A Good Death

by A Good Death (retail) (epub)

  Suzie had put her hands over her ears. Sabine reached out and pulled at her wrists. ‘And that was just the Milice,’ she said with relish. ‘Down there it’s the Germans.’

  ‘I don’t know why you’re so pleased about it. You won’t like it if they set fire to your house.’

  Sabine stretched out her legs. ‘War is so exciting. I enjoy it so much more than peace. Today has been really good. Now the Allies have landed, there will be real fighting here. Battles in France instead of somewhere else. You wonder what they’ve been doing all this time, in Africa and places like that. Why didn’t they attack here where the Germans are living?’

  ‘Well, they’ve done it now,’ Suzie said placatingly.

  ‘Perhaps the Germans have killed Madame Ariane by now.’

  ‘Listen.’ Suzie held down the branches. They peered out and saw a deer bounding down the hill, the white underside of its tail flashing. ‘Perhaps Micheline is coming back with news.’

  If she had hoped that this distraction might divert Sabine from her train of thought, she was disappointed.

  ‘We might go back and find her body lying in the courtyard,’ Sabine spoke slowly to spin out the pleasure of the fantasy. She slipped her hand under the hem of her dress, tucking it inside the elastic of her knickers. Suzie averted her eyes, hoping that the visit of the Germans was not going to trigger a new bout of murderous imagination in Sabine. The idea of killing her stepmother kept recurring to Sabine and, once her interest in a project was roused, she was obsessive.

  ‘Perhaps they have tied her up and raped her. Perhaps they have hung her upside down, like the boy from La Tuiliere and have beaten her with sticks. Or with razors, slash, slash, a thousand cuts.’ Sabine rocked herself lovingly.

  ‘Don’t, don’t.’ Suzie’s voice rose in pain.

  Sabine’s was rising too. ‘All right, a single bullet, like shooting a deer. Bang and it falls, still running. A little burned hole in her chest, that’s all. There’s not much blood when you shoot a deer. He might draw out his pistol, the German, and shoot her at close range. Or they could set up a machine gun and dr-dr-dr, stud her with bullets.’

  ‘She’d be a hero.’

  Sabine released a long breath. ‘Who cares? She’d be dead.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  Sabine fell silent, absorbed in her fantasy of pain; Suzie lapsed into her own dream world, which she visited each night before she went to sleep, the make-believe family of Papa, Maman and Rahel. Rahel was a beautiful American doll, her namesake. She always began by remembering the games she used to play with her, but this time, as often happened, inexorable reality broke into the pliable texture of the dream.

  She had left Rahel with Maman the day she was taken away. Rahel the doll always stayed with Maman, when she, Rahel as she was in those days, went to school, keeping her company in the damp basement lodging when they lived in Clermont Ferrand. She did not always go to school, although she might set off as though that were her destination. Her mother was too sick to stand in line and had lost the ingenuity necessary to cope, day by day, with new, unforeseen difficulties. She lay in the semi-darkness, coughing, coughing, while the cockroaches walked boldly across the floor. Rahel could not master the offices that Maman used to visit, but she knew how to obtain their food coupons every month and how to queue at the boulangerie. Money was becoming more and more of a problem; the last of the funds that had reached them from Papa in Paris was almost at an end.

  One day a lady came from the Committee of the General Union of French Jews and, seeing the state Maman was in, said she must be moved to hospital. That time Maman refused. But a month or so later, she returned from school to find another lady sitting beside Maman’s bed.

  ‘Rahel, this is Madame de Cazalle,’ Rahel curtseyed. ‘She is a friend of Omi and Opa, and Papa has asked her to come and see us.’

  Rahel shook hands with the newcomer and made a quick assessment of her clothes and manner, a skill she was perfecting in her dealings with the outside world. The woman was tall, dressed in a beautiful tweed suit that dated from long before coupons. She had light brown eyes, like liquid honey in a jar, and thick dark brown hair, smooth and shining, falling to her shoulders under her hat. She was uneasy, her mouth tight, as if her conversation with Maman had distressed her. Rahel bent over Maman for her kiss.

  ‘Rahel,’ her mother said, ‘you remember when the lady from the Committee come, she want me to go to hospital?’

  Rahel nodded. Maman always made mistakes when she spoke French. She spoke fluently, with a large vocabulary, but she made elementary errors, which caused Rahel, with her purist French education, to flinch. She knew that Maman’s speech made people think her stupid or ill-educated, and they regarded her with contempt. Long ago they spoke German together, she and Papa and Maman, but then Papa had forbidden it and they only spoke French. Rahel and Maman tried to obey, even in Clermont without Papa. For her it was easy, for she spoke French in school. But Mama could never give up German; it was her language. So sometimes they spoke it together and Maman was happy.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I now decide that it is a good time to go and get well. And while I am away Madame de Cazalle will look after you.’

  Rahel stared at her new guardian. As far as she could see no one looked after her; it was she who looked after Maman. ‘She’ll come and live here?’ she asked dubiously.

  Maman laughed and then coughed. ‘No, you will live with her.’

  ‘That will not be necessary, thank you.’ Rahel addressed Madame de Cazalle directly.

  But she was powerless in this, as in everything else, and it was all arranged. Madame Meyer from the Committee came again and they talked about Rahel’s new papers and her food coupons (Category J3). The two women sat on the bed and the chair, leaving her standing beside Maman. The false papers would say that she was born in St Sever in Pas-de-Calais, because the Mairie had burned down there in the thirties and it was impossible for the authorities to check her identity with the records. Madame de Cazalle, equipped with blank cards and a rubber stamp was an expert in making new papers.

  ‘And what were you called? We’d better start afresh; not Rahel, I think.’

  ‘No,’ Maman said.

  ‘Rahel, what would you like to be called?’

  ‘I like Rahel. I am Rahel.’

  ‘Suzie,’ Madame de Cazalle said firmly. ‘It’s a Jewish name and a French name. Do you like Suzanne?’

  Silence.

  Maman said, ‘I like Suzie very much.’

  So she became Suzie and Rahel was left with Maman. Madame de Cazalle explained that life was becoming more and more difficult for Jews in France, especially if they did not have French nationality. The German authorities had just announced that in the occupied zone they had to wear a yellow star …

  Rahel listened with boredom. Why was it that adults told you things that you knew perfectly well, as if they were breaking terrible news? Life was always becoming more and more difficult for the Jews. Papa and Maman used to talk about it long ago in Paris, and since they left Paris and came to Clermont it was worse.

  Maman opened her eyes and made an effort. ‘Rahel, you will live with Madame de Cazalle until the war is over. You won’t tell anyone at all that you are Jewish. And when the war is over, Papa come and find us both and we are all together again. So you are Suzie Ollivier now and you do whatever Madame de Cazalle says. If she says you are to go to mass, you go to mass. You do just what her little girl does. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, Maman.’ Rahel caressed her hand.

  ‘Promise you will never tell anyone who you are.’

  ‘I promise, Maman.’

  It pleased her mother to speak to her as if she was very young and very stupid. She played this game too, hiding what she knew and what she guessed, because if they did not speak it, it might not be true. But this was spoken and it was about to be true.

  * * *

  She met Sabine for the first time late in the a
fternoon in the tower room, always known as Madame Ariane’s salon, to distinguish it from the big salon, the little salon, the blue salon, all the other rooms in the enormous house. From the outside its facade seemed to go on for ever; inside there were doors, corridors, rooms without end.

  The journey had been long. She had said goodbye to Maman in the early hours of the morning and left without shedding a tear. They took the bus to the station and waited. They sat in the train for three hours. They got out at a country station and waited. They took another train, a stopping one with only two carriages. Suzie hardly paid attention to the changing scenery or their fellow travellers. All the time she thought of Maman alone, with no one to care for her.

  At one point Madame de Cazalle said, ‘You will call me Madame Ariane, because there is another Madame de Cazalle where we are going. And Madame Veyrines, her sister-in-law. And you’re going to meet another little girl, just a bit older than you. She’s called Sabine. You mustn’t tell her about Maman and Papa. We’re going to say that Maman is a friend of mine, which indeed she is. My father has known your grandfather for many, many years, so we must be friends. And you must say that Maman is not well, so you are coming to live with us. And remember, you are called Suzanne Ollivier. The olive tree is the sign of peace, so your new name is looking forward to when peace will come.’

  Suzie was not interested in the symbols that were so important to Madame de Cazalle. ‘Who is Sabine?’ she asked.

  ‘Sabine is …’ Madame de Cazalle sighed. ‘Sabine is a strange person. I hope you will like her. Here’s our train.’

  * * *

  The strange person looked ordinary enough. She had a cloud of curly dark hair and a round pale face too large for her features, round, brown eyes, a button nose, a tight little mouth, like marbles on a board.

  When they had been introduced Madame de Cazalle said, ‘Sabine, would you take Suzie to Micheline for your tea. She’s very tired and she’ll need something before dinner.’

  The idea that one could eat ‘something’ that wasn’t counted as dinner seemed staggering to Suzie. But it was not important to Sabine, because, instead of leading her to the promised food, she ran ahead into the farmyard, into a green enclosure dotted with fruit trees under which a scattering of hens were pecking. Suzie marvelled at them. It was such an extraordinary place that even the hens were unusual: dull gold, or shining black with a green glaze, or white with shaggy feathers like fur. She stood still, looking round her. Below them was a lake, sky and clouds reflected in its perfect upside-down world, over which black swans, ducks and moorhens sailed, as if the water was the air.

  ‘Come on, come on.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘I’m going to introduce you to someone. There’s someone you must meet. Come in here.’ Sabine wrenched open the wooden door of a little house barely high enough to admit her, shutting it firmly behind Suzie.

  After the glare of the sunshine on the emerald grass, the interior darkness cut off Suzie’s vision with the abruptness of a hand over her eyes. She could only hear a soft snorting, and smell straw and ammonia, a sour vegetable tang. There was a presence, large and solid, moving in the straw, barging questingly against her knees.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s Lou Moussou, Lou Moussou.’

  Sabine spoke crooningly. She was slapping it, scratching it. Suzie could hear flesh on flesh, rasping. The creature was naked, huge, mottled, pinkish, with sparse hair sprouting from its body. It grunted in ecstasy. She could make out its snout swinging towards her, its pink eyelids rimming its pinhole eyes, which looked straight at her. Its ears twitched intelligently, listening to Sabine’s voice.

  ‘He’s my friend, my friend.’ She had an odd habit of repeating her phrases. ‘And now you’re here, he can be your friend too. Look, scratch him here. He likes it.’

  Rahel extended her hand gingerly to touch the firm rind with her fingertips.

  ‘He’s called Lou?’

  ‘No,’ said Sabine. ‘It’s not his name, it’s who he is. It’s a respectful way of speaking about him. It means the man, the master, the gentleman in the patois. He’s always called Lou Moussou, the pig. Now he knows you.’

  She was already on her way out, fastening the latch with swift skill. ‘I’ll show you something else too.’

  She was running back through the paddock, diffracting the jewelled fowl like sunlight through a prism. Gasping for breath, Suzie followed her into the house by the tower door. They raced through an enfilade of rooms. She caught glimpses of gilt frames and misted mirrors, chairs arranged in ghostly groups, their former occupants now ranged on the walls in portraits.

  Sabine’s footsteps rapped on the roads of parquet, the sound muffled out when she crossed the glowing lakes of oriental rugs. She halted at a hidden, silk-covered door, cut into the wall without a frame, and whisked it open.

  ‘This is my secret place. No one comes here, no one.’ They were in a stairwell of bare stone. Another door opened and this time Suzie closed her eyes against the sudden brilliance that confounded them. The late afternoon sun was flowing in a stream of dancing atoms through a window above their heads and striking the white-washed walls with dazzling effect. The room was a hall, double height, although it was lower at the far end where the wall was rounded, like the inside of a beehive. A few rush-seated chairs, oddly low, with high backs, were arranged in a row towards the front of the hall. In front of them was a table covered with a white cloth, with two candlesticks on it, as if it were Shabbat and someone was about to say the Friday night prayer. Sabine seated herself on one of the chairs, with her back to the light.

  ‘Come and sit, sit here.’ She pulled another chair in front of her. Suzie squatted on the low seat, the sunlight falling full in her face.

  ‘You’ve come here to live?’ Sabine asked. ‘For ever?’

  Suzie screwed up her eyes. She could only see her interrogator as a silhouette with a dark nimbus of fine curls.

  ‘Well, until my mother’s better.’

  ‘Why did she bring you here?’

  ‘My mother’s sick. She can’t look after me.’

  ‘Do you like her?’

  ‘Who? Your mother?’

  ‘She’s not my mother. She’s not my mother.’

  ‘I thought you were Sabine de Cazalle.’

  ‘Yes, we have the same name, but she’s my stepmother.’ Sabine was leaning forward in the intensity of her feeling. ‘I hate her. I hate her.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘My father’s dead. My mother’s dead. She took me away from the sisters and brought me here. I’m in her power. It’s the same for you. She’s taken you from your parents and brought you here. You’re in her power too.’

  Suzie was overmastered by Sabine. Both parents dead; she could not imagine anything worse. At least she had the hope of seeing Maman and Papa again one day, when the war was over.

  ‘So you’ll be on my side?’ Sabine asked.

  How could one not be on the same side as someone who had lost her parents definitively? Suzie’s own tribulations seemed minor. ‘Of course.’

  ‘Swear.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No, swear by all the saints.’

  ‘I swear by all the saints.’

  Sabine rose briskly, taking Suzie’s hand to drag her up too.

  ‘Where are we?’

  ‘This is the chapel. I use it as a hiding place. The reason that it’s safe is because she never comes here. She’s not Catholic. Now, I’ll take you to Micheline. You’d better sleep in my room.’

  * * *

  From that first day Suzie had been under Sabine’s rule. Sabine had wanted to be her friend. For a long time she had had no friends, so Sabine’s eagerness for her companionship was at first a solace. But it came at a price. Sabine wanted her alliance in her war with her stepmother and watched Suzie carefully for any sign of defection. Suzie had at first tried to retain the friendship of both, because she needed them both. Sh
e could see no harm in Madame Ariane; indeed, she seemed full of good will, refusing to notice Sabine’s rudeness to her. But Sabine would not permit any intermediate position. Suzie had to take sides: if she wasn’t for her, she was against her.

  Suzie learned what that meant one evening soon after she arrived when they went to receive their goodnight kiss from Madame Veyrines, Madame de Cazalle and Madame Ariane, who were sitting together on the terrace. Madame Ariane had kissed her cheek and then, impulsively, put both arms around her, whispering in her ear, ‘Don’t worry. It’ll be all right one day.’

  In their bedroom Sabine had exploded with fury, ‘You mustn’t let her do that. She’s trying to take you away from me, to turn you into a traitor.’

  Suzie had protested feebly, denying her pleasure in the moment, insisting that she had only received, not given anything in the exchange. Sabine’s emotional tirade had been kept up late into the night until, sobbing, beaten, Suzie had promised to have no conversations with Madame Ariane. She would hate her, for Sabine’s sake, she swore. From then on she had to ignore all overtures of intimacy from Madame Ariane and to ally herself with Sabine. She had no choice but to submit to Sabine’s regime of terror.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Florence reappeared in the forest after a couple of hours to summon them home, where they found the Germans installing themselves in the house, and Micheline and Madame Ariane busy moving their belongings and those of the aunts into the tower. The officer in charge had demanded a roll-call of the household and seven o’clock found them, all of them, in the hall waiting for the hour to strike, to knock on the door of the library.

  ‘There is something profoundly humiliating about queuing at the door in one’s own house,’ Madame Ariane remarked to Henri, ‘which is presumably why we have to do it. They’ve already made me take them round and recount the history of Bonnemort, as if they were guests being given a house tour.’