In This Hospitable Land (2 page)

On what seemed like an ordinary spring day in Brussels, thirty-nine-year-old Professor André Sauverin awoke, rose from his bed, stepped into his small kitchen to start a pot of coffee, then went and opened the single window of this rented room at 172 Chanssee Vleurgat and—as usual—stretched himself fully and took a deep breath. The skies were clear, the temperature mild, and the sun shone brightly, low in the sky, as André gazed east, feeling expansive. He looked forward to his last day of teaching for the week and then his weekend on the coast with his family. Delightfully fresh air poured into the room, scattering dust motes and dispersing the stifling mustiness that had accumulated during the night. But as André relaxed his body, released his breath, and savored the scent of brewing coffee, he realized something was different this morning, something terribly wrong. No birds sang in the park across the way. The world seemed completely, preternaturally still. Wondering at the cause, André leaned out the window and sensed, rather than saw, a vibration which disturbed his visual field. Concentrating, he heard a distant rumbling, soft at first, but steadily rising in volume from a low growl to a terrifying roar.

Squinting against the sun’s glare, André couldn’t be certain whether he was actually seeing clusters of dark spots or just floaters in his eyes, until the spots resolved into the shapes of aircraft, formations bearing down upon the suburbs and the city. As he watched, intellectually detached but consumed physically with horror and dread, the planes—three to a squadron—kept coming and coming, first speckling the sun, then darkening the sky. Not until one group approached his apartment building and flew overhead could André discern the German crosses on their tails.

Bombs began to drop through the clear sky as the sun glistened on the new green leaves of trees lining august avenues and parks. Munitions fell as if weightless, in stepped ladder-like lines and odd arcs. Columns of smoke and debris rose from the ground like geysers before the concussion of explosions caught up with the frightening scene.

Air-raid sirens screamed, an undulating wailing mixing with the grumbling of engines and the slamming of bombs raining down and exploding on impact. André, transfixed, realized that the war he and his family had tried to prepare for without ever really believing it would touch them had actually, inescapably, come to Belgium.

He was thankful that the previous September he had moved his wife and children to Le Coq, a non-strategic summer resort along the North Sea, the same weekend the Germans invaded Poland. His parents followed in January, and finally his brother Alex and his family had left Brussels for Le Coq at the beginning of May. Had he done enough to be ready for war? The question tormented André, and by the light of this day, his torment was much worse.

The banging of doors and yelling in the hallway snapped André out of his reverie. He couldn’t understand the words his neighbors shouted, but their anxiety was palpable and the sound of their feet thumping rapidly down the stairs required no interpretation.

His instinct for self-preservation finally took hold. He strode into the bathroom and opened the taps to fill the tub as a precaution against the disruption of the municipal water supply, conscientious to implement the government’s much-publicized civil defense instructions.

Suddenly remembering the pan of water, he hurried into the kitchen to shut off the low flame, then reached for his gray raincoat, always a necessity in the steady drizzle of springtime Brussels. Buttoning the raincoat up to his neck, he grabbed a chocolate bar off of the kitchen table and jammed it into a pocket. A nearby blast jarred him, shaking the building just enough so that bits of ceiling plaster cracked and fell.

André hurriedly joined the rush of tenants tramping down into the basement.

In the crowded vaulted subterranean crypt, the apartment’s makeshift bomb shelter, a single light bulb dangled from a thin cord swaying back and forth ever so slightly, casting an eerie shifting glow on the heavy dust layering the ledges of the cellar walls and on some two dozen faces. Working long hours during the week at the university, André hadn’t had a chance to get to know his fellow residents. They held little interest for him anyway.

Everyone was hushed, listening to the muffled distant explosions. Being gathered together provided some comfort, but minute by minute their collective fear grew.

André stood apart hardly looking at the others. He thought some knew him to be a professor, a profession admired and respected by Belgians. But these were all ordinary wage earners, reluctant to start a conversation with a person of his stature. It was fine since he had no wish to speak. He wanted to think.

His eyes may have appeared focused on the bare wood joist framing the underside of the ground-level apartment but they were actually focused inward. He busily pictured bombs descending. Counting the seconds between successive blasts, he calculated—as he would from the intervals between lightning and thunder—the speed of the bombs’ approach and how much time he and his neighbors might have until the storm of war broke upon them.

Meanwhile Madame Uyttendaele lumbered into the basement. André had never found this overweight concierge pleasant, particularly compared with Madame Jaspart, who had cared for the Sauverins so well during their years at 36 Avenue Émile Duray in the more desirable section of Ixelles. An ugly scowl distended Madame Uyttendaele’s fold-filled face. Decades of inactivity and overindulgence in the weight-inducing specialties of Belgian cuisine, and not a little of the Belgian ale favored by the Flemish, made her an unwelcome sight.

Madame Uyttendaele pushed her gray, stringy hair away from her sweaty forehead and her weak, watery eyes, and scanned the ashen faces of the tenants. “Professor Sauverin! I had to turn off the water running into your bath! You wanted the building flooded and more work for me?”

War has come,
André thought.
Belgians are dying. Who cares about an overflowing bathtub?
But vowing not to lose his composure and to maintain his high standards of conduct and decency—he simply said, “Thank you for taking care of that,” and turned away.

Nervous chatter and awkward bursts of laughter from the others came to an abrupt end as a bomb exploded near enough to disturb the supposedly safe underground chamber. In the silence that followed, all André could hear was choked breathing, rapid and dry and punctuated by the rattle of phlegm deep in his neighbors’ throats.

Shuddering, he thought of his family again and wondered,
Have the Germans attacked along the coast too? They’ve been battling the British in the North Sea since fall…

The awful buzzing of Luftwaffe warplanes and the booming of bombs receded into the distance. Would the all-clear siren sound soon?

André looked around, finally acclimated to the weak light. The others were so slovenly attired—some in nightclothes, most untucked and askew; one without shoes—André realized he too must appear peculiar.

Forced to remain in this uncomfortable cell, André cast about for a way to deploy his mind without edging back into anxiety-ridden territory. He would have tried to solve some equations in his head but he was too rattled for the concentrated logic that such calculations demanded.

Bombs started falling again, seemingly with greater focus and ferocity. The bare bulb began to swing wildly, making their frightened faces, bathed successively in distorting shadow and light, grotesque masks standing out grimly against the rough whitewashed masonry of the dank cave-like walls.

Then the light went out. Even as the noise of the warplanes diminished, everyone in the darkness tensed for a third assault.

Finally the light bulb flickered back on. The others slowly grinned in relief and even began to josh a little. Then a startling shriek violently erupted. Everyone jumped. But the sirens didn’t signal another attack. It was the all clear, an invitation to come out and discover what remained of the city.

A stooped, wizened fellow with short white tufts of hair sticking out stiffly like the dried stalks of a harvested wheat field called tremulously to Madame Uyttendaele, “Do your duty! March up those stairs and find out if it’s truly safe for us to leave!”

Like every concierge, Madame Uyttendaele had been asked by the city fathers to act as a de facto air-raid warden in the event of an attack. She grumbled as she hoisted her bulk slowly out of the basement, laboriously opening the cellar door. She was instantly forced back by an inflow of acrid smoke from a nearby fire, and by the screaming of ambulances and the groaning of fire trucks rushing through the streets.

Undeterred by the smell, the noise or the heat, the huddled apartment-dwellers shielded their eyes and headed toward daylight. André led the way, taking the stairs quickly as was his custom. Thankful to have survived unharmed, he bounded up to his apartment as the others moved out onto the front steps. There they babbled excitedly and proudly of their experience as if not being blown to bits had conferred honor upon them.

Have they nothing better to do at such a time?
André wondered. He pushed open his unlocked door, unbuttoned his raincoat, dropped it onto a chair, and considered what he had to attend to, knowing what he must do: resume his normal life, for as long as possible.

He shaved with the usual care not to nick his skin. Then he brushed his thinning brown hair with Roja tonic, an oil with a manly smell tinged with sweetness, sold with the promise of preventing hair loss. Back in his bedroom he pulled on his familiar dark-charcoal trousers with the knife-edge crease, eased his undershirt over his thin body, shifted carefully into his starched white shirt, and fed his shoulders into the loops of his suspenders. At five feet eight inches, his slight build made him look taller, his manner of dress giving him an appearance of severity offset only by his gentle demeanor.

In the bedroom he reached for a tie, ran it under his stiff collar, looped it repeatedly, and carefully centered the dimple of his newly made Windsor knot. He paused momentarily to admire the way the dark blue of the silk shone against the red triangles of a pattern descending to the perfectly matched ends, then shot his French cuffs straight held by the silver cuff links inscribed with his initials, a cherished gift from his parents long ago. He considered with an involuntary shiver how little such precious metal meant compared with the iron and steel of guns, rifles, airplanes, and bombs.

Appraising his appearance in a mirror as he pulled on his vest and suit coat and adjusted the gold chain of his pocket watch, he finally felt fit to face the world and his students—at least those who could make it to the university, as he hoped he would be able to do.

He tramped down the stairs again, possessed by the perverse thought that the Nazis had been cruelly courteous in scheduling their attack early enough for him and his fellow Belgians to get to work almost on time. As he stepped outside he was partially blinded by the smoke-smudged light. He began to worry about the Free University. For the first time he considered the possibility that his beloved institution of higher learning—a bastion of Belgian freedom and a juggernaut of scientific and technological development—had been a target of the bombing.

Scanning left and right through eyes half shut against the painfully bright sunlight that cut through wafting clouds of dust and smoke, André hurried toward the corner for the streetcar he hoped would come. He carefully skirted around a mound of rubble that spilled out into the street. Confused, and with his eyes tearing painfully, he finally realized the façade of the apartment building five doors down from his own had been completely blown away. Grit, ash, and lightweight debris swirled through the air above the disaster, slowly settling onto the accumulation of crumbled stone, wood, and plaster.

A half-dozen men frantically heaved bricks and timber aside. How awful if anyone was buried in that gigantic pile of debris! André felt a powerful impulse to lend a hand but couldn’t, concerned not so much about encountering a dead body but to become nauseous in seeing blood.