| Extract From An Act Of Treachery |
 |
| I learned to lie about where I was going and what I was doing. Once I asked Annette to tell the Distribution Centre I was feeling too poorly to work and I told my parents I was going to see the doctor. Instead I spent the morning in Les Trois Quartiers inspecting ribbon, artificial flowers and other useless items. There was nothing which might make me more attractive to Klaus but I enjoyed the fantasy that I might find something. |
|
| It would be the same at the other big department stores, Les Galleries Lafayette or Le Printemps but I began to search in my mind for ways of going there rather than back home or, worse still, to work. Absorbed with this problem, I did not at first notice the beginnings of a commotion, the sudden advent of fear among my fellow shoppers and browsers, the distant sound of someone shouting orders. By the time I emerged from my dreamland into the real world, the doors of the shop had been locked and the customers were being herded together. Hysterically a girl called out that a German had been stabbed in the store and they were looking for the culprit or for hostages. |
|
| Soldiers were pointing guns at us while others searched out those who had vainly sought to conceal themselves among the merchandise. I should have been terrified but instead was merely embarrassed that my petty deception might now be exposed. Beside me a woman wept that we would all be deported and her mother of ninety would be left alone in their apartment with no one to look after her. |
|
| The Germans were now demanding our papers. As I held out mine to a young officer he looked at me and I saw uncertainty enter his eyes. The woman with the elderly mother began to keen and he shouted at her brutally before calling over one of his colleagues who also stared at me quizzically then nodded to him. |
|
| Before the envious, contemptuous gaze of my fellow Parisians I was ushered out of the shop and left to go where I pleased. I understood well enough what had happened and began to hurry towards the Distribution Centre to work, to expiate, to drive away the memory of being spared from some ghastly fate, which still confronted those in the shop, because a sharp witted German had recognised the girlfriend of his commanding officer. |
|
| I changed direction towards the Seine, wanting instead of working to watch the early June sun sparkling on the river, to breathe the air of freedom, to imagine myself upon a boat sailing away from Paris and its horrors. I remembered the woman keening and wished now that I knew where she lived so that I might do something for her mother, tormenting myself by imagining the old lady waiting for her daughter, waiting and waiting. I hoped they found and shot the culprit for surely that would spare the others, others as innocent as I but who had no friendship with the enemy to pray in aid. |
|
| I felt guilty, grateful, soiled, distinguished but when the turmoil of my mind began to settle I was conscious of one thing only. If Germans recognised me as the friend of Klaus von Ströbel so must Parisians, I had been a fool to imagine I was capable of keeping the association clandestine and soon all my friends and relations would know as well. |
|
| Someone I knew was approaching me now, smiling. I wondered would she still smile if she had heard how I consorted with the enemy, would she even acknowledge me? A year ago it might have made no difference but now the impositions and privations were so huge and so many people had just disappeared that ambivalence towards the Germans had long since hardened into hatred. |
|
| Then, as I returned her smile wondering for how long I could take such greetings for granted, I stood stock still, my eyes fixed on the yellow star, my spirit screaming with shocked but silent protest. The order had gone out about a week ago that all Jews over the age of six must wear a yellow Star of David. Until now I had not seen any and had hardly paid much attention to this latest manifestation of persecution but now the cruel reality confronted me from the jacket of a girl younger than myself and I had not even realised she was Jewish. |
|
| Her smile weakened a little as she followed my gaze but she continued towards me. |
|
| "I'm sorry," I said. "I didn't know." |
|
| "No? I'm afraid I always thought it was obvious." |
|
| I looked at her and supposed it was, although now I came to think of it I had little idea what distinguished Jewish features. I recalled something about large noses and felt myself ignorant and insensitive. I glanced again at the star, remembered Yvette Levin and thought such a regime could be the product only of savages not of Europe in the middle of the twentieth century. |
|
| "I am afraid I qualify several times over under the definition. Both parents, all grandparents. Not very assiduous but it isn't that which counts. The time will probably come when you will be afraid to acknowledge me in the street." |
|
| They are Jews according to the definition to which we are obliged to work......I do not make these laws, Catherine, and so I do not have to justify them. Klaus’ words rang through my brain tolling moral desolation. |
|
| "It isn't fair." How often had I roared those words in childish protest at some petty injustice, how pathetically inadequate they sounded now. |
|
| "Nothing's fair. Children lost in the Exodus, tiny babies sent to Drancy, not knowing what happened to some of the men who fought, old folk not having enough to eat und so weiter, und so weiter as those beasts would say." |
|
| "I am in love with one of those beasts." |
|
| Her mouth slackened and her eyes widened but she said nothing as she turned and walked away quietly with no trace of flounce, just a slight, defeated sagging of the shoulders, so slight I could not be sure I had not imagined it. I never saw her again. |
|
| © Copyright Ann Widdecombe 2002 |
|
