Lovely War(83)

It explained all the kindness, too. Pink walls and a pretty nurse and jolly pleasantness. Because he needed to be treated gently, as one would a young child. His food soured on his tongue.

Elfin green and lacy blossoms peeped from buds on trees below.

The nurse returned. “Your parents have been by. They’ll be back this afternoon.”

Golden light on pink walls made James close his eyes and breathe slowly. Just like a day at the seashore, visiting his grandmother in the summertime.

His parents knew he was here in a mental hospital. So the damage was already done. But they would love him anyway. Even in the bruised and bleeding sanctum of his heart, he knew that, and he took comfort in it.





APHRODITE


     Cabbage in Compiègne—April–May 1918





THERE’S A FRESH, clean smell to cabbages. Something satisfying about the crunching sound of chopping them up and dropping them with a splash into enormous vats of hard vegetable chunks.

Hazel’s job was to slice, daily, three wheelbarrows full of green cabbages. Around two hundred pounds of cabbage per day. Her hands grew red and raw from cabbage juice.

But it was better than onions. Hazel couldn’t handle onions. So Colette, who could, spared her friend and chopped the entire thirty-pound bag of onions daily. Even so, she had to wear aviator goggles, lest her eyes weep into the soup.

After cabbages and onions, they scrubbed and cut potatoes. Sometimes there were butcher’s bones to boil down into the stock. Then the German prisoners standing in the soup line would cheer. These were the high points of life at Compiègne.

The camp at Compiègne housed eight thousand German combatant prisoners of war. They slept in drafty barracks, breakfasted on rationed bread before dawn, then worked all day. The French government had them rebuilding roads and laying train tracks. At night, the men were famished. Hazel and Colette ladled gray soup into their bowls.

Hazel hated seeing how thin and forlorn they were. Beaten down by war and captivity.

Now that she saw Germans daily, with their bright blue eyes and shaggy beards, hearing their “Danke, Fr?ulein” for the soup, she struggled to understand why they and French and British lads had spent four years killing one another.

Of course she knew about the German atrocities in Belgium. She knew what terrible brutality they had caused in 1914. But surely these weren’t the ones who had done it. How did one nation produce both humble souls and killers?

They’d had mothers and sisters and sweethearts, jobs and hobbies and pets. Favorite songs and foods and books. Why must they die? Why must our boys die?

For Colette, serving Germans each day was agony. In their faces she saw the eyes that had sighted their pistols upon her father, her brother, her friends. She could never forgive them. But she fed them. Whatever god wants to wound me more will fail, for I have nothing left to hurt, she thought. Whatever god demands forgiveness of us will have to make do with cabbage soup.

Hazel spoke no German, but Colette did. She understood when they were cursing France and Britain under their breath.

A few could speak English, some sounding British, and others American. They made small talk with her. She did her best to be cheerful for them. She hoped whoever had James now would do the same. She prayed that someone had him in their care. The alternative was unthinkable.

Others ignored her, and a few were rude, or even vulgar in the way they looked at her. She didn’t know what they muttered, but it took little imagination to guess.

After the commotion of Saint-Nazaire and the glamor of Paris, Compiègne was dull and dreary. After cleanup, they walked a short distance to the hostel where the Red Cross billeted them. They talked, wrote letters, and played cards. Eight other girls, all French, serving in various roles, nurse and typist and laundress, roomed there. They were friendly.

Only the slow approach of spring brought any uplift. Leaves uncurled, and crocuses began to poke through the frosty ground. The breezes began to smell of rain and fresh green things that weren’t cabbage. There would almost be hope in the air, if it wasn’t for the utter lack of news of Aubrey or James.

“This job is our penance,” Colette said one morning as they’d walked to work. “If we hadn’t allowed Aubrey into our hut, we’d be there still.”

Hazel looked at her in astonishment. “You’re not sorry, are you?”

Colette shook her head. “I’d do it all again. If only to spite Mrs. Davies. But Justice is blind,” she said, “and rules are rules. Now we pay. In onions and potatoes.”

“If I ever leave this job,” Hazel said, “I will never, so long as I live, eat cabbage.” She laughed. “It’s a shame. I used to like it boiled.”

Colette wrinkled her nose. “Ffaugh.”

“I miss the piano,” Hazel said. “I wonder if I can even play anymore.”

Colette looked puzzled. “Don’t be silly. Of course you can.”

They walked on a while longer, until the kitchen buildings were almost upon them.

“Do you think, Hazel,” Colette asked her, “that we just need to learn to forget them, and move on with our lives?”

It frightened her to hear Colette voice the question Hazel had been asking herself.

“Certainly not,” she cried. “Until we have firm proof otherwise, we hold out hope.”