The War Laid Flat

She laid the yoga mats on top of a bunker. The Atlantic Wall: concrete blocks, remnants of a defence barrier against a possible Allied landing from Britain. As they sink in the sand it’s hard to see how they served as observation posts or machine-gun positions. But they are beautiful, tipped on their sides, colourful graffiti blooming across most of them.

Ours has a horizontal surface, which is why she chose it: a machine built to kill, picked this morning to find interior presence, focus, peace.

Seven mats. Some black, some purple. It is early, the beach nearly empty — a few dog walkers, the teacher, us.

I love these beaches on France West Coast. Vast, wind blowing softly, sand with no end into the Ocean, wooden barriers staggered down toward the water as if someone had planted a fence and then forgotten what it was meant to keep out. Or maybe in.

‘Chien tête en bas.’ ‘Inspirer.’ Six women, one man, heads down, hips to the sky, right legs lifting to swing the foot forward between the hands.

Ten years ago my body did this without asking me. Now it negotiates. My right glute still burns from the surf class two days ago. The waves keep arriving behind us, they break too close to the beach to attract many surfers here, indifferent and beautiful. My mind wanders.

It finds a video from a friend’s Facebook. West Africa, somewhere — a capoeira class in a yard of red dust. Two bodies circling inside a roda, the berimbau disguising combat training as dance and play. A teacher encourages the students and I recognize my friend, an open exploratory mind constantly looking for adventure. In the ring I recognize two more girls, one I am not surprised to see, but there is another. I cannot believe it. ‘My two worst enemies,’ I say, to no one.

They are actually women now, late thirties. The first was a close friend in college, before the friendship curdled into something I still can’t name. The other I met working in Africa. I crossed her for the first time one day in the office of the man I was with then; I said hi and hated her with a completeness that frightened me. Of course she went on to apply to the same job I applied for and get it. My self-fulfilling prophecy was complete when I decided to leave the place, my partner, my job. I used to run away back then, first in cycles of three months, then of two years.

They were never true enemies of course. Each of them simply held up some part of me I could not stand. There were many such girls. I followed them, fought them for years, in silence, inside my own chest, until one day I could finally tell the difference between who I was and what I wanted and the choice other people were making. Theirs, not mine.

All of it lay flat on a yoga mat, on top of a bunker, on a beach at the edge of a continent. The war beneath me. The war inside me. Both gone quiet.

I surface from my thoughts. In front of me my daughter is balanced in tree pose, one foot pressed to the opposite thigh, arms lifted, her long curly hair moved by the wind.

She is so beautiful it hurts.

I wonder if she is breathing as she focuses on the teacher’s guidance. I also wonder if the fights are already in her, already raging while disguised or coiled and waiting, or if she will never fight them.

To her right is F. She was given a purple mat. She is all serious, concentrated. We were students together in a border town in Italy, hard up against Slovenia, when crossing was still a journey, cheaper cigarettes, the Casino. The wind does not shake her.

Darker skin, shorter than my daughter. She is wearing all black but has a fluorescent yellow bracelet, a mountain pose held with an authority that is almost endearing. Two days ago the sea terrified her — she who comes from an island hated the surf, needing solid ground under her feet. I smile and I think: she was never my enemy, she mirrored nothing in me. Firm, calm, at least in my perception, the same at fifty as at twenty.

And for a second I see it — her nerve, her willingness to take life as nothing more than this: in-breath, out-breath, the sound of water, heat and cold, the minutes going by and then gone. A courage I still struggle with.

The class is ending, the sun is now stronger, I think it will be a hot day.

My eyes go back to my daughter.

I try to think what I wish for her. I realise I have no answer.