Gestapo Term Analysis

Von Linden resembles Captain Hook in that he is rather an upright sort of gentleman in spite of his being a brute, and I am quite Pan-like in my naïve confidence that he will play by the rules and keep his word. So far, he has.

He wanted to know, then, why I was choosing to write about myself in the third person. Do you know, I had not even noticed I was doing it until he asked.

The simple answer is because I am telling the story from Maddie’s point of view, and it would be awkward to introduce another viewpoint character at this point. It is much easier writing about me in the third person than it would be if I tried to tell the story from my own point of view. I can avoid all my old thoughts and feelings. It’s a superficial way to write about myself. I don’t have to take myself seriously—or, well, only as seriously as Maddie takes me.

9) Not being able to finish my story.

10) Also of finishing it.

I am no longer afraid of getting old. Indeed I can’t believe I ever said anything so stupid. So childish. So offensive and arrogant.

But mainly, so very, very stupid. I desperately want to grow old.

“Your accent is frightful,” I answered, also in French. “Would you repeat that in English?”

She did—taking no insult, very serious, through a pall of smoke.

“I’m looking for verity.”

It’s a bloody good thing von Linden let me have that cigarette, because otherwise I don’t know how I’d have managed to conceal that every one of us was dealing out her own DAMNED PACK OF LIES.

He has a light nasal tenor—so beautiful. It hurt worse than being slapped, being shown the irony of his life. And of mine, of mine—OF MINE—Isolde alive in the day and the sun while I suffocate in Night and Fog, the unfairness of it, the random unfairness of everything, of me being here and Isolde being in Switzerland, and Engel not getting any cognac and Jamie losing his toes. And Maddie, Oh lovely Maddie,

MADDIE

Julie has vanished.

It’s true she made her first meeting—Tues. 12 Oct., the day after we got here, but then she simply disappeared as if she’d never been in France. Today’s the 21st. She’s been missing over a week.

I understand now why her mother plays Mrs. Darling and leaves the windows open in her children’s bedrooms when they’re away. As long as you can pretend they might come back, there’s hope. I don’t think there can be anything worse in the world than not knowing what’s happened to your child—not ever knowing.

Etienne’s written out a list of local birds on the first three pages. For a week in 1928 Etienne Thibaut decided he was going to be a nature enthusiast. Sort of thing you do when you’re ten, about the age I took Gran’s gramophone to bits.

The list of birds makes me sad. What changes a small boy from a bird-watcher into a Gestapo inquisitor?

“She showed me,” Penn said. “She was pretty clear about it. Adjusted her scarf as soon as we’d shaken hands—gave me a good look. Ugly row of narrow triangular burns across her throat and collarbone, just beginning to heal. It looked like it had been done with a soldering iron. More of the same all along the insides of her wrists. She was very clever about showing me, cool as you please, no drama about it.”

Because that’s what it’s like, schoolmates being guillotined as spies. I didn’t understand before—really didn’t understand. Being a kid and worrying that a bomb might kill you is terrible. But being a kid and worrying that the police might cut your head off is something else entirely. I haven’t words for it. Every fresh broken horror is something I just didn’t understand until I came here.

Julie was next.

Suddenly she laughed wildly and gave a shaking yell, her voice high and desperate.

“KISS ME, HARDY! Kiss me, QUICK!”

Turned her face away from me to make it easier.

And I shot her.

I saw her body flinch—the blows knocked her head aside as though she’d been thumped in the face. Then she was gone.

Gone. One moment flying in the green sunlight, then the sky suddenly gray and dark. Out like a candle. Here, then gone.

Her gardens are full of roses—sprawling, old tangled bushes, quite a few of them autumn-flowering damasks with their last flowers still nodding and drooping in the rain. […] The flowers are sodden and dying in the December rain, but the sturdy bushes are still alive, and will be beautiful someday in the spring, if the German army doesn’t mow them down like the ones in the Ormaie town square.

There’s more—I know there’s more—Engel’s underlined all the instructions in red—red’s her color, Julie said. The pages are numbered and dated in red too. Julie mentioned Engel had to number the pages. They’ve created it between them, Julia Beaufort-Stuart and Anna Engel, and they’ve given it to me to use—the code’s not in order, doesn’t need to be. No wonder she was so determined to finish it—

“You never gave any to Julie.”

“Never gave any to Julie!” Engel gave an astonished bark of laughter. “I damn well gave her half my salary in cigarettes, greedy little Scottish savage! She nearly bankrupted me. Smoked her way through all five years of your pilot’s career!”

“She never said! She never even hinted! Not once!”

“What do you think would have happened to her,” Engel said coolly, “if she had written this down? What would have happened to me?”