“No, sir,” I murmur, all too aware of people watching us on the platform as they wait for the train. Not only don’t I want to speak to German soldiers—I don’t want to be seen speaking to them, so I turn away.
The officer blocks my path with a chilly smile. “I see what attracted the boy’s notice, Fr?ulein. Your fair hair, blue eyes . . . you are very pretty.”
Trying not to glare, I stare at his inverted widow’s peak, which seems to point, like an arrow, at the skull and crossbones on his visored cap. What kind of brutes would wear that? When the silence drags on, the officer squints his glacial eyes. “Where are my manners? Obersturmführer Konrad Wolff, at your service. May I see your papers, please?”
I don’t want him to search my handbag, where he might find the document Travert gave me, so I quickly fish out my new identity card.
“Congratulations, Madame Travert,” Wolff says, examining the card closely while the younger soldier remains at attention. “I see you’re a newlywed.” Then he narrows his eyes. “You’re missing something, aren’t you?”
I feel a spark of fear, though it’s an authentic document. “Missing something?”
“A father,” he says with a chuckle. “Father unknown. A blond and blue-eyed Frenchwoman born in the last war? It could be your mother opened her legs for a German soldier. Bad for her reputation, but maybe good for you. Maybe you are Volksdeutsche.” Of German ethnicity, he means. Someone who might be given special favors. The officer hands me back my identity card, turns to the boy, and says, “Give her the chocolate.”
Though my stomach is growling, I don’t want to take chocolate from Nazis. “I don’t care for it.”
“Nonsense; everyone loves chocolate! Besides, this soldier won’t be needing it. He must be punished for his incorrect behavior; he allowed your loveliness to distract him and forgot to return his shovel to the stationmaster.”
The child-soldier gulps, then the officer pulls from his boot some sort of collapsible baton. “I could report him for disciplinary action, but I’m not a patient man. I believe in the power of immediate lessons.”
Neither of us has time to react before the officer swings the truncheon against the boy’s jaw, then does it a second time, sending a spatter of blood and saliva to my feet. I skitter back with a cry of surprise and horror as Wolff shouts in German, lashing at the boy again and again. The pathetic young soldier tries to stay at attention, but another vicious crack to the skull breaks him. He whimpers, shielding his face as I scream, “Stop!”
But it doesn’t stop. I’ve seen boys brawl on the playground, but I’ve never witnessed violence like this. It’s a brutal beating that goes on and on until I think I hear teeth crack.
Mon Dieu, is the officer trying to beat the boy’s brains out?
Obersturmführer Wolff keeps hitting and hitting, and I want to snatch that bloody baton and drive it like a stake through his heart, but I’m frozen in shock and terror. None of the other soldiers intervene, but an angry crowd of French people all drop their luggage and begin to surge closer. Too late . . .
As it turns out, a skull doesn’t shatter like a marble bust. It makes a sickening sound, wet and hollow. That’s what I hear when the boy collapses to the ground at my feet. I don’t know how or why, but somehow I’m on my knees on the cold concrete platform, cradling the young soldier’s head—now a bloody mass of red oozing wounds. I scream again as his hot blood soaks my skirt. “Please get a doctor!”
Obersturmführer Wolff only wipes off the baton and slides it back into his boot. “Guten Tag, Fr?ulein.”
Then he walks away, bloodred boot prints in his wake.
I try to hold the boy together, try to mold his broken jaw back into shape with my fingertips. But there’s so much blood pooling underneath me. Sticky, and steaming into the air with the boy’s increasingly shallow breaths.
* * *
—
At the hospital in Brioude, a nurse gives me a washbasin, a sponge, and the privacy to wash. I scrub my skin clean . . . but there’s nothing to be done for my skirt or my shoes. And I let out a shaky breath because I can’t get the iron scent of blood out of my nostrils.
French people at the train station carried the young soldier to the hospital. We carried him here because we’re not savages, and I held his brains in his head the whole way. Now I don’t want to leave until I know . . .
Travert knocks lightly, then steps into the room, offering me his leather coat. “In case you wanted to change.”