The Silent Hours

by Cesca Major

  We have been moved again. The officers in the Stalag sent us to a different Kommando and we are in a factory, an hour’s walk away from the main camp. We sleep in a long room next door to the machines that sit silently in the darkness. Outside the guards patrol the courtyard contained within a barbed-wire fence, so we are truly hemmed in. This lot seem bigger than the last, barking rather than talking. Mocking everything we do, so we feel laughed at and pathetic.

  The everyday seems smaller and greyer now that we are in the middle of this mesh of buildings. I miss being able to see into the distance, not wonder at what is behind a blank wall or a fence. We can’t see the horizon, only patches of sky through grimy, high windows in the factory where we work, making out distant vapour trails and feeling a shudder as something drops too close. We’ve been in the city now for a few weeks and the work is colourless and never-ending. Worse, I feel that we really are now part of the machinery of war, that we are helping them.

  There is talk of escape as we lie on stained bedclothes above an alley that seems to always be piled high with festering rubbish, breathing through our mouths. Rémi isn’t sure, he wants to sit tight and wait for it all to be over but I don’t want to sit and wait for a war that might take years to end, to lose my life on the whim of someone else. We hear stories – it has been done before, and successfully too. Even talking about it makes my heart hammer harder, pumping blood to my limbs, making a foot twitch, hand resting on my thigh stopping it rise and fall, rise and fall. Father would not want me to sit here, he would want me to fight, to stand up and bloody a man’s nose.

  I know I can’t post this now, will no doubt have to destroy it – another reminder of my submissiveness, and I shouldn’t worry you about these thoughts anyway, but I will try to get out. I will not just sit on my hands and nod at them. That is not me. I am not sure what the future holds for me but it can’t be here. I hope Rémi can be persuaded by others; I don’t want to leave him behind but I will go—.

  TRISTAN

  Luc and Dimitri agreed that we should go back to the big tree and take a rope to make a swing. I think of the smoke and the spies living near it. It will be good to have a rope as we will probably catch them and then we can tie them up and end the war. We have made a pact not to tell Maman that we’re headed quite so far away as she won’t like the sound of a swing in a big tree; she’ll think it’s too dangerous. I think she would probably think spies are dangerous too, but I haven’t told the others of my plan yet. Today we have got permission to take a picnic and go and play games outside as long as we always keep the house in sight. I think this is the day.

  We set off through the lanes out of the village. The hedges have grown right up and the long grass is bending over into the road, tickling our legs as we pass. We take turns carrying the little basket Maman has packed for us. I am straying out into the middle of the road, the silence is all around us, apart from the cry of a bird in the distance or a little insect who is calling to his friends. I realize I haven’t seen a motorcar in days and I grow more and more forgetful of our old life in Paris where there were plenty of motorcars and noises, and not so much grass and sky. We get to a gap in the hedge where there is a little wooden bit to climb over, surrounded by nettles. You can see where hundreds of people have stepped on the wood in the past and the patch of mud around it is churned up with footprints. All the grass has worn away.

  We clamber over, jumping into the field. I breathe out happily at the sunny day, the cloudless sky. A butterfly bobs past me, dips right in front of my face, his blue and green wings beating quickly. We can see the line of trees up ahead, the start of the forest, and walk along the bit where the grass has been flattened into a track. I’m looking out for the smoke but I can’t see any. Dimitri runs ahead then spins round on the spot, making rat-a-tat-tat noises, firing shots from a make-believe gun at me and Luc. Clutching at my chest I fall to the ground, the basket forgotten. I then jump straight back up and give chase, arms outstretched, firing bullets in his path, diving into the grass to escape his shots, lying out of breath and panting. Luc tries to join in the game but is so slow he gets shot a dozen times. He keeps refusing to die so the game ends in me calling him a blockhead as Dimitri attempts to explain the rules to him for the hundredth time.

  We see a massive hole in the ground by a fallen trunk. It looks like the home of a badger or a fox or something. Luc wants to leave a bit of his lunch outside the hole and lie in wait to see what will come and eat it. We can’t even get him to move by threatening to leave him there by himself, and then Dimitri comes up with a masterstroke and claims the hole might be for a bear, as they are found in this part of France and they are known to eat children. When Luc protests the hole is too small to fit a bear, Dimitri simply shrugs his shoulders and says he wouldn’t be waiting around to find out. Luc joins us without a word and spends the next few hundred yards looking over his shoulder. Dimitri can be terribly clever.

  I’m confident I can remember where the tree is and lead the other two into the forest. The whole world turns a funny shade of green as we walk through and only little bits of light poke through the leaves above our heads. There are a lot of mushrooms and some mossy patches and fallen branches around so we have to watch where we are walking. Luc says we should take some mushrooms back with us but Dimitri has read somewhere that they can be poisonous so we decide it isn’t a brilliant idea. Although I put one in my pocket, to maybe see later what might happen – I heard a few mice scrabbling around in the outhouse at our new house and think they’d be perfect for my experiment.

  There’s a crack up ahead and I think of bears. We stop still and listen. Then nothing.

  I’m hungry and I’m glad we have a picnic to eat. Maman made the sandwiches from freshly baked bread and butter, and they’re very good. Even the smallest scraping of butter now seems like heaven itself as Maman keeps telling us it is rationed, which means you don’t get very much because of the war. I don’t know why the Germans want all our butter but maybe they don’t have it in Germany. I talk to Dimitri about the treats back in our dining room at home in Paris: pastries, petit fours, madeleines, éclairs, miniature cakes in different colours on the cake stand, with the icing with silver balls and little bits of frosted lemon, bowls of sugared almonds that never ran out. It still doesn’t seem particularly fair, especially as I know Papa is an important man and is wealthy. He once gave Maman a ring made of diamonds that Clarisse told me was worth more than the moon and the stars, so I think it was very expensive.

  Another crack, a twig snapping, and I turn my head quickly.

  A wall of trees and silence.

  Everything is getting darker and the sun plays hide-and-seek behind the clouds. There is an enormous tree lying on its side, its roots poking right up in the air, all of them covered in moss.

  Dimitri has stopped. He sniffs at the air. ‘Do you smell that?’

  I drag my eyes away from a slow-moving line of ants walking along the bark to sniff too.

  ‘Burning?’

  It’s the smell of a bonfire, that smoky smell that gets right inside your nose and tickles the hairs and makes you want to sneeze.

  Smoke. The spies. I feel like my heart is beating twice as quickly.

  A louder crack, this time nearby, makes both of us jump.

  We can’t see Luc.

  ‘Don’t scare us,’ Dimitri says, as Luc appears from the other side of the trunk.

  ‘What? I …’

  Another crack and we all stop, frozen.

  I turn my head and then see what looks like a house in amongst the trees, a field’s length away. The windows are hanging off its hinges and its roof doesn’t look right, like parts of it have fallen inside. There is smoke though, I can see it. The window’s all smeared with dirt but … the spies! I can see the eyes watching us, I’m sure of it.

  I think of the rope but this wasn’t how I thought the plan would go. My ears a
re buzzing like there’s an insect trapped in my head.

  There’s another crack and it feels like the whole forest can see us. Dimitri’s face is green in the shadows, he’s looking left and right, pushing his glasses back up his nose with one finger. The same snap again and he yelps, like the noise the Villiers’ dog makes when you pull on his tail.

  The wood is alive.

  A cry.

  We run.

  We urge Luc on. The noises are gaining on us. Words – French, or is that German? A bark – an animal? There are footsteps, crackling, snapping. We aren’t alone. My hands ball into fists, one holding tightly to the empty basket. Dimitri runs with the rug, squeezing it to him like the blanket he used to suck on in the nursery. Luc grabs my free hand. His eyes are so wide you can see all the whites. He gasps, ‘The bears, the bears!’ He makes little whimpers because he is running as fast as he can. A part of me knows I could get away quicker without him.

  We burst back into the open field and hide in the long grass, the sun making everything less frightening. We lie down to catch our breath. Luc refuses to stop for long and drags us to our feet, his two hands tugging at both our arms. We keep low and move back through the field, then make a run for it on the road back to the village.

  Luc talks the whole way back about bears and monsters. I start to feel silly now – I didn’t even try. We could have caught them. We could have paraded them back to Papa. We could have ended the war.

  I promise myself to tell Papa. I’ll give him the rope to take. He’ll stop them.

  SEBASTIEN

  The night sky is inky and the stars are peeking out from swathes of thick cloud. My parents will be asleep by the time I get home. Isabelle’s face, the memory of what we have done, our words, promises, stop me feeling tired.

  I leave the bicycle where I found it and walk through the streets, one set of steps when, in a few short hours, there will be dozens of people hurrying along.

  I turn the key in the door as quietly as I can manage – I don’t want to wake the formidable figure of Madame Dusang, an ancient widower who finds any excuse to hitch up her skirts, march up the stairs and rap sharply on our door to complain of the slightest noise. Creeping inside, I pad softly across the hall and then place one foot on the first stair. It makes a telltale creak and I glance at the door to Madame Dusang’s domain. Making my way quickly up the stairs – best to do it in a burst – I see that our door is open a fraction.

  I edge into the apartment, aware that my parents might be out looking for me, holding my key uselessly in my hand. Pausing two feet inside, I listen to the shadows, straining to hear any sign of movement in the flat. My breathing quickens as I notice the hall lamp has been knocked on its side.

  Not daring to turn on the light, I try to think.

  The moon casts an eerie glow over our furniture so that I imagine I see figures everywhere. Peering around the archway entrance into the living room I see the room is empty. The chaise longue stands in its usual place; the table by the window where Maman likes to sit is undisturbed; the chess board still boasts the abandoned game Father and I began a few days before, its pieces waiting patiently for us to resume. He is winning. I catch my own frightened reflection in the mirror and start.

  Taking the stairs quickly and quietly I pause at the top of the first flight. My parents’ bedroom door is closed. Leaning against the door, I try to detect their breathing inside. It feels ridiculous, as if I’m a young boy again, woken from a nightmare and going to seek solace in the warmth of my parents’ bed. I can’t very well run in on them now, make Mother scream at me in her cotton nightdress, can I? They left the apartment door open, that is all … and yet something feels wrong. My hand reaches for the doorknob and I slowly turn it.

  Desperately trying to remain silent, I push open the door and poke my head around it, so that only the top half of my body can be seen – a smaller target for Father and his slippers if they are there.

  As my eyes adjust to the dark I realize the bed is mussed up, the duvet thrown back, and that there are not two sleeping figures. They are not here. Yet they went to bed. Mother would never leave the bed unmade. My hands grow sweaty, my heart hammers.

  My head is buzzing with questions. I don’t know how many moments I stand in their doorway dumbly, but after that I sweep through the apartment, calling their names. Perhaps they are looking for me. I can’t imagine Father would be wandering Limoges with Mother in the middle of the night but perhaps she insisted? Perhaps they couldn’t sleep and went to find me? I wish we had a telephone, a way of contacting someone. Jean-Paul might be able to help – maybe they are with him? Why wouldn’t they have just waited in the apartment?

  Every corner is searched before I return to sit on the end of my parents’ bed, helplessly putting my head in my hands, feeling so small in their bedroom. Wherever they both are, only one thing is certain: they will be worrying about me.

  The sliver of hope I have that they are out and all this is in my imagination comes crashing down as I approach my mother’s dressing table. Lying on its smooth glass surface is her wedding ring, a simple band of gold. She always removes it at night and puts it on again in the morning, after layers of hand cream have been applied.

  The memory of her smiles in the tri-mirror, all three faces beaming at me, make me grab the edge of the dressing table, suck in a breath as I think of her face now. My hand closes around the wedding ring and I stand there, in the semi-darkness, lost.

  A noise. Spinning around to face the door, I seize the first thing to hand: a silver-backed hairbrush on the dressing table. I surge to the doorway, hairbrush raised. There are distinct footsteps on the stairs.

  This is happening.

  This is real.

  The light is switched on and I roar. I hear a high-pitched squawk – not the squawk of an intruder but the squawk of a terrified woman and there, standing in the light, is Madame Dusang, hair in rollers, bare feet in slippers, holding a saucepan aloft, gaping at me and my hairbrush. We are both panting.

  ‘I heard noises,’ she says. I can do little but look at her. ‘Your parents? Where are they?’ she asks, looking about the apartment. ‘Gone.’ ‘Gone where?’

  ‘I don’t know, I wasn’t here, they are … gone.’

  ‘Perhaps they’re with friends?’ she suggests.

  I shake my head.

  ‘There were noises. I thought I heard your mother, but I was listening to the wireless, the noises stopped.’ She wrings her hands and looks at me. ‘I didn’t investigate.’

  ‘Her ring.’ I hold out the small band of gold. ‘She always has it, she would never leave without it. Something has happened to them.’

  ‘Who would want to do your parents harm?’ she asks gently. I know her and Mother play cards together sometimes.

  It is this last question that allows some doubt to creep in. Who indeed? Who would want my parents taken away? My father perhaps – he knew the bank made him vulnerable, had taken steps to put everything in Jean­ Paul’s name – but my mother? A small voice inches in. Maybe it can be explained. Maybe they will sweep breathlessly through the door, back late from a concert or a friend’s dinner; maybe Mother will flit into the room, reach up and brush the bottom of my cheek as she kisses me good night, her familiar perfume washing over me as Father complains about the tough meat, smiling at his wife, removing his jacket with a flourish, rubbing his neck with tiredness.

  I blink, but it is still me and Madame Dusang in an empty bedroom and the certainty that they are gone.

  ‘The gendarmerie? I … I don’t know, but they are gone,’ I say. ‘Father was worried, said that we were in danger here, that perhaps the gendarmes were watching. Things were happening elsewhere, he’d heard rumours of others but I’d never really …’ I stopped then, choking on the last few words. ‘I must go.’

  I realize that whoever has taken my parents might come bac
k.

  Father had warned me, all those times. I needed to get out, to think.

  Madame Dusang stops my pacing with a hand. ‘Do you have somewhere to go?’

  I nod.

  ‘I have not seen you.’ She smiles at me. ‘Your parents will be safe. You will see,’ she says, looking at me earnestly. ‘You will see.’

  I nod again. ‘Thank you, madame.’

  I write my parents a note, barely explaining anything in case it is found but needing to write something. I wonder where to put it, to hide it from prying eyes. Father’s beside table. He keeps a roll of money hidden there, in an old glasses case. For emergencies. ‘In case,’ he said. I open the drawer.

  There is a thick envelope addressed to me in my father’s hand.

  Creeping along the roads, I return to Oradour, not thinking where else to go, just automatically returning to her. It is an interminable walk, all the while racked with guilt. I hadn’t taken my father seriously, I need to tell him how sorry I am. I have to find them. I think of my note telling them I will wait to hear from them through Jean-Paul. I think of his letter, instructions, money.

  He had planned it all, just in case.

  The moon, a thin whisper of a line in the dark, impedes my progress: the light barely enough to see by. I wish I had bought a candle. Every now and again I light a match that flares up for a moment, shows me the earth a few feet ahead of me and then, with a fizz, it is out and only its smell remains.

  After hours following the lines of the tram I arrive in the high street, move towards the shop, my limbs aching. I trip on the side of the pavement and quietly curse.