Heather O'Neill - Daydreams of Angels

“Do you have anything to read?” the soldier asked.

“Yes,” said the Toymaker, happy to be useful. He hurried into his living room and brought back a big book of fairy tales.

“Do you prefer to read by yourself, or do you prefer to be read to?” the Toymaker asked. “There’s a story in here that my own mother used to read to me when I was little. It is about a goose that always has to protect her goslings from a very fancy wolf who has developed a taste for such birds.”

“Are you mad? A tale about a goose? What kind of insight can a goose have? Do you have any of that existentialism that’s supposed to be all the rage in Paris?”

The next day, the Toymaker left the house. He knocked on the door of a lawyer who lived in town. The lawyer was surprised to see the Toymaker at his door, and was even more surprised when he asked if he could borrow some books from his library.

When the soldier went to bed that night, there was a copy of a book by Albert Camus on his nightstand, next to a glass of milk and a small plate of cookies.

The soldier felt that on some level he should be touched. He knew that the Toymaker was doing everything to make things special, but he didn’t want to feel indebted. The soldier wanted to pay his own way in this world so that he could act exactly as he wanted. He resented that the Toymaker was expecting things from him.

He had a compulsion to open the matchbox as he sometimes did when he was reflecting on things. He could never bear more than a minute or two though, as the music of the cricket always made him feel kind of sad, even though there was nothing for him to be upset about. And this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. He actually quite liked it. It made him think that there was some part of him that he knew nothing about and that was going to very much surprise him one day. Nobody really wants to know themselves completely, especially not when they are young. What’s the fun in that? He didn’t mention the book at all when the Toymaker peeked in later that night. This time too he closed the matchbox soon after opening it.

The Toymaker sat by himself on a little chair in the kitchen. He had to admit that he was disappointed because he’d thought that he and the boy would do all sorts of things together. He had pictured them looking for mushrooms together in the forest. He had imagined them on a beach, looking for pretty seashells. But he also had to admit that he wasn’t as lonely anymore. It was as if any company was better than no company.

The boys in the village kept begging to try on the soldier’s topcoat. They wanted to play with his radio. The soldier found two of them in his room one afternoon, pretending to electrocute another little boy seated on a chair, demanding he give up the names of Resistance fighters. The soldier yelled at the boys to get lost and chased them right out the door. He sat on the bed, wondering about his aborted mission in France and where he was actually supposed to be.

“You can be a role model to those boys,” the Toymaker said. “They look up to you. Why don’t you go out and play some football with them? I bet you could take on all of them by yourself.”

The soldier didn’t say anything, but he slammed his bedroom door shut in the Toymaker’s face. All the paintings in the house fell off the walls. The Toymaker thought that this was what being a real parent was like. It was not all wine and roses. You had to try to make your child feel loved and wanted and worthy over and over again, no matter what they did. If he kept at it, he could teach the soldier to be loving and kind.

“They know your face,” whispered the Toymaker on the other side of the door. “Your days as a spy are over. You can’t go out there, but you can be happy here.”

But as much as he tried to be a parent, the soldier refused to be a son to him.

One of the neighbouring farmers delivered food to the Toymaker’s house every week. The soldier always found the culinary selections unsatisfying.

“Don’t you have any way to get wine and meat, for God’s sake?” the soldier asked.

“You have to go into the Big Town to get them. It’s too far a walk for me.”

“Well, why didn’t you say so? I’ll go for you.”

The soldier got dressed in a long grey coat and a beret and scowled with feigned disgust. He stood in the living room for the Toymaker and the children to admire his new look as an indignant Frenchman. Although he couldn’t remember anything about his past, he had a feeling that his having been shot had had something to do with a woman and not his subterfuge skills.

“You will be found and killed,” the Toymaker exclaimed.

“Oh come on, no German in the world can tell that I’m not from France. I just have to scoff at the trees and the rocks and existence as I walk — that’s the hard part. I’m going into town now. I’m going to be somebody’s Cousin Loïc, okay? If I get shot, it’s not the biggest deal in the world is it? A passing mechanic’ll surely be kind enough to put me back together. I’ll have exhaust fumes coming out of my ass when I run. Or maybe an electrician will find me, and when I wake up in the morning my head will glow like a light bulb.”

All the children laughed uncontrollably at this joke, holding their bellies, which were getting cramps from being doubled over, and crossing their legs so that they didn’t pee themselves. But the Toymaker didn’t even smile. On the contrary, he was very serious and worried. He interpreted the soldier’s lack of sensitivity as being due to immaturity. He was no more than a silly little boy — and silly little boys lost their way in the woods.

But the soldier managed to get to the Big Town after a two-hour walk without incident. On the black market he bought a bottle of wine, a long row of sausages, some bread and a bag of coffee. He walked through the woods, whistling a Bartók tune, looking forward to eating some proper food.

On his way back, he spotted a striking young woman coming toward him. There also happened to be a big tomcat following her down the path. She was tall and had red hair that was coming out from beneath a white fur hat. She wore a black fitted coat that went down almost to her ankles. What a fox! the soldier thought.

“That’s a pretty coat,” the soldier said.

“I found it in an abandoned house. I knew that no one was going to come back for it. It’s so warm. Do you want to buy it?”

“No thanks. That’s a giant cat you have there. It looks as if the two of you have had some really good times together.”

“He’s the only one I can trust in this world. You can’t trust people anymore. It’s the people that are the animals.”

The soldier paused, not knowing what to say for a moment. This girl had an odd way of making small talk.

“Do you want some food?”

“Please,” she said, her voice cracking.

She ate a piece of sausage ravenously. She went through all his food, shoving chunks of bread into her mouth. When he was about to object and say that there were others who wanted the food, she hurriedly put three sausages in one of her pockets and the bag of coffee into the other. Then she put her hands up to his face.

“Kiss me. I so want to be kissed right now. I don’t care if it’s good or proper. I just want to feel alive. I need to be reminded that I’m alive and that I’m not in the grave.”

The soldier forgot about anything else that was happening in the world. The girl’s cheeks tasted like tears, but oh my lord, how she kissed. It was a bit of a disappointment when she took off her coat. She looked so skinny, her ribs were poking out and her arms were covered in bruises. But the woman had eyes that looked at him in a way that none of the little girls ever could. She was having dirty thoughts. That’s what he had felt was missing in him in the quaint little house in the woods. The Toymaker and the little girls knew nothing about getting naked and the secret things that adults liked to do when they couldn’t sleep. Nobody had read to him from The Complete Marquis de Sade to try and revive him.