Читать книгу Sins of the Innocent - Mireille Marokvia - Страница 18

One morning in late November, the lawyer’s housekeeper knocked on my door. She had good news for me, she said. She had been downtown shopping and had heard that one could now send letters to England and France.

“Take your letter to the post office,” she added. “I think you’ll need special stamps.”

All communications with England and France had been cut after the declaration of war and, as far as I knew, were still cut. But I was only too ready to believe any good news. I had been worried about my parents and my friends. They, no doubt, imagined that I was incarcerated, perhaps mistreated.

I rushed home to write a reassuring letter. I was well and free to go wherever I wanted to, I wrote. Everybody was as nice and as helpful as before. I hoped that peace would prevail; nobody I knew in Germany wanted war against France, I wrote.

At the post office, the employee to whom I handed my letter said, besides an emphatic, “Nein!” something I could not understand. He did not understand my bad German either.

A large woman standing by offered help. Towering over me, she explained, in simple German, that I had been misinformed. No, no letter could be sent to France. She felt so sorry for me, she said. She assured me that no German man wanted to fight against any French man. She would like so much to help me, she said, but she did not know how.

We walked side by side for a while. Suddenly she said, “If I were you, I would go to the radio station and just ask permission to read my letter on the radio.”

What a good idea! The helpful woman gave me directions, I thanked her, and I was on my way.

At the radio station, a doorkeeper directed me to a polite, well-groomed young gentleman in civilian clothes who spoke French and was eager to help. Would I leave my letter with him? he asked. Yes, I would. He promised I would hear from him shortly.

That evening, I told Abel about all I had accomplished by myself in just one half day.

If he had any misgivings, he did not say.

One day later, I was assigned, by telegram, a late-evening appointment at the radio station. I went alone, taking with me another letter I had written to my friends. At the radio station, the polite gentleman was beaming as he told me that I was welcome to read any letters I would like.

I stood alone in a large, dark room, in front of a microphone, and read my letters.

Because of the darkness and the silence, but mostly because of the late hour, I thought that this was direct broadcasting. I imagined my voice traveling through the vast darkness and reaching my father and my mother in the old house where I had lived the happiest days of my childhood with my beloved grandparents.

To make sure I would reach them, I would have to repeat the reading, I thought. But no, the polite gentleman said, this should do for the moment.

Of course, what I had done were recordings that would be played day and night, I soon discovered. We had no radio, but all the people we knew did. Sometimes, walking on the street, I would hear my voice.

One day I received an invitation for tea from a lady who wanted French lessons. I welcomed the diversion.

She was about my age, slim and elegant, and she spoke French quite well. We agreed to meet for tea once a week. I did not think she needed any lessons, I said.

We sat at a small table in her airy, pleasant apartment and had tea and excellent homemade pastries. She said she had heard me on the radio.

Suddenly she bent toward me, across the table. “You are being used, do you know that?” she whispered.

Christine was less polite. She appeared on our threshold one night, turned her back on me, and addressed Abel angrily. I could not understand her. I don’t think Abel ever told me what Christine truly said.

Less than a week later, a letter came from one of Abel’s brothers-in-law who lived in a town about three hundred kilometers away. He was coming to visit us, he wrote.

He was a career officer who, because of a heart defect, worked in an office for the army. I had met him once. I remembered an ugly man with a kind smile.

He arrived on the following Sunday in late afternoon. It was odd and a bit perturbing for me to see a German army officer taking off his verdigris military greatcoat in our home. He too felt awkward, he smiled a lot.

He sat at our small table for dinner, talked briefly about his wife, Abel’s favored sister, and their son, a boy of nine. Then, bending over as if he were addressing the noodles and greens on his plate, he said, or rather grumbled, “Don’t do a thing for those . . . people. You don’t know them. We, in the army, we know them. Don’t ever get into any kind of deal with them. Abel, do you understand?”

Yes, Abel said, he understood.

I said nothing, but I had understood.

A few days later, a telegram came assigning me a late-evening appointment at the radio station. Abel accompanied me.

The polite gentleman at the radio station, that evening, wore the black SS uniform that made Abel cringe. Smiling confidently, he handed me a prepared text, an appeal to French women, he announced.

“Oh no, no, I cannot read a text I have not written,” I exclaimed.

The polite gentleman looked surprised and rather annoyed.

“Well, in the future, you will have to deal with someone else anyway,” he finally said. “I am proud to inform you that I’ll depart for the front shortly.”

“The front, which front?” I asked.

I got no answer.

Another telegram summoned me sometime later. I went with Abel, who had to explain that I had a bad episode of a recurring laryngitis. I, of course, could not say a word.

Next I received a check. No explanation, just a check for what seemed, at the time, a substantial amount.

I returned the check, in person, to a very surprised employee.

A week or so later another check came. Again, I returned it.

No more telegrams or checks arrived after that.

“You take one step on your own and it is right onto treacherous sands,” Christine told me. “Ask me for advice before you take another.”