Ashes

by Christopher de Vinck

  ‘See? A large, flat boulder is embedded just below the surface of the ground so the pine trees’ roots can’t grow above the large rock, but there’s still enough soil for a carpet of wild grass.’

  The sunlight poured over the tips of the trees and splashed on the grass like melting butter.

  A sudden whistling in the distance startled us, so we stepped quickly between the trees, and away from the path. A moment later, a man in a hunting jacket and red cap approached from the opposite direction, carrying a large gun with a long barrel that extended before him.

  ‘You girls shouldn’t be out here by yourselves. There’s a lynx nearby. I saw fresh tracks on the side of the pond back there. They love fish and beautiful young women.’ The hunter raised his rifle towards us.

  I was glad that the man had included me in his reference to beautiful women. No one had ever said that I was beautiful, but I feared his gun, his voice . . . the fact that Hava and I were alone, and that we were lost.

  Hava said, ‘Beautiful girls have bigger claws and sharper teeth than any lynx.’

  The man smiled and said, ‘Follow me. I’ll guide you back to the main path, just to make sure you’re safe.’

  At a small intersection of two dirt paths, the hunter pointed and said, ‘The city is that way.’

  ‘Thank you, monsieur,’ Hava said.

  ‘Au revoir, mesdemoiselles. Don’t be afraid of the lynx. You’ll be all right.’ The hunter smiled again, slung his rifle onto his shoulder, turned, and walked away.

  Of course I was afraid of the lynx as we headed back to Brussels. ‘Maybe the lynx is sitting in the secret place, eating fish.’

  Hava growled at me like a wild cat, and then grinned. ‘Let’s climb a silo,’ she said.

  CHAPTER 16

  The Führer is deeply religious, though completely anti-Christian. He views Christianity as a symptom of decay. Rightly so. It is a branch of the Jewish race.

  Joseph Goebbels’ diary, 29 December, 1939

  As we made our way back to the city, the sun set. Hava and I ran with the stars above us. ‘Look, the buttons of the angels,’ Hava called out, as I tried to keep up with her. ‘Look at the stars, Simone. There’s no easy way to reach them! Come on!’ She continued to run ahead of me.

  ‘Hava,’ I answered as I ran out of energy and stopped. She stopped and walked back to where I stood.

  ‘We have to catch the yellow stars, Simone.’

  I looked at Hava and asked, ‘Do you think the stars were made, or did they just happen?’

  Hava smiled and said, ‘They’re made of course, of gold, and they will be above us forever. But you have to touch one first to know for sure.’ She pointed to a tall silo in a distant field. ‘Follow me.’ She set off again at a run. This time I just walked behind.

  By the time I reached Hava she was already halfway up the metal rungs embedded on the outside of the silo.

  ‘Come on, Simone. Come on up. I’ll meet you at the top!’

  Hava was the only person in my life who could entice me to climb a three-storey, cement silo. When I reached the top rim, she was already straddling the edge. I held onto the last metal rung and did not look down.

  ‘Look, Simone. We’re high enough to touch a star.’ Hava reached up into the darkness, closed her hand into a fist, and then brought down her arm. ‘Got one!’

  The night sky was splashed with stars scattered above us.

  ‘Open your hand, Simone.’

  I opened my hand as Hava placed her closed fist onto my palm. ‘Now, be careful. I will release the star slowly so it won’t escape.’

  I felt Hava’s fingers unfurl on the flat of my palm. Something dropped gently on to my skin.

  ‘Close your hand quickly. Now!’

  I clenched my hand into a fist. ‘Got it,’ I said. ‘Which star did you catch? Arcturus? Sirius?’ I opened my hand.

  ‘The Star of David, Simone. It was my grandmother’s. My father gave it to me on my first day of school and I have worn it ever since. Now it’s yours.’

  It was a small, gold star on a delicate gold chain. ‘Hava, I can’t accept this.’

  ‘I want you to have it. I’ve never had a sister, but I feel like I do now. It will protect you from lynx, hunters, and star-crushers, and it will always remind you of me, and of the time we caught a star together.’

  I slipped the chain around my neck and felt the warm gold star against my chest. The Star of David – the Star of Hava. No matter what my had aunt had told me to do, I could never abandon my friend.

  CHAPTER 17

  Luftwaffe was the official name for the Nazi air force founded in 1935. Led by Hermann Göring, it had become the largest and most powerful air force in Europe by the start of the Second World War.

  That next morning, a Saturday, there was another loud knocking at the front door. I was in the kitchen boiling clothes. I smile to myself now whenever I think of myself in the kitchen, standing on a chair, leaning over a large, green pot, boiling blouses and socks, stirring the clothes with a broken broomstick.

  When I read Macbeth for the first time, I laughed aloud in class. Sister Bernadette slapped her book shut and asked me if I had lost my mind. I explained that the witches in the play sounded like me as they worked and spoke: ‘Double, double toil and trouble; fire burn, and cauldron bubble’. But I wasn’t cooking eyes of newt, or frogs, or even tongue of dog. ‘In my kitchen,’ I explained innocently to the class, ‘I boil underpants, socks, a shirt, and a dress or two.’ But I was in double, double toil and trouble with Sister Bernadette because I had said ‘underpants’ in class. No one said the word ‘underpants’ in a Catholic school in 1940.

  The noisy knocking at the door persisted. I looked up from my boiling pot. The steam from the water surrounded me like ghostly tendrils. By the time I climbed down from the chair and walked into the hall, I must have looked like a spectre, pale and frightened. Through the tinted glass in the door I could see a tall figure in a squared military uniform. I hoped for an instant that it was my father.

  I pulled back the large iron bolt, opened the door a crack and called out. ‘Yes? What is it?’

  ‘Mademoiselle Lyon. It’s Sergeant De Waden.’

  I hardly recognized his voice, so changed since the autumn.

  ‘Bonjour, Corporal.’ I said, surprised, as I opened the door. ‘Don’t you know that the general isn’t home?’

  ‘I’ve brought the horse.’ The young man gestured to his right, and there was Charlotte, nibbling a carrot held up to her mouth by little Nicole.

  ‘Corporal De Waden, it’s not Sunday, and as I told you, my father isn’t here.

  ‘Oui, oui, Simone, I know. I’ve come to see if you’d like to ride the horse in the park again. And look, I’m no longer a corporal. I’ve been promoted. I’ve been given this new uniform and a hat with a visor. I even brought a carrot for the little girl.’

  I stepped out into the street and looked at the newly formed Sergeant De Waden in the bright light of the open air. I glanced down at my dress and worried that there might be a frog or the dead eye of a newt smeared on my lapel.

  ‘I’ve missed you, Simone.’ He extended his right hand. I extended my left hand and, as we shook, I noticed his hand felt surprisingly soft and warm.

  ‘Bonjour, Sergeant De Waden.’ I tipped my head in a gentle manner.

  ‘Bonjour again, Mademoiselle Simone. I’ve brought the horse.’

  ‘Charlotte.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you know Salomé?’ I asked my old friend.

  ‘Excuse moi? Salomé? Is she a classmate?’

  I was eager to tell him the story about the prince in the well, the prophet and the dance of the seven veils, but thought better things might be expected of me, the general’s daughter. ‘No, the opera, Salomé. I know opera.’

  I know opera. Can you imagine telling a young man that you know opera? As if that mattered, as if that were important. But it was important to me that the sergeant didn’t t
hink that I was still a child, now that I was eighteen and living alone. And I knew people were impressed by the opera.

  Later that day, when I told Hava that I’d asked a sergeant in the royal army if he knew Salomé, Hava said that opera was a secret, and only girls, Clark Gable, and John Charles Tillman understood opera. But I told her it was not Clark Gable, nor John Charles Tillman, who had brought me a horse. She had no response to that.

  ‘Here, take this,’ Sergeant De Waden said to me as he proffered a fresh carrot. I curled my fingers around the offering, and my sergeant from the royal Belgian army gave a little nod. ‘After you.’

  In the street, the sun washed over me as if I were a new bouquet of daffodils, displayed on a market stall. Little Nicole held the reins of the horse.

  ‘I’ve commissioned her into the army,’ Sergeant De Waden said as he stooped down and gave the little girl a penny. She didn’t want to give up the reins, but did so willingly when the sergeant coaxed, ‘All good horsemen in the king’s army must obey orders.’

  I handed Nicole my carrot and she touched it to the horse’s lips. We all laughed as Charlotte crunched loudly. I was glad to see that even the sergeant laughed as he said to Nicole, ‘Off you go now.’

  ‘Merci, Monsieur Sergeant,’ Nicole replied as she stood at attention and saluted. Then she turned to me, smiled, and skipped off along the pavement.

  ‘You remember that I taught you how to ride a horse properly, I presume?’ Sergeant De Waden asked sarcastically.

  ‘Yes, of course.’ I looked at the sergeant’s chest and noticed for the first time that he wore a number of ribbons and a medal.

  He noticed my gaze. ‘I wish I could tell you that I earned them for valour.’ He loosened a pin from his jacket and placed it in my hand. It felt cold and sharp. ‘This one’s for horsemanship. We still maintain a cavalry, but it doesn’t make much sense any longer with tanks and aeroplanes. It’s more for show.’

  ‘What can you do with your horse?’

  ‘I jump, and we train the horses to walk backwards, trot in parades,’ Sergeant De Waden said as he pinned the medal to my blouse. I felt as if a frog had jumped out of my skin. ‘Your father did us a favour by exercising the horse each Sunday. And people like to see the military in the parks. It gives them a sense that all is well.’

  The horse pleased me. It smelled of leather and hay. The thick muscles in its chest and its head were powerful and sleek.

  Once, Hava and I had climbed on top of the bronze horse in the park belonging to Godfrey of Bouillon, the leader of the First Crusades. I had been so clumsy, trying to pull myself up onto the back of the weathered horse long after Hava was already clutching onto Godfrey’s back yelling, ‘Faster! Faster!’ as she pretended that she and Godfrey were halfway to Hollywood.

  When I called out to Hava for help, she looked down at me. ‘How am I ever going to reach Hollywood and kiss Clark Gable if I have to keep dragging you along?’

  She released her grip on Godfrey, grabbed my outstretched hand, and pulled me up next to her. I liked standing on top of the bronze horse with Hava. We were surrounded by art museums, the National Library, former palaces, and exclusive shops. I felt as if I were a part of the statue of Godfrey of Bouillon as I stood up straight with my long, awkward arms dangling at my side. I didn’t have the figure of Venus de Milo, but I did have my arms.

  Hava had dared me to kiss Godfrey’s lips. It was difficult to climb over the front of the statue because of the horse’s reins and Godfrey’s extended, bronze arms, but when I managed to reach Godfrey’s face, which was as big as a milk kettle, I asked her, ‘Should I kiss him slowly or quickly?’

  A man with a husky voice broke the spell. ‘I think you two young ladies ought to climb down.’

  A policeman reached up his hand and helped us gently back down to the cobblestones of the square.

  ‘Ladies, I do not think that your parents would approve of your horse-riding adventures, particularly yours.’ He glared meaningfully at me.

  Hava was exasperated that everyone seemed to know who my father was. ‘Do you think that if we kissed Clark Gable in Hollywood your father would find out as well, given all his spies?’ I shrugged.

  For the rest of that afternoon we pretended that no matter what we did, there were Belgian army spies keeping track of the two wild girls trying to escape Belgium on a secret mission to kidnap Clark Gable.

  Now, in front of my house, Sergeant De Waden placed his right foot into the silver stirrup that dangled against Charlotte’s muscular flank and, in a single motion, lifted himself up into the saddle of the great horse. He leaned down, extended his arm and said, ‘I will pull you up behind me. Swing around and hold onto my waist.’

  Previously, he had always led Charlotte, while I watched the world go by from her broad back. But circumstances had changed: Seargeant De Waden had been promoted and his confidence and self-assurance had advanced accordingly. His gesture was protective, sure – something comforting in a world that was becoming increasingly unpredictable.

  Without a second thought, I extended my hand to him, and again noticed the softness of his.

  ‘Now, when I say three, give yourself a little bounce from the cobblestone as I lift you up.’

  When Hava had pulled me up onto the bronze horse in the Royal Park, her hair had spilled over her face, and when I was finally at her side, she had brushed the hair out of her eyes. It was the first time I realized that she was beautiful.

  ‘One. Two. Three!’

  I pushed with my feet against the cobblestone, giving myself a slight bounce, and then all at once, I was airborne, lifted in a sudden, quick motion. Sergeant De Waden had the strength of ten bronze statues as he pulled me behind him. I felt like a winter shawl flung onto his back.

  ‘Now, hold onto my waist.’

  I had never held on to a man before, except for my father on my birthday.

  The day I turned sixteen, before I opened my gifts, my father had picked up the music carousel from the parlour shelf. It was a beautiful music box made of porcelain. Three miniature horses, each painted in pastel blue, green, and gold, stood in silence on the carousel, before they rotated in a perpetual chase to the music of Mozart’s minuet from Don Juan.

  My father had cradled the music box in his arms as he wound up the little gears with the key that was inserted at the base. He placed the music box onto the parlour table, extended his hand to me, and then we danced. I held onto his shoulder with my left hand, and held his damaged arm gently with my right. As the soft music clicked and clacked like icicles and wind chimes, my father spun me round and round the parlour.

  Sergeant De Waden guided the horse along the wide boulevard that divided the Royal Park in half and I kept my arms wrapped around his waist. One side of the park was filled with tulips, and the other with azaleas. I remember thinking that there were enough flowers for the entire world in the park that day, or at least enough flowers for my world.

  People did not recognize Sergeant De Waden, but they did recognize Charlotte. Old gentlemen stood up and saluted. Children ran alongside and waved. I held onto the sergeant’s body; his back was stiff, his stomach muscles taut. At one point, just before he signalled to the horse to move into a quick trot, Sergeant De Waden released one hand from the reins and grasped one of my hands as if I was a part of his belt, or holster. The horse tipped backwards slightly and jumped forward quickly.

  Charlotte moved in a sudden rocking motion. The trees seemed to soar above us. People applauded. The clopping sounds of the horseshoes on cobblestones convinced me that with just a simple command we might fly. I held onto the sergeant as the horse entered a full gallop. ‘Hold on!’ the sergeant called out. ‘Hold on!’

  I gripped the sides of his body more tightly. The horse clung bravely to the hard surface beneath us, relishing its ability to run. People’s faces blurred as we flew past. Vibrant flowerbeds transformed into rainbow-coloured canvasses. Children’s laughter caught the breeze, free, alive, joy
ful.

  Without warning, I began to feel as if I were suddenly under water. Sound became muted, drowned out by something louder, close, mechanical. Our bodies seemed to move in slow motion, as time juddered to a halt. The sun dimmed, obscured by an uninvited guest, intruding on one last moment of perfection.

  Then, everything exploded in the roar of angry aeroplane engines, growling, spitting petrol fumes. One after another, propellers cut the air above our heads. And still they came. The horse stopped abruptly, as the sergeant pulled on the reins and stared at the spectacle overhead. People stood still. The sky blackened with aeroplanes – German aeroplanes. Shadow after shadow raced over the cobblestones and disappeared into the tulips. A boy asked his father, ‘Is it a parade?’

  The music of the park’s carousel faded and the ride came prematurely to an end. Parents grabbed their children from the painted saddles and ran.

  Sergeant De Waden turned to me and said anxiously, ‘I must get back to my base.’

  PART III. THE INVASION, 10 MAY, 1940

  CHAPTER 18

  Brutally attacked by Germany which had entered into the most solemn engagements with her, Belgium will defend herself with all of her strength against the invader. In these tragic hours which my country is undergoing, I am addressing myself to Your Excellency, who so often has demonstrated towards Belgium an affectionate interest, in the certainty that you will support with all of your moral authority the efforts which we are now firmly decided to make in order to preserve our independence.

  Telegram from Leopold III, King of Belgium, to Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States, 10 May 1940

  When I was a little girl my father took me to River Meuse, not far from the city of Namur, to visit my great-aunt, who had spent most of her life smoking cigarettes and playing mah-jong with her housekeeper.

  It was summer, but Aunt Dolly refused to install air-conditioning in her house. My father tried to open the window in the room where we sat, and Aunt Dolly scolded him. ‘Don’t you open that window and let in the germs.’ She smacked the table with her open palm with such force that the mah-jong tiles jumped like startled crickets. The game ended, and my father stormed out of the room. He was only a major at the time – a general would have opened the window. My father called to me to follow him. I was only ten. If I had been eleven, I might not have followed him.