by Sharon Maas
‘He really believes it,’ Marie-Claire told Victoire at her next visit. ‘He’s so relaxed! Everyone else is in panic, and all he tells me is not to worry my pretty little head.’
‘It’s all show,’ said Victoire. ‘Hitler is finished. It’s all a matter of time.’
But Marie-Claire knew that something was wrong. She knew her husband. And so she watched. Something was up, something sinister and terrifying. A plot was in the making. His behaviour was stranger than ever.
For instance: the men he brought into their home. He’d lock himself away with them for hours in his study. She tried kneeling at the door, peeping through the keyhole, putting a glass to the door in order to listen, but invariably there’d be a key in the inside lock and a radio blaring at the same time – as if he knew she might be eavesdropping. As if he no longer trusted her.
Suspicion grew. She noticed that the most frequent visitor was Pater Pius, who came now almost every Sunday afternoon and stayed till evening. Pius gave her gooseflesh. For a man of God he was astoundingly – well, creepy was the only word she could find. His eyes were pits of something so dark and terrifying. She avoided them at all costs, yet they’d bore into hers as if demanding she meet their gaze. She’d flicker a look at him, and recoil in a barely concealed shudder.
One afternoon in mid-August he was there again. Unusually, the study door was open and as she walked past, she spied the two of them, standing at the desk. As usual, the radio was blaring: military music. She stopped for a moment. Kurtz placed some papers into a manila envelope, then he handed a small leather pouch to the priest. They shook hands. At that moment Kurtz looked up and caught her in the doorway. ‘What are you doing there? Go away!’ he barked, and she leapt away as if bitten, ran to the kitchen and stayed there until the priest had left.
When she heard the front door click shut, she emerged and walked over to the study to inform her husband that dinner was ready. She knocked and waited for his herein, just as she had in Colmar. ‘Dinner’s ready,’ she said, but her eyes immediately drifted to the wall behind the desk. The oil painting that always hung there was slightly awry. Kurtz’s eyes followed her gaze and, for a fleeting moment, his face was that of a deer caught in the headlights: shock, guilt, fear registered there. And then the face smoothed out again, and anger registered instead.
‘Why were you watching us earlier, Margarethe? Why did you not walk past, when you saw the door was open? Are you spying on me?’
She stammered, ‘No, no, of course not, not at all, I was just waiting to ask if I could serve you both coffee…’
‘Well, don’t let it happen again. If we require coffee, I’ll ask for it.’
Later that night, when Kurtz was in the bathroom preparing for bed, she tried to return to the study, but the door was locked. That was unusual. There was nothing in the room worth stealing, apart from that awry oil painting, an original by Josef Hoffmann. Something was off.
The next morning, Sunday, Kurtz retreated to his study and spent several hours in there. She brought him – at his request – a cup of coffee. She set the cup down on the table and glanced at the painting. It was no longer awry.
Marie-Claire might not be as intuitive as Victoire was said to be, but all her senses were now on full alert. It was no longer conjecture: something was very wrong. Something devious was going on, and she had to find out what. She’d have to wait till Monday.
* * *
On Monday, Kurtz left for work as usual. The study door remained locked. She had to get in…
At nine o’clock, as usual, Elke, the cleaning lady, arrived with her bucket and a myriad of rags. As usual, Marie-Claire chatted with her in their forbidden native language, and casually mentioned, as if in passing, ‘I wonder if you have a duplicate key to my husband’s study? He seems to have locked it by mistake.’
‘By mistake? Madame, men don’t lock their studies by mistake. If it is locked, it is deliberate.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘But yes, I do have a key. I have duplicate keys for all the rooms in the building.’
‘Could you – could you perhaps lend it to me, just for a day?’
She held her breath. The reply would be a test. Elke was a native Alsatian. Most native Alsatians detested the Nazis and wanted them gone. But some had sought their own advantage, and worked for them. Elke had done so; she could not have acquired this job in a house occupied by Nazi tenants without having passed an initial intense interrogation by the concierge.
She and Elke had, up to now, enjoyed a certain camaraderie. Elke knew that she, Marie-Claire, was troubled, and that Kurtz was the cause of her trouble. She had always felt that Elke, secretly, was on her side. And besides, Elke must know that time was up for the Nazis, and if she had once sought advantage on that side of the fence, surely she would know that it was time to switch sides.
This was the test. Marie-Claire held her breath…
And then the great release. Without a word, Elke plunged her hand into her apron pocket, removed a bunch of keys, inspected them all, walked to the study door, tried a few.
One of the keys turned in the lock.
Again, not a word was spoken as Elke eased the key from the keychain and handed it to Marie-Claire. A slight nod of understanding – that was all.
‘Thanks,’ said Marie-Claire. ‘I’ll return it tomorrow.’
The moment Elke left the apartment Marie-Claire was in her husband’s study. She carefully lifted the Hoffmann painting from the wall. It was as she had suspected: behind the painting was a safe, with a combination lock set into the metal door.
Marie-Claire inspected the lock. She tried it out, with the eight digits of Kurtz’s birthday. Nothing happened. She tried the shortened version: six digits. Nothing happened. She tried her own birthday: eight digits, then six. Still nothing. Panic gripped her. What else could he have used as a combination? Had he written it down somewhere? Where? She dashed to his desk, looked through the drawers for some note with a number written on it. Perhaps it was a random number that he had memorised… Marie-Claire knew, now, she simply knew, that it was utterly vital for her to open that safe – but how?
She looked wildly around the room for a clue, a hint. There was a bookshelf, with only a few books on it. Mein Kampf, of course, and a biography of Adolf Hitler, and a few others on the history of Germany and Austria and Nazi propaganda. A flash of light went through her mind. She walked to the bookshelf, removed the Hitler biography and opened it, scanning the first pages. She found what she was looking for.
Back at the safe, her hand trembling slightly, she twisted the lock back and forth to the digits 20041889. Hitler’s birthdate. Nothing happened. Then she tried 200489. The safe clicked and sprang open. She gasped in delight.
Inside the safe were only two objects. A large manila envelope, most likely the same one she had seen in Kurtz’s hand through the doorway. And a leather pouch, this one much larger than the one Pater Pius had taken.
She took both objects to the desk, sat down at it. Opened the pouch, and gasped. It was filled with jewellery. Brooches, rings, bracelets, watches, gold chains and pearls and stones that even with an amateur eye, Marie-Claire could tell were precious.
She stuffed everything back in the pouch and picked up the envelope. It was slightly bulky: there was more than paper in it.
She shook out its contents onto the desk. Picked them up, inspected them…
And then she did not gasp. She gave a cry of horror, and rushed to the telephone.
‘Victoire! Victoire, you must come, at once! Today! It’s an emergency!’
Fifty-Six
Victoire
It really didn’t suit her to travel to Strasbourg today, but Marie-Claire had obviously been desperate. An emergency, she’d said. What could that mean?
It was inconvenient, because the wine harvest was just a few weeks away and, without the usual hands – all the younger males of the district had been conscripted and were somewhere in the East, or dead – it was mainl
y up to Victoire to recruit pickers from the surrounding villages. There was some competition between the Ribeauvillé domaines. Pickers this year would be mostly female, many children, older people, anyone with two working hands. But Marie-Claire was not one to unnecessarily panic: she had to go.
The concierge gave Victoire the creeps. Those beady, suspicious eyes, when Frau Frank let her in, the grudging telephone call up to Marie-Claire, the disagreeable tightening of her already thin lips – entering Marie-Claire’s building was like walking into a refrigerator and closing the door behind one. Victoire nodded at Frau Frank and stepped into the lift. Slowly, the concertina-grille door clanked shut, the chains and pulleys began their creaking and cranking, and the lift slowly moved upwards.
Marie-Claire was waiting on the fourth-floor landing. Victoire saw her feet first through the grille, and then her legs, her torso, and finally her face. It was the face of a person about to be led to the gallows.
Marie-Claire yanked her out of the lift and almost dragged her into the apartment and slammed the door behind her.
‘You have to help me!’ she cried. ‘I found him out! He’s planning to flee! In two weeks’ time! It’s all planned! And – and to kill me!’
‘Calm down, Marie-Claire, and tell me what happened. From the beginning.’
And so Marie-Claire told her all. About the visit of Pater Pius on Sunday, and the awry painting, and the locked door, and the key, and the combination, and the manila envelope, and the contents of the latter. While speaking, falling over the words, she led Victoire into the study, removed the painting, opened the safe, and showed her the evidence.
‘See,’ she said, shaking the contents from the envelope onto the desk, picking up the items one by one, handing them to Victoire, breathlessly explaining all the while, words tumbling from her lips. ‘A passport. With his photo, Victoire, but a different name: Roland Schneider. Obviously forged! And letters, look. Correspondence with a priest, Pater Paul, in Karlsruhe, who seems to have organised the whole thing. And he – Dietrich – wanted to take me along too, but Pater Paul advised him against it as I would only complicate everything. And Dietrich said if he left me behind, I could be a danger because I knew too much, I could name names; I could name Pater Pius and also provide photos of himself, of Dietrich, identify him. And Pater Paul said, “You have to get rid of her, then.” Victoire, that means, kill me, doesn’t it?’
Victoire nodded. ‘That’s what it means, yes. But how on earth does he expect to flee when Germany loses? Does he think he can stay hidden forever?
‘No. Victoire, look!’ Marie-Claire waved a sheet of paper at her sister. ‘A list! A list of addresses, all the way through Germany, down to south Tyrol. And names of people. Priests, Victoire! They are all Catholic priests, and they are going to help him flee! It’s all planned out! He’s going to stay with these priests – first in Karlsruhe, then Nürnberg, then Salzburg, all the way down to Tyrol. And then he’s to wait for a while, and then cross over into Italy, and get a ship, the Maria Rosario. To – to Buenos Aires, Argentina! His passage is booked already! He wants to flee to Argentina!’
‘I bet lots of Nazis will try to flee, now the game is up. Rats fleeing a sinking ship. And what’s this?’
Victoire picked up the pouch, loosened the fastening, upended the leather bag so that its contents spilled in a clattering, glittering heap onto the desk. She grasped a handful of gold chains and necklaces, pearl chokers and jewelled rings and brooches.
‘The bastard! Do you know where this came from, Marie-Claire? From his victims. The people he killed. Jews.’ She let the jewellery fall, held up one piece after the other. ‘I’m no jeweller but I think some of these things must be very valuable. This necklace, for example. That looks like real diamonds. And you say the priest had a smaller pouch?’
Marie-Claire nodded. ‘I saw Dietrich hand it over.’
‘Payment, that’s what it is. He paid this Pater Pius and he’s going to pay all those other priests on his escape route with these valuables. What a bunch of murdering thieves!’
‘But priests, Victoire? Catholic priests? Christians? How can they? Don’t they see the evil? Surely it’s the duty of the Church to resist?’
‘Some people are corruptible, Marie-Claire. Even so-called Christians. I guess for some people there’s a breaking point where temptation and greed win out. And power. And— oh! Marie-Claire!’
‘What?’
Victoire was holding up a thin gold chain on which dangled a small blue pendant.
‘This is – was – Juliette’s! I’d recognise it anywhere, that pear shape. She always wore it – it was her mother’s. She wore it in remembrance. She never wore any other jewellery. It was hers!’
‘So that’s the proof, then.’
‘I can’t believe it! So it was Juliette! She was one of the four, burned alive! Oh, Marie-Claire! I didn’t, I couldn’t believe she was really dead! I never believed that last report, that she’d been seen in the camp. It didn’t make sense – why would they bring her back after three years? Why would she still have shiny hair after three years in prison? I clung to the hope that it was a mistake, that it wasn’t Juliette. But this! This is proof! She was there, and they killed her! He killed her – your husband!’
Overcome by the reality of that little sapphire pendant, and what it meant, Victoire gave in to her grief, and this time Marie-Claire was the one to give comfort, to take her sobbing sister in her arms. But then Victoire pulled away.
‘And he wants to kill you, too! Marie-Claire, we need to do something, quickly!’
‘But, Victoire, what can we do? I mean, I know I could just run away, now, with you. But we can’t let him get away with this! We can’t let him escape to some paradise in Argentina, protected by friends! He needs to be tried as a war criminal! I can’t just save my own hide and let him go free, he has to be punished! And if I just flee now and take all these things he’ll come after me, after Maman, after all of us! The Nazis are still strong here in Alsace; he still has enormous power! He’s vicious, and devious. And so dangerous!’
‘No. You’re right. We can’t let him escape.’
‘So what now?’
‘I’m thinking,’ said Victoire. ‘Wait a moment.’ She sat down at the desk, rested her head in her hands. Closed her eyes. Remained still for almost five minutes. Then she looked up, and a light was in her eyes.
‘I think we – you – have to kill him.’
Fifty-Seven
Marie-Claire
It’s all so simple, Victoire said, but it didn’t feel simple at all. Juliette’s death, and Marie-Claire’s ongoing marital rape, night after night, had to be avenged, and they were the ones to do it. Victoire went home that same day. She had to think about it, she said, make concrete plans, talk to Jacques. She had an idea – something Jacques had once mentioned.
Victoire – dear, sweet, angelic Victoire – was transformed. It was as if some other-earthly power had taken hold of her, turned her into this new being, this avenging angel. Yes, that was it – divine wrath, a no-holds-barred knowledge that this was the thing, the only thing, the right thing to do. As if, almost, Victoire was an instrument of divine justice; she who, more than any of them, was good and kind and obedient and even as a child had never given her mother the least cause for complaint, always dutiful, always good, reliable, compassionate.
Whereas she, Marie-Claire, the black sheep of the family – she was the one worrying about sin and guilt. Victoire, who had gone home last week to ‘think things through and talk to Jacques’ and was now back with not only a concrete plan, but concrete means to execute it, just laughed away her qualms. Now they stood in Marie-Claire’s kitchen, clearing up after a light lunch, discussing the final details of the plan – and preparing for it.
‘If it really worries you, just go to confession later on, to Père Roger,’ Victoire said. Père Roger was their family priest in Ribeauvillé, a gentle, kindly, grey-haired man who had known them all their live
s. ‘That’s a real priest. He’ll understand. He’ll know you had to do it. He’ll grant you absolution.’
‘But… in cold blood? It’s murder, a mortal sin!’
‘Yes. In cold blood.’ Victoire paused. ‘It’s for Juliette, and everyone else he killed, all the thousands he’s tortured and starved and worked to death and hanged and burned alive.’ She paused. ‘My own opinion is this: extraordinary times call for extraordinary actions. This man is murderer of thousands. He murdered Juliette, and has no qualms about murdering you. He’s a monster. You are in a unique position to ensure he does not escape justice. You should use that position, Marie-Claire; I think God has given you this opportunity, and you should use it. It’s almost as if, as if, almost – you are an instrument of God. To bring him down at last. You must, Marie-Claire. We must.
She paused. ‘I will take responsibility, Marie-Claire. It is my decision, and I will do it, not you. I will talk to God about it, in my heart, because that is where God lives. And I know I will find forgiveness.’
Marie-Claire thought about it, and nodded. ‘But what if they question the suicide, accuse me of murder?’
‘They won’t. Trust me.’
‘I’ll do it. But, Victoire – can you stay here, over the weekend, so I’m not alone? See it through with me?’
Victoire shook her head.
‘I’d love to – and any other time, I would. But this is the busiest time of year. The vendange is just about to begin. I’m really indispensable. I want to go home tonight – well, early tomorrow, on the first train.’
