VIII. Le Viėi / The Old Men
Monday, July 22nd, 1940
"So, when the penitents heart-broken
Sue for pardon at your door,
Flood their souls with peace unspoken,
White flowers of our briny moor!"
Mireille had felt some trepidation in watching him—her current position in the doorway conspicuous to any occupants that might be in the house, but she knew Mother and Honorine were otherwise engaged. Mother would be working at preparations for the ploughing, and Honorine would be helping her along. They knew Mireille had come inside to catch her breath; such breaks from work were quite routine. Her activity, however, was entirely not.
They had had their row only hours before, but she couldn't let things lie. Her stomach had been in knots all morning, and she had the creeping inclination that she had mishandled things. Though if casting him off made the most sense, why wouldn't her mind let her be? And so here she found herself, standing not two meters away from the very object of her strain.
He stood along the length of his bed, shoulders hunched as he shoved what little belongings he had into his trunk. Some Soldaten would be along to collect it later, no doubt. His position commanded these few luxuries.
She didn't know how she had managed to sneak up on him without being discovered—wasn't he supposed to be a trained killer? How could he let a young woman catch him so unawares? Had their time together removed his mind so thoroughly from war?
With a harsh sigh he slammed the lid of the trunk down, the noise reverberating off the stone walls, "What?"
So he had known she was there after all. Of course he had.
She didn't want to answer him, but her nerves had ignited at the loud sound and his attention commanded it. Mireille did the only thing that made sense to her and drew nearer to him. She was a moth in bright light, and though a part of her marveled at how easily she could be drawn in, everything in her wanted to be close. As close as could be and even closer still.
He was leaving, and she feared her freedom would take off with him, never to be felt again. Would she break under her routine and ordinary life once it was foisted back upon her? How could she bare it without him there to wake her up from her daydream?
A touch of fear ran down her spine. All at once she fully understood the weight of his leaving. Her officer. The man she had once hated but now admired. The single person who had helped her make sense of this world was now abandoning her in it, and he hadn't even the decency to understand just how much he had changed her.
All of it boiled up into a festering mix of anger, fear, hate, sadness, and desperation. Mireille couldn't breathe for the weight of it. And as she drew nearer to his stiffened back, she let loose every single nasty thing she felt.
Her fists pelted his back with a fury that she didn't dare try to express with words, and the room filled with the sounds of her heavy breaths and mangled frustration.
She hated him, oh goodness, how she hated him!
But, oh glittering and naive stars above, how she loved him!
Her realization was not enough to pause her assault, and if anything, it spurred her on to hurt him more. He deserved to have every last ill-fated, misconstrued notion of her love marred over his skin. He would see what he had done to her in the bruises that would line his skin. And, oh God, how he should burn.
Kurt whirled on her almost as quickly as she began to attack him, and their hands danced in a frenzy as he tried to secure her wrists within his grasp. Their parrying was wild, but he never stopped advancing until soon her back was against the wall, hidden from view behind the open door.
He overcame her once she was immobilized, and their open mouths clashed in only the harsh way that theirs could, somehow still managing to convey everything they wished to say. Their tongues lapped and their teeth rattled against each other. All the regret, the burden, and the shame. The hope, the loss, and the reverie. It was too much and never enough. They were two celestial bodies falling out of orbit in wild and manic circles.
When they couldn't stand not to breathe anymore, they stood for a few hopeless seconds with their eyes closed, foreheads resting against one another.
"Can you really just go?" she hated how pathetic her voice sounded to her own ears in the long silence that followed.
At not hearing his response, Mireille opened her eyes, heavy-laden with tears, and reached up to pet his cheek, "Kurt?"
His eyes snapped open abruptly, and she saw herself mirrored there. They were red and lined with unshed agony. The few pieces of his perfectly-styled hair that had come undone shook as they fell over his forehead. He looked as if he were fighting himself. As if the very sight of her was scalding him yet enticing him to come closer. They were alike in that sentiment, at least.
He grabbed her around the waist and drew her in, practically suffocating her with the tightness of his grasp. But she loved it. She was where she had wanted to be all along. No pretending, no doing what was fucking right anymore. She wanted him and she loved him and she wanted to stay with him here, forever.
His lips dipped low once more to capture her own. This time it wasn't so rushed and frantic. He took his time to taste her. He wanted to remember every last bit of her to carry on with him wherever the front took him.
"I have never wanted to know someone as much as I have you," he spoke lowly when they parted next. His blue eyes bore into hers, and she knew that in those words he meant everything he could ever say.
"Will I never see you again?" She asked, out of breath. Her hands clutched at his shirt, doing everything to meld their two bodies together.
Love was a strange thing—how it gave hope where none should grow. It was a soft, yellow flower between the cracks in the cobblestones.
He watched her intently as he answered, "I don't know."
She reached up to capture his face and seared a kiss across his lips. She poured every last anguish into it. With a sigh, she leaned back.
"I will try to forget you," she began, and watched as his eyes searched her face, incensed over her meaning. She couldn't help the small smile that shone through her tears at his familiar anger, "But I fear I never will."
He spoke not a word and raised his hands to cup the sides of her face like she had done to him. His thumb swept gently over cheek while he watched her a few seconds longer. Then, with a final, light peck on her lips, he was out of the door and down the hall.
Mireille stood where he left her, dazed with the weight of it all. When his harsh footsteps sounded on the gravel outside of the window, she raced to see the back of his form as it retreated down the lane.
She knew it was over, and that they would never see each other again. She knew that, truly. Yet still she felt nothing. She was in a haze, one where she saw things happening around her but they meant nothing. Picture shows without the sound. Funny lights on the wall.
Wiping her face dry quickly, Mireille smoothed her dress down and stepped lithely from the room. It was time she returned to help Mother and Honorine with their work.
She carried on like that for the rest of the day—cocooned within her own mind. Nothing was real, and the strain of the work she performed escaped her. She didn't even look up when a German soldier came down the lane to collect the Oberleutnant's trunk. She simply wasn't there.
It was only when she stepped into the solace of her room after the long day's toil and shut the door behind her that her legs gave out and she collapsed to the floor. She did her best to stifle the cries, but after a time she realized she didn't have to. Her pain sliced her so deep that when she tried to voice it, she couldn't make a sound.
She lay like that, curled up on the stone floor and clutching her throat for the rest of the night.
Sunday, June 9th, 1946 - Six Years Later
Mireille trekked warily into the center of the town square to see the fountain flowing freely with water once more. It was an act that had been absent so long that she had even forgotten it was possible. Mass had just let out for the morning, and she debated heading home straightaway or strolling down to a neighbor's house for a quick bite and catching up.
The town was bustling more than it had in the past six years. The war had been over for months now, and everyone was doing their part to restore Bussy to its former glory. The sweeping waves of amber grain were no longer pockmarked from expended rounds and bombshells. The people did not hide in fear from behind darkened windows or stash their extra food in any hidey-hole they could find.
The sun shone bright on the people of France anew. The birds came out to share their gay tune. Neighbors greeted neighbors in the street, unashamed to sidle up for a long conversation, their schedules no longer driven by their occupiers.
It was as if there hadn't been a war at all.
But a war had been fought, and Mireille saw it—the traces of fear and death that hung on every street corner. Those same neighbors regarded each other warily, knowing that when it had come down to it, they had been the first to sell each other out. Families attended Sunday service minus their sons and fathers.
That was then, and this was their new present.
Honorine had elected to stay at home as she did every Sunday, refusing to leave the sanctuary of the farmhouse. She hadn't really left since she had come home at war's end. Mireille had thought she was dead. She had grieved her loss after the girl had gone missing sometime after the first wave of invaders had marched on, and was forced to do the same for Mother two weeks later, the older woman too shocked to repair her broken heart. The only remaining Marveaux girl hadn't the ability to wear black to honor their memory, each day's work requiring her to wear her less than best.
She hadn't really thought about it, how death hung around her like a cloud, stooping her shoulders and lodging a permanent ache in her neck. But when she spied Honorine standing stock-still at the end of the lane, her dark hair now long enough to sweep down her back and her eyes holding a tiredness that only survivors knew, Mireille's legs had given out from under her.
Her body was racked with every sob she had held in since the war had started, and she couldn't stand up even when Honorine had tried to lend her a hand. She stayed on the ground like that for a long while, her sister electing to get down with her and just be. They had hugged each other until the tears had dried on their dirt-stained cheeks.
Mireille had looked up into her sister's eyes then, seeing all the horrors that remained yet unspoken, "Where have you been?"
Honorine had answered but didn't give a thing away, "Come on, let's go inside."
They walked arm in arm, but Mireille felt a distance between them.
It had taken several weeks for Honorine to even hold eye contact and offer a soft dismissal when Mireille asked what had happened. Then some weeks after that came the start of an answer. The trickle of answers gave way to a full torrent by the time winter came around, and they would spend long nights up in the kitchen sipping coffee and filling in the years apart while snow fell quietly outside.
Apparently the Germans—in an effort to keep their soldiers 'unspoiled'—had created their own brothels while in occupied France. The official word was that these establishments were staffed by those who were prostitutes before the war, but Honorine had been plucked up on her walk home from town. Plucked up and carted off to a home full of women a fair distance off in the hills.
Nazis came in and out daily, and she began to recognize some of their faces. She talked of escape with the other girls, but they promised she would have her breasts and lips cut off before they fucked her one last time and put a bullet in her head if she did that. So she had stayed. Stayed and made friends with the women and even some of her repeat frequenters.
She hated herself the most for that. That she had let them put their hands on her and then would stay up late into the night to talk about their lives. They never asked about hers; she was a whore after all. What little German she knew was enough to bridge the language barrier between most of them.
It was the ones who didn't want to talk that she had feared. They came in with their rough hands and callous tongues and made her forget why she bothered to keep on living. She prayed for their deaths the most. The fact that Germany had lost the war was only a minor vindication.
Mireille had hugged her through every story, trying to reassure her that she was still loved despite it all. She didn't think Honorine felt it though. She was her own woman now—her fully developed body a testament to the fact—and Mireille didn't think she could take back the damage those men had inflicted during some of the most formative years of her life.
Honorine hadn't cried when Mireille told her that Mother was dead. Nothing made her cry anymore. Not when she heard the news of the death a boy she had attended primary school with. Not when Rainer got so old he had to be put down in the garden. She had been the one to take the shotgun in hand to carry out the deed herself.
Mireille knew that Honorine's mind wasn't fully with her, but she knew it would come back in time. She hoped.
Her own wartime experiences hadn't been much. She'd had to tend to the farm and help the neighbors like nothing had gone on at all. She'd had to cater to the whims of each passing Wehrmacht member that demanded something of her: food, wool, tools. They took whatever they could carry. She couldn't wait until she would see them retreating instead.
When the Allies invaded in '44, she had waited with the smug satisfaction of an old hag seeing her forsaken hedgerow predictions come true. Posters had gone up around town, calling on citizens to arm themselves against the retrograding enemy force. She had ignored their urgent pleas, feeling that the problem was concentrated in Paris rather than their humble country town. Nevertheless, she kept the loaded shotgun next to her bed when she slept, just in case.
Then all at once, they came like a torrent. Germans passed through the already-ravaged Bussy in the same direction they had come, and Mireille sensed the irony at how the conqueror was now turning tail to run. These young men who had first arrived so fresh-faced and cocksure in their line of tanks were now mostly hobbled—whether it was from injury or exhaustion it was hard to tell. She couldn't recognize any of them, not that she wished to find a familiar face among the deluge. That didn't stop her looking though.
What if she so happened to lift her head from drawing a cool palmful of water at the fountain under the aged clocktower to see him standing there—pristine uniform torn and bloodied around him? His hair would be unkempt and he might have the beginnings of a beard from days of traveling without provision. He would smell, and he would show her nothing but hate, she was sure.
Their tables had turned after all. She could consider herself amongst the victors now, and he and his had been all but thoroughly beaten. He would snarl with contempt as she drew near. He would wish her gone from his sight, and she would wish the same. But she would touch him. Reach out to feel his soft skin hidden beneath mangled garments once more. She wouldn't dare to breathe a word, and perhaps her touch would be enough to stem the anger within him. Or at least keep it at bay long enough for her to draw her fill.
They could find themselves down the side of a long alley before any of the others in town thought to look for her. Before his comrades asked after their Oberleutnant. A tryst behind ivy-covered fences would be enough for her. To feel him, to breathe him, to taste once more the ire-filled lacquer around his heart.
But would he really be so whittled and rotten? Or would that softness within him settle itself like the morning dew over her?
She simply did not know. And so, a part of her hoped. Shrouded her mind in such fantasies every time her head kissed the pillow and didn't release her until the morning stretched well on past her usual hour of rising.
Still, she knew time would heal her addled mind. Her officer had been a passing tryst, her first real exploration of something outside of the mundane; she could not help but fixate upon the freedom he made manifest. She would find her own way sure enough; the sooner, the better.
Mireille crossed through a line of bushes that rose above her head where a small opening presented a large enough gap to pass through unhindered. It was much quicker to use this path that lined the edges of several homes in town rather than walk the streets. It could be overgrown at times, but the foot traffic was frequent enough that it always remained passable.
It was high summer once more, and the heady scent of lavender rose from a nearby garden. She could not see the end of the tree line next to her—it seemed to stretch on forever.
Her mind wandered languidly over the tasks that would need tending to once she arrived back at the farmhouse. Rodolphe would no doubt be there by now, as he came around every Sunday. And Monday, and Tuesday, and…As a matter of fact, now that she came to think of it, Mireille found that Rodolphe was turning up at their farm more and more.
He had disappeared for some time at the height of the war when the fate of the world hung over everyone's head as a great question. Several late night conversations over a cup of steaming coffee had revealed that he had been away to Paris to join the resistance. And at such a young age too.
"That's because the Boches never saw it coming!" he rounded when Mireille had the audacity to chastise his noble and heroic pursuits for the sanctity of France, "A kid and a spy? There's no way they would have put two and two together. It was pure genius!"
Mireille had chuckled at that.
Truth be told, Rudolph wasn't so much a child anymore. His rounded cheeks and creaking voice were pitched in the later days of the war, and every time she saw him (which wasn't very often), he seemed to have grown a head taller. His arms hardened with long sinews of muscle, and his soft brown eyes contrasted the strong set of his jaw.
His birthday would be upon them soon, his 22nd. My, he really was man already wasn't he? Where had the time gone?
She hoped he would like the hat she was knitting for—
Mireille stopped her musing and halted in her tracks.
A man was stooped over a tiny garden enclosure, his weight resting on a wooden cane. He was missing the bottom portion of his right leg, and she saw a skinny black strap circling his head indicating an eye patch. A veteran.
But that wasn't what stopped her, no. It was his shape.
He was lithe, his slender body tapering in the same way that his had. His hair was the same dark blonde as her officer, but it was longer and disheveled.
Funny, she hadn't thought of him in weeks. And even when she did, she made sure to spit at the ground to cast his image from her mind.
She didn't know who this man was, but something in her told her that no matter how improbable and unexpected his likeness to her officer, she had better leave well enough alone.
So she did. She turned on her heel to circumvent the line of houses from the other side. It added an extra five minutes to her walk, but she didn't mind. She used it to talk some sense back into herself.
One man who bears a slight resemblance and you practically dissolve into a puddle, she chastised. If God is merciful, that man is dead in a ditch in the Baltic.
He was a part of the past, as dead to her as the hydrangeas in winter. No matter how many times her hand wandered down to touch herself and a set of condescending blue eyes met her there.