Open/ Pierre ́s Journey After War

Open/ Pierre’s journey after war

Margareth Stewart

Copyright © 2019 Margareth Stewart

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical means, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations for critical reviews, and specific non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, institutions, places, events and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to real people, living or deceased, or current events, is pure coincidence.

Publishing by Majestique Literature

Twitter: author_margarethstewart

Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

AUTHOR MARGARETH STEWART BIO

SYNOPSIS

After his young family is killed during aerial bombings of France in WWII, Pierre survives in near despondency, eventually embarking on the vagabond life as his outlet for grief and for time to ponder revenge. Despite suffering continuous reflections of his tragic past, Pierre journeys across continents bestowing kindness to other troubled souls. OPEN - Pierre’s Journey after War takes a deep, inward look into the soul of a man whose wife and children are indiscriminately killed in the ceaseless aerial bombing of France during the Second World War. His remorse as a survivor spikes a desire for revenge equal to his heartache. It is between the force fields of these two powerful emotions that author Margareth Stewart frames her story about the lasting psychological effects of war on innocent civilians. She builds a melodrama of believable proportion based on Pierre’s suffering from severe, personal tragedy, and magnifies its significance by contrasting his perpetual mourning with a modern couple’s inability to simply watch over each other in a more dependable world. The cosmopolitan couple’s attempt to engage in a healthy vision of an opportune lifestyle during a short vacation offers striking contrast to Pierre’s long endurance of unanswerable images of a family lost in a war consigned to distant history. Burdened by the inability to protect his loved ones, he is driven to social rootlessness. Unable to live in the present or with his terrible past, he punishes himself through self-exile, surrendering to forces beyond control, determined to escape his nightmares by wandering from place to place like a runaway child. A true vagabond, he takes shelter and survives on goodwill shared with others, most of whom suffer comparable, daunting injustices.

Notably, the author avoids positioning Pierre as an aimless derelict. Instead, she produces a complex character, an educated and empathetic man, and enchants us with countless and insightful characterizations of Pierre’s involvement in the unforeseen, as in this description of a compassionate encounter with a warmhearted woman: "They were similar, in that they shared the capacity to grasp the whole situation in an instant. How else could he have known her situation? She had no other explanation for what had happened. It was the first time someone really saw her without even touching her, without even looking at her for long. She’d felt ashamed in his presence -- naked."

Glimpses are caught of Pierre’s possible recovery yet the author holds back to demonstrate the lifetime needed to heal from severe, emotional trauma. Stewart, who has a doctoral degree in social psychology, utilizes Pierre to depict the enduring psychological journeys faced in the resolution of troubling obsessions. Had he been a modern soldier, Pierre might have been diagnosed with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PSTD), a syndrome, oddly enough, disassociated with civilians who survive the same torment of battle. In Stewart’s work of imagination, Pierre’s affliction originates in a different era, when trauma was often considered a sign of cowardice among soldiers, and was not the subject of civilians.

Margareth Stewart thus prescribes her therapy for Pierre’s shell shock and anguish by asking him to apply acts of kindness and charity -- remedial methods for building a subliminal bridge to help him cross the emotional Rubicon of misery. In this way, Open – Pierre’s Journey after the War, embodies the dimensions of a fable or a moral allegory. The novel illustrates the impact of stress from sweeping, man-made, uncontrollable events that ultimately force us to solve our irrational digressions, whether societal or personal.

Pierre feels at home in moving from place to place. When his mission in a specific village or town is accomplished, he wanders once again, observing and savouring whatever life offers. His activities are circumstantial and unpredictable. Intuitively, he remains on the move to reconcile his past while his future stands still. He returns to France an old man. On a day on a walk past vineyards near his former home, Pierre is offered a lift by a couple whose absurd, whimsical presence vividly contrasts with whatever solemn tranquillity he’d found through his consequential journey and search for redemption. Pierre for the first time is inspired to speak of his past.

CHAPTER 1

LONG COMME UN JOUR SANS PAIN

ROUEN/1940

Bombs fell from the heavens all night long, pouring like rain, non-stop, with no hint of ever letting up. Pierre knew the approaching barrage would put an end to everything, that he should move his family elsewhere, but where? Almost all surrounding areas had been hit. Some people had fled to the countryside, but with shortages of food and shelter, their efforts had proved futile. He inhaled a deep breath and sighed, When will this end? Where can we go?

Sleep failed to come that night. Pierre stared at the ceiling, for the first time in his life unable to determine what to do. From time to time, after hearing a distant explosion, he looked out the window to see a small flash of light on the dark horizon, evidence of the bombardment’s nearing.

The safest places to go were too far to travel with five children, particularly with Antoine just a baby. His wife, tired lately, felt sick most of the time. People had initially offered assistance, but as the war progressed, not much real help could be found. Pierre wondered. How have things evolved this way? What is going to happen? Worried, he was certain of one thing: the world was falling apart, one bomb after the other, all through the night.

Pierre arose for a long walk in the early morning darkness on ground powdered by a snow shower. The cold air made it easier for him to breathe. Perhaps his head would clear as well, enough to devise a plan. There had to be a way out of it, a way out of here.

His beautiful wife, Claire had become so fatigued she no longer noticed his absence. The last few mornings, he taken charge of everything, of getting the children out of bed, feeding them, helping his wife with the cooking and cleaning, and things she usually managed alone. On the verge of exhaustion, she was no longer vexed with the children’s behavior that normally annoyed her. When she sat to eat, she often left food untouched. She had stopped reacting to conversations and happenings around her. Disconnected, vague, she stared at the landscape for hours. Their common quarrels as a couple had ceased. Colors had dissipated. Strange distant noises brought more terror and disruption. The ominous sounds made her shiver. She constantly touched the medal worn around her neck and whispered, as in a prayer: Please save us, please.

Pierre did not know what to do, but needed to determine a way out. Walking, he heard more sounds in the distance, coming closer, from every direction, assumedly on an assaultive path to Paris. We have to go.

In the dim light of dawn, he watched as planes flew in low on a heading toward the village. Explosions followed. He had nowhere to run. No shelters, no trees, no-where to hide. He ran home through the terror and the noise. Have they been hit? He could not breathe. He felt as if his mind lacked oxygen, as if his brain had become detached from his body. What if I don’t make it? What if...?

As he ran, breathless and desperate, he screamed their names. It had surely been too close this time -- too close. They should leave immediately. The village seemed so far, always distant, never near. It took him ages to reach it, moving as if part of a slow-motion film.

In the light of a new day the destruction could no longer be hidden by darkness. Pierre struggled to contain himself, his body convulsing, as if reacting to something as yet unknown. They would leave at once; there was no more time to lose. He would come up with a plan. Yes, a plan. He had to hurry home. They would survive. He simply needed to get there.

He reached the village to see people rushing about, several in panic, others crying for help, some trancelike. Many houses had been hit, some demolished, some on fire. He ran on. He would get them out, to the fields, to the countryside, anywhere. They would find a means to survive. This new hope, this plan quickened his pace. He had made up his mind to take them to the fields. They would survive.

Time stopped in his heart. Part of his building had been destroyed. At his corner, people stood, crying and bleeding. He ran, calling their names, his heartbeat thundering in his ears, stopping at the bottom of what used to be stairs, calling and calling. No one answered. No one cried. Nothing moved. At that precise moment, Pierre’s soul left his body. "

Are you all right, sir? a man approached to ask. Have you been hit? Do you need help?"

Pierre shook his head no. The man glanced at the remains of the home then left Pierre alone.

He shouted their names once more. It was useless. Around him, existing on another plain, as if viewed through his wife’s despondence, people were calling out, carrying wounded and worse. Seemingly half in the present, half disengaged, he stared at the destruction and wondered why he had been spared. Why me?

He looked around, taking in the destruction, recognizing elements of the ruined building, what was left of a place called home. Now, it had no shape, no color. The reality of it struck him like the bomb that had taken everything from him. He scaled shattered walls and floors, casting aside once familiar pieces of furniture on the climb to the upper level to what was once their bedroom.

She lay on the floor, next to the door, still in her nightclothes, beside a dropped basket of laundry. He hugged her, her skin cold against his. Blood smeared a corner of her mouth. He touched a small cut on her forehead, above her left eyebrow. She had been so beautiful. He kissed her, and tasted metal when his tongue licked his lips. He clutched her, his face tight against her neck. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.

His tears dried that day. The only thought keeping him alive summed up in one word: revenge.

Someone cried out from downstairs. Pierre did not move. He stayed on the floor with Claire for some time then carried her to their bed, settled her, and combed her hair, letting her soft strands fall through his fingers, smelling the verbena oil she loved to use. He kissed her again, held his breath, and left the room.

He walked to the children’s bedroom. His heart would not allow him to go in. He stepped back to sit in an armchair, where he remained, mute and immovable for the next seven days as people came and went, asked questions, and tried to help. At most, Pierre would nod or shake his head, not in answer to anything, but to make the person go away and leave him alone.

He neither ate nor slept for days to come. During that time, he heard no more explosions. Not because the bombing had ended, but because his senses had been reframed to no longer perceive the outside world. Snow and rain came in where the roof had once been. He did not mind the intrusion. Pierre had mastered the ability to disappear from himself. He buried his memories in the wreckage of his home with those he would always love.

After days of sitting in the half-broken brown leather armchair, trembling with pain and cold, he stood, packed a small case with a mug and a piece of a coat, took one last look and left, walking away from the light. He had no intention of staying in a particular place. He would travel like a flâneur, unshaven, untamed, open to whatever life brought.

As he journeyed, he listened to people´s stories, sometimes offered help, other times continued on his way, none of the stories more painful than his, now experienced in haunting nightmares. He fell asleep only when least expected, often when his nervous system was strung as tight as it could be. On the verge of breaking down, he would collapse into the deepest sleep, but never escape his pain.

If asked about his past, he would gaze at the horizon, speechless. No one dared ask the question twice.

He moved without direction, only away from the light. Though he stood tall, Pierre was half dead, kept alive by the burning desire to exact revenge, Nothing less, nothing more.

CHAPTER 2

DÉJÀ VU

KINGSTON/2000

I bet you don’t remember this, Patrick, she said and dove to the bottom of the sea. When she came up, she shook off the salt water and kissed him. He responded passionately, his tongue meeting hers, until she slipped something from beneath her tongue into his mouth.

What´s this, Melissa?

It was as hard as a tooth and had an iron taste. He took it out and looked at it, though unable to see it properly without his glasses, and any guess would have been a blind bet. He stood in the middle