A Nail, a Rose

by Madeleine Bourdouxhe

  The worried nurse picked up the baby, dumped her back in the cot and went off, crossly.

  She hadn’t responded or protested to the nurse but as soon as she was alone she leaned over again, took the baby in her arms and held her very close.

  She could pick out the sound of an engine coming closer, as if a plane was diving, swooping back up and then diving down again. Twice the whole building trembled, from basement to rooftop, in the space of a few seconds. She looked at the window near the bed, at the window-panes. Hail, Mary, she thought, Hail Mary full of grace… Mary might have been full of grace but she wasn’t timorous. One fine night she stopped somewhere, got down from her donkey to give birth and then got straight back on the donkey to continue her journey. If only she could just get to the corner of the room, so that she could stand up with the baby next to the cupboard, far enough from the windows…

  She threw off the blankets and held the baby close, tucked in her left arm. With her free hand she groped around, looking for something to support her, then, sliding out of the bed, she tested her legs. Her head span, her legs buckled, and her body gave way under her. She lay down on the bed again and closed her eyes for a moment. Ah well, she thought, the Virgin Mary was the Virgin Mary, after all; I am only me. I’m going to need two or three more hours’ rest – then I’ll be able to move, I’m sure of it. The windows and the walls have stood up to the bombardment so far, and no doubt will continue to do so for two or three more hours. Leaning back against the pillows she stayed there, quite calm and still, clasping her baby in her arms.

  *

  How quiet the room had been on that first day, filled with sun, the sunshine warming the blankets and her hands that lay motionless on top of the folded-back sheet. But the wave of silence was strangely unreal; it was an anguished silence because of the contrast with what was happening elsewhere. She propped herself up a little and turned towards the window, straining to catch the words and sounds wafting up on the air, trying to imagine what was happening in the street.

  ‘I can see something shining up there… I bet they’re going to fire.’

  ‘I think I can see something too – a long way off, between two trees?’

  ‘There are lots of French soldiers on the ramparts…’

  ‘Oh well, that’s all right then.’

  But the nursing-home was in a side-street, a long way from the centre, and she couldn’t often hear anything very significant; mostly she just heard the same noises again and again. They seemed to respond to each other and to repeat each other so monotonously that they were tedious, irritating – they seemed pointless. After the alarm siren would come the gunfire, and she’d count the muffled, rhythmic shots – loud, soft, distant, close – then there’d be silence again, and the ‘alarm over’ siren would sound. Minor hubbubs that no longer bore any resemblance to the chaos of the night, minor hubbubs that marked the passage of time and frayed the silence.

  The cup and the plate that she’d used for lunch hadn’t been cleared from the table and the nurses were up to their eyes. Trolleys were rushing up and down corridors; doors were opening and shutting and telephones ringing; it was as though the night’s tumult had precipitated a wave of births, a constant flow of women in labour. It seemed as if every baby that was supposed to have been born in the fortnight to come had decided to be born on that day.

  Looking around her, she saw the cup and the plate, the suitcase she’d left on the chair when she came in yesterday morning, the flowers in the vase, the enamel-painted table and bed. She felt the strength of the sun on the blankets, on her hands, and on her face, and she felt the peace and silence of the room – this room of hers that had been abandoned by time.

  She straightened up a little and took the child in her arms. The air was heavy with smells: the smell of the lilies of the valley in the vase, the smell of the wooden furniture, the smell of the different fabrics in the room. Now the air had brushed the baby’s nostrils, the sun had touched her hair, and time had smoothed her hands. In the dawn hours her mother’s hands had touched her cheeks, her mother’s warmth had impregnated her body. My beautiful little daughter, here is your first day on earth.

  The road had come to life again.

  ‘Seems things aren’t going well at the border…’

  ‘It’ll take some time before reinforcements arrive…’

  Closing her eyes, she could see roads, villages, stations, frontiers. New images came to her, grafted on to other images from the distant past; they intermingled, alternated, became jumbled up in her mind. Memories came to her from the source of her being, from the beginning of time. And through the sounds, words and smells of today, past times came overwhelmingly to life, in all their minute details.

  She recalled a morning in August, as stunning as this morning in May, when she’d been an innocent child holding her parents by the hand, a child who, not knowing the meaning of possessions, without memories of her own, was leaving nothing behind her. She had seen the river Meuse downstream, never upstream before. From new roads, new towns and unfamiliar country, she learned, for the first time, the meaning of discovery. She watched hands joining and parting, handkerchiefs waving, and she learned the meaning of friendship and the agony of parting. On a station platform she saw a woman kiss a man, kiss him again and drench him in tears. As she watched the woman turn away, stumble against a pile of leather equipment, haversacks and mess-tins, and lean desolately against a wall, arms empty and heart wide open, she learned the meaning of conjugal love. And when the train stopped in the middle of a field, as the sun was setting, bathing everything in beauty and turning the trees purple and gold, she learned something of the sweetness of an evening landscape.

  As she lay in this furnished room she heard, from the depths of her being, the voices of her mother’s father bringing her home from school, telling her that one day at Isaphan a gardener had been afraid of death. She didn’t really understand, but it was good to feel his rough hands in hers, and to learn the meaning of memories. Her schoolbooks might be able to tell her that her country was divided into nine provinces, that the world contained five continents, that John heard Jeremy’s dog barking, and that René ate rice and made fun of Robert – but now she was learning from sentences like this: ‘Snacks available 24 hours’; ‘Saponite washes whiter’; ‘When you hear gunfire keep to the right-hand pavement’; ‘On to the bridge-head’. Legs aching, eyes wide open, she walked on through the wide jostling avenue, full of fumes from the brightly lit stalls. She was at the very heart of life.

  This May morning had become mixed up with that August morning long ago; here she was at the source of her memories, at the very source of her being. The stillness in the room and the noises outside made her susceptible to the plight of that child from the past; it was as if the child was calling out to her, and she felt a lump in her throat.

  She felt sure that the very colours and sounds, the very sensations through which life revealed itself to her, inhabited the same streets, people, trees, rivers, fragrances and daylight as they had for that child from the past, still so alive in her memory. From you to me, she thought, from me to that other child; perhaps, today, just from you to her…

  In the meantime, the fortifications erected by the men were falling to soldiers who were as handsome as they were strong.

  2

  There were people everywhere, men, women and children, twenty or twenty-five in a lorry, seven or eight in a vehicle meant for four. She was stretched out in the back of a lorry, her tiny baby on top of her, looking straight ahead with impatience in her eyes. She’d brought it upon herself, she thought, getting caught up in this escape – yet she wasn’t really fleeing or abandoning anything, she was merely responding to an appeal. The clarity of her memories guided her like a star.

  She didn’t dare look around her yet; she was allowing her body time to adjust to the bumpy ride. Touching her strangely slack belly she readjusted her dressings, made sure her milk was coming through and checked that the
baby was properly covered up. Then she closed her eyes for a moment, trying to distract herself, to think about something other than the wheels bumping over the road. She was frightened, in spite of herself.

  The first few hours passed quickly; she knew the road well, and anyway had no control over the passing of time. Then, reaching a queue of other vehicles, the lorry slowed down and a queue began to form behind it. So long was the convoy that you couldn’t see either the end of it if you looked back or the start if you looked ahead. It seemed as though the whole human race was on the road: men and women, young and old, ugly and beautiful, in cars, lorries, bicycles, tricycles, push-chairs, handcarts – even on foot, carrying heaven knows what possessions in their arms.

  Engines over-heated and the vehicles came to a halt, defeated by the slow pace. The border was at least five kilometres away. On the right-hand side of the road there was a large building set among green trees and terraces where you could sample all the products that came from bee-keeping. First five, then a hundred, then a thousand starving people rushed to this place and came out with their arms full of paper bags: honey sweets, honey gingerbread, honey caramels. Lord, what a lot of honey in this dawn of war.

  But where is the war? And who is the war? Perhaps it would be easier if one could find a symbol for it. But the memory of a great helmeted goddess, strong, impassive, feared, revered and dispensing glory, for whom soldiers would enlist and lay down their lives, had faded now. Perhaps she was all around us, behind and in front and among us, crumbling and above our heads… perhaps that was her symbol overhead, see, three fine bombers passing through the sky of an early summer. People looked up, gingerbread in hand. ‘Take cover, for God’s sake, take cover!’

  But it was hard to know where to take cover; the road was now full to bursting. The bombers passed over without firing. How good the honey was, slipping so meltingly down the throat.

  Shouts of departure, and everyone dashed to the lorries before the doors clanged shut and they got going. They travelled at least two kilometres at top speed, which seemed a hopeful sign, but then the convoy stopped, blocked by another going the other way: this one was made up of big waggons covered with tarpaulins stretched over hoops; soldiers led the horses that pulled them. This convoy stopped too, brought to a standstill by the traffic jam, and conversations took place between the two.

  ‘Where are you supposed to be joining up?’

  ‘We’re going to Ostend. We’re supposed to await orders there.’

  ‘Cigarette?’

  ‘I won’t say no… like some wine?’

  ‘God, I’m dying for some.’

  ‘Your people must be hot, packed in like sardines in this sun.’

  She raised herself slightly, holding on to the handle of one of the doors with her right hand, supporting the baby with her other arm, and looked at the soldiers. She was less interested in their helmets and jackets than in their faces, and their eyes, and the colour of their hair. The two that were talking were tall and thin, Parisians called Jacques and René, and there was another one, the youngest, who was stout and blue-eyed and determined-looking. He’d unbuttoned his jacket, he was suffering badly from the heat. Their faces, eyes and whole bearing were those of grown men, but if they were asked their names, they’d give them in full, including all their first names.

  ‘Looks as though the road’s clearing…’

  They raised their hands in salute and exchanged goodluck farewells. Still half propped up, looking through the mica panel in the hood of the lorry, she watched them go. Some of them remounted the horses, others set off on foot alongside the trucks, others sat at the back of the lorries. The whole convoy moved off. No shots were aimed at the sky. All those feet on the road, soldier after soldier, taking long masculine strides, each with their own way of walking, their own special characteristics.

  ‘God Almighty, I’m hot. D’you want a cigarette? They’re Belgian, it’s good tobacco. “If you’ve a Lucifer to light your fag…”’

  ‘Idiot. Shall we eat some of that gingerbread that the kid gave us? Hey there, horse-rider, would you like a piece of gingerbread? While we’re going so slowly you might just as well stretch your legs.’

  All those feet treading the dust with long masculine strides. Lucien-Georges Gaudinet, Pierre-François-Emile Forgeron, Albert-Amédée Léridan. No shots had been fired at the sky. She could still see the soldiers, in the far distance, but only just. Farewell, unknown soldiers who weren’t leaving for war.

  She lay down again in the well of the lorry. And now this convoy got going too – not surprisingly, since they had each blocked the other.

  She looked at the baby: she could start to drink her mother’s milk now. She half-opened the big dressing-gown that enveloped her completely, and tried to unbutton her nightdress, but it was too tight.

  ‘Has anyone got a pair of scissors?’

  ‘Yes, but they’re at the bottom of a suitcase that’s at the bottom of the lorry…’

  The material finally gave beneath her fingers and teeth, releasing her swollen breasts.

  It’s not easy to put an infant to your breast for the first time. The baby tried to suck, gave up, tried again, then gave up altogether. She held her head against her, sensitive to the slightest movement from her baby’s clumsy lips. She was vaguely aware of some commotion around her but, preoccupied with her task, she barely noticed that the lorry had stopped again. She moved in the anxious, rather awkward manner of the new mother. The baby drank a little of her milk, and she buttoned up her nightdress and sighed; she was exhausted. This time they had stopped for good: it seemed the border was closed, and no one else would be able to cross it today.

  The activity on the road was at its height but on both sides the meadows and fields were quiet, drenched in heat. The great peace of the evening was rising slowly from the very edge of the horizon.

  Some women emerged from the houses that were dotted along the road, with water, wine, blankets; one of them offered mother and child a room for the night. Seeing that there was something going on and that a woman was being helped down from a lorry, the soldiers who had stopped on the other side of the road came up to them and said, ‘Hang on a minute, we’ll help you out.’

  They came back with a stretcher, and within moments they’d got her on to it and were carrying her. The house was tiny, the stairs winding and narrow. After several tries at mounting them one of the soldiers said:

  ‘There’s nothing else for it, if we’re going to get round that corner we’ll have to stand the stretcher upright.’

  ‘We mustn’t do that,’ the other one said. ‘I know what I’m talking about, if you stand up abruptly it can bring on an embolism.’

  Laughing, she said:

  ‘There’s no room for an embolism in a place like this! Come on, help me stand up.’

  Then she quickly added:

  ‘But take the child, because if I were to fall…’

  The third soldier, who was leading the way, leaned over and took the baby, holding her almost at arm’s length, as men do.

  Once the corner was turned, they lowered the stretcher and went into the room. It was very small, with a bed so high that it almost touched the low ceiling. One of the soldiers took the woman in his arms, and as he carried her to the bed he stumbled, so that they both nearly fell; all four of them laughed. When her baby was given back to her she held her close, sighing with relief.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘And I can’t even offer you a drink…’

  They chatted for a few moments, and the soldiers told her that the traffic jams on the road had separated them from their regiment. There were quite a few of them, in two lorries, and they didn’t know whether they were meant to join the others in Ostend or in Furnes. One of them had gone off to make a phone call; he would be back by now, they said, so they had better go down and find out.

  How odd, she thought to herself: a very small room, simple, clean and bare; a woman, a newborn child, and three soldiers.
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  It was a bold and beautiful morning, like yesterday and the day before, and through the little window in the room she could see wide, peaceful fields. Above them the light was vaporous and you could smell the nearness of the sea: the green, grey North Sea.

  She took a few steps around the room; she seemed to be all right. After all, she couldn’t always have a stretcher and three soldiers to help her.

  Her companions from the lorry helped her downstairs but when they got outside she walked on her own. She sat on the bench in the lorry, like everyone else: that made an extra place and was something of a relief to those in the front, who were sitting on top of each other. The lorry started up, she felt the wheels turning and turning. An hour, an hour and a half, two hours… and then suddenly it speeded up, until they were going very fast, and they crossed the border almost without noticing.

  ‘Carry on, carry straight on. No, don’t bother to show your papers. Go on, and hurry.’

  When they came to crossroads, there were sometimes police or soldiers signalling them on. It was like a fever of haste. And everyone did what they could, went as fast as possible, even tried to overtake, but there was no point, because you only had to dovetail back into the convoy.

  Arriving at dark Dunkirk, they crossed the town at speed. They saw some sailors sitting around on walls – waiting for something, perhaps, or just bored. After that the convoy spaced out, cleared a little, some vehicles taking one direction, others another. Now it was possible to overtake, as some vehicles went more quickly than others. Four or five lorries went past, one behind the other.

  The baby was making some progress with feeding and had drunk all the milk from her mother’s breast, but she still seemed hungry.

  They stopped for the night in a village in the Somme. It was always the same: lorries banked up at the side of the road or in courtyards, and houses full, so the last arrivals had to sleep in the vehicles or in barns. A woman came out of one farm and, seeing the mother and child, said: