Half in shadow a novel, p.29
Half in Shadow: A Novel, page 29
These feelings have crept up on her, pushing those of Franz into the distance. Though not completely out of view. He is a cool breeze that enters occasionally to blow away warm thoughts of Arthur. Yet at these moments Franz is not Arthur’s adversary and an enemy of Belgium, but another forgotten soldier, and certainly not a lover, despite their moment by the river. She thinks of him in the conditions she has heard about from Arthur and others and thinks more with pity than anything else.
She sinks into the mattress and stares at the walls in the dark, the walls that belong to someone else, that might one day be returned to them, reminding her that life is transient, and opportunities can disappear. She has come to a decision.
At breakfast, Gisela tells her daughter a story that she heard from someone at the marketplace. Two lovers were slain when they tried to escape Belgium together, and their bodies were burned, then buried where they were shot on the border. People take flowers to the grave when the guards aren’t looking.
Josephine feels a chill at the back of her neck, tries not to read anything into this.
Grace is late to wake up. She looks radiant in her sleep, red cheeks, fair hair, gemstone eyes that shimmer green, hidden beneath closed lids. She was woken in the night with nightmares, and Josephine had comforted her with an untruth, that the monsters in her dreams aren’t real.
Slivers of sunlight catch the dew on a patch of green. Josephine puts her hand to the cool glass on the window to the yard below.
The birthday fever that suspended them from reality hasn’t lasted. Eugène will have to steal more food, with German stocks low, and he thinks the theft will be noticed. They have no money, and the previous day, besides enjoying the egg and flour bounty, they had stood in line for bread and potatoes.
“How long will you be?” Gisela asks as Josephine leaves.
“I don’t know, Maman.” She could say that she is working, but she is tired of lies. “I wish to spend some time with Arthur. He may be gone soon.”
Josephine has been helping Arthur pack up some boxes as instructed by Eugène. It will mean they leave the printing machine behind. She is disappointed that they won’t be working together, that they may not have many excuses to spend time alone.
“Do you want to go somewhere today?” she asks.
“Where?”
“To the park to walk, for fresh air.”
“It is risky.”
“Everything is risky.”
They are both feeling carefree, perhaps a little giddy since somehow, without saying it aloud, they are together; they are bound.
It is Sunday, and her mother has told her that people are going to the church to sing “La Brabançonne” in protest again. Somewhere close by, German music plays, drowning out the distant sounds of war. It means the guards will be diverted, gravitating to the centre of Brussels, where most of the population is gathering.
You need to be more fearless, Mouse, said her papa, many years earlier. More like your mother.
36. BOUND
They take the tram north to the forest park. Arthur watches her walk ahead, light-brown hair with glints of honey, tendrils falling about her face.
She holds out her hand, which he engulfs with his own, and they step along the pathway, sun streaming in angles across her face, her long dress sailing behind her. They stop to study fish in a pond, and she is as still as a fountain statue, focused, and he can’t remember Harriet ever being so still. He is talking about good things now, about life in better times. Josephine brings it out of him. There is never judgment in her eyes. She is not unlike Xavier, but she isn’t like him, either. Their characters differ, Josephine fearful and careful, Xavier careful but fatalistic, and Eugène fearless, even godless sometimes, the way he talks of revenge.
Arthur wants Josephine, there is no denying it, but he can’t have her. He has already told himself that. It is wrong. He has nothing to promise her. She could have anyone. She must not feel the same way about him, yet she says so in the kisses they share, in the looks she gives that are long with promise, and in the way she colours when she catches him staring. They are signs, though perhaps he misinterprets. He is older, out of touch maybe.
The air is cold in the shade. They amble for a period, watchful as guards walk past them on the way to somewhere else, strangely festive, as if there were no war. Arthur has blended in. Only days before, a zeppelin had passed overhead to bomb another town, and the mood was different.
Back at La Vérité she is close and not close enough, and his arms reach around low behind her, spontaneously, and he lifts her up in a bear hug to kiss her, and she tastes sweet and edible, and he has fallen like he told himself he wouldn’t. She puts her lips on his forehead and holds them there, her hands on either side of his face, fingers searching and stroking curiously.
And he can’t stand it anymore, what she does to him, the power she possesses. His lips on cool skin, and his hands touch her tenderly, caressing, until they are joined with passion, their hearts beating large as one. He can see no bad in the world, no life outside what they have in these moments in the space they share.
She is crying unexpectedly, and he realises that this is her first time, and guilt cuts him open, exposes his doubts once more. She laughs then, strangely, during the tears, then rolls on top of him and kisses him everywhere on his face to erase the frown, to clear his heart.
“I am hopelessly in love with you,” he says under laughter, too, and she reaches for more.
In the fading light of afternoon, she has her chin on his chest, looking up at him expectantly, eyes patterned like opals when the light is directly on them.
“Where are you?” she says.
“Right here,” he says, then with his large hand he cups her chin, thumb tracing the small white scar on her cheek. She turns her head to the side and closes her eyes to doze, her head gently rising and falling with his breathing, while he ponders their earlier conversation.
We should not waste a moment. Do you think? he asked.
You are thinking of your son, no? Josephine asked.
Yes. I am. I am thinking of his life, hardly lived. Only a few years younger . . . You must not waste a moment of it. Not you.
That is strange. You are thinking I’m too young for you then? It is something Papa would likely say, though only when he was walking past so he did not have to face my response.
The age, does it bother you really? said Arthur, cautiously.
I thought the English loved younger brides.
I believe your lot did, too.
True.
Well?
The truth is I don’t care about age, she said. You are a young man, no?
She smiled widely. He wasn’t used to it. It was beautiful, unguarded, so unlike her, too, from when they first met.
I’m sorry, it must sound odd to ask you these things, said Arthur. But it is your life. Your time. I want to be part of it if you’ll let me . . . The truth is that I’m altered, too. Today I don’t feel the same as I did yesterday. They say a man can be born again if he believes it at the point that death is nigh.
I say a man can be born again while he is very much alive, she said.
She climbs out of bed while he searches around the floor beside them for the match to light the lamp. It whooshes into life. He watches her wriggle into her petticoat and pull on her dress, tiny fabric buttons that she pushes through nimbly with fingers that he has kissed a hundred times. He could watch her for hours, though it is only seconds she has given him to take her all in.
“I will take the bicycle this time,” she says.
“They will probably take that like they take the horses. Carts are being pulled by oxen if those are not taken also.” He will worry about her until he sees her again. “Maybe I should walk you.”
“No!” she says. “Enough risks for one day. I am safe and you are not.”
“And if you are stopped?”
“I will think of something. I always do,” she says. This answer doesn’t make him feel better, niggles of doubt. She climbs on top of him to dispel it, arms around his neck and cool kisses on his hot skin.
“You will be here tomorrow?” he asks.
“Yes,” she says, peeling away from him.
She is gone and he paces the floor, feeling buoyant and a sense of calm.
How did I find her? It is love. He knows it because his heart is beginning to repair. He can go on now.
He is startled. There is a sequence of knocks on the door. He is hoping it is Josephine returned.
Eugène has someone new with him, a Belgian, to break apart the stillness. Not that Eugène is unwelcome, nor that he didn’t expect him back this morning, just that the energy of the stranger is intrusive. He is raking over the contents of Arthur’s life with his eyes, pillaging the mood, examining the view of the canal, even the sheets on the bed that are crumpled. He seems to stay on them a moment.
Eugène doesn’t seem to notice any of it.
“This is Cédric,” says Eugène. “He has been sentenced to prison for refusing to work for the Germans. They have sent his father away already. He is staying here until we can get him to the border. I would normally take him closer, but some have abandoned us. They are too frightened now. And I do not trust the smuggler Karl because of what you did to his brother, Herbert.”
“I can take him to the border if you wish,” says Arthur, wanting to make up for it.
“We will both go,” says Eugène, “when it is time. One of us must be there in case we need a decoy. There must always be two now, since the fiasco at the border with Gordon.”
Eugène likes to remind him of this, of Josephine’s involvement, too.
Arthur nods.
“I need to go see Maman,” says Eugène. “Remind her that if we are missing for many days to not go to the authorities. Will you be all right with him?”
“Of course,” says Arthur, and Eugène is gone.
“Are you an English soldier?” Cédric asks, the question puerile.
“Yes,” he says, turning to the stranger, suddenly aware there is a person there he must contend with. Life on the run, mutating. Another day. Another change.
37. A SOLDIER RETURNS
Josephine cycles fast, the cold wind in her hair.
German soldiers are coming her way. They look tired. They are grimy, they are back from war. A bandage on a hand. One is old enough to be her grandfather. He is probably a father, too. Her heart is strangely soft and free.
“Guten Tag!” she says.
One of the soldiers raises his hat, his other arm bound up to the elbow. He is tired of war, too. Leaves and litter bluster around her wheels. She lowers her head and tunnels through the wind.
She rolls her bike around the side of the house and enters through the back door, hangs up her coat and hat. The house feels warmer today, and she can hear murmurs coming from the other end of the hallway.
Josephine bounces into the front room, then falters. Franz and her mother rise from the sofa to greet her, and Gisela is first to speak.
“Captain Mierzen has brought us some coal,” announces Gisela. There is no sign of Grace. A fire is in the grate and a basket of food on the table.
“Josephine,” he says unsurely, as if he can’t quite believe she is real. He is smiling his twisted smile that he makes to control his emotion. He is pleased to see her. It is obvious.
“I’ve just been telling Captain Mierzen that you went to the Parc du Cinquantenaire to listen to the band today. Did you see your brothers there?”
“Yes, Maman,” she says, holding her mother’s gaze, her message received. “It was very pleasant.”
Josephine stares at the empty teacups between them on the coffee table, wills her eyes to meet his.
“You have had trouble with food, your mother was telling me,” he says. “You lost your job.”
“Yes,” she says, images of Arthur in her vision, his name, she feels, emblazoned across her face.
“I heard about what happened to Vivienne. It was a terrible shock. I had no idea.”
Didn’t you? she wants to shout, memories of Vivienne and the hole in her chest. Is it that he is more shocked by her death or that she was a spy? No doubt he knows something.
Gisela is reluctant to leave them.
“Maman, can I talk to you, please?”
Gisela looks at her daughter, her face shifting between pleading and defiance. Josephine is aware that she does not like the German, that she would throw the coal and food back if she could.
Gisela stands up to follow her daughter into the laundry near the back door.
“I need to speak to him privately. You must leave us.”
“I thought it was over between you.”
Josephine swallows.
“Maman . . .”
“I will go,” she says, her hands up in surrender. “But, Josephine, you need to ask him not to come. Especially now that Grace is here. You can’t trust him. He is probably the one who got Vivienne killed. He is on the side that killed your father, that killed our Yves. Don’t you forget that!”
Josephine stares at her back as she leaves.
Franz has his back to her, too, his hands behind him casually. He is looking at the photo of Yves on the mantelshelf.
He turns as she approaches.
“I did not expect you,” she says, possibly the only honest thing she can find to say.
“You never wrote,” he says.
“I would have replied if you’d written. If I’d known where to write.”
“I wrote you many times.”
Maman has not once asked about Franz. This thought flitters through her head and out again before landing, before reaching a truth.
“I can’t explain why the letters didn’t come,” says Franz. “I wrote six times, each time waiting for yours.”
She feels a thump to the chest as if she has been punched. Imagines the torturous conditions in the trenches, which Franz has just come back from.
“You have to believe me.”
She steps to face the window, so she doesn’t have to look at him. So he can’t see that she believes him. Cause and effect, Xavier would say. He didn’t write. She moved on. She can’t go back. But if she were truly honest, she would have likely moved on anyway.
A pigeon swaggers along an architrave across the street, and Josephine’s eyes follow his steps. What now? she asks him before he takes flight.
“Did you have anything to do with Vivienne being caught?”
“No, of course not! I have read the report. I would have brought her into headquarters myself for questioning had I known of her operations. It would not have happened with a staged arrest in public. It was a calamity . . . She was a spy, in case you weren’t aware.”
She believes him, though there are still things about Franz she would like to know.
“You visited her before you left,” she says, turning now, a vision of where she wants this to go.
“Yes, to say goodbye. She was a friend . . . I have perhaps performed poorly in my role since I did not suspect her at all. Perhaps I am not particularly good at spotting deceit.”
Josephine looks away, hoping that he cannot see hers.
He takes her hand, and she lets him for now.
“I meant what I told you before I left . . . I wish to take care of you.”
He retrieves a crumpled, water-damaged photograph from his shirt pocket.
“I have kept you next to my heart.”
Tears spring to her eyes. She had been so sure of him. And she is sure of him now. Though it is different. She is different.
“Josephine, what is wrong?”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t hear from you . . . Your letters never came. I am in shock, that is all.”
She can see it all then. His heart is pure. Her plans are thwarted. She does not know what to say. He has been to the Front, fighting. There are traces of the battle he has brought back, the burn marks on the backs of his hands, the dark circles around his eyes, the way his jacket no longer fits firmly to his body, the jagged part in his carelessly combed hair, the attention to himself less important. He has been through war. He puts his hand on her arm.
“I am sorry that I have arrived without warning. I didn’t mean to shock you.”
She steps away, frees herself from his hand that brands her guilt.
“Are you back here permanently?”
“For a little while, yes. They have asked me to find some people. It is a better job than the one I’ve been doing. I can’t tell you how hard it is out there. How much of your past life is stripped from you. I’ve had time to ponder things that are more important.”
She shakes her head.
“What is wrong?” he asks.
“I’m not sure it will work. You and I.”
“What do you mean?” he says.
“I can’t . . .” She is unable to think of the right words to say.
“Josephine, I have to go. I must return to the Kommandantur. I arrived only hours ago and stole some time to come here.”
He perhaps does not want to hear what she has to say.
“I love you, Josephine.”
There is something she feels still. Though it is more the feeling of being loved, not a feeling of being in love. She has tasted the latter and knows the difference.
He is gone, and Josephine sits down to stare at the wall, to find a way out of this. She is only vaguely aware of her mother, who has returned to sit next to her.
“Why, Maman?” Josephine asks wearily, when she is able to speak.
“It wasn’t right.” There is a break in her voice. “I’m sorry. But, Josephine, I never told you. The national committee who distributes charity food told me that they would no longer serve you, that you were banned from receiving any rations if you continued to consort with the German captain. Word had spread. Your reputation was at stake. I did what I thought—”
