by Michael Smth
Henri huffed impatiently and leaned toward her. “No, something’s not wrong. I have things to tell you, but not in front of the whole world. Is there a private spot nearby?”
“There’s a meadow next to the mill stream. It’s quiet. I sit there sometimes.”
“Fine. Tell Pruvot the way there.”
They got into the phaeton. Eva said to the driver, “Head toward Lefebvre, Pruvot. Turn left just after the rickety bridge.” The Mercedes eased away from the convent.
They turned onto the lane tracking the stream. Henri pointed with his swagger stick to a shady spot on the bank. “We’ll sit there, Pruvot. Bring the blanket from the boot.”
They walked the ten meters to the stream bank, and Pruvot spread the blanket. Henri told him, “Fine. Now wait with the car and keep a lookout. I don’t want to be disturbed.” He sat and patted the place next to himself, indicating Eva should join him. “Charming spot,” he said as he tossed a pebble into a pool near the shore.
Watching the circular ripples radiate on the water’s surface, Eva felt anxious.
With his stick, Henri flicked an imaginary speck from the blanket. “Mother Catherine chatters on about all you’re doing at the school.” He set the stick down, its tip touching Eva’s knee, and he picked a twig from the grass. “About how the other girls have come to look up to you.” He snapped the twig in two. “What are you thinking? I told you to shrink into the wallpaper, not be the damn chandelier.”
“Uncle, you said I was doing well, keeping my notebook. I like the other girls.”
“It’s not a matter of what you like. Listen, young lady, you have more important things to do than be a cuckoo bird.” He lit one of his black-papered cigarettes. “Look at the stream flowing by. Tell me what you see.”
“Just the sun’s reflection.” Eva brushed a tear from the corner of her eye. “And that leaf floating by.”
“Aha. You notice what sits on the surface. The sparkle. The leaf. But you miss what’s beneath it—an underwater rock. See the ripples just there?” He pointed with his stick to a faint swirl on the water. “I’m sure there is a stone below. And though you don’t see it, that stone influences the flow of the stream infinitely more than does your leaf. You are to be the stone hiding under the surface, not the leaf everyone sees.”
Eva blinked back tears. “But uncle, Mother Catherine’s become a mother to me. And the girls, they’re like sisters. One of them, Françoise, is the best friend anyone ever had. We—”
Henri snapped his fingers in her face. “Merde, Eva, your friends are dolts, aspiring to no more than serving some lout of a husband. And that stupid nun, content in her mysticism.” He shook his head and sighed. “You are so much more than they are, lucky girl.”
Eva looked shocked. “You speak with such contempt of them. We’re working to lift them, too. Isn’t that so?”
“Of course they’ll be better off in the end. They might be too dull to see it now, but they’ll come around.” Henri raised his arms in frustration. He moved his hand before her face and slowly brought his fingers together in a fist, as if grasping air. “Mon Dieu, what’s important, Eva, is your chance to bend history.”
“Must history be bent?” Eva shook her head slowly. “I sometimes think that for me, being normal, having a family, is enough.” Her eyes blazed through tears. She looked away. “More than enough.”
Henri scowled and rapped her knee with his swagger stick. “Listen child, you have no family! No family but the nation.” He used the rod to turn her face to his. “Your own mother tossed you aside like garbage, for Christ’s sake. We took you in. Became your family. The only one you’ll ever have.” Henri’s face went from hard to soft quick as butter hitting a hot skillet. He reached over and tenderly stroked the hair over her ear. “And we count on you now—for the enemy prepares to jab a spear into our heart.” His fingertips lingered on her cheek. “Even as we speak, he schemes to put us under his dusty boot. Do you see that, for now, we all must sacrifice everything for your family’s survival? Sacrifice everything to usher in the new era? Everything?”
Eva’s lip trembled. “I understand, uncle.”
Henri nodded. “Very well.” He looked around to be sure they were alone. “I did come today to discuss something other than commitment. Important events approach. Just this week I learned that the clock has been wound. That La Folia has begun.”
“La Folia?”
Henri rolled his eyes. “The dance. A Sarabande. Don’t those nuns teach you anything? In olden days, La Folia was a tumultuous dance in which tempo and rhythm swept the dancers into a frenzy. When hostilities break out soon, there’ll be a worldwide Folia from which only one side will walk away. It must be your nation, your family, that’s left standing at the dance’s last note. You do understand, don’t you—it’s the highest virtue to do whatever it takes, to kill if necessary, to save your own family?”
“Yes.” With a finger she traced invisible lines on the palm of her hand as if truth were scribed there. “I understand.”
Henri scowled. “You don’t seem convinced.” He reached inside his coat for the knife he kept in the inner breast pocket. He held the ivory handle before Eva’s face and pushed the release. The shiny blade sprang out obediently. “No such qualms infect Monsieur Knife.” He reflected a shaft of sunlight from the blade into Eva’s eye. “Be more like me. I’d gouge out a heart—even yours—without blinking, if the nation’s good required it. That’s true virtue.” He studied her face. “Of course, I have no need to cut you, since you’re committed. Right?”
Eva faced her uncle. “I am committed to my nation—my family—and her cause.” There was no reservation in her voice.
Henri retracted the blade and returned the knife to his coat pocket. “That’s more like it.” He snuffed out his cigarette. “Now listen up. Our foes are preparing to strike. Soon. Keep vigilant for anything suspicious. Remember, yours are the eyes and ears I count on. Yours and those of my girls in Liege and Namur.” He raised his index finger for emphasis. “Above all, watch the Meuse bridge. Remember, the bridge’s gatekeeper controls all of northern Europe. We must be that gatekeeper! Also keep a sharp eye on the Belgian army facility outside Lefebvre. Watch for troops on the move. Especially foreign troops. I need accurate aircraft numbers. Alert me to anything out of the ordinary, no matter how innocent it seems. Got it?”
“Watch the bridge. And troop locations. Report anything extraordinary….I understand.”
“Fear not, we will counterstrike. If it can be mounted, perhaps we’ll even preempt the enemy’s plan. In the next weeks. A defensive war. An honorable war. In any case, it doesn’t change your role: You are my eyes. Understand?”
Eva nodded.
Henri took her hands. “It’s a glorious time you live in, Eva. The nation, your family, counts on you. Nothing else matters.” He stood. “That does it. We go.”
Nothing more was said until Eva was getting out of the Mercedes at St. Sébastien. Henri grabbed her sleeve. “Don’t you let me down!”
When the other girls saw Eva just before supper they asked about her uncle’s visit.
“Uncle just wanted to tell me some plans he has for a big dance party,” Eva said. “Nothing much to do with us here. He told me a story about stones and leaves.”
“A story!” Bébé clapped. “Perhaps you’ll tell it to us after lights out tonight?”
“Perhaps—” Eva was quiet for a moment. “—If I can find a way. I want so much to tell you. Let me think on it.”
That night Eva lit her story-telling candle to convene the Whispering Owls. She brought the flame close to her face. “This is the story of Bleubec, a new-hatched cuckoo chick. Did you know Cuckoo mothers lay then abandon their eggs in the nests of other types of birds?”
“Yes!” Cami said. “Back at home, we have them living in the woods.”
“Is that so?” replied Eva. “I’ll say Bleubec, too, lives very close by. When cuckoo chicks hatch, they are fed and fled
ged by their surrogate mothers. In Bleubec’s case, she was left with wrens. As different as she looked, you’d think the wrens would see her as foreign, but they did not. She forsook her natural Coo, Coo, Coo trill in favor of a wren’s lilt, and she seemed to fit right in. But little Bleubec wasn’t happy. She was haunted, because her own mother abandoned her. And because she had to live two lives separated from each other by a magic wall.”
Eva bit her lip, as if thinking what to say next. “One life was lived in the secret world of her cuckoo heritage where everything was solid and sturdy like a stone set in mortar. And the other was spent in the world of the wrens, one of freedom and warmth, as soft as a leaf. But soft things don’t last. What Bleubec hated most was the wall of silence between her worlds. She longed to tell the wrens what she mustn’t say—that their world couldn’t last and its passing would be painful, but that the new one, the one of stone, would be best in the end.”
Clarisse interrupted, “Blondie-head, this has to be the worst fairy tale ever. Better stick to your stories about Mother Swan and her silly woodland school.”
The other girls nodded shyly.
Laetitia took Eva’s hand. “It’s just that we like the other stories better, Eva.”
“That’s fine,” Eva said. “Soon I’ll have some new characters for Mother Swan to deal with. Some geese, maybe. You’ll find that more interesting.”
“Geese are funny,” Bébé laughed, pantomiming a goose’s waddle.
“Perhaps,” Eva said, “and if not, I’ll try to make them so.”
May 10, 1940
It was before dawn when the racket woke Eva. For the first few moments, drifting in that hazy transition between sleep and waking, she was angry that her birthday celebration had turned chaotic when the cake burst into flames. Then the haze cleared, and Eva realized that while both celebration and cake had been dreamt, the chaos was real.
“Get up immediately, my flowers!” Agitation frosted Mother Catherine’s voice. “Don’t take time to dress. Carry your school uniform down to the chapel vault. Move quietly and quickly.” The nun helped Estelle, the crippled girl, down the line of beds to the staircase.
Dani sat up in bed. “Mother, is it a fire?” she bawled.
“No, I fear war has come down on us. Now do just as I instructed. Quickly!”
Eva was last in a string of girls heading through the dark dormitory to the chapel. She dawdled, transfixed by the thought that what she’d waited so long for had finally begun: Her nation righteously confronting evil. An effete Europe reborn, cleansed. A day, as Henri put it, “to tell your children about.”
On the stairs she heard a humming sound and stopped at the stairwell window to look and listen. Over several moments, hum turned to drone and then to angry buzz. Growing louder. Coming closer. The sound became a screech. Then Eva heard the staccato tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. Like a distant snare drum. The drumming got closer, louder, more insistent as the screech became a tortured roar. Peering out the window, at first Eva saw nothing but the purple dawn. Then it came hurtling by, so close she jumped back. The spectacle riveted her gaze: Plane, flames, smoke, in that order. It was a biplane, cartwheeling a wild, earthward arc. Its sputtering engine spat sooty licks of flame and belched billows of black smoke. It passed by the window so close Eva could see the pilot, a rag doll pitching about in the open cockpit. As if the air were syrup, the plane seemed to move in slow motion. The drama ended on the hillside pasture beyond the old stable, an orange ball of flame that lit up the garden below the window. An instant later the thud of the explosion smashed into the windowpane, sending a shower of glass shards clinking at Eva’s feet. Stunned by the shocks of flame and blast—and death—she stood frozen, the reflection of orange fire dancing on her face.
It was the barking that unlocked her. Outside, little Caspar raced back and forth between the dormitory door and the garden where he could see Eva in the window.
“Caspie, oh you’re all right. Stay! I’m coming.” Eva stepped back from the window, her slippers crunching glass. She flew down the dormitory stairs like water coursing through a ravine. She bolted through the door to the garden and caught the flying dog. “Caspie!” She held her pet tight. “Oh, the pilot!” Tears filled her eyes. “They tell you about the rosy outcome, but not the thorns along the way.”
Eva heard footsteps on the gravel behind her. She pushed the horror she’d just seen from her mind and wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her robe.
“Child! Thank God I’ve found you!” Sister Arnaude was panting. “What are you doing here? It’s war, you know. Come immediately.” The nun saw the pleading look in Eva’s eyes. “Yes, bring little Caspar. Everyone is waiting for us in the chapel vault.”
“Sister…” Eva’s gaze dropped.
Sister Arnaude looked annoyed. “What is it, child?”
Eva bit her lip. “Who started it?”
“Same as the Great War. The Boche. Always the Boche.”
Eva clutched her dog in the crook of one arm and caught the nun’s sleeve with her free hand. The women headed across the twenty meters to the chapel. As they ran, Eva looked over her shoulder. The horizon-bursting sun had painted the sky pink and lavender. Peaceful. Except for smoke still hanging over the hillside, there was no trace of what minutes before had slashed the heavens. She glanced toward the orchard, looking between the trees for the luminous eyes of her nation’s resolute soldiers. There was only darkness.
The nun tugged the chapel’s massive door open. It swung powerfully, hitting the chapel wall with a clang that echoed through the stone structure. She pulled Eva into the cool darkness of the vestibule and locked the door. Blackness ruled, as if every ray of light had zipped outside just as the door closed. Feeling her way like someone newly blind, Eva followed the nun to the stairs. They spiraled down to the underground vault room, where the nuns and girls of St. Sébastien knelt in the dim light of four candles.
Mother Catherine led the recitation of the rosary. Looking resolute, she nodded to Eva without missing a beat. Icy stares gripped many of the other faces in the vault. The blend of their soft sobs with the communal Ave Marias sounded like the drone of distant aircraft.
Eva wished she could tell them things would be all right in the end.
Sitting with Caspar asleep on her lap, Eva quickly tired of peeling off repetitious Aves and instead surveyed the cavernous vault. She’d been down there just once before and the eerie place fascinated her. As her eyes acclimated to the darkness, she studied the vault’s details: The geometry of the groined arch stonework that came together above her. The tarnished brass candle holders in the four corners of the main chamber, each holding a thick, yellow tallow candle capped with a flickering, flaxen flame. The dark crucifix hanging from the ceiling directly over the small altar. The rack of dusty wine bottles sleeping in the antechamber on the right. The small wooden door on the left, the one Camille said shut in an old nun who’d gone insane. The cold wall stones she’d felt on the stairwell. The flat floor stones, stippled with glittering flecks. The sweet aroma of ancient incense that infused everything. For Eva, the vault’s features were as intriguing as the wrinkles on the face of a centenarian.
When the rosary ended, Mother Catherine gathered the girls around her to sing popular songs from the carefree days after the Great War. When most of the girls joined in, Eva felt the fear in the vault scurry off behind the cobwebs.
After what seemed to Eva an entire day, Mother Catherine sent Sister Arnaude to reconnoiter the outside world. In thirty minutes or so she returned and briefed Mother privately. As they conferred, the vault vibrated with girls’ whispers.
Mother cleared her throat to restore order and spoke in a loud voice that echoed through the chamber. “My flowers, Sister Arnaude has investigated the situation outside. Things seem quite peaceful there, at least for the moment. It is mid-morning. We can now go up to God’s good sunshine and air, but I want you all to stay together in your classrooms. You may read while luncheon is prepar
ed. We hope to hear more news from wireless broadcasts and from Father Celion. When I learn anything, I will inform you.”
The girls were giddy with excitement at the twin prospects of leaving the dank vault and learning what parts if any of their wild speculations and whispered rumors were true. For Eva there was also the prospect of celebrating her seventeenth birthday, that Friday, May 10, 1940.
Be the Leaf
In the older girls’ classroom that afternoon, ancient Sister Eusebia got the students seated and ambled off to settle the younger ones next door. The moment she left, Camille ran to the window, the ribbons on her brunette braids dancing behind her like butterflies. Pointing outside, she shrieked, “There in the orchard! Soldiers on black horses…I think.” Like apples tumbling into a bin, wide-eyed girls scrambled to the window. But they found the orchard tranquil. Other such sightings followed, and in every case, the alarms proved false. The remains of the downed aircraft, its burned hulk and the black-smudged pasture around it, would have fanned the fires of excitement, but they were hidden from view by the old stables and Eva told no one what she’d seen. So quiet, accompanied by disappointment, began to blanket simmering fear. It was in that broth that eight St. Sébastien girls, including Eva and Françoise, clustered together.
Isabelle from Namur was nicknamed Soleil—Sunshine. Pushing her fingers through her auburn hair, she said, “Call me selfish, but I say tough luck if the muddy boots of war tromp someone’s toes. My heart’s racing, and I like it!”
“Call you selfish, Soleil?” said Clarisse LaCroix. “I’d call you easily amused. What have we found? A few crumbs of excitement. Well, it leaves me wanting. Wanting the whole cake.”
Camille fingered her braids. “How’s this for cake, Clarisse? Down in the vault, I dozed off and dreamed of armies moving on the hillsides like swarms of insects. It was tingling terror, seeing those swarms seethe in battle! Then, merde, I woke up.”