Page 60 of The Velvet Hours
“Solange,” he whispered.
I didn’t answer. I simply let him kiss me.
30.
Solange
December 1939
On the radio that evening, almost everything we heard became lost in static. Father smacked the dial out of frustration. I barely noticed. I was still thinking of Alex and our kiss.
“Are you all right?” my father questioned.
“Yes,” I answered. I tried to think of an excuse for my obvious distraction. “Grandmother just told me something unsettling today.”
He looked at me, then down at his food.
“I hardly think she could have told you anything sadder than another world war only twenty years after the last one.” He shook his head.
I felt my stomach suddenly fall. Although I mentally fought to cling to the memory of Alex’s kiss, I could feel it dissolving in the face of my father’s agitation.
He stood up and went into the pantry in search of a bottle of wine. I heard the glass being placed on the counter, then the soundof his pulling out the cork. He took a long swallow and came back to sit beside me.
“I don’t mean to be cross, Solange. I just never thought I’d be alive to see another war like the last one. Every one of those boys whose last dose of morphine I administered, died fighting to free France from occupation by the Germans.”
He shook his head and took another swallow of wine. “I feel like a dog that senses a storm is coming.”
“Don’t say such a thing,” I said. “I feel it will only bring bad luck.”
But the words had already been let go into the air, and they floated heavily like dark clouds between us.
I slept fitfully, vacillating between the sweet memories of Alex’s kiss and the ominous predictions made by my father.
But in the end, his sixth sense was confirmed. Two days later a letter was delivered to us with an official government letterhead. I placed it on the kitchen table. When I returned home that afternoon after a morning of writing and a brief coffee with Alex, my father was sitting at the table with his head in his hands.
“What is it, Papa?” I asked.
“I’ve been conscripted, Solange.”
At the sound of his words, I immediately felt my stomach twist in knots.
I picked up the letter and read it. “You are to report to duty as medical pharmacist, to the army hospital with the Sixth Army Regiment just outside Caen.”
***
My heart was pounding. How was this possible? Papa was fifty-three years old, and yet Alex hadn’t even received draft papers. At least, not that I knew of.
“Papa, can they really make you go?”
He nodded. “I’m afraid so. I’d be arrested if I refused.”
“But there is still the medical test, Papa. Maybe you have a weak heart.”
“I don’t, Solange.” His voice, almost always clinical, now had a traceable sense of fear in it. I could hear it like an out-of-tune musical note.
“I’m not thinking of myself now, I’m thinking of you... I don’t want you to live in this apartment by yourself. It won’t be safe. I’ll worry constantly not knowing if you’re all right.”
“I’ll be fine.” I shook my head. “Please don’t worry about me.”
