The Silver Tin Box

THE SILVER TIN BOX

Near Bucharest, Romania 1940

The murky surface of the water suddenly broke into small shimmering ripples of light. The boy’s eyes shot to the movement and he watched, mesmerized, as two tiny black eyes lifted up out of the cloudy depths and gazed unwaveringly at him. He was lying on his stomach at the edge of the pond, arms crossed under his chin and his chest supporting his weight. Unmindful of the wet mud that was slowly soaking it’s cold tentacles into the front of his faded jacket he knew that his mom would scold him when he got home and tell him to go back outside their humble cottage and brush the dried mud off because there was no way she was going to wash it anytime soon with all the other work she had around here.

Lying there in the dappled sunlight, the tranquility of the undergrowth quietly resonated around him. Birds twittered in confident safety in the lofty beech trees and the water gurgled contentedly as it streamed away in a thin ribbon from the pond. There was no sense of danger, nothing  shattered the peace in this hidden place that the boy had found long ago, hidden from the noisy and chaotic life at home.

It was a small frog and it seemed to be watching him intently, not sure whether he presented danger. The two gazed at one another steadily; the boy with fascination, the amphibian with unblinking and guarded surprise. Slowly, without a ripple, the little frog sank quietly below the surface. The boy gave a sigh and stared at the spot fixedly trying to see which way the frog had swam but the water was too leaden and he could not track its movement. 

He continued his surveillance of the pond, his eyes moving slowly back and forth between the banks feeling the gentle warmth of the sun on his back. Suddenly a flash of movement caught his attention and he swiveled his head freezing in surprise at what he saw. 

The two gazed at each other, both reflecting astonishment. The boy didn’t move, only his eyes opened wide in startled astonishment as he stared at the young girl about his age who was standing with her hands folded demurely against the front of her white dress. How long had she been standing there? He felt a little shy and the embarrassment of being caught in such a vulnerable position caused a slight smile to tug at the corner of his mouth. The girl responded with a quick grin of her own and she said in a soft, bell-like voice “What are you doing?”

Scrambling up onto his feet, unmindful of his grubby palms and jacket, he didn’t answer immediately but shuffled awkwardly and gazed anywhere but at this vision of purity which was now picking her way towards him, dainty feet clad in soft shoes made for carpeted rooms, not the harsh ground she now tiptoed on.

He had never seen anything so lovely. Accustomed to the untidy and raucous conditions he and his five brothers lived in, his first thought was to run, hard and fast. Seeing this, the girl stopped and held up a hand.

“Oh, please don’t go. I didn’t mean to surprise you. I’ve seen you here before…from a distance,” she quickly added, seeing the alarm instantly crossing his face. She spoke English in the lilting accent of an American citizen.

The boy blinked rapidly. This unsolicited visit invading the tranquility of his place of safety had assaulted the inner, quiet joy that filled him whenever he was here. For years this refuge been his escape from the poverty and stress that filled his days under the roof of hardworking parents, who themselves were exhausted from the daily struggle to survive.

He felt angry and confused now. Trapped between his cherished solitude and the present real horror of this assault he sought to escape. The pond was behind him and the girl standing in front of him and so he slowly began to slide his bare feet sideways to make a run towards the dense forest of trees towards home.

She noticed his uncertainty, his fright. “Please don’t go,” she said again. Her voice lifted in sweet pleading tones. Hearing the sincerity in her words, he hesitated and for the first time looked fully at the trespasser. She was lovely, all his senses acknowledged this. Her curly blond hair, set loose from any headwear, cascaded down over her shoulders. Her face, with a small, freckled nose and full soft lips, belied his first dismay and gradually he began to relax.

They stared at one another, each making an assessment of the other. Again the girl was the first to speak.

“Sorry for surprising you. I know it was wrong. I’ve been wanting to speak to you. It gets so lonely up there…”

She pointed over her shoulder towards the dense hillside which in the far distance lay the formidable white stones of a large mansion which, he knew, was the American ambassador’s residence. His parents had told him to never go anywhere close to it, disapproving of the negative stigma of Western dominance that it represented and he had blindly obeyed.

So he stayed. That first hour found them sitting shyly, a distance apart on the grassy bank, exchanging basic information about themselves. As they talked he found himself being drawn to her. This girl, he now saw, was a simple soul, unsullied by the temptations of her world and unwittingly he began to relax.

So began an unlikely friendship between a sophisticated albeit innocent young girl and an equally naïve boy who, brought up in the poverty of rural and uneducated countrymen, nevertheless had an intuitive and sensitive insight to human nature with all its pernicious characteristics.

Shelly was 6 weeks younger then he was, a detail that 14 year old Ivan found pleasing, a slight pride welling up in his chest. She looked at him with admiration which was a remarkable to him. The people in his village were often scorned and disregarded by others; a pitiful ignorance, he thought, born from the lofty view of the standards which money brought. Shelly’s calm and innocent acceptance of him was refreshing and he began to open up to her in the growing conviction that he could trust her.

They began to meet regularly, or as often as her home schooling and his chores would allow. He discovered that as an only child she had travelled to many places in the world with her diplomatic parents, who settled no longer then a couple of years in a country before being sent to another place. She was surprisingly unworldly and this, he realized, was because she was sheltered and protected, an only child brought up by loving but busy parents. That she was allowed to roam unguarded around the countryside was due to a lazy and neglectful tutor who was only too glad to have some free time of his own and simply made her promise not to wander beyond the boundaries of the diplomatic residence. Her parents were in demand and involved in all sorts of embassy duties which sometimes went long into the night and as a result it might be days before she even saw them.

Theirs was an unlikely friendship born out of two innocent individuals from very diverse backgrounds yet their minds blended together in a linked bond of interests, convictions and a wonderful humor which united them. They discussed all things, laughed together at silly incidents and found in each other a mutual sharp mind and a passion for knowledge. She began to bring down to the pond her lessons and books which he would take back home to read and then discuss with her the next time they met.

One day she brought with her a shiny metal tin box. It had once held biscuits, or cookies as she called them, sent over from the USA by a fond grandparent. They were delicious she informed him and she wished she had kept one or two so that he could have tasted them. Ivan sniffed inside the biscuit box and could smell the aroma of vanilla, chocolate and cinnamon. He said he wished he could have tasted one too. Then she excitedly told him her idea for the box.

“We could leave notes in it for when one of us can’t come down here.” She took out a notebook and a pencil from a cloth bag she had slung around her shoulder. Opening the notebook she showed him the pristine pages. “Say I come down here and you aren’t here. It has happened you know!” she importantly declared. “Or if you come and I’m not here and we can’t hang around waiting and waiting. Then we can leave a note in the tin for the other. Don’t you think that’s a good idea?”

Ivan nodded dubiously. His writing skills were elementary at best. Schooling was always haphazard and mostly relied upon the teaching of his mother or grandparent. That he was an eager learner was an advantage which benefited him momentously. Thanks to this enthusiasm he read English newspapers, like Time or Good Housekeeping, that had been taken from city dustbins and brought home to the village by the more educated villagers.

There began a new season in the binding of their relationship. Note writing became a delightful game because even when they found a common time when they were both there, they would sit in the warm sunshine on the pond bank and delightedly look inside their trove at the contents left there. Sometimes there was only one note, sometimes more. Then with giggles each would open their own folded message and read the words out aloud.

Mr Henry (Shelley’s tutor) smacked my hand with a ruler today because I smudged my page with ink while I was writing. Silly old man. I couldn’t help it if my elbow mussed up the page!

or

I dropped one of the eggs I was carrying today. Mam was so cross. I told her I would not have an egg for breakfast cos it was my fault. But she still gave me one. Damien (his younger brother) was so cross cos he wanted it.

Then came the day, in the enjoyment of their nascent friendship, neither of them had foreseen, never considered, might happen.

As Ivan stepped out of the shadows of the forest his first reaction was one of delight that she was there, sitting cross legged and playing with a grass daisy. Her head was down with her long blonde hair hiding her face but he immediately knew that something was wrong. Stepping closer he slid down next to her but she didn’t lift her head.

“Shelly?” A tear dropped down into her lap and she lifted her hand to wipe her eyes. A silent wave went between them. Ivan felt frightened. The birds chattered away in the trees and the water gurgled quietly. Ordinary sounds in the life of the forest but suddenly Ivan knew with sudden dread that something momentous was happening. Quietly, he took her hand. She shivered and her golden hair swung as she raised her bowed head to look at him. Her face was tear streaked, her blue eyes misty with hopeless misery.

“We’re leaving. The embassy is closing. All of us are going back to America.”

She turned her eyes to the water and continued.

“There is a war coming. Or maybe has already come, I don’t know. They say it won’t be safe to stay here.” Her voice suddenly rose a pitch.

 “Oh, Ivan! I wish you could come too!”

Ivan’s voice was tight as he replied just one word, but it contained enough emotion in it that consumed all his hopes and joy for his future.

“When?”

“I dunno,” she shrugged her hunched shoulders. “Today maybe. Or tomorrow. Mama is busy packing up all our things”.

They sat there both frozen in their bewilderment of the unanticipated change. Their young minds could not immediately adjust to the rapid shift of their horizons which up until now had impossibly held naive expectations of limitless and infinite togetherness, of friendship, of shared lives and even of future experiences. But now Ivan realized with a dull thud in his stomach that it was not going to happen and indeed could never have been a likelihood.

Numbly they sat side-by-side on the bank, shoulders touching without words. The uninterrupted resonance of nature shimmered and echoed around them but the delight of the day was gone. Unnoticed, the water rippled and softly murmured, the birds repeating their rhythmic chorus high in the rustling treetops but internally their hearts were shattered with the sudden shock of this portent news that now loomed between them.

She cried out. “I’ll write to you, Ivan! I will! And you must write to me…you will, won’t you? Here is our box,” holding out the silver tin box that had for months been the one established link between them.

“My address, the house in New York to where we are going, is in there. I asked my Papa for it. I told him I had friends here that I wanted to write to. When you write be sure to put your address in your letter so that I can write back!” Her eagerness, coupled with a frantic fervor brought a sharp terror within his being.

Numbly he nodded as, at the same time and from a distance, came the urgent call of a voice crying out Shelley’s name. She sprang up, “I have to go!” He rose with her and they stood facing and at the same time reached out their hands to clutch each other. They stood like that, hands clasped for an inestimable moment that finally stretched abysmally into the awful knowledge that this would be the last time they would see one another. Then she was gone, running up the hill away from him, her hair swinging and her dress looping around her legs. She stopped half way up and turned around. He was still standing there gazing up at her and their last glances were filled with a great sorrow of lost friendship and of precious moments that had so cemented them together and bonded them, they had thought, for eternity.

That night the bombing began. Ivan and his family sat huddled together in the dark cellar beneath their house. Ivan wondered miserably where Shelley was. Had she and her family already left the vicinity or were they, like him, also closed up somewhere to listen and shiver with fear at the terrifying sounds of roaring planes and the whistle of bombs being dropped, followed by loud blasts that made the ground shake and the walls reverberate around them? He suddenly realized with a dreadful comprehension that in the distress of their moment of parting, he had left the silver tin box that contained her address behind at their pond. He clenched his jaw. He had to go back.

It was only some days later after the American planes had left that Ivan was able to return. As he walked closer he was dismayed and frightened at the devastation that had toppled trees and decimated large areas of the forest around him. As he came to the pond he sucked in his breath. There was nothing left of it. Before him lay swathes of putrid mud and mounds of blown debris from the trees and the bushes that had exploded from the impact of the bombs. Of their grassy bank, on which they had spent so many happy hours sitting in the warm sunlight, there was nothing left. Ivan gazed about him in distress, swallowing hard the sick lump of bile that rose in his throat.

As he turned away a glinted flash of light caught his eye. Taking a deep breath he realized that he was looking at a corner of metal pushing out of the morass. It was their tin! He had to get it. He waded through the tangle of weeds and mud and reached out with a long stick to bring it closer to him. It was difficult but slowly he prodded and nudged at it until it was within reach. As he lifted it out, careful not to lose his balance, he saw with a gut wrenching dismay that the lid was hanging open on one hinge and the interior of the tin was filled with mud and water. There was no sign of the note with Shelley’s address on it.

Frantically he dug inside the tin; then he cast around the mud hole where the pond used to be, around the sides and up the surrounds to the shattered stubs of trees and bushes. Nothing.

The following years after the war ended were exhausting as the village scrambled to erase the fear and restore the terrible damage done. Although Ivan joined in the laborious task of rebuilding he never forgot without a gut-wrenching feeling of loss, the memory of the sweet companionship of a beautiful and lovely girl who had disappeared overnight into the realm of the unknown.

It was as he was hoeing the newly replanted fields that he heard the sound of a vehicle coming up the dusty road. He stopped what he was doing and shaded his eyes to see a red sports car come to a halt and a girl with long blonde hair springing out of the driver’s seat. For a moment of incredulous wonder they gazed across the field at each other and then the girl started running towards him, her blond hair blowing behind her as she crossed the distance between them with her white dress blowing in the wind. Incredulously Ivan watched her and time suddenly stood still, the sun shining brightly with absolute confidence in the sky above. She was back.