One foot in front of the other.
Chapter Six
Lucie
In the before time, the time of sweet oblivion, we had no idea what was to come.
I recall once I threw quite a fit of pique because the pink of my ribbon was not the right hue. I had wanted the ashes of roses of a woman, not the brash, rosy pink of a little girl. After our home was destroyed, I found the length of ribbon in the ruins and used it as a tourniquet on a young soldier whose leg had been blown off by a mortar.
I am quite certain he did not mind which shade of pink was the ribbon.
After war was declared, my father insisted I finally accept an offer of marriage, and so I acquiesced to a young man from a fine family. Like everything else, he was taken away by the war. He rarely writes, or if he does, the letters don’t come through. It is hard to imagine him on a battlefield; he had soft hands and an easy, dandified way about him. He is now an officer with the army, but when here in Reims, he had enjoyed parties and dancing and dressing just so.
In the before time, we couldn’t believe our German neighbors to the north would decide to take possession of us. It would be like someone in the house next door, a friend and colleague, coming by and announcing: “This is nowmyhouse. You will stay and serve me, or you will die.” The invasion seemed just that absurd.
Under whose authority does a country, a people, a government, decide such things? Back when my father taught me lessons as I idly spun the big globe in the corner of his study, he would explain that war was terrible but was sometimes necessary.
Father was wrong. This war is indeed terrible, but it is in no way necessary.
I remember the first shell that smashed through the walls of our house. I had been descending the stairs—the massive spiral stairs of which my father was so proud—and the clock on the wall was chiming to tell us it was nine o’clock. It had struck only four chimes when the world exploded.
My ears rang, and I saw but could not hear the tinkling of the shattered windows, shards of glass raining down upon me. I fell several steps down, covered in the white plaster dust of a wall that had disappeared.
Concussion is so...odd. It leaves one feeling sure one is dead, even without showing any apparent injury. I could not believe I remained whole.
Later, my nose would bleed and my head would ache, perhaps from injury, or maybe my mind itself was damaged and scarred. Later, I would muffle my cries in a pillow whileMamancarefully picked out the hundreds of tiny splinters of glass embedded in my skin. Later, she would apply her special salve of thyme and lavender, telling me my young flesh would heal with very little trace of the wounds I had suffered.
Much later, I realized that I had survived a shelling, probably by inches. Had I been one step higher or lower on the stairs, I might have lost my legs, or worse.
But at the time I could think only: Am I dead? Have I died this easily?
?Papa was too old and frail to join our boys who went to fight; our sweet Henri does what he can, but he, too, was rejected by the military as unsuitable.
So we all remained at our poor, wounded house—a home once so fine it had its own name: Villa Traverne. Several refugees helped us to cover the gaping holes with tar paper to protect us from the rain, and we stayed living there, as though in a giant dollhouse, pretending it was normal to mount stairs that no longer had a wall.
Ours was not the worst on the block. What had once been an esteemed neighborhood now lay open and vulnerable like a stripped carcass, its streets clogged by piles of masonry and broken furniture, and even the bodies of friends and neighbors.
Our homes, our haven, our Reims, in ruins.
In September of 1914, the Germans shelled us for half an hour even though they had already taken control of the city. They wanted to frighten us, make us small. And they did. The streets looked like an artist’s conception of hell: iron girders contorted into tortured angles, massive wooden beams splintered into kindling. I am still haunted by the doors and windows that remained, even when all around them had been destroyed. Naked stairways leading into the sky, into the void.
My father begged us to evacuate, but my mother refused.
Mamanis unusual for a woman of station. Eugénie Dubois was raised as the daughter of a farmer in the hills outside of Besançon, and learned from her own very humble grandmother how to make salves and ointments from herbs and oils. Though she took on the airs of a fine lady after marrying my father, war changes things. She startedknitting sweaters and scarves for the children when the first war refugees arrived in Reims; later, when our neighbor’s son showed up on our doorstep in need of care, she took him in and tended to his wounds.
Word spread quickly, and soon enough our once-fine Villa Traverne became a makeshift clinic, providing refuge to those unable to fight but not so gravely injured as to be evacuated to the military hospital.
My mother taught me to wash wounds with salt water and honey; she applied plasters made of mustard and calendula. We concocted salves from lavender and beeswax, and balms with olive oil and thyme. Rosemary, yarrow, and comfrey leaf reduce itching and scarring; Saint-John’s-wort helps with aching joints and nerve pain. Teas of slippery elm bark, sage, and peppermint cure all manner of intestinal ailments, and a shot of pear brandy from our rapidly dwindling cellars was always appreciated.
We didn’t have much, but we brought the poor, aggrieved soldiers bowls of soup, crackers with honey, slices ofpain ordinaire au levain. I do not care for nursing, and am not by nature a physician, but more than anything, these unfortunate men, some merely ailing while others are permanentlymutilés, needed rest and recuperation, so the nursing was not strenuous.
Through it all, my father left his study less and less; his wool business had included a robust trade with our neighbors to the north, and was now abandoned. Some of our fellowRémoishad looked upon us with suspicion because of those German ties, but now none of that matters.
After the invaders marched into Reims, two soldiers pounded on our still-standing door and demanded to know why we had not evacuated with the others. I explained, in their own language, that we were tending to the sick. They laughed, less interested in the fateof the “dirty Frenchpoilus” than in the fact that I spoke German. They thought it was a fine thing, and suggested that I could teach the children of Reims to be good German subjects.
I barely refrained from spitting on them.
After a mere eight days, our valiant French forces wrenched control of Reims away from theBoches, but the invaders squatted down on the surrounding hills and pelted us with their weapons from afar.
