Caravellum

On the evenings when I chase sleep into the darker hours, I often think back on the year I spent at the manor. So far from it now in time and place, the memories have mostly blended into one faded recollection. The nights without lights, listening to bombs from afar. The days half-awake, pulling corpses from rubble. One of the few pure memories I keep, so complete in its recall within the shrouds of time that I fear I must have imagined it, is that day by the lake.

We crouched barefoot on the dew-damp grass, huddled close as a chill breeze pulled through the willow trees. Grumbling biplanes careened and twisted in their deathly dance above, percussive beats of gunfire like thunder from the smoke-pocked sky. Spent cartridges cascaded through the branches above us like rain, each landing upon the grass with a soft thud. A girl on the edge of our group gasped in pain. She quickly flicked the glowing cartridge from her arm, a red welt starting to form where it had seared her skin. We came closer, wrapping about each other and around the trunk of the tree, stretching our threadbare clothes to cover as much exposed skin as it could manage. One of the boys beside me muttered words in a language I didn’t understand, hands clasped and white-knuckled. Each quiet chant ended in a refrain that some of the others repeated under their breath. I tried to mimic the sounds, not knowing their meaning but wanting their comfort. After an eternity, the echoes of the planes grew fainter as their fight flew them further across the scarred ranges. We watched them through the narrow gaps in the foliage. The engine of the leading plane sparked into the plume of an explosion, its body engulfed in flames as it plummeted; a blazing meteor through the darkness of the early morning sky. We could not tell which had been fighting for us, uncertain whether to cheer or to cry, though too exhausted to do either. The surviving plane drifted onwards, and eventually disappeared over the horizon.

A small bell pealed. The tension within us eased, the taut puppet strings cut as we collapsed into a heap. We dragged ourselves from the shade of our hideaway, the rumble of engines replaced by stomachs. The elder children were pulling the long tables from the manor windows to set them upon the grass, directed under the watchful eye of Father. I went with the younger children to retrieve the stump stools, and placed them around the table that faced the narrow lake stretching from the manor’s entrance. A pair of boys lifted a large pot from the stomped-out fire, burdened low with boiled vegetables. The shorter limped each step with a loping lurch; the other, half-blind, tentatively toed forwards. The pair made their way carefully about the table to the head, where Father now sat. He cast his eyes down the length of his thrice-crooked nose, watching silently as the boys approached. He raised a hand, prunish and thin, and dragged a spoon through the proffered broth. He blew, then sipped. We could all hear the cooks’ hearts pounding. The shorter twisted and untwisted the frayed ends of the rope that tied his apron about his waist. The other stared intently at Father’s face, peering through the mists of his vision to watch his reaction. Father nodded. The cooks bowed their heads to hide their bashful smiles. They placed the pot upon the table, atop the scorched impression where it had been placed many times before. Father ladled himself a bowl of soup. We jostled into an approximation of a line down the edge of the table, each filling their bowls with as much as they could bear before the hot liquid began to seep through the many cracks in the crockery. I gazed into the pot once I finally reached the front, having been pushed to second-last in the line. There were no carrots or cabbage left, as was to be expected, though I gave the bottom a hopeful scrape to be sure. I poured out the broth, discovering with some satisfaction the remnants of onion skin and the saturated mash of a potato. The new girl behind me, who I knew not by name but only by the soft sounds of her silent sobs during the blackouts, eyed my bowl with envy as she took the final dregs. Father waited, his sunken eyes watching the last girl until Agitta – the eldest of us – stood, took her bowl to the girl and placed part of a carrot within hers. The girl returned a crooked smile, and, once we had taken our seats, we began to eat.

We had each licked our bowls clean, the pot filled to its brim with lakewater and placed upon the fire, before we fell into silence. The muted thuds of explosions echoed to us from our abandoned homes along the coast. If I listened too long to the sounds, it was easy to imagine the echoes of distant screams. Each howl of the wind became the cries of my mother and father. Each whisper of the breeze became the screams of my sisters. I’d seen some of the others cake mud onto their ears to block the sounds out. I had tried it once. It had made the screams louder. Father watched us over steepled fingers, his expression as unreadable as always. He stood, stretching to his full height as half tall as the trees about us. His stained long frock flowed about him as he walked, masking the jolting gait of a lamed leg that he dragged across the grass. He moved to the centre of the space between the shell-shocked manor and the lake, watching across its waters to the rising morning sun. We waited.

Father knelt down and passed his hand over the stones on the bank. He turned several about before he settled on one in particular. He brushed it upon his frock as he stood, turning it about to examine its every angle with a careful eye. Then, he leaned back and twisted his arm quick. He launched the stone from himself at an angle such that the stone struck the surface of the lake’s water and bounced from it, unperturbed in its bounding journey as it struck the water twice more, then thrice, and we had all stood from the table and were bending to watch as it skipped across the lake’s surface – now a glimmering blue – until it struck the side of a twisted reed and the stone sank into the heart of the lake. Father turned to us, eyes bright in the rising sunlight, and spoke a word I did not understand. He gestured to the stones upon the ground. Agitta walked over and picked her own. She leaned back and, mimicking Father’s motion, launched her stone. It hit the surface once, deflecting upwards at an ugly angle before plummeting into the water with a curious plop. There was a moment of silence as Agitta watched the sinking stone with an odd solemnity. Then, a stifled exhale of laughter from the new girl, who caught the slip of joy in two hands about her mouth as if to try and force it back in, eyes wide and startled by her own reaction. After a moment, Agitta laughed, then I couldn’t keep myself from joining, and soon we were all upon our backs howling in strange voices, hoarse from disuse. We stripped from our worn layers and stepped into the lake’s edge, each grabbing our own stone. The water was cold yet bracing as we washed the filth of days uncleansed. We launched our stones, keeping in mind the brilliant journey of Father’s as our own barely bounced once, or not at all, before sinking. Each failed attempt sparked a renewed chorus of laughter about the lakeside, echoing throughout the trees until we couldn’t hear the planes or the bombs or the screams anymore, until it felt like the willows themselves were laughing with us.

Once the sun had settled from its dawn and brought a faint warmth to the air, the elder children swam out through the centre of the lake. They raced to the furthest edge, shouting and hollering as they pushed and pulled at each other. I swam as far as I could, to the aorta of the lake’s heart where the bottom still caught the slightest shifts of sunlight filtering through the silt-moted blue. I trod water and watched as the light cast fantastic upon its surface, painting the sky with its reflection. Father stood in the shallows and swung the younger children about in the water. The others leaped upon his back and pulled at his legs, thrashing in laughter as they tried to topple the mountain of a man. He acted a pantomime, stumbling and surrendering, before collapsing into the water with a great splash. It sent a joyous rippling refrain across the lake as he emerged, spluttering water, his mystique undone by the joy of the children.

I cannot remember how long we spent in that lake, or whether we ever played in it again, but I can still hear the laughter that echoed in that strange place. I can still see the smile of the girl who cried in the dark. Like all the memories I keep of those days in which we waited for the war to end: bright ripples of stones skipping across dark lakes.