Of Silence | completed

THE BAKER

LILLE, FRANCE, 24 DECEMBER 1937

Valérie found the boy on the corner of the street, quietly lacing up his beaten shoes. His head was bowed, his thin arms were bare, and she could make out the raising of his skin where it pimpled from the cold.

It was a weary Christmas Eve, and Valérie wondered with uneasiness about how a boy his age had come to be in this position. She watched him tie and retie the shoes, which were so frayed and threadbare she did not know how he would be able to walk when the snow blew in. She knew the weather would take a turn for the worse this year. It was all the talk she had at the bakery nowadays; every passing person on the street would stop by to mutter excitedly about having a white Christmas, and Valérie would nod her head in response while a giant part of her sank to the ground.

The boy was small and frail. It was quite obvious he had not seen the embrace of a home for several years, and Valérie wondered if she might take him in. But things were hard enough at the bakery these days, and the lack of business was constantly cleaning out her cupboards for her. Things had barely picked up again in recent years before she was forced to empty the money out on her wraith of a sister, who sat cold and ghostlike in the single room above the shop and did not move.

She stood several feet away from the boy for a while, watching him trace patterns on his ragged, ugly clothes, gray with soot and bleached with cold. She wondered if he had any work, and how old he was. The hems of his black trousers were caked with dust - she gathered that at some point he must have been sweeping chimneys. The grease on his shirt revealed that he had perhaps once aided a mechanic, or worked in a mine.

He curled up on the street, rolling something small and golden in his skeletal-white fingers. His expression was empty and lost and there was a faraway look within his eyes. He did not see her standing above, or if he did, he did not react. Valérie squinted as far as her aging eyes would allow, studying his face: he seemed to be fairly young, no more than fourteen years of age. She decided that he was too young to be on the streets - to be anything really, but loved and cared for.

Valérie made up her mind and walked towards him, silently. She may have been a little plump, but she was strong and light on her feet. The boy did not look up until she stood before him and her shadow cast on his freckled face.

'Boy,' she said, with a voice that was full and deep and homely. People always told Valérie that her voice was a roaring hearth, warm and rich, like something you would want to curl up next to on a freezing day.

He stirred, and his fist closed around the golden object - a small bird, Valérie noted, made of exquisite craftsmanship and hung on a fine chain that dangled out of his hand. The boy's eyes were of the deepest blue, and so, so very cold. Valérie shivered, and she was certain that it was not because of the heaping wind nor the overcast sky.

'Boy,' she said again. 'What is your name?'

'Charles, ma'am,' he said, softly, his voice as delicate as hers was sturdy. 'Charles Sauveterre.' His gaze shifted to her face, but he did not make a move to get up. He lay there and dithered like a moth in a window. Valérie wondered what had made him like this; as frigid as the ice that hung in the air.

'Charles,' she said, softer this time. 'Get up. It is cold and you should not be out at this hour.' She had barely said so when the sky darkened a shade and the lamp in the window of the butcher's flickered on. She cast a glance behind at her bakery. 'Boy, I will give you a meal. Get up.'

He rose, quietly, and his movements were ungainly and tentative. Valérie was not tall but when the boy stood his forehead barely reached her shoulder. The matted hair on his head gave him no more than a centimeter's increase in height. He was thin yet wiry, and his cheeks held the sunken pallor of the dead.