“For days on end, Lorenzo hardly came out of his hospital shed. I knew he would invite me in when he was ready, and not before. He was silent and withdrawn whenever he came out. I would ask him about the flamingo, whether she was well enough yet for me to come and see her, but he would not reply. He would not even look at me. Even at meal times, he wanted to stay in the shed with his flamingo, but Nancy put her foot down.
“You have to eat, Lorenzo,” she told him. “You must. You must eat for the flamingo. You need to be strong to do your healing.” Nancy always had a way of saying the right thing to him. Even so, he was never happy about coming away and leaving his patient. He would walk up and down, nibbling unenthusiastically on his sausage. He had to finish every bit of it before Nancy would let him go back to his shed. It was as if the rest of us hardly existed. For days, he was like this. He lived only for the flamingo. His absence affected not just me, but all of us. It became like a cloud hanging over us that would not lift. Then one day it did, miraculously.
With Lorenzo shut away in his shed, I had taken to riding out with Henri on the farm whenever I could. Henri was the only one of us who seemed still to be much as he always had been, never morose or gloomy as the rest of us had become. He would just get on with the next job to be done, because it had to be done. I loved being out with him around the black bulls, driving them to new pastures, or riding in amongst the white horses and their foals, making sure none were walking lame, that the foals were fit and growing on well.
We were riding back one morning into the farmyard, Cheval trotting out as he always did when he was on his way back home, when we saw the most wonderful sight. Lorenzo was walking across the yard toward the caravan, the flamingo at his side. The flamingo was stepping out strongly, wounded no longer, healed. Maman and Papa were standing there, watching them, and Nancy had come running out of the house. Lorenzo walked the flamingo around and around, clapping his hands with delight. The flamingo stayed close to him all the time, honking happily, both her wings outstretched. One moment Lorenzo and the flamingo were walking side by side, together, honking in harmony, moving in unison, then the next moment there seemed to be two flamingos.
“It is like a miracle,” Nancy breathed. “A miracle.” And so it seemed to all of us who were there to witness it. But that wasn’t the only miracle that was to happen that day.
I was so happy to have Lorenzo back with me. He too made no secret either of his joy at our reunion, skipping along beside me, clapping his hands. We were never alone after that. The flamingo came with us, following us wherever we went. If she ever looked hesitant, or nervous, Lorenzo only had to honk gently and she would come running. I could see now that one of her wings would not stretch out quite as far as the other, that she was struggling to beat the air strongly, evenly, with both wings. I wondered then if the Caporal had been right, that the wing had been too seriously damaged, that she might never fly again.
I did not want to go back down the farm track toward Camelot, toward the concrete bunker and the guns and the soldiers. I did not want to be reminded of it. But one day Lorenzo insisted we go, dragging me along, and calling all the while to the flamingo to follow. We were coming ever closer to the bridge. We could see the hideous shape of the bunker, and hear the laughter of the soldiers. There was music playing, the soldiers singing. I saw them waiting by the wire, but they could not see us yet.
“No, Renzo,” I said, taking both his hands and trying to persuade him to come away. “No, please, I want to go home. Come, Renzo, come.” Then I had a lucky moment. I spotted an egret moving through the reeds beside the canal. “Grette!” I whispered, pointing it out to him. He had seen it. When I took his hand, he did not resist.
We followed the egret as it picked its way through the reeds along the shore of the canal, back toward home. We were almost there when Lorenzo stopped and crouched down to watch more closely. I did the same. The egret was busy feeding. The flamingo beside us was as still as we were.
That was when we noticed the water in the canal seemed to have changed color. It was no longer murky and gray, but brown, dark brown, the color of wood. I realized then that it wasn’t just the color of wood. It was wood! The canal was full of planks, all jammed against one another, so tightly in places that it was more like a wooden floor that stretched across the canal, from one bank to the other. I could hardly believe what I was seeing.
“Twenty-nine,” Lorenzo said. I counted. He was right, of course. Twenty-nine planks of wood were floating in the canal, some half submerged, some half hidden in the reeds.
I knew at once of course who had done this, and so did Lorenzo.
“Capo,” he said, “Capo.” I left Lorenzo and the flamingo there and ran home to the caravan. You cannot believe how fast I ran, how loud I was shouting, how garbled was the story I told them. I was back with Maman and Papa in a few minutes, with Honey and the cart. Papa had to wade into the canal waist-deep to reach all the planks, and float them over to our bank. Then Maman, Lorenzo, and I were dragging them through the reeds, hauling them up the bank and loading them onto the cart, the flamingo looking on, honking at us and flapping her wings.
When we had loaded every last one of the planks, Papa drove the cart home, Maman and me riding in the back, sitting on the pile of planks, Lorenzo following us up the farm track with the flamingo beside him. What a triumphant little cavalcade it was that Henri and Nancy must have seen coming into the yard.
We were all there in the barn later that morning, the planks laid out where they should go. Some were too short, some too long, but we could all see that there was enough wood now to finish the floor of the carousel. Standing there, gazing down at this bounty of timber, Maman and I knew, Lorenzo too, and everyone else suspected where the wood had come from, who had been our benefactor. His name was in all our minds, but no one dared speak it, not until Lorenzo did.
“Capo Capo,” he said. “Capo Capo.” He was telling everyone. He wanted the truth spoken.
Without Nancy, I do not think that Maman, Papa, and Henri would ever have accepted this gift from the enemy—for that, of course, is what it was: we all knew it.
“Well,” said Nancy, standing on what would soon be the new floor of our carousel. “We have to make a choice, don’t we? We can either take these planks, chop them up, and use them for firewood—but that would also be benefiting in a way from what the Caporal has given us. Or we could make a bonfire of the lot and watch it all go up in smoke, or we could see it simply as a gift of kindness and make good use of it. After all, we may not like the Germans one little bit, but they did not blow up our carousel. It was not an act of war, or of Occupation. A tree fell on it, and a French tree too. The big Caporal was there. He saw it in ruins. He wants to help us bring our carousel to life again. It is a gesture of kindness, of reconciliation. That is what I think.”
“More important, he warned us about the Milice,” Papa said, “told us to hide, to keep away from town, from the roads. Let us not forget that.” To hear Papa speaking up for any German was a surprise, and a great relief to me. Papa liked the giant Caporal, so it was all right for me to like him too. That made me feel easier.
There was no need for any more discussion. They started on the work to complete the floor of the carousel as soon as the wood had dried out, and worked every evening late into the night, sawing and planing, chiseling and hammering. I would listen from my bed in the caravan. It was music to my ears. On one of those nights, I remember, I woke crying from a nightmare, a nightmare of hammering in my head that seemed to me like guns firing, louder and louder, closer and closer. Maman was beside me, trying to calm me, reassuring me that it was just Papa and Henri in the barn, hammering the planks into place. Strange, n’est-ce pas, Vincent, how we so often forget our dreams, but remember our nightmares?
And le flamand rose, Lorenzo’s flamingo? Well, she became part of all our lives. She followed Lorenzo everywhere now, like a pink shadow. She was never allowed into the farmhouse, though, so Lorenzo stayed outside with her almost all the time. Only in the house at nighttime were they ever separated. Nancy was adamant about it; she would not have flamingo droppings and feathers all over the house. So, reluctantly and complaining, every evening Lorenzo would have to walk the flamingo back to the hospital shed for the night. She was not alone in there. There were several terrapins and two orphan flamingo fledglings to keep her company. But all the same she let us know how she felt about this enforced separation by honking regularly all night.
It was Lorenzo’s miraculously recovered flamingo and the newly completed floor of the carousel that cheered us all. Forgotten were any past warnings of threat and danger. The Germans did not fire the guns again, no soldiers intruded onto the farm. The Milice did not come. We were left alone and in peace. Even the mosquitoes did not bother us so much. There were new foals and calves on the farm, plenty of fish in the canal, and Lorenzo was happy because the flamingos were breeding well out on the island in the middle of the lake. There were so many of them sitting on their nests that you could hardly see the island for flamingos.
All the time, progress on the carousel was gathering pace. The floor had made all the difference. Henri had straightened the damaged metal uprights that would support the roof. And Papa and Maman had now completed, much to Lorenzo’s delight, ten of the flying pink flamingos that would soon adorn the crown of our new carousel. Henri and Nancy would come back from town on market days having sold everything they had taken in to sell. Food was becoming scarcer still these days, so demand was high.
With them, they brought good news, the best news there could be. There was more and more talk in the town that the Americans would be landing soon, that it could not be long. The war would not last forever. The Germans would be gone. Freedom was coming.”