Nine Lies of B.G. Davies

Unknown Artist: Bicycle and Snow, 1941

Grand Prize Winner of the Literary Fiction Network's Winter Writing Competition

Tip-tap, tip-tap, she comes. Down the hall. Louder. Sharper now. Less echo. Heels on tiles. The lady will be here to take away his Lisette, like she does every day. Soon, she will be faking a smile and tugging at the photograph in his hand, pulling him back to their cold world. Tip-tap. He doesn't have long.

Wilhelm Schmidt twists the creased photo paper between his bony fingers and tries again to look deep into the old photograph. He needs to focus on the evidence, remember the facts, seek out the truth. The faded photograph of the snow-covered bicycle depicts reality: on the morning of January 1st, 1941, Paris saw the largest snowfall in its history. That is a fact. It has been proven. The bicycle is right there in the picture, Lisette's bicycle. The rickety bike that brought her to him, the one covered in fresh snow. The old bicycle makes her new again.

It had been a wonderful fall. Of that, Wilhelm Schmidt is still certain. He remembers how the smells were all new: baking bread, decaying leaves, the occasional waft of spiced, smoking meat from the quarter on the streets behind. For an eighteen-year-old away from his parent's farm in Bavaria, the posting to Le Maris was an adventure of a lifetime. And to be working to further the glory of the Faderland gave the mission a higher purpose. There was endless wine, food beyond belief, wonderful weather and, oh, the Parisian women were a sight to cherish. While it seemed to Wilhelm the officers were having an even grander time, he had no complaints. He was living it up in Paris.

Wilhelm considered himself fortunate. Because of the influence of his Uncle Werner, a Captain in the army, he had been guaranteed a position as a guard in occupied France if he volunteered early. His friend Horst had waited until the recruiters pulled him from the farm, and he ended up fighting on the Russian Front. Wilhelm, although only a Private, was assigned to guard the Commandant's headquarters on Rue Charlot, in the Le Marais neighbourhood of Paris. Wilhelm saw himself on a working vacation, not fighting a war.

The street he stared across each day was quiet. A few local residents would walk or bike up and down, their head hung down or looking to the other side of the street. Most Parisians, it seemed, chose to avoid passing by the massive old home that had become the local headquarters for the occupying army, and, instead, traveled one street over. Without much to look at, Wilhelm knew every stone on the rock wall across the street, each split in the mortar and every piece of grass that so valiantly resisted the stone and pavement, sneaking through a crack and fighting its way to stand tall. He admired the clump of grass across the road.

It was a great time to be a German in Paris. While he had heard rumours that food was becoming scarce for the French, he didn't believe that was true. The German servicemen had everything they wanted. And the news from home was exciting! How proud he was of his brothers who had swept through Europe and were now on the doorstep of Russia. Soon, the suffering which Wilhelm's family had endured would be over. Germany would be great again.

But the great matters of states and nations were not his concern. For Wilhelm, obeying orders was his duty. He took pride in staring across Rue Charlot for twelve hours each day. Thankfully, he had been assigned the day shift so he was able to wait each day for the girl on the bicycle.

Click-clack. Click-clack, he would hear her first, coming down the street. Pedals clicking and clacking against the bike frame, getting louder as she approaches his sentry post. Like she does every day.

She passes at 10:15 each morning, riding north. He sees her crippled bike from the corner of his right eye as she squeaks past his sentry. The young woman glances upwards at the massive red and black emblem draped from the third-floor windows, then her eyes lower, meet Wilhelm's gaze for an instant before her head turns to look ahead. Wilhelm inhales the contours of her face, tastes the purity of her youth. He feels her smooth skin, wants to run his hand over her cheek, trace the outline of her soft nose with his finger. He tries to hold her gaze as long as he can, until she rides by and his stare drops to her feet, where, for an instant, he can see the white skin of bare calves spying out from below her dress, making circles as she peddles up the street. Lisette, he calls her.