“But you said you didn’t receive a letter.”
“Exactly! Father had a thick steel box he kept all of his important documents in. Official things, money, anything grubby hands weren’t meant to touch. If he was composing a letter to me, like Elmo says, that is where it would be.”
“And this box, you know where it is?” said Michel.
Axe pointed across the other side of the lawn, to the huge pile of debris that had, once, been her home. “There. It has to be in there.”
Michel nodded. “Then we will find it.”
Axe snorted. “If it is not in a thousand pieces, it’s at the bottom of a thousand pieces of stone.”
“If you want that box, I will find you that box,” said Michel in a steely voice.
“Michel, that is crazy. Some of those hunks of rubble are huge, and the whole thing is a mess, rubbish tangled together. Not to mention, you’re still recovering.”
“Me? No. As of today, I am recovered.”
“A person does not just decide they are recovered. You cannot dictate to … to a healing body.”
“Of course I can. It’s my body. So I tell you, I am recovered. Besides, those stones aren’t so big,” said Michel and winked. He finished his coffee in three gulps and stood.
Axe remained unsure whether Michel was more brawn or brain. Whether his bluster was an elaborate joke at his own expense or simple self-delusion. Whatever the case, if he wanted to help her keep her farm, Axe was not going to stop him.
He and Axe set to work straight away. It was slow and tough going, for it was no stonemason’s pile of quarried rock, but a knot of stone, wood, mortar and furniture that had been thrown higgledy-piggledy together. Everything seemed to rest on everything else, so not only was it heavy and hard work, it was also infuriating. Michel or Axe would pull on what they thought was a free beam only to lever up rock fifteen feet away, or they would try to lift a large stone and realize mortar connected it to five other stones.
So Michel would swing the sledgehammer and grimace and pretend he felt no pain or discomfit. Broken glass and jagged pieces of metal were littered throughout. Soon Michel had a half-dozen little cuts on his hands. The blood congealed with the chalky dust.
Gradually, new piles emerged, away from the remains of the old house. A pile of stone and mortar, another of wood that could be burned or reused and another of unrecognizable furniture or chattels that were now junk. A fourth, sad pile of possessions that remained recognizable or useful numbered no more than a dozen items.
Everything they pulled from the wreckage stank from weeks of intermittent rain. Clothes, curtains and carpets had begun to rot. Axe supposed she should have started the job much sooner, but it had been too ghastly to consider and she had prioritized getting the farm ready for animals.
Michel fished out a hunk of torn plate iron. It was two hand spans wide and heavy, far too heavy to hurtle miles across the sky, but it surely had. And it was only a fragment. No wonder nothing was left of the house. It came from an artillery shell meant to destroy bunkers and fortresses. Not sweet Belgian cottages.
On the other side of the pile, Axe saw a ceramic cup, miraculously intact. She moved pieces of rubble away and picked it up, cradling a hand beneath its base the way a mother holds a newborn’s head. She removed that hand and held the cup high, like a trophy.
Axe grinned broadly and opened her mouth to call to Michel—to share a small grace amid seemingly unmitigated destruction—when the body of the cup fell away and Axe watched it shatter against stone. Michel did not even turn at the noise.
Axe threw the handle against the rest of the rubbish. There was nothing left. Everything was pulverized, except useless things like a steam iron, a wooden butter bowl, a child’s book she did not remember reading and which she would probably just burn when she needed to make a fire.
She clambered across the rubble and made for the barn. Monster followed. Axe pushed the huge barn door shut, as if she might shut out the misery of the world. She crouched down and scratched Monster’s ears, and tried to stop thinking a repeating cycle of miserable thoughts about what she faced. What so many people in Belgium, France, Russia and a dozen other countries faced—a war that erased families that had struggled so hard and so long for their meager lives.
What her parents had achieved on that land—building a home, building a family, building a life—had to matter and be shown to matter. If she, their sole child, simply returned to Rotterdam without a fight, history would erase them.
Axe’s head rested against Monster’s. A daughter and a dog: how could that be all that was left of two vibrant lives? The notion sickened her, a feeling of dread that coursed from head to chest to stomach.
The door creaked.
“Axe.”
She looked up and found Michel standing at the entrance to the barn.
“Is this the box?”
26
The steel had weathered to the color of zinc. There were dents on every corner, and one enormous depression in the middle of the lid. Axe tried to pry it open but made no headway. She looked to Michel.
He reached across and took the box in the crook of one arm. It was heavy, either filled with heavy things or made of good steel. He used all his force to pull at the lid. It did not move.
“Needs persuasion,” said Michel.
He bashed each of the two unhinged sides of the lid against the table and then tried again, to no avail. He repeated the process, except harder, with more violence. The lid did not budge.
“Hammer?” said Michel.
Axe went to the shelves where the tools were kept. She returned with a hammer and handed it to Michel. He flipped the box upside down and lent it on its back edge, then began tapping at the ridge of the lid. He tapped along its entire length. It did not move.
“Stubborn,” he muttered.
Michel stood and used more force with each tap.
Tap tap tap, tap tap tap.
Monster did not know what to make of the commotion. She grumbled her confusion, then trotted outside. Michel kept at it, his swings growing with force.
“Do you want—” started Axe.
Michel cut her off. “No. It’s almost there.”
The bashing went on and on. Michel muttered expletives under his breath. Still the lid seemed immovable.
“Michel. Michel.”
“Come on you piece of shit,” said Michel. He smashed down with force. The hammer cut a slight tear in the edge of the lid that, with the next blow, tore a centimeter-long gash.
“If that’s how you want it …”
Michel worked at that spot. The steel tore, peeling back, bit by bit. Still it stayed shut. Michel rolled the box with one hand and smashed the hammer in seemingly random spots, as if pulverizing a steak, spinning it around and hitting, spinning, hitting.
“Michel, there must be an easier way.”
He was too fixated, too carried away with his own mad focus on the task to register Axe’s voice.
“Come on!”
He put the box upside down on the table, raised the hammer high above his head and swung with all his force. The hammer head landed sweet on the torn, folded lip. The box flung into the air, twirled and the lid snapped open. Paper and coins flew out.
The box landed ten feet away and turned over in the dirt. Michel and Axe watched paper rain down. A small piece landed at Michel’s feet. He picked it up. He held it in front of his face, a little colored bill, ornate and beautiful, unmistakable as a Belgian fifty franc note.
Axe rushed about, collecting sheets, while Michel finally put the hammer down and collected more notes. Axe held each page up and made a brief examination before moving on. She picked up the fourth sheet, held it close to her eyes and did not move.
“What is it?” said Michel.
“The first page of a letter.”
“Who to?”
“Me. It’s father’s letter to me. Dated …” Axe gasped.
“What is it?”
“The fourteenth day of March. That’s a day before the bomb hit. The day after Elmo says father signed the papers. These are his last words. This is all that’s left.”
Neither Axe nor Michel said anything more. They finished gathering the spilled contents of the deformed box and placed everything on the table. There were five pages to the letter—for Axe’s father, a great deal of writing for just one day—but there was no final page with his signature and expression of love. It was unfinished.
Axe began reading. She stopped and looked up. Michel was watching her, waiting. She realized that, through a series of the most unlikely events, the French soldier was in it with her. He deserved to know.
“I will read it. Out loud.”
“You don’t have to do that,” said Michel.
“Do you not want to know?” said Axe.
“I do, but …”
“Then I will read it.”
27
Axe pushed her hair behind her ears. She took a deep breath and began.
Dearest Axelle,
You sounded well in your last. You seem positively happy with Sven who has written us two more letters now and appears a very nice man, as much as you have said in your own letters. That pleases your mother and I no end. I only wish his lettering was neater.
We know Sven and yourself will have a different life to the one you had here with us and that is good because farming is hard even though it is all I know and I do not want to know anything else except if it is time for lunch and whether it will rain. Old men like me look forward to passing their farm on to a son who will continue their work while they sit and get fat and tell them they are doing it wrong. But we do not miss having a son because you have been the great light in our lives. We are very glad you will marry Sven and he is a good smart boy who will do the right thing, he has promised us that and we believe he will.
We think a marriage in Rotterdam sensible and the matter decided in that regard. Your mother thinks it wise if you set a date and we try to come, then you continue if we cannot. We have heard of some people having problems on the way north and on the border most specially. We know you want us to be there and we want to be there to see the woman you have become. We are proud, you know this.
We have of late been able to set aside a small sum to pay for the marriage, even if it is not in full but some part and that is important to us. Thank Sven and his family for their offer as we do in our last.
I am sorry about holding up your life the way we have. Delaying important things on account of the war seemed sensible some time ago but has become un-sensible or non-sensible since then. Whoever gave me the idea that this German business would be short and quick had rocks in their head and put rocks in mine, about as many as I need for a new fence in the top enclosure. Now I think it might not end for some time and I probably do not need that fence, so I still have the rocks. That is your father making a joke. He is a better farmer than joker and not good enough at either to buy a motor car.
A few weeks ago I spoke to Godewyn who seems to know the history of everything and everywhere or pretends he does. He is a good man for talking over things because he likes talking and does not worry about the things you should worry about and does worry about things that matter not at all. He wonders why smoke rises sometimes and not at others and wanted my opinion. I did not know any answers and did not care to know if he himself finds out, and told him so. There is no room in my head with all the rocks.
Godewyn reminded me of the Hundred Years War. Reminded being a kind way of saying taught when a man my age does not like being taught anything. A man Godewyn’s age cannot help himself and teaches we younger ones anyway (I suppose if I am old he is ancient). The war was a long time ago between France and Britain and lasted one hundred years, with gaps for cups of warm milk and cheese snacks and those things according to Godewyn. When I got home I told your mother that there was a war that lasted one hundred years and she told me that this war now was the same because one hundred years of killing and damage had been done already in just three. As we both know it is from your mother that you get your smarts and she is normally right. She was certainly right about that.
Your mother and I are very well so do not be concerned, the town is not doing so well though. Everybody is talking about when the next wave will come because the British seem very determined about moving the Germans from the high ground. It has been a long time without major fighting of the sort that has done the worst damage and taken many lives, though the artillery guns and smaller movements of troops are of course happening all the time. It never ends. It seems just a matter of time before the war beast finds a new appetite and maybe even greater than before.
The sheep are all gone now. The last were sold off some weeks back. That is the nice way of putting it. They do give money but if you would prefer to keep the animal is that selling? I suppose it is. Other less generous words come to mind as well.
Would you believe I am writing this letter during the middle of the day when I should be working? Perhaps I have become an extravagant man of leisure. As I say there are no sheep and the farm is not what you remember. There is no point in working and yet there is work to be done everywhere. I expect that makes no sense but it makes sense in a way.
Both our families, on your mother’s side and mine, would do the right thing and help us now if we could get back across the front, but we cannot. One tends not to think about how important family is in the good times and only realizes when things are not so good. When I try to remember the boy who decided to come out here and make it on his own it is like looking at a stranger. I do remember he was young and headstrong, which is how older men say fool, but much good came of it such as yourself and your mother and these things I would not trade.
I am unsure how detailed the news you get of the war is there. Perhaps you know they have flattened forests in both France and south of here, something I have not seen with my own eyes but everyone says it is so. If they want to get straight through to the other side bad enough, both sides have enough men and machines to destroy anything. Your mother and I cannot keep hoping the war will go around us and let us be just because there is a forest behind the lucerne paddock to in-commode or dis-commode (have I made any words up yet? Only good ones I am sure) the armies. Men who aspire to become ancient men and wise are meant to face up to realities, not pretend they do not exist or outright defy them. And one reality
Axe put the final page down and sat there, looking at the words. Her father’s last unfinished words to her.
“That is it?” said Michel.
Axe nodded. They sat in silence for a long while.
“It does not say anything about Elmo, or a sale,” said Michel.
Axe looked at him until he looked away. She reached her hand across and placed it on Michel’s. “That is not important. Thank you for finding this. It means a great deal to me.”
“I think … it may not be what you were hoping, but it is a good letter. You are lucky to have such a father.”
“I was. I am. He was decent, and he loved me. I always knew that, and felt it.”
“He was funny.”
“Yes. He was funny. He thought he was funny. So did I, sometimes.”
Michel looked across to the steel box he had retrieved from beneath countless stones and had beaten open with a little more vigor than may have ultimately been necessary. He tapped it with a finger. “I can hammer some of the dents out of this, if you like.”
Axe smiled briefly. “No. The letter is all I need.”
“Will you use it? The letter, I mean.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what he was trying to say. When he sent me off to the safety of Rotterdam, he refused to even talk about selling. ‘Not ever.’ It was that simple to him. But he sounded different in this letter.”
“I suppose three years of war leaves its mark.”
“Yes,” said Axe. “And I was too busy to notice. I was enjoying my nice, safe little life in Rotterd
am.”
“Axe, you are here. You came back to a war front to save their legacy. Few would do that.”
“Please, Michel, you practically swam across a war front!”
Michel snorted and smiled. “I am a soldier. The front is where I belong. It’s different.”
“And I am a daughter. Their only child. Where do I belong?”
Michel shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“Neither do I.”
They said no more. Both were exhausted, Michel physically and Axe emotionally. Neither yet dare breach the levy holding back a reservoir of questions and answers that had swelled from weeks of silence.
Later that evening, they discussed Michel doing a little hunting in the morning. Then, despite the booms of a distant—but not quite distant enough—artillery shower, both slept soundly.
28
The barrels comprised enormous cylinders of steel thrusting meters into the sky. Their weight was measured by the ton, yet the cannons themselves seemed secondary to the incredible wheels that carried them, nearly as tall as the men who stood next to them.
Kranz looked at the guns, at the epitome of industrial warfare. The fact was, neither side lacked for weapons that could wreak massive destruction and death. Kranz had done a few rough calculations. He knew that, together, the Central Powers and the Allies probably had enough weapons to kill every human on the planet. But moving those weapons and deploying those weapons—be it artillery, machine guns, bombs, mines, gas, tanks or men themselves—was the real challenge. It was the great irony of modern war: killing had become easy, while logistics had become hard.
Kranz had the formula for his own special brand of death. He had possessed it for years, kept under lock and key in the basement of his mind. It had been almost too easy to begin and then scale up production, such that they would soon have enough mustard gas to disable tens of thousands of men. All that was left was perfecting how they retrofitted artillery shells to carry mustard gas instead of pure explosives or chlorine and diphosgene.
Michel And Axe Bury The Hatchet (The French Bastard Book 2) Page 11
