by Sharon Maas
‘Oncle Yves,’ she said, ‘Herr Major von Haagen is here to speak to you about the resoling of his boots.’
She turned back, her agitation now under control.
‘He’ll be right here. Thank you for the book. I will indeed read it.’
‘It is my own personal copy. A gift for you.’
‘Thank you. I appreciate it.’
‘Perhaps you would do me the honour of accompanying me to a small event at the officer’s club next Saturday. I would be proud to be your escort.’
‘Oh! Well, I don’t know – I am flattered, but…’
‘You need not be shy. It is in fact a rather exclusive event. There will be other ladies there of course, other French ladies even – but cultivated ladies. No-one of ill repute, I assure you.’
‘May I – may I think about it?’
‘What is there to think about? It is a high honour – why should you hesitate? I have already declared myself as having nothing but honourable intentions, why would you even think of declining such an offer? Really, I do not understand this. It could not possibly be that you, like some of your female compatriots, refuse to fraternise with Germans? Even after I have gone to considerable effort to explain our culture…’
‘What is it? Can I help?’
Thank goodness, Oncle Yves had arrived. He looked from one of them to the other.
‘What’s going on?’
‘Herr Girard, I have requested the honour of your niece’s company at an event at the officer’s club this coming Saturday. She is hesitating to accept my proposal, I would be grateful if you would encourage her to accept. Of course, there are advantages for both of you.’
‘Well, of course she cannot give an answer before discussing the matter with me! The girl is only twenty-two. She got engaged at the age of nineteen, to a man who went off to fight a war and was instantly killed, by Germans, as it happens. Her wariness is only natural. She is like a daughter to me; since the death of her father, in fact, even though I have not seen her for many years, I do regard her as the daughter I regrettably do not have myself. Obviously, she is inexperienced and reticent when it comes to men and courtship. Obviously, she must discuss such matters with me and then, and only then, can she agree to a rendezvous. As a man of chivalry, you must understand this. And I would be grateful if in future you would direct all such invitations to me. It is exceedingly impolite to go over my head. This is not the way the French do things. It is not considered comme il faut.’
In tone as well as content it was a severe reprimand, and von Haagen seemed to hang in the balance between accepting the reprimand as a man who had offended etiquette, or as a German officer insulted by a lowly civilian. His head jerked backwards; literally taken aback, and once more Sibyl suppressed a giggle.
And then the decision was made; reprimand accepted. Von Haagen, firmly put in his place, finally changed the subject. It so happened that von Haagen, through family connections, had found out the address of a leather wholesaler in Munich. He had brought a list, with prices. He and Oncle Yves discussed the placing of orders; the financing of such orders, and the fact that Oncle Yves was quite, to put it bluntly, pleite – broke – so further negotiations took place. It seemed that, since the footwear of German officers stationed in Colmar was generally in a terrible condition, it would be possible to conduct business between them, the wholesaler and Oncle Yves. Oncle Yves, in fact, was to become the unofficial Staatsschuster, State Cobbler, for the officers.
Before he left, von Haagen turned back to Sibyl.
‘Fräulein, my invitation for next Saturday still stands. You will enjoy it I am sure. Would you at least consider it favourably when you discuss it with your uncle?’
She hesitated. ‘I’ll – think about it. Perhaps you can drop in on Wednesday, and I will give you my answer.’
He beamed and gave a little bow, a brief nod of the head. ‘That is most gratifying. I shall come by then, and hopefully the response will be positive.’
He replaced his cap, bowed again, and walked out the door to a jangle of bells.
‘I’m not sure that was a very clever move,’ Oncle Yves said as von Haagen was finally back out in the street.
‘You really had little choice, Oncle,’ said Sibyl. ‘And thank you: quick thinking, about the rendezvous. In future I will always ask your permission in matters of love and courtship.’
‘Pah! I can see that happening.’
Yet the levity was not long-lived.
‘I’ll have to report all of these developments to Acrobat,’ she told Oncle Yves, ‘and I doubt they’ll be happy. And one thing is for sure: I can never meet David here again.’
Chapter 21
In fact, Acrobat insisted that Sibyl accept Major von Haagen’s invitation. The instructions were to watch and listen; to let the Boche get drunk but not to drink herself. Drunk German officers were likely to spill secrets, secrets that might help the Special Operations mission of sabotage and subterfuge. As for von Haagen: she was to go along, within reason, with his efforts at courtship.
‘Do you think you can handle him?’ Oncle Yves asked.
‘Yes,’ Sibyl replied. ‘As far as I can tell, he truly does have honourable intentions; he seems to get a thrill out of talking about himself and discussing German poetry. That’s something I can handle. He seems to be yearning for something beyond the reality of war: music and poetry and art. He’s only human. My guess is that it’s his way of staying sane throughout Hitler’s madness.’
‘Pah! Germans are not human. Do you know what happened on this very street? There was a Jew down the road. A violin maker. A good friend of mine, Joseph Meyer. Before the war we used to meet some evenings, enjoy a glass or two of wine, talk into the night. Joseph of course played the violin; his wife played the flute. He had five daughters. They all lived in that house down the road, the one with the red shutters and the boarded-up shop. They would have musical evenings at the cultural centre; but also singing and dancing, laughter and just good community. They were proper Alsatians, proper Colmar citizens. Not rich but minding their own business. Do you know what happened to them?’
‘I’m listening.’
‘Well. Let me go back a little. Before the war there were about twenty thousand Jews living in Alsace and Lorraine. These Jews were well aware of what was going on in Germany, of the pogroms – after all, we are right beside Germany and we were hearing those terrible broadcasts of that crazy fellow Hitler and his plans for the Jews. And how they were to be persecuted and exterminated. We heard of that horrendous Kristallnacht. So Jews here were better prepared for what was to come than Jews in the rest of France. They knew. They had no illusions. So they organised themselves, protected their businesses and assets and of course their families.
‘Joseph had close friends and when things got threatening he distributed his most valuable violins among us. He had five or six very valuable ones. I myself still have one in the attic. It’s easier to hide a violin than a human. I would have hidden a human, one of his daughters, but he didn’t think it necessary. Not yet. He wasn’t a practising Jew, wasn’t active in the Jewish community in Colmar. So he thought he could get away with it. With staying in Colmar.
‘The Boche marched into Colmar in June 1940. On June 16th all the Jews still in the town were told to come to the police station. They were allowed to bring along a suitcase each, two thousand Francs, food for four days. They were all packed into trucks and transported to France. They weren’t allowed to take gold or jewellery. They weren’t sent to the German camps. It was all relatively civil, compared to some of the stories we’ve heard since – transports to concentration camps and such. No, the Colmar Jews went south. But Joseph, stubborn fool, refused to go. He had a German name; he thought he could get away with it. We lived on this quiet out-of-the-way street. My life is here. I was born in this house. Why should I go? He said. His workshop was here. His violins, his tools, his livelihood. What’ll I do without my tools? I’m not going. We�
��re staying. They won’t know I’m Jewish. We’ll take the risk.
‘All went well for a year or two. But then – well, someone must have ratted on him. It was already 1942. The Gestapo began interviewing us, neighbours, asking about Joseph. If he was Jewish, if he went to the synagogue, and so on. Well, he didn’t go to the synagogue so when they came I answered that truthfully. I said we never spoke of religion which was only half true but they weren’t to know. Joseph got scared. He decided to leave voluntarily, but now it was too late to be evacuated. Colmar was supposed to be Judenrein, free of Jews. Joseph was suddenly terrified. He had to get his family out! One by one, first the daughters. He had ambitious plans: he’d get his family to Vichy and then to America. He had a brother in New York and that was where he was headed, or so he thought.
‘We had it all planned. This was how I actually began to work for the Resistance. He had to get his family out secretly, through safe houses and so on. There was a route for rescuing Jews. We heard of a family-run vineyard near Ribeauvillé which was helping to hide Jews. Sarah was eighteen, a big girl who could look after herself. So she went alone first of all. In 1942 the rest of the family was to go there and they would hide them and get them down to the south through a planned route of safe houses. We got Sarah and two more daughters out.
‘But we were too late. One night, actually it was early in the morning, we heard shouting in the street, the shattering of glass. I looked out of the window and saw those German thugs; Gestapo, in uniform. They had smashed the glass of his shop and broken down the door. They dragged the family out into the street. The youngest was five, Rebecca. She was terrified and began screaming. They yelled at her to stop screaming but that made it worse of course. They began to beat her with a club. Joseph and his wife tried to stop them beating her but they were just clubbed down themselves.
‘I ran out to try to help, I yelled at them to stop but they had surrounded the family and beat everyone away. I got a few blows of the baton. In fact, they broke my arm but that was nothing. They beat Rebecca to death, right here in the street, in front of her parents. What had that child ever done to hurt them, the cowards! Joseph and his wife were frantic, yelling and crying for them to stop, to beat them instead. But they did not afford them such mercy. A truck came and took them away. We never heard from them again. You can still see Rebecca’s blood between the cobbles. It’s stained dark and we can’t get the stain out.
‘We had heard by now of trains taking Jews to concentration camps in Germany but we do not know if that’s where they went and if so, what happens to them there. We will find out once this terrible war is over. After that of course they raided the house and took away all the other violins and other items of value. The house is still empty, waiting no doubt for a German family to move in when the war is over. If Germany wins, which of course it won’t. But the Boche did not know that at the time. Now, where was I going with this story? Why did I tell you it in the first place?’
‘You were trying to convince me that Germans are not human.’
‘Ah yes. Well, there you have it. What human behaves in this way? To kill an innocent child in front of her parents? Simply for being of a certain race? Tell me, is that human? Animals behave better than that. I know of a female dog who had puppies and she adopted a motherless kitten and suckled it like one of her own. It is a human instinct to care for our young. If you lack that instinct so far as to actually destroy a young one then you are not human. That is my final word. And anyway, at some point the Germans declared Alsace to be Judenrein, and we have been that ever since. The Boche are not people to be toyed with and I do not at all like this new instruction, for you to start fraternising with them to extract information. That is not the work of an SOE agent, as far as I understand their mission. I thought they were just here in France to blow things up.’
‘They are in France to win the war. By whatever means available.’
Sibyl, agitated by Oncle Yves’ story, hardly slept a wink that night. Her claim that the Germans were only human; that von Haagen was only human, now seemed nothing but naïve wishful thinking. Trust no-one, Vera had said. She had laughed to herself at von Haagen’s pompous and condescending lecture, believing she could see right through him; but had she any idea what went on behind those cool blue eyes? Obviously not: but now, her duties entailed trying to find out. Accepting his courtship and helping the greater cause by pretending he was human; but was it all a sham because he was not, could not be, human? What did it even mean, to be human? Did humanness by default imply inherent goodness?
No, she concluded; no matter what, Germans were human, even the evil ones. She had no right to strip von Haagen of his right to be human, to make of him a beast. Whether she trusted him or not, he was human. There is a living spark in all of us, she reminded herself, something beyond good and evil, an essence of life that is, indeed, inherently good – even if buried deep in a morass of evil.
Could it work? Was she up to it? In the darkness she shivered, but not from cold; and the thumping of her heart echoed through the silence. This was war, and she was caught in the middle of it. She had chosen this route, and there was no way through but forwards.
Chapter 22
Sibyl removed a pair of heavy boots from the cobbler-shop window and replaced them with a pair of delicate ladies shoes, with high heels. Oncle Yves hadn’t made such shoes for years, but that was irrelevant. The exchange of shoes was a pre-arranged signal for Jacques. It meant: do not enter the shop. Back-up meeting place.
The back-up meeting place was the back room of a carpenter’s shop. Oncle Yves drew a sketch of the way there and shook his head in sadness.
‘He used to be Jean Carpentier. Overnight, he became Hans Zimmerman. I’m only lucky they have not yet forced me to become Karl Schuster or some such thing. It seems that after the age of seventy they are less strict. And you: you will be renamed Dagmar Müller. Give them time.’
The Germanification of Alsace, Oncle Yves had told her, entailed not only the renaming of streets and shop names but surnames and the most mundane details of daily life. Taps in bathrooms could no longer be chaud and froid but had to be heis and kalt. Sel and poivre became Salz and Pfeffer. Le pain was now das Brot.
‘They have banned the wearing of berets: too French. Everything French has to go. Our culture, our language. Overnight, they removed all Alsatian teachers, sent them to Germany for retraining and replaced them with German teachers. The poor schoolchildren, especially those who do not speak Alsatian! We’re not allowed to use the Larousse dictionary. We had to remove all certificates and diplomas from our walls. It was so petty! They banned Binda thermometers because the alcohol in them is red against a white and blue background. The Lycée Bartholdi was Germanised and Nazified and renamed the Mattias-Grünewald-Schule. Schoolchildren had to learn to write in the Sütterlin script, that ugly jagged calligraphy resembling the teeth of a saw. Everything has to be German.
‘But the worst of it is that not all Alsatians are against the Boche. There has been so much collaboration, even support; even some men voluntarily joining the German army, even the SS army! They think it’s best to know what side your bread is buttered; but one day they will pay the price. I am sure of it. The Germans must go. Anyway – enough of that. Complaining won’t change anything. Here’s how you get to Jean Carpentier.’
She found the shop with ease, not least because of the sign on the window proclaiming Zimmerman in large black letters. The teeth of a saw, Sibyl reflected. That’s exactly how those letters looked.
Just as at Oncle Yves’ shop, a bell jangled as she opened the door. But unlike the cobbler’s shop, this was a cosy, friendly place; just as narrow, but with beautiful wooden articles displayed on the shelves and on the floor: toys and household items; candle-holders, chairs, stools and tables. A beautiful full-length mirror, in which Sibyl saw herself for the first time in months. How thin she had become! Her cheekbones stood out, her eyes seemed sunken in her face, and her clothe
s, drab and worn anyway, hung loose on her body.
‘I’m looking for a birthday present for my aunt,’ she said, which was the password.
‘I have a beautiful set of cooking spoons,’ was the correct reply. ‘Go on through to the back and up the stairs. He’s waiting.’
* * *
He was on the first-floor landing. He must have heard her footsteps on the stairs. Without a word he gathered her into his arms, held her there, silently, for a while as they absorbed one another. And then, again without a word, he led her into the front room – as at Oncle Yves’ house, a small sitting room at the front of the house, overlooking the street.
They parted, each taking a seat across from a central dining table, made of solid oak as were the four chairs around it.
‘So,’ he said finally, ‘what’s happened, that we have to meet here?’
Sibyl gave him a quick summary of her last conversation with von Haagen, and Acrobat’s order that she should accept his invitation, his courtship.
‘So now they’ve promoted you to proper spying? Intelligence work? I thought that wasn’t the domain on Special Operations?’
‘Sabotage and subterfuge. Subterfuge covers a multitude of areas. In this case, it’s about – access.’
‘You mean – you could…’
‘Exactly.’
‘Mon Dieu. Sibyl – Lucie – I don’t like it. I don’t like you going in there! It’s too dangerous.’
‘And what you’re doing isn’t dangerous?’
‘Yes, but…’
‘But what?’
‘But – I love you.’
She did not reply. She reached out her hands across the table. He took them, held them, squeezed them.
‘Remember what we said – what you told me – that first night, after I landed? It’s better for us to stay – disengaged. To not get distracted, personal. To do our jobs without emotional attachment. That’s what we swore.’
