A Long Since Tasted Wonder

In wartime, food was rare. A memory; a long since tasted wonder. Paper thin and tasteless was this ungodly concoction thrown onto the bare wooden table. We all gathered around reluctantly, staring at the evidence of our tragedy. Some, the more hungry of us, picked up spoons with shaking hands and unseeing eyes, watching as the strange substance wobbled in ways a stew should not. Red rimmed were the eyes of these tear stained faces that stared at their bowls. I had no mirror but knew mine was the same pallid shade, with remnants of dust and dirt from who knew where. A heavy silence, filled with the weight of unspoken thoughts, hung in the air. It was as if all wonderful scents and sounds of domestic life had been sucked from our very souls. The memories, only semblances. Dreams. Life was now the true waking nightmare. The shadowed room we were in rumbled beneath the warzone. Walls shook with violence and the wooden floorboards above us shed its coat of time. Time was both our only comfort, and our curse. Down here, we were wasting away, yet it was the only place we could be safe. Beneath the house of a stranger, whose life was theirs still, whose home had not been destroyed. 

Through war, we had lost much, become vagrants in our own country and enemies to our friends. Those who had once looked upon us as a family, now saw only their fear reflected as our treachery. In propaganda, we were disparaged as vermin, carriers of disease, and thieves. Lesser than human, we had no rights. Our lives, our futures, were stolen from us. All we had was time, past and present. Time that stretched before us - a game of waiting. Time, that stretched behind, a game - lost. These thoughts were my constant companion, an imaginary foe that repeated its psychological attack each and every night. Mechanically repetitive, like a fusillade of bullets. I would never forget the sound, the echo, the ricochet; for the sound itself was pain. 

When gunshots are fired around you, your mind hones in on the vibration - every movement, pulsation and impact is felt. The echo, heard, is secondary to the moment, felt. Within this primordial state, the definition of being alive is truly understood but so, is the meaning of death.

I felt a shiver course through me, for even now, here, underground, it could still be heard. 

The war in the sky. The war on the ground. The war within. 

The scrape of cutlery on near empty plates was enough to make me flinch. I held in tears while biting my lower lip. The taste of iron, of a small droplet of blood, although bitter, was more palatable than another swallow of this brown lumpy stew. We had to be careful not to think too much of the contents. If we did, the very thought on an already stomach could make us sick. I grasped at my throat, feeling the claws of panic tightening around me, as if I had awakened some sleeping beast. 

“Remember.” Father said suddenly. “Mind over matter.”

Mind over matter. It was my most used epithet, the only thought strong enough to make me eat. I steeled myself and looked around at my family. Faces were all I saw before, drained and weary. When I panicked, when I feared the worst, my mind shut off to the familiar. Because it was the familiar creases, quirks and expressions that emphasised how much we lost. But I forced myself to look.

My brother, whose hair had fallen over his eyes, nodded and smiled, ever so slightly. I found myself smiling back. The shadows behind us flickered in the candlelight, eerie and yet, somehow comforting. For if I narrowed my eyes, and opened my mind, I could imagine we were somewhere else. In the attic, or the barn, playing and hide and seek in the night. And the moon, half hidden by the clouds, but surrounded by stars, would shine through the window. We would jump from hay bale to hay bale, and play games with the creatures. And father would come back from a day in the fields and join us, revealing food stolen from the kitchen. A midnight snack for my two night owls. We were not hungry then, not in the way we were now. Then, we wanted for nothing. It was perfect. Now, we hungered for hope just as much as we longed for life. Hate had stolen from us, robbed as we were of more than just food. Even our appetite to live was sometimes tested.

“Colours.” Father said, and again, “Colours. The wonderful rainbow of delight. Each colour has a taste. Remember the taste.”

I closed my eyes, letting myself fall into the dreams we learned to feel. Green and yellow - the fields and the sun. Bright blue - the sky in summer. 

“Gold, do you remember gold?.” 

“Honey.” I replied. And the texture, my mind prompted. “Thick and rich. Perfect.” 

Long grass swayed beneath the evening sunset, as I walked through the field to the meadow’s end. I felt the brush of branches as they reached for the ground, as a child would reach for their mother’s arms. The trees hummed with the sounds of nature, a bee here and there alighting on a single leaf for rest. This scene was but a flash of colour in my mind, a painting preserved by the glowing amber of hope. Within this illusion, I could taste it: the sugar and the fruit, the herbs in the garden, and the honeycomb from the hive. And with this feeling in my heart, I reached for my spoon and heard laughter, and song and joy. And thus, with the help of my father’s hand, guiding my own, the scents and sounds of life long before this desolate war returned to me, in a rush of colour.

“Hope,” Father said with a wink when I opened my eyes, “is the secret.”