Authors: Cesca Major
PAUL
Dear Isabelle,
Who knows which of these letters will reach you? You will all be worried, I know, so I write simply to reassure you, I am safe. I have been taken prisoner, we all have. It seems my war is over and I hope news of my capture has reached you all so that you are not left wondering. You must convince Maman that I am well – I know she will worry in that dreadful, quiet way of hers so you must promise. It happened so quickly I’m still not sure how it happened. It was with a whimper rather than a roar and for that I think we now feel ashamed. Lines of bewildered men marched all around me afterwards, flanked by cocky Germans, their rifleshanging across their backs, their broad smiles confident. They are crawling all over our country now and we are unable to stop them.
They say we will be released when this war is over and so we wait knowing that it can’t be long: reports tell us that most of Europe has fallen with us. For nowwe are processed, held, divided into groups – the officers are sent to separate places. It seems the lads I am with are all from quiet French villages like ours; most areoutdoor lads like me, bored of concrete buildings and inaction. Confusion reigns and I almost wonder whether it happened quicker than the Germans expected it to. More arrive each day and there is talk that we will be put to work – some of the boys think we’ll be in the factories or mines. I’ll do whatever I’m told but I’ll pray I can see some sky while I’m doing it.
I’ve stayed alongside Rémi who seems now like a younger brother: I feel hugelyprotective of him. He got hit in our attack, holding a bridge with some others, but doesn’t tell me what happened to the rest. I haven’t seen any of them. We try to find time to talk and get the news, but it is so hard to find out what is happening beyond wild rumour. His family’s paper mill has closed down. He is determined to get it back up and running when this is all through.
Things are loud and confused. We slept on an athletics track those first fewnights; I imagined getting up in the night, doing hurdles against the guards. Wehave been herded about like animals going to market and now we are being held inan old barracks. It is fine – I have my own bed and we are being fed. Some days areworse than others, I didn’t know how an hour could drag before, how an afternoon could feel like a week, no purpose to anything. Enough of this though. The conditions are fine and the Germans are not mistreating us. The only thing you won’t like is the news that my head has been shaved, all that floppy, sandy hair you said was my best feature: gone. But if that is the worst thing that befalls me I will take that.
Some talk about release as a real possibility so I pray I will return to you all soon. It all moved so quickly. And I thought we were ready.
God bless and love to our parents. I will write again hoping one will getthrough,
Paul
ADELINE
1952, St Cecilia nunnery, south-west France
Rain pounds against the windows. The water pours in rivulets down the glass and outside is a blur of greyish greens. The room is so dark it seems like there has been no new day. The rain has set off something outside, an unpredictable rattle of metal – something is loose and blowing carefree in the storm. The wind is making a low moan as it sweeps across the courtyard. There is so much energy and noise outside I wonder whether it will ever be calm again.
The sisters, seemingly oblivious, have continued their usual routine; in fact, Sister Bernadette has been loudly praising the Lord for the good weather because it helps the second love in her life: her courgette plants. Sister Marguerite’s mood mirrors the weather today, sweeping into my room to bring me a tray of food. She barely stays a minute in the stool by the window before she is up, pacing. I follow her movements. She opens her mouth to say something, and then continues to pace to and fro. She is usually so light on her feet, an easy nature, a ready smile. Today I wish she was not in my room.
‘Did I ever tell you about the day we found you?’ she asks, abruptly turning to look at my face.
I slowly shake my head.
‘The look in your eyes when Sister Bernadette brought you in … She had seen you in the village, wanted to help …’ I try to remember my arrival here but my mind washes around, throwing up blurred images and scenes that seem to form one long day, not lighting on a moment.
‘The others were fussing about your injuries,’ she continues. ‘The scrapes down your sides and face. Your leg was a bloodied mess and you’d broken your wrist. I looked at your face for a flinch of pain, a response to the prodding, and there was none. You allowed them to take you in their arms, allowed them to disinfect the scratches, allowed them to push and pull you in each and every direction, and all the while you said nothing, and your eyes …’ Sister Marguerite stops. ‘You didn’t care.’ She is whispering now. ‘I couldn’t understand it – I wanted you to cry out, to whimper, to ask us whether you were going to get better. You nodded at their questions but gave them no answers. That was eight years ago today.’
This isn’t an ordinary explanation of the day, I realize. This is the reason for her daily visits.
‘I couldn’t understand what could drive someone to give up all hope. I couldn’t begin to fathom what you might have been through to look like that. For the first time in this nunnery it made me … it made me question whether there was a god.’ She takes a step closer. ‘To allow that much misery in one person.’
This pity, this open, unabashed pity for me, makes me start to shake. Why is she saying these things? She must stop.
‘Sometimes you have that look again, I can’t reach you, I can’t …’
A scratchy sound, a gurgle rises up in my throat.
Sister Marguerite stops, strides over, puts both hands on my shoulders, forces me to look at her. ‘Please.’
My eyes meet hers.
‘Please … please, talk to me …’
I try. The gurgling sound again. I can’t and before I can write her a note, scratch something as I sometimes do, broken sentences to reflect the gaps in my own mind, I am pulled away.
It is
that
day – I know it is: I’m aware of the same strange pull on my insides, the feeling that I might expel the contents of my stomach if I stay too long in this memory. It is so clear, often repeated, when other things are barely there or stubbornly refuse to reveal themselves, when my own surname eludes me.
I am walking with Isabelle to the green. We pass Monsieur Lefèvre – I remember I need to talk to him about ordering a joint of lamb. Not now. He is hurrying too, sweating as he looks around him, I don’t stop. I see Madame Garande carrying bags of food, shouting after some local child for stepping on her skirt. She shakes it out, brushing at the mark. The child’s hair is blonde, ringlets under a hat. Where is Vincent? I look for them and see my own confusion etched on the faces of others.
The number of soldiers is overwhelming and my heart vibrates in my chest. The whole village is moving towards the green, clusters of children excited to be out in the sunshine. A couple of boys conjure up a yo-yo and take it in turns to practise tricks. Twins, faces covered in freckles brought on by the early summer’s sunshine, long plaits down their backs; one of the girl’s ribbons is loose. It trails onto her shoulder and the pale pink satin strip glimmers. They giggle together, swapping a note, a drawing of some sort.
They’re oblivious to the men dressed in that dull grey uniform herding them efficiently to be registered. But a few of the boys are looking, unable to drag their eyes away from the sleek rifles slung casually over their shoulders, some with ribbons pinned to their top pockets. Soldiers are rare in the village and to see one so close up must be a treat for them.
The adults scowl, muttering in French about the Hun swine, some loud enough to tempt the soldiers to turn their heads and find the source. My clammy hands grip the bag I am holding, our papers inside. I will it all to be over quickly. I see Isabelle looking warily around her, attempting to smile at a couple of the boys in one of the classes she teaches. A wash of relief that we are together at least. One of the younger soldiers admires her, his gaze appraising. The sun beats down on her hatless head and her ringlets are a riot of yellows. She looks so slender and fragile in her short tea dress, as she clutches her bundle to her chest.
If I had stayed with them, refused to let go of Vincent’s hand, would it have turned out differently?
He was there too, his solid mass, his low voice, his hand enormous as it enclosed mine. He turned. It was a profile I knew without needing to see it. He looked across at the mayor, seemed to relax, shoulders dropping a fraction, his jaw unclenching as he watched the men talking in a tight circle.
I didn’t stay – my hand left his before I had stopped to think about it. I would have kept clinging to it if I had the moment again. He’d stepped back, was talking to Paul, gesturing across the green to something out of my eye line. There had been no words as we parted, a look back, another and he’d gone; they had both gone, and I could still feel the warmth from his hand, wanted to seize it back and make sure we never let go.
I look into Sister Marguerite’s face as she searches mine for clues: a moment of frustration glimpsed briefly, and then gone. The drab greys of the room, and Sister Marguerite’s uniform of black and white, are a gloomy haze. The colour from that day, the village in full bloom in the heat of summer, her face and the faces of the children, are all blurring into nothing, fading into the recesses of my memory once more.
She pulls the stool over to the bed and picks up my left hand. She holds it to her lips and gives it a simple kiss, then bows her head so that she is almost doubled over my bedclothes. ‘You must keep trying. Please. Try to talk. You must. They will send you away but I know you are in there. Please, have faith …’
We breathe in and out. The room grows even darker, the sky fat with clouds. I can do nothing but sit there. I cannot force the words out. She leaves shortly after. Her tired footsteps fade on the stone flagstones and I feel a surge of guilt that I had a part in slowing them.
SEBASTIEN
We step into the library, the air filled with the smell of books and furniture polish. It tickles the back of my throat. There is a long table in the corner under high latticed windows, with reading lamps down the middle and empty, scuffed leather chairs around it.
Isabelle cocks her head towards it and moves through the turnstile, giving a small sideways look at the librarian behind the desk as she passes. I tip my hat and am rewarded with a pink close-lipped smile. I follow her across the room in silence feeling lighter already, the stillness of the place blocking out the noises and rush of the high street outside. I pull out a chair for Isabelle and settle opposite her. There is a lone, light cough and the sound of pages being turned, of delicate movements, quiet industry.
Isabelle removes her gloves, producing a book from her bag, some notes in untidy blue ink. I let my breath out slowly and ease back into the leather. She leans over her desk, her blonde hair falling over the book she is engrossed in.
My chin is resting in one hand, the other wavering over the page of the journal I had been reading. I can’t look away. The light from the high, thin windows casts long beams onto the scratched wood of the desk, slicing across her, highlighting strips of skin of softest gold in the late afternoon light. I love the silent way in which we are working. She often comes here to plan her lessons, researching the books she is going to teach the children, recounting what she has learnt in whispered snatches, or during breaks on the bench in the alcove in the corridor outside.
I plan to tell my parents about us but more weeks and months pass and I don’t find the words, know that I need to somehow. This is wartime and we are Jewish. For now, though, I don’t want it spelt out, I don’t want father thinking of a dozen reasons why I should call it off. So there is next week. In this moment I am certain – I don’t want anything to change. Someone sneezes and the noise brings me back and she looks up, catches my eye and gives me a slow smile.
Beyond her, the librarian moves past, pushing a wooden trolley in front of her, her pursed painted lips the only colour to her face, her thin frame obscured by piles of books in different colours, some with spines coming away, nondescript titles etched in gilt. I get up to search for a book, one hand massaging my leg as it sears with pain from resting so long in the same position. Isabelle doesn’t look up and I move away, wanting something to lose myself in before I fall asleep reading about banking. I head to the Classics section and wander aimlessly down the aisle, skimming over the titles.
I can see the back of her head over the tops of the books on the middle shelf and feel my mouth lifting at the sight. Her shoulders are hunched, one hand resting on her cheek, her elbow on the desk. Her pale blue summer coat hangs from the back of her chair. I think back to how my life had been before Isabelle. My mind is filled with her and, despite everything happening in Limoges – father’s worry, the mutterings dripping down from the occupied zone, life there so different to ours, everything scrutinized by Germans – there she is at the centre of my thoughts, vibrant and alive: she seems to personify hope, the future. Her light laughter, her kind exchanges with strangers, the way she can raise a smile from the surliest person – this energy that she exudes seems to block everything else out: all my worries, made worse when I see Father’s greying hair, the slight stoop in his shoulders like the world is weighing on him and he is waiting for it all to collapse; Mother, her knitted brow, the new lines in her face as she looks across at Father, tries to intercept the paper, prepare him … all of it is forgotten in the moment when Isabelle rests a hand lightly on my arm.
Isabelle is living only a few kilometres away in Oradour, and yet it is another world, a world seemingly unaffected by the changes. She tells me there is rationing, refugees, farmers who have lost sons and whose elderly mothers are bringing in the crops, but she speaks more often of lazy days wandering through the meadows, the old men playing
pétanque
by the green, the woman gossiping over the clothes lines, the oblivious carefree screams of children racing around the school playground. I want to be part of that world, I want to stroll through the streets, sit and smoke with Father outside a nice hotel, hear Mother’s carefree laughter tripping over our conversation, have Isabelle by my side, her hand resting in mine.
My whole body aches for that moment, the impossible moment, when two worlds collide.
And suddenly she is in front of me, standing at the end of the aisle, one hand loosely on her hip, her pleated cotton skirt thin in the light, the faint silhouette of her thighs through the material. Her face is quizzical, one eyebrow slightly lifted. She places a finger on a shelf, begins the pretence of searching the books as the librarian, her pale face all eyes, wheels past once more as if waiting to pounce. I turn a laugh into a light cough as Isabelle looks at the librarian and then up to the ceiling, feigning exasperation.
Trying to focus on the titles in front of me, I realize I am unable to make out the lettering: the authors’ names a mix of consonants and vowels as I feel her presence, watchful, playful, as she moves slowly towards me, eyes still on the shelves, head held to the side so that she can read the spines more easily. A quick glance to me as she approaches and one side of her mouth lifts. She is now an arm’s length away, so close I can make out the small, neat mole on the nape of her neck where she has swept her hair aside, the stiff white collar of her shirt in stark contrast to the peachy softness of her skin, the pale pink of her cheek. In the shafts of dusty half-light she looks like she has emerged from the pages of a romance novel. An arm’s length and yet a world away … could I pull her towards me?
Catching me staring, she points a finger at the shelf and asks, ‘Anything good?’ in a half-whisper.
I shrug quickly, heat surging to the ends of my fingers, pulling out a book at random; it slips in my hands so I have to save it, then turn it the right way up.
She appears over my shoulder as I read the first page. Her breath is on my neck and her body is centimetres from mine. I freeze, muscles tense, not wanting this moment to end. She smells of soap and roses. My eyes remain still, the first line repeated again and again until I hear her say quietly, ‘Sounds far too depressing.’And she has broken the spell, sidled away from me, still looking at the books in regimented lines. I breathe out in a rush, roll my eyes at myself and seize two more of the nearest books, hastening back to the table to trawl through them.