He’s wandering, feet just moving, as if the motion alone will save him. There’s no one at his back, not now, not at this precise moment. In another moment, who knows? Reconnaissance he’d told them, but the French countryside is nowhere he’s ever been, years of gray cities and gray streets, German efficiency, making all this green, all this color electric to his eyes. And then, a path appears, a flamboyance of trees. My god, this green! This light, and—it’s a garden, in full bloom, so lovely he thinks this must’ve been what Eden was like before everything went wrong.
And there, rising behind it, a castle. He knew this existed somewhere, assumed there would be something to guide the way, not this sudden onslaught of beauty, this unmarked glory. He turns, looks back over the hills he’s crested, Blamont, a beautiful little city full up with red roofs and little potted plants on every doorstep, the double towered gothic church, gargoyles looking down, so alive you can see their mouths dripping. And here he is, on this free spot of ground in the middle of bloodshed. He looks up at the castle, reconnaissance, yes, best to go inside, just to see.
He walks through the field, lets the tips of his fingers graze the heaps of flowers, spilling out from the earth, climbs the stairs and goes inside. No door to be found, just a great opening, and he is stilled as he takes in the rubble and ruin, the rows of portraits lopsided, frames chipped and splintered, women in heavy collars, men in glorious wigs, faces slashed and curling, the paint peeling in swaths. The library, pages of books with heel marks dug into them, spines broken and scattered, desks turned over, lamps smashed, bullet holes in the woodwork. Everything ruined, everything destroyed, by his own countrymen he knows, each room a tragedy, beauty dismembered.
And now he’s wandering again, eyes glazed, as he goes from room to room, all the wonderful things upended, and then, a moment of calm, when there, in one corner of a mostly empty space, curtains torn from their rods, windows smashed, there, in the cracked sunlight, a piano, a grand piano, Steinway and Sons, perfect and gleaming, not a mark, not a scratch, as if its beauty alone saved it, the black lacquer glossy and rich, a miracle presented to him amongst the fervor of destruction.
He thinks of his mother, his father, their long fingers, sitting side by side after his little brother’s bar mitzvah, heads touching, the notes long and slow, before the war, before his older brother died, before he was sent into this constant stream of gunfire and quick, sharp cruelty, death and almost death, shattered limbs and shattered hearts, before he knew the things people could do to each other. He hovers over the keys and plays hesitantly, haltingly. Slowly his body relaxes and Shlof Mayn Kind, Sleep My Child, fills the shattered room with perfect music.
In this moment, in a French city in a French castle, he has never been more aware of his Germanness, the love he has for his country. And, in a few years, when this day seems like a dream, like something that never happened, his country will declare him subhuman, vermin. His family will flee and he will stay, not believing his own eyes, his own ears, convinced his love will win out, his patriotism will override the whims of a despot. And he will not understand he is wrong until the bullet enters his brain in a mass grave, eyes looking up at the sky as the dirt covers him.
But he doesn’t know that yet, in a foreign country thinking of his home. That hasn’t happened yet. All he knows is this moment is soft and beautiful, and the sun is bright and outside electric green, and he is safe for a little while, the world quiet. And his hands move over the keys as if he has forever, as if he could be here forever, as if he’ll live forever, suspended in time in this room, in this place, one bright spot, a pocket of Eden before it all goes wrong, truly and completely.
Before all, everything is lost.
Kate LaDew is a graduate from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro with a BA in Studio Arts. She lives in Graham, NC with her cats James Cagney and Janis Joplin.
Featured image: The Old Castle by Emanuel Murant from the Met’s Public Domain
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