Half Sick of Shadows » Band of Brothers [2]

08: To the Heart of Life

"At war with myself and a wretched race,
Sick, sick to the heart of life, am I."
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Maud

-

I have been removing tiny shards of broken glass from my skin for a week. I take care to keep track of the days based on when they bring me food: twice a day, always at midnight and midday. There are no windows, so I'm always in either artificial light or darkness. I try to sleep whenever I'm not writing or being interrogated. Food is the only way I can keep track of time.

The broken glass has left a pattern of scars like freckles scattered across my left hip. It burned searingly hot when they crushed it there, and it still burns now, but the pain is duller now. I would rather that than the carbolic again, so I don't complain.

Is it stupid that I'm worried they'll cut my hair? Now that I think of it, it really is.

When they're working out which methods get to you the most in order to extract your confessions easiest, they try everything. I worked out what they were doing after a couple of days, and when they stripped me of my clothing to interrogate me I tried my very best to pretend I didn't care. I pretended that I had neither vanity nor modesty. If they knew I had both, they would cut my hair. They would shave it all.

I really want to keep my hair.

The hauptsturmführer is most interested in D-Day. I think that's why my punishments have been minimal for how much I've rambled about it. To be honest, I think he's growing rather fond of the characters in my confessions, too. I think Thomas is his favourite, but Thomas is everyone's favourite. He's always been mine, at least.

I think of Thomas often. I don't know when I started calling him Thomas. He's Tom. He has always been Tom. I think of Tom often. I think of them all often, but I think I think of him the most. I think of Gene, too, sometimes, but I try not to. I don't deserve him. I never did, but especially not now. I really hope he thinks I'm dead.

I don't really think of my parents anymore. Not often, in any case. I don't know what that says about me and I don't care to try to work it out.

My confessions have been confiscated again for analysis. I referred to them as a novel once and got a right old bollocking for it so I won't be doing that again, even mentally, just in case I slip up. Sometimes I try to be funny when Hauptsturmführer Becker speaks to me and I suffer for it every time, but sometimes it's worth it. The punishment for snarkiness is much less than what it is for wasting time and paper - think more along the lines of no food for three days, sometimes no water for two. It's not pleasant, but sometimes I take the risk anyway, just to feel like I've got some fight left in me. I always thought I'd go out fighting, so I suppose this is my way of rebelling even though I have fallen at their feet and laid my sins bare. Most of them, anyway; I haven't finished my story yet.

When I finish my story it's over, so I suppose my lengthy narrative is, in part, to bide time. I don't know why I do it, because when I'm not remembering and writing I'm praying for death, but every time I immerse myself in the past I suppose I'm consumed once more by my old fighting spirit. Juliette was a fighter.

I miss Juliette. Jules. I miss being Jules.

I know it irritates the hauptsturmführer when I put in parts of the story that I wasn't actually there for, which, in part, is why I do it. Like moments after I had fallen asleep, or walked away, or so on and so forth. In those cases I take a guess at what might have happened, and I try to make those guesses as accurate as possible based on what I know of the person I'm describing or how they've spoken to me about the event since. Makes it feel more real to do that, too. Kind of like I'm a detective uncovering a story, even though I already know the ending.

She gets captured, and it's game over. Hauptsturmführer Becker knows it. The French Resistance woman who has to translate parts of my story knows it (sometimes I deliberately don't translate the French, just to irritate Becker because he doesn't speak a word of it). In any case, Juliette gets captured by the Nazis. It's a rotten ending, but it's true. The story leading up to that event is much more interesting than the event itself, but writing it out is so much like rereading 'Romeo and Juliet'; you're told from the beginning exactly what's going to happen to them, but you hope with your entire being every time that this time it'll be different. It's kind of like that, here, because even though I know that Juliette gets caught, I find myself really, really hoping she doesn't.

I might change the ending. Just because. I'll get hurt for it, and be forced to write the proper ending anyway, but I might change it first. I want to give Juliette her happy ending. She deserves it, I think. Or maybe she doesn't. It's not my place to decide, really, but currently I'm the author and I decide that she does. I've got a little way to go yet, before the ending, so I'll consider it. I wonder what the punishment will be for lying.

On second thought, maybe I'll just tell the truth. The real ending is horrible, but they'll do worse than hang me if I lie.

Oh Seigneur, aie pitié. Aie pitié. Je suis désolé. Mon Dieu. Mon Dieu. Mon Dieu.

I can hear the girl in the cell next to me screaming. I don't know what they did to her, but she's been wailing in agony ever since they threw her back in there, which was perhaps thirty minutes ago. Contrary to popular belief, prisoners are not friends with fellow prisoners. I have never met that girl, though she has been here longer than I have. I only ever hear her scream in French, so I assume she's part of the Maquis. I wonder what she thinks about me when I come back to my cell screaming my own bloody murder. Does she think of it as a show of anonymous solidarity like I do with her?

That's stupid. That's a stupid thought. That's a horrible thought. She's in agony.

I think they'll be taking me in next. We have a meeting due, the hauptsturmführer and I, about the recent developments of my story. After he left me with the two guards to write for twenty days straight and I chose to detail everything that happened in Aldbourne in excruciating detail, he hasn't left me alone for that long since. He drills into me that I am not to waste his time, but he lets me tell my story nonetheless. I get punished, but he lets me continue to do it. But he doesn't leave me alone to write lest I try to go that deep into it again.

When the door opens I don't even look up. I am still sprawled out across the floor from where the guards dropped me. I hear the hauptsturmführer laugh.

"Get her on her feet," he tells the guards in German, and they haul me up by my elbows.

When I look Hauptsturmführer Becker in the face he is smirking. "I would like to know what happens next," he tells me.

That makes one of us.