Transgression: A Novel of Love and War - By James W. Nichol Page 0,1

hoped he’d just been wounded.”

“How long did you wait? Two months? Four?”

He sat down on the corner of the desk. His black pants, flaring out at the thighs, were tucked neatly inside the tops of his gleaming boots. Adele tried to concentrate on the seams.

“We made repeated inquiries, we went to our town hall, we wrote to hospitals, to the special centres of information in Paris. No one’s lists are complete. They always say we have to wait for more information to come in.”

“So you find no information from French sources, but you hope for the best, that your father has been transported to Germany. And now, almost a year later, you come here to inquire if this is indeed true. I ask you again, what took you so long?”

“We were told complete lists of prisoners would be made available to our officials, but to this day they have not been made available. We waited and prayed.”

The young SS captain stared at her in silence.

Adele examined her bruised hands and broken fingernails.

“What is your father’s name?”

“Henri Paul-Louis Georges.”

“What was his occupation?”

“She says he was a medical doctor.” The Wehrmacht officer answered for her.

“It is always of interest when people seem slow to bring a name to our attention, particularly in a matter that seems so routine. We have to wonder why. But we have your father’s name now. Thank you.”

Adele nodded, got up and walked out of the Domestic Population Bureau of Information. She couldn’t feel her legs.

René was waiting for her, sitting at the kitchen table smoking one of his black-market Turkish cigarettes. His dark hair was uncut and wild-looking, his fingernails were black with grease, and he was trying to grow a beard. He glared at Adele through a cloud of blue smoke when she opened the back door.

René was older than Adele by only thirteen months but already her head barely reached his shoulder. For some infuriating reason her body was refusing to grow at an acceptable rate. Her hair was black and thick and wild about her head. They both had prominent eyebrows, high cheekbones, and the same dark eyes, though Adele’s eyes were larger and more luminous and projected an appealing vulnerability. With no effort at all they seemed to be able to draw all kinds of people to her. Adele and René had been in a heightened state of competition all their lives, whether it was to demonstrate who could balance a spoon on the end of their nose the longest, who could make the funniest remarks at the dinner table or who could deliver to their father the most impressive school report. After the first few grades, Adele wasn’t really in the running when it came to school.

“René has such a conventional mind,” Adele had remarked to her father one day in an attempt to account for why her reports were full of four point fives and fives, while René’s reports glowed with columns of sixes. “I’m going to be an artist.” It had been a blatant attempt to use her father’s best thoughts about her as a defence.

Henri Paul-Louis Georges had smiled at this, though whether it was because he was slightly appalled or slightly amused, it was difficult to tell. No doubt his school reports had once glowed with straight sixes, too.

“Then you must decide what kind of artist you’re going to be-run-of-the-mill, like this report, or exceptional. Be exceptional, Adele. Become well-educated, think deeply on all things, and then turn and show the world its true face. Like Dante.” He’d smiled and squeezed her hands. “Dante aside, whatever you do, you must try your best to be of service to your fellow man. That’s the most important thing in life. Isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Adele had replied.

“Then you must acquire an education.”

Now Adele closed the back door and decided to ignore René for as long as possible. She put the kettle on to boil and began to rummage through the cupboards to see what Old Raymond, the family’s chauffeur when they still had their touring car, their gardener when they still paid attention to the gardens, had managed to buy with that day’s quota of food tickets.

She could hear her other brothers, Bibi the youngest at four, and Jean six, playing loudly somewhere in the house.

“So,” René said, “what happened?”

Adele looked into the tea jar. It had been empty that morning, but now there was a little pyramid of black tea leaves sitting in the bottom. God bless Raymond.

“What did you find