 asanova Restaurant Book: Denise's Story
Chapter 1
When I waved goodbye to my brother and sister, I did not know our whole world would change before I saw them again.
It was late April 1940, and I was five years old. My parents and I had taken Gilbert to the train station; he was going to summer camp at the Belgian seashore. Rita had left a few days earlier for the girl's camp run by the Catholic nuns near Brussels. They were supposed to be gone for six weeks.
My brother Gilbert was 8 years old, and he liked the adventure of traveling, but Rita was 10, and she didn't really want to go. She hated leaving behind her chickens, rabbits and ducks for weeks at a time. But Mama was worried that Rita was getting skinner every day, and she hoped that the change of scenery would do Rita good.
My mother had packed tins of waffles for them to take with them. We all loved my mother's waffles. They are nothing like those limp squares Americans eat today, soaked with maple syrup. My mother's waffles were a special treat - she would use her wooden spatula to mix eggs, milk, butter, flour, and a touch of almond extract in her white bowl, and set the batter aside to rest while the waffle iron heated on the wood-fire stove. When the waffle iron was smoking hot, she filled it with the thick batter and placed it over the heat until the waffles were golden brown. Now and then she had waffles waiting for us after school -- some dipped in milk chocolate, others glazed with powdered sugar and rum cream. My mother's waffles were one of the few things that Rita really loved to eat.
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Rita was always a picky eater, and ever since our father killed one of her roosters for Sunday lunch, she simply refused to eat any kind of meat at all. She hadn't even named that rooster yet; our uncle in Germany had recently given it to her. I couldn't blame her; Gilbert and I didn't want to eat him either. After my father cut off the rooster's head, Gilbert swore that he saw tears in the poor rooster's eyes. Rita convinced us that if we all stuck together and refused to eat dinner that he'd never kill another one. Since she was the oldest, we followed her example.
After that, my father did not kill another one of Rita's pets, but Rita still wouldn't eat meat, or even fish. She loved animals so much. My mother would cook special dishes just for Rita, like pasta with butter, cauliflower with a nutmeg-flavored white sauce, or mashed potatoes. She would fry an egg for Rita while the rest of us ate pork roast.
Mama tried and tried, but Rita stayed too skinny to suit her. One day Mama got so frustrated with Rita that she took her bowl of chicken soup and dumped it on Rita's head. That wasn't like my mother. She must have reached the end of her rope.
Now that I'm a mother myself, I can understand just how tired my own mother must have been during those years. Not only did she take care of the three of us children and my father, she also ran a grocery store out of the front room of our house where she sold a little of everything. My father often worked hard, but he was not ambitious like my mother. She had a sharp mind for business.
Our village of Ligneuville was only 20 miles from the German border, in an area of Belgium called the Ardennes. It was about six miles from Malmedy, a larger, more industrial town, with a population of about five thousand people. Ligneuville was a small village - maybe only 400 or 500 people -- and many of these were my Georis relatives. My father's parents and his 10 brothers and sisters all lived in the village with their families. Our favorite uncle, Nicolas, was the baker, Uncle Jean was a dairy farmer, Aunt Marie and her husband were the teachers for the village, and so on.
My father, Jules, was the oldest son and was the town's blacksmith, just like his father had been when he was young. My father was the best looking man in the village, and he knew it. He loved to dress up in his finest suit and hat. You would think he was a well-to-do gentleman, until you saw the calluses on his strong hands.
He met my mother, Maria Gilles, at a village dance. She was only 19 at that time, and a real beauty, so she caught my father's eye right away. She had thick honey-colored hair that she wore pulled back from her face, and her eyes were a deep blue-gray. My mother was born in Germany, and her mother died while she and her three brothers were children. Her father was in the German military and no one in their family could afford to care for four young children. My mother and her brothers had to be separated. For years, they were constantly moved around among their aunts and uncles.
When she became a teenager, my mother went to work as a servant for a wealthy German family. There she learned about the finer things of life, proper etiquette, and how to speak High German, rather than the coarser German spoken by her family. This experience opened her eyes to the possibilities the world offered.
A few years later she moved to Ligneuville to work at the Hotel Du Moulin as a chamber maid. Today, you would call Ligneuville a resort town. The stone houses were widely spaced around the village, on one or two acre lots, with neat vegetable gardens and flower beds. A clear, cold river - L'Ambleve -- flowed through the center of the village. In the distance, we could see gentle rolling hills, vast pine forests, and pastures.
Wealthy sportsmen from all over Europe traveled to Ligneuville to fish for trout in our river. The Hotel Du Moulin catered to these people, and was only open during the fishing season, Easter to September. The pond behind the hotel froze solid in the winter. The owner of the hotel covered the ice with straw before the spring thaw to hold in the cold and prevent the ice from melting so that hotel guests could have iced drinks during the summer months. What luxury!
During the 1920's, when my mother was young and working at the hotel, all the unmarried young women had diaries, and they would invite young men they liked to write in it. When my mother offered her diary to my father, he turned to the very last page of the book and wrote, "Let anyone who loves you more than I do, write after me." Of course, he stole her heart away.
It wasn't long after that they were married. Their courtship must have been awkward at times. My father was a fiercely loyal Belgian, and his native language was Walloon, a romance language spoken by the people living in this part of Belgium. He also spoke French and German.
Since Ligneuville was so close to the German border, our area of Belgium had been claimed by the Germans during the first World War. This had created a history of resentment and mistrust between the two cultures. My father did not like the Germans or the German culture. He had been a teenager during the first World War when the Germans occupied his town, so he had been taught how to read and write in German. Still, his resentment was strong. So, it is an ironic twist of fate that he found himself in love with a young German woman, who spoke little Walloon or French.
Years later, this mix of cultures became an advantage for my brother, sister and me. We grew up speaking German at home with our mother, and with our father and friends, we spoke Walloon and French.
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While Rita was picky about food, I loved my mother's cooking. All of it. Sunday lunch was our special meal. We'd always have a big meal after church - a steaming pork roast or baked chicken with potatoes. Maybe some boiled red cabbage in the winter or, in the summer, a fresh green salad from our garden behind the house. We always ate together at the kitchen table; the antique table and chairs in our formal dining room were reserved for holiday dinners and special guests. My mother cooked in the hearty German style that she grew up with.
Every one had a glass of beer at dinner, even the children. The dark beer that Rita, Gilbert and I drank was called "table beer." It had less alcohol and was sweeter than the kind our parents drank. Beer was an everyday part of our life in Belgium. Our little town, like every other village, had a local brewery that delivered wooden barrels of beer by a horse-drawn cart to our doorstep. My father transferred the beer to large liter bottles sealed with ceramic caps that were held tightly by clamps.
Once a week, we had dessert. I loved this the best. Every Saturday, Rita and I would help my mother make the pudding for Sunday. We made three kinds - chocolate, raspberry and vanilla - and layered these in my mother's ceramic mold, shaped like a big fish. We'd take turns licking the bowl and spatula, but we had to wait until the next day to eat the pudding.
After church on Sunday, we would have our large lunch. When everyone had finished the main course, my mother would carefully unmold our fish pudding. Our pink, white and brown striped fish would quiver on the platter, while our father carefully divided the pudding into five portions, one for each of us: the tail, three slices for the body, and then the prize - the head. I still remember that the head always tasted best. Rita loved the head, too, even if it was shaped like a fish.
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While Rita and Gilbert were at their summer camps, I stayed at home with my mother and father. I'll always remember those early days of May in 1940 as the best days of my childhood. My parents treated me like their little angel. I didn't have to share their attention with Rita and Gilbert; I had them all to myself. I even got to sleep in my parent's bed at night. I didn't care if Rita and Gilbert went away forever. Looking back now, I realize that almost happened.
On May 10, the German army invaded Belgium. Since our town was close to the border, we were taken over right away. There wasn't even time to resist. Communication with the rest of the country was cut off as Hitler's army moved west toward Brussels. My parents did not know that children at Belgian camps were evacuated by train to seashore towns in France. Within 18 days, the Germans had taken over the entire country of Belgium, and were advancing into France.
Needless to say, my parents were terribly worried. They had no idea if Rita and Gilbert had been killed in the bombing, as many had, or if they were safe. Not only were they worried about their children, but the Germans had taken over our village of Ligneuville. Over night, everything changed. We had to use German currency and speak German. Even the name of our village was changed to "Engelsdorf," meaning "town of angels."
Because the German army was so powerful, there was little point in the villagers resisting the invasion because they knew they would be killed if they did. This take-over infuriated my father; he was very much against the German regime, but he was helpless.
I remember that summer of 1940 clearly. My parents were trying to find out what happened to Rita and Gilbert. They tried to hide their worries from me, but I knew something was very wrong.
Then one day in September my father came home with word that a busload of children was being brought home from France. He went to the bus station in Malmedy to see if he could find Rita or Gilbert. Amazingly, they were there, only he did not immediately recognize the two children running toward him. Both were skinny as nails from lack of food, and their heads had been shaved and treated for lice. Gilbert said, "Dad, take me home! Take me home! It's me! It's me!" My father looked down at Gilbert, who looked nothing like the strong boy he sent away to camp months earlier, and said, "Yes, of course, Gilbert. Let's go home." My father had changed during those long months too. His hair that had been as black as his anvil, had turned pure white from worry.
Gilbert was a strong-willed boy; his experience only seemed to make him stronger and more determined. But Rita was touched in a different way by the experience. She had liked the summer camp near Brussels at first. The nuns taught her how to knit and embroider. She especially loved Elizabeth, the young nun who was her teacher. The school camp was not too strict, and the nuns would let her eat whatever she liked without disciplining her.
As the Germans moved closer to Brussels, the German air force started bombing the city and surrounding area. Since the girls could not be sent home through the German line, the nuns decided to move the girls to France. Elizabeth and thirty-two girls were evacuated by train in cattle cars, along with the cows. Rita didn't know where they were going, and she was as worried for the safety of the cows as she was for herself. They rode on the train for what seemed like days, until they reached the French seaside town of Nante. Elizabeth did the best she could to find shelter and food for the girls, but these were scarce because of the war. They slept in one long room that was only furnished with chairs and tables, no beds. All they had to fill their stomachs was dry bread and tannic red wine.
It wasn't long before the Germans started bombing there too. Inevitably, after two weeks of bombing, Rita's building was hit during the night. Elizabeth was killed, along with nearly all of the girls. Only Rita and two others ran outside, clinging together and crying while the sky was bright with the bombs and fires. The next day, some strangers took the girls to another town - St. Nazaire - on the ocean. The strangers told them they would be sent to Canada where it would be safe. Of course, Rita just wanted to go home. How would her parents ever find her? But since so many had died, there were not enough people left to justify the evacuation to Canada. So Rita and the other girls were just left in St. Nazaire to fend for themselves.
One of the girls disappeared. Rita didn't know what happened to her, so she was left along with Rosa. They roamed the streets and beaches looking for scraps of food. The soldiers had left banana peels on the beach, so they ate them, and at night, they would find little fish lying on the beach. Rita was so hungry, she was even glad to eat the fish. The girls dug a hole in the side of a sand dune and slept there at night.
There was one church in the town that served pea soup on Sunday, so they had one warm meal a week. But, with the war going on, no one had time to take care of two lost girls. No one asked if they were hungry. No one helped. One day they found a place where grapes were growing, so they ate handfuls of them. But the grapes were not ripe. Oh, they made them so sick.
All Rita had to wear was her favorite dress and her thin green coat. My aunt had made the dress from a lovely pink fabric with silver stripes. Other than that, she only had her undershirt and panties, and her shoes and socks.
One day Rosa said, "I've found some bread, and I will give you some if you will give me your dress." Rita was so hungry that she traded her dress away. After that, all she had to wear was her coat over her underwear. She was filthy, sunburned, and covered with lice. And soon she was hungry again.
One day they were on the beach searching for banana peels, when they saw two men with guns. One of the soldiers said, in German, "What are those children doing here?" Since our mother had taught us German, Rita said, "We're lost" and explained their situation. The German soldiers told them not to worry, that they would help them return home to Belgium. Soon the girls were on a bus with other children that had been found in France, and were given crackers and milk. When the bus arrived in Paris, Rita could not believe it when she saw Gilbert! He had been evacuated to France too, but he had not had as hard a time as Rita. They were changed to a bus headed for Malmedy, and a few days later they were home.
When Rita and Gilbert arrived home, my mother and aunt undressed them - Rita's green coat and Gilbert's shirt and pants were so filthy and torn they had to be burned. My mother heated the water on the wood stove and gave Rita and Gilbert a warm bath.
For three months, Rita could not talk. She was in such shock from her experience. However, she started to eat again, and slept in a clean bed. Eventually, her voice returned. But ever since, she has loved animals even more, especially homeless ones. She feed and cares for them, because she knows what it's like to live alone and hungry on the street.
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