Her Darkest Hour: Beautiful and heartbreaking World War 2 historical fiction

by Sharon Maas

  He paused for breath, his eyes boring into hers, her hands grasped tightly in his sweaty paws. She had not the strength to tear away either hands or eyes, not the courage even to shake her head and say no, no, NO! She was a quivering deer, and his gape was the glaring headlight in which she was caught. Maman had almost crashed into one, braked just in time, a winter or two ago in a forest lane. The little roe had simply stood there, not a metre in front of the car, as if hypnotised, staring at them instead of plunging away into the woods. So, too, was she incapable of flight or even denial. She never even said yes. She only nodded, helplessly.

  That was weeks ago. Not seeing him daily had given her a respite, a time to think and make decisions and calculate her prospects; there had been the letter to Papa and, recently, his patronising reply and now this.

  Undeniably, she was pregnant. No speculation any more, no guesswork.

  No options.

  The girls, of course, only reinforced the sense of falling backwards into a pre-ordained future in which she had no say, no decision to make; everything was already decided, no other way out, because the one path opening to her was, logically, obviously, the best, a gilded road. She was the envy of the typing pool, her status elevated to the skies.

  ‘And he doesn’t even know you’re pregnant!’ exclaimed Klara, eyes bulging with envy.

  ‘He must have made up his mind long ago, even before the Christmas holidays, and then simply lost control. I think he was planning a much slower courtship.’

  ‘I think he has to get married. To get the promotion. They only like married men in high positions. Loyal party men are supposed to father four children each. Only the Führer himself is allowed to be unmarried. Because he is above normal human passions.’

  ‘He chose you! You’re so lucky!’ was the unanimous verdict.

  ‘He’ll be so excited to know you are pregnant!’

  Only Ursula heard her weeping at night, came to her bed to stroke her hair and comfort her. Only Ursula understood.

  ‘I know you don’t like him very much, and he did overstep the mark. There’s no question about that. But, Margarethe, your situation is not that unusual. Throughout history, women have had to marry men they didn’t really care for, have their babies. They simply got on with it, gritted their teeth and accepted it and you know, in the end they learned to even love their husbands and it wasn’t so bad after all. I think, with your intelligence, you can turn this around into something positive. You can persuade him, for instance, to move to Paris, which is what you always wanted, and then do what you want. He’ll probably get a young mistress anyway. All men do. And leave you alone. Please try to see the silver lining.’

  And slowly, over time, it was Ursula who helped the most. She was right: women had always married for convenience. Even her own mother had done so; marrying her father had been a business decision taken by both their parents. And look at Margaux now, happy in her own four walls (as happy as a woman could be in wartime) and totally independent.

  She, too, could go that route. But deep inside, Marie-Claire could hear her mother’s warning voice: ‘Run, Marie-Claire! Run as fast as you can!’

  But Marie-Claire had nowhere to run.

  A personal letter landed on her desk in the Mairie. It was from him, inviting her to Strasbourg to ‘make formal arrangements’.

  She would have to tell him she was pregnant.

  Forty-Four

  Margaux

  The hall telephone was ringing, and Margaux hurried to answer it. Always on tenterhooks, these days, always waiting for news of some sort. War did that to people. And as one of the only people in these parts to own a telephone, she was often the first to know, the first to find out the worst. She picked up the phone: ‘Hello? Château Gauthier here.’

  She listened. Gasped. And then shouted so loud Victoire, in the kitchen, could hear it: ‘Marie-Claire did WHAT?’

  A minute later, Margaux staggered into the kitchen. She waved towards the bottle of Pinot Noir on the countertop.

  ‘Pour me a glass, Victoire! That was Madame Guyon – you remember her? She now works at the Mairie. The place is buzzing with the news: Marie-Claire has just got herself engaged to the Kreisleiter, the top Nazi in the building. She’s getting married next week, in Strasbourg.’

  The next day, in fury, Margaux shot off a letter to Marie-Claire: Do not ever set foot in my house again! You have betrayed everything we hold sacred …

  The moment she posted it, she regretted it. It was too harsh. That never again… perhaps she should write another letter, explain… but no. Let Marie-Claire read it. Let her betrayal sink in.

  Forty-Five

  Nathan

  It was euphoric, the release that came after you’d blown up a Nazi rail communications centre. Nathan wanted to shout and dance and sing and yell it out to the world. Of course, in the grand scheme of things it was only one small victory, but he’d done it, along with Henri, a chemist from Strasbourg, and the little band of brothers. Together, he and Henri had created the explosive in Henri’s lab; they’d passed it on to Jacques’ Maquis lads, who sneaked behind the wire fence surrounding the main Nazi communications central in Strasbourg, planted the bomb, set the timer and ran for it. From a safe distance, hidden in the back of a black van parked several blocks away, Nathan had watched the building erupt in a deafening blast of red-hot flames: he and Henri had hugged each other, laughed and gone their separate ways.

  Nathan was supposed to return to Colmar, where other jobs waited, but so consumed was he by exhilaration that he decided on a small detour. It would only take two days. He had to see Juliette. It had been months, now; he had to share with her this new-found sense of certainty. That they would win; that good would triumph in the end. That it was all worth it, no price too high to pay; not even the price of one’s own life.

  He knew the way. He had visited her before, when she had first stayed in Natzwiller last December. He had a good map; he could make it, even in daytime, if he kept to the fields and forests, and used his compass.

  Forty-Six

  Juliette

  Juliette’s work finished shortly after midnight. Serving Nazis was exhausting and frustrating work. They were loud, uncouth and, usually, drunk, and the older the night grew, the more their legendary German discipline faded away and the cruder their behaviour became towards her. Slaps on the behind, bawdy comments, vulgar insinuations were all part of the night’s work – she was used to it. The pub grew noisier and more raucous as the hours slipped by, and this was every night. It was as if the clientele, all of whom worked up at the camp – now in full operation – needed to empty themselves of whatever ugliness they had filled up on over the course of their day. Vomit it out, sometimes literally; and she was the one who had to clean up after them. Some of the faces had become familiar over the summer months; she knew many of them by name, and they her. She used her legitimate name and identification – there was no reason to hide, Jacques had said. Her new, official, German name was Johanna – Johanna Dolch.

  There was one new patron who looked familiar, and she had racked her brain, while in the kitchen collecting his order, figuring out where she had seen him before – that face…

  He, too, had seemed to recognise her. Since the start of the war she had had run-ins with several German officers, with or without swastikas, and they had all ended innocuously; but this man’s face gave her the shivers, and that fact made her think back to the less harmless encounters, and then it came to her: Colmar, November 1940. The day the soldiers marched in. She, on her way to the post office. The ginger-haired brute who had stopped her, questioned her, and later organised the requisition of her home. How could she have forgotten?

  Since that first spark of recollection she’d been on edge. He had definitely recognised her. Would he wonder what she was doing here, in a remote pub in the mountains, instead of at her studies in Clermont-Ferrand? She tried to remember – had she told him she was a student, or not? It wasn’t unusual
for an Alsatian girl to be working as a waitress, but a student, surely, should be studying? Would he remember? What would she say, if he questioned her? Her papers were in order, yet still. He’d been suspicious even then: eyes narrowing, the probing look, the question: sind Sie Jüdin?

  But she was a quick thinker. She’d say she had finished her studies that summer, couldn’t find a job as a vet, couldn’t find a job in Colmar, had heard of a host of new vacancies in Natzwiller and Schirmeck, and applied. It was all supremely plausible. A burden of fear fell from her mind. She had nothing to worry about. There was nothing about her, nothing in her rented room, that could point to guilt of any sort. All she did was listen and make internal notes, which she then passed on to a courier who came once a week, sent by Jacques’ network. She was safe.

  Yet, walking home that night, up a lonely lane leading to the farm where she lodged, she couldn’t help have the jitters, that sense of spiders running up and down her spine. She kept looking behind her. Was someone following her, or not? She had no proof, had seen no shadows. It was just a feeling. Victoire would call it an intuition, though of course that was nonsense – there was no such thing. Without evidence, there was no need to feel this way, no proof of anything untoward. And yet she was spooked, evidence or not. She put her hand on her chest, and beneath the wool of her pullover her fingers found the sapphire pendant she always wore, her only physical link to her mother. It brought luck; the touch of it brought calmness.

  The night was dark, the moon just a sliver, appearing every now and then from behind banks of drifting clouds. There were no lights on the road. Overhanging trees from the forests on both sides seemed like black holes on her path – she avoided them and their shadows. She heard sounds, but it must have been an animal – foxes roamed here, she knew – and there was no need to feel fear. No need at all.

  But then she heard it. Definitely. Footsteps. Following her. She gasped, and picked up her pace, but so did the footsteps. She began to run, but then a shout, an almost hoarse cry: ‘Juliette! Stop! It’s me!’

  And she did stop. And it was him. And then he was in her arms, and it wasn’t a spook but the opposite, the quintessence of love. She folded him into herself.

  A whispered conversation, a temporary parting.

  * * *

  Later that night, Juliette opened the window of her ground-floor bedroom. She let him into her room, into her bed, into her heart. The raid came in the wee hours, before the cock’s crow.

  Juliette and Nathan, dragged out of bed by three, or four, or was it five, shouting screaming Nazis with pistols pointed at their faces. They were allowed to drag on some clothes, and then shoved and kicked out into the open. Her landlady, Madame Chevalier, stood looking on, stunned out of her wits, but then she, too, was overpowered. There was that ginger-haired officer, directing the others, bellowing orders. Both of them shoved into the backs of two waiting jeeps, separated once again. Shouts of: Jews! They are both Jews! Scum! Pigs!

  It was only a short drive up to the camp.

  Forty-Seven

  Marie-Claire

  It all happened so quickly, and had the quality of a dream; or rather, of a nightmare. It hardly seemed real; it was like an episode in one of the novels she used to read, so long ago. A formal proposal of marriage – in writing! – from Kurtz.

  She knew then that she had lost. There was no way out. She sat down to reply, and kept it short and formal.

  Sehr geehrter Herr Kreisleiter Kurtz,

  * * *

  I am going to have a child. For this reason I accept your proposal.

  * * *

  Yours sincerely

  * * *

  Margarethe Gauss

  He sent a car for her the following week. She was brought to the home of a colleague of his, where the colleague’s wife, Frau Baumgärtner, fussed around her, took her shopping, made sure she had a ‘suitable’ wedding dress (not white, of course; and nothing too festive, something practical) and hosted her for the two nights leading up to the wedding, a sober ceremony at the local Bürgeramt, witnessed by Frau Baumgärtner and her husband, quickly over. Margarethe Gauss became Margarethe Kurtz.

  ‘What about your family, Margarethe?’ Frau Baumgärtner had asked. ‘Aren’t you going to invite them? Your parents, your brothers and sisters? I know it’s a just a small civil ceremony, but still…’

  But Marie-Claire shook her head. She never discussed her family, her mother, with her future husband. There seemed to be a silent agreement that it was an out-of-bounds topic, forbidden. She assumed that Kurtz understood, but could live with, her mother’s rejection of the Nazi infiltration of Alsace, because of the perks. Later, she was to notice that all the wine in the house was from the Château Gauthier-Laroche, and she too understood, though only vaguely. Sometimes it was better not to know the details. And so, too, at the wedding no mention was made of family, and no family member of either bride or groom was present.

  It was a workaday, functional ceremony, the only nod to festivity a small bouquet of yellow roses, organised by Frau Baumgärtner. Afterwards, her new husband kissed her chastely on the cheek and whisked her away in a heavily swastika’ed black Mercedes-Benz to a reception at the Edelweiss Hotel in central Strasbourg. It seemed that the entire upper echelon of Nazi functionaries had been invited, along with their wives. Wine flowed, and beer; Herr Baumgärtner (Marie-Claire never actually found out what position he held) made a speech with several lewd references, at which Marie-Claire blushed and her new husband bent almost double with laughter, along with the rest of the male contingent. The ladies tittered behind lace handkerchiefs, and one poked Marie-Claire in the ribs.

  The evening quickly morphed into a raucous singing session of embarrassingly bawdy German songs, after which Kurtz breathed a beer-infused ‘Liebling, it’s time to go upstairs’ into her neck. His hand crept round her waist, pulling her to her feet. ‘Now, ladies and gentlemen, I have to excuse myself. It’s time to exercise my husbandly duties!’ he called out, raising his stein, causing yet more bawdy laughter and whistles and calls to ride her to heaven! Marie-Claire had herself only drunk one glass of champagne; now she wondered if it would not have been better to be drunk herself, to be numb and without care and without any conscious awareness of events, and no memory.

  Up they went in the lift, Kurtz’s fingers still digging into her waist.

  He half-walked, half-staggered to the bedroom, fumbled with the key, almost fell through the door, then managed to pull himself to his feet and propel them both across the room to the bed.

  Fumbling fingers wrestled with buttons and zips and, failing, just didn’t bother; it was easier to simply rip things open, tearing garments and undergarments. Marie-Claire closed her eyes and gritted her teeth and retreated to a place within herself where it all was not happening. Where it could not happen. Where it was all just a nightmare, happening to someone else, to a body that was not hers, and she herself was untouched. It was the only way to bear it.

  It was the only way, in the days and weeks and years to come.

  Forty-Eight

  Marie-Claire

  Six months later

  It was Friday once again. He’d be home tonight. She’d have him for two full days and three whole nights, smelling of death and putrefaction. Not that she’d ever smelt death and putrefaction in her real life before this, but those were the images his smell evoked. He’d tear off his clothes in the bathroom (after she’d run a warm bath for him) but not all the sweet-smelling salts and soaps in the world could remove that smell from his skin, his hair, his very breath. She could hardly bear to touch those sloughed-off clothes: she’d bundle them into a laundry bag and send them down to the concierge for the laundry service. Let them deal with it! Though even the cleaners couldn’t get rid of that ingrained stench.

  But worse, much worse, was the fact that his very mind smelt of it. Stank of it. It was like a sheath around his personality, a shell of something revolting. She had no words for it. And she
was the receptacle for it. He sloughed it off, into her body, each of those three nights. She provided a mental laundry service for him, against her will. This was her entire raison d’être in his life.

  By Monday he’d be rid of it, and she’d be rid of him. Then it would be her turn to slough it all off. That grim, grimy, stinking layer of whatever it was he collected at that place where he worked, doing whatever he did. She still didn’t know. Not for sure.

  It was only a prison, he said. A prison where enemies of the state were detained. Terrorists, he said. Bad people who were a menace to society. They were put to good use while up there. Hard work was the antidote for criminal activity, and these people worked, and his work was to supervise them. That was all. It was a good and necessary thing. Yes, the work itself was not pleasant but otherwise one could not ask for a more satisfying place of work. It was idyllic, he said, at the top of a mountain with far-reaching views of forested hills – a wonderfully scenic place, which made up for the contact with the vermin he had to deal with all week. Fresh air, the vast blue sky, forests and mountains – it was, really, the ideal workplace, and if it weren’t for the clientele – well, one couldn’t have everything.