by Alan Holmes
After twenty minutes, the nun removed the poultices and applied warm olive oil to ease the burning of my skin. Nevertheless, the entire area remained red and sore for several days after the last application. Eventually, my fever slowly subsided. During this time, Mother was at my bedside night and day.
Then, a new crisis arose. I was not eating any food or drinking any of the mineral water or orange juice offered to me. It was Mother who correctly diagnosed the problem. The dreaded mustard poultices were always administered about an hour before both lunch and supper, and upon completing the treatment, I was in such a state of nerves and terror that eating and drinking were out of question.
Mother explained her theory to the nun, who declared that she wasn’t about to change the scheduling of her ward duties to accommodate my whims. When Mother told Docteur Moronguet about the matter, it was evident that he did not want to tangle with the nun, who was a surly, vindictive woman, feared by everyone in the ward. He ducked the issue by explaining that he had no say in the hospital’s scheduling, unless it was “a matter of life and death.”
At that point, Mother exploded. “Don’t you think my son’s life will end in death if he does not eat soon? Is that not a life and death matter? My son has not eaten in a week with all these dreadful cataplasmes!” she shouted in outrage.
The surgeon certainly knew about my pneumonia and the pleurisy, but he apparently had not known about the mustard poultices. He explained that he had ordered a twice-daily revulsif and that, although mustard poultices came under that heading, he had assumed the sisters would use a modern type called ouate thermogène (thermogenic cotton).
The nun grumped that ouate thermogène was for sissies and was too mild to do any good. Nevertheless, she grudgingly made the switch. It was a huge improvement, chiefly because the pads of ouate thermogène didn’t smell of mustard and did not burn my skin quite as much, though it still felt extremely hot and left my skin red from its mysterious heat.
The stuff came in the form of a large apricot-colored pad of cotton wool. The sister unrolled this dry pad from its wide “jelly roll” paper packaging and, using scissors, cut a piece the right size for my chest. The pad was activated by sprinkling it liberally with eau-de-cologne, which was also sprayed onto my chest with an atomizer. Then, mysteriously, the pad felt extremely hot soon after being pressed to my cologne-doused skin. I still didn’t like the process, but it was such an improvement over the mustard poultice that I accepted it without shrieking and becoming panic stricken. With this change in treatment, my appetite returned.
One day, Raimond came to visit me in the hospital. “You know the black P.O. locomotive?” he asked cheerfully. (The gondola-to-locomotive transformation had been implemented only a couple of months before.) “Well,” he continued, “while you were gone and not using it, I took the opportunity to repaint the entire locomotive in royal blue and to change the P.O. insignia to a P.L.M. insignia. I did the lettering in yellow to look like the gold lettering used on the real P.L.M. locomotives. I think it’s a big improvement, and I know you will like it.” The speed of my recovery started to match that of the real P.L.M. express trains.
When I returned home from the hospital, Mother made me drink a small glass of beef blood three times a day as a treatment for anemia. I don’t know if this was real beef blood. Purchased at an apothecary, it looked and tasted like blood, but it didn’t clot; Mother maintained that it was real beef blood, somehow sterilized for medicinal use. I dreaded taking the stuff, but it must have worked, for I soon regained a healthy color, though none of the weight I had lost.
While I was still convalescing, Mother took Brenda and me to visit our grandparents in Brussels. She hoped that during this sojourn I would regain some weight, as my grandparents’ household—and indeed Brussels itself—were both known for superb food. Not that Françoise’s cooking was in any way inadequate. It was more the style of eating that was different. In Belgium, at least in those days, people ate richer foods and larger quantities at each meal than did the French in general. The Belgians were more bons vivants than the French, according to Mother.
For good measure, Françoise offered to make a batch of pâté de foie gras aux truffes (goose liver pâté with truffles) to take with us to Brussels. This was something else with which Mother was plying me, in the hopes it would fatten me up; it’s loaded with fat and rich in iron, and she genuinely believed that by eating a goodly portion of it everyday, all my dietary needs would be addressed. This delicacy was, of course, available in Brussels, but every pâté is the unique creation of the chef who makes it; Françoise’s was quite exceptional and my gourmet grandparents greatly appreciated her choice of ingredients and their proportions.
It’s possible Mother may have thought that she could not ask her parents to buy this premium-priced delicacy especially for me. Or perhaps she just liked the idea of presenting her parents with this delicious gift. But there was another reason why Mother accepted Françoise’s offer.
On a previous trip to Brussels, Mother had been made to pay a substantial customs duty on a pâté she was carrying. The experience had left her seething with resentment. “The customs duty was three times what I would have paid if I had just bought it in Brussels!” she had exclaimed when telling us about the outrage. It was clear that she wanted to even the score by outwitting the customs officials on this trip. As a teenager in Brussels, under the German occupation during World War I, Mother had been involved in food smuggling for the sake of having something palatable to eat. Any border crossing seemed to stimulate this once important instinct in her and allowed her to savor again the thrill and excitement of smuggling.
Françoise prepared her two-kilo pâté in a heavy earthenware crock, which itself would be no small or trivial thing to conceal from a customs officer. For those who might wonder why her delicacy had to weigh all of two kilos, hardly a small portion when it comes to this rich food, I must explain that two kilos was the size of the pâté produced by Françoise’s recipe, and that jostling Françoise was not something one did lightly. Besides, a smaller one would hardly present the challenge Mother craved.
It just happened that Uncle Hill (Major Hill, Father’s army friend) had given Brenda a rather unusual doll. It was a large doll that was mostly pale blue plush on the exterior, rather like a teddy bear. But instead of a teddy bear’s head, the doll’s almost spherical head had a plasticized cloth circle where the face should have been, and on this smooth surface was imprinted a little girl’s smiling face. I thought this doll was nothing short of grotesque, especially in profile, but Brenda adored “Collinette,” as the doll was called. Brenda had named the doll after Uncle Hill; colline is the French for hill.
Collinette was no ordinary doll in certain other respects. Her limbs and head were stuffed and fairly rigid, but Collinette had a zipper down her back; her body was limp and completely empty, and this cavity was nicely lined. The purpose of the empty space was for the storage of Brenda’s pajamas in daytime. With the void thus filled, the doll assumed some semblance of a human figure. From Mother’s point of view, Collinette’s virtue lay in the fact that her interior cavity was large enough to hold the ceramic terrine in which the two-kilo pâté was to be cooked.
For the trip to Brussels, the porcelain terrine containing the pâté and its lid were tied closed with string. Thus secured and wrapped in wax paper, the whole package went neatly into Collinette’s capacious interior. Brenda clearly didn’t like the idea and wondered what would happen to her pajamas, but Mother assured her that Collinette would survive the trip in pristine condition and that her pajamas could travel in a special doll suitcase she would buy for her. Brenda was placated, and Collinette was enlisted as a major participant in Mother’s smuggling caper. The plan seemed simple enough and foolproof.
On the day of our departure, Mother found that little Brenda, only four years old, could barely lift the pâté-stuffed Collinette,
let alone carry her any distance. Furthermore, the crock was so bulky that Collinette’s already none-too-graceful outline was further distorted, making her look as if she were “with child” and carrying it rather low. Fortunately, among Brenda’s other treasured possessions was a small baby carriage intended for her dolls. With a bit of squeezing and pushing, the corpulent Collinette could be wedged into the baby carriage.
The flimsily built toy pram wobbled precariously under its heavy load as Brenda valiantly trundled it along the railway platform at the Gare du Nord in Paris. When we reached our railway carriage, Mother and I, each holding one end of the pram, struggled to lift it into the compartment. Lying there in her baby carriage and looking up at us with her jovial face, Collinette seemed all sweetness and innocence. Waiting in the carriage for the train to depart, I prayed silently that the customs inspector would view her the same way.
As our train sped towards the Franco-Belgian border, the little pram rolled uneasily back and forth in the compartment’s aisle with each lurch of the train. Collinette continued to stare blissfully at the ceiling and didn’t seem to mind.
Brenda, wearing a dark green velour coat and shiny patent leather shoes, carefully rearranged the doll blanket around Collinette and said a few soothing words to her baby. With the doll blanket over her lower half, Collinette’s distorted shape didn’t show, and luckily, we had the first class eight-passenger compartment to ourselves. Mother, in an elegant, blue matching skirt and jacket, appeared calm as she read a mystery novel.
For a while, I was content to watch the passing scene, but as the trip progressed, I began to eye Brenda nervously. She didn’t seem convinced that all was well with Collinette and had begun to fret over the doll. I don’t think Brenda understood the high stakes of the game. I, on the other hand, had overheard Father warn Mother about the foolishness of this venture. “If you’re caught smuggling, you’ll have far more to pay in fines than it’s worth and you’ll also have serious other problems. It would be wiser if you simply paid the customs duty.” As a result of my eavesdropping, I was well aware of the situation we were in.
I was, in fact, highly anxious that Mother might end up in prison if she were caught, and I also worried because I was involved in what sounded to me like a major crime.
At one stage of the journey, Mother took Brenda and me to the toilet. As we walked along the carriage corridor, I peeked into the various compartments and, in one of them, happened to spot the dreaded customs inspector at his wicked work. He was dressed in a black uniform and wore an imperious-looking visored cap. He reminded me of Mother’s descriptions of the occupying German officers during the war.
On the return trip to our compartment, I once again glanced into the compartment where the customs inspector was holding forth; he seemed to be scolding a poor woman who looked as though she were pleading with him. My worst fears were upon us.
We were on an express train, so the customs people had boarded in Paris. Knowing they were on a three-hour journey, the inspectors took their time as they advanced methodically down each car of the train, spending considerable time in every compartment, opening all suitcases and searching each one thoroughly.
It wasn’t long before the customs inspector opened the door to our compartment. At that precise moment, Brenda decided it was time to take Collinette out of her pram and started a struggle to un-wedge the well-ensconced Collinette.
Brenda’s unsuccessful struggle gave me time to grasp the danger we were in. I jumped from my seat and finished the job of removing Collinette from the little carriage, making sure I stood between the baby carriage and the customs inspector so that he couldn’t see the doll. I seized Collinette below the waist and, with my arms encircling the doll so that her incriminating tummy was well concealed, I sat down in the seat closest to the window and farthest from the compartment door. There, turning towards the window so that Collinette was even less visible to the inspector, I started extolling to her the beauty of the passing landscape, which consisted mainly of coal mines, dross heaps, grimy factories, and slum dwellings.
Brenda was not a bit pleased by this and soon initiated a determined effort to pry Collinette from my arms. I held on firmly. In the meantime, the surly customs inspector scrutinized Mother’s passport and started to ransack her suitcase. The inspection must have lasted a long time, for he pulled almost everything out of the suitcase, unfolding garments and prodding into everything. Meanwhile, the struggle between Brenda and me raged on. She tore and pulled at anything she could grab. Hitting and scratching, she berated me through a veil of tears. But I continued to cling tenaciously to the doll.
When the customs inspector had gone through all of Mother’s belongings, he turned his attention to me and said crossly, “Come on now! Let her have the doll!”
There was what seemed to me like an interminable silence, during which Brenda stopped crying, and the inspector glowered at me accusingly. Finally, for lack of anything else to say or do, I blurted out a bald-faced lie.
“But it’s my doll!” I protested.
Before Brenda could interject, Mother quickly said, “My son is right! He loves dolls—he always has—that’s why I didn’t stop this quarrel sooner. My daughter is forever pestering him and trying to take his dolls!”
The customs inspector stared at me suspiciously for some time, then turned and left our compartment mumbling to himself and shaking his head.
As soon as the inspector was out of sight, I put Collinette back in her pram. Brenda now insisted that her doll didn’t look comfortable in the pram and needed cuddling. And she protested loudly that Collinette was her doll. Mother tried to explain the delicacy of the situation to her and, although I don’t think Brenda understood, she eventually resigned herself to leaving Collinette alone. With the inspectors on board until we reached Brussels, our situation was still tenuous.
My prolonged state of high anxiety, Brenda’s clawing and pummeling, and my sudden, unexpected blurting out of a huge lie had taken their toll. I was in tears and badly in need of reassurance. Between sobs, I managed to tell Mother how much the lie was gnawing at me and that I didn’t think I could continue to lie if the inspector were to return.
Mother moved over so that she now sat next to me and put her arm around me. In hushed tones, she tried to reassure me. I heard her say, “During the war, I found it necessary to tell lies to a bunch of bandits and bullies to keep from starving.” Turning suddenly petulant, she said, “These customs inspectors are no better than those terrible boches! The nerve they have to paw through my lingerie—and those enormous duties they demand from us—the nasty brutes!” Then, calming down, for she was obviously shaken by her own rhetoric, she added, “You were being loyal to my cause, and you were absolutely wonderful! Alain, I’m very proud of you. You told a white lie to save us all, and it was the right thing to do. A white lie is a lie told for the greater good. So don’t worry yourself any more about this matter.”
When we reached Brussels, Collinette’s painted smile seemed to be a knowing smile and, once in Brussels, she was restored, none the worse for wear, to the more mundane task of pajama storage.
My grandparents greeted us and Françoise’s delicious pâté with delight. Mother had her revenge for that levied duty and a double dose of the excitement she apparently craved. However, I think Mother was genuinely contrite, if not ashamed, about what she had put us through, though not about the smuggling per se. She asked Brenda and me not to tell anyone about this incident. Yet, for the rest of her life, every time she crossed an international border she couldn’t resist some new (and minor) smuggling escapade to prove to herself that no authority could tell her what she could and could not do.
Brenda and I loved to visit our grandparents, who doted on us while Mother went out visiting old friends and the haunts of her youth. This was the last visit to Brussels during which I would see Granny in good health. Later that yea
r, she fell down a flight of stairs and broke her spine. At the time, there was nothing the doctors could do to heal or help her. Over the next three years, Mother took her disabled mother to see all the best specialists in Paris and London, but to no avail. Granny remained a total paraplegic for the next fifteen years, until she died at the age of seventy-six.
Even before the accident, Granny was a frail-looking woman. She was a sweet and affectionate soul and, after her accident, patient and uncomplaining about her continual pain. She continued to read to us children, even though she sat completely bent over in her wheel chair. I still remember Granny’s gentle voice as she asked me to turn the pages of the book she was reading to me. We used to lay our children’s books on the floor in front of her. With her rounded back forcing her to look down, she could not raise or move her head from this position. She had also lost the use of her hands so that she had to be fed and lifted into her bed, still bent over with her face barely a foot from her knees.
Grandpa was an energetic and high strung man, well informed about what was going on in the world, an enthusiastic “modernist” and optimist, who was sure that technology (such as it existed then) had, or soon would have, a solution for everything, including his wife’s injury. Despite his high-energy nature, he was a gentle, affectionate man, soft-spoken, self effacing, and considerate.
My grandparents’ house at 109 rue Berckmans, in Brussels, with its huge rooms and high ceilings, was a veritable palace. The house had five stories, sweeping staircases, grand fireplaces, and massive crystal chandeliers.
It seems strange that such a luxurious mansion should find itself across the street from two small, “half-basement” business establishments. Both shops were among the special delights of our visits to Brussels. One of them was a first rate toy shop, and the other was the best place to buy chocolate truffles in all of Brussels, which at the time, was the chocolate truffle capital of the world.