Story: Dancing With My Soul. Chapter 4.

by Andy Engines

My daily routine was slowly growing on me and I found that it helped to take my mind from other matters beyond the little cottage. The old woman was starting to make a more sense as I picked up individual words. She would smile as she held something in front of me and repeat its name over and over whilst waving her hand for me to repeat. The reward of a smile when I got the pronunciation right was becoming addictive.

Every morning my first task was to clear the ashes from the range in the kitchen and I soon learnt to preserve all the embers that were still alight as these made short work of getting the fire going again. As soon as the fire was lit I would get a kettle of water on to boil, expectant of the first drink of the day an hour or so later.

Once the water was on to boil I would sweep the kitchen floor and once satisfied that the floor was as dust free as it could be I would slowly crawl back across the old stones scrubbing them clean with a hand brush and water. At first my knees ached from the kiss of the old stones and my hands were perpetually sore but after little time I found the aches disappeared. Slowly my young body adapted to the daily demands it faced.

At first I tried to find quick ways to get everything done but with a little time I came to realise that this was the way it had always been done and for good reason. My own efforts at re-inventing the wheel normally ended in more work and more effort much to the delight of the old woman.

We worked as a team. I started in the kitchen and she in the small living room we sat in every evening. When the water on the range eventually boiled she would pat me on the back smiling and steer me to a warm seat by the fire. She would then carefully make two coffees and hand me one as we sat in companionable silence watching and listening through the window as the birdsong slowly started to herald the new day.

As the birds sang shadows appeared from darkness and shapes slowly grew as grey emerged from black. Dark skies lightened and almost as if by magic colours would slowly grow from the grey. The sun would slowly cast its majestic touch on our small world and the valley in front of us would come alive. The view never ceased to amaze me as I watched each morning, it was pure, it was life itself.

The lower slopes sang in yellow, hordes of yellow dominating the scene and when they tired gave way to a darker orange, and when they too tired they gave way to the darker green of the trees standing sentinel above the havoc of colour. When too the tree’s tired they gave way to grey and the hard ageless rocks at the top of the slopes, kissed at the very top with pure white as if the Gods themselves breathed gently on them. This was my view each day and seeing it appear from the dark of nights grasp was to see the moment of birth. 

And yet even in this paradise memories came back to haunt me.

“Passports? Marije a fool can see we aren’t who we are pretending to be. This has to end now.”

I went to brush past her and for the first time ever I felt her hand on my arm, holding firm, drawing me back. I looked in shock, glaring in anger from her hand to her eyes and there saw the look of fear in her eyes.

“Mistress, I am sorry. Please don’t go downstairs and say what you intend. I promise you this will pass. You have more money if it is needed. If we now say that we have been lying then we have committed real offenses. We have already made our statements. Don’t you see? We are committed now.”

She looked hard at me, imploring.

“If we turn around now then it will look like we are covering something up. We will be guilty of whatever they think.”

As she spoke her words sunk in and I realised there was no turning back, we were committed.

I sat forlornly in the front room and looked out over the square through the window but I saw nothing. All I could see were a million thoughts rushing around my head. I knew I was close to panic and had been ever since I watched Marije hand over the passports to the policeman. This whole thing had escalated far faster than I would have ever dreamt possible and now we were committed to a course of action I would never have volunteered for in a thousand lifetimes. I turned into the room to see Marije going about her daily chores as if nothing had happened and wondered at how calm she appeared.

“How can you do that?”

“Do what Mistress?”

“That… How can you continue as if nothing has happened?”

She smiled as she paused in her work, “Mistress nothing has happened and if it is going to there is nothing I can do about it. I learnt that from my childhood.”

“Your childhood?”

“Yes, my childhood. When the country was at war I was a child and thankfully the danger we were constantly in was not…” she paused thinking, “it was not something I understood so I continued playing with my toys as only a child could.”

“But you aren’t a child now.”

“No I am not, but I am still powerless all the same.”

I sat and thought about her words. I had limited knowledge of the war that had ravaged her country but I knew it had been brutal, whole families, whole villages, had been destroyed and for the first time I started to realise the gulf that lay between us. I quite naively thought that everyone had grown up the same as me.

“Tell me. What was it like.”

She looked at me and walked over, she still wore my clothes and as if an unspoken message had passed between us she sat and I could see pain in her eyes.

“I was a child and didn’t really understand what was happening but I do remember. I would lie in bed some nights listening to my parents talk and though I didn’t hear everything I could sense their fear, their worry, their terror… Children are good at that. Children can sense when the world is happy and when it is sad.”

She stopped talking as her mind drifted back and unable to speak I watched as a spectator as she relived her childhood days.

“Many people died, I still don’t understand really but neighbour turned on neighbour, village turned on village as if everyone was caught up in a madness that only man can create. My parents survived somehow but uncles, aunts, cousins, friends died. It was as if the hand of the Devil swept through our land and took at random.”

We sat looking at each other and I could see the emotion on her face. I didn’t want to speak. I didn’t want to break this. A tear rolled down her face and I moved over to her and held her tight. She was silent but I could feel her chest heaving as she cried silently onto my shoulder. We sat holding each other for an eternity. In those moments I felt closer to Marije than I ever had and I came to realise that like a parent to a child she was protecting me in the best way she knew how.

I waited for the bang on the door as our deception was discovered and yet it never came. One day turned into two and Marije seemed to continue normal life as if she didn’t have a worry in the world. I on the other hand was far from tranquil as my mind saw monsters in every shadow. At one point I decided to call the American embassy and got as far as dialling half the number and then realised the stupidity of what I had done. I knew I had been stupid in letting the passports go but somehow the fear of telling someone else was worse. I prayed that it would all become good again.

I decided to continue to remain indoors until this was over and though the confinement was claustrophobic it was easier to hide. In my mind I was a fugitive, hiding and waiting for the day of discovery. I now knew how criminals on the run must feel. I was balanced on a tightrope made in my mind. Then as days slowly passed I started to relax as my mind convinced me that if there was an issue with our identities it would have been acted on by now. On the third day Marije came to me and asked if she may go to the police station to enquire when we might be getting our passports back. As she left I watched as she walked across the square. 

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