Erwin Mortier - While the Gods Were Sleeping

She sticks her forefinger in her mouth, perhaps she’s pricked herself again on the pins during that eternal mending — I heard her pulling open seams. With the twin sisters she pulled the sleeves out of old coats, as though they were drawing and quartering a heretic (I could hear from the tugs, the capricious strokes that something was wrong).

She says, I feel hot. I say, it’s freezing outside, Maman, it’s never been so cold. She lets me pull the nightdress over her head after all; I hear her moaning in the folds: “Why don’t I have normal arguments with my daughter?” She pulls the material over her trunk herself, and straightens the ribbons. “About flowers, fashion, theatre. Instead of over…” She looks up again into the mirror, her eyes fill with tears again, her chin trembles, she scrabbles for a word, “…consonants!”

I burst out laughing. She sent me a look like a projectile, went to her bed and pulled the blankets off while leaning on the bed with one arm. I went over to her, bent over to tuck her in, but she gripped both my wrists and gazed directly into my eyes.

I have never heard anyone whisper so sweetly, manage to spew her gall so viciously in my face, well aimed, with the finesse of a cobra: “ T’as sacrifié ta prudence à ce drôle Monsieur Heirbeir, n’est-ce pas, chérie? ”

I turned round, walked towards the door — I thought, she’s got a temperature, she too, she’s delirious.

She waited until I was almost outside before giving me the fatal blow, in the back. Deliberately in the mixture of French and Flemish she always used when mocking me, she snapped at me: “ Ne me dites pas des blaaskes, mamzel. Je le sens .” These “blaaskes” or bubbles were my transparent fibs.

I SAW HIM AGAIN a year after the death of the child. One afternoon the door of the church porch swung open and he disturbed my reflections, in the darkness of the aisle to which I often retreated when my mother sent me downstairs, to post letters, run errands or to deliver eggs to the elderly — jobs that I did quickly in order to take some time for myself, and I liked whiling away those few moments of freedom in the church because it was cool and dark in summer, and quiet when there were no services.

Since the impact of the projectiles, workmen had provisionally closed the hole in the high choir with lengths of wood and dull-green tarpaulin and swept the rubble aside, against the wall of the aisle, perhaps to be able to use a sieve to recover plasterwork or other usable ornaments — for later, when everything was over and we woke up from the impermanence that had all of us in its grip.

Someone had put the saints that had been blown down by the blast and whose stone feet still rested on the plinths, at an angle against the wall, next to the improvised high altar in the transept. The first service that Abbé Foulard had held there had been for the child, five days after her death, on the last day of the summer — the wind turned that morning and all through the Mass made a loose corner of the tarpaulin flap languorously, like a lame green wing. As we sat round the coffin, the planks of which my mother counted, the first rain kept gushing over the floor whenever the wind lifted the tarpaulin.

He was carrying three bags on long straps over his shoulders, and under his arm a small wooden valise, and walked past me up the aisle to the high choir, attracted by the light that slid through the gaps in the roofing of tarpaulin and laths over the walls and fell in shafts onto the cleared rubble and the saints’ statues.

He stood there for a while, laden as he was, looked around, sought a suitable viewpoint for catching that light, then put down the bags on a couple of chairs, just before the high choir, kept an eye on the play of light, bent over one of the bags, opened the wooden valise, and only when he stood up again, with a folding camera in his hand, did he catch sight of me. I was sitting in the shadow. He did not recognize me to begin with, frowned, then smiled: “Mademoiselle Demont… What a pleasant surprise,” and came towards me with his hand outstretched.

After that first meeting and the little incident in the casino at night I wrote him no letters, made no enquires about him, who he was, whether anyone knew him, where he was. If something was to happen the opportunity would present itself. My mother called me hyper-romantic because of that attitude, and perhaps she is right. Love has always made me lame, fatalistic. If it does not have the character equally of fate and of a blessing, it leaves me cold — or rather, it is not love at all.

He took photos for people whom he called with mocking emphasis “my clients”. People associated with the papers across the Channel, who were always short of material, preferably obtained from other sources than the official war photographers. He said that they were crazy about ruins of churches and children—“Works miracles, it seems, a good ruin in the dailies.”

He had to do it secretly and also more or less anonymously; he had no official access but knew the way. He had connections, he said, at the press bureau where he was the errand boy for some big noise or other: “Thanks to Daddy. Friends in high places…” He seemed to regret it. “Not that he’s asked me anything. Wouldn’t want to see his little boy blown to smithereens, somewhere in the mud of Flanders or the…” in irritation his fingers drummed on the camera the rhythm in which he spat out the words, “…bloody fucking Dar-da-nelles…”

When I told him about Amélie, and said he should have come a year earlier, he gave a sarcastic guffaw. “No dead kiddies, Miss. No corpses. Such an inconvenience, to have people actually dying in war… unless of course if they manage to do so gracefully. Saw one of those a couple of weeks ago, near Ypres. Doesn’t happen that often. Such elegance, the fellow looked like bloody Michelangelo’s Adam the way he’d fallen. As naked too, I’m afraid. Another inconvenience. No nudity! If you happen to die in this war, Miss Demont…” He looked straight at me: “Please do keep your frock on…”

“I’ll try my best, monsieur.”

He took a few photos of the interior, the deserted choir with the hole, the temporary high altar in the transept, but he also wanted a couple of me.

“I wouldn’t want to find myself in your newspapers,” I protested, all too coquettishly.

He refused to be discouraged. “It’s for my personal collection…”

I asked him if he kept all his conquests in albums.

“Sure, piles of them.” He winked. “Have stopped counting altogether…”

He took two or three, with the small camera that he would later give me as a present. “You seem quite a pensive person,” he grinned as he pressed the shutter, came closer and made as if to shoot again. “A penny for your thoughts, as we say in England.”

“I was thinking, Mister Herbert, that if you were an onion, I’d like to peel you.”

He paused, waited till I was looking straight into the lens. “Well, I’m relieved you don’t see me as a fruitcake.” He took another photo. “Though if I were an onion, Miss Demont, I’d make you cry.”

We got up. I helped carry a couple of his bags and invited him for coffee. He offered me a ride in the car which he had parked in the church square. While half the village stood gaping he held the door open for me like a good chauffeur, loaded his things and took me home. My mother was glad to see him. She had the coffee table laid outside in the shade of the trees. As she poured I saw how she enjoyed being able to be the worldly-wise bourgeoise again for a moment.

“One advantage of the war, mon cher monsieur ,” she chuckled as she offered him the dish of biscuits, “is that I’m no longer afraid of mice. What a triumph!”