“Standing there in the square with Maman and Papa, I could feel my whole being dissolve with sadness. Horse, Bull, Dragon, Elephant, all our rides, all our animals, lay there on the ground, broken and shattered.
Everyone was watching Papa now as he walked forward, brushing aside the leaves, stepping over the branches and the ruins of our carousel, and of Maman’s barrel organ. Until then, I hadn’t seen it lying there crushed, directly under the huge trunk of the tree, the generator beside it. Papa crouched down to pick up the remains of one of the flying pink flamingos. He stood up, piecing them together in his hands.
Then holding it high above his head, he said: “We will mend it.” He repeated it, his voice full of fierce determination, shouting it out so that everyone should hear him against the roaring wind: “We will mend it!”
That was when I noticed some of the German soldiers standing there in amongst the crowd of onlookers, and I recognized the giant soldier. He was wearing a gray cap, not a helmet this time. His hair, I noticed, was snow white, which was strange for a man who was not that old. He was coming through the crowd toward us, and I was wondering why he limped, I remember. He stood there, tall and stiff, in front of Papa.
“They tell me you are Monsieur Charbonneau, the owner of this carousel.” He spoke as stiffly as he stood. Papa did not reply. “Your papers? Identity papers?” the soldier demanded. Papa handed them over without a glance at him. “I have orders to clear all this away,” the soldier went on. He handed the papers back.
“We shall do it ourselves,” said Papa quietly.
“Very well, monsieur, as you wish.” I thought that was all he was going to say. He noticed me then, standing beside Papa, and I saw that he remembered me. “I wish to say, monsieur,” he said, “that this was a very fine and beautiful carousel. I am sorry this happened.”
“You do not need to apologize,” Papa told him, but still not looking at him. “It was the mistral, the wind, that did this,” Papa went on, “which is stronger than you are, stronger than all of us. You and your kind are to blame for much, but not for this, not for the mistral.”
“I understand, monsieur,” the soldier said. “But should you wish us to help you clear—”
“I thank you for your offer, but we can manage without your help,” Papa told him coldly. And now he did look up at him, his face full of defiance. “If you really want to help, then perhaps you might take your soldiers and go back home where you belong.”
The two men stood for some moments in silence, the giant soldier towering over Papa.
“Nonetheless,” the soldier said, “I am sorry for your misfortune, monsieur.” He smiled down at me then, and I found myself liking him, despite his uniform. I remember feeling a pang of shame that I liked him when I knew I should not, and all at the same time I was glowing with pride at how brave Papa had been to speak his mind.
Shortly afterward, the giant soldier led his men away, but most of the townspeople remained, unable to leave, still stunned at the destruction before their eyes, some of them crying openly, the older ones especially. I thought at the time, of course, that it was the destruction of the carousel they were sorrowing over, but I have realized since then that, for many there that day, the grieving must have been over the loss of the great plane tree, which had towered over their town, over their lives, and the lives of their forebears for hundreds of years, standing there as solid as the ancient church, and now so suddenly and cruelly struck down.
For many of the townspeople, the fall of that much-loved tree—so soon after the arrival of German occupiers—must have represented the ruination of everything that was precious to them, their town, their country, their liberty. The great tree was dead, but the leaves were still being blown about in great gusts, as if it was in its death throes.
To see old people in tears very nearly broke my resolve not to cry. But then, in just a few moments, all my sorrow was banished, and I was overwhelmed by a great and sudden gladness that held back my tears. Papa, Maman, and I found ourselves surrounded and comforted by the townspeople, men, women, and children—some of my worst school enemies amongst them. Monsieur Dubarry, the mayor, had his arm around Papa’s shoulder. He, like so many, had rarely so much as deigned to speak to Roma people like us. But here they were, all gathering around us in our hour of need, voicing their opinions as to what should be done, and how. They were talking over one another so much that I could understand little of what they were saying or proposing, or what was going on. I knew only that somehow they were all intent on helping us recover what we could from this catastrophe.
Soon enough, the debate over, the square became a hive of activity. Horses and carts were sent for, axes and saws were fetched, and they all set to, hacking, chopping, sawing away at the crown of the tree, pulling aside the great branches that had crushed our beloved carousel. All this time, the rain lashed down and the wind raged around us. Tiles were blown off the rooftops and sent crashing to the ground; and those trees still standing in the square were being rocked and shaken above us with such violence that I was sure more of them must come down at any moment. But the townspeople seemed oblivious to all this. They worked on tirelessly. We all did, together.
Madame Salomon, my kind teacher from school, was there too, I noticed, a scarf covering her hair and head as if she did not wish to be seen. I wanted to run over and ask her why she had left the school, but she was too busy, and so was I. Our eyes met through the leaves of the fallen tree, and she smiled at me. When I looked up again, she was nowhere to be seen.
The more we pulled and cleared away the crown of the tree, the more we discovered that the damage done to the carousel was even worse than we had first supposed. Some of our animal rides were so broken up, so fragmented, that they were unrecognizable. As far as I could see, not a single one of the sixteen animals I knew and loved so well had survived intact, nor had the machinery that Papa maintained meticulously so that every day it turned the carousel smoothly and regularly, at exactly five circuits a minute, no more, no less. It lay now battered and twisted under the debris of the tree. Papa bent down and retrieved his wooden cranking handle, and gave it to me for safekeeping. That at least was unbroken. He smiled for the first time then.
“Look after it, Kezia,” he said. “We’ll be needing it again.”
By now, with the scale of the devastation evident before our eyes, we should have been in the depths of despair. But the recovery was already in full swing, everyone organizing everyone else, all of us retrieving what we could and, with the greatest of care, Maman, Papa, and I joining in the great rescue, gathering whatever we could. I picked up the head and broken horn of Bull, half the tail and a hoof of Horse, and the fractured leg of a flying pink flamingo.
By now, several carts were drawn up outside the church, horses pawing at the cobbles, heads tossing, impatient to be going. Soon a chain of townspeople was set up across the square and the remnants of the carousel were being passed from hand to hand, Papa and Maman supervising the loading of the carts outside the church. My chief tormentors at school, Joseph and Bernadette, were there in the chain, I saw, and many other children from school, all of whom had given me such a hard time, called me names, pulled my hair, thrown stones at me, spat at me even from across the street. When I smiled at them now, they smiled back, even Joseph, even Bernadette. I was amazed, and pleased, and angry all at the same time.
One by one, the carts would disappear and return awhile later to be filled again. So it went on, until every single piece of the carousel had been carried off. Maman, Papa, and I followed the last cart down the street, through the gateway under the town walls, over the canal, to our field, where Honey was grazing contentedly in the wind and rain, seemingly oblivious to us, to everything that had happened, and to the ruins of our beloved carousel that now lay all around her.
There it was, spread out on the grass in pieces, our precious carousel, like some enormous jigsaw puzzle emptied haphazardly out of the box and waiting to be put together. Some fragments had been deliberately gathered and arranged, so that a few of the animals were already a little more recognizable. I noticed at once that two of Dragon’s legs and his tail were laid out together, and so was Elephant’s head, one ear, and half of his trunk.
For some time, none of us spoke. Only then, I think, did I begin to take it all in, and the tears came at last, filling my eyes, running down my cheeks. I wiped them away, but Papa had already noticed. He put an arm round me.
“We are alone now, Kezia,” he said. “You cry all you like. But always remember this: that everything happens for a reason, that beyond the clouds there is blue sky, beyond the sadness there is always joy. I mean we made friends today, did we not? And one day this carousel will turn again and the music will play and the children will come. It will happen. Maman and I, we made it once. We will make it again, and this time we have you to help us. You look after my cranking handle. I shall be needing it one day.” I had never before heard Papa talk so passionately.
“Papa is right. What is broken can always be mended,” Maman told me, stroking my hair and kissing the top of my head. “And the townspeople, they want it to be mended. You saw that they love the carousel, as we do. Why else did they bring all this here for us? We shall make it happen.”
“But how?” I cried, the tears flowing freely now. “Look at it!”
As I spoke, I heard the honking of flamingos above us, and the singing of wings. I looked up to see a great flock of them overhead, hundreds of them, flying over the canal into the setting sun, and it was only then I thought of Lorenzo, and Horse, which he loved so much to ride. I could see now, in amongst the debris of the carousel, one of Horse’s legs, and his battered head nearby. The rest of him was nowhere to be seen, lost amidst the wreckage. I knew then how devastated Lorenzo would be when he found out what had happened to the carousel, if he ever saw the remains of his beloved Val. It did not bear thinking about.”