Lieden Sie die Kinder: Suffer the Little Children

It is raining, stinging needling rain that bites through the parchment shift of her dress. Her calves hurt. Her stomach is empty, and her throat is full of phlegm, the aftermath of a lingering cold, the cling film lining of her lungs. The horizon is backlit slush mud grey, and Miriam Hallwass veers up the cobblestone path of her cousin’s house, throws down her bicycle, and raps a tiny, pale pink fist against the smudgy glass window. Inside a light flickers. Voices are hushed, and when the door slithers open Heike pummels through it, her body crippled with the dragging weight of a leather bound suitcase. The girls struggle to mount it atop the bicycles handlebars and belt it with wicker straps.

Before the sun rises on Heist Op den Berg, the city on the mountain, the two are pushing impatiently through calf kissing blades of grass. In the distance, Heist fades from view. A single spire of church punctures the developing sky, growing bleak and irrelevant in their trek. An hour passes. Two. They switch bicycles when the sun rises to the occasion, and sheds a layer of nervous sweat across their honey brows.

The wall comes into view. It extends for miles in both directions, and there is no avoiding it’s blemished barrier. They pedal through the open gates, and the city is unraveling itself into a new day. The cobblestones are slick, but the sun is heavy, and they walk their bicycles through the now peopled streets. The thick, sultry scent of the canals rises up to meet them . A fat man in chocolate smeared white linen steps outside his shop and hoists a tray of waffles above his head. The girls slink past him and hold their rioting stomachs. They avert their eyes.

In the center of the town’s square, they unleash the suitcase and use its straps to fasten their bicycles to a street lamp. Before them lies the Cathedral of Brussels. Together they ascend the stone steps and enter the grey, pock-marked archway. Atop the altar lay a gilded box, glittering and golden like the tiniest glimpse into material heaven. The host rises behind thick glass, a starburst of light and ornaments surrounding it. They set the suitcase in front of them, and simultaneously drop to virginal knees, their lily fingers locking, elbows splayed on the leather liner before them.

 

"For God’s dear Word they shed their blood

And from the world departed

Like bold and pious sons of God;

Faithful and lion-hearted,

They won the crown of martyrs."

Miriam slips a prohibited hand past the red velvet rope and touches the jewel-encrusted case of the glistening box. Behind the preternatural backlit glow of the canopy, the sealed and plait sarcophagi holds the Blood of Christ. A static sizzle-point prick of trust envelops her hand, and settles into her palm. She whispers, "amen" and the two exit the chapel, the suitcase

balanced between them, their knuckles kissing on it’s handle. They make their way down the garbage-strewn streets.

In this town, the medieval masque that is Brugges, the alleys dead end with canals, and the canals are a spider webbing across the wasteland of ancient buildings. The train station is a metal box plucked from the sky and set in the center of an archaic garden of squandered fountains. Cherubim angels purse chipped lips and spit air into dry hands. The train tracks lace the city in two spirals. One going north, one going south, and neither in a straight line until their steel construct has passed the water veins, and righteous walls, and entered the lust and wanton green lands of Belgium.

Heike pulls a set of punch tickets from her dress pocket. They’re weather, and damp, but their date says they’ve been purchased the night before.

June 19, 1938

Inside the train car the air is thick and sweet. Ever so much more suffocating than the stagnant fish smell of the outside. Miriam is reminded of cinnamon rolls, and waffles, and her stomach roils and toils and audibly growls as the two hoist the suitcase to the luggage shelf across from them. The train is empty, minus the feeble form of a priest who waits impatiently in the doorway, as they struggle to consume the space above his seat. His body is crooked, his hand presses hard on the wooden shoot of a cane beneath him. There is a web work of deep blue veins pressing up from brown leather skin. His finger nails lay some 3/4 of an inch beyond his fingertip, and they are yellowed and thick. He crosses his hands in his cassock as he sits, and watches the two with accusatory eyes.

Miriam shifts beside her cousin, lays her hand on the crease the cushions make between them, and Heike responds by lacing her finger into the palm. When the train creaks and groans and a whistle blows, the cart finally begins to move and Heike squeezes the girls hand, and drops it.

Outside the window the countryside morphs from dank, liquid greed, flat fields and patchwork dots of angelic white sheep to thick neon green. Sheep become goat, pointed roofs become flat and angular. Rolling hills line the distance, and men in cream-coloured shirts push themselves through the purple and green grotto of grapevines. Before them the priest begins to mumble and hum the tune of some foreign lullaby. Miriam’s stomach twists and chimes in unison. Dots of sweat form above her top lip, her cousins honeycomb hair is plastered at her temples. The sound of Heike’s penny loafers tap out a song of fear against the rubber mat of the floor, her fingernails typewrite her horror on the peeling vinyl seat. The priest stares with hallowed, yellow eyes. His face is a mask of incrimination. A jaundiced yellow aura of indictment that seems to reach across the aisle and drag them up by their renegade ears.

The rolling hills become circlets of brick homes, which become blocks of brick streets, which recreate a city in which the train comes to a screaming, metal shrieking halt in its station.

The girls jump to their feet, too rushed and apprehensive to allow the priest his respected first exit. They climb the seats on either side of him, their hands on the edges of the leather case, when the voices of the soldiers ring loud, and unobstructed. Miriam’s legs collapse beneath her, her heart shudders and stops, and for a moment the girl lays splayed across the rubber floor before the adrenaline shot of fear inhales her, and pulls her back into her seat.

Unmistakable thick tongues scream on the platform. A procession of men and women file past their window. A blonde woman with her hair in tight golden curls buries her face in her hands and begins to sob. A man screams in Dutch from the stairwell. The girls cannot see him, but he is shouting curses and then comes the heavy crack of a baton to his skull. The sound is sickening, it reverberates through the platform, enters the train car and bounces off their ears. The priest lowers his head, and begins his indecipherable prayer.

The sunlight filters in through the door, and the stern outline of a soldier shadow plays on the rubber floor. The illusion makes him remarkably tall and compact. His black lined shoulders stretch from one end of the aisle to the other, and he rotates his belted hips, shifts his weight. The shadow teases them for an eternity. His voice plays choppy like the overdub in a projected film. Inside her tiny chest Heike’s heart bashes itself like a bird estranged to a cage. Miriam’s limbs are numb; her breath catches noisy and wet as the shadow shifts, and the solder appears in their doorway.

He is young. His face is streamlined, finely boned and alabaster white. His eyes are rabid, small and the colour of dirt and ice. He demands in a raucous voice, he shouts at them in German, and the three passengers sit frozen in fear.

"Was sind Ihre Namen? Was ist Ihr Zweck hier?" He repeats himself, and the words coil hoarse with spit in the back of his throat. His cheekbones are like switchblades in his face. His eyebrows are baby fine, and invisible beneath a flat cap. Miriam shifts with a wave of nausea and guilt, some unknown force of want erupts in her stomach. She averts her eyes from the grey clad form of the boy. She crosses her ankles and her heart pounds in her thighs.

The boys eyes fall from her, to Heike, and to the priest. He nods his head, and the priest nods back. The two share the common bond of knowing that their path is the chosen one.

Above his head the suitcase seems to radiate with a need to be announced. The boy lifts an erect arm, riveted with tightly sewn patches from shoulder to cuff, and his ivory white finger pins the case. He screams over his shoulder, and a rapid clap of boots hit the platform, growing loud and louder until the doorway is bursting with young boys in matching grey, all shouting and indicting and grappling for the owner of the case.

The first boy steps forward, his form towers over the girls. Their shoes butt up to one of his on the floor, and his boots are twice their size. He stands akimbo, his eyes angelic, and accusing, pinning Miriam back against the seat. Her face flushes, she raises her hands to her mouth and screams in Dutch:

"No! No it is not ours. We have no bags! It was here when we came!"

But the boy does not understand. He leans down, presses his face into hers, his breath is hot, molten and scentless. His nose is fine, and pointed like a needle, his tongue pulpy and pink behind his screams. He pelts her with throaty German words, and sends a command to the soldiers behind him. One boy, lacking of patches and markings pulls the suitcase down in one deft move of his arm, and the group jumps on it, breaking the silver plated latches.

Inside, the scent of animal, of blood, is overwhelming.

Meat.

Flank after flank after breast of cow and chicken and goat lay packed in tiny puzzle pieces, wrapped in plastic, pushing to the brim. The meat is still cool to the touch. The inner lining of the case is damp with condensation. Heike’s eyes flutter with fear, and her head rolls back on the thin stem of its neck.

The priest opens his mouth. His German is raw, unprocessed. He speaks in animated hands, and high-pitched tones. Miriam’s mouth twists in contempt. Her mind reels with thoughts of absolute blasphemy. Sanctimony. Hypocritical Holiness. The dull weight of her cousin rolls onto her shoulder. The girl is limp.

The first boy, the beautiful boy, points his righteous finger towards her. He demands, short and quick: "Und sie?" The priest raises his pious eyes, his fingers on the beads of his rosary, he holds them up, and shakes his decrepit head.

She pieces the body language, and religion, and the slight slacken of the boys stance, and realizes the Priest is swearing on his Saviour, on the Lord Jesus Christ himself that these girls did not enter this train car with that case.

The unadorned boy slaps the suitcase shut, and tucks it under his arm. They burst from the door, and onto the platform, their voices shrieking with hyenic laughter. In the center of the aisle, the allegiant boy abducts the hand of the priest and presses his pointed pout of lips to the mans rotten, burlap knuckles. He crosses himself and walks mechanically out the door.

Miriam opens her mouth, but the priest throws a hand up in front of her. His face is stern. He kisses the wooden beads of the rosary, one by one. He gathers his robes and shuffles out of the car. His bent body shifts and creaks with the sound of fabric and beads and dragging feet on the platform. Then all is silent, save for Heike’s ragged breath as she comes around, and the train exhales an equally struggled rush of steam. The doors clamor closed, and the girls remain in their seats.

Today they would see the sun justified at its peak over the spiraling populace of Paris. They would find bread in a Boulangerie and pass the hours beneath the Arch de Triomphe before ascending the train once again, and finding their way empty handed, but free, to their homes.

Departure: Brugges 8:00 am

Arrival: Lille, France 2:00 pm

Coach 3, Seats 1 & 3

Reviews

[Hedra Helix]

Your writing is so clean and at the same time beautifully full and descriptive. Nice:)

[Daniella Rose Walker]

WOW.
This is truly amazing to read. Beautiful imagery! So descriptive! The way you wrote it made it feel so... surreal. Almost as though it was a dream.

Thank you so much for sharing this piece!!

[M. A. Torres]

top notch narrative. you have a grasp of the language(s).
excellent title.