Max stared at the ground. ‘I can’t, Father. I’d be too ashamed.’
‘God sees everything, my child. Has seen. Whatever evils you confess will not surprise Him. And it may bring you peace.’
Max frowned angrily. ‘I can’t afford peace. Where I am going, peace is what happens when all your enemies have been killed.’
Father Bauer began a slow shuffle back towards the house. ‘I think you are right. It is time for me to go back inside.’
Max stayed him for a moment, one hand resting on the priest’s fragile upper arm. ‘Please tell me that I haven’t offended you, Father?’
‘By no means, my boy. By no means.’ Father Bauer allowed Max to steer him back through the picket gate.
Halfway up the path the old man stopped, his head pecking to one side, one unruly hand tapping against his thigh. ‘Max. Listen to me.’
A thin trail of spittle left his mouth, and he dabbed the saliva impatiently away with the frayed sleeve of his cassock.
‘Just as with your eyes and their faraway look, there is an echo behind your voice, an honest echo, which heartens me. Don’t go to your death a cynic, Max. Remember what Herodotus said, in his Histories: “The most hateful torment for men is to have knowledge of everything but power over nothing.” You have been given knowledge, Max. A terrible knowledge, which you bear on our behalf. But only your belief in God will give you power. Power over the evil that you see, to change it. Power over the fear that you see, to understand it. Power over any wrong that you see, to rectify it.’
Max shook his head bleakly. ‘Father. You are a good man, and I am not. There are days when I have taken pleasure in killing. Days when my eyes have clouded over with hate until I was unable to see.’
‘Maxl. Maxl.’ Father Bauer turned towards him, shrunken now, his thin hair, untidily brushed, standing up in scattered clumps across his scalp. ‘When I was a young man, I thought, in my hubris, that I had chosen to be a man of God. That it was my vocation.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘Only recently have I come to the conclusion that my vanity was such that I was unable to see that it was God who had chosen me for His own purposes.’ He drew himself up. ‘God chose me to be a priest, just as He has chosen you to be a soldier. It is His will.’
‘What? Chosen me to kill?’ Max shook his head. ‘Father, please, give me facts. I can’t cope anymore with metaphysics.’
‘Very well, then. I will.’
The old priest smiled, and his smile appeared to light up his face from the inside, as a half-burned candle will, on occasion, shine out through its retaining wax.
‘God has not chosen you to kill, Max. No. Hardly that. He has chosen you to make a choice.’
France
The camouflaged Steiner was parked at a right angle to the central courtyard, near the no longer working fountain. Its overweight driver was slumped on the bonnet sucking on a cigarette, his grey-uniformed back to Max’s approaching figure, his passenger nowhere to be seen.
To Max, fresh from his talk with Father Bauer, there was something offensive about the picture the Steiner made, as though an iconoclast, or some passing anarchist, had daubed a blemish onto a much-loved painting. He felt an overwhelming desire to strike out the jeep, and the soldier, and all the echoes of unwanted war they carried with them, and magically restore the once familiar scene.
‘Yes, Sergeant? What can I do for you?’ The unexpected reversion to his military voice, and the unwelcome frame of mind that came with it, caused Max’s gorge to rise in protest at himself.
Startled, the elderly sergeant sprang to attention, furtively dropping his cigarette. As Max came abreast of the vehicle, the man caught sight for the first time of Max’s civilian dress. A frown passed across his features. For a moment he seemed unsure whether to try for a salute, or bend forward to retrieve his fallen cigarette.
‘I am Captain von Aschau.’
The man saluted, still squinting uncertainly at Max’s get-up. ‘I’m sorry, Captain. I didn’t recognise you as an officer.’
‘That’s hardly surprising in the circumstances.’
The sergeant opened and closed his mouth, as though he were on the verge of questioning Max as to what circumstances he might actually be describing. ‘Major Burkhardt is waiting for you inside, Captain.’
‘A major? A major in the Wehrmacht? Waiting for me?’
‘Yes, Captain.’
‘Well, I had better go into the house then, hadn’t I, and see what he has to say?’
The sergeant, still standing rigidly to attention, refused to be drawn any further.
‘At ease, man. I am in civilian clothes.’
‘Yes, Captain.’
‘And please retrieve your cigarette before it ignites the oil leak that I can see spreading beneath your motor.’
‘Yes, Captain.’
Max smiled. With a belly like that, the man would have trouble bending even halfway to the ground. A supply lackey, obviously; no one else in the army had the wherewithal anymore to get fat.
As he entered the front door Max became aware of the murmuring of voices off to his right. His father was saying something – the words Pour Le Mérite were being bandied back and forth. His father kept the medal in a display case, above the Kaiser’s personal citation, awarded to him in the last few weeks of the Great War.
Listening to the one-sided conversation, Max wondered whether he should take advantage of the unexpected diversion and go swiftly upstairs to change out of his civilian clothes and into his uniform. No. To hell with it. He would stay just as he was. He pushed the study door open with his fingertips.
‘Ah, Major Burkhardt, my son has returned, just as I promised you. He, too, of course, has the equivalent of the Pour Le Mérite, with his, how do you call it again? Knight’s Cross. Only my son has a sprig of Oak Leaves to his. How the young always surpass their elders, eh, Major?’
Max allowed himself a fleeting glance across the major’s uniform, taking in the red staff officer’s stripe down the side of the breeches, and the conspicuous lack of any combat medals. Not a fighting soldier, then – he would have to be doubly careful. His father had probably already alienated the man with his tin-ware chatter about Knights’ Crosses and Oak Leaves and Pour Le Mérite citations. ‘Major Burkhardt.’
‘Captain von Aschau.’ Burkhardt’s eyes were conducting a similar inventory of Max’s get-up. ‘I had rather expected to find you in uniform.’
Max shrugged. So he was dealing with one of those, was he? Trust him to stumble onto a martinet while he was illegally wearing civilian clothes. ‘I only have one dress uniform, Major. And it’s in the process of being cleaned. I wished to make a good impression on the train going back to the front.’
‘Ah, yes. Of course.’
The three men stood silently, as if at the end of an extended conversation. After a moment, Major Burkhardt turned towards Bertram von Aschau and canted his head expectantly.
Von Aschau caught the look and straightened up, fiddling with the buttons on his cardigan as if he wished that he, too, had a uniform to change into. ‘Yes. Yes. Certainly. I shall leave you men to it, then. Good day to you, Major. Good day.’
‘Good day, Count.’
Max didn’t like the way the major inflected the word ‘Count’. There was already bad blood between the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS, and the major had one over on him now with his unlawful derogation from army strictures about the wearing of uniforms on leave. The last thing he needed was for some jumped-up supply-paladin bureaucrat to make trouble for him with the military authorities; he suspected that he might have a hard time controlling his temper.
He waited until his father was completely out of the room before attempting to regain the initiative. ‘May I assume that this is not a social visit, Herr Major?’
‘Hardly, Captain.’
‘Then kindly come to the point. I am, technically at least, still on leave.’
The Wehrmacht major rocked back a little on his glittering boots
, as if he had just received an unexpected blow to the face. ‘I have fresh orders for you. From your Division. Sealed orders. They were passed on to us for forwarding to you. Colonel Manfred asked me to make sure they reached you personally.’
‘Please give my compliments to Colonel Manfred and thank him for me.’ Max held out his hand. ‘Thank you, Major. The orders.’
Major Burkhardt drew himself up. ‘I feel constrained to say that it goes against the grain to hand these orders over to a man in civilian dress.’
‘The grain of what?’
‘You are making fun of me, Captain?’ Burkhardt’s eyes were flashing around the room – anywhere but on Max’s face. It was obvious that he felt that the place itself was an insult, and that Max was simply the dollop of sour cream on top of it.
Max shrugged. ‘Would you prefer me to go and retrieve my uniform from the wash and put it on, so that you can hand the orders that you have for me to the image, albeit wet, of one suitably attired?’
Burkhardt fumbled inside his tunic and withdrew a buff envelope.
‘You know what it says, of course?’ The Waffen SS officer in Max was beginning to enjoy the more senior Wehrmacht officer’s obvious discomfiture.
‘The envelope has an official seal.’
‘Even so.’
Burkhardt slapped the envelope down onto a side table. He seemed to be battling some inner demon, and losing. ‘You will be hearing more of this, Captain von Aschau. You may be certain of that.’ Burkhardt’s face was flushed, the skin around his eyes unnaturally white against the freshly blotched background. ‘You men from the front may think you are God’s gift to the Reich. But we too serve, who are forced to stay behind to organize the running of the war.’
‘That’s a very comforting thought, I can assure you.’ Max swallowed the rest of his intended words. What was the point? Was this what he was fighting for? Lice such as this? The man was probably personally responsible for the five hundred pairs of thin leather parade gloves his local depot had received instead of winter mittens, and which he had pretended to Bettina in the summerhouse that they had eaten. And for the lack of felt overboots for his men. And for the wrong diameter tank shells they were constantly being sent. And for the shit-for-soup food they were getting now, instead of the high-calorie rations they really needed to survive the bitter cold of a Russian winter. ‘Thank you, Major. I will open this when you are gone.’
Burkhardt hesitated, then snapped out a ‘Sieg Heil!’
Max bowed very slightly. ‘I am sorry that I cannot return your salute, Major Burkhardt. But as you have already observed, I am not in uniform.’
The major turned angrily on his heel and marched out through the door. Max could hear his shouted commands echoing off the walls of the corridor. Poor bastard of a sergeant, he thought to himself. The man would probably get seven days latrine detail for smoking while on duty.
He threw himself into a chair and perused the envelope. What now? His leave was up anyway, what little of it he could call his own. Perhaps they wanted to fly him back to the front? That might give him a few extra days, anyway. On one of Major Burkhardt’s supply planes, perhaps? Laden down with tons and tons of useless trash. He slit open the envelope with his fingernail.
‘What is it, Max? What does it say?’
Bertram von Aschau had re-entered the room. He was standing, half an eye on the retreating Steiner through the window, half on Max.
Max scanned the flimsy, then burst out laughing.
‘Max?’
Max shook his head wonderingly. The act of laughter made him feel good again. Made him feel as if he belonged here on the earth, rather than in the forgotten no-man’s-land of the soul he had been inhabiting for so long. ‘Father Bauer was right. The man is obviously a prophet.’ He threw back his head, his mouth falling open, his tongue playing across his teeth.
‘What are you talking about, Max?’
‘I am talking about God’s will.’
Bertram von Aschau flinched. ‘I hear enough of that sort of thing every day from your mother. Kindly say what you have to say in the demotic, and be done with it.’
Max took a deep breath, consciously controlling his elation. ‘The powers that be have decided to move us away from the Eastern Front.’ He savoured the words, as though they formed the text of a sudden, unexpected, death sentence reprieve. ‘The High Command expect an enemy invasion of the European mainland some time early next year. During the course of the next three months, therefore, they are transferring my regiment, lock, stock, and barrel, to France.’ He slapped his knee with the paper, then flicked it onto the table beside him. ‘I am not, repeat not, to return to Khodorov. Instead, as it states in my military records that I speak fluent French, I am to make my way – by the swiftest possible route – to Montauban, Southern France, and begin preparing the ground. Allocate billets. Arrange supplies. Scout out the surrounding area, and choose which villages and towns we will occupy.’ Max chuckled. ‘And there’s more.’
Max’s father made a bemused face. ‘More?’
‘You want the pièce de résistance?’ Max smiled. ‘Well then I’ll give it to you. Due to unanticipated – yes, it really says “unanticipated” here – casualties at the front line, and to my own consistently valiant conduct in the face of uncalled-for enemy attrition, I am to be brevetted major.’
PART THREE
St Gervais Du Mont-Boisé, Aveyron, France.
April 1944
Lucie Léré
The vent d’autan had been gusting for three days now, bringing with it rain, and hail, and bad tempers. All outside work had stopped at the oustal, and the boys had resorted to mending harness and replacing rotten wood inside the barns in a vain effort to keep out of the house and avoid the cutting edge of their grandmother’s tongue. Only now, with the paradoxically warm wind seeming to die, were they able to venture out – like Ordovician fish transuding from the sea – into the basse-cour, where the sucking mud threatened to invade their wooden clogs and drag them off.
Back inside the farmhouse, Lucie Léré hunched over the porcelain wash-hand basin in the corner of the souillarde and flannelled her face and behind her ears with a discarded strip of towelling. The only mirror in the house was set into the tin surround of the basin, and she used this to check the lustre of her wind-swept hair, the dark smudges beneath her eyes, and the condition of her teeth, which, unlike her brothers, she kept white and healthy by the regular use of diluted baking powder and the shredded tip of a liquorice stick.
When she was finished with her inventory, she ran her fingers down the broadened ridge of her newly broken nose, her eyes anxiously following its still unfamiliar contours. Finally, with a staunch, forbearing sigh – as of one reluctantly returning from the fragile world of dreams to the brutal world of the living – she dried her face and pinned back her auburn hair.
A silent, thoughtful girl, just six weeks shy of her nineteenth birthday, Lucie Léré was the eldest daughter and only girl in a family of four children, which consisted of her and her three younger brothers, Gilbert, sixteen, Aimé, fourteen, and Bastien, twelve. Lucie and the boys lived and worked together at Canteloube, their grandfather’s farm, which was situated three kilometres along the Montauban road from the small town of St Gervais du Mont-Boisé, in the department of the Aveyron. The smallholding on which they lived included a farmhouse, a yard, two stone barns, and about a dozen widely dispersed hectares of mixed pasture and arable, with a distant half hectare plot set aside for the family vines.
The three boys all took after their father and paternal grandparents, and were rapidly growing into burly, useful men, with their grandmother’s distinctive Gougnac nose, and the thick, broad hands of their Ségala ancestors. Whereas Lucie, it was universally acknowledged – or at the very least it had been before her recent misfortune – tended to favour, in physical terms at least, her wayward mother, Jeanne, whose elusive parents (of Mediterranean and, God forbid, possibly even Italian stock) obvio
usly considered it beneath themselves ever to descend on their rustic in-laws from the lofty heights of their thriving Marseille bakery.
Now, without any prompting, Lucie bustled through from the souillarde and began to lay the table for her grandfather and brothers, just as she had done nearly every morning of her life from the age of six onwards – a thick porcelain plate, a fork, and a wine glass for each setting. Then she strode over to her press-bed to check that the tureen nestling beneath her eiderdown was still comfortably warm.
‘It’s ready, Mémère,’ she called out to her grandmother. ‘I’ll fetch the boys. The storm will have made them hungry. Then I must hurry and help maman at the restaurant.’
‘In this weather?’ Her grandmother sighed long-sufferingly. ‘If you must, La Lucette, if you must. But take care, you understand?’ She cocked her head in implicit warning. ‘And don’t forget to take those radishes with you when you go. You must charge the Bourgeoise at least twenty francs for them. She can well afford it. And not on account, do you hear me? She can pay cash, like the rest of them.’
The walk into town took Lucie longer than usual, thanks to an unexpected resurgence of the storm, and to the fact that all she had to shield herself from the wind and rain was a short oilskin jacket and a token paisley headscarf. When the cloudburst became too strong for comfort, she cast about herself uncertainly, then ran for shelter to the small wayside shrine of St Gervais. She huddled, with her back to the road, beneath the stone coping.
It was for this reason that she failed to hear the Kubelwagen containing Max von Aschau, and his sergeant-major, Paul Meyer, as it pulled up beside her on the rain-rutted road.
When she did become aware of its presence, she dropped her bag of radishes and jinked back for cover against the retaining wall of the shrine, her heart beating uncontrollably fast, her hands flattened against the wall behind her as if she had just surprised a scorpion inside her shoe.
The Occupation Secret Page 6
