Ashes

by Christopher de Vinck

  The house shuddered. Bits of plaster fell from the kitchen ceiling. Planes kept flying over the city. I tried to block out the sound, covering my ears with my hands, and then I began to hum a church hymn.

  The vibrations from the planes caused the windows to rattle loudly. People wailed in despair outside on the street. Bombs fell on the city. I couldn’t look. I didn’t want this to be happening. I couldn’t accept this was happening. Was the war going to kill us all? Was I going to die? Tears stung my eyes as I bit hard on my lip. I had to stay strong. I had to defend my father’s house. I had to make soup.

  I was an 18-year-old girl in May 1940. I had no idea that 40 miles away the largest tank battle in the history of the world was taking place between the Nazi Panzer divisions and the brave, but lightly equipped, Belgian army and French tanks.

  I thought my armour was strong against Duessa the Witch. I thought I was clever, and would be safe in my house. I was Salomé and, like many other teenage girls, in love with Clark Gable. I was the daughter of the general.

  But in reality, I was frightened. My Maginot Line wasn’t working. My soup wasn’t having the required effect. I couldn’t bear to be in the house by myself. I saw the silhouettes of people rushing past the closed window shades: people fleeing their homes; little outlines of children’s heads bobbing up and down; shadows without faces. People with names and histories flattened to indistinct grey shapes on my window shade.

  ‘My name is Simone Lyon,’ I said to the parade of shadows. ‘My name is Simone. I am a brave Belgian woman.’ I pretended that the people behind the window shade stopped and listened to me, in awe of my courage.

  I had no idea that British and French troops had tried to help Belgium troops stop the invading army and tanks from advancing towards Brussels. I didn’t know that on that day 2,500 Nazi aircraft had begun a bombing campaign against villages, airfields, and factories. I didn’t know that over 16,000 Nazi paratroopers had landed in Rotterdam and The Hague. But I did know that I had to save my arms from the Nazis. I knelt on the floor thinking about Atlanta burning during the American Civil War, and I tried not to cry. I was going to be brave like Scarlet O’Hara.

  There is a section in Gone with the Wind where Margaret Mitchell says that Scarlet O’Hara’s suffering during the war was like a dream too horrible to be real. It felt as if I was in a horrible dream as I listened to the BBC. I heard the radio broadcast, and understood that Nazi troops were swarming into Belgium from the west. Then I heard another terrific explosion not far from the house.

  The windows shook again, violently this time. The shadows moved past the window faster and faster. Brussels was under siege. German planes still passed over the city. Smoke bulged up in the distant sky, and then I heard a frantic knocking at the door.

  I was afraid. Aunt Margaret had instructed me not to let anyone in. The knocking persisted. It was all too much: the bombs, the radio, the boiling water . . . the knocking. Even though Sergeant De Waden and my aunt had warned me to lock my door and not let anyone in, I grabbed the house key and raced to the hall hoping it was the sergeant, or my father. I turned the key and yanked open the heavy door. ‘Hava!’ I cried as she fell into my arms and wept.

  ‘My father sent me,’ Hava said as she leaned back and looked at me through her tears. There was dirt on her face. Her hair was matted. ‘There’s chaos everywhere. We heard the news about a possible invasion, and my father knew that you were alone. He wanted me to come to your house and see that you were safe. We didn’t know the planes were coming. I was already through the park when the planes arrived.’

  I tried to soothe my friend between my own tears; tears of joy because I was suddenly not alone. The only thing I could say to her was, ‘Would you like some soup?’

  We sat at the kitchen table in silence for some time, as if we were British gentlewomen taking afternoon tea. That is when I looked out of the window and saw that the next building was on fire. Orange and yellow flames seemed to be reaching out for my windowsill and I broke down, repeating again and again, ‘My arms! Don’t let them take my arms, Hava.’ I crumpled to the floor. ‘The Nazis, don’t let them take my arms!’ I began to shake. Poor Hava didn’t know what to do.

  CHAPTER 22

  This is the BBC. The German army invaded Belgium and Holland early this morning. The armies of the Low Countries are resisting. An appeal for help has been made to the Allied Governments and Brussels says that Allied troops are moving to their support.

  When I woke up it was dark except for a single lit candle on the bedroom dresser. At first I didn’t know where I was. It was completely silent. No planes. No audible distress in the streets. No fires. My room was on the third floor of the house, filled with my books, piled on the floor in wobbly columns. Each pile denoted a category: poetry, journals, and novels. On the opposite wall from my bed hung my parents’ wedding picture. In the candlelight it seemed as if my mother and father were floating in the frame, or perhaps it was my delirium. Hava said that I had spoken in my sleep a number of times.

  I turned over and saw Hava sleeping in my reading chair beside the bed. I had witnessed the entire American Civil War in that chair, one chapter at a time.

  ‘Hava?’ I whispered. ‘Hava?’

  Hava moved her right hand to her face and rubbed her eyes.

  ‘Hava?

  She opened her eyes and looked at me with a sadness that I didn’t immediately understand.

  ‘Hava, are you alright?’

  She pulled her thin legs up onto the chair and said, ‘You were the one who fainted, and you’re worried about me?’

  ‘The bombing has stopped.’ I looked at Hava again and remembered how she’d looked when I first met her at the Red Cross: confident and beautiful.

  Hava stroked her cheek slowly with her left hand and said, ‘I didn’t know that I was a Jew until I was eight. It was my birthday and my father brought me to the carousel. I was riding a seahorse as my father stood behind the rope waving to me. I didn’t dare wave back – I was afraid of letting go of the seahorse’s head, even with one hand, fearing that I would fall.

  ‘A boy was sitting on an ostrich right next to me. When he saw me looking at him, he said, “Jews don’t ride seahorses.”

  ‘After the ride, walking hand in hand with my father under the linden trees, I asked him if I was a Jew. My father stopped walking, crouched next me and said, “Little one, my Hava, you have a sweet heart, and you love others, so yes, you are a Jew.”

  “But why can’t I ride a seahorse?” I asked.

  “What is this?” my father huffed. “Who told you that you can’t ride a seahorse?”

  ‘When I told my father about the boy on the ostrich, he lifted me up onto his shoulders and said, “Don’t worry about him. He’s God’s problem.”’

  I sat up on my bed and asked Hava, ‘Where are your parents and Benjamin?’

  ‘They were going to the synagogue. My father insisted that I check on you, and bring you back there with me. We all left the house at the same time. When I got to the corner, I turned and looked at my family. They were all holding hands: my father, mama, and Benjamin in the middle. My father saw me at the corner and raised his hand to me. I raised my hand too, and then I ran through the park. Then the planes appeared and the bombs. We must go to the synagogue, Simone. We must go and find them, now that you’re better.’

  The summer before, Hava and I had visited museums to gaze at the paintings of beautiful horses, or fields of golden wheat. We’d admired the dress of a peasant and the royal vestments of a king. I had seen blue paintings of women looking out of a window, men in rowing boats, flowers as beautiful as jewels in a box, but among the most beautiful images I ever saw were the eyes of Hava in the candlelight that sad night, the shape of her cheeks, the lines in her face that etched an image of hope framed by her dishevelled hair.

  ‘Yes, the synagogue. Of course,’ I said, ‘Like Tara.’

  I had been to Hava’s synagogue once before, and I under
stood why she felt it was a place of safety for her; a place she could return to again and again, like Tara, Scarlett O’Hara’s home. We all have a place of safety in our memory, or in our daily lives, where we can push open the door and know that we are safe and welcome. Inside our home is a favourite room, a book remembered, a father planting roses, a cat licking its paws on the windowsill, God perhaps, the aroma of a favourite soup.

  ‘Yes, the synagogue,’ Hava said again, as she struggled to her feet. I placed the candle on the floor and reached out to her. She took my extended hand as she stood up slowly. ‘Your hand is warm,’ she said as she steadied herself. ‘Okay, let’s go.’

  Before we left the room, I noticed Benjamin’s drawing of God, with his green shirt and two orange kites, pinned to my wall. I grabbed the paper and Hava smiled saying, ‘Remember, those aren’t crosses; they’re kites.’ I looked at the happy God, the kites, and the green shirt, then I folded the drawing along its established creases and tucked it into my dress pocket.

  ‘Let’s go to the synagogue.’

  We stepped out of my home. It was dark; the early hours of the morning. I felt for the first time the fear of death surrounding Hava and me. How was it possible? I thought as we ran through the streets. How can one day be filled with picnics and opera, then the next day the sun is erased and the city is in flames, in so short of time?

  The streets were empty now. It seemed as if the city was asleep and the day had been a collection of nightmares strung together with planes, clouds, and the cries of mothers. I saw a small, torn Belgian flag hanging from a dark apartment window. The synagogue. A place of safety. We needed a place of safety.

  ‘Are you sure your parents went to the synagogue?’

  ‘Yes, Simone. Yes. I’m sure of it. They’ll be at the synagogue. My father said they’d wait for me there. Let’s hurry.’

  We stopped in the middle of a wide, empty street. Hava looked into my eyes and repeated. ‘He promised, Simone.’

  ‘Which way, Hava? Which way to the synagogue?’

  She looked at me as if she had forgotten the purpose of our being together in the middle of Brussels in the middle of the night, at the beginning of the Second World War, but then she squeezed my hand and pointed. ‘This way.’

  I thought about Van Gogh’s painting, Starry Night, as we hurried through the dark streets of Brussels. There were no lights. It seemed that most of the electricity in the city had been cut off. I had never seen the stars in Brussels because the city was always so bright. Even in the middle of the night, the street lights and fountains were usually illuminated. But at the very beginning of the war, Brussels had retreated into sudden hibernation, closed within itself.

  Hava and I entered the park, that in the darkness looked like wilderness hidden under black capes. Trees bore down on us like ogres. Bushes became fat Nazi troops. The cool night air breathed down our necks.

  Just as we were about to exit the park, a voice startled us.

  ‘Halt! Stand where you are!’ Hava stopped and stumbled backwards as if she had been struck in the face.

  ‘Stop, I say.’ We heard the bolt of a rifle being pushed into place. ‘What are you doing here? It’s forbidden. There’s a curfew.’

  ‘We’re on our way to visit a sick friend,’ I lied.

  ‘Simone?’ said the soldier.

  ‘Sergeant De Waden?’

  ‘Simone, what are you doing here? I told you to go home and stay there, and lock your door. The Germans have crossed the border. No one is safe. We have orders to arrest anyone who isn’t in their home.’

  ‘Is this your sergeant?’ Hava asked as she looked through the darkness.

  ‘Sergeant, this is my friend, Hava. We’re on our way to meet her parents. She came for me, so I can be with them.’

  ‘It’s forbidden to walk the streets!’ The poor sergeant didn’t know what to do or what to say. His uniform said that he was to arrest us, but his heart said that he should escort us personally to safety . . . on his back if he could.

  ‘Where do your parents live?’ Sergeant De Waden asked Hava.

  ‘We’re not going to my house. We’re meeting them at the synagogue.’

  ‘The synagogue?’ There was a change in his voice. ‘That’s not a place I think you should go, Simone.’

  ‘We just have to meet her family,’ I urged. ‘Once we find them, we’ll all go back to Hava’s house. I promise.’ Sergeant De Waden sighed.

  ‘Fine, if you must. But I’ll escort you there for your safety.’

  I nodded, and as we walked through the streets of Brussels an odd sense of security arose among the aromas of the park flowers, and a calm descended from the suddenly subdued night. After all, Hava and I were under the protection of the Belgian army.

  My sergeant walked between Hava and me with a confident stride. It was through Sergeant De Waden that I finally heard an update on where my father actually was.

  ‘Your father is with the Dame Blanche, Simone; the Resistance. He’ll fight the Germans in his own way now. I just hope that he’ll be okay.’

  Can this be true? I thought. Could he be in danger? Was my own private Maginot Line collapsing?

  ‘Don’t frighten her,’ Hava said. ‘The German soldiers are coming, that’s enough for one night.’

  I reached out into the darkness and touched Hava’s hand. There was silence except for the sound of our shoes against the hard cobblestones. If I could have done so, I would have sung a song for Hava as we began this night walk in the newly artificial world that was crossing over into our lives. Was my father okay? I had to believe in that moment that he would be.

  Poor Sergeant De Waden. He was built with brass buttons and orders, action and desire. I knew I was his desire, but I also knew the difference between the moonlight and the light from a man’s urgency. When I pointed out how incongruous it was that the moon was so beautiful that night as the three of us walked to the synagogue, Sergeant De Waden lamented that it was a curse, a bad omen of what was to come. ‘We don’t need more light for the German Air Force. It would be better to blow up the moon.’

  I wanted to tell the sergeant about Van Gogh’s masterpiece Starry Night: how the moon was a part of the permanent picture; how no matter what happened, the moon would reappear; and that, to me, the moon was a pearl in the black sea of my own fears. But he would not have understood, so I was silent.

  As we turned a corner, we saw movement in a doorway. I imagined it was a Nazi soldier. But then an old woman wearing a brown house smock stepped out onto the street with a straw broom.

  As Sergeant De Waden, Hava, and I approached the woman, she began to sweep the pavement clear of broken glass, bits of wood, a child’s shoe, and loose sheets of newspaper.

  ‘Hello, madame,’ I said.

  The woman looked up from her broom, squinted and uttered just one word: ‘Courage.’ She turned from us, stooped to her labour, and continued to sweep.

  I remember how the broken pieces of glass jingled on the pavement. I remember seeing that the small shoe was torn on one side. I watched the soiled bits of newspaper roll under the pressure of the straw broom. It felt as if all that I knew of my city was being swept from the streets and pushed into the gutter.

  Dawn had begun her work. Shadows disappeared slowly under the trees. The glow in the sky was not from bombs and fire, but from the sun’s new alchemy on the dark earth, turning night into the gold of morning.

  Hava pulled my hand gently and whispered, ‘There it is.’

  At the end of the street, the Great Synagogue of Brussels sat like a confident father towering over his children. It was coated in brick and hewn stones. A large, rose window was built in the centre of the arch; a large eye celebrating light, inviting it to enter the soul of the synagogue.

  ‘Right, you girls are safe now,’ Sergeant De Waden said. ‘I’ll leave you here. Remember, you cannot be out at night. There’s a curfew.’ He looked at me with a small smile, a nod of the head, and a slight bow.

>   ‘Vive la Belgique,’ I said.

  His smile disappeared as he glanced quickly at Hava. Then he saluted and walked away.

  ‘Look, Simone,’ Hava said pointing as we stopped opposite the large building. ‘See under the glass window, carved in red marble, the Tablets from Moses, the Ten Commandments?’ She let go of my hand and stood before the wide doors of the synagogue and began to rock back and forth on her heels. Her eyes were closed. She wrapped her arms around her body and said, ‘Thou shalt honour thy father and mother.’

  I put my arm around her. ‘We will find them inside.’

  Hava looked up at me and whispered again, ‘Honour thy father and mother.’

  ‘And Benjamin too,’ I added with a smile.

  She returned my smile, took my hand, and together we ran across the street and pushed open the large wooden doors of the synagogue.

  CHAPTER 23

  I was truly under Hitler’s spell, that cannot be denied. I was impressed with him from the moment I first met him, in 1932. He had terrific power, especially in his eyes.

  Joachim von Ribbentrop, 15 July, 1946, Foreign Minister of Nazi Germany, testifying at the Nuremberg Trials

  Once, after reading Romeo and Juliet in Sister Bernadette’s class, I met up with Hava at a small café. We drank our coffee, and as we walked to my house, she suggested that we act out the death scene. ‘I can be Juliet,’ she said as she closed her eyes, swaying back and forth on the pavement, and stabbing herself with an imaginary knife. ‘O happy dagger! This is thy sheath; there rust, and let me die.’

  Hava began to stagger on the pavement. She didn’t look anything like Juliet of Shakespeare, but like Crazy Hava of Brussels.