When Papa Came Home from The War

     It was after the night that the fireworks lit up the sky that Papa came home from the war. I was in bed. I heard his footsteps on the stairs; I knew it was him, the telltale way the second and fourth boards would creak under his weight. I heard him whispering, his voice hushed so not to wake me. I could hear Mama crying, she would be happy to see him again as he had been gone for so long. She'd cried a lot lately.
     I was so sleepy I didn't even hear the door to my room open. I opened my eyes to see him standing in my doorway, silhouetted in the frame. I could barely make out the neatly cut lines of his uniform so steeped in darkness was he. My heart thumped in my chest, I wanted to sit up and say something but was afraid that the dream would be broken and he would go away again. He stood at the foot of my bed, his big hands hanging loosely by his sides and although his features were wreathed in shadows, I could see by the tilt of his cap that he was staring down at me. I could still hear him whispering to my Mama, his voice soft and sibilant in the shadows but his words inaudible.
     My eyes closed and when I woke again I found him sitting on the edge of my bed, his broad shoulders hunched in the darkness as he watched me sleep.

     It was strange having Papa back but in some ways it was as though he'd never left; I had almost forgotten how the smell of his pipe smoke would linger in the living room after he had gone. I would often enter his study to find his favourite book open at the page that he had been reading when he left. The Great War had changed many things for so many people, but for us unquestionably the greatest transformation had been in Papa; he would spend the daylight hours away from the house only to return in the evenings, brooding and dark. I had hoped that he would be home for good but I knew that the war wasn't ended and as the Army was his life, so it had to be ours. He used to say 'what the Army can give you it can also take away'. Usually he was of a poor disposition, morose or angry. He spoke to Mama but she rarely listened, her mood was little better and for the best part she would ignore him, staring into space, her hair awry and her eyes sunken. She has taken to drinking in the daytime. I think that perhaps she thought that a problem ignored was a problem solved and I think that that made him angrier, on occasion he would bang doors or throw things across the room; he scared me on those days.
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     It was on the day that the people gathered in the street outside our house that I finally heard his last words to her. Mama was drinking again, her face sallow and her eyes turned away. Papa stood in the doorway his kit bag slumped in the hall.
     "It's not my fault," he said.
     "We should never have been here," she said bitterly, "we should have left long before."
     "And where would you have gone?" Papa snapped back. "Dresden, Hamburg� Berlin for God's sake? The Fuhrer has dictated that-"
     "What?" Mama said. "What has the Fuhrer dictated? Did he dictate that I had to give up the life of my only child? Where was your beloved Fuhrer when the bombs fell? Where were you when your son was killed as he slept in his bed?"
     Papa closed his eyes.

     I watched them, my dear Mama and Papa thrown together and torn apart in the same instant.

     I watched Papa gather his things and push his way out into the street before straighten his cap and stalking away.

     The people gathered outside, turned their faces towards me, their eyes hollow and their mouths silent.
     They saw me and theirs were the first gazes I'd felt since before that night. Before the night the fireworks came.

     I just don't understand� things had been so much better before Papa had come home from the war.

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Author's Note

Thanks to Mouse for helping me with the ending and changing everything that it would have been to what it is now...

Reviews

[Anya]

Oh that's so sad. Incredible write though, just incredible :)