Would you look at that. I'm posting Tintin again. Wow! Okay. Here goes nothin'.
This will be a series of one-shots (there are three I currently plan on posting) all centered around my take on Tintin's past. It is, full disclosure, a somewhat unusual take. Of course all backstories are valid, but I departed from the norm of Tintin as an orphan. Not because I think there's anything wrong with that, but simply because in my heart I've always had a different idea. And I've always wanted to share it, in the form of a story.
I wrote this as backstory framework for a full-fledged multi-chapter about how Tintin became a reporter. Then I set it aside to work on other projects, and these little snippets have been wasting away in a half-forgotten folder ever since. But even if I don't end up finishing that story, I wanted to share some of the work that came out of it.
So. I've decided to post these glimpses into my version of Tintin's past. I do hope you enjoy.
THE PROMISE
August 23rd, 1936
Neel, Belgium
Tintin marched down the dirt road which led to his house. The air around him was thick, ripening with early afternoon as the sun approached its zenith. He breathed in the scent of vegetation and pollen, rising from the grasses and wildflowers which stretched over the surrounding fields. The farmland was punctuated by dark, wooded dells like fistfuls of wildness.
The straps of his school satchel dug into Tintin's shoulders. He gripped them with both hands, and pretended the groceries were vital supplies, the difference between life and death for his team of explorers.
"Miles from civilization, they happened upon a cache of non-perishables hidden by soldiers during the Great War," he narrated in his newsreel-announcer voice. "Tinned beans and coffee, and by some miracle, a pound of sugar. The men knew this was a sign that they must keep on, through the brutal landscape of the Siberian tundra."
The thought of the far north reminded Tintin who, in reality, funded this particular expedition. Theon's paycheque had arrived the day before, postmarked by the mail service of the Baltic Sea. This meant that, some weeks ago, the freighter on which Tintin's stepfather worked had stopped somewhere along the serrated edge of the Swedish or Finnish coastline.
Tintin adopted the swagger of the expedition leader. "Take heart, boys," he addressed his weary team. "We'll make it to Finland within the week, where a merchant ship will pick us up and take us home."
He hummed to himself, still half in his game, as he turned onto the gravelled drive that led to the cottage. The flower-studded vines twisting up the front porch made a beautiful picture, Tintin thought, and he resolved to suggest that his mother could paint them. It had been a while since she'd painted anything.
Tintin climbed the front stoop and clattered through the entryway, flinging his bag off his shoulders.
"I'm back!" He dragged his satchel by the strap, down the corridor and into the kitchen, where he found his mother standing over the sink. "Here I am." He grinned. "With enough food to last us until the next Ice Age."
He paused, and his smile faded. His mother hadn't turned around. Tintin drew closer, and noticed her stillness, the slight tremble in her hands. Her fingers tightened their grip on the edge of the sink. She slumped forwards, and her hair cascaded down to cover her face, exposing the ginger freckles on her neck.
"Maman." Tintin spoke through an exhale. "Are you alright?"
Joi turned around, too quickly, and grabbed for the counter with one hand. The other held onto her stomach, which swung with the sudden movement, straining against the loose fabric of her dress. Pale grey eyes rested on Tintin without seeing him, her brow wrinkling.
"Oh-" She shook her head. "Hello, mon coeur. I'm sorry. I'm fine, just fine."
Her voice was strange and distant, airier than usual. Tintin saw the rigid line of her shoulders, as if braced against a storm, and he heard what she wasn't saying. It must be bad today, he thought.
He held out his satchel. "I brought the groceries."
"Yes, darling, thank you." She gave him a small smile, and her eyes fluttered shut. She inhaled through her nose. "I need to sit down for a moment," she breathed out. "If you could put the meat into the icebox-"
He nodded, "of course, Maman," and offered a smile of his own. He followed as far as the door that led into the parlour. Only after his mother had settled into the couch, legs splayed to accommodate her stomach, did Tintin return to unload the bag.
The baby was due in less than a week. Not soon enough, Tintin thought, and chewed his lower lip. He tucked the meat into the icebox, and the potatoes into the hollow under the floorboards of the pantry, and tried to recall her previous pregnancies with Emmeline and Sibyla. He didn't remember them being anything like this.
A cry started up in the nursery above, as if on cue. Tintin recognised Sibyla's pure, almost melodic tone. Two-year-old Emmeline joined in, not one to be left out of anything.
Tintin skidded through the parlour door, and found his mother struggling to get up. He raised his hands. "Don't you think of moving, Maman." He didn't wait to hear any argument from her, darting through the parlour and up the stairs.
Emmeline quieted as soon as Tintin entered the room. She was sitting on the floor with her blanket discarded behind her, having crawled over the brass rail of her bed. She clutched a cloth doll, and watched as her brother went to Sibyla's crib.
"Sibbie, Sibbie, shhh." He lifted her into his arms. "Hush, little prophetess. You must have had some horrible visions in your dreams, hm?"
She stopped mid-wail and opened her eyes, looking up at him. Tiny mouth open and puckered, listening to his voice. The half-darkness thinned in the light of her sudden open grin, hands grasping, reaching for Tintin's tuft of hair. He bent his head and let her grab it, to hear her giggle.
"There, you see." He lifted his head, and smiled. "Everything's perfectly alright."
Tintin looked down to find Emmeline clinging to his trousers.
"Let's go downstairs, the three of us, and see Maman, shall we? She needs some cheering up." He shifted Sibyla so that he could hold her against his shoulder with one arm, and used the other to take Emmeline's hand. "You've gotten too big for me to carry you, Mel," he told her. She gave him a proud smile.
Once they reached the bottom of the stairs Emmeline let go of Tintin's hand, to run ahead into the parlour. He followed her in.
The air coated his skin like syrup, dense and sweet. Tendrils of honeysuckle scent reached in the open windows, but no breeze. The room was horribly still.
Joi had fallen back against the couch, hair splayed around her head. It shone red and gold in the sunlight cast through the window. Tintin drew nearer, and heard her gasping for breath through parted lips. A flush bloomed in her neck and cheeks, where strands of hair caught in fine dewdrops of sweat.
Tintin set Sibyla down onto the floor. It took him a moment, staring at his mother, to remember to breathe.
"Maman," he whispered.
Her hand hung limp from her arm, draped over the side of the couch. He cupped it in his own, pressed against his chest, and felt her warmth through his shirt. "Maman, wake up."
She didn't stir.
Tintin swallowed through a dry throat. He reached for her face, and touched her brow, gentle as he could. He drew his hand back. Her skin was almost too hot to touch.
The room emptied of air. Tintin swayed, and dropped to his knees. He didn't notice Emmeline beside him until she tried to climb onto the couch.
"Maman. Up. I want come up."
Tintin put a hand on his sister's head. "No, no. She's sick, Mel."
Emmeline looked at him, then back to her mother. "Maman?"
She groaned. Tintin held his breath, and her hand in his. She tossed her head to one side, but didn't open her eyes.
"I'm afraid Maman is very sick," he said, quiet, and released his breath.
His body was disconnected, not his own, as he stood unsteadily and lifted Sibyla up from the rug. He took Emmeline's hand in his and led them into the kitchen, where he deposited the one-year-old into her feeding chair, and gave her a spoon covered in honey to keep her occupied. He tried to offer the same to Emmeline.
"No. Don't want." She stamped her foot, arms crossed. "I want Maman," her voice rose, threatening tears.
"I know, I know." Tintin tossed the honeyed spoon into the sink. He pulled down a clean rag from the cupboard, dampening it with water from the jug kept in the icebox. He turned back to Emmeline, and knelt to meet her eyes.
"Maman needs our help now, Mel," he said, voice strained, yet determined. "So you must be quiet. You must not cry. Do you understand?"
Emmeline stared at him, and said nothing. Tintin rose and took the cloth into the parlour, letting his little sister follow behind.
The cool cloth seemed to help, at first. Her tongue darted out to wet her lips, and her eyes fluttered half-open. They brushed over Tintin before closing again.
"Maman?" He pressed the cloth to her cheek. "Can you hear me?"
She opened her eyes wider, yet struggled to see him, as if through fog. Her clouded stare chilled Tintin's blood. "Remy?" she breathed.
Tintin drew back, blinking at the strange name. "No, Maman." He leaned towards her, to break through the veil between them. "It's me, Tintin. Augustin," he added, though she never called him by his first name.
"No, no." His mother shook her head, too quickly, and had to close her eyes again. With sudden fire, she spat, "I told you to leave us alone."
Tintin brushed a copper curl from her eyes, and laid the cloth over her brow. She's hallucinating, he thought, recalling a list of fever symptoms he'd read before. "Shh," he soothed. "It's alright, Maman."
She swallowed, and tore a ragged breath. "Don't you… don't you try to take him away." Her voice grew hoarse, unravelling. "You have no right. He's mine, my baby-"
"Hush now, it's alright," Tintin said again, trying to believe it. "No one is going to take the baby." He pretended the situation was reversed, and spoke as she would have. "I'm here. I'll take care of you," he promised.
If she heard him, she gave no sign. Tintin turned the cloth over, to its un-warmed side, and stood back up.
For a long moment he didn't move, staring down at the limp form of his mother on the couch. Her rounded stomach rose and fell, as her breath shook the fragile cage of her chest. Tintin shut his eyes. Think, he told himself, think.
But the problem was not that he couldn't think. The problem was he thought too much. Disease symptoms and names of medicinal herbs and emergency first-aid treatments pelted him like raindrops and vanished on impact. He forced his mind to slow, and focus on the facts.
Fact: his mother had a fever. Fact: she was nearly nine months pregnant. Tintin had read plenty of manuals written by great outdoorsmen about how to treat hypothermia on mountaintops and heat stroke in deserts and not a single one of them said anything about treating fever in a pregnant woman. Because pregnant women didn't climb mountains or traverse deserts.
He couldn't take care of her. He didn't know how.
"Tintin…" Emmeline tugged at the hem of his shirt. Her dark eyes glistened. "What's wrong with Maman?"
Tintin crouched and cupped her face in one hand, smoothing her furrowed brow. "I don't know." He forced a deep breath. "I have to go into the village, and find help."
"No." Emmeline grabbed his hand in both of hers. "No, no, no!"
"Mel, I don't want to." Her hands tugged at him, small yet insistent, weakening his voice. "But there's no one else to go."
Tintin felt heavy as he stood back up, and set his jaw.
He shut his sisters in their bedroom, assuring them he'd be back as soon as he could, thought he doubted Emmeline heard him through her wails. Tintin locked their door behind him, knowing they were safer that way.
He started running on the stairs, and didn't stop, not even to glance at his mother before he shot through the front door. Clouds of dust rose in his wake along the dirt road, through the bright, oversaturated afternoon, all the way into the village. He tried not to think beyond the pulse of his feet underneath him.
The sun was a whip against his neck and heels, mocking, branding him. With every step, every second, the heat burned Tintin's promise to his mother into the back of his neck.
/*|*|*\
A week later, after Joi came home from the hospital with Alice Marie Mattheus, a tiny yet healthy baby girl, Tintin made a curious discovery. That terror, once passed, had a corrosive effect on memory. It seemed to him it should be the opposite.
He remembered that afternoon as a series of facts, as if he'd watched it happen to someone else. Upon reaching the village, he'd found Dr. Vermote, only to be told to run straight back home and wait for the ambulance. He'd been there when they took his mother away, to the hospital in Genk. He'd lied, telling the driver that his father would be home soon. He knew it had happened. He didn't remember living it.
When he told his mother the story later, at last convincing her they must have a telephone installed in the house, Tintin left out the only part he did remember.
After watching the ambulance until he could no longer see it, he had climbed the stairs to his sisters' bedroom. Emmeline met him at the door with high-pitched fury, demanding their mother. Tintin had no reassurance to give her. He let her pull him to his knees, her fists in his shirt, crying into his shoulder. Sibyla began to howl. Tintin fought the tears until he couldn't anymore.
He remembered lying on the floor with his baby sisters. Lost, left for dead in the Siberian tundra. It would be the last time Tintin allowed himself to cry in front of anyone for nearly a decade to come, and neither Emmeline nor Sibyla would remember it. It would be the last time he felt younger than his nine years, sobbing until he could barely breathe, until the darkness of the room consumed him and the three of them fell fast asleep.
That was what he remembered. That was how he learned what it meant to be powerless, and it was a feeling far worse than fear.
In case anyone might be wondering, Tintin's home village of Neel is entirely fictional. Its closest town, Genk, is real, and located in the province of Limburg in East Flanders.
So! While you're here, please consider dropping a line in the box down below, to tell me what you thought. Feedback, especially constructive criticism, is the wind beneath my wings. I'm editing and finishing up the 2nd and 3rd of this series, and I'll post the next one as soon as I've deemed it fit for general consumption. If you're interested in reading it, please let me know in a review, or by hitting the follow button. Hope to see you in the next installment!