War Serenade

1. I See You-2

The crowd roared with delicious anticipation.

She was amazed by the prisoner’s gentleness as he reached for the bird while he clung to the wire for dear life with his other hand. Blood oozed from new lacerations as he manipulated the pigeon slowly through the razor edges, his own hand taking the pain, while gentle fingers encased the bird protectively.

Goodness! No wasted drop. They were hungry. She couldn’t watch the poor bird’s imminent demise, yet she couldn’t look away.

He manipulated the pigeon from its lethal trap and held it above the fence while his other hand still gripped the wire, stopping him from falling three stories to a razor-sharp death.

She winced at the taste of blood and realized she’d bitten the inside of her cheek.

The man still held the bird firmly in one big hand. What a showman.

“Get it over with!” she wanted to shout. She’d learned to nip torture in the bud the hard way. Don’t be dramatic, Iris. She heard her mother’s voice but managed to ignore it as the fascinated guards lowered their guns, and the gleeful crowd was quiet. All eyes were raised up to the man on the wire.

He held up his hand as high as he dared without losing his balance.

“A sacrifice?” wondered Iris.

His tapered fingers opened. The pigeon froze. The prisoners were still and silent.

The bird took flight. Wobbly at first, likely overcome by its unexpected freedom, but mercifully, it caught the wind and soared away.

Free.

And then she understood: He freed the pigeon because he couldn’t free himself.

Wild, angry “Boos” broke the silence. That was Italian she understood.

The man’s face remained expressionless. He simply started his downward climb, and as he dropped his chin for a good look at where to secure his next footing …

He found her eyes instead. His bleeding, bare foot remained suspended in midair.

And the world stopped, as did her heart, suspended in her chest. Then the blooming thing somersaulted. A great, big, double Boswell & Wilkie Circus high-wire dismount kind of somersault. Breathing wasn’t important as his eyes penetrated her hidden, most private core, and seeing into his deepest self, she felt at once immediate recognition and the ache of long separation. Then joyous relief at the reunion, unfathomable understanding, and above all, deep, satisfying, all-consuming emotion she didn’t understand. It pierced her heart like a long pin into a well-stuffed cushion.

“Get down now, or we shoot.” Guns were c****d again, but the sound was far away, in another world. Another time.

From far away, she heard Dr. de Kleyn’s insistent voice: “Let’s go where it’s safe. It’s dangerous out here.”

She blinked, breaking the connection and jolting her senses. She inhaled her first breath in what seemed like two days.

Before she turned away, Iris tried to find the bird savior’s eyes again, but he was close to the barbed wire, so his concentration was on the careful placement of his naked foot. She felt empty. The doctor’s last words echoed in her head, and the most profound thought hit her like a hammer: “Dangerous? I’ve never felt safer than I did just then,” but she followed his white coat into the brick building.

She had jelly legs, a new, awfully odd sensitivity, but as they were ushered into Julian’s office, she lost all sensations other than distaste.

The bird savior had made her forget how much she was dreading this ordeal.

Julian bounced on the balls of his feet, and his thin smile was as wide as she’d ever seen it as he led them to the mess hall. He was gloved as usual, and the bunched hand held his whip, which tapped against his leg. A kind of out-of-sync metronome. “So effens skeef,” came into Iris’s mind unbidden. She rarely spoke Afrikaans because she was English through and through, and that mattered when the Boers and the English were still smarting over their vicious war. But sometimes the Boers’ Afrikaans language truly captured a situation as no other could. Julian was indeed “a little bit off-center.”

“I didn’t dare hope you’d come, though I requested you.” His cloying presence was the perfect antidote for her still fast-beating heart.

Iris feigned indifference. “Here to do a job, Julian. Trust you’re doing well?” A rhetorical question. She didn’t care how he was.

Doctor de Kleyn had no time for small talk with the acting head of this dismally run camp. “Get the prisoners in so we can get this over and done with, Colonel.” The disdain that tainted the undeserved title was clear to Iris and lost on Julian.

As she worked, Iris was acutely aware of Julian’s eyes on her, no doubt waiting with bated breath for her reaction to his new lofty title. She refused to curtsy to his ego. She busied herself for the onslaught of the growing line of prisoners by placing the heap of cotton balls in a sterilized bowl, filling the malaria pill dispenser and prepping the vicious-looking needles for the penicillin shots.

The single line of ragged men wove in and out of the hall, through the doors and down the long passage.

The first emaciated prisoner was in front of her. She went to give him his malaria pill, and he put his hands behind his back and stuck out his tongue. The stench of his open mouth made her recoil in horror. Doc was quick to intervene. “This is not a communion wafer, my friend. Put out your hand.” Julian appeared like a demonic genie, his whip raised ominously. The man’s tongue disappeared like a lizard who’d missed a fly.

Iris was startled by the naked fear she saw on the prisoner’s face as Julian’s whip was raised. She shivered. Shame on you, Iris, for dreaming up the whip!

The line kept coming, and a pattern was established: hands out for their malaria pill; turn sideways to have a couple of inches of upper arm cleaned by Iris; turn sideways to Doc for the penicillin shot. She was grateful for their dirt-encrusted bodies, because the mud trapped their odor underneath. When she caught the odd whiff of dank flesh the alcohol couldn’t mask, it made her stomach clench.

After a couple of dozen administrations, she turned her head away from the masses, waved her hand in front of her nose and whispered to the doctor, “Noxious!”

“No showers. They have to wait for the rain to bathe.”

“Oh my gosh, I didn’t think past the smell. I feel so bad now. Who could do this to human beings? Or animals, for that matter?”

For an answer, de Kleyn jutted his jaw at the hovering Colonel Julian.

How would Gregg handle stinking to high heaven like this?

She vowed not to show these likely once-proud men that their stench was beyond endurance. It was quite a feat, but she did it. For Gregg. Just in case.

And still they streamed in. Though very few spoke English, they seemed not enemies at all, just skinny, neglected men in rags, many without anything on their dirty feet. Like pigs in manure. Don’t be unkind, Iris.

Now and then she caught a glimpse of the vital men they might have been before the war. A flirty wink. A kind smile. A wicked grin. She knew the interest in their eyes wasn’t for her particularly, but rather any change was a welcome break in their mundane, pitiful existence.

As she cleaned spots on muddied deltoids and revealed sun-bronzed skin, she wondered if this was how her brother looked. Dirty and disheveled. Just a face in a long line. Oh, Gregg.

Thoughts of him overshadowed the sympathy she felt toward these neglected men. The likes of them were aiming guns, bombs, and heaven only knew what else at her brother. Trying to kill him, but please God, not succeeding. Last she heard, Gregg was flying his Spitfire over Italy. Life was fraught with ironies, she’d discovered.

Her ludicrous thoughts of Gregg in a POW camp making up games and arranging tennis matches now shamed her. These neglected men in front of her were the realities of war. Oh, please, God. Protect him from this horror.

He’d left them brokenhearted on the platform the day he went off to war. She, Mom, Lena, Sofie and Buffer feared they would never see him again. Not even Buffer’s doggie kisses could make her feel better.

Recently, her department store, the fanciest in all of southern Africa, made volunteering for the war effort compulsory for all staff. They were paid for two days out of their work week to offer their services where needed. But Iris knew she had to over-achieve in order to pay her dues to keep her brother safe. She doubled her hospital duty, working dozens of hours without pay in her own time. She had the time since she’d sworn off … well, since Julian.

But sure as hell, she hadn’t anticipated cleaning off the grimy arms of Gregg’s enemy so they wouldn’t die in her own country. Not from malaria or diseases cured by penicillin, at least. Malnutrition under Julian’s neglect was another matter.

How ironic, too, that she assisted in protecting her country’s enemies from the very disease that had so cruelly taken her father. Life was full of disparity between what actually happens and what, by all accounts, should.

Too often she dreamed Gregg was faceless. Her own screams, and faithful Buffer’s wet nose nudging her, mercifully woke her and she’d force his familiar face into perspective, or if all else failed, looked at the photo next to her bed. She shivered. It had been a long month since his last letter.

She felt herself applying unnecessary pressure to the man’s arm as she prepped for his injection. She apologized softly to the prisoner. She was grateful he seemed oblivious.

And then he was in front of her.

The pigeon savior.

Her legs buckled again. What the hell? Since when had she become the fainting sort?

His eyes were dark blue, and his hair was jet black, but there was nothing dark about his spirit. She felt at once warm and safe and hot and flustered as his eyes captured hers again. Close up this time. She was transfixed.

They opened their mouths at the same time. To speak? No. They were more like flowers opening to receive the sun or rain or some necessary sustenance to survive. She breathed him in through her nose and still open mouth, inhaling him, consuming him. She saw tiny little scars around his mouth, and she longed to kiss them softly, to take away their cause, if not the scars themselves, because they saved him from being just too good-looking.

“Keep the line moving, Iris.” The command made her jump.

How close had they been standing? How close had their open mouths come to being connected by magnetic force, or whatever the hell it was that pulled them together?

The doctor’s voice brought her back from wherever the mystifying swim in those dark blue pools had taken her, and she placed the malaria pill in his hand.

They both jumped as her two fingers touched the inside of his palm. A current. An actual electricity sparked between them. Their eyes were locked when he smiled. Afterward, when she could think, she realized she was right about the dimples.

Guilt surged through her, and she busied herself with applying alcohol to cotton balls.

He was the enemy. Gregg’s enemy.

She could feel his eyes burning into her skin, a warm, delicious burn like sunshine after a violent storm.

As she rubbed his bicep with alcohol, she tried to calm her breathing by thinking of ... who was she kidding? She couldn’t focus on anything but the color of his skin. Namib sand. Smooth and fine like that sandy coast where precious diamonds were found. Don’t look up, Iris! Where’s it going to get you? Eyes DOWN.

Her mind dictated, but her heart ignored. She raised her eyes slowly, fearful the connection would be different this time, but his eyes waited and, if anything, the magic intensified to hot and all-consuming.

Her bliss was short-lived, as Doc pulled her savior’s shoulder around so he could jab in the needle, followed by a gentle push to move him along.

Iris felt a deep sense of loss as soon as her savior was gone. Emptiness had replaced the languid, warm place he’d taken her with just the depth of his eyes and the sight of his skin.

“Her” savior? Emptiness? She had touched him clinically once. Don’t be ridiculous, Iris. Her mother again!

But those eyes. Interesting. Magnetic. Looking into her very soul.

The Savior dominated her mind throughout the afternoon as Julian hovered in her peripheral vision. As she and the doctor were leaving, Julian called to her.

She heard her voice, clipped with irritation. “Julian, I can’t chat. We have to get the balance of the medicine to the lab for refrigeration.” She thought that sounded impressive, though she made it up on the spot.

“Iris. Give me another chance. I can make you happy.”

“Please, Julian. We’ve talked this to death.” Then she felt bad. She didn’t want to be unkind. Iris turned toward him. “There are many girls who would love your attention. I just don’t have time for a relationship right now. Go well.” She hated being false, but she suspected his vindictiveness ran deep, and she wanted no part of it.

And why on earth had she suggested the gloves and the bloody whip? She’d created a monster. She shook her head hard to free her mind of the guilt and resolved not to think about it again. She turned and left the room in a hurry, feeling Julian’s eyes drilling into her arched back.

The prisoners must have been in their tents because none were to be seen, and there was a guard with a gun posted ominously outside every fourth V-shaped canvas.

She wished she’d seen him again. Rags, bare feet, and all. He’d somehow cleaned the blood off his hands and feet before he’d come to the makeshift clinic. She remembered, too, that his arm was just a wee bit dusty and not encrusted with mud. He hadn’t even smelt like the others. She was pathetically touched by the effort he’d made when running water was not a benefit they enjoyed.

As the jeep careened back to town, she pushed hard on the outside of her thick cotton uniform and felt the sharp angles of the folded paper inside her pocket. A tangible reminder of the adventure that lay ahead. Her delicious secret. Her salvation. Her future.

But today she needed more. Her hand found its way into her pocket, and she clenched the piece of paper. It wasn’t the original. She’d gone through four replicas since she got the letter two weeks ago. Desperate clutching had blurred the content.

His blue eyes were all she could think of. The balled paper felt prickly in her hand as she squeezed tighter. Ridiculous! Why was she fantasizing about the impossible when a dream come true literally lay in the palm of her hand?

Out of the blue, she began humming a tune. She didn’t know the words, just the title and the tune. How odd.

“O Sole Mio,” she sang softly, well-disguised by the jeep’s noise. As she la-la-la’d the rest of the tune, she was infused with calm, and she loosened her grip on her paper talisman.