The Baker's Secret(63)

He did not answer. It was difficult to appear strong while caged, but Odette felt power rising from the soles of her feet. This war seemed a decidedly amateurish affair: the guard was present, for example, because the cell lacked a proper lock. From a certain point of view, he was as imprisoned as she. “My mother’s people were from Düsseldorf.”

“Ah.”

“Yes, a conversationalist of rare ability,” she muttered. “Where is your home town?”

He remained on his stool, sliding a hand up and down the stock of his rifle. “Munich.”

“I’ve been there. Lovely cathedral.”

He shrugged.

“Not a churchgoer? Well, I also remember a square flooded with ice, and my grandfather rented me a pair of skates.”

The soldier stood. “How about you stop talking?”

“I think your Kommandant wants me to do a great deal of talking.”

The guard wandered down the hall. “Save your chatter for him.”

The lights went out, simultaneously with the roar of a bomb quite close. The building shuddered. Odette felt dust fall from the ceiling onto her face. Something in the manner of the darkness gave her a sense that this outage would not be temporary.

The soldier remained in place, waiting. Odette watched his gray silhouette. When the lights did not return for several minutes, she heard the knocking of his heels on the floor. A door whined on its hinge, then his boots clanked up the stairs.

He returned carrying something metal, she could tell by the sound it made when he set it down. The soldier poured papers out onto the floor, crumpling some. There was a metallic scratching sound, twice, then a small flame. He brought a cigarette lighter to the paper, and it filled the hall with a cheery orange light. The guard held the crumpled page as long as he could before releasing it into the basket. A glow remained, and he tossed another crushed sheet in on top.

Odette leaned on the bars. “DuFour will burst into flames himself when he finds out you touched his papers.”

The guard raised an eyebrow at her, then returned to feeding the fire. For a while the corridor brightened as he burned page after page, but smoke began to roil along the ceiling. Odette found it growing difficult to breathe, yet she did not make any complaint. She felt she was being tested, so she sat on her bunk and kept her head low. The soldier remained upright on his stool. Although he had not said anything, she knew they were in a contest to see who could endure the smoke longest.

Soon her eyes hurt. Her throat pinched. Her nose began to run. The guard rubbed his hands together over the flames. Odette leaned lower, trying to catch the good air below. The guard dropped in several pages at once, his fire tonguing higher than the wastebasket’s brim, billows of gray rising and curling down the ceiling. As they clouded around his head, the soldier sneezed.

“Yes,” Odette hissed, but he only stood, passed his eyes over her with reptilian indifference, and strode to the hall’s far end. There he pushed the door wide till it held, providing the smoke with the chimney it desired, while Odette felt cooler air pour in around her feet.

“What do I get for winning?” she said.

The soldier trod back down the hall. “We will soon see.”

Odette stood. “What did I do to deserve this treatment? Serve the Kommandant undercooked eggs?”

“It has nothing to do with deserving.”

“Where’s the justice in that?”

He lowered himself back on the stool. “Making you people obey is more important than justice.”

“What do you think he will do with me?”

He shrugged. “Guess.”

It was as though he had dropped a rock into her stomach. Which was worse, her fate or his indifference to it? Odette paced the cell, trying to imagine options. Was there anything she could offer the Kommandant? Would any negotiation be possible? Would he have any interest in the facts?

She knew the answer. She had witnessed the occupying army’s methods for four years. There were no exits, no escapes. To be suspected was to be guilty, and to be guilty was to be dead.

She must leave the cell, and town hall, and village entirely. Take the bag of cash hidden behind the stove, and at least until the end of the war, abandon the life she had known. But how? This guard was as simple as a pudding. She guessed his age at twenty, perhaps twenty-one. What did boys that age desire? She remembered all too well what they had desired of her, back in that day. With breasts developed larger and earlier than most, Odette used to joke that not a fellow in town could say what color her eyes were. Why would this guard be any different, except perhaps to feel more desperate after life in a garrison?

There was one move left to make, and if it failed then the game was over. Odette stood with hands on her hips. “Soldier, what is your name?”

“Kreutz.”

“Corporal Kreutz?”

“Private.”

“Well, Private Kreutz, I would rather not die as an example to scare my friends into behaving themselves.”

He opened the bolt on his gun, squinting into the opening. “So?”

“So.” She came to the front of her cell, leaning against the metal until the bars pressed her flesh. “So a woman would do anything to survive. You know that, I believe. In the end, this is what we can offer to save our lives. This is what we can give.”

Kreutz stared at Odette directly for the first time, her mannish body, her giant breasts, and he burst out laughing.