This is story 11. First draft July '23. It all came about rather quickly. Now it seems prophetic three months later with another war in the Holy Land. And war in the Ukraine ongoing. The idea came about when I read an article Belarus decided to hold war games near the Polish border.
Ten Hemming Way
1700 words
ONE
The rain came down hard and we ran for cover under the awning. Across the street a woman in a peasant dress, her hair up in a bandana, came out to take down laundry from a line. She thought better of it and went back inside. It was too late, the laundry was already sopping. The rain would not let up so we stayed in the cafe and later found out from a fellow Canadian there were rooms for rent upstairs. The window in our room was open and we could hear the rain fall on the slate roofs and we fell asleep listening. In the morning we got up late and when we left the laundry was still on the line. This was just outside Paris. Before the war. Before all hell broke loose.
TWO
We were still in Paris when we heard the news. A bomb fell on Warsaw. We wondered if we should catch the next flight out but in the end we decided to stay. Warsaw was far away and the sun was shining and everybody was going about their business. We said lets go back to that little cafe where we spent the night in the rain. We took the underground as far as it would go and then caught a cab and had to tell the cab driver where it was. We found it alright. We looked for the lady in the peasant dress and we could see her through the open door sweeping the floor, sweeping the dust out onto the street. It was a very normal thing to do. It was a Saturday. The streets were very quiet. Too quiet for a Saturday we thought.
THREE
That night we got drunk. The Canadian was still there. She was writing a travel blog and used the cafe as a home base. She got drunk with us. So did an American with an Italian husband and three Japanese travelers and a older woman from Berlin. We were all drunk and laughing. The Italian husband and the woman from Berlin spoke pretty good English. The three Japanese girls could not but they had a smattering of French so we all got along well. We were all staying in the cafe. We were the only ones there. It was a Saturday night and we had nowhere to go. The streets were deserted by the time we crawled up the back stairs to our beds. We had a very good time. The following evening while we were having dinner Paris was hit. Then Tokyo, Toronto and New York. Berlin too. We were in shock and we sat in the cafe and wept.
FOUR
Jets flew overhead. They were flying low towards the east, flying in small groups and the noise was so great we put our hands over our ears. The coffee cups rattled on the table. We sat looking up, out past the awning, looking up at the jets with our hands over our ears and then looking across the tables at one another. The street was jammed solid with cars and the cars were crammed full of people and possessions. We watched them crawl by and they would stop and then move forward a few feet, and we watched the faces of the people in the cars looking back at us, the children eager, excited, wide eyed, the older ones blank and knowing. They were all going in the same direction. The same direction as the jets. It made no sense to us. We did not know. Communication was down. The lights flickered. Traffic stalled and a woman in the passenger seat rolled down her window and beckoned us. We went over and crowded around. She spoke French and told us it was not full out nuclear and she crossed herself. Limited she said. Limited as a war could be. She asked us what village this was and we told her. She said merci beaucoup and her window went up. Her eyes had tears in them and the traffic started moving again. We sat back down in our hard little cafe chairs. We had nowhere to go. This was only Tuesday.
FIVE
In the night we could hear thunder. It was Paris, hit again. That made no sense. Why bomb a city? In the morning the Italian man said he and his American wife had decided to leave. They would go to his grandparents farm north of Turin. It was near where the three countries of France, Italy and Switzerland come together. It was mountainous and out of the way, the province of Aosta he said, and sparsely populated. He thought it would be safer there. He said we could join him. There was room for all of us. They were going to leave early the next morning. We had to decide.
SIX
The exodus was still underway and that night the cafe was full and all the rooms were full. The power was off and everybody sat outside in the dark drinking wine and looking up at the sky. This was August, remember, and it was a beautiful night. Warm and the stars were out. It could have been a setting for a Van Gogh painting. Food supplies were already running short and we took what we could get. The cafe owner was very kind. I think he liked us. He took very good care of us. The nine of us sat together. We had become friends, friends thrown together. Thrown together by circumstance. We huddled over two tables brought close and talked in whispers under the stars and the sky was very dark but for a glow over Paris. We decided to leave for Italy, to go to the mountains, everyone except for the German lady. She had a cousin near Copenhagen. She would go there. We now had somewhere to go. We were very excited. Across the street a candle burned in the window of the lady who wore the peasant dress. I could see her silhouette. I wanted to take her with us.
SEVEN
It was hard to leave. Hard to leave the cafe owner and the peasant lady and the German lady. It was hard because we felt close and because there was a good chance we would never see one another again and we would never know how things turned out. We shook hands and hugged and had tears in our eyes and I went over to the house across the street and hugged the lady in the peasant dress. She was standing in her doorway and she smiled and seemed surprised and confused but took it in stride and went back inside and I never saw her again.
EIGHT
We walked most of the way. The trains were down. It was hard to catch a ride. Who had room for eight people? A farmer hauling pigs took us one hundred kilometers. We sat in the back with the pigs. It was better than walking. The pigs were fine company. There were four of them.
NINE
The countryside was tranquil enough. This was France you know, farms and villages and picturesque small towns. We slept where we could. It would have been quite wonderful in other circumstances. We did not complain. What would have been the point? There were more and more people on the road. The news was always bad. The war had spread to the four corners. People fighting. People dying. For what? Our Canadian friend wrote in her journal: Humanity has a lot of built up hostility and tension and now it is being released. This will end only when all the tension is gone and there is nothing left. We hoped she was wrong.
TEN
We never did see any military. No soldiers. Just jets streaking across the sky. They always went the same way, in the same direction, east.
There were countless numbers of people on the roads. The people were fleeing the cities and going into the country. The cities were hit hard. Everywhere things were in short supply, food, shelter, there was no petrol to be had anywhere. There were too many people.
It happened when we were nearing Macon. Lyon was hit. How bad we did not know. News now came slow by word of mouth. If this was true it was not the first time. To hit cites seemed sadistic, unfathomable. Cruelty with no reason. If I was on my own I would not have known what to do. I would have been lost. I would have sat on the side of the road and stayed there. As like as not, I would have never left the cafe. I would sit on those hard chairs and be drunk until the wine ran out.
We thought it was snow. The sky was azure with only a few clouds. We held our hands palms up, faces towards the heavens. One Japanese woman said, 'mais c'est en aout?' "But this is August?" It was not snow but ash. A fine ash that coated everything. We changed our plans, Lyon was kaput. At Macon we crossed over the Saone. I feared the bridge would collapse from so many people. There were so many bicycles and backpacks and people pulling wagons,
children in tow and crying with their dogs and cats in their arms and some
wrapped in blankets.The river was flowing yellow as we looked down from the bridge and there were five bodies floating on the surface. They were fully clothed and the two that were face up looked at the falling ash with blank eyes as they disappeared under the bridge and when they came out the other side they still had that blank uncaring look. They were the first bodies we saw. We were all on foot carrying what we had. The Italian husband in his halting English said our new route was shorter but the terrain was more mountainous. It was a trade off, he admitted, but perhaps for the best. At least we had a place to go. It gave us purpose. The world itself had lost its purpose. If it ever had one.
No comments:
Post a Comment