by Marian Unn
*****
It was not long after the death of his fiancé that Merek joined the militia. He did not confide his intentions in me, he simply left one day. For years he was gone, and for years I cried every night.
My sister visited me often, even though she lived fifty miles out in the farmland. She would come to visit me every week. I loved her so. She would often ask me to come live with her and her family out there; assuring me that the pain I felt would be so much easier to bear if I would live among my family. I would tell her, “Oh, if only I could leave, perhaps then my heart would heal. But how can I leave? This house is our home and this is where he will return when he comes back.”
“If he comes back,” she would say. Heartless words I know, but she meant all the best for me.
I was very poor living by myself. I spent the little money my husband had left me in raising Merek. I also supported us from the small ration I earned from the selling of blankets, scarves, shirts, pants, and other cloth wares I had made by hand. On occasion, I would sell a doll. They made me four times as much as a blanket, but materials to make the dolls were too expensive to make them often. I was worse off now that Merek was gone than ever before. Jobel’s money was spent; Merek’s small salary from his work at the cobbler’s was gone; and my little business was nearly impossible to manage properly without Merek’s helping hand. It was evident to most of my poor state of living. I would often receive donations of food and small coins from the church. The shop owners would also give me discounts since I had known most of them all my life. Others were close enough to me to be called my friends, and they were all so kind and helpful. It was a truly generous town I lived in then, nothing like it is now.
I was even more disadvantaged than most poor folks. Without Jobel, I was no longer in a position to hear of news of the war. With my low position as a widow whose son was out of the house, I was often the last to hear of any news, whatever it might be. Most information of the war came by a messenger who would gather the most prominent men in town and hold confidential meetings to discuss it. They in turn would tell other men as well as their own wives, and more than one of them was a known gossip.
At the flower shop one day the old owner Mr. Herlet had stared at me for a long moment when I first walked into the store. I did not understand why, but it did not bother me much. He would not meet my eyes, and his moustache scrunched up against his nose as he chewed his tobacco more fiercely than usual. Picking the cheapest bouquet, the best I could afford for my departed Jobel, I admired the fine plumeria. In a low voice, the owner picked a few of them. Tying them together quickly, he handed them to me in the oddest manner I had ever seen him in. “These are on me this time.”
“Why, thank you,” I had said, confused by the solemn look he wore. I noticed the mournful look on many of the townspeople’s faces. Cries echoed through the streets, many from the homes of people I knew well. I wondered what had occurred, but it was not in my nature to pry. It was not until I found my sister waiting for me at my home that I knew that whatever sadness had plagued my town was to plague me as well.
“The military unit 315 was captured by the enemy.” When she said the name of the unit, my heart skipped a beat. It was my son’s. “The sole person who escaped was the son of some lord, bartered off with a bribe no doubt. The word he brought back to the main camp, and to us for that matter, was that they had been sold out. One of their own had informed the enemy of their position. Do you know what he sold them out for? Thirty bags of silver! The greedy scoundrel is still there, too! He watched it all happen! Of course, there was no time for us to counter attack when the enemy came, and so it was a quick and brutal defeat. But those who died in battle were the lucky ones! It is said that the surviving prisoners were beaten, starved, and tortured in the worst of ways. The nobleman’s son himself was barely alive. He said that one by one the soldiers were beginning to die off, some even committed suicide. ‘The cowards,’ he called them, though he himself was bought out! I know it ain’t right to kill yourself, but what right does a selfish brat like that have insulting the dead? It just ain’t right! If you ask me, he ain’t no better than the guy who sold them out! Well, anyway, I heard that the nobleman’s son also told a commanding officer that it would be pointless to rescue them, that by the time they could devise a plan and gather the men to save the poor boys, it will have been too late.”
“He’s a coward if you ask me,” my sister continued, ” but I suppose he’s right if what he said was true. They were killing so terrible and fast there wouldn’t be any left to save by the time we got there. He even said that it was pointless to eventually attempt to retrieve the bodies, you know, to give them a proper burial. He said that after they died the bodies were desecrated, pulled apart into who knows how many pieces, and bur-”
“Enough!” I could not bear to hear anymore. My sister covered her mouth, “I’m sorry, Rosetta, I don’t know what compelled me to tell you that much. You need not have heard all of that.” Shaking my head at her I pressed the flowers to my chest, breaking their stems and crushing their petals as I did.
“Sister, I will come to live with you now, if that is all right.” I choked back my tears, but my voice was cracked, and I could hold them back no longer. “Oh, my boy! Oh, my baby! Why?” I cried, “Why my Merek?” my voice shook, my stumbled prayer breaking out of me as I fell to the floor. “He was not even a man! Not a man and he- and he- ! Oh my God why have you done this to me? Why? You steal from me my Jobel and my Merek! Why? What plan have you for me? How can my suffering lead to your love? How?” I shrieked out. “How, Lord?!” As I shriveled upon the floor, my sister wrapped her arms around me.
“Rosetta,” she whispered gently, “let’s go. You-”
“No!” I shook her off. Stumbling to the dresser in the corner of the room, I knocked over my chair at our little table and stepped on Jobel’s flowers, damaging them once more. Pulling out a ragged little hat I had sown for Merek when he was just a babe, I squeezed it tight, soaking it with my tears.
“Oh my son! Oh my son!”
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