Richard Morin creaked down the stairs to the storm cellar with a packet of letters and a bottle of cognac tucked under his arm. One last time for Lena.

BY HEATHER BONIN MACINTOSH

IMAGE BY MEAHA CAUDLE-CHOI

Day 1 

Richard Morin was a twenty-year-old, freshly minted paratrooper with a fiery spirit that matched his red hair when he landed in Provence on August 14, 1944.  He rolled over twice, then onto his rucksack and sucked air into his compressed lungs, as he was taught. He checked his limbs. Intact. Not vision, not hearing, but smell came first—the scent of lavender perfume. He grinned.  

 

Day 2 

Dusk snuck away into night. He explored a stone farmhouse with an empty hearth. The sound of death whistled through broken shutters like the final gasping breath of a dying man. He stubbed his toe, bent low and felt a metal ring. Under a trap door was a set of wooden stairs. He descended into a hole that smelled of soil and wet dog. It felt damp and earthy and comforting. He heard glass shattering before pain split his forehead. 

When he awoke, he lay prone on a smooth dirt floor, rucksack gone. He reached a hand to his head. A sticky liquid clung to his hair.  

“Blood?” he asked in French. 

“Non.” It was a woman’s voice. “I hit you with a jar of peaches. It’s peach juice.” 

Sleep descended upon him like a roaring plane in a dive he could not pull out of. 

 

Day 3 

Richard saw a young woman in a floral dress with ribbon trim that had once been bright but now looked faded and tattered at the hem. Her shiny black hair curled over her shoulders. When he asked questions, she only stared at him with inky eyes, unspeaking. So, he talked of his homestead in Nouveau Brunswick, lobster fishing, and family fiddle nights.  

When she spoke, her voice was husky. “I have not said a word in months.”  

“Where is your family?”  

“My parents and brothers were taken by the Germans. I covered myself with fallen branches in the forest.” 

“Is this your farm?” 

“No.” 

“Where are you from?” 

She swung her long, dark hair off her shoulder. “We are from everywhere.” 

“What does that mean?” 

She shrugged.  

Lena Karani was also twenty, also hiding from the German troops, also a subversive. That evening the young, enigmatic woman led him along the edge of the lavender field he had landed in and across a burbling creek that hid the noises of twigs cracking underfoot. She pointed to distant lights across a clearing. 

“They stay in the chateau and many people come and go.” Her voice dropped. “Two weeks ago, I cut a radio cable over there.”  

Richard’s chest rose in amazement. She led him back along the path with stealth methods that rivalled any commando. Lena knew the trails well and was adept at spying. Her skill was admirable, and he wondered who had taught her. He heard the advice of his military instructor in his head: watch and learn. 

 

Day 4 

His objective was to blow up the bridge at Les Matins de Rhône. When he told Lena, her eyes lit up and her breasts heaved with excitement. She rapidly outlined a plan to slip between the girders and attach an explosive under the bridge deck. It was then that he fell in love with Lena, the revolutionary.  

 

Day 5 

The rickety wooden bridge blew up with only one bundle of dynamite. Lena gripped Richard’s hand when the explosion resounded a few hundred metres away. As orange flames transformed the night sky, Richard turned to watch Lena’s face glow in the flickering light. Overcome with longing and gratitude and a desperation to survive together, he pulled her close to him and kissed her. He allowed himself one moment like freefall when the entire world spread out before him. Then they ran.  

 

Day 6 

“You can hide here until I return with reinforcements,” he said when they returned to the cellar. She laughed mockingly.  

“You’ll die without me, Acadian. I will lead you along the secret paths to your people. Your army.” 

“Will we meet your people along the way?”  

 “The caravans have disappeared. The travelling houses of my people.”  

“You’re a gypsy?” 

“We prefer Roma.” 

He nodded. She hung her head and sang a slow tune in minor chords that sank into the earthen walls and made Richard’s bones ache. The mournful melody spiralled up to the ceiling and risked leaking out into the open space above them. She twirled in a dance, steps quickening to match a climbing tempo until the song ended and she collapsed to the floor. Dark curls spilled around her wet face. Richard fell in love with Lena the Roma then. 

 

Day 12 

For a week they trekked beside endless fields of flowers. Lena wove lavender blossoms in her hair and Richard wanted to bury his nose in her tresses. En route, they discovered another storm cellar that protected them from the world. Richard untied the laces of Lena’s dress one by one, kissing down her spine. She turned and tugged her dress down. They made love throughout the night as though their enemy might arrive at any time. Richard awoke to Lena singing softly in another language. Caressing her leg, he shared his own song so alive in his mouth that he tasted maple syrup and crab cakes and Lena’s skin. 

 

Day 24  

A group of olive-green clad soldiers crossed a vineyard beside their trail speaking English. Richard and Lena ran toward the men, arms in the air, shouting and laughing. Words flew out of Richard’s mouth: his landing, the storm cellar, Lena, surveillance, escape. The officer in charge shook Richard’s hand as the communications official dropped to his knees to set up the radio antennae. 

“I won’t leave her,” Richard told the officer that evening.  

“Command wants you back in Marseille immediately. You’re travelling with the supply convoy at first light. We’re under orders to march for the Chateau tomorrow. I can spare two men to take her to the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Avignon. You’ll find her there when this is finished.” 

When Richard shared the plan with Lena, she wrapped her arms around him and gripped the back of his shirt.  

“I should try to find other caravans.” 

“Stay at the convent. Please. It’s the only way I’ll know where to find you. I’ll write to you.”  

“I cannot read.” She spoke in a factual tone, but the words were tinged with an edge of strength. She lifted her chin.  

Already enamored, he fell deeper in love then with Lena, the challenger. He kissed her lips.  

“Learn,” he said. “You’ll be able to help the war effort better.” 

She grinned and kissed him back. 

 

Day 516 

 One year, four months and three days later, after the V-Day he thought might never arrive, Richard met Lena at the port of Marseilles. They married on board three days later.  

 

62 Years Later 

Richard winced as he descended the stairs to the storm cellar, each step more painful than the one before. His wrecked knees were a testament to years spent leaping from planes. His eyes blurred. He stumbled toward two lawn chairs in the middle of the room, side by side. Slumped into his seat, he set the cognac on the floor and the yellow letters on his lap. He opened the top envelope.  

Inside was a letter he’d written to his wife when he was away on a training mission. With it was a copy of the first business card she had designed for him: Paratroop Instructor, a Lena Morin original. It was written in her distinctive handwriting and featured a sketch of a Douglas C-47 in the upper right corner. She had carried that card in her portfolio as she developed her own career as a calligrapher and illustrator, first making business cards and later signs for bookstores, menus for cafés, and sales flyers for apothecaries. Wherever they moved during his military career, mostly around Canada and once to Germany, she would connect with local shops and restaurants and soon have both new contracts and new friends. He loved how her work had brought them a tangible connection to people off base. They made friends who had nothing to do with guns and aircraft and peacekeeping missions; it felt like another secret world they shared.  

After his retirement, when the last of their four children had moved out, they had purchased a bungalow near their grandchildren. In the backyard, Richard built a storm cellar with an arched stone ceiling. They sat in it every Saturday night to reminisce, play cards, dance, and even play music—he on an accordion and she on a tambourine. Sometimes they made love on a blanket on the floor, more slowly than when they’d met, their urgent passion replaced over the years by an abiding love that grounded them both. Sometimes they invited friends to enjoy a drink in the cellar, or their grandchildren to play games in the secret room. Soon after she was diagnosed with bone cancer, they had to quit dancing. When she became too ill to manage the stairs, he carried their memories to her, first to their bedroom and later to the hospital. And then she was gone. 

He uncorked his favorite cognac and took a swig directly from the bottle. He felt untethered without her, as if his parachute didn’t open. Alone in the dark underground room, he released a months-long wail. When his choked breathing slowed, he wiped a sleeve across his face and over the damp pages. One by one and in order, he reread the letters he had written to her over the years: letters sent to the convent in Avignon while he spent an interminable year away from her until the war ended; letters sent to their home on the base in Petawawa while he trained as an instructor in Ottawa; letters sent to her and the children from various missions in Cambodia, Cyprus, Congo, Syria, Egypt and Bosnia. So many letters, and she had kept them all. His hand shook with loss and sorrow and remembrance as he raised the bottle into the air. One final toast to his Roma sweetheart. His voice warmed with the liquor and his ravaged heart glowed amber. As he sang the familiar Acadian tune his wife had loved, the stone walls bounced his quavering tenor back to him, an echo of a shared melody. One last serenade for Lena. 

Heather Bonin MacIntosh is working on her first novel with a Humber College mentor. Her work has been published in the anthologies Very Much Alive and Blood is Thicker and in WestWord and LavaLife. She aims to foster cross cultural engagement through her writing.

Image: Meaha Caudle-Choi, Greenway, digital photograph, 2018.

Edited for publication by Arisa Valyear, as part of the Professional Writing and Communications Program.

The HLR Spotlight is a collaboration between the Faculty of Media & Creative Arts and the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences and Innovative Learning at Humber College in Toronto, Ontario. This project is funded by Applied Research & Innovation.