The creak of midnight floorboards alerted her to the German soldier paused outside her door.
"Jeanne," he spoke in a fervent hush. "May I have a word?"
He had not dared use her name before that moment. It was what made Jeanne take pause, and stop worrying the ragged edge of a nail between her teeth, and debate whether or not she should pretend to be asleep. Of course, she knew that she should. Whatever he may be — commander, composer, Kraut, or all three existing together impossibly at once — Captain Werner adhered faithfully to the rules of the house. If she made no invitation, he would retire regardless of the light beneath her door. She thought she at least knew that much about him.
Jeanne rose and opened the door.
The captain took a startled step back. She realized he had been resting his forehead against the wood grain of her door. He had been at the Kommandantur that evening drinking with the other officers and stayed later than usual. Now, he had changed out of his uniform and into his more unobjectionable sweater, which Jeanne had always privately thought quite cunning. His pale eyes flashed to her in question, his face grave. She thought he would not hold it against her if she changed her mind right then and closed the door.
She did not change her mind. She left him in the hallway without a word and retreated to her armchair by the window. Perhaps the scarcity of furniture would deter him from staying long, or from coming in at all.
But Werner was not dissuaded. After a moment's hesitation, he followed, stooping his broad shoulders as he came. He always seemed overconscious of his presence taking up more physical space than it actually did inside their home.
When he turned back to the door with an inquiring look, Jeanne communicated a nod. He pushed it shut behind him.
And then they were alone.
"I do not wish to intrude on you, mademoiselle," he apologized. "But I suppose that hope has outlived reality." He kept his hands spaded in the pockets of his sweater. He did not sit immediately, but took the time to process his new surroundings. Jeanne pulled her legs up into the chair and gathered them beneath her. Her mattress sagged beneath Werner's weight as he settled across from her. It looked like a child's bed when contrasted with his size. Maybe he was not overconscious after all.
"I have not noticed you outside my window for a while." Before she could make sense of his statement, Werner withdrew a hand from his pocket. Nestled in the crease of his palm, crafted by his fine pianist's fingers, was a pair of hand-rolled cigarettes.
Jeanne stared at the offering. It had been a few days now since her grandfather had left his nicotine pouch unattended. Was she really willing to accept help from the enemy? She gripped the arms of her chair indecisively. Werner watched her. Jeanne was reminded of the times she had taught Pierre to offer feed to the skittish roe deer, back before the officers' vehicles had scared them away from the roads. Almost as soon as she thought it, she resented the comparison. She resented the way this German looked at her as if she, too, was a fragile creature that might bolt at the slightest provocation.
Jeanne leaned forward and accepted one of the cigarettes. Gratitude warred with suspicion in her eyes as Werner delved for matches. She had mapped his expressions well enough these past months to know that he suppressed a smile now. This, too, reinforced her resentment, though not enough for her to return the cigarette and turn him out of her room.
He struck a match, and she leaned in again, slowly breathing the cylinder to life. Their eyes met above the cinder glow, and she quickly withdrew. She pushed a teacup and saucer across the desk toward him, allowing its existence to be explanation enough.
Werner was no longer looking at her. He extinguished the match as she directed, and deposited it into the cup, but he was staring at the blouse she had abandoned half-mended at the foot of her bed. Jeanne rose without a word and removed it from sight, shutting it up tight in the wrong drawer of her bureau. She paused to take a drag with her back to him, and despised the way her hand shook.
"I have never wanted to kill a man before today."
She turned to him with widened eyes. Werner leaned heavily on his knees, staring hard at the floor with the transfixed, faraway expression he sometimes wore when gazing into the fire. He seemed a captive to what he saw, almost afraid of it, but unable to look away. He had forgotten his cigarette. Jeanne swooped back across the room to hold the teacup out and catch a trickle of ash. Werner blinked and lifted his eyes to her, as if surfacing from dark fathoms beneath the ocean. Jeanne replaced the cup on the desk and sat back down.
"I am a soldier," he reasoned. "It is my duty to always be prepared to do what is necessary. But before today, I had never…"
Jeanne reached between them impulsively and caught his hand before it could curl all the way into a fist. He glanced up at her, startled, and she realized her error; she had brought them too close. She eyed him warily as she withdrew.
They sat together in silence, as they had so many times before — only this was unlike any time to come before, and they both knew it. Jeanne fidgeted, before leaning forward to extinguish her cigarette.
"Sometimes I imagine…" Werner began haltingly. He swallowed, and turned his eyes to the cold, invaded country outside her bedroom window. "I imagine a world where the circumstances of our meeting had been different. Do you ever imagine the same?"
Jeanne said nothing.
Werner's gaze drifted to the crumpled filter expiring in the teacup. He took a drag from his cigarette, hollowed his cheeks, and rose, stubbing out the evidence of his vice beside her own.
She hadn't anticipated him leaving so soon, and wondered if she had finally, truly offended him. Her room was not her own tonight, and neither were her hands; she caught a corner of his sweater and gained her feet, gazing up at him, unable to hide her desperation to communicate.
Werner turned in the same instant and grasped her by the shoulders. His tall frame bent to her as her fingers wound in his sweater. He brought his mouth to the level of hers, and her eyes slid shut helplessly as he blew. Jeanne inhaled, drawing the smoke he breathed into her own lungs, until the ghost haunting the air between them vanished into her.
He held to her a moment longer until her lightheadedness faded, then turned on his heel and departed. The door clicked closed behind him. It was as if he had never been there at all.
But he had been there. There was still a depression where he had sat on the edge of her bed, and the cigarette at the bottom of the teacup expiring quietly beside her own. And he would be here tomorrow inside this house, moving through the spaces she ceded to him, catching her eyes and quiet meaning, leaving signals for her in the smoke.