Flamingo Boy by Michael Morpurgo
Then he took him firmly by the hand and led him away from his anvil across the farmyard to the edge of the lake. There the flamingos were, crowded on to their island, in their hundreds, incubating their eggs. Lorenzo sat down on the upturned fishing boat at the edge of the lake and pulled Henri down beside him, holding his arm fast.
“Renzo stay. Papa stay.”
There was no more argument. Early every morning and evening two of us were always there, sitting on the upturned boat, watching the nesting site for intruders, whether fox or badger or wild boar or human. The water level, Nancy told me, was high enough in the lakes this year to keep most predators away, but it was still shallow enough for the egg-robbers to be able to wade out. And come they did, not at dusk or dawn as everyone was expecting they might, but in broad daylight.
The flamingos raised the alarm themselves, lifting off in a cacophony of urgent honking. Maman spotted the thieves first from the steps of the caravan. Half a dozen men were wading out across the lake, some of them already on the island. By the time we were all there at the lakeside, Henri with his rifle in hand, the egg-robbers were already busy raiding the nests, filling their sacks with eggs, while above them the flamingos wheeled and soared, helpless to do anything about it. But we could.
The egg-robbers ignored our shouting, but Henri’s rifle was enough to make them pay attention. He fired one shot in the air. That stopped them collecting. The next shot sent them scurrying in a panic off the island, splashing through the lake, making their escape, some leaving their sacks behind them, all except one, and I recognised him. He was from town, the father of Bernadette, my old tormentor at school. He stood his ground, sack over his shoulder, and was hurling abuse at Henri and Papa as they came wading out towards the island.
Lorenzo and I wanted to go with them, but Maman and Nancy held us back. Across the water, we couldn’t hear every hateful word he was yelling at them, but we could hear enough.
“We know about you, Henri Sully! You have gyppos for friends! You wait, I have a brother in the Milice, and I promise you he will hear of this!” Henri fired another shot into the air as they neared the island. “You will regret this, Henri Sully, I promise you!” Then he turned, jumped down into the water and waded away to join his friends on the far shore where they stood, shaking their fists, yelling expletives and curses at us.
By then we had joined Henri and Papa on the island, and were already busy emptying their discarded sacks and putting the eggs back on to the nests. Above us the flock of flamingos circled, waiting for us to complete our task, and be gone. Their triumphant honking sounded to us like a battle cry of victory and freedom. We had seen off the enemy, retaken the island and saved at least some of the eggs. We were soaked through and chilled to the bone by the time we got home afterwards, but the raiders had been repulsed, the flamingos were back on their island and we were exultant. We should not have been.”
CHAPTER 26
They Will Be Back
“Henri was sitting there, silent and deep in thought, as we laughed and celebrated our famous victory. When he did speak, he had words of warning for us, and for Maman and Papa and me especially.
“They will be back,” he said, “and next time I do not think they will come only for the eggs. You heard him. That man has family in the Milice. They will come.”
Henri looked up at Papa and Maman. “Until now, they may have forgotten you. Not any more. If they didn’t know before, they know where you are now. There is nowhere we can hide you, not here, not near the house. But there is the fisherman’s hut out on the marshes – it hasn’t been used for years. I have sheltered cows and calves in there from time to time. The roof leaks, but it is shelter. In town, they don’t even know such a place exists. You’d be safe there for a while. You could hide away and no one would find you. And we could bring you everything you need. It is all I can think of.”
“And the carousel?” said Papa. “Who will look after the carousel?”
“We will,” Nancy told him. “We will, and when the Americans come, and it cannot be long now, you can come back, and we will finish it together.”
“We will take you out there in the morning,” said Henri, “but early, before dawn, so no one sees us. Tonight you must pack what you need. And take blankets; the nights might be cold out there.”
That is what we were doing that same evening. Lorenzo was shadowing me, holding my hand whenever he could. He knew well enough what was happening, and he did not want me to go. After a while, he wanted to be alone with me, I could tell. He led me down to the lake and we sat silent on the upturned boat, looking out to the island.
We had no words, until he said: “Three hundred forty-one.”
That was the moment we heard the sound of a car, several of them, coming up the farm track, and coming fast. Three cars were pulling up outside the farmhouse. Everything happened so quickly after that. Lorenzo lifted the boat by the bow. I knew at once what he wanted me to do. I crawled in under and he lowered the boat over me. I cowered there in the dark, terrified. I could hear what was going on, all the shouting, and the breaking down of doors. Lorenzo was sitting on the boat now above my head. I could feel the boat rocking back and forth, hear him moaning and humming. I heard the splintering of glass, and raucous laughter, then the sound of footsteps running towards us.
“Two!” someone was shouting. “We’ve only got two of them. He said there were three gyppos out here. There’s a girl too, he said. She’s got to be hereabouts somewhere.” And then his voice was coming closer. “You! Idiot boy! Flamingo Boy! The gyppo girl, where is she?”
“Fly, flamingo, fly,” Lorenzo murmured again and again, rocking so hard now that the boat was creaking above my head. “Fly, flamingo, fly.”
“He’s loopy in the head. Daft as a bloody brush!” It was another voice from further away. “Come on, Paul, we’ve got two of them. That’ll do. The gyppo girl’s probably run off into the marshes. She won’t last long out there on her own. Look, they’re burning the caravan. Gyppos, dirty beggars they are – they live like lousy rats, they do!”
I did not see the caravan burning. I smelled the smoke, and imagined the rest. Imagining is sometimes worse, Vincent. I did not see them manhandling Maman and Papa into the cars, but I knew it was happening. I only heard car doors slamming, more shouting, and the sound of the cars driving away. Then there was nothing but sobbing, and the distant crackling of flames. I thought it was all over, that they were gone. But then I heard more footsteps coming close, running footsteps, and I knew they were coming for me too. I curled myself into a ball in the darkness, biting my lip to stop myself from crying out.
“Renzo, have you seen Kezia?” It was Nancy’s voice. “Did you see where she went?” Lorenzo was rocking more violently now. I could hear the fear in his humming. “It’s all right, Renzo, all right,” Nancy said. She was sitting down beside him, on the boat, right above me. “They’ve gone,” she went on. “But Kezia, we can’t find her, Lorenzo. They didn’t take her. She’s about here somewhere. She must be. She can’t have gone far.”
“Zia Zia!” Lorenzo said. He was tapping the side of the boat, trying to tell her. Moments later, the bow of the boat was being lifted. I crawled out. Both of them were holding me then. I buried my head in their arms, clung to them, not wanting to look up and see the caravan in flames, not wanting to remember what I knew had happened.
When at last I did dare to lift my head and look, I saw Henri throwing buckets of water on what was left of the caravan, and he was not alone. The Caporal was there, two of his soldiers with him, all of them trying desperately to put the fire out. But it was hopeless – I could see that at once. The caravan was burning from end to end, the flames roaring up into the sky, smoke billowing out over the farmyard, showers of sparks landing all around us.
Terrible though it was to see my home burning, all I could think of was Maman and Papa. I realised they had taken Maman and Papa away, but still I looked for them everywhere, called for them
The Caporal was coming towards us with Henri, both of them with eyes reddened from the smoke, their faces smeared.
I asked the Caporal through my tears: “Where have they taken my maman and papa?”
“I do not know,” he told me, “but I will find out. Believe me, I did not know this would happen. We are no angels, but to do this, to do this … this is shameful.” He came closer to me and crouched down. “I will see that no harm comes to them. You have to believe me, to trust me.”
“Trust, Capo,” Lorenzo echoed. “Capo, trust, trust.”
The Caporal stood up, wiping his face with the back of his hand. “I can promise you this. From now on, my soldiers will make sure no one comes past the gun emplacement on to your farm. We shall block the road. No more Milice will get through. But there are other ways to reach the farm, across the marshes. So it is best from now on, I think, to keep the little girl out of sight. It will not be for long. The Americans will be here soon – that is what we hear, and I am sure it is true. Then this war will quickly be over. I can go home, and your maman and papa can come home too.”
“But where are my maman and papa?” I asked him again.
The Caporal hesitated before replying. “There are places where they take Roma people.”
“But why have they taken them, Caporal?” said Nancy. “That I think is a more difficult question for you to answer.”
“I know the answer to that, madame,” the Caporal replied. “It is because the world has gone mad, and it is we who have made it mad. But when all this madness is over, and it will be soon, you and your family and your carousel can help mend the world, help put right the wrongs we have done.”
He walked away then, taking his soldiers with him, leaving the ashes smouldering behind him. Through the drifting smoke out in the field, we saw Honey intent on her grazing, as if nothing had happened. We smiled at that, and then at one another. I needed a smile, Vincent, you cannot imagine how much I needed a smile at that moment.”
Kezia took a deep breath then that became a long sigh, as she gazed sadly into the fire. “I can never look into a fire without remembering,” she said, and remained silent for a while. I thought she might be going to find some reason or other not to go on with the story. But, when she lifted her head, I could see she was ready to continue, that she wanted to finish it. She wanted to tell it all. I felt then for the first time that this was a story she was anxious to pass on, that she wanted me to hear, and that for reasons I did not know, and still do not know, she had chosen me.
“The night of the caravan fire was the first time I ever slept in this house, Vincent. I slept with them upstairs, in the room where I still sleep all these years later. Four in the bed we were that night, all of us huddled together against the world. But sleep came to none of us. It was not only Lorenzo who kept me awake, as he rocked himself, as he hummed and muttered to himself that night. I wouldn’t have slept anyway. I kept trying not to think of Maman and Papa, of what might be happening to them, of where they were. If it was a camp they had been taken to, as I think I remembered someone saying, then that would not be so bad. A camp was not so bad. I was hoping that, wherever they were, they would meet up with Madame Salomon, that they could all look after one another. I knew Madame Salomon would be as kind to them as she had been to me. In the middle of the night though came my darkest thoughts, that I would not see them ever again.
I prayed to Saint Sarah, tried to pray as I had done when I was little, Maman kneeling with me in front of her icon in the caravan, with the candle burning beside it. But Saint Sarah could not comfort me because I could not believe in her as I had then. All the same, I kept praying to her, night after night, more in hope than in faith. Thinking back, she kept my hopes alive. And I am still trying to work out, Vincent, when hope becomes faith, and what faith is without hope.”
CHAPTER 27
A Light in the Darkness
“The Caporal was as good as his word. Nancy told me the next day that a roadblock had gone up across the farm track just beyond the bridge and the gun emplacement, so no one at all could come that way on to the farm and trouble us. Of course, I never saw this roadblock, confined as I was to the house all day and every day.
We did as the Caporal had told us. We laid low, kept ourselves to ourselves. Nancy and Henri made sure I stayed out of sight inside the farmhouse. I hoped against hope that the Milice would not come searching for me. I lived in dread of the sound of a car pulling up outside, and the knock on the door. Nancy tried to reassure me again and again that I must not worry, that the Caporal would do all he could to look after us, and that anyway she was sure the Milice would not be bothered to come hunting after one little Roma girl who, so far as they knew, could be anywhere now out on the marshes.
Nancy still left the farm once a week to set up the stall in the market, because she had to.
“We have to live,” she said. When she wasn’t with me in the house, Lorenzo would come and be with me all day, and not just, I felt, to keep me company, but to look after me, almost as if I was one of his flamingo fledglings. He would sit beside me, reaching out from time to time to touch my hair or my cheek, and humming to me as he hummed to them. Henri went about the farm work as usual, unperturbed, resolute in his determination to carry on. They were all trying to make me feel safe, but I knew I was not.
I suppose I lived much as you have had to live, Vincent – until recently that is – shut up in this house, unable to venture out at all. How I longed to be outside again, to run free with Lorenzo. I spent long hours at the bedroom window upstairs, gazing out through broken shutters over the marshes, watching the flamingos and egrets coming and going. Nancy had closed the shutters downstairs and forbade me from ever opening them. A face in any window at the wrong time, she warned me, and I could be discovered. I did have somewhere to hide. If the worst came to the worst, if they did come to search the house, Henri had made a false bottom inside the big blanket chest in the bedroom. I was to crawl in there, lie down and stay there until it was safe to come out. They made me practise hiding in there. I hated doing it, but I knew it had to be done.
Nancy would never let me spend too long alone in the house. She knew how anxious I was, every waking hour, about the Milice coming again, and about Maman and Papa. So she kept me busy, working with her in the kitchen, helping her make the sheep’s cheese, sorting the herbs for market, salting the fish, and of course there were my lessons. I still had my lessons with her, every day without fail. It was difficult to concentrate, but I think those lessons were the saving of me, for it was during these long weeks that I began to read on my own, for myself, not only to read to Lorenzo, but now for my own pleasure too.
They did not have many books in the house, but the few they had I read again and again. I loved stories of travel and adventure, especially Alexandre Dumas’s The Three Musketeers, and then there was Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days, The Man in the Iron Mask and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. In these stories, I could escape from the four walls of the farmhouse for a while, and escape all the fears that so easily overwhelmed me about Papa and Maman, and the Milice, about having to hide in the darkness of the blanket chest if they came.
As time went by, Nancy constantly tried to dispel my anxiety as best she could. The Milice would have long forgotten all about me by now, she said. As for Maman and Papa, I had to trust the Caporal. Remember how much he had helped us out with the timber for the carousel? Hadn’t he told us he would find out where Maman and Papa had been taken, to do all he could to see they were safe? He would do what
But the days passed and the weeks passed and there was still no word from the Caporal. I could not help thinking sometimes that he had abandoned us altogether, that he was not to be trusted, and that anyway he could not protect me from the Milice, whatever he had promised. After all, they had come and taken Maman and Papa away, hadn’t they? He hadn’t been able to stop them then. And weren’t they all on the same side anyway, the Milice and the Germans, the Caporal too? Hadn’t Papa warned us that the Caporal wore the uniform of the Nazis, the enemy, the invader, the occupier, and that we should never forget that?
Nights were the worst to endure. After my prayers to Saint Sarah, I would lie awake for endless hours, longing for the comfort of sleep, but listening for the sound of a car, for heavy footsteps outside, for the knock on the door. Fears piled on fears so, by the time morning came, despite all the praying, I had often lost all hope.
In the end, it wasn’t Nancy, or keeping busy, or the reading, or the praying that brought me the greatest comfort: it was Lorenzo. We found we needed one another in these dark times more than ever. The terrible day when the Milice had come and invaded his world, the day he hid me under the boat and saved me became for Lorenzo like a recurring living nightmare. The memory of the caravan on fire haunted him. He could not put it out of his head. I think it haunts him still, which is why I never speak of any of this when he is about, Vincent.
He would sometimes have panic attacks. Out of nowhere, all of a sudden, he could become frantic. He would start banging his head with his hands, or even hitting his forehead against the wall, if we did not stop him in time. He raged about the place, wide-eyed with agitation. I was the one he often ran to when he was having one of his fits. It was me that Nancy and Henri turned to now to help calm him down, to comfort and console, to bring him back to himself. I would hold his face in my hands, talk to him softly about Camelot or flamingos, sing “Sur le Pont d’Avignon” to him, and in time we would be touching foreheads, and I knew the worst was over. He would cry then, holding on to me so tight and for so long that I thought he might never let go. It was strange, but, in comforting him, he was comforting me just as much.