Marcel's Letters

by Carolyn Porter

  Aaron guessed the small photo in a lower corner—the after photo—was taken an hour or two later. Smoke still streamed from some buildings. Others appeared flat and lifeless, choked by a layer of ash. It reminded me of images of Manhattan’s streets after the Twin Towers collapsed on 9/11.

  The full fury of Allied air power was brought to Berlin in 1945. On February 3, more than one thousand B-17 bombers dropped more than two thousand tons of explosives. It was the single largest aerial attack on the city. The scope of destruction was almost beyond comprehension. Fires raged for days.

  Images of Berlin seared into my brain like an iron brand scarring flesh. German soldiers sprinted past buildings engulfed in flames. A woman cradled a child as she skittered past bodies abandoned in the street. Legs with feet still laced into boots laid in a gutter, the torso nowhere to be seen. Men and women in tattered clothes cleared mountains of brick with shovels and bare hands. Cables and axles had been rolled together and tossed like balls of yarn. Buildings were fleshless skeletons, with trusses and beams jutting out like bare ribs.

  On March 24, 1945, one hundred and fifty B-17s—nearly twice as many as the eighty-three that caused the destruction shown in the Library of Congress photo—targeted the Daimler-Marienfelde plant. They delivered a fatal blow. Damage made it “impossible for production to resume.”

  My stomach dropped. What happened to Marcel after Daimler no longer needed him?

  My head knew the likely answer. My heart refused to believe it.

  I quietly got out of bed and went to the living room. Once again, nightmares made sleep impossible. I was too exhausted to look for Marcel, so I grabbed the remote control and flipped to a television show on forensics that ran throughout the early morning hours. Each half-hour episode focused on a brutal crime and explained how the tiniest detail could crack open a case. Despite the show’s topics—murder, rape, arson—I chose it because the narrator’s silky-smooth voice sometimes lulled me back to sleep.

  Exhaustion was not the only thing that had taken up residence inside of me. It was anger. I was angry at Aaron for not helping with the search; at Marcel’s family for not cherishing his letters; at my clients for consuming time and energy; at every person who had not returned an email or letter. Most of all, I raged at myself for not finding him—and for allowing the search to devour time, money, energy, sleep.

  As the third episode rolled into the fourth, I tried to dissect the hold Marcel’s letters had on me. Thousands of men and women wrote letters during World War II. They were only words on paper. Every day I was surrounded by words on paper. I made a career of designing words on paper. Why were these words different?

  I did not have a driving interest in genealogy.

  Or French history.

  Or World War II.

  I was not searching because I was bored, or because I had vacuous blocks of time to fill. A hundred better uses of my time existed: I could finish the font, market my business, swim laps at the YMCA. Even more basic: Hoover needed a bath, I needed a haircut, the mound of laundry in the basement grew ever larger.

  Marcel’s words of love were undeniably intoxicating. But his letters were not written to me. His letters would never provide me with love. Sliding into this obsession might have made sense if there was a gaping emotional hole in my life. But I was married to a wickedly smart and funny man. We were good together. I liked my work as a graphic designer, and I was fortunate to have good clients. Yet I could barely wait for each workday to be done so I could search for Marcel.

  Aaron had been correct when he said finding Marcel’s fate would not change anything. There was no practical reason I needed to know. The answer would not cure cancer, prevent homelessness, stop wars.

  Yet finding out if Marcel lived seemed to be the only thing that mattered.

  It haunted me that his letters had been at an antique store halfway around the world, sold for a handful of dollars. Marcel loved his wife and daughters so openly, so deeply—his desire to return to them was so palpable—I could feel it in my bones. If Marcel loved his family that much, he had to be loved by them in return. Didn’t he? So why hadn’t they treasured these letters as much as I, a complete stranger, did?

  The word to describe what I had been feeling hit me: beholden. Somewhere along the way, the search had changed from a curiosity to an irrevocable responsibility. It was as if not stopping until I found out his fate would prove someone cared what happened to him. It would prove the fragment of life captured in his letters mattered. Even if I did not know anything else about Marcel, I knew this: He existed. He mattered.

  So despite the fact that every physical record of Marcel seemed to have disappeared—every record other than Wolfgang’s ledger—I refused to let Marcel disappear, too. I refused to allow the love he had for his wife and daughters to be lost to history, even if that love was only ever remembered by a non-French-speaking, novice type designer in White Bear Lake.

  “I will remember you,” I whispered.

  “Fromage, dinner will be ready soon,” Aaron said as he poked his head into my office.

  “Fromage?” I repeated minutes later when I stepped into the kitchen.

  “It’s your new nickname,” he said with a smirk. “Ma petite fromage.”

  “My little … cheese?” I said with a laugh. “Why would you call me your little cheese?”

  “It’s perfect. You are from Wisconsin.”

  The nickname was a peace offering. The angry exchange over the bombing records had been forgiven.

  I sensed Aaron wanted me to declare the search a good effort and let it go. But I was grateful he accepted that was not going to happen. After I cleaned up the dinner dishes, I settled into the couch, pulled my laptop onto my outstretched legs, and resumed the search.

  Three short notes accompanied Tom’s translations of the final letter and the postcard. First, Tom noted the date on Marcel’s letter was confusing. “It had been written February 1, but he told his wife to go see ‘them’ on February 1. It’s not clear how timing could work,” Tom wrote.

  Then, Tom noted the letter included a reference to “fridoline cuisine,” which even stumped older native French speakers he consulted with.

  Finally, Tom noted he changed the three-letter acronym DCA, which stood for défense contre avions, to AAA to reflect its English-language equivalent: anti-aircraft artillery.

  My heart sank before I read another word.

  The text at the top of the page, above the salutation, is a continuation of text from the fourth page and is the end of the letter.

  Letters Four and Five

  Marienfelde, Germany

  February 1, 1943

  My darling wife,

  I don’t know if you will receive this letter the quickest, but there’s a friend who is leaving for Paris and I will give him your letter. This evening I received news from the boss. He told me that you need to go see them on February 1st. Now I can give you some details about my life as a prisoner. Tonight I succeeded in getting a beautiful piece of cod. I prepared it in a court bouillon and with oil and vinegar. You might say that I’m boring you, but there might be some letters that you didn’t receive.

  In the morning at 6:10 we leave for the workshop, arrive at the canteen at 6:30 to drink the juice that costs 5 pfennigs, that means 20 centimes, without sugar. Then to work, when we arrive we chat until 7 o’clock. At 8 o’clock it’s 20 minutes in the toilet for a cigarette when there is one. Quarter to 9 we go down to the canteen to have a snack and another coffee. At 9:30 we go back to work, another trip to the shitter waiting for quarter to noon, then we leave quickly for lunch. At ten past noon the meal is finished and we go back down to the canteen for the third juice. At 12:25 we go back to work with several trips to the toilet, waiting for 5:30, the time when we clean the machinery. At 6:00 it’s the evening meal, 6:10 everything is done. We run errands in town or go back to the barracks to get letters and to make food because as soon as we leave the table we are hungry again. What
we eat doesn’t stick to our ribs. When I come back I will make you some fridoline cuisine and you can tell me the news. The other day we ate chicken.

  As for the tough times, let me tell you about a big event the other day. At 7:30 pm the sirens go off, we hurry down to the shelter, leaving all the just-served plates of food on the tables. At 8:30 the sirens have been blaring for an hour, then strangely even in the shelter we feel a blast, because nearby there is an AAA battery. At 20 minutes to nine somebody yells that the barracks are burning. Everyone hesitates to go out because the AAA bursts are still going off all around us. Then the battery takes a big hit and everything quiets down. I’m able to go out with a buddy. The moment he opens the shutters to go out through the window, the window panes blow up, the barracks was already an inferno inside. At 9:30 we see the results of the operation. All around us houses are burning and so is the battery with six krauts killed off. In our two French barracks, five Russians and one Russian dead. The worst is the prisoners’ camp. 80 guys burned alive because the Germans locked them in their barracks. Talk about some real bastards.

  The next night it happened again but it’s Berlin that really suffered the most. The ambulances kept going all night and the next day. Yesterday I saw the damage and you know that matters for us. Now the morale is good and I’m waiting for business. Now for the packages, everything that you can think to send me go ahead, because the black market is king here. 160F for one kilo of bread, 160F for one pack of cigarettes, 80F for 20 grams of tobacco, 3000F for one kilo of butter, 1200F for one kilo of pork, and everything is in keeping. Today I sent you 50 marks. If I receive some packages think of how much money we’ll make. Above all send me tobacco because I am too sad without it. The time is already very long without you and without my daughters. What are those three doing? I think I’ll get a letter from you soon that will tell me some news. My boss tells me that you are strong. I was proud of my darling wife and I send her my biggest kisses. Please hug and kiss my dear daughters for me, as well as Grandma, and also my father who must be worried too. I’m waiting for news from Pierre. You saw that the krauts are taking a beating in Russia, but you know there are still lots of partners even though there are still many who are sulking. Your bum who loves you, kisses you so tenderly, before going to sleep.

  If you think of it, send me a photo because I don’t have a lot. Say hello to everyone for me. Your big guy who kisses you again and who thinks about you all the time.

  Marcel

  April 13, 1944

  My darling,

  Finally Tuesday evening I received a letter from Berchères, dated March 15th. Can you believe it, almost one month. I was so happy to have some news. Actually the garden is not very early this year. And it’s the same everywhere. But can’t you find someone to till it? There must be some late or lost letters, because I don’t know the little Marc. I suppose it’s Madame Vallet’s grandson. For Henry I was not surprised. He must have many of them in his case. As for the Maillard girl she only gets what she deserves. There are too many women like that.

  One girl who must be happy that I didn’t come in person is Grisette, she can take advantage of life. I started working here 15 months ago today. I would love to take a little trip to see all of you. The longer this goes, the more I miss you. Maurice was extremely proud of himself when I told him that he was your favorite. As for the others, they are looking forward to meeting you, and they all say hello.

  My little treasure, I leave you for today while always keeping the hope that I will see you again soon. Give a big kiss to my little hoodlums for me as well as my dear mother. I send you my biggest kisses and above all be careful with your health.

  Your big guy who only dreams of you.

  Marcel

  Chapter Eleven

  White Bear Lake, Minnesota

  Late March 2012

  After reading the translation of the fourth letter, I sat in silence with a hand locked over my mouth as if I were trying to prevent a gasp from escaping. When I stood inside the store in Stillwater, I selected that letter because it included so many numbers, and I knew I needed numbers for the font. I never imagined the horror those numbers would reveal.

  I walked out of my office and tried to think about something else. Anything else. But it was impossible. As Marcel’s words swirled inside my brain, messages of love—“your big guy who only dreams of you”—seemed to rebound off news of men burned alive. Tender kisses ricocheted off hunger. Affection and brutality were like oil and water: coexisting but refusing to mix. The two seemed impossible to reconcile.

  I went back into my office and sent Tom an email. “Eighty men burned alive. Fuck.”

  Tom responded with a confession: he wept while he translated the letter.

  Eight months earlier, before I gave Tom approval to translate the first letter, I ran a quick search on him as part of due diligence I would complete before sending money to anyone. A profile photo showed a man in his late forties. He wore a black T-shirt and had a shaved head. His arms were folded tight over his chest. The tough-guy image seemed surprising for someone who spent free time translating French love letters. It was even more surprising he would admit weeping to me, since I was essentially a stranger. Marcel’s letters, it seemed, had wormed their way into Tom’s heart, too.

  Marcel had written the postcard fifteen months after arriving in Berlin. Fifteen fucking months. Nearly two more months would pass before Allied troops would storm the beaches of Normandy. Four months would pass before Paris would be liberated. Another year would pass before the war in Europe would come to a bloody end.

  I read the two translations again and again. It was as if I hoped the words might magically rearrange themselves into clues or answers. The name Marc Vallet was new, though the lead was not encouraging. First names alone—Henry, Maurice—were worthless.

  Sadness washed through me as I realized this was the end.

  These were the last words I would read from Marcel.

  It seemed like a logical guess that Marcel had painted the blue and red stripes with watered-down writing ink, but in a quest to uncover any overlooked clue, I wanted to test that theory. I scavenged through office supplies for a bottle of red ink used to refill a stamp pad I used to mark client approvals. I grabbed some scrap paper, went into the kitchen, and swirled drops of ink into a tablespoon of tap water. The stripes on Marcel’s letters were about the width of a fingertip, so I dipped my finger into the pool of crimson and swiped it across the paper, trying to replicate the stripe.

  Color-wise, the diluted red ink was remarkably close. But my stripes ended at three inches or so, and were wide where my finger first touched the page, then quickly tapered to a point. Marcel’s stripes were long, with a uniform width. Did he have a paintbrush? What if it wasn’t ink? Could the red be transmission fluid? Ground-up bricks? Blood? Wouldn’t blood have oxidized and turned brown? The unknowns were maddening.

  In the days that followed, I exchanged emails with a sales representative at a chemical analysis laboratory. He outlined two options for identifying what the stripes had been painted with.

  The first option required the destruction of part of a letter, a condition which made the solution untenable.

  The second option would not have harmed the paper, and it was considerably less expensive—only $500 per color—but the result would have been limited to the identification of a class of chemical compounds. That information would be meaningless since I did not know the first thing about the differences between one class of compounds and another. And I could not throw away $1,000 to get information that would not tell me whether he survived.

  Ten more months would elapse before I learned how the blue and red stripes had been made. It would prove to be one of the biggest surprises of the entire search.

  I was in our living room, curled under the zigzag afghan as January winds whistled outside, mindlessly scrolling through typography specimens on eBay. If I was lucky, I might find something to add to my ever-growing c
ollection of handwritten ephemera: a splendid old letter, an envelope bearing a wildly flourished address, a ledger page with columns of scratchy numbers. But the prize I unexpectedly stumbled across was even better: a letter bearing familiar watery blue and red stripes.

  The letter had been written in 1943 by a Dutchman, then mailed to an address in Zweden. The letter came with its original envelope, which also had blue and red stripes. The envelope had been sliced open, resealed, then certified with a blood-red Oberkommando stamp. My mind raced to understand what I was seeing. Why would a Dutchman mail a letter to Sweden emblazoned with the colors of the French flag? Why would the Oberkommando open the envelope?

  My head snapped back when I noticed that the eBay seller described the blue and red stripes as “chemical censor marks.” An online search confirmed chemical censoring had indeed been used during World War II, and within minutes I found a detailed report online about chemical censoring. The report had been written by a man in California—a stamp collector with a special interest in censored mailpieces. It was only 8:45 p.m. in California; I impulsively picked up the phone and dialed his phone number.

  The man, Franklin, answered after the first ring. I introduced myself and, in the cheeriest voice I could muster, I inquired whether we might chat about his report. I guessed not many forty-three-year-old women called to chat about World War II chemical censoring. I held my breath as I waited for his response.

  Franklin asked a few clipped questions, his skepticism palpable. But once I described the stripes on Marcel’s letters, and explained they had been mailed from a Daimler factory in Berlin, Franklin believed me.

  We talked for an hour. More accurately, Franklin talked while I absorbed every transfixing word. Letters written by conscripted laborers—men like Marcel who had access to valuable intelligence about factory production, armaments, and supply chain issues—were highly censored, he said. The blue and red stripes were not a gesture of Marcel’s French pride, as I had assumed for years: they were chemical developers used by German censors to reveal messages that might have been written in invisible ink.