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Under Total Eclipse We Will Tremble Like Birds Without Song

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One

I am the one who remembers.

I am the one who has been chosen to remember.

I am the one who has forgotten how to die.

I remember the sound of the cut of the bullets ripping through the body.

Even though I did not see it with my own eyes.

Everything has been forgotten now.

They have forgotten what happened here. Time has swallowed up the memory.

Soon those of us who saw it will all be dead and then they will say; How could it have happened? It is not possible. Perhaps it never happened at all. Ordinary people are not capable of such things.

Time has dissolved everything away.

Now the faded old television newsreels will not give up their secrets. They will tell nothing of how it really was.

Ellen Provost is an old woman lost in reverie.

Suzanne must have already been in the back room then. Barricading furniture high against the door. Or perhaps already finished barricading and simply standing defiantly

waiting for them to burst in screaming and take her away.

It was already a lynch mob by the time I arrived at the café. They would listen to nothing. They were drunk with liberation, suddenly brave now that the Nazis were gone.

They called her a whore and they spat on her. They struck her with their sticks, these ones who never dared to strike out at the Germans through all the years of humiliation. They struck her mercilessly. Their rough sticks tearing away the flesh from her naked arms. I remember the blood streaming on her pale skin. Running down scarlet on the pale.

Ellen Provost is an old woman lost in reverie as she sits in her chair by the window watching the bustle of the city as it rushes into a future she does not care to see. She is living in timelessness, thinking of her sister and how together they once fought a desperate war for survival. A war that could not be won. A war that could not be lost. She knows that in war there are never any survivors.

They were bringing her out with her head already shaved bald. Dressed only in her silk chemise, her face bleeding and stained with purple iodine. A crude swastika daubed on her scraped skull and forehead. She was still defiant then, even when they put her together with the other women they had captured. The guilty ones. The little whores. One of them was holding a baby, another was trying to cover her naked breasts with her arms. They all had blood dried on their faces and clothing, all wearing nothing but shifts and underwear torn ragged by the mob. Swastikas scoring their bald skulls and faces in angry purple. Suzanne too, standing apart from the collaborator women and proudly defiant. Staring the mob right in the eye..

Ellen has lived long enough to understand the journey of a lifetime in its completeness. She knows the things that are necessary to make the journey. Ellen is old and wisdom has settled upon her. Ellen knows what these necessary things have given her, and what she has paid for them.

The crowd wouldn’t listen to me when I told them what she’d done. They wouldn’t listen to anything. They only wanted to shoot her. They were filled with their righteous indignation, smoldering with the weight of the years of their cowardice. ‘The heroes are all dead,’ they yelled at me, ‘Whores like her betrayed them.’

And then Suzanne called them all cowards to their faces. Each one in turn she looked in the eye and called a coward. One after another. Each one she called out by name and then she called him a coward. The women too. She accused them of collaborating with the Germans by their assent. ‘You all hid away safely at home year after year’, she screamed at them. You are all cowards.

And at once they sprang on her like beasts, tearing at her clothes, tearing the skin from her cheeks with their fingernails. In their shame they wanted to drink her blood.

Ellen knows that few understand what will be required of them to sustain themselves through a lifetime. What the spirit requires. What they must have inside they will not know until it is too late to be attained. And so the spirit dies. Most die in longing and regret, most are not wise until it is too late. Everything costs a terrible price which must always be paid. Wisdom always comes too late. The wounds fade but do not heal.

It is better to die on your feet than live on your knees. This is one thing I truly know. But when it comes to the moment of choosing, there are few who will not choose to live on. Any way they can. This I also know.

Battle not with monsters, lest you become a monster. When you gaze into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you. So said the philosopher Nietzsche, but he was not correct. I have battled with monsters and I have stared into the abyss. And I have learned that we must always battle monsters. It is only when we are cowards and fail to do battle that we need fear the gaze of the abyss. For the abyss is within us and it knows what we have done. The night is long and dark and endless. The abyss knows what we have done and

what we have failed to do. And the abyss is relentless.

Across the street from where she sits at her window, Ellen notices a young girl and a boy kissing in a doorway. A timeless and innocent kiss such as she has known herself a thousand times. She feels a romantic longing welling up, a sudden desire to live it all over again. She feels a nostalgia for simple human sensibility, for the responsiveness to thrill to a kiss like the girl she once was. Just one last time more. The longing never dies in those who have lived wisely.

Everything has been forgotten now. They have forgotten what happened here. Sixty years have gone. I am the only one left to remember.

We were crushed under the heel of the Nazis but still we laughed and still we loved. It cost us everything and we knew that it would. And we paid the cost, we paid with our lives. Just for a moment to feel alive again, just for a moment to love life once again. It cost us everything and we paid it willingly. I was young and I was strong and there were much worse things than death.

Everything has been forgotten now. Time has swallowed up the memory.

Today they know nothing of how the spirit can be crushed. Of how fear devours the soul. How oppression turns the heart to ice.

How our humanity can flee from us.

Evil is commonplace. It wells up within us and spills from us into the world. It is in our nature and we must always act against it, for it is only by moral action that we can still the consent of evil.

Cowardice withers the spirit relentlessly. The abyss will not quit.

For the youth fades from us and the beauty dissolves away and one day there is a face in the mirror which is not our face. It is the face of what we have learned and done and believed in. It is the face of what we have made of our lives.

I am the one who has been chosen to remember.

I am so full of remembering that I have forgotten how to die.

Winter 1941

Cherbourg, France, December 1941

As Ellen walks into the old market square of Cherbourg, she feels the dull light and the gray stone of the surrounding buildings oppress her. Winter here is always filled with the sense of death. But things have never seemed so hopeless, so endlessly dark.

Everything is gray, she thinks, the same color as the German uniforms. Even the sky has been conquered.

It is early in the morning and Ellen Provost is a youthful schoolteacher in her early thirties walking under a dark sky through the narrow streets of the ancient fishing port of Cherbourg, France. She feels as if the leaden sky is lying upon her, crushing her under its weight. Her heart is frozen with sorrow and she knows it will never heal.

Ellen is wearing a shabby coat and walking with a weariness to her step that has become common in people as the war drags on without hope. Already this new war has lasted long enough for her to have lost everything.

Everything in my life has been destroyed. I will end it and that will be that. The war can go on without me.

Ellen is a well known and respected figure in the small provincial town. She is always pleasant and polite, always careful to carry herself with dignity and discretion, carefully concealing the fact that she is better educated than almost everyone in town. Even now, when there is a sense of tragedy and defeat about her, she still tries to show a cheerful front, to hide the desperation. Everyone already has more sorrow than they can bear.

Coming into Place Greville, the main square of the town, life looks almost the same as ever. If it wasn’t for the occasional soldier in uniform and the lack of local men lounging and smoking on the streets, gone now that they have been sent to German work camps, she could hardly even tell that there is war.

Life is simply going on..

Children are walking with their mothers or playing in the streets in squabbling bunches, housewives are passing on bicycles, old men stand on corners chatting and smoking and coughing, just as they always have done. Only the young men are missing. Now on the street there are only those young men working in the police and the plainclothes Militia, the local men who wanted to help the Germans run things as soon as they got the chance. And there were plenty of them. Once they were junior office workers and store assistants, now as Militiamen they hold the power of life and death in their hands.

As Ellen crosses the square towards the Café des Sports, she notices new graffiti painted on the brick wall, Death To Jews. Scrawled in dripping blood red paint. Normally there would be great danger in writing a public message on a wall, but this message the Germans allow, and it is appearing more and more. These days graffiti is appearing everywhere out of the mortified silence.

As she passes two soldiers standing laughing with two local policemen in uniform, she casually looks the other way. Ellen has learned never to catch any official’s eye, these men like nothing better than to show women the power they hold over them. To catch an eye is to invite the inspection of identity papers which must be carried at all times. Then there is the sexual innuendo and the quiet threat to endure.

The war is in people’s eyes. They stare out of the skull with incomprehension.

The war is there in the secret fear that shows in their eyes as they glance sideways in passing, their eyes turning away in fear. In stores, on trains, on the sidewalk.

The war has poisoned the trust from us.

Now walking lost in her thoughts, Ellen almost bumps into a handsome young captain in the feared black Gestapo uniform, standing casually talking to a well-dressed civilian doctor. She gasps, realizing at once that this man is Captain Krupps, known to all in town as the head of the Cherbourg regional Gestapo, a man with death at his fingertips.

Krupps is amused by her startled reaction, he always enjoys to see the sudden realization of his power on their faces. He smiles at her, politely tips his cap and flashes her the easy smile of a handsome womanizer. Ellen is not an unattractive woman.

‘Captain Krupps at your service madame.’

Ellen nods politely in return and quickly casts her eyes to the ground in a routine gesture of subservience. She keeps walking in order to prevent accidentally inviting any further contact. As she hurries away she imagines she can feel his eyes on her back, appraising her for arrest or rape or the falsified blackmail that will make her into a collaborator. She feels the fear rise in her again. Always on the street there is the fear. Only when she is safely at home does it subside. And then instead there is the silence of everything that has been lost.

Under his gaze she feels a flush of shame and powerlessness, as if he has forced her to be seen naked. She hurries across the square towards the refuge of the Café des Sports.

He might as well be God for the power he holds over me.

Inside the Café des Sports Ellen’s younger sister Suzanne is energetically wiping tables, part of her job in the busy café which is patronized by German officers each evening to the annoyance of the entire town. Formerly this was their own favorite café, now they must steer clear of it lest alcohol loosens their tongues. An indiscreet word will cost a man his life.

Suzanne looks up as Ellen comes in, she goes over and kisses her fondly on the lips. She strokes Ellen’s hair affectionately, they have always been close sisters.

‘Hello Sis. How are you feeling?’ Suzanne asks gently, always fearing the answer.

It has been a long time since Ellen has answered with anything but a lie.

‘I’m all right. Suzanne, don’t treat me as if I’m an invalid all the time.’

Ellen has always been able to read Suzanne’s face with ease.

‘I’m only worried about you.’

‘I’m all right,’ Ellen says, becoming agitated. She does not like to lie to Suzanne.

‘Good. Claude wants to ask you out again,’ Suzanne says, cheerfully switching gears, trying again to take Ellen away from the ruins of her life.

Suzanne is youthful, brash and lively, and Ellen has always admired and envied it in her, her sheer joy in living. She has a sensual and promiscuous air about her and around their small town, the reputation to go with it. Ellen loves the way Suzanne is always ready to laugh, always ready to sing or kick off her shoes and dance. Ellen can’t count the times that Suzanne has brought trouble into their lives, when they were growing up she was always the wildest girl in school, with a toughness in her that she was unafraid to show. Suzanne was always the best of friends and the worst of enemies.

Ellen shrugs off Suzanne’s cheekiness, lately it has an air of desperation to it that betrays her deep worry for Ellen.

‘Well I'm not going out with him,’ Ellen says irritably. ‘Doesn’t he know I'm married?’

‘He knows. He says he doesn’t mind,’ Suzanne laughs. ‘You know maybe you should go? Get out the house, you might have some fun for a change.’

‘I have plenty of fun thank you.’

‘Oh sure. If you call knitting fun. Like the old ladies do.’

Suzanne watches Ellen closely, watching her for signs of despair. Each day she looks more beaten, more desperate, closer to the suicide that Suzanne fears she will one day attempt. Suzanne can see the slow freezing coming over her. There in the deepening pallor of her face, in the weak sighs slipping innocently from her lips, in the joylessness of her smile. Life is withering away from her. Ellen is not a frivolous person, if she attempts suicide, she will succeed.

Ever since Ellen’s husband, Robert, went missing at the military front, death has been circling her. Suzanne has been forced to keep up the hopeless pretense that he is not dead, that one day he will reappear unharmed and alive. That this impossible miracle will one day happen. For more than a year now she has been allowing Ellen to pretend, to lie to herself. Ellen has been crushed long since, even before the other terrible disaster. Now Suzanne sees that she lives like a woman on a tightrope who longs to fall, and there is nothing to catch her except death.

Suddenly Ellen laughs, Suzanne’s bluntness always makes her laugh, Suzanne has never been polite for a moment in her entire life.

‘Just because we don't all have low morals. Like some people we know,’ Ellen says affectionately.

‘Ho ho! The queen of the virgins casts stones!’ Suzanne laughs too, that easy laugh Ellen loves. ‘Come look what I got us..’

Suzanne goes behind the bar and collects a large fish wrapped in newspaper, she displays it proudly. Ellen admires it, she know exactly what it means, such fish are scarce and highly prized.

‘I wish you’d stop sleeping with the fishermen. I’m so tired of fish.’

Suzanne laughs heartily, ‘I haven’t slept with him yet. Although this is a very big fish.’

‘So are you sweetie.’

‘It should be good though. If you cook it I’ll come to yours at six?’ Suzanne nods hopefully. She hates to cook and eats with Ellen whenever she can.

‘All right. I’ll try to get an apple from Vincent’s grocers.’

‘Good,’ Suzanne agrees, always relieved to see any enthusiasm at all in Ellen. ‘Will you go by Ruth’s and give her a bit of the fish?’

Ellen nods and wraps the fish, putting it in her bag.

‘Give her as much as she wants.’

‘That’s very generous.’

‘I’m a very generous person you know,’ Suzanne laughs, ‘That’s my problem with men too.’

Suzanne does a sexy little dance, shaking her hips.

Ellen feels her heart warm for her and the laughter she has brought them through all these terrible years. Watching Suzanne dance Ellen remembers why she has come to the cafe to see her.

‘Suzanne I think you should stop working here. It is becoming too popular with the German officers. And so are you sweetie.’

Suzanne shrugs carelessly, ‘I serve them beer, nothing more. I don’t like them and I don’t take anything to do with them. What’s wrong with that? I have to earn a living.’

‘People will talk.’

‘Prattle you mean. Same as always, war or no war, this town is always full of sheep.’

Ellen sighs, Suzanne has always been willful and impossible to dissuade from anything. ‘I hope you won’t come to regret it sweetie.’

‘I have more than this to regret, I can assure you. Now go and get us some nice fruit before it’s all sold, won’t you?’

Ellen shakes her head in exasperation and goes. There is no talking to Suzanne and she is beginning to get an unpleasant reputation in the town.

Outside in the square Ellen sees some German troops climbing from a canvas truck and forming up on the sidewalk in rows. There seems to be an endless amount of tall young German soldiers, far more soldiers than any rural town of forty thousand beaten inhabitants could ever require to be fully pacified. Cherbourg’s strategic location on the coast of the English Channel has given it an importance disproportionate to its size. Now it has been occupied by a high security German presence defending against a military invasion from across the Channel. Now the beaches are covered in land mines and barbed wire and tall wooden tank traps. England is only fifty miles away by sea, almost within sight on a clear day. Often Ellen marvels that just over the horizon there are people living unconquered. It does not seem possible.

People in France have grown used to the sight of German soldiers on their boulevards. German soldiers with giggling young French women on their arms, German soldiers drinking the best of French wine, eating the best of French meat, sleeping with Frenchwomen for small sums of money and often even less, mere trinkets such as cosmetics and cigarettes.

And in the town of Vichy in the unoccupied southern zone of the country, the new French government is willingly doing the German’s bidding, always aware of the delicacy of the arrangement, always aware of the ease with which the Nazis can sweep them aside if they are refused anything at all. Sometimes to Ellen it seems the government too are sleeping with the Germans for mere trinkets.

In the year and a half that has passed since the sudden shocking surrender of the French army, after not even a mere three weeks of fighting, Great Britain has been struggling on alone, unprepared, unequipped and beleaguered against an overpowering German military force. Things have never seemed so utterly hopeless, only yesterday Germany showed its limitless power by declaring war on America. Now there is Russia and America and Great Britain and its Commonwealth opposing the Germans, and the Nazis have all Europe in a stranglehold. Now there is war throughout the entire world, in Asian and Africa too. The whole world is on fire, but still the Germans come here to Cherbourg.

As Ellen crosses the square to the greengrocer shop she sees Captain Krupps again, watching her as he walks towards the soldiers lining up before him. His eyes on her are full of dark suspicion. Ellen hates him, she knows there is nothing she could refuse him without it costing her life.

He is like a murderer looking for a victim.

Inside the greengrocers it is warm and busy and smells of earth. Ellen feels relief to be out of Krupps gaze and in the presence of the other townspeople whom she has always known. Especially the greengrocer, Vincent Lapin, whom she has always liked. He is a fat hearty man who always lumbers around behind the counter, chatting to his customers in loud and cheerful tones. Ellen remembers him as a fat and cheerful child who once kissed her in the woods behind the beach and made her cry.

There is little for sale in the store, the only thing that Vincent reliably stocks is Jerusalem artichoke. No-one can understand how this can be, but the joke is that the Germans must not like them, since everything else in the country has been stolen by them or eaten by the farmers. Only the tubers of Jerusalem artichoke are commonly available, even though they were once considered fit only for feeding cattle, they are now so in demand that they are under rationing. Otherwise there are only some few carrots and turnips for sale, and people will queue and beg to buy them.

As soon as Ellen takes her place in line behind the other women waiting, Mrs. Baston turns to her. Ellen doesn’t like her, even though they were neighbors for many years when Ellen was a girl and lived at her parent’s house, before she married Robert. As children Ellen and Suzanne would spend hours mimicking her and devising new insulting names for her. Now almost sixty, her face has aged like the face of a man, her body widened and become sturdy and severe. But Mrs. Baston has remained as nosy and unpleasant as ever.

‘Hello Ellen,’ she says, spotting her immediately.

‘Hello Mrs. Baston,’ Ellen replies coldly enough to discourage chit-chat.

‘Did you hear anything from your poor husband yet dear?’

‘No, not yet.’

‘That’s too bad. We mustn’t give up hope though.’

‘I know he’s still alive somewhere..’ Ellen says, unable to stop herself from falling into the conversational trap.

‘That’s right dear,’ Mrs. Baston nods, as if talking to an invalid, ‘Thank God for Marshal Petain saving our boys. I heard a woman in Beyeux got her husband back. He’d been missing nearly thirteen months.’

Despite herself, Ellen feels hope springing up in her once more, ‘Robert’s only missing fourteen months. Not even fourteen..’

‘That’s right dear,’ Mrs. Baston nods, ‘This man was in the hospital. Nobody even knew who he was. Amnesia of the brain he had. They’ve sent him off to work in the camps in Germany now.’

Ahead of Ellen at the counter, a woman steps up for service. Ellen knows her vaguely from the school where she teaches. She came to work there and after only a week or two of working, Jews were proscribed from teaching and she left. Ellen has not seen her for a long time and now she looks thin and worn, as if her youth has fled from her. She has a bright yellow star sewn on her coat, above her left breast with the word Jew written on it. All the Jews are wearing them now, these last months under the new laws, even Ruth has the vulgar star displayed on all her clothes whenever she goes out of doors.

Vincent greets the woman warmly, ‘Hello Mrs. Schulman.’

‘Hello Vincent. Do you have anything special today?’

In the queue Mrs. Baston is watching the transaction closely, she turns to Ellen and silently mouths the word Jew with distaste. Ellen doesn’t react, unsure what to say.

‘I have a very few apples,’ Vincent says, ‘I could give you one for your children.’

‘That would be very nice.’ Mrs. Schulman is grateful.

‘She shouldn’t get that,’ Mrs. Baston interrupts forcefully. ‘We should get the special things first.’

‘Now Mrs. Baston,’ Vincent replies cheerfully, ‘Mrs. Schulman is one of us. Born and bred right here nearby. You know that.’

Behind the counter Vincent’s wife, Therese, steps forward. She is a fearful and scolding woman, as thin and unpleasant as Vincent is fat and amiable.

‘Vincent. Don’t start,’ she says as if addressing a child.

Mrs. Baston is encouraged by her success. ‘They had enough before the war. We should get the good things now. Their men don’t even work.’

‘We’re not allowed to work Mrs. Baston, Mrs. Schulman says, careful to hold an inoffensive tone, danger is lurking everywhere for Jews. ‘The Nazis don’t allow Jews to work.’

‘I could report you Vincent,’ Mrs. Baston says, fixing her eye on him threateningly.

Vincent is unconcerned, ‘Now, now.. We’re all patriots here.’

Therese steps forward, ‘Don’t you worry Mrs. Baston. We have something extra-special for you.’

Vincent gives Mrs. Schulman the apple. As it sits on the counter before her, she hesitates to pick it up in the face of such hostility. She turns uncomfortably and looks at Ellen for support, as if she recognizes her as an ally from the school.

Ellen doesn’t know what to say, everyone in the store is looking at her, waiting to see her response. To publicly take the side of a Jew could be very dangerous, even in such a small matter as this. She does not own a vital foodstuff store as Vincent does, people have been denounced to the Gestapo for less. Such a thing goes into an official report and one day even this could mean the difference between mere deportation and sudden execution.

Ellen’s mind reels as she tries to weigh the consequences before speaking, she cannot form an opinion what is best. First she almost says one thing, and then suddenly thinks something else is wiser. Finally in the face of Ellen’s long silence, Mrs. Schulman turns back to Vincent.

‘I don’t need it Vincent. I wouldn’t want to make trouble for anybody.’ she whispers wearily.

Ellen feels herself blushing with shame. She quickly searches for her ration book in her shopping bag to avoid looking at anyone.

I am a coward..

‘You just take the apple,’ Vincent insists pleasantly, ‘You've always been a good customer here. War or no war.’

‘They get everything.’ Mrs. Baston grumbles, aggrieved.

Mrs. Schulman picks up her ration book and her change and quickly leaves.

As she passes Ellen, their eyes meet. They were once casual acquaintances but Ellen cannot help her now. Mrs. Schulman is calm and strong, in these last few years she has seen enough humiliation to no longer blame people for their weaknesses. It is enough simply to still be alive.

Ellen reddens and looks away, ashamed again, desperately wishing she could have the moment of decision back, even though she knows the outcome would probably be the same.

Mrs. Baston notices the silent exchange of looks passing between them. ‘Well I never saw anything like it, she says, outraged, They don’t even know their place.’

‘Don’t you worry Mrs. Baston,’ Therese soothes her, ‘It won’t happen again.’ She looks at Vincent, as if daring him to disagree.

Before Vincent can respond, the door opens and a short, middle-aged policeman in uniform enters and joins the line of customers. Immediately tension rises in the store as everybody becomes aware of his uniform, even Mrs. Baston falls silent.

The police are in the service of the Germans and they are not to be trusted. Not even this one, Raymond Hardy, even though he is Vincent’s good friend and partner in many failing black market business schemes.

Vincent gleefully allows his argumentative customers be intimidated. Raymond’s power over people always amuses him.

‘Now who’s next? Mrs. Baston?’ Vincent asks in his booming voice.

Mrs. Baston looks at the policeman uncertainly. Officials are no longer in the habit of waiting patiently.

‘Oh Raymond can wait his turn fine,’ says Vincent, ‘Therese dear, can you take Raymond upstairs to the sitting room?’

Therese gives Vincent a nasty look, she doesn’t like Raymond much and she doesn’t like having to take over the store while Vincent drinks with him and talks about

their black market schemes.

On her way home, Ellen strolls down the fenced alley running between the backyards of two rows of terrace houses on adjacent streets. From the alley she can already see Ruth hanging her fresh washing out in her yard.

As Ruth pegs the clothes on the line with wooden split pegs, she turns calmly to a two year old boy playing in the dirt beside her.

‘Don’t eat that Bernie, that’s wood.’

Ellen pauses to watch them unseen, remembering when she lived a life just like this. A peaceful life that is fading from her memory now, shattered like mirrored glass.

Ruth Artan is in her late twenties and although she has always been Suzanne’s close friend ever since their schooldays together, Ellen nevertheless looks upon her as a younger cousin of sorts. Around Ruth the child’s clothes on the line have a yellow star sewn on the left breast, Jew lettered on it in black. The regulation yellow star looks huge on the tiny clothes. Children under six are not required to wear the yellow star for precisely this reason, so that they do not appear to be oppressed by the largeness of the brutal mark set upon them. But Ruth has sewn it on Bernie’s clothes in order to humiliate the authorities in the same way as they are trying to humiliate her. People stare on the street when Bernie passes with the star bright and large and obscene on his chest. The decent people among them always look away in shame at what their country has done. But there are not many of them these days.

Several times Ruth has been questioned on the street by Militiamen and police as to why the child wears the star, each time she has escaped by claiming she is only an ignorant Jew who thought it was required by law and knows no better. This is the one thing the authorities are always ready to believe.

Ruth finishes hanging her wash and sits down on a broken wooden chair next to Bernie, she picks up a pair of child’s shoes and begins rubbing the soles on a stone half buried in the ground. Ellen waves from the alley as she goes through a broken gap in the low fence into the backyard.

‘Hello,’ Ruth calls pleasantly, always pleased to see a friendly face now that government regulations are closing in tighter and tighter on Jews. This last year since the Jewish registration she has no longer been able to work or own a bicycle or even have any savings in a bank. She cannot sit on a park bench nor own a radio, she may not go to a beach or a cinema, a theater or concert hall, a library, museum or exhibition hall, a market or a fair, a racecourse, sports ground or even a campground. Her children may not go to school and no Jew even may ever walk on the street without wearing a yellow star on the breast to mark their humiliation.

Little by little Ruth feels a noose tightening around her neck, the latest official regulation will make her only allowed to shop for a single hour in the afternoon, long after all the available food has been sold and the shops are closed again with their shelves empty. She feels as if she is slowly being removed from the world. Her husband has already been sent to a work camp in the East, in Poland. Ruth has heard nothing from him except a single postcard saying how wonderfully pleasant the work camp Auschwitz is. But all the Jewish wives in town received exactly such a postcard, all saying precisely the same things about this wonderful camp. And the words written on the card sounded nothing like the husband she ever knew.

Ellen feels such pity for Ruth that she deliberately brightens her mood in order to cheer her. With shame Ellen suddenly realizes that Ruth could have been the one in the greengrocers looking to her for justice and finding only silence. Finding only a coward.

‘I’ve got something for you,’ Ellen says, ‘Suzanne sent it over. It’s a bit of fish.’

‘She’s still sleeping with the fishermen then?’ Ruth laughs.

Ellen laughs too as she takes out the fish and displays it. ‘No, he’s still trying to seduce her, that’s why she got a whale. Look.’

Ruth is impressed by its size, ‘Oh he's going to succeed I’m sure!’

Ellen notices Ruth rubbing the shoes hard on the rock sunk into the dirt, ‘What are you doing?’

‘The shoe inspector is coming to town tomorrow, I’m trying to wear them out, they don’t fit Bernie anymore. They won’t give a Jew coupons for new ones unless the toes are sticking right out. I have to hand in the old ones.’

‘Don’t do that,’ Ellen says, ‘Give them to somebody else who needs them. I’ve still got some of Freddy’s shoes, you can have them. Some of them are almost new. He was bigger than Bernie.

Ruth pauses, uncertain how to react, Ellen has never spoken of her dead child before. ‘Well that would be good..’ she says carefully, ‘ I mean if you don’t want to keep them..’

‘Well..’ says Ellen quietly, ‘What for?’

As soon as she says it she wishes she hadn’t. Now they have fallen into an awkward silence as Ruth searches for the right thing to say. If only she hadn’t offered the damn shoes. Ellen feels the desolation seeping back into her, like a wound ripping open.

Now I’m going to cry and upset Ruth..

She stares off silently into the distance, her eyes blurring.

‘Why don’t we have some tea?’ Ruth says with a brightness she does not feel.

Early on Monday morning it is barely light as Ellen cycles past the park towards the school where she teaches. Up ahead she can see two people doing something at a military poster on a wall. Ellen knows the poster well, each day she cycles past it on the way to work, it shows a German soldier holding up two French children. In threatening letters it says; Trust In The German Soldier. The British Are The Enemy.

Ellen cautiously steers her bike to the far curb to keep away from the subversives, lest she is thought to be with them. The defacing of an official German poster is punished by prison, deportation to a German work camp or even possible execution if a public example is to be made.

At the poster, Isabel Castor is carefully watching Ellen approach as her husband, Felix, calmly dips his brush into a pot of white paint.

‘Hurry up Felix! You’re always so slow,’ she whispers, squinting with concern at Ellen approaching. Isabel is sixty years old now and she doesn’t see that well any more.

Felix quickly paints large white letters right across the poster. Resist V!

‘Very nice,’ Felix murmurs, standing back to admire his handiwork.

‘I think it’s alright, I think I know her,’ Isabel says, worriedly watching Ellen approaching.

Isabel nods a tentative hello at Ellen.

Ellen isn’t sure who it is, but she knows that what they are doing will lead to trouble. She speeds up to pass them and get away.

‘Good morning,’ Ellen replies politely, hurrying on and turning into the narrow cobbled street which leads the long way around to the school.

Later in the morning Ellen stands in her school classroom in front of her class of ten year old boys, all fidgeting as one little boy reads an essay aloud to the class.

‘Then after we ate the delicious potatoes we all had to sit quietly on the floor so Papa could listen to the radio from London..’

Ellen interrupts the boy immediately, she must always be on the lookout for children accidentally giving away their parents illegal activities. So much is illegal now that no child can be trusted with the responsibility of remembering it all. Ellen knows most of the parents, and listening to the BBC radio from London is punishable by imprisonment, deportation or perhaps even death.

‘That’s fine.’ Ellen says gently, ‘Who else would like to read now?’ Ellen bends quietly to the boy, ‘Tell your papa to come in and see me. Tell him I have something important to tell him.’

In the classroom a number of kids are straining to raise their hand noticeably higher than the others to catch Ellen’s attention. As she surveys the class choosing, the door opens and a young teacher, Michelle Seru, comes in smiling at Ellen.

‘All right class,’ says Ellen ‘Take out your arithmetic books and open them to your homework. Come on now boys! Quickly.’

Ellen smiles at Michelle, she’s always glad to see her, the one colleague at the school whom she considers a friend. Michelle is an attractive young idealist in her mid- twenties and, although she is almost ten years younger than Ellen, in a small town like Cherbourg intellectual compatibility is a much more important issue than age. There are simply not enough people for too much choosiness when it comes to friendship.

Michelle leans to Ellen and whispers discreetly, ‘I heard there was some black market stockings at Vidal’s. I’m going over there now while my kids are at gym. I said I’m going to the doctors. Do you want stockings? They’ll be expensive though.’

‘No. I don’t need stockings.’

Ellen never goes out after dark and has no plans to do so.

‘Well you never know do you?’ laughs Michelle, ‘Maybe one day bald old Claude at the café will start looking good. Suzanne told me all about it.’

Ellen laughs, ‘Suzanne is nuts! She's such a troublemaker.. I could use some soap perhaps. See if he’s got any while you’re there.’

‘If you get the stockings you can come out with me while I look for a nice fellow,’ Michelle laughs.

Ellen smiles and goes to her desk drawer and gives Michelle a parcel wrapped in wrinkled brown paper. ‘Here’s that yellow dress I told you about. It’s kind of old now but it should suit you with your red hair.’

Michelle is delighted, ‘I don't care if it’s old, I’m so sick of all of my own clothes. You have fun now, I’ll be back at lunch,’ she laughs wickedly, relishing a walk in the open air without noisy children. Ellen rolls her eyes, Michelle giggles and goes.

Ellen claps her hands to get quiet attention once more, ‘All right now class! Pierre you read your homework essay now.’

A boy stands up and begins reading, ‘Why the Germans are our friends..’

Ellen sighs and looks out the window, she can see Michelle walking energetically across the schoolyard. Ellen is glad she is not a young woman like Michelle, faced with a world without young men, except for the handsome and cruel German soldiers who crush everything around them.

Just as Michelle passes through the school gates and turns down the street, she hears a voice calling out to her. She turns, a young woman who looks somewhat familiar is approaching.

‘Michele?.. It’s Natalie Bannat.. From Lille. From St. Marie’s High School..’

Now Michelle remembers her, she never knew her well at school, only that she was a working class girl with good looks and a loose reputation, a poor student in a lower class.

Michelle shakes her hand politely,‘Natalie?.. What are you doing here?’

‘I moved here three months ago, to be with my fiancé. Perhaps you know him, Joseph Castor?’

‘No..’ Michelle shakes her head. ‘I’m a teacher here now. I’ve only been here in Cherbourg for less than two years. I don’t know that many people yet.’

‘Are you married?’ Natalie asks, with a hint of jealousy.

‘No.. Not yet..’ Michelle answers, hiding the fact that she could hardly be further away from marriage.

‘You’re not still such a goody two shoes are you?’ Natalie asks with clear disapproval.

Michelle blushes in embarrassment, she is a virgin without prospect of either husband or lover and she is not sure that she has chosen the wisest path for her life.

‘I’m in a hurry,’ Michelle says, anxious to get away, ‘I have to go to the square.’

‘I’ll walk with you,’ Natalie offers conversationally, ‘I’m getting married soon.. When Joseph gets back.. Then we’ll have a baby right away..’

Michelle nods, Natalie chatters on about her finance as they walk, and Michelle recalls that she never really liked her at all.

The sky is already growing dark, threatening rain as Ellen cycles home from work for lunch. In the town, life is simply going on as always, children are playing football in the street, a German officer is getting into an army staff car with an attractive young civilian woman, a policeman is inspecting an old man’s papers.

As Ellen cycles along the street, women she knows nod hello to her, she knows their names and their children and their friends, their lives woven together in ways that cannot be unraveled. As she cycles Ellen notices more new graffiti painted on the side wall of the school; Petain Is A Traitor. Jews Are Dogs. English Liars!

Everything seems so normal in the town that Ellen that can sometimes hardly believe that there is a war on and she has already lost everything, her husband, her child, her beautiful life.

Now I go through my life like a ghost. And that is good.

Even the coming of spring has not comforted her.

Ellen turns into an alley to take the shortcut home through the maze of streets in the old town, she turns again down a narrower alley, known only to the locals who live in this part of town. As Ellen turns her bike into the shadowed alley she almost crashes into some men in civilian clothes who are blocking the way just around the corner. She stops quickly to avoid them. Suddenly she notices that one of the men is holding another from behind while a third man stabs at him brutally with a long butcher knife. Again and again he jabs the blade up into his belly, forcing it up into his heart. Ellen can hear the scraping sound the knife makes as it slips between the rib bones.

Ellen is paralyzed by terror as she watches the victim struggle desperately. He doesn’t die easily, he fights for life like a panicked animal. It is not at all as she has seen in the movies where a single punch can cleanly silence a man. It is dirty and awkward and brutal and the sounds he makes are animalistic. They creep across her skin with their brutal ugliness. He wails desperately, frightened and sorrowful both at once, yielding to death slowly as his murderer grunts with the force of his knife blows, like a laborer exerting himself at his work. Ten or fifteen stabs already, each time the long blade sunk in to the hilt against the body.

The older accomplice holds his hand tightly over the wriggling victim’s mouth, he is wailing mutedly and wrestling against the larger and stronger man who holds him forcefully, making him helpless, ushering him firmly into death.

Finally the older accomplice notices Ellen watching them wide-eyed. For the first time she notices his face, seeing that he is a well-dressed middle-aged man and not a young tough.

‘Get the hell out of here!’ he hisses at her forcefully.

Ellen nods wildly, panicked beyond speech, she backs away with her bike, numbed. The younger man with the knife finally sweeps the wide blade expertly across the victim’s throat. A curtain of blood flows down his neck, immediately staining his short collar red. The victim sighs and his strength ebbs and at last he settles into death as the older accomplice grips him forcefully. Stillness settles into the dead man as he droops towards the pavement.

Suddenly another younger man rushes around the corner behind Ellen, stopping in dismay when he sees her.

‘Where the hell were you?’ The older man snaps angrily at him, as if he is the leader.

‘I was there watching! She came the other way Paul. Honestly!’ the young man pleads.

Ellen looks at the young man, she recognizes him from the town, he is young enough that he might have once been her student. She is dazed and terrified by what she has seen, she knows it is a matter of life or death that she gets away from here quickly. They might simply kill her to save themselves from a firing squad. She begins babbling like a fool as she backs her bicycle away from the killers.

‘I have to go.. I have to make soup.. My sister’s expecting me. I have the vegetables here in my bag.’

As the dead man settles on to the ground, the man called Paul finally releases his grip on him and begins to examine Ellen mercilessly. Now he is clearly the leader of the three. Ellen immediately goes to pieces, fear coursing through her, making her begin to weep with fright. She does not want to die in this alley with this man slitting her throat open with his vicious knife.

The knife man quickly moves to her and takes a firm hold on the handlebar of her bike. Now there is no escape from whatever they wish to do to her. Death will come in only a moment now, with the slice of a blade.

But the leader speaks softly, calmer now and with an educated voice. ‘We're patriots madame, this is a traitor. Please be calm.’

He turns angrily to the knife man. ‘I told you doing this in daylight was a damn stupid idea.’

He glares over at the young man, the boy looks away chastised.

‘She has to die now too.’ the knife man says simply, ‘She can identify us.’

Ellen feels she will faint with terror, she begins weeping uncontrollably, unable to catch a full breath. It is her life or her death now. The leader Paul is considering the matter.

There is silence which seems to last forever.

Until at last the youngest one interrupts it nervously, ‘I know who she is. She's a schoolteacher in town. I don’t think she’ll tell anybody. She has a sister I used to know. We can always find her again.’

Ellen hears the sympathy in his voice and begins to plead, ‘Oh please.. Please. I’m on our side. I won't say anything, I don’t know anything. You can kill me if I tell. Please.. Please..’

The leader Paul stares at her ruthlessly, trying to see into her, trying to decide if she is safe to allow to live. His own life depends on this judgment of a moment. He notices a pool of water on the dry dirt around her bicycle pedals, the woman has peed herself with fear. Suddenly he is filled with sympathy for her simple humanity.

‘Go home,’ he says quietly, ‘Don’t forget we know who you are. You see what happens to traitors?’ He indicates the man sprawled dead on the ground, his limbs awkward and unnaturally still.

Ellen is overcome with panic and gratitude, she is prepared to do or say anything if this man will only grant her life.

‘Oh thank you. Thank you, thank you..’

The knife man reluctantly lets go of her bike, and looks earnestly at the leader, he is not pleased with this decision.

Ellen suddenly realizes that these men could change their minds just as easily again. Her fate is a spinning coin, life or death. She scuttles to turn her bike around and sets off pedaling as if in a bicycle race. She is so panicked she can hardly keep her balance on the bike. Finally she turns the corner and cycles off down the street as fast as she can.

The leader Paul watches her go, smiling to himself at her panic, he’s surprised that he can seem so terrifying to anyone.

We must look like very dangerous people..

‘You made a mistake Paul,’ says the knife man, Marc Lasceaux.

‘Well, we all make mistakes.’ Paul says affably. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

For the first time Paul realizes that his friend Marc is a truly dangerous man to have as an enemy, just as he is a reliable comrade. Marc is capable of doing whatever must be done, he is liberated from conscience in a way that Paul is not yet. To become like Marc he must kill still more men first. They turn and head off quickly down the alley in the opposite direction from Ellen. The rain begins to fall now, making him feel depressed. Another bad day in an endless series of bad days. The comic woman on the bicycle was the only bright thing about it.

Copyright Lee Vidor, 2010. All rights reserved.

Under Total Eclipse We Will Tremble Like Birds Without Song

315 pages, $3-99 ebook

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