They’ll Be Home By Christmas

Paris Night 1 _{(Credit: ANWERIX on DeviantArt)}

I had never quite considered sunshine could feel cold, however, the weather feels as though it is a cruel joke. The scatterings of warmth on a clear day feel so much more oppressive knowing what is happening. In such troubled times, I find myself noticing normalcy with apprehension. Life is entirely abnormal right now, but my weekly routine has remained the same.

A young girl, straining against her mother’s hand pulling her onwards, remains transfixed by a music box in the window of a toy shop. The tiny, carved figure of an elegant ballet dancer spinning around as a tune neither of us can hear lilts the air. The girl’s nose has turned red in the cold, but nothing can overpower her view of the music box, except her pleading for her mother to walk inside. The girl says, “Mama, I want to be like her.”

How envious I am of a girl who can still dream. All that awaits me when I sleep are nightmares. My beloved is off, far away, hiding each night in a filthy trench praying he wakes up to survive another day of horrors. He has tried to shield me from the truth when he is able to write. The latest of his letters sits on my vanity, stained with ash and dirt from the front. I want to carry it everywhere, but I know my worrisome nature will destroy what may be his final words to me if I clutched it too tightly.

His efforts to protect me from the ugly truth of his daily routine are sadly in vain. The horrors he and his comrades endure are painted on the faces and etched into the bodies of every solider boy overcrowding the makeshift field hospitals. Some are able to move around town, either on leave or awaiting to return to the front. Even the ones without scars from battle have suffered deep wounds on their souls.

I flatten the wrinkles in my skirt and continue onward. My mother would not wish me to be late collecting her things. I pray the little girl convinces her mother to buy that music box in the window. I pray she has something to hold onto.

Lost in my thoughts, Paris’ usual sights and smells melt away. I’m immune to the stench of so many people and horses. My own anxious and restless thoughts drown out the din of the few motorcars and the masses of Parisians fretting about normal concerns to keep from worrying about their husbands and sons and fathers far away on the frontlines. I wish I were that skilled. My mind only hears the one sentiment everyone shared as we waved our brave boys goodbye on their way to the battlefield.

“They’ll be home by Christmas.”

***

Paris has yet to wake up when my mind throws me off a cliff. The weight on my eyelids invites me to return to my sleep, but the tragedy of the dreams have jolted my mind awake, fighting my body’s desire to sleep again. Sleep forever. Sleep until he comes home. In the darkness of Eric’s bedroom, I use my thumb to ensure the ring still clings to my left ring finger. I breathe a sigh of relief when my fingertip slides over the metal band. I find it uncomfortable to wear to sleep, but I am too afraid that if I take it off, it will melt away as some of my memories of Eric already have. I can’t remember the way he’d make eggs like his mother taught him. My mind reaches for those little phrases he’d use which I found adorable even though I seldom understood them. Some days I struggle to recall his voice; I am so thankful I have a few videos to remind me. My thumb rubs the ring once again. I will take more videos and photos. I will hear his voice again.

The ring also lets me keep track of which reality I’m in. My counterpart in these dreams wasn’t asked by her sweetheart before he shipped off to war. These dreams have remained my secret for months. Noelle has occasionally stayed the evening when I am too upset to be alone, but I guard these dreams of another woman in another life facing the same struggle as though they were a mountain of gold and I were a dragon.

She understands my plight. Of course she does, she is a figment of my subconscious given a voice and a story and a life while I sleep. Still, she would understand why I wear my half of a matching set of flannel pajamas Eric ordered for us to wear. I could never understand it, but he assured me that it was a sign of affection in his hometown. Secretly, I have been grateful for them. They’ve held back the cold every night, and they cloak me in lingering warmth as I make my way over to the window with its view of the city.

Paris might as well be a city of gold in the darkness of a cold, winter morning. Glittering veins splayed out between blocks of buildings just like this one, are filled with lives just like mine. I wonder if any of them are thinking about what I am thinking about. Our leaders have all said that this is an internal affair and that we should not interfere. Most people agreed, not our country, not our business. It fills me with such rage that we could be so indifferent to something so horrific. But their future is not attempting to withstand the inferno; only mine is.

The echoes of Jean-Philippe’s rebuke of Aymeric coil their way around my mind again. “What a tragic waste of such a beautiful soul it would be. Should you possess a fragment of his bravery, you would be far more noble a man!”

I wish Eric was a coward. That he would have stayed to give me the ring himself. That we could have enjoyed the gifts of the season together. That he would have stayed safe and moved me into his apartment with him. I took it over after he left. Practically, it’s nicer than my old apartment and closer to my work without much of a rent increase. Sentimentality dictates that I want his place in Paris to be our first home together.

He will be home by Christmas.

Since Eric left, our evenings at the café continued, but were irrevocably altered. Aymeric seldom joins us anymore. When he does, he is even more withdrawn and somber than his usual standard. Claire laughs more often than she used to, though it is a cold laugh. She has no warmth or humor in her laughter, and I cannot tell if it is performative or her heart is as heavy as the rest of ours and she is seeking but not finding relief. Jean-Phillippe has no more stories of grand adventures and boasts of tremendous accomplishments. The others are much the same.

While everyone has directed their ire towards Aymeric still, I pity him. The origins of this group stretch back to our university days. I’ve known Aymeric since we were barely old enough to make decisions on our own. He has always been a principled man, forced to grow up too quickly. He always would have been a grim person; it is just his nature. However, his childhood brought him so much pain and the aftershocks guide his behavior still. For better and worse.

The days have blurred together. There have been some weeks where I have started to get ready for work before realizing it is Saturday morning. I am glued to the headlines and the live updates as lines shift on the map so far away. It does not feel normal for something so horrific to unfold while I am faced with the annoyances of everyday life.

A crowded metro car feels so insignificant when your heart is sitting under falling artillery shells.

***

The great City of Light earns its name even by candlelight. The dim, flickering, golden glow characteristic of wartime rationing hides the red around my eyes and the tremors in my hand when I read my love’s latest letter. The fighting is brutal, but they are doing well. He remains in good spirits, thinking of me. They expect the war to be over soon.

I know he’s lying.

He tells me in the words he uses, the way he describes things, the omission of certain details or the inclusion of others. He tells me the story past the prying eyes of the censors in a way only I would know. His sanity barely hangs on by a thread. They have no supplies, and the artillery is brutal. The enemy is inching closer and closer, and there is no sign of help. They live amongst filth and rats and disease and cold. They cannot understand why they are fighting and dying.

My heart twists and knots, threatening to burst out of my chest in rage. Helplessness is the cruelest feeling of all. I would be of no comfort in that trench beside him because it would only make him worry for my safety alongside his own, but I wish to be nowhere else in the world at this moment.

My friends come to my door, begging me to attend a concert at a café. All of us know the same anguish more intimately than we’d like. Nightly excursions have become a way to lighten our heavy hearts. While the letter rests on my vanity, the words scrawled on it continue to dance around my mind as we watch the musicians play.

My evening listening to music and watching couples dance, even in the cold of the season, is a sick joke. What little warmth of the evening fades away quickly when I picture my love shivering in a filthy hole in the ground, kept awake by the incessant explosions. My mind drifts away from my table, out over the Seine, and then upwards, until I can see land without these lines we care about enough to kill and die by the thousands for.

I take another sip of my tea.

He will be home by Christmas.

***

Aymeric makes his first appearance in two weeks this evening. I had been here with Noelle for close to an hour before Jean-Phillippe and Claire appeared, and we believed no one else would show. Aymeric’s large stature did nothing to hide how small his soul feels. I can tell by the way he shrinks away that he is uncomfortable.

“I am glad you came.” I gesture for him to join us.

“I am so sorry. I had never meant to cast such a shadow over our evening ritual.” A mighty man sinks in the chair, barely whispers his apology. Not out of insincerity, Aymeric has never been insincere. He is ashamed.

“You should have thought about that before you asked such a,” Jean-Phillippe stutters and stammers over his next word, searching for the right one before scowling and switching languages briefly, “jackass question, as Eric would say.”

Aymeric shrinks further into himself and moves to get up when Noelle places a hand on his arm.

“Jean-Phillippe,” I interrupt, shaking my head. The passersby of Paris behind him in the window are oblivious to our world being torn asunder. My mind can only think of the war, the danger, the fact that one of us is in danger and not here in the place he’s meant to be. “Life is too short to stay angry at a friend for a single mistake.”

Jean-Phillippe slumps back in his seat and sighs deeply. He admits that he has been angry at Aymeric because it is impossible for him to be angry at Eric. Being angry at Eric for doing a noble thing and potentially getting killed would leave any of us feeling too guilty in the aftermath to function. So we redirect it towards our jobs, the mundane frustrations of our city, and each other.

“I cannot bear it! I cannot! Why should he be over there?” Jean-Phillippe snaps, scowling before he breaks and takes a deep, shaky breath to maintain some level of composure. “Why should he be over there and I am safe? What kind of friend am I?”

“A good one. You maintain a safe place for him to return when it is all over,” Claire says softly.

Aymeric makes a valiant attempt to hold back a deluge of tears. “I am sorry, my friends,” he stammers between sobs.

“You miss him. We all do. You are angry at him for leaving, we all are. But that should never rob us of our love for each other,” Noelle counsels with wisdom beyond her years.

The evening unfolds with the five of us navigating a new normal. Aymeric is welcomed back into the fold. Claire dryly remarks on the others not being here, many of the members in our little salon having grown distant since the schism and Eric’s departure. But Jean-Phillippe declares that the five of us are all that matter in the grand scheme of things.

We dream of the future, discussing our world with a more sober perspective, anchored by our brush with reality. We begin to laugh again, not to ignore the weight within our hearts, but to make it slightly easier to bear. We appreciate those we have with us while respecting the absence of those who are not. We plan for what happens when we are all together again.

I run my finger over the ring again and smile.

He will be home by Christmas.

***

He will not be home by Christmas.

In fact, he will never return home again. I will not see his face or hear his laugh. He was cut down during a charge across the barren wasteland between trenches. His family was informed this morning, and his sister came over to tell me specifically. She asked me to assist with the funeral arrangements.

Days drove on as we find a church and inform loved ones. There are far too many funerals these days. Black suits and dresses with veils are too common on the streets of Paris. I could not bear it when the body was returned to us. I sit through the service unable to feel much of anything. I can only think of the life I will never have now.

I stand before a grave in the drizzling rain, grateful that the precipitation obscures my tears. His sister told me on the way to the graveyard that he was saving for a ring, and that he intended our lives be bound forever. Now my future is clouded and shrouded in a thick black smoke which threatens to choke everything before it.

He came home by Christmas.

***

I have always found peace down by the Seine. The glittering lights of my adopted hometown reflected off the water have always calmed my mind when it races and runs. Waterlogged stained glass mosaic in crisp night air is the kind of idiosyncratic beauty only a place like
Paris could offer. These are the beautifully insignificant sights I wish I could share with Eric.

“Please, come home to me,” I whisper.

I do not know if anyone or anything is listening, or if there is anything which might grant my prayers. Waiting in this pit of mystery threatens to tear my soul asunder. Even the lights and colors of Paris are dulled knowing what is transpiring in a friendly nation.

I recall our last morning together. I was so hesitant to get out of bed, believing that if I stayed put, time could stop and the waking nightmare would never roll over my life the way fog overtakes a town in the valley. His hands were sweaty, and there was a hesitation in every moment. And still, he went.

As Jean-Phillippe said one night before Eric left, the boy was our heart and soul. His presence was the glue which held us together, solved every heated debate, welcomed us into his home without a care that we were still mostly strangers. His absence binds us similarly.

I received word from him sometime over the course of the evening without realizing it. A brief note: a declaration of life and his love for me. He claims to be in good spirits, though he cannot write about where he is or what he is doing. Just that I am with him always and that he has so many dreams of the future, and what we will do together once this is over.

He will be home by Christmas.