Lovely War

by Julie Berry

  I hovered at Stéphane’s side.

  Now? he wondered

  Why not now?

  “Colette . . .” he began.

  Not that way.

  “Yeah?”

  He gulped and scrambled for something else to say.

  “Your song,” he said. “At the beer festival. It sounded good.”

  It sounded good. What a clod. What a pathetic way to pay a compliment.

  “Thanks,” she said. She saw his silhouette against the afternoon sky and wondered how Stéphane had grown so tall so quickly, and what business he had acquiring such muscles. He’d been such a lump of a boy. Loading and unloading ships all day would do it, she supposed, but in that hazy, damp moment, the why of Stéphane’s changes became less important than their reality.

  He sank into the grasses beside her. Her cheeks were red, and her eyes bright, and there she was, unbuttoning her top button and fanning herself.

  Poor Stéphane. It’s a terrible thing, risking a lifetime of friendship for a dream that has suddenly spiraled into something too big to contain. He’d offend her, he was certain, and she’d reject him, and shun him, no doubt, and then what would he do?

  He couldn’t make it through a day without at least seeing Colette half a dozen times. But if she never wished to see his face again, there’d be no place in Dinant to hide from her disgust.

  And what could he say? Words weren’t his particular forte.

  She sat up in the grass. Bits of grass and dirt clung to her blouse and her hair.

  “I’m a mess,” she said.

  “No, you’re not.”

  “You’re a mess,” she told him, “so you’re not qualified to judge.”

  Stéphane gazed up into the clouds and grinned. Lying on the grass, tired and peaceful, with Colette nearby, and scolding—that was all right with him.

  “If it’s just us two up here,” he said, “what does it matter if we’re a mess?”

  She turned her gaze toward the panoramic view, leaving him free to study her back. So graceful, the curve of her spine. He could run his fingers along her back, right now, if she wouldn’t chop his hands off for trying. He’d have to be content with imagining.

  Colette turned back to see his eyes closed. It left her free to do some studying of her own.

  “Sleeping?” she said. “Some company you are. Did you drag me up here to take a nap?”

  Don’t be content with imagining, I told him.

  He held out a hand to her. “Let’s do that,” he said. “Let’s just take a nap.”

  She took his hand, wondering why she was doing so, and felt a jolt of—of what? What was it she felt when silly old Stéphane took her hand?

  She lay back down on her side. He wasn’t silly old Stéphane anymore.

  Attack first and analyze later. “What’s gotten into you?” she asked him.

  He propped himself up on his side, and they were face-to-face. Only centimeters apart. It might as well be a river of lava between them.

  He braved it anyway. He leaned forward and kissed her.

  And missed her lips and got her nose.

  Colette’s eyes fluttered shut. She couldn’t think. Of course Stéphane wants to kiss you, I told her. You want to kiss him, too. It was true. I wasn’t “putting words” into her mind.

  Poor Stéphane’s heartbeat clanged in his throat. It would be a long descent back to town with Colette if he’d just ruined all. But she hadn’t run. She hadn’t kicked, nor squawked, nor bolted, nor scolded. He almost wished she would.

  One more try, I whispered to Stéphane.

  Colette’s eyes opened again. She saw Stéphane’s lips part and felt her own do the same. Before she quite knew what had happened, she’d leaned toward him, and he’d pulled her close, and she kissed his lips. Or he kissed hers. Either. Yes.

  Some moments later, Colette broke away, gasping for air. Stéphane slipped an arm around her and pulled her close. He lay smiling. She gazed at him in wonder.

  Thought wasn’t easy, between the havoc in her rib cage, and the electricity skittering across her skin.

  Stéphane?

  Who else?

  * * *

  Remember this moment when you think of Stéphane. Remember Colette, once upon a time, standing atop the citadel mount, leaning over the rampart looking at tiny rooftops below, for one last look before climbing down, with her old friend standing close beside her, now strange and new.

  ARES

  The kids had that first kiss in July of 1914. In the weeks following, Colette and Stéphane were too drunk on love to pay attention to the talk of war that began to fill the newspapers.

  Until, on August 4, ignoring it was impossible. German armies invaded neutral Belgium and conquered Liège. Rumors flew of civilians mown down, and towns razed to the ground.

  On August 15, a German division captured the citadel. French armies met them there in battle and recaptured the citadel a few hours later. (Incidentally, one of the French fighters injured there that day was Charles de Gaulle, today the leader of the underground French Resistance against the Nazi occupation of France. War, you see, gives birth to heroes.)

  On the night of April 21 to the 22, carloads of German soldiers rolled into Dinant. They set some twenty houses on fire and killed thirty civilians. They reported later that the civilians had opened fire on them. All survivors denied that this was so.

  On August 23, the Germans returned in force. They set fire to hundreds of homes. They blamed the civilians for all German losses thus far in Dinant, and pulled men from workplaces and homes and hiding places, and executed them in the streets. Women, children, and babies were executed too. As old as eighty-eight. As young as three weeks. Nearly seven hundred in total.

  Dinant’s flames raged for days. Only smoking rubble remained. The old church, Notre Dame de Dinant, caught fire. The carillon in the bell tower burned, silencing the town.

  * * *

  HADES

  Among the dead were Colette’s papa; her uncles Paul and Charles; her cousin, Gabriel; and her brother, Alexandre. The carpentry workshop where the Fournier men built wooden furniture was one of the workplaces raided. Colette and her mother lost everyone.

  When shots first rang out, Stéphane ran through the streets, searching for Colette. The Germans caught him and shot him too.

  The slaughtered died in excruciating fear, less for themselves than for those they left behind in the grip of German soldiers. It’s the most pitiable state in which to enter my realm.

  Stéphane entered my realm, bleeding from his very soul, for all the dreamed-of weeks and years of love ripped away from him by the firing line. He paced the citadel for years afterward, searching for what could not be found.

  Colette took shelter in the abbey, le Couvent de Bethléem, across the river from the Germans, when the first shouts and cries began. She crouched in a dark cell, rocking and praying, begging her god to spare those she loved.

  She emerged to a town on fire, to learn she’d lost everyone she loved except her mother.

  Her mother died a few days later. Technically, a stroke, but it was grief that killed her.

  * * *

  Colette the child died that day.

  The Dinant she loved was gone. She spent weeks trying to help the survivors clean up the rubble. She held motherless infants and tried to shush their wailing. She took fatherless children into the fields to pick flowers so their mothers could drink and sob.

  She pictured, over and over, Alexandre crumpling to the ground. Papa doubling over. Oncle Paul and Oncle Charles, clutching vainly at their shattered chests.

  She could not bring herself to picture Stéphane.

  She worked to offer comfort, but it tormented her that she’d had no way to comfort those she loved best, who needed comfort most at the gates of death.

 
; So one moonless, cloud-covered night in early fall, she wrapped her few remaining belongings in a rag, stole a boat, and rowed all night against the Meuse’s slow current, making her way south into France, and hiking across the countryside until she reached Paris and her aunt, Solange. She made her way to the YMCA headquarters, lied about her age, and volunteered.

  She couldn’t face the Red Cross and the dying and the blood. But she could try to help where she could, to listen to somebody else’s Alexandre, and somebody else’s Stéphane, as if she were listening to the conversations she’d never be allowed to have with her own dear ones.

  For the next four years she grew into young womanhood surrounded by soldiers and weapons and war. She politely deflected declarations of love and poured thousands of cups of coffee. She worked tirelessly to provide comfort to others who would face the German guns.

  She believed if she could comfort them, then she might one day receive comfort, too.

  APHRODITE

  Entertaining the Yanks—January 4, 1918

  AFTER SUPPER, SOLDIERS began filtering into the vast YMCA relief hut, bound for games tables, a library, the chapel, and a coffee station where Hazel waited to make cheerful conversation.

  There were so many of them. They were so very male.

  Hazel, in her freshly brushed Y uniform, poured hot drinks and dreaded talking to young men. But the Yanks, with their harsh Rs and their wide smiles, soon won her over.

  “Howdy, ma’am! You ready for us to wallop those Germans?”

  “Ain’t you two a sight for sore eyes!”

  Then Ellen let it slip that Hazel played piano, and a general uproar demanded that she perform. Here it was. Playing was what she’d come to do. But she didn’t know their music.

  “Play ‘For Me and My Gal’!”

  “Got any Irving Berlin?”

  “How about ‘Cleopatra Had a Jazz Band’? Do you know that?”

  “‘Carry Me Back to Old Virginny’?”

  One mortifying no after another. Mrs. Davies, watching, shook her head.

  Hazel’s hands shook and notes swam before her eyes. Fortunately, she’d memorized “La Marseillaise” and “God Save the King” and “Rule, Britannia!” so she played those.

  European anthems. They failed to rouse the troops. Her terror turned to paralysis.

  She didn’t know the American anthem. Something about their flag? In desperation, she played familiar pieces. Brahms, Schubert, and Schumann, and Chopin. The Yanks cheered.

  Hazel played until Professor Henry’s lecture was to begin. The Americans stomped and whistled. This would take much getting used to. Sure enough, the chairs were packed for the professor’s first lecture on British history, starting with the early Iron Age.

  A doughboy swaggered over to talk to golden-haired Ellen, leaving Hazel to herself.

  “Pardon.” A soft voice spoke in her ear. “You are the new pianist?”

  She turned to see a young woman in a YMCA uniform. Her accent was French, and her hair jet-black, bobbed short, in sleek curls closely coiling around her face. Hazel had never seen such a look outside the more daring fashion magazines.

  “Wow,” she whispered, “you look just like Irene Castle.”

  The stranger smiled. “I can’t dance like her. Too bad for these soldiers.”

  Hazel felt embarrassed at her reaction. “I’m sorry,” she said. “That was rude of me.”

  The other girl pursed her lips. “Rude, how?” She paused. “You don’t like Irene Castle?”

  Hazel laughed. “Don’t I, though!” She held out her hand. “Hazel Windicott.”

  The girl’s smile transformed her expression. “I’m Colette Fournier. Bienvenue à Saint-Nazaire.”

  Hazel smiled. “Merci beaucoup.”

  Colette nodded appraisingly. “Not the worst accent I’ve heard from une anglaise.” She nodded toward the soldiers. “The Americans with their tourist’s phrase book French are unbearable. They think they’ll sweep me off my feet. Parles-tu français?”

  “Umm . . .” Hazel laughed. “Not really, no.”

  “No matter.” Colette pulled open her pocketbook. “Want some chocolate?”

  I always say, chocolate makes all the difference. And friendliness, of course.

  “How long have you been with the YMCA?” Hazel asked Colette.

  Colette gestured toward a low couch under the building’s eaves, and they both sat.

  “Four years.” She smiled ruefully. “They’ve been an education. I volunteered early on in the war, because I desperately needed something useful to do.”

  “What did your parents say?” Hazel asked. “Mine weren’t thrilled about me going.”

  Colette hesitated. People treated her differently once they knew. Trust Hazel, I told her.

  “My parents and all my family are dead,” Colette said simply. “I volunteered soon after my village was destroyed by the Germans.”

  Hazel gasped. The girl’s matter-of-factness astonished her.

  Then something Colette had said caught her attention. “Your village destroyed, early in the war . . . Then that must mean you are . . .”

  “That’s right. Je suis belge.”

  Not French. Belgian. Even worse battle scars. The better part of Belgium had fallen to the lightning aggression of Germany’s August 1914 invasion. The Rape of Belgium, they called it. The stories of women raped, children crucified, nailed to doors, of old men executed . . .

  Hazel’s breath caught in her throat. “Oh, I am so sorry!”

  Colette looked amused. “It’s not such a terrible thing, you know, being Belgian.”

  Hazel flushed. “I don’t mean that. I mean, all that Belgium has suffered!”

  Colette wondered why she was telling this English girl so much. “My father, my brother, my two uncles. My cousin, and many friends from my childhood. All gone. My home, everything.”

  “Oh, no.” Hazel pictured her own father, and boys from her neighborhood. Even James. Tears ran down her cheeks. “I’m sorry I’m such an idiot.” She wiped her eyes. “For years I heard about all the atrocities in Belgium, and about the need to help the refugees, but . . .”

  “But they didn’t seem real to you?”

  Hazel hung her head. “I suppose not.” She wiped her eyes. “Which is your village?”

  “Dinant,” Colette said. “What’s left of it, that is.”

  “How did you survive?” Hazel asked.

  Colette paused. The first wrinkle in her steady calm. Hazel’s heart broke for her.

  “I hid,” she said. “While those I loved were murdered, I hid in a convent.”

  And there was the grief, and guilt, overflowing the dam that had held it in.

  “That is exactly what all those who loved you would have wanted you to do,” Hazel said.

  Colette had been through these memories a thousand times, yet at Hazel’s words, Alexandre and Papa and cousin Gabriel and oncles Paul and Charles appeared. And Stéphane.

  When Colette’s eyes met hers, Hazel saw a glimmer of gratitude there.

  “Where is home for you now?” asked Hazel.

  “I have an aunt in Paris,” Colette explained. “My mother’s sister. She took me in, after. I had nowhere else to go. I volunteered for the Y so I wouldn’t be too much of a burden to her. But come,” Colette said, sitting up. “I didn’t introduce myself to tell you my sad story.”

  “That’s quite all right,” Hazel said.

  “I came to ask if you would accompany me,” Colette went on. “I’m a singer, or so I tell myself. I was hoping you and I could practice together. At night, after lights-out.”

  “Won’t we wake Mrs. Davies and Miss Ruthers?”

  Colette laughed. “I think not. We’ll play softly. They sleep with cotton in their ears. And they snore enough to sleep through a bom
bing. Meet me tomorrow night?”

  Hazel nodded. “I look forward to it.”

  APOLLO

  Wake-Up Call—January 3, 1918

  REVEILLE SOUNDED.

  “Somebody hit that alarm clock,” moaned a soldier in the 15th New York’s K Company.

  “You mean, strangle that bugler,” replied another voice from across the room.

  Aubrey opened his eyes and shut them quickly. It was still dark. Hadn’t they just arrived? He rolled over in his bunk and offered his backside as a general comment on the day.

  Somebody lit a lantern. His mates sat up and stretched. The heartless chirpy bugle tune squiggled into Aubrey’s ear. He rolled back over, flat, and listened to the wake-up call.

  Listen, I told him. What would happen if you turned the reveille on its head?

  How?

  A minor key.

  He hummed it to himself.

  That’s right. It’s got a whole different color to it. Now swing it.

  He cut the tempo in half and swung the rhythm.

  Ooh. That’s something.

  You’re good at this.

  “Get your bones out of that bed, Aub,” his buddy Joey Rice told him. “Or Captain Fish’s gonna come in here and knock you one.”

  Aubrey slithered out of bed and into his boots. “Joey,” he said, “where’s your horn?”

  Joey Rice pulled a cornet mouthpiece from his pocket and waggled it. “Right here.” He used it to mimic the reveille. Without the horn attached, the mouthpiece made a tinny sound.

  “Geez, my tongue’s gonna fall out,” Joey said. “Too early in the morning to play.”

  “Morning’s the whole point of it, tonto,” said Jesús Hernandez, clarinetist. He was one of the horn players Lieutenant Europe recruited from Puerto Rico for the band.

  “Make it minor,” Aubrey told Joey. “Drop the top note half a step.”

  Joey Rice changed the note. A spooky tone emerged.