Flamingo Boy

by Michael Morpurgo

  Cheval was careering round his field, neighing in his terror. Henri ran over and caught him, and was holding him by his halter, breathing into his nose to calm him, just as Lorenzo might have done. Honey was in the same field, grazing contentedly as usual. She barely lifted her head to look at us. The grass all around was not green any more, but grey with dust. Nancy had gone straight into the house by this time to see what damage had been done inside. My ears were still reverberating from the sound of the explosion. I was standing there, numbed, bewildered, unable to gather my thoughts, when I suddenly realised I was alone. Lorenzo had wandered off. I knew at once where he must have gone.

  He was crossing the wooden bridge by the time I caught up with him. There were no soldiers to be seen. Everywhere I walked I saw the debris of the explosion strewn about on the farm track, in the canal, in the stream, in among the rushes. I clung tight with both hands to the rail as I crossed the bridge – or what was left of it. Only a couple of planks were still intact, and I wasn’t at all sure they would be strong enough to hold my weight. I stepped across tentatively, calling for Lorenzo all the time. But if he was in the castle he was not replying.

  I was in the courtyard, calling for him, looking for him, when his head suddenly rose up from behind our rock in the middle of the courtyard.

  “Lot Lot!” he cried, and then he was up there, up on the rock, arms raised in the air. “Guin Guin. Roi, moi!” His whole being was wreathed in laughter, and he was beckoning me impatiently to join him. That was easier said than done. The courtyard was a field of rocks, concrete rocks, that I had to clamber over to reach him.

  When at last I was up there, the two of us stood, speechless, looking about in disbelief. The two great guns had been toppled over and lay on their sides, their barrels half buried in the marshes. All around us everything had been blasted to ruins. The remains of the buildings that must have housed the soldiers, and all the remnants of the concrete gun emplacement, littered the courtyard and the marshes beyond, as far as the eye could see.

  But it was what had been left standing that amazed me, for the ancient stone walls of Lorenzo’s beloved Camelot still stood, not entirely but mostly. The two of us touched foreheads and held one another, neither of us wanting to let go of the other, nor of the moment.

  Minutes later, I found myself sitting on our rock and telling him the story of how Arthur found the sword in the stone, and he was acting it out, drawing the sword out easily, raising it high, then he was killing dragons again, and again.

  “Agon agon!”

  He knew and I knew that every dragon he was killing was a Nazi soldier, that all the wicked dragons were going or had gone. I could not help thinking, though, that one of them at least had been no dragon, but a friend we could trust, who had promised Maman and Papa would come home.

  I clung to this promise, and to my belief now that Saint Sarah would help during the weeks that followed. With the Germans and the brown-shirted Milice gone, we could all go once again into town on market days. So we were there on the stall, selling our fish and our cheese, our honey and herbs, the tricolour flying high and proud again on the mairie, when the Americans arrived in a flurry of roaring jeeps and trucks. They really did smoke big fat cigars. What a day that was! The townspeople cheered and waved, and everyone kissed and hugged everyone else. We were free again to be us.

  The Americans were so big and tall – that’s what I remember most about them – and they laughed a lot. We had not seen or heard laughter like that in a very long time. And laughter, like joy, is infectious. They had chocolate too, which they handed out – Hershey Bars they called it – so I loved them for that too. Chocolate, cigarettes and money to spend on the market stalls, on our stall as well – the Americans seemed to have everything. We could not understand what they were saying, of course, but that did not matter. Their smiles and ours said all that needed to be said. There was no more threat, no more fear. France was France again; France was ours again; France was free again!

  But, despite all the euphoria in town that day, I could not forget that there was no Maman and Papa in the crowd. I never stopped looking for their faces, listening for their voices. When we came home to the farm, they were not there waiting for us. Henri and Nancy were still reassuring me that all would be well. Every day that Maman and Papa did not return, they told me the same thing again and again, but every day I believed them less. My hopes were fading. My faith was fragile.

  There was some good news, though. Henri had made enquiries in town at the mairie, about the camp at Saliers where Maman and Papa had been taken, and they told him that Americans had liberated it, and were taking care of the prisoners. So I was hopeful again, for a few days. But in the end I did not believe that either. If it was so, where were Maman and Papa now? Why had they not come home? And then the nightmare thoughts would come again, that they had been taken away to other camps I had heard about. There was talk in the town of these other camps, far away, in Poland, in Germany, concentration camps they called them, where many people had been taken, where dreadful things had happened, where prisoners had been sent and did not return. Someone said Madame Salomon and her whole family had been taken to one of those, and no one had heard of them since.

  My new Sully family enveloped me in love during these days of despair. I was never left alone with my dark thoughts. At night, we all still slept together in our one wide bed. Just being close to them gave me great comfort.

  One night, I was lying there, only half awake, the others sleeping soundly beside me, when I heard a car drawing up outside. My first thought, irrational I know, was that the Germans were back. There were voices, and a loud knocking on the door downstairs. Henri was quickly awake and sitting up. He lit the lamp and went downstairs. We tried to follow him, but he told us all to wait on the stairs. He opened the door. From where we were at the top of the stairs, we could just about see.

  Two soldiers in American uniforms were standing there. They had red crosses on their arms.

  “Monsieur Henri Sully?” one of them said.

  The soldiers were trying to speak French. We couldn’t understand every word, but just enough. “You know these two, monsieur? They say they are Monsieur and Madame Charbonneau. They say they live here. Is that so?”

  I was bounding down those stairs, and in their arms before any more could be said. The two American soldiers had their answer. It was over there, right by the front door that it happened, Vincent, this homecoming, this longed-for moment, the very best moment of my entire life.”

  CHAPTER 30

  Old Years Pass, New Years Come

  “But, even as I clung to Maman and Papa, I knew they were not the same. I could feel Maman’s shoulder blades through her coat, and, when I looked up into Papa’s face, I saw his whole demeanour had changed. His eyes, once so bright, were sunken and sad, and I could see the white of his bones through his cheeks. They were pale, pale ghosts of their former selves. But they were alive and they were home, as the Caporal had promised us they would be. At that moment, nothing else in the world mattered to me.

  Maman stayed poorly and weak for many months, but Papa grew better with every day that passed. His colour returned, and his cheekbones disappeared as his dear face became more his own again. His energy came back, and the brightness in his eyes. Nancy brought them both back to life, feeding and caring for them, making sure they never lacked for food, or warmth, or comfort. Lorenzo would often sit with them, holding hands, touching foreheads, passing on his healing love to them. Henri and Nancy gave up their bedroom for them, so they could be together and quiet and with me, and they slept down here, in this room.

  Maman and Papa said not a word to any of us – so far as I know, and certainly not to me – about the camp at Saliers. I learned only much later of the hunger and the suffering they and all the prisoners there had had to endure. Many had died of hunger and disease. I learned much later too that Madame Salomon and her family had died in Auschwitz, one family of six million Jews
who had perished in the camps. Roma people had died in those camps too. Maman and Papa had been lucky. I had been lucky.

  They did tell us of the day the Caporal had come to see them with a basket of food, with news of us all, and of the carousel. He told them that the war would be over soon, that they would be home again. He gave them new heart, new hope, they said, at a time they needed it most. Papa told me once when I was older that without the Caporal they might have faded away in that camp and died, as so many did, that they came home, at least in part, because of him.

  In time, they both recovered, not fully in Maman’s case. She was never as strong afterwards, but the heart of her was there in her smile and laughter.

  The Caporal not only helped bring me back my maman and papa, he gave us back our carousel too. The completion of the restoration of the carousel took a year or more after the war had ended. We all worked every day to make it just as fine and beautiful as it had once been. Nothing made Papa happier than to be carving the new rides, and nothing made Maman happier than to be painting them. It was the carousel as much as anything that gave them joy in life again.

  Maman told me quite often afterwards: “It was you, Kezia, the thought of you and the carousel, that your papa and I lived for in that dreadful camp. Then, when we came home, we watched you grow, and we saw the carousel coming together – that’s what gave me back my life.”

  Then came the great day, the first of May in 1947. The carousel was finished. We loaded it up carefully, piece by piece, into a dozen or more farm carts, some belonging to neighbours, some to our relatives. Cheval pulled one of them, Honey another, whether she liked it or not. So, early in the morning, we set off down the farm track, past Camelot, and along the canal into town. Through the gateway under the walls of the town we went, past the church and into the town square.

  We had the carousel up and working faster than we had ever done it before, and that was because there were so many helping hands. The queue to ride the Charbonneau Carousel that day stretched right round the square. They rang the church bells, and Monsieur Dubarry, the mayor – wearing his tricolour sash – made a long speech, which no one could hear, and to which no one was listening anyway, and then at last he gave the signal for Maman to start the music. With Lorenzo riding on his Val, and me at his side, and with every other ride full, the carousel began to turn, to the sound of “Sur le Pont d’Avignon”, and to huge cheers and laughter from everyone there. There never was a day like it.

  Alors, c’est presque la fin, almost the end of my story, Vincent. A couple of years later, Maman and Papa had built a new caravan, just like the old one, and painted it just the same too. So we had our own home again. I thought it would stay like that forever, the two families, the Sully family and the Charbonneau family, living side by side as we had before. But there is something in the heart of every Roma, Vincent: we have to keep moving on. I had changed, though. I think I had become used to being settled in one place, and Maman and Papa knew that. They could see I was happy where I was.

  That was why – in part at least – they came to an arrangement with Nancy and Henri. I would stay at the farm. Nancy would go on schooling me, and Lorenzo and I, we would go on together as we had, like brother and sister, best of companions, dearest of friends. Maman and Papa would return to the farm every year in the spring and summer months to set up and run the carousel in town, and, while the season lasted, would live on the farm in the caravan as they had before.

  They talked it all through with me and with Lorenzo one evening, all of us together in this room. I could not have been happier about it. I would have the best of both worlds: two families, both of whom I loved. And Lorenzo was – how do you say it? – over the moon. His celebratory flamingo dance that evening was the best, the most joyous he had ever danced.

  Over the years, I became quite used to Maman and Papa coming and going through the spring and summer of every year. I would cycle into town and help them with the carousel as I had helped before. Sometimes I would travel with them in the caravan down to the sea at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer for the Roma festivals, and meet up with all my cousins, and aunts and uncles, who, mostly, very soon accepted Lorenzo, my Flamingo Boy brother, as one of the family. And, if some of them didn’t, I didn’t care anyway. I just wouldn’t speak to them again.

  The seasons passed. The summers came and went, the mosquitoes and the mistral winds, the flamingos nesting out on the islands in the spring, the fledglings flying. And Lorenzo and I – well, we grew up, as Maman and Papa, and Nancy and Henri, grew older. Maman, her heart weakened by her time in the camp, died first, then Henri a few years later. It happens this way, Vincent, it always has. The old fade away, and we take their place.

  Old years pass, new years come, and now Lorenzo and I find ourselves alone here, working the farm as best we can. Two of my younger cousins look after the carousel these days – so it’s still the Charbonneau Carousel – and they bring it to Aigues-Mortes in the spring and summer months, just as we always did. And Lorenzo and I still go in on market days sometimes and run our stall, when we have enough to sell. So Lorenzo still gets his ride on his Val from time to time, and I get to see the children riding round, and hear their laughter. And every ride still begins with “Sur le Pont d’Avignon” on the barrel organ.

  Every time I’m there, I see Elephant, and Bull and Dragon and Horse, and all the others, and I remember it was Papa who carved every one of them. When I look closely, I can see Papa’s chisel marks and Maman’s brushstrokes on them, as if they made them yesterday. Maman and Papa, they live on in the carousel, and in me. So, that’s our story done, Vincent. Now you know everything. Bedtime, I think.”

  CHAPTER 31

  Last Words

  “Except that I don’t know everything,” I told her. “You still haven’t answered my question. You never told me how come you speak such good English, did you?”

  “Zut alors!” Kezia laughed. “I forgot. I am getting old. I forgot, and you remembered. Eh bien, well, as I told you already, I think, there was another Englishman who turned up at our door, over thirty years ago now, not young like you. He was a professor, an ornithologist. Dr Alan Roberts he was called. At the time, we had a severe problem on the marshes here – not just here, but all over the Camargue. The flamingos were becoming fewer and fewer. Many years they did not come to breed here on our lakes at all. There was a real danger that soon there would be no flamingos breeding and living in the Camargue any more. The Camargue without flamingos was unthinkable to us.

  “We all knew this, but did not know what to do about it. There were many reasons. In dry springs and dry summers, when the water in the lakes was low, the foxes and wild boar and badgers could get across to the breeding islands, and kill the sitting flamingos and their chicks in the nests. So, more and more, the flamingos were not coming to breed here, and were breeding elsewhere, where it was safer. They are not stupid. Over the years, of course, the stealing of flamingo eggs had done and was still doing a lot of damage too.

  So anyway, this Englishman – this Professor Alan Roberts – arrived at our door one day. He told us he was passionate about the survival of flamingos in the Camargue, and he needed somewhere to stay out on the marshes, so he could make his research, do his work. He had heard about this “Flamingo Boy”, who he had been told lived here in this house, who knew more about flamingos than anyone else around. He wanted to meet him, to work with him, so that they could share their knowledge, and together help save the flamingos of the Camargue.

  So the two met, Alan and Lorenzo. And Alan stayed – for five years or more. He slept where you now sleep, and every day he and Lorenzo would be out on the marshes, observing the flamingos, photographing them, studying them, working out what could be done – had to be done – to save them. All those photos of the flamingos you see on the walls, it was Alan who took them. A wonderful photographer! And, while he stayed, Nancy asked him to teach me English. Nancy was always the teacher. Her mantra was “the more yo
u know, Kezia, the better you grow”. She was right too. They did a deal: he would give me lessons instead of paying rent for his room. So that’s what happened. Alors, now you know: that was how I learned English, Vincent.

  Meanwhile, Alan, along with Lorenzo, and with many others here all over the region who love our flamingos, devised a plan. Laws should be made to prevent the theft of flamingo eggs. It was done. Water levels were to be regulated, so there was always enough water in the marshes to keep the flamingos safe from predators on their breeding islands. Predators were to be controlled. This was all done too. But, by now, most of the flamingos had already deserted their breeding islands, and, in spite of all these efforts, very few flamingos were returning to the Camargue to breed. It looked as if it was all too late.

  Then Lorenzo had an idea, a brilliant idea. He went out in the boat one day with Alan on to the island in our lake, and showed Alan what must be done, on this island, and on all the islands, if we wanted the flamingos to return. Out of the mud Lorenzo crafted with his own hands an imitation of a flamingo nest, a raised mound of mud, with a dip in the top for the eggs to rest in. This, Lorenzo was sure – and Alan was soon persuaded too – was the best chance of encouraging the flamingos to come back in numbers and lay their eggs. Provide them with ready-made, purpose-built nests made of mud, make it look as if they had been there from the year before, and from the year before that, that this was their place. They had to feel they were coming home.

  “The two of them, Lorenzo and Alan,” continued Kezia, “spent days, weeks, months out there, crafting hundreds of these nests of mud. I made some too myself. And the next year, in April, many more flamingos flew in, and the year after that they returned in their hundreds, then in their thousands all over the Camargue. It is really true, c’est vraiment vrai, I’m telling you. And, as you hear, I speak English too, quite well, n’est-ce pas? Are you happy now, Vincent? And I was thinking – are you fit for an outing tomorrow?”