by Nōnen Títi
“Better still, they may have some prisoners to toy with, because, like you said, they don’t see them as human beings. It’s a game played far from home and with the lives of others. The details don’t matter. As long as you belong to one group, you can easily find something wrong with the others to use as an excuse. For you it was girls against boys because it suits your age group, and this entire exchange of power and pleasure, fear and anger, was run by hormones.”
Grandpa Will relights his cigar and sends Mariette to the kitchen to get lemonade and four glasses. “Go hold the doors open for her,” he tells me.
Neither Granannie nor Dad say anything to us and Rowan must have gone to bed already. The lemonade means that Grandpa Will isn’t finished yet either. Indeed, as soon as we all have a drink he starts again.
“Think of history, each of you. Name me a hero, Mariette.”
“Uh, I don’t know.”
“A hero from the past.”
“Jeanne d’Arc?”
“Right, what happened to her?”
“…She got burned at the stake,” Mariette answers. “Name me an individual, Jerome; somebody who didn’t follow the masses.”
“Socrates.”
“What happened to him?”
“He was sentenced to death by poison.”
“Name me a powerful leader, Stuart.”
“Alexander the Great.”
“Right, how did he die?”
“He overdosed, I think.”
“Did he die in combat?”
“No.”
“Who died in the wars he fought and won?”
“The enemy.”
“Yeah, and half his own army; the foot soldiers, the followers. And a few more, like his generals when they didn’t obey his orders. They died by his hand. Name another hero, Mariette.”
“Achilles.”
“Doesn’t count. That’s mythology. A real-life brave person, not too ancient.”
“I don’t know.”
“Another individual, Jerome?”
“Ghandi.”
“Certainly. He could have also been Mariette’s very brave man. He dared to stand up weaponless against the British army. Another leader, Stuart.”
Stuart also hesitates.
“There are plenty. I didn’t say they have to be brave or fair leaders.”
“Napoleon.”
“Sure. Any other true heroes or people of outstanding merit?”
“William Wallace.”
“Fine. Anybody else?”
We come up with a few more, but increasingly fail to find any.
“Either your knowledge of history is pathetic or maybe there were never many heroes or individuals around, at least no famous ones. You see, remembering and honouring heroes of war is trying to forge a reality to an example of an ideal past that never existed. We don’t need to honour the soldiers of war because those still alive weren’t heroes. The medals they wear weren’t given to them because they stood out from the troops but because they did what they were told. There’s no place for individuals in an army and those who survived were not heroes – unless you consider it heroic to drop a bomb from a plane.
“Some were lucky; they never encountered the enemy face to face or if they did they were on the winning team. Those who were captured squealed or at the very least obeyed their captors in order to survive and rightfully so, but they live a lie. They give in to the worship so they can believe in their own innocence. They say they only fought to defend their country, for freedom, for peace even, but not for themselves and so they accept the medals as a reward for their sacrifice. But not one of them spoke out against the war or against the orders of their superiors, or they wouldn’t have survived.”
Grandpa Will replaces his drink with the last bit of his cigar. He almost singes his moustache trying to relight it.
“Real heroes don’t count on the glory; they don’t believe they’ll be rewarded for their actions in some afterlife. Real heroes are those who believe this here is all there is and still risk that one life to fight an unrecognized battle to help others. Most real heroes die alone in nameless prisons; they lie in unmarked graves without medals, and they remain unnamed in history.”
Grandpa Will stands up from his chair, tells us to wait here, and leaves the room. Not a word or a look has been exchanged between us when he returns with a new cigar, a box and a book.
“It makes no difference who is fighting in a war or what the reasons for it are. There is no right reason for war and bad behaviour happens on both sides. Those who are in power will commit atrocities to the enemy whether they are soldier, civilian, woman or child. I’ll give you some examples of that in a minute, but you need to remember that every victorious army has murdered and raped, just like you abused your power over the girls and just like Mariette and Lizette victimized Jacqui and Gabi, who could be considered the civilians in your case. They were powerless, so it was easy. It made you feel better to get somebody back for calling you a child or for having played some pranks on you.
“So don’t accept excuses about foreign soldiers being brainwashed and ours being honourable; every army does it. The Germans did it during the occupation, the Japanese did it in New Guinea. The English did it in Scotland, the French in Africa, the Dutch in Indonesia, the British in India, the Russians, the Chinese, the Spanish, you name it. And not only in wars. Just remember all the tribal people who lost their lands, their lives and their children to white conquerors. And look at who still live on the fringes of society. Neither is it something of the past; the Americans are doing it in Iraq today. I’m not saying every soldier, but every army has them.
“The only times these atrocities are mentioned is after the wars, unless it’s leaked in some way. In those cases governments scramble to put up committees to investigate and reassure the public. The soldiers caught are instantly disowned by their government, which will apologize and say it was a mistake, but it wasn’t. These activities are known and often tolerated by the ruling armies because it boosts the morale of their soldiers. So don’t be fooled by the denial and don’t be fooled by the memories that are allowed to be shared. Remembering wars is not a means of stopping them no matter what people say.”
Grandpa Will sits back. He seems more relaxed. His tone is less harsh and he lights his new cigar. It looks like he’ll be telling us another story. He nods.
“I didn’t fight in the war. I was three years old when it started, but I was there and I remember the vibes. I saw the looks in the soldiers’ eyes. I heard the tone of their voices, even if they didn’t speak French. I know what they felt and I know what the civilians felt. We played it out in our games, us kids. In our games we sought revenge too.
“My mother and father never involved themselves with the resistance, but my mother’s brother Richard did and one day he was caught. He had also learned that you need to be brave and so he refused to talk. I was barely six when the soldiers came. My mother pushed us into the closet, me and my sister Sabine, who was nine. That was all the closet could hold. We only heard what happened through the door. More than anything I remember Sabine’s hand over my mouth to keep me quiet and I can to this day recall the sound of her beating heart next to my ear. When the soldiers left both my parents and three older siblings were dead. So was Richard’s entire family, babies included.
“Your grandpa Jerry’s father, who was our uncle, took us in and shortly after the war we came over here to live with our aunt Marie, my mother’s sister, on this farm. Marie and Rurik had three children left, but only two still lived here. Annie, your gran, had run away from home and lived in town with Jerry.
“Now it already wasn’t totally legal then for cousins to marry, but we were registered as Jerry’s siblings for the journey. It was also not uncommon in those days for more than one child of one family to marry into another, so I married Beth and Sabine eventually married Glenn. That’s why you’re all much more closely related than you may know. None of you have known Sabine.
The only sister left to me, the one who saved both our lives in that closet, died giving birth to your uncle Guillaume.
“Now, don’t think the people here were safe from the war. The three brothers of Annie, Glenn and Beth died as soldiers because they went into the army to fight. Two of them received medals for bravery for having died heroes. Because that’s what heroes do, you see: they die. Only in stories do they survive the odds, you understand that? If you, Stuart, hadn’t recovered your common sense fast enough to realize that this was your cousin, Lizette would have drowned. She was trying to be brave. Well let me tell you all something: Being brave is being stupid. It’s being stupid with the lives of others, like Richard was. The correct attitude is self-preservation. It’s nature’s way. Remember that even the lion will avoid injury in the pursuit of a meal. It’ll go hungry in favour of its safety; it knows to relinquish power in the name of survival.
“So maybe you’re ashamed for squealing or for trying to blame someone else or for following the rules of your group rather than coming to the aid of someone on the other side. That’s called survival instinct. Our society repudiates that instinct, so you feel guilty. Now you have to learn to live with it.”
He takes a drink and sighs. “Maybe the saddest reminder of the war in that game you played is in the names. One of Granannie’s brothers was called Stuart. My brothers were Jacques and Antoine and my thirteen-year-old sister was Lizette. And you, Jerome, you were named after my father. That’s how we wanted to remember them, through a new generation; a generation that could be spared from war memories. Now we think that was a mistake, that it’s better talked about after all, which is what I’m trying to do right now. I want you to put yourself in their place. Just think for a moment what you’re doing with your life. Are you making plans for the future? Are you learning a job or are you hoping to die in a war tomorrow? Is that the future dream boys should have? Because those soldiers were your ages.”
Grandpa Will opens the box he has been holding and shows us two medals pinned onto a cushion: Alistair Leclerq, Stuart Leclerq.
“Do you know why Alistair and Stuart went to the other side of the world to fight in a war? Do you want to know why their father kept these medals on display and told all of us the tales of bravery and victories –the medals, which were here, because the boys were not? This is what they died for: a piece of metal on a ribbon in exchange for a young life and your great grandfather Rurik was proud of them for having risked their lives and lost them. Do you know why Rurik was so eager to take that risk, why he encouraged Stuart, who was only just seventeen, to join his brother? Do you want to know why Richard risked the lives of his children and grandchildren, siblings, nephews and nieces by going into the resistance? It was because they hated the Germans that much. It was because they, too, had been in a war. They had met before, during what is known here as the Great War, the First World War. That’s when Rurik met his wife, Marie, who was the sister of my mother and of Richard.”
Grandpa Will opens the small book he brought down and turns the pages, which are yellow and look fragile, very carefully. “This is Marie’s diary. Dated the twenty-first of November, 1918: ‘Ten days since armistice. Today I married Jean-Etienne Leclerq. Thanks to our dear priest, Rurik Paterson no longer exists. Who would have thought my children will carry my last name into the future. Jacqueline was my maid of honour, but Richard is still in the clinic. We couldn’t wait for him any longer. In five days’ time I shall embark on a long journey to start a new life in Australia and I shall not be sad to leave behind the memories of this God-forsaken war’.” Grandpa Will stops reading and carefully closes the book.
“Rurik and Marie arrived here early the next year, but soon found they weren’t welcome. Rurik’s father, Alistair, disowned him for his name change. He called Rurik a coward for having fled the war. Like Rurik did later, Alistair would have preferred his son to have died in the war instead of coming back and giving him grandchildren. And Rurik was the only one able to do this. His three brothers did not survive the war and none of them died in battle. They were still young when the war started, but once they were old enough and the number of casualties grew, more and more pressure was on the family to do their duty. So they went, possibly for no other reason than to avoid being jeered at in the streets, possibly because they dreamed of being heroes and saving their country. The first to go was Donnach in 1916. He was one of the first to end up in Europe. All we know is that he went mad, from fear maybe. He hung himself. The next was Finlay, a year later. He ended up too close to the poison gas, was taken prisoner and made to work in German mines, but the lack of food and disease killed him.
“Rurik and his younger brother John went together. They were like many young Anzac soldiers serving under a British officer and that caused problems. The Brits didn’t appreciate the blatant lack of respect for rank. The officer was usually no older than his troops and made officer, as they did, not because he had skill or experience but because of the social status of his parents. In other words, the soldiers’ lives were in the hands of incompetent kids. The hurt pride in these kid-officers for the jokes would once have meant the soldiers were flogged, but flogging was abolished by then – not in schools, of course, but in the army. The replacement for this was called ‘field punishment number one’, which came down to the offending soldier being tied up in the line of enemy fire without food and things like that – torture for power, no more. And in some cases death by firing squad, like for falling asleep on sentry duty or for making mistakes like drunkenness or leaving a post. John was accused of desertion for arriving at his post an hour late. Rurik protested this and as a result he was ordered to take a place in the firing squad. His choice was between doing it or ending up in the same situation. He probably didn’t aim, but he did stand there and that night he ran. French villagers took him in. They were Marie, Richard and their sister Jacqueline, my mother.
“After the war he could not come back here under his own name or he would have still been tried and faced death for desertion. Marie married him to save his life. She was twenty-six by then. Rurik was just nineteen. The only reason I know all this is thanks to this little memoir. He never talked about it, nor did Marie.
“That was Rurik’s story, but Marie and her siblings didn’t just help him to do a good deed. They hated soldiers and for good reason. The Germans occupied France and Belgium from 1914 onwards. As I said before, those in power will commit atrocities wherever they go, usually under the influence of alcohol or in an attempt to show off, or as a replacement for being put down by a higher-ranking officer. Soldiers commonly used civilians as shields against snipers, often children. Remember these are the same brave soldiers who bring the medals home.
“Early in 1915 a group of German soldiers walked into the village where Jacqueline, Richard and Marie lived. All three were in their early twenties and worked in their father’s bakery. They were in the back when the soldiers came in. Their father, Gerard, had remarried and had two small children, who were with their mother in the shop. The soldiers demanded bread. They started to harass her, poking her with their weapons. When Gerard came to her aid, he was instantly killed. Then they violated his young wife and their seven-year-old daughter before stabbing them to death. Then they helped themselves to loaves of bread by pricking them on their bayonets. That’s when they found baby Etienne asleep in his crib, so they did the same to him. They walked out into the streets carrying his pierced body above their heads. The child may have never had the chance to wake up. Richard and his sisters were in the rafters. It was get out and be killed for sure, or stay hidden. Maybe it was easier for the girls to live with this later, but Richard never got over it, so his anger at the Germans perpetuated into the next war, for which Jacqueline still paid with her life.
“You see, Richard’s guilt drove his hate as Rurik’s shame did, but if he hadn’t run, none of you would exist today. Now can you see why it has to stop? Can you understand why this family refuses to have anyth
ing to do with war ceremonies and why I want you kids to talk about what went on between you, to get the hurt on the outside so you don’t use your unresolved anger to start yet another war, whether with each other or at school? You can all go to bed now.”
Grandpa Will picks up the book and leaves the room. I watch my own fingers as I push them together so hard they turn white. Two warm lines itch on my cheeks. One runs down a bit faster than the other. But my fingers don’t want to let go of their play to wipe them away because if they do, the tingling in my arms and chest might become a quake and tear my heart apart. I have no idea how long I sit there like that, aware of Stuart’s breathing beside me but not able to look at him. Neither he nor Mariette move, so it’s me who eventually leaves first after all, in need of my own diary, needing to be alone.
Dad and Granannie have long gone to bed.
MARIETTE
I feel a bit like Dad must have when he was growing up here; as if I now have three brothers. I kind of like it. Jerome goes walking with Uncle Charl in the mornings. I’m not sure what’s going on with Stuart; he has long talks with Grandpa Will every night. Rowan is nice enough, but he does his own thing.
I still share Granannie’s room, though one of the attic rooms is free and has been offered me. “You can move your things in there, Mariette, if you wish, but I’d be sorry if you did. The bed feels better when I have someone to share it with.” So I stay, because I like her company too. I like telling her my thoughts at night and knowing they’ll never leave that little nest.