The Officer and the Spy, page 26
The view of the mountains was clearer than ever, above the rooftops; she fixed her eyes on their peaks, still capped with snow – the white bathed in the sun’s final beams, all the brighter for the darkness that was thickening by the second around her – thinking, fleetingly, of everyone up there who’d be willing her on.
Then,
‘Fräulein,’ came the boy’s voice. ‘Fräulein. Halt.’
She cursed, stopped.
He was still a little way behind her. At the head of the stairs, she guessed.
There was something familiar about his voice. She couldn’t place it.
She didn’t turn towards him either.
Needing to calm herself, she forced a long, deep breath.
‘Fräulein,’ he said again, then broke off as another set of boots, much surer than his, came up the stairs.
She heard a murmured conversation.
‘Jawohl,’ the boy said.
And the new boots carried on, towards her.
Not quickly.
Not hastening, like she’d hastened.
Not hesitant either. Just taking their time, even as the boy sounded to turn, and retreat.
Eleni almost wanted him to come back.
He, young and uncertain, had sounded far easier to manage than whomever was wearing these boots.
She was ready for the hand that seized her.
It still shocked her, when it came.
The gentleness of the grip that closed around her arm, shocked her.
Then, a voice.
A voice she didn’t doubt she’d heard before.
His voice.
‘Come with me,’ he said.
‘Remembering wartime Greece.’ Transcript of research interview undertaken by M. Middleton (M.M.) with subject seventeen (#17), at British Broadcasting House, 6 June 1974
#17:
It had been so long since I’d seen her. She’d changed.
M.M:
You’ve said about her disguise…
#17:
It wasn’t just that. She’d changed in herself. It shouldn’t have been a surprise. Everyone was changed by the war. But she… She’d become… [searches for word] harder.
M.M:
Harder?
#17:
Tougher.
M.M:
I suppose she had to be.
#17:
I suppose she did. Even so, it was a… jolt. I would never have believed, back in thirty-six, that she could have killed someone. Then [shakes head], then, I didn’t doubt it.
Chapter Eighteen
Come with me.’
He spoke in English, for no other reason that it was what they’d always done with one another. He did it quietly though. For her ears only.
She said nothing in reply. Not at first.
She didn’t move.
For a few seconds, she did nothing but stare.
He stared back at her, into those eyes he’d never forgotten, but which he’d given up on ever seeing, so close, again. He’d given up on a lot of things, over the course of the year that he’d served here in the Festung Kreta… Fortress Crete. He no longer hoped he’d one day leave it.
He’d lost any belief he deserved to.
He watched her eyes move, in just the same way as they had the first time they’d met, down on the harbour, with Fred Astaire playing. Then, she’d been smiling. Now, as she took in his cap, his uniform, the insignia on his chest, his sleeve, her lips turned in disgust. And God, it hurt. He’d known it would, but not like this. Not as bad as this…
‘Where are we going?’ she asked, finally speaking, also in English, as quietly as he had, but not so quiet that he didn’t catch the edge to her tone. An edge that let him know that, even in her hatred, she was remembering other things too. Like the hours they’d lost, sitting beneath their tree; how they’d kissed in the rain at Notre-Dame (and no, he hadn’t gone near it, when he’d marched through Paris); the way they’d used to wrap themselves up in one another, drifting in the sea.
He didn’t know why the thought of her memories hurt even more.
‘Are you arresting me?’
‘If we stay here much longer, and Weber decides to join us, I might not have much choice.’
‘Weber?’ she said. ‘That’s his name?’
‘Let me worry about him.’
‘I’d rather not, if it’s all the same to you. Tell me who he is.’
‘Fine.’ Still holding her arm, he pulled her on, in the opposite direction to the one he’d ordered Weber to return. ‘First we need to move. He might still be watching. I won’t keep you long.’
He didn’t intend to.
And he hadn’t thought for them to go far. He didn’t want to risk the pair of them running into anyone else. He knew these streets. They need only get to the next one, and would have their pick of abandoned bombsites to hide in.
Wordlessly, they walked.
As soon as they rounded the corner, he dropped her arm.
‘Here then,’ she said, slipping into the doorless, roofless shell of a home.
Inside, it was all blackness, broken stones, and smashed furniture.
‘Make you proud?’ she said.
He ignored the question.
She set her basket down on the remnants of a dresser, and tipped her head back, looking up at the first stars pricking the April sky. It was getting colder. He saw how she held her shawl wrapped around herself, the chill sheening her skin. He followed her gaze upwards, seeing Venus. He’d searched for it every night he’d been back on the island, even the first one he’d come, when he hadn’t dared chance sleep, but had slumped against a tree, his gun in his lap, the few who’d been left of his men around him, and Fischer whimpering about his arm. Always, when he’d found the star, he’d thought of her.
He didn’t tell her that now though.
Make you proud?
She wouldn’t want to hear it.
He could understand why Weber hadn’t been sure she was who he’d suspected she was, just now. In her thick stockings and old-fashioned dress, that cloth scarf covering her darkened hair, she could almost have fooled Otto.
He was often in Chania, only able to take so much of existing between his billet, and the division’s parade ground at Souda. Whilst it was invariably hideous, being in town, facing up to the disgust directed at him from almost every corner, the thought of her kept pulling him back. Everywhere he looked, he saw the ghost of her, with the ghost of him – happy, careless, laughing, never too much – and, when he did, felt human again, like he still had a soul.
He got that most in the square.
He’d never forgotten that promise they’d made to one another in her bed, that they’d meet again there.
We’ll see each other, he’d said, but still have to look twice…
He supposed, part of him at least, had been waiting for this moment.
He’d been alone at a table, writing to Krista (I don’t know how much longer I can go on) when he’d looked up, and, seeing her talking to that Greek man, felt his entire body go still. He hadn’t taken his eyes from her, so had noticed the glances she’d kept throwing in Weber’s direction, quickly suspecting that all was not right.
Then Weber had moved from his table, circumnavigating her, clearly trying to get a better look, and he’d known all was not right.
Otto actually quite liked Weber. He hadn’t led him during the invasion. It was only after the surrender that Weber, having lost his own CO, had been put under his command. He reminded Otto, in many ways, of how seventeen-year-old Meyer, with his mother’s blanket, had used to be. Before Fischer had done what he had to him. He was even younger though, only recently turned seventeen. Traumatised, still, from the battle. He’d been badly wounded, taken prisoner. Nearly died…
‘Did you nurse?’ Otto asked Eleni now, drawing her attention down from the sky, back to him. ‘During the invasion?’
She frowned, bemused. ‘I wasn’t a nurse… ’
‘But you helped in a hospital?’
‘Yes… ’
‘Were any of your patients German?’
‘Any…?’ she began, then stopped, her expression clearing in understanding. ‘That was him?’ Her eyes widened in alarm. ‘I spoke to him in German… ’
‘It’s fine. He wasn’t certain it was you.’
‘Papou said he didn’t have long… ’
‘Well, he’s still here. I’ve told him I’ll take you in for questioning.’
‘You followed us?’
‘Yes.’ Once he’d found them again. It had taken him a minute. ‘I reminded Weber of the trouble he could get into for chasing a Greek woman home at night.’
‘I swear, sir,’ Weber had stuttered, ‘I wasn’t planning to do anything. I just want to see if it’s her…’
‘Do you speak Greek?’ Otto had asked.
‘ No.’
‘Then you’ll scare her, if she’s not who you think. Go back, leave this with me.’
‘You’re not worried about getting into trouble?’ Eleni asked him, coldly.
‘No,’ he said, wearily. ‘Come on—’ he moved back towards her ‘—it’s probably safe for you to go home now.’
He didn’t want her to. God knew he didn’t want her to.
But he didn’t want this either.
‘How long have you been here?’ she asked, remaining where she was, looking up at him, her entire body tense with restraint. Like those Greeks on the mainland who’d stared into his truck. All the French. ‘How long…?’
‘From the start,’ he said, wishing he had a different answer. ‘I landed at the start.’
‘On a glider?’
‘In a parachute.’
She stared.
‘You were one of them?’
‘Yes, I was. Come—’ he turned ‘—let’s go.’
‘Did you take part in the reprisals?’ she asked.
Slowly, he turned back to her.
Her eyes, glinting in the darkness, burned into his. She clenched her hands in fists.
‘You’re seriously asking me that, Eleni?’
‘I am seriously asking you that, Otto.’
It was his turn to stare.
Go to hell, he so nearly told her.
‘I got demoted,’ he said instead, stepping closer, ‘for refusing to.’
‘Yes?’
‘Yes.’
She flicked another look at his insignia. ‘What were you before? A general?’
‘A captain. I got promoted again.’ He had Major Count Von Uxkall, the parachute division’s chief-of-staff, to thank for that. ‘I have not shot a single Cretan. Not even the ones who killed my men… ’
‘Should I thank you?’
‘No.’
‘How can you be here?’ Her eyes were by now liquid.
She was trying not to cry.
It took him back to when they’d stood in another set of ruins, in the heat, not the cold; at Knossos. He’d hated it for her then. He hated it now.
‘Eleni, please… ’
‘Shame on you.’ She struck him on the chest. Then again, and again. ‘Shame on you, Otto.’
‘Shame on me, yes. Shame on me. I am drowning, Eleni.’ He caught her wrists. ‘I am drowning in my shame.’
‘God, Otto,’ she said, and wasn’t hitting him anymore.
She was pushing him away, scrambling over the rubble to go.
Never write to me again, she’d said, in her letter.
‘Don’t you dare follow me,’ she told him now. ‘Don’t you dare come near me.’
Don’t you dare follow me.
She didn’t want him to.
She got herself from that building without a backwards glance, her hands smarting from where she’d struck him, and only hated him.
She hated him.
How long have you been here?
From the start…
She didn’t care that he could so easily have been one of those sticks she’d watched fall limp, on that first day of the invasion.
She didn’t.
She couldn’t have given less of a damn about the flash of fury in his eyes when she’d asked about the reprisals.
No, the sobs rising in her, filling her chest, her throat, as she blindly retraced the steps they’d just taken, making for the lonely sanctuary of her basement, had nothing to do with her pain at his obvious pain, nor any compulsion she’d felt to go to him. She’d known she couldn’t go to him. Not like she’d gone to that boy, Weber. (Don’t let compassion in. What an idiot she’d been.) She’d felt no compulsion. She hadn’t been disturbed by any treacherous happiness either, when she’d heard his voice. Come with me. He was her enemy. All of their enemy. That was why she was having to fight back her tears.
Shame on him.
She ran down the steep, shadowy stairwell to her front door, jaw set against the memory of his words.
Shame on me, yes.
I am drowning, Eleni, in my shame.
She reached her door, and, needing her key, slammed her hand against the wood, realizing she had, in her haste, left it, along with her basket, behind in the ruined house.
It tipped her over the edge. Giving into her tears, she sank her head against the door, and wept.
I could drown with you, he’d once said to her, swimming, in the water beside that rock with its urchins.
I’d never let you, she’d told him. Never.
She hated the thought that he was drowning now. She did. At least as much as she hated him.
Why did he have to be here?
Why?
Finding no answer to her own impossible question, but needing her key, she pushed herself from the door and, wiping her eyes, returned through the chill night to the rubble.
He was still there, sitting on a pile of stones, his cap off, his head in his hands, fingers pressed into his short, short hair.
She wasn’t surprised to see him.
It came to her that she’d known she would.
Had she left her basket on purpose, then?
Wanted, on some subconscious level, to grant herself this excuse to return?
He raised his head, as though hearing her silent question, and, as his green eyes met hers, she felt her heart, her treacherous heart, catch.
Silently, she went to the dresser.
He watched her move. She felt the pressure of his stare on her skin.
She reached her basket. It had tipped when she’d put it down, and there were only three snails left inside, gorging on the leaves. Two had made a break for freedom and were inching painstakingly across the shattered wood, silver trails reflecting the moonlight; their version of a sprint.
She left them to it.
Good for them, really, to have got away.
Impulsively, she set their friends free too, and picked her basket up.
Don’t look at him, she told herself, just go.
Even as she thought it, she turned, facing him. His eyes, fierce with feeling, once again held hers, transporting her to a thousand different moments when they’d looked at her, so differently.
She’d loved him. She’d loved him so much.
Goodbye, she needed to say.
‘How is your mother?’ she heard herself asking instead.
‘She died,’ he said, and the words, his pain, struck her, wrong-footing her all the more. ‘Just before I was meant to meet you in Paris.’
‘Oh, Otto.’ She closed her swollen eyes. Never write to me again. Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘It was too… hard. Complicated.’
‘I am so sorry,’ she said, and was, in spite of everything. Deeply, deeply sorry. She pictured Brigit as she’d briefly known her; frail and wan and kind. The way she’d smiled whenever she’d looked at Otto or Krista that day at Knossos, then over their last dinner at Nikos’s villa; her tears on her cheeks, watching Marianne play. ‘I’m so very, very sorry.’
‘Thank you.’
She thought of how devastated Marianne was going to be. Then, Marianne’s worry, all this time, over Krista’s silence, never writing to her, not even before the war…
‘Krista isn’t…?’
‘No.’
Thank God.
‘Why didn’t she write to Marianne?’
‘She said she didn’t know how to, without telling her about Mama… ’
‘But why wouldn’t she? Why didn’t you…?’
‘For what purpose?’
‘Marianne adores her.’
‘She’s lost everything, Eleni. Why add to it?’
‘Because,’ Eleni began, then stopped, unsure what to even say.
He sighed, deeply. ‘You stayed in touch with Marianne?’
‘Yes. Until I came here.’
‘How is she?’
‘Well, the last I heard, the man she lives with, Hans, your mother’s old colleague, he was helping her to apply for a scholarship at his music school.’
‘Music school?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s good. God—’ he filled his lungs, as though the goodness was oxygen – which to him, perhaps it was. ‘I’m happy for her.’
‘Yes,’ said Eleni, hit now by more disorientating memories: of how he’d used to tug Marianne’s plaits, and fling her in the water, teasing her, like he’d teased Krista…
‘And Esther?’ he said.
‘Esther’s fine,’ she said. Then, needing, finally, to be certain, ‘You gave Lotte my address?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you marry her?’ The question was out before she knew it was coming.
