In the Fall They Leave, page 1
Contents
In the Fall They Leave
Copyright © 2023 Joanna Higgins. All rights reserved.
Dedication
Quote
Ultimatum
History Lessons
Weeds
Wrong Notes
And Still the Day is Not Over
Frightfulness
Shrecklichkeit
Vein
Rolls
Logic
An Unspecified Task
Bayonet
Secret
Eclipse
Deception
Report Card
Scarcity
Spy
The Queen of All Poisons
Reparation
Home
Chocolate
Coincidence
Resolve
Birds
Colors of a Different Season
The Lost Children
Joyeux Noël
Winter Light
Farmhouses
Hospital
Brio
Geese
The Mouse
The Spy
Fishmongers
Haze
Meeting Force with Force
What Might Chekhov Make of It?
Pen, Ink, and Paper
Deceptions
Postulant
Sister Aquinas
Soup and Bread
The Matron
Piano
A Rational Thought
Nocturne
“Phantasie”
Afterword
Acknowledgments
In the Fall They Leave
Joanna Higgins
Regal House Publishing
Copyright © 2023 Joanna Higgins. All rights reserved.
Published by
Regal House Publishing, LLC
Raleigh, NC 27605
All rights reserved
ISBN -13 (paperback): 9781646032983
ISBN -13 (epub): 9781646032990
Library of Congress Control Number:2022935693
All efforts were made to determine the copyright holders and obtain their permissions in any circumstance where copyrighted material was used. The publisher apologizes if any errors were made during this process, or if any omissions occurred. If noted, please contact the publisher and all efforts will be made to incorporate permissions in future editions.
Cover design/artwork © by C. B. Royal
Cover image Copyright (c) 2017 metamorworks/Shutterstock
Regal House Publishing, LLC
https://regalhousepublishing.com
The following is a work of fiction created by the author. All names, individuals, characters, places, items, brands, events, etc. were either the product of the author or were used fictitiously. Any name, place, event, person, brand, or item, current or past, is entirely coincidental.
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Printed in the United States of America
Dedication
For Jerry,
Christopher and Kaili,
and in memory of John Gardner
Quote
When every autumn people said it could not last through the winter, and when every spring there was still no end in sight, only the hope that out of it all some good would accrue to mankind kept men and nations fighting.
—Barbara W. Tuchman, The Guns of August
Simplicity is the highest goal, achievable when you have overcome all difficulties. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.
—Frédéric Chopin
Ultimatum
Brussels, Belgium
Newsboys charge the platform, their cries a racket of startled birds. Allemand Ultimatum…Alle-mand Ulti-matum… Ulti-matum!… Allemand Ulti-ma-tum! Papers flap above heads, explosions of white wings. Disembarking passengers press forward. Clots form. Movement stalls.
“What is it, monsieur?” Marie-Thérèse all but shouts.
The elderly man is a little deaf. He is also laconic to a legendary degree. “L’Allemagne encore,” he says, his eyes on the arrivals from Ostend.
Germany again. Fragments of an old history lesson rise murkily through layers of other old lessons. The Franco-Prussian War, the cause of which does not rise murkily. She recalls, though, that just over a month ago, a young Serb shot the Archduke of Austria and his wife, Sophie, while they were in an open car on their way to visit a hospital in Sarajevo, the capital of Yugoslavia. Both died. That event sent the Brussels newsboys flying then too, shrieking and flapping their papers. And ever since, newspapers have been warning of a war potentially greater than any previously fought.
“Does it have anything to do with us? Aren’t we neutral?”
“Efficacité.” Extending his right arm, he slashes at the air.
“Do you mean Germany’s efficiency?”
He gives a curt nod.
“So, maybe she decided to stay in England. I don’t know if I—”
The old man surges forward, waving his cap, Marie-Thérèse in his wake. Approaching a tall woman in cream-colored linen, he holds his cap over his heart and bows.
“Bonjour, Monsieur Wojtasczek,” she says and, turning to Marie-Thérèse, “Mademoiselle Hulbert. You came too. How nice.”
Trained in observation, Marie-Thérèse detects an incipient frown held in check. She detects withheld criticism—and a miasma of disapproval. You came too when you might have been doing something useful such as studying or even taking the dogs for their walk? How nice.
“I had some free time and I…so I asked the gardener, but I should not have presumed… Pardonnez-moi, Matrone, s’il vous plaît.”
“No, no, it’s fine.”
They retrieve the matron’s trunk from a baggage cart and then in breezy sunlight on the Place Rogier, the gardener waits in line to buy a newspaper. The matron asks about her two dogs, and Marie-Thérèse, still shaken, rattles off their latest exploits.
“I’m glad they’re well.”
In the back seat of the school’s Landaulet, the matron raises her newspaper. Marie-Thérèse wishes she had one to hide behind. Why in the world had she asked to go along to the station? True, she was excited to begin her third and final year at the nursing school. True, she’d been free that morning, and a thunderstorm at dawn had swept through, leaving behind glitter and balmy warmth, and she’d felt some altogether uncharacteristic surge of euphoria. And further true, she worshipped the woman and was anxious to see her again, given all the war rumblings. And so, voilà, yet another mistake.
How ironic. She’d failed at her piano studies because she hadn’t been impulsive enough. “Your playing is too stiff, mademoiselle. Take more risks!” But risk-taking meant mistakes, no? They were kind enough and tried to explain—and demonstrate. All of it lost in the pulsing roar beating in her ears.
She pries a speck of lint from her gabardine skirt. Mistakes…she hates them. And the foreboding they bring on. Turning to the window, she blinks away gathering tears. The boulevard, strangely, has become a parade route of sorts. Automobiles, horse carts, trams, and even bicycles trimmed with flowers and ribbons. Lampposts, too, and horses’ bridles. Little girls wear crowns of marigolds. A bicyclist, just then passing the slower-
moving Landaulet, is carrying two strings of onions in his right hand, each woven with yellow and red ribbons. Church bells clang at every block. Newsboys chant at every corner. Along sidewalks people are embracing or gesticulating in apparent argument. Belgian flags drape windowsills, balconies, and shop fronts, their vertical red, yellow, and black bars rippling like sails. And sheets of newsprint are skidding and tumbling along sidewalks.
Ribbons, flags, people, newspapers, traffic. Everything that day, August 1, 1914, in motion.
Why are people celebrating?
She’s afraid to ask.
History Lessons
Just outside the lecture hall, a crow screeches some staccato outrage. The matron’s part-wolfhound, Jackie, responds with his window-shaking bark. On and on it
goes—screech, bark, screech, bark. Donnie, the shepherd mix, joins in, and it’s a Three-Part Invention.
“Merci, messieurs,” she says when they all finally stop.
Someone in the assembled group laughs, then a few others. Tension crackles apart, and the day becomes what it is, under it all a fine, rose-scented August afternoon. The school and clinic were once four row houses in an old Ixelles neighborhood with mature gardens. Leaves are making their forest sounds. Marie-Thérèse takes a deep breath and observes the matron for clues. There are none. The woman’s transcendent calm reminds her of the Académie’s Madame Gonczy, the way the renowned pianist could walk onstage, take her time adjusting bench and gown, then sit there for the longest while in that ponderous silence until finally, with indifference almost, extending her arms and from some thread of sound begin weaving a tapestry of perfection. The memory reawakens Marie-Thérèse’s headache.
“It is good to be back,” t
But the woman doesn’t appear disturbed in the least. Her hands are loosely clasped on the lectern, her voice steady. Her oval face, with its high forehead and swept-back, light brown hair in its coil, radiates the usual serenity, the only difference being an addition of peach tones, after her month-long stay in England. She’s in uniform now—the white cap, cuffs, and apron, the lake-blue blouse and skirt. Obviously, she’s following her own dictum, Marie-Thérèse thinks. Never show fear. Glancing at her own hands cupped on her chair’s writing surface, she observes how the thumbnails are going hyacinth-blue, up near the cuticles. And the fingers are cold and minutely trembling. At the Académie, she always had to soak her hands in warm water before any lesson or performance. And practice a breathing technique that never quite worked to quell fear.
Nor does it now.
“I’ve placed copies of today’s editions in your sitting room,” the matron continues, “but for now, a summary. Germany has just given Belgium an ultimatum declaring that Belgium must allow German armies to pass through on their way to France. Germany is saying that France attacked first, and so Germany must retaliate for its own self-preservation.”
Has her left eyebrow lifted a little in skepticism? Marie-Thérèse believes so.
“It is unclear whether any such attack has taken place. However, to allow Germany to pass through will violate Belgium’s neutrality. Not to do so, Germany says, will make Belgium its enemy. So, my dear students and staff, we are in a predicament. King Albert is to give his response as early as this evening, and then we may know more.”
Marie-Thérèse glances at her roommate, seated on her right. Rani, an excellent student in every other respect, unfortunately can’t help showing anxiousness. Hives betray her. And there they are—blotchy crimson patches marching right up to her red-gold hairline. She’s staring at the matron with the intensity of someone trying to absorb a difficult lesson.
“We will convene again when there are further developments. Meanwhile, I will be working on a new syllabus emphasizing areas we have already covered but must augment—amputations, bullet wounds, and blood transfusions. My dear students and staff, by this evening the situation may have been resolved diplomatically. But you know how I believe in being prepared. We may not have control over events, but we can control our responses to them.”
She restates the words in English, then reverts to French. “Whoever wishes to discuss this matter with me in private may do so between the hours of two and five o’clock this afternoon. Reserve a time on the sign-up sheet. Some of you may wish to consider taking a leave of absence. Our dear French, German, and English students might well consider this option.”
The same words issue forth in calm English.
“I want to go!” a woman calls out in English. “Sometimes you’re so mean!” The woman’s laugh devolves into a gasping hack.
Marie-Thérèse doesn’t turn as many others do. It’s just Charlotte, a resident patient who became addicted to morphine during treatment in England. The matron has been trying for years to wean her off the drug. This interruption is likely just another ploy to get her small dose ahead of schedule.
As the matron and a sister lead Charlotte out of the lecture hall, Liese, in the row ahead, turns to Marie-Thérèse and Rani. “Sounds like you two will be missing out on some excitement around here. Not to mention your certificates. How unfortunate!”
“We might not have to leave,” Rani says, more to her desk.
“Well, but it doesn’t look good, does it?”
New students, forgetting Liese’s name, will often add, “You know, the pretty one.” Marie-Thérèse thought of her that way too. Liese’s prettiness called to mind cherubs painted on nave ceilings—the plump pink cheeks and golden curls, the insouciant eyes. Liese was the first to extend friendship, and Marie-Thérèse, still stunned by failure and sorrow, found comfort in confiding in her. In no time, all that delectable information spread like some contagion throughout the school: her failure at the prestigious Académie; her rift with her mother, once a prima ballerina, no less; and then her terror of failing at nursing. For the rest of that first year, Marie-Thérèse had to endure stares and whispers and almost left. So that was The Pretty One, she found out the hard way. Trading in confidences in order to build other alliances.
At the Académie there’d been little time for friendships or even machinations of the Liese kind. Though polite and encouraging to one another on the surface, under that halcyon sea lay cold depths of ambition and, in Marie-Thérèse’s case, debilitating doubt and fear. For the most part, she lived like some solitary cave dweller in her practice room. Those who joined quartets or trios had it better, she realized, enjoying a camaraderie of shared striving. At times Marie-Thérèse wishes she had taken that path. She might still be there.
No. Their smiles said it all when she told her instructors she’d be leaving.
But that water has flowed under the bridge. Against all expectations she’s come to enjoy her nursing studies despite the occasional doubt and fear induced by mistakes. At the Académie you can fail no matter how hard you work, but here at the nursing school, persistence, study, and attention to detail can lead to success. And so far, to her surprise, she’s been succeeding.
Liese breaks into these thoughts. “Well, let me know if you two need any help packing.”
Dismissed by a sister, students and staff are leaving the lecture hall.
“Merci, but neither of us will be going anywhere just yet. Right, Rani?”
Rani’s lips are curled under. She’s still looking down.
Later they see Liese’s name on the sign-up sheet.
“I hope she leaves,” Rani says.
Marie-Thérèse agrees. Her own mean-spiritedness tells her she hasn’t really forgiven Liese. But it does help to regard it all as a good, if painful, lesson.
Weeds
Please have one, mademoiselle,” the matron says, after pouring their tea.
The round table in her front window is set with teapot, cups, and the English wheat biscuits offered at student conferences. The matron brings them from England and probably had them in her basket that morning, Marie-Thérèse is thinking. Now, afternoon sunlight filtering through lace curtains creates figured shadows on flowered porcelain and white linen—and the precious biscuits that might be all gone by day’s end. Carefully, she places one on her plate.
“So, you are uncertain?” Although they often converse in English so Marie-Thérèse can practice the language, today they’ve chosen French.
“I hope to stay at the school, but…”
“Yes?”
“My father, you know, is German, and my mother French. And the newspapers…they’re saying the king is not going to agree to the ultimatum.”
“He does seem set against it. But we will know soon.”
“My family may want to remain in Brussels…all my father’s eye patients are here…but if Father thinks we should leave, then I must as well. I would rather stay, though I realize it will be hard. War casualties…I’m not sure I have the necessary…fortitude.”
“We can’t know our strengths until tested. I do know that you are a thinker. That’s good, but excessive worry is not. Think of worry as weeds that want to take over a flower garden. When I received the telegram about the situation here, I was weeding my mother’s rose bed. Roses need so much coddling. Weeds, though, thrive in any bit of soil and in drought and even flood. Like one’s worries. If you and your family decide to leave, I hope you will be able to return. You will always have a place here.”
“Merci, Matrone. But this ultimatum… It may come to nothing?”
“I will not offer easy assurances.”
“If there is war, will you stay?”
“Yes.”
“Pardonnez-moi, Matrone, but it might be safer for you in England, no? And if England enters the war, the hospitals there—” Marie-Thérèse stops herself. Arguing!—with the matron. Heat floods her face.
