Proposal
Marie-Laure sits in her customary spot in the corner of the kitchen, closest to the fireplace, and listens to the friends of Madame Manec complain.
“The price of mackerel!” says Madame Fontineau.” You’d think they had to sail to Japan for it!”
“I cannot remember,” says Madame Hébrard, the postmistress, “what a proper plum tastes like.”
“And these ridiculous shoe ration coupons,” says Madame Ruelle, the baker’s wife. “Theo has number 3,501 and they haven’t even called 400!”
“It’s not just the brothels on the rue Thévenard anymore. They’re giving all the summer apartments to the freelancers.”
“Big Claude and his wife are getting extra fat.”
“Damned Boches have their lights on all day!”
“I cannot bear one more night stuck indoors with my husband.”
Nine of them sit around the square table, knees pressed to knees. Ration card restrictions, abysmal puddings, the deteriorating quality of fingernail varnish—these are crimes they feel in their souls. To hear so many of them in a room together confuses and excites Marie-Laure: they are giddy when they should be serious, somber after jokes; Madame Hébrard cries over the nonavailability of Demerara sugar; another woman’s complaint about tobacco disintegrates midsentence into hysterics about the phenomenal size of the perfumer’s backside. They smell of stale bread, of stuffy living rooms crammed with dark titanic Breton furnishings.
Madame Ruelle says, “So the Gautier girl wants to get married. The family has to melt all its jewelry to get the gold for the wedding ring. The gold gets taxed thirty percent by occupation authorities. Then the jeweler’s work is taxed another thirty percent. By the time they’ve paid him, there’s no ring left!”
The exchange rate is a farce, the price of carrots indefensible, duplicity lives everywhere. Eventually Madame Manec deadbolts the kitchen door and clears her throat. The women fall quiet.
“We’re the ones who make their world run,” Madame Manec says. “You, Madame Guiboux, your son repairs their shoes. Madame Hébrard, you and your daughter sort their mail. And you, Madame Ruelle, your bakery makes much of their bread.”
The air stretches tight; Marie-Laure has the sense that they are watching someone slide onto thin ice or hold a palm over a flame.
“What are you saying?”
“That we do something.”
“Put bombs in their shoes?”
“Poop in the bread dough?”
Brittle laughter.
“Nothing so bold as all that. But we could do smaller things. Simpler things.”
“Like what?”
“First I need to know if you’re willing.”
A charged silence ensues. Marie-Laure can feel them all poised there. Nine minds swinging slowly around. She thinks of her father—imprisoned for what?—and aches.
Two women leave, claiming obligations involving grandchildren. Others tug at their blouses and rattle their chairs as though the temperature of the kitchen has gone up. Six remain. Marie-Laure sits among them, wondering who will cave, who will tattle, who will be the bravest. Who will lie on her back and let her last breath curl up to the ceiling as a curse upon the invaders.
You Have Other Friends
“Look out, Pusswood,” Martin Burkhard yells as Frederick crosses the quad. “I’m coming for you tonight!” He convulses his pelvis maniacally.
Someone defecates on Frederick’s bunk. Werner hears Volkheimer’s voice: Decency does not matter to them.
“Bed-shitter,” spits a boy, “bring me my boots.”
Frederick pretends not to hear.
Night after night Werner retreats into Hauptmann’s laboratory. Three times now they have gone out into the snow to track down Volkheimer’s transmitter, and each time they have found him more directly. During the most recent field test, Werner managed to set up the transceivers, find the transmission, and plot Volkheimer’s location on the map in under five minutes. Hauptmann promises trips to Berlin; he unrolls schematics from an electronics factory in Austria and says, “Several ministries have demonstrated enthusiasm for our project.”
Werner is succeeding. He is being loyal. He is being what everybody agrees is good. And yet every time he wakes and buttons his tunic, he feels he is betraying something.
One night he and Volkheimer trudge back through the slush, Volkheimer carrying the transmitter, both receivers, and the folded antenna under one arm. Werner walks behind, content to be in his shadow. The trees drip; their branches seem moments away from erupting into bloom. Spring. In two more months Volkheimer will be given his commission and go to war.
They stop a moment so Volkheimer can rest, and Werner bends to examine one of the transceivers, draws a little screwdriver from his pocket, and tightens a loose hinge plate. Volkheimer looks down at him with great tenderness. “What you could be,” he says.
That night Werner climbs into bed and stares up at the underside of Frederick’s mattress. A warm wind blows against the castle, and somewhere a shutter bangs and snowmelt trickles down the long downspouts. As quietly as he can manage, he whispers, “Are you awake?”
Frederick leans over the side of his bunk, and for a moment in the nearly complete darkness Werner believes they will finally say to each other what they have not been able to say.
“You could go home, you know, to Berlin. Leave this place.”
Frederick only blinks.
“Your mother wouldn’t mind. She’d probably like to have you around. Franny too. Just for a month. Even a week. As soon as you leave, the cadets will let up, and by the time you return, they’ll have moved on to someone else. Your father wouldn’t even have to know.”
But Frederick tips back into his bed and Werner can no longer see him. His voice comes reflecting down from the ceiling.
“Maybe it’d be better if we aren’t friends anymore, Werner.” Too loud, dangerously loud. “I know it’s a liability, walking with me, eating with me, always folding my clothes and shining my boots and tutoring me. You have your studies to think of.”
Werner clenches his eyes. A memory of his attic bedroom swamps him: clicking of mouse feet in the walls, sleet tapping the window. The ceiling so sloped he could stand only in the spot closest to the door. And the feeling that somewhere just behind his vision, ranged like spectators in a gallery, his mother and father and the Frenchman from the radio were all watching him through the rattling window to see what he would do.