The Illusion of Separateness

by Simon Van Booy

  Imagining all this, A longed for another chance to be cut down by some low-­flying Englishman in a fast plane. He should have given up earlier. He should have buried his dagger in the garden to go blunt. He had heard about the others, those in his village who disagreed, or thought Hitler was mad, or sympathized with the condemned. They quickly disappeared, leaving their families to continue on without them in disgrace and longing.

  And when the war started, there was gossip it would end early with concessions and treaties and brass bands. But it did not, and he was soon part of a convoy headed for France. The older troops who fought in the first war told them it would be a battle with the French to the death. But then the vicious army they imagined did not appear, or they were in the wrong place, and it would come later.

  There were attacks, but they were isolated and unorganized. A’s first kill was a figure shooting at him from across a river. And then a boy his own age at close range whose throat opened like a pair of wings.

  He did what they told him to do. He would have done anything they told him to do. He hid inside the pronoun we.

  In the afternoon, a squadron of bombers flew over at low altitude and dropped their load several kilometers ahead. Distant thunder. Silent plumes of crow-­black smoke.

  A continued over the fields, his muddied jacket under one arm as though out for a country stroll.

  One kilometer or so later, A came upon a barn on fire. The earth was dug out in places and there was splintered wood.

  On the ground were the charred remains of a woman still holding a bucket. The flames crackled and tore at the afternoon. A sat where he could feel the heat of the burning wood.

  When the wind changed, an edge of the farmhouse roof caught fire. A had been thinking how he might stay there for a few days, but the whole house would soon be engulfed. At the last minute A realized that there might be food inside, and hurried toward the kitchen door.

  It was cool and shady. There were stone floors and heavy plates in a line on a shelf. The plates were light brown with thin cracks that made them seem old, like faces with nothing to say and nothing to see. One smaller plate had rabbits painted on it. The rabbits were in top hats. An inscription on the plate said:

  Le Lièvre: Il y a souvent plus de courage à fuir qu’à combattre.

  A once had a pet rabbit. It was called Felix and used to follow him around in the fields beyond the cottage. A used to lie on his back and Felix would sniff him and A would giggle. One night over dinner, A’s father couldn’t stop laughing. After watching his son eat a second helping of stew, he told him to go check on Felix.

  Sunlight reached in through the farmhouse window with arms of smoke. On the table was a knife and squares of fabric cut into rectangles. There were also large safety pins, which glinted in the sunlight.

  After a quick search, A found three onions in a basket and a few sticks of old celery. There was also a pitcher of milk with an inch of cream at the top. A cradled everything into his arms and was about to leave when he glanced at the rabbit plate and considered how it would feel to have a book, any book, even one in French that he would not fully understand. He dumped everything outside and ran upstairs.

  The landing was thick with smoke and A had to hold his breath. In the first room was a pair of narrow beds with two white blankets, frayed but pulled neatly over pillows. There were two bedside tables of dark wood, a square clock, and a wooden closet with mirrors set in the doors.

  A rushed to the window and flung it open. He filled his lungs with clean air, as smoke poured out over his shoulders. From the second floor he could see the body of the woman more clearly. The heat from the burning roof was intense.

  A went back into the room and scooped out an armful of men’s clothes that were hanging in the closet. He tossed them through the open window and watched them flutter to the ground.

  In the second room was a chest of drawers and, to A’s utter delight, a small stack of books. There was little time to choose, so A grabbed the thickest volume, which he then dropped in his excitement. As he bent down to pick it up, he noticed at the far end of the room a mess of blankets and a makeshift crib from which a round face was blinking furiously.

  II.

  A SET THE screaming child down by the cow fence and covered the body of the woman with his jacket. He changed out of his ruined uniform and dressed in the shirt, trousers, and jacket from upstairs. Then the baby stopped crying and watched A roll his old clothes into a ball and toss them into the fire.

  There was a cattle trough by the fence, brimming with rainwater. Insects skimmed along the top. Dead slugs had turned white and rolled at the bottom. A splashed the mud and smoke off his face, then brushed back his hair with both hands.

  When the baby started crying again, A fetched the pitcher of milk and put some cream on his finger. The child took it eagerly then reached for more. A tried many positions, but not one of them seemed appropriate for feeding. He had never witnessed a child fed by a mother before, nor felt the warmth of another human body against his. The child, being turned sideways, and spun, and held upside down by A, thought it was a game, and his crying turned to laughter.

  In the end, A poured milk into the palm of his hand and the child licked it out. After a dozen palmfuls, the child looked up and made a noise that sounded like meow.

  They sat there for a long time deciding what to do.

  The child kept looking around. A knew why, and it filled him with despair.

  At the edge of the farm was a gate. A few birds had perched to watch the flames. A imagined another child waiting at another gate for his father, and recalled vividly the forms and faces of those men he had cut down.

  And through all this, the child clung to him, and A clung to the child.

  They had a long way to go.

  This would be the first day.

  III.

  HIS FATHER WOULD think he had been killed. He could read books again, sit in fields, fall asleep outside, and go back to the secret rural life he so enjoyed. He could raise the child as his own son, teach him to read and write. They would take all their meals together, make each other laugh, grow things in a small garden, and go swimming in summer, when the rivers were shallow.

  His mother seemed to him now more alive than she ever had—­as though he were taking over from her somehow and the child in his arms was himself.

  He knew that ­people would be suspicious of a young man who didn’t speak—­but he had a baby. He was carrying a person too young to know about war.

  Slow convoys of German soldiers eyed A and the child with indifference. French peasantry who, on getting little response to their questions, threw their hands in the air or hurled insults that A did not understand. After a few days, they were both desperately hungry, and the child wouldn’t stop crying. If not for an old woman who noticed a man and baby stumbling along the road—­it might have ended for both of them quite soon.

  Her first task was to feed the child, but just enough to begin the process of eating again.

  The woman had a skeletal face with deep-­set, serious eyes that gave the appearance of chronic disapproval. She arranged her gray hair meticulously, in the style of a bourgeois. A thought that at one time she had probably been quite beautiful. He wondered if she had any children, and where they were. A dry mop stood upside down in the corner of her sitting room like someone watching, and beside the fire there were two wooden armchairs, one of which appeared unused. There were sheets of newspaper on the floor, and from time to time, a cat wandered past with its tail up.

  A’s silence did not seem to bother the woman. She had lived alone for a long time and was not used to speaking. Her initial fear was that the man would beat her. But after a few hours, her fear was that they would leave.

  A sipped hot broth before a crackling fire, and watched the old woman lay the baby on a towel, then unpin the soiled cloth around
its bottom. She wiped gently with a warm rag and the child screamed. She rinsed out the rag and continued wiping. The flesh on the child’s genitals and upper legs was raw. The child was screaming with such force that his face had turned blue. A put down the bowl of broth and went to him.

  When the child saw A, he calmed a little and his screaming turned to crying. After several shallow breaths, he fell silent and reached out his hands. A touched them. The woman smiled and applied a white paste to the baby’s raw skin with her fingers.

  The next day she cut up one of her old dresses and showed A how to pin a piece of fabric safely onto the child.

  After they had eaten supper that night, she demonstrated how to hold the baby against his shoulder, and pat the middle of his back.

  In a trunk upstairs, the woman found A a pair of shoes, which were too big, but cushioned his ruined feet as they foraged each night in the dusk for potatoes, turnips, carrots, or anything remotely edible. Whatever they unearthed was first offered to the child.

  One day a man knocked on the door. When the woman opened it and spoke to him, he said he was lost, but couldn’t stop looking at A, who stood behind with the baby. The next day, two men kept walking past the house and trying to look in. When gunshots were heard in a nearby field that evening, A decided they would leave at dawn.

  The woman filled a basket with clean rags, apples, and anything else she had lying around.

  She stood in the middle of the road and watched them disappear.

  That night in bed she held her rosary and wondered who else she could help.

  On her deathbed thirty-­eight years later in 1982, still clutching her rosary, the old woman felt the measure of her loss through the grief of those at her bedside. She tried to appear calm but was in a great deal of pain. She was known simply as Marie, though older ­people liked to call her Mairie,* to show their respect for all she had done for ­people over the years.

  When the moon came out, she exhaled a final breath and the most insignificant part of her slipped away with grace.

  The entire village took part in the funeral procession. Behind the hearse, the priest talked loudly and laughed because she had taught him the joy not only in life. Teenagers followed slowly at the back, keeping distance enough to smoke and hold hands.

  IV.

  A AND THE CHILD slept mostly in barns. When it rained, they found shelter under thick summer trees. If there was no one around, A read to the child from the book in his pocket. And though neither of them understood what the words meant, the sound of it gave them peace.

  A knew how to harvest the wild hedgerows, and the child soon developed a taste for blueberries and strawberries. They found a rhythm for eating and sleeping, and the child seemed content—­except at night, when he often woke and was inconsolable.

  A changed his diaper always in the morning, at noon, and in the evening. If not too soiled, he would keep the old pieces to wash later. He also applied the white paste given to him in a jar by the old woman.

  There were a few times when the child was screaming so much that A got worried, and so broke his silence and hummed the only song he loved, that he had heard as a child, and which haunted him with mysterious familiarity. He liked to think of it as something his mother had taught him. He did not know who wrote it, when, or why—­that it was called “Of Foreign Lands and ­People,” and that his mother had received a standing ovation when she played it to a packed school auditorium in 1911.

  One morning, they found a bicycle in some damp hay. With a little practice, A figured out a way to keep it going with both of them on.

  After hours gliding through the countryside, they approached a village so small there wasn’t even a sign. In the distance outside a café, a group of Nazi soldiers were standing in the road, smoking and talking. The child could feel A’s fear and clung tightly. In a flash of inspiration, A rang the bell on the handlebars and the soldiers instinctively separated to let them pass through the middle.

  By noon the next day there were gradually more buildings, more ­people, and a steady stream of sputtering cars with things strapped to the roof.

  When they saw the Eiffel Tower in the distance, A got off the bicycle and wheeled it. They had no more food and the baby was restless. Eventually, it was too much for A to bear, and so, holding the child in his arms, he stepped into the first café that looked friendly. A man in a short brown tie greeted him. A tried to convey, using his hands, that he wanted to sell the bicycle outside, or trade it for something to eat.

  ­People stopped eating and looked. The owner held meal tickets to A’s face and shrugged. Then a waiter began to usher them out, wrinkling his nose in disgust at the smell of the child. When they were almost to the door, an elegant woman in a red dress strode over to the owner and slapped him hard on the cheek. Then a chair scraped because an old man at the back of the dining room had stood up to see.

  The woman took the baby from A’s arms and went back to her table, where she mashed her lunch into tiny morsels. A few ­people applauded. Others shook their heads in disgust.

  A stood by the door and watched the boy reach madly for the food on the woman’s plate. He felt giddy with delight. The waiter went back to work. As ­people finished their meals and left the restaurant, some handed A a piece of cheese, or bread, or meat wrapped in newspaper. One woman told him he should be ashamed of himself, begging like that with a child.

  Before giving the baby back to A, the elegant woman wrote her name on a piece of paper, along with her address in the Ninth Arrondissement. Then she kissed the child and walked out.

  They wandered the boulevards of Paris for hours like a pair of tourists. A’s feet ached in a new way. He wanted to tell the baby that Paris was like a poem in stone. He thought about the woman in the red dress, and wondered if they would live with her from now on. She was very attractive, and in time, they might even grow to love one another. He could get a job, fix up her place—­read to them at night for entertainment.

  They came upon the Louvre Palace by accident, and ambled through an archway into the Tuileries, where A set down the bicycle and found a sunny patch of grass.

  They played, clapped hands, and rolled in the grass. Bees shouldered their way into soft bells, and birds circled noiselessly above the fountains. When A took a small, plump tomato from his pocket, the child snatched it, but instead of eating it, held it to A’s lips.

  He bounced the boy on his lap, and from time to time, fed him pieces of food from his pocket. Old ­people stopped walking to look at them.

  A collected fallen petals from the flower beds and rained them down over the child. The statues seemed to protect them without moving.

  When the baby cried, A hummed quietly and cradled him.

  They fell asleep with their foreheads touching.

  When other ­people began to pack up and go, A looked for the woman’s address in his pocket, and set the child on the bicycle. The sun was beginning to set, and night would be cool.

  When they reached a wide square of cobblestones at the edge of the Tuileries, A noticed ­people congregating on the rue de Rivoli, and thought it might be a good place to get directions. He would show the piece of paper with the address, then point questioningly.

  At the center of the crowd was a stout old man with a small dog that was doing tricks. A leaned the bicycle against a wall, and pushed to the front so the baby could see. The dog was wearing a tiny beret and a tricolor coat. ­People applauded when he stood on his back legs. The old man was delighted and blushed.

  After a short time, the crowd had grown so large that pedestrians had to step into the road to pass. There was no end to the dog’s folly. A wondered if they were once part of a circus. When the crowd laughed, A and the child laughed with them.

  Then angry shouting in a language that A understood. ­People strained their necks to see what was happening. The crowd was so large that a
motorcycle and sidecar were unable to turn up a narrow street. The driver shouted in French, then in German, but the dog had put everyone in a trance.

  The soldier climbed out of the sidecar and muscled his way through the crowd. He shouted at the man to take his animal and clear off.

  The man made a face and turned to his little dog. The soldier shook his head in reproach and pointed for the man to go. Then the little dog shook his head and raised a paw in the same direction.

  The crowd screamed with laughter.

  A and the baby laughed too because the dog had done it without any sign from his master. The soldier pushed the old man to the ground. The crowd surged and shouted viciously. When the dog attacked the soldier’s ankle, he pinned his body with his boot and drove the butt of his rifle hard upon the dog’s skull, dashing it against the stone. The crowd broke into violent screams, and rushed upon the soldier. A felt in danger of being crushed but couldn’t get away. The soldier, cornered by the fierce mob, waved his gun frantically back and forth.

  Then gendarmes arrived blowing whistles. They tried to break up the crowd, but ­people were resisting. A wrapped the child safely in his arms and tried to shoulder their way out of the mayhem, but then nudged a gendarme in the back who quickly turned around and demanded to see his identity papers. A tried to back away slowly, but the policeman raised his pistol and demanded identification.

  “‘I have no way,’” A said in English, “‘and therefore want no eyes; I stumbled when I saw.’”

  There was a moment of connection, which may only have been confusion, but the gendarme’s father had been an English teacher in Le Mans and often recited lines from Shakespeare at the dinner table on Sunday.

  Then military vehicles arrived. Soldiers beat anyone in their way.

  One of the soldiers must have thought that A was resisting arrest, and stormed past the gendarme with his rifle out. The policeman told the soldier to lower his gun, but his eyes were burning. A quickly handed the child to a teenage girl standing next to him, and raised his arms in surrender. The soldier pushed the barrel of his rifle against A’s forehead and screamed. Then some of the other soldiers began firing and the crowd went mad. As the soldier prepared to fire upon A, the teenage girl, still holding the child, realized that she was looking at the same soldier who had killed her brother last year outside a café as she and her mother watched helplessly. Without hesitation, she took a pistol from her pocket and shot the soldier twice in the heart. A gendarme several yards away fired at the girl, but missed and hit A in the face. ­People found themselves spotted with blood and fragments of bone.