It had been too long since I’d heard from Clare. A year and a half and I still wrote her, but nothing came in return.
Maman caught tears on her cuff. “She’ll write, mon poussin.” She straightened. “She’ll write and tell you all about her journey.”
I didn’t want to think about all of the reasons Clare might not return, all of the tropical diseases and ailments that could befall her. Malaria, trypanosomiasis, river blindness, dengue fever. Snake bites. Lions. Rushing rivers. Something could’ve happened years ago and I wouldn’t know. Who would think to contact me? Who in the Laghouat general post office would do anything with the stack of waiting letters but throw them away?
A boy leaned around the doorway, panting. “Gaspard!” His hair hung sweaty on his forehead. “It’s time.”
Gaspard swung his towel up over his shoulder and came out from behind the bar. He looked grim. He had a son my age. He had every reason to look grim.
“Luc.” Maman caught my hand as I stood. “Don’t go,” she said in English.
I kissed her forehead in reply.
Papa and I followed Gaspard out onto the street, to a freshly pasted poster. Above a pair of crossed tricolor flags, stark black letters announced: ARMÉE DE TERRE ET ARMÉE DE MER: ORDRE DE MOBILISATION GÉNÉRALE. Paste dripped down, smudging the handwritten date. Tomorrow we were to report to our units.
Crowds were starting to gather around the poster, men bleak-faced, women quietly clutching up the fronts of their coats. I swallowed and tried to pretend that I wasn’t completely terrified.
Papa stood behind me, still tugging at his beard. It’s what he always did when he was thinking far too hard about something. At forty-nine, he was still in the territorial reserves. I could see his fingers already tracing against the side of his leg. He would have to learn to paint war now.
“Papa…” I started. “I don’t know…” But I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t confess, not to my papa who was French to his core, that I felt more fear than patriotism. That I was confused and exhausted and wanted nothing more than to lie in Maman’s rose garden and sleep for a hundred years.
He clapped a hand on my shoulder. He didn’t need me to say it. “Trust in France.” He straightened his hat. “It’s all we can do.”
I wanted to believe him. I wanted to not be afraid of what came next. The past months of marching and studying and falling asleep in lectures, and we were no closer to being soldiers. And yet, with that paste-smeared poster on the wall, suddenly we were. Just like that.
With another long look at the poster, Papa returned into the café, his fingers still tracing the side of his leg.
Around me I could hear sobs between the murmured chatter. Mothers held onto young boys’ arms. Fathers stood stoically, looking everywhere but at the dripping poster. Sweethearts clung together, touching cheeks, faces, mouths. Straight down the street, a boy, much too young for the army, marched with a tattered flag above his head. “Viva la France!” he shouted.
Suddenly cold, I went back into the café.
Maman was gone. She must have slipped away while we were outside. Papa sat alone at our table, drinking the now ice-cold coffee. In front of him were two glasses of dark cognac and a bottle.
“She wanted to leave before you said goodbye.”
I wouldn’t have been able to turn and walk away from Maman’s tears. “I understand.”
“We must make a pact,” he said, pushing one glass to me. “If we go, go quickly. For your maman.”
It was absurd. We both knew it. What was war if not messy? But we silently shook hands and picked up the cognacs. It was the sort of oath that men took when they didn’t know what else to do. Words that masked helplessness. We drained the glasses in one swallow.
I looked to Gaspard, standing at the bar slicing cheese. He shrugged. “He bought the bottle. Have as much as you like.”
I poured out two more and offered Papa a silent santé. “She’ll be fine, won’t she? Maman?”
He tugged at his beard. “She’d do better than you or I would if we were alone. Iron, she is.”
“Even iron rusts.”
He swirled his cognac and drank. “And it becomes more beautiful for the transformation.”
I caught a drop on the side of my glass with my thumb.
“Luc, she left this for you.” From his pocket, he took a ribbon, pale blue, from Maman’s hat.
I remembered a boy with a faded ribbon, missing his maman terribly. I tied it around my wrist.
I finished my cognac and took the rest of the bottle to the counter at the front. “Gaspard,” I said to the owner, “put the rest of this behind the bar. I know you have that hollow post, where you keep the good stuff hidden. Put this there.” I dug all of my money out and put a handful of bills on the counter. “Please, Gaspard. When this is all over, we’ll drink together. We’ll toast to another day, conquered.”
Gaspard sighed, but he took the bottle from me. “Keep your money. Just come back, you hear?”
Papa patted my shoulder and left without another word.
All of those letters I dutifully wrote to Clare, those letters piling up in Laghouat, waiting for a return that might never happen. All of those letters, waiting for an ending to our story.
I tore a blank page from the copy of Germinal in my jacket pocket. With the stub of a pencil, the words came out in furious scribbles, a place to direct all of my fear and confusion and anger.
Paris
Samedi, le 1 août 1914
The First Day
Clare,
I don’t know where you are or if you’ll ever read any of my letters. You’re off on a quest, but now, so am I. Here, this day, I’m being called to take up my sword.
The princesses my father painted were always strong enough to take the scissors to their own hair. They waited for no one. Even before you came to Mille Mots, Papa was painting you. I don’t have their courage. I don’t know how my tale will end.
