Michel couldn’t sleep. His little brother Fernand wanted a story, but Michel was too old for such things. He used to love it when his mother read stories to them, sitting on her stool by the side of the bed, when she used to make him camomile tea to help him sleep and gazed at him as he drank it, when Fernand snuggled up next to him under the covers, babbling giddily, when their father brushed his hand over Michel’s forehead, and he dreamed of when he’d be just as big and strong as Papa, whose shadow covered the whole bed, whose gentle voice wished them goodnight. When mama and papa kissed him, thinking he was asleep, and he would open his eyes to see them, to know they loved him. All of that was gone now. Ever since he’d arrived at the Saint-Sauveur orphanage, he no longer wanted to hear any of it: no more stories, no more lies, no more hope. And not a single prayer. He thought only of the reality: solitude, emptiness, absence. The absence of his father, dead at the front, and the void left by his mother, taken away by the police.
The sisters at the Saint-Sauveur orphanage were kind, for the most part anyway. Sister Bernadette would sometimes slip him a lozenge or a Vichy pastille. Fernand didn’t like her as much because she was no good at telling stories and was always complaining about her arthritis. Michel was happy that Fernand still slept beside him in the dormitory. There were thirty-three orphans sleeping in rows, and at night he often heard the other boys crying. They pretended not to hear, they closed their eyes and tried to think of something else: of before, of another place. Fernand didn’t cry; he was just as happy as he had been before, just as carefree. He was a good brother, the only family he had left, the best orphan there was at Saint-Sauveur. Michel looked out for him, teaching him everything he knew, reassuring him and helping him grow up. Fernand was a good lad; he listened carefully, never objected, and was happy just playing with a ball or singing songs. And he ate all his soup, even though the Jerusalem artichoke soup wasn’t very good, and the salsify smelled terrible and made everyone gassy. They had to take cod liver oil and vitamins once a week, and it made their stomachs turn all day long. Michel wanted it to be over, the war, although who knew if it would really change anything for them, the war orphans. The sisters were scared stiff of the Germans. They called them the bochs, though he didn’t know why. It sounded like a funny sort of name to him, not the sort of thing that scared you, but when sister Bernadette talked about the bochs her face contorted and her eyebrows furrowed. When they went to the beach in Mole, they could play hide and seek in the casemates near the jetty. If they shouted up “Brot! Brot!” the Germans would throw down biscuits for them. At least the Germans gave out biscuits; they never got biscuits at the Saint-Sauveur.
Tomorrow was Sunday. Michel did not look forward to the Lord’s Day because there was no school, which gave him too much time to think about his mother. During mass his mind wandered, and he heard not a word that the priest spoke. Then they had to go to confession, though God knows what manner of sin they could have committed. He told the priest about his pain, and how he wanted to go far away and never come back. The priest listened to him patiently and advised him to be patient. He said that one day soon, a family would take him in, that they would be happy, Fernand and he, that they would live like real children. He also said that there was more of life to be lived, that there was a whole world out there beyond the orphanage, and that all this would pass and he would forget all about it. But Michel knew that he would never forget because his solitude sometimes turned to anger, because the emptiness sometimes turned to sadness, because Fernand wasn’t enough to make a family.
Alan Alfredo Geday