In This Hospitable Land (65 page)

André, Denise, and Cristian were excited. Ida was agitated. Christel seemed nervous.

As the train rolled along, André kept looking through the dirty windows, pointing out factories destroyed by the war, villages with whole sections turned to rubble, and roads and bridges blown up and barely repaired. The Germans had done this in retreat trying to delay the destruction of Germany by destroying France first.

“That’s mean,” Christel said. “We’re supposed to take care of each other, aren’t we? That’s what I learned in the Cévennes.”

Denise sighed. “I hope it’s nothing like this back home.”

Approaching the border, André explained they would have to show their papers to government officials on both sides. But their papers were in order so there was no need to worry. “Just smile and be polite,” he said. “Leave the talking to me and your Maman.” The train stopped but kept wheezing and shaking while they waited for French customs officials to make their way through the cars. “They must be glad to once again be guarding a frontier that only recently wasn’t theirs to guard. See the pride they take in following form? That helps restore their confidence.”

When the next officials came through, the children were excited to see real Belgians who weren’t family.

“So officious,” Denise said, watching how they handled others.

“They’ve gone back to their old habits,” André agreed, “as though the Germans had never been here.”

“Look how worn their uniforms are,” Denise clucked.

“And the insignia are tarnished.”

“Papers please.” The words were polite but the official sounded stern.

The children hugged their mother anxiously as André showed the man their passports and Cristian’s birth certificate from Aubenas. The official studied Denise’s British passport carefully, asked a couple of questions, then handed the passports back.

“This is from French authorities in the south,” André said volunteering a document signed by the notary in Vialas and countersigned by the mayor, proclaiming the diamonds in the Sauverins’ possession legitimately theirs. André was glad he had thought to get it.

“Why did you leave Belgium?” the customs man asked.

“To save my family.”

The official shrugged. “I need to inspect. Let me see your bags.” André got them down from the overhead rack. The man poked his hands in and felt around. “This paper says you have diamonds. Let me see them.”

“Why?” André asked growing hot. “Our papers are in order.”

“I still have to see them. Will I have to search your wife or perhaps put you and the children off the train right now?”

The children buried their faces in their mother’s dress.

“That won’t be necessary,” André sighed, reaching into his pocket and pulling out the small velvet pouch.

The official took the bag, opened it, poured out the diamonds, and counted. “The same number listed. Good.”

He handed the document back to André but put the pouch and diamonds into his pocket.

“What are you doing? Even you admit our papers say those diamonds are ours!”

“Procedure,” the official said, opening a little book with an official-looking stamp on the cover. “Don’t worry. I’ll give you a receipt.” André tried to control himself while the customs officer wrote in pencil, pressing down hard to make a carbon copy. “If all really is in order, you may claim your diamonds from the customs office in Brussels.”

Red-faced, André accepted the receipt and suppressed his rage. Within minutes the train crossed the border into Belgium.

The train finally pulled into the old gray south station, so familiar and yet so different than before. Gone were the lively, colorful crowds. The flower shop stood empty. The candy stores appeared to have closed long before. Only the shoe repair shop remained open—busier than ever since nothing new had been obtainable for years and old cracked leather had to be sewn and patched time and again unless the entire population of Brussels were to go barefoot or wear the wooden clogs of the Cévennes.

Firmly leading his family into the early autumn evening, André recognized buildings but not the spirit of the city. His children were energetic and enthusiastic but André couldn’t pay proper attention or answer their barrage of questions until he figured out how to get them to the small two-bedroom apartment near the university’s chemistry department.

The few slow-moving taxis were loaded with passengers. After several frustrating minutes André wondered about boarding a streetcar. He thought he knew the right one.

While they waited, Ida kept looking about trying to take in and remember everything. Christel stared fixedly at the olive-brown army trucks rumbling and growling past, exhaust spewing from their tailpipes. She’d never seen so many different types of vehicles before.

The army was completely in control. Every civilian vehicle automatically gave way before military transports.

Far down the street in a great space between two buildings, rubble was piled high where an apartment house had once stood. André was carried back to the initial bombing of Brussels: the building with its façade torn away by a bomb blast and the dead man he had seen perched in an easy chair…

Though most fighting had bypassed Brussels for the strategically vital port of Antwerp, V-1 and V-2 rockets occasionally dropped silently and exploded loudly on the capital. How safe would they truly be with a resentful Germany continuing to try to claw its way back from a steady series of defeats? Nazi rocket launchers in the Netherlands had been captured but there were still firings from the other side of the Rhine.

Other hopeful streetcar passengers gathered behind the Sauverins. André and Denise felt pangs of hurt, regret, and anger as they stared at the lovely trees lining the great boulevards—bare of leaves, their desolation seemed to speak of present-day Brussels, as did the cracked and chipped shop and street signs, their colors showing up faded in the failing light of day.

A crowded streetcar finally arrived and the Sauverins squeezed onto it with everyone else. As returning refugees they thought their emotional difference would announce their presence if their strange clothes didn’t. But no one took the slightest notice of them, too deeply involved in their own concerns to perceive the cares of others.

At one time André would have been affronted had he, as a member of the Free University’s faculty, not been accorded some small deference. But he expected none now. In the Brussels of October 1944, even a repatriated professor was of little moment and hardly any interest at all.

They found the address and climbed the single flight of stairs. Denise kept reminding herself that they really were back even if this place didn’t feel like home in the slightest.

Taking a great collective breath, they opened the door and stepped into the small, cold, barely furnished space they would inhabit for some time to come. Christel looked up at her mother imploringly. Denise couldn’t think of a thing to say.

“It’s been a long time,” André offered, forcing a smile for the children’s sake. “But here we are.”

Denise put Cristian on the floor, certain he could not get lost in a place so small. Then she took her husband’s hand, realizing André could use some reassurance too. “It’s lovely to be back,” she said. “Different of course. But we’re together, in Brussels!”

“I was never sure we’d see it again,” André said hoarsely.

Denise kissed and released his hand then began to poke about the kitchen fitted out with a small stove and a few cabinets. The little dining table was covered with dust and crumbles of plaster shaken loose from the ceiling by the explosions of bombs and rockets and the firings of heavy guns. Tiny, time-worn wooden chairs with rush seating surrounded the table. The one easy chair in the front room was more substantial but its leather was cracked and its arms were burnished by countless resting elbows. A single hanging lamp cast a bare glare across the room and spilled into the back.

“I thought we would have more space in Brussels,” Ida said petulantly, returning from the one bedroom. “This is smaller than where we lived before the war.” She scrunched up her face. “It’s even smaller than the space we shared with Mamé and Tata Irene.”

“Ah, but we’re lucky to have it,” Denise said as soothingly as she could considering her own uncertainty and distress.

“Will we have to stay here long?” Christel asked, matching her older sister’s petulant tone and scrunched-up face. “It’s not very nice.”

Slowly, deliberately, André said, “This is our home now. And look: we have our own bathroom. You never had
that
in the Cévennes.”

At that moment they realized Cristian had already found his way to the bathroom since he had somehow reached up and pulled on the chain to the tank. The gurgle and rush of water announced his whereabouts to them and the chain’s function to him.

Laughing, Cristian returned with water splashed all over the front of his clothes. “That’s fun!” he declared, having never experienced an overhead water tank before.

“Well, don’t waste water,” Denise said gently, struggling vainly to suppress her own laughter. “Only pull the chain after you use the toilet.”

“You mean we don’t have to carry our chamber pots outside anymore?” Cristian asked in stark amazement.

“No, silly,” Christel said showing off the superior knowledge she pretended to have. “You don’t use a chamber pot when you live in a big city like Brussels.”

Denise suddenly realized she must go out no matter how tired she was to obtain food for her family. She might have guessed food would still be scarce and sold mainly in the black market at prices she was in no position to pay. But with a little effort she found and bought enough to make sure her family didn’t starve that night and would have something nourishing with which to start the next day. Unfortunately she couldn’t find coffee. Oh, how she had hoped to surprise André with the real thing first thing in the morning.

Even as she trudged back up the stairs to their new home hoping her family would be pleased with what she brought them, she knew what André would say when she apologized for her coffee failure: “Not to worry my dear. Someday…”

Cristian, who slept in a special blanket-bed his mother had made for him on the floor, woke up first and looked out the window. He marveled at the difference between Brussels and Le Salson. But his new home was gray and misty. Frightened, he crawled into bed with his parents.

“I have to get ready,” André said, opening his eyes, kissing his wife, and carrying his son with him into the front room. He told the boy to be quiet and not to wake his sisters.

“That’s not fair,” Cristian complained in a sibilant whisper. “I want to tickle them!”

The little boy put his hands over his eyes and watched between his fingers as André, for the first time in Cristian’s life, put on a suit and a big dark tie.

“You look like a professor again,” Denise said happily, entering the room. “Let me straighten your lapels.”

“It’s a funny feeling,” André admitted while Denise also straightened his tie.

“Maman,” Christel called, sitting up in bed and rubbing her eyes. “Can we go out to play?”

“Later,” Denise said. “First we have to get your papy off to the university.”

“What about breakfast?” Ida asked, not even lifting her head. “I’m hungry, Maman.”

They all sat down to breakfast, which was meager. But the bread was very good.

“I plan to visit Tante Anna and her family on the way home,” André said, wiping his lips with a napkin and standing up. “To see how the family is.”

“Oh, it will be so wonderful to be with them again,” Denise declared. Then she asked Ida, “Do you remember your great Tante Anna and her daughters?”

“A little,” Ida answered. “Wasn’t she just like Bonnemaman?”

“A little younger,” Denise said, smiling, “but very much like your Bonnemaman Rose.”

André gave each child two kisses on each cheek in turn.

“Not a third one?” Christel asked, perplexed.

Denise explained the difference between the south of France and Belgium again.

“But for you,” André said, leaning down to Christel. “Well, we haven’t been away from the Lozère so long that we’ve forgotten already!”