Disgusted, Danielle met his gaze, and squared up to him. Taking a step forward, she blew into his face, arms akimbo, daring him to react.
“Just try it,” she said without blinking. The boy stood silent and motionless, taken aback by her attitude. “You’re a coward. Why don’t you go out and fight the Germans? They’re the ones you need to show how brave you are to, not us. The war is outside these walls, not inside them.”
Seeing Father Marcel approaching with Elise and Jacques, the two boys slunk away to the far end of the yard, leaving Danielle in peace. She stood there, brow furrowed, arms folded, and biting her bottom lip, as she always did when she felt challenged.
“These are difficult times,” said Father Marcel, trying to relieve the tension. “We’re at war, and have only just realized it. Now it’s right in front of our eyes, we can feel it . . .”
“They don’t want us here,” Danielle interrupted him. “They don’t want us anywhere.”
“War brings out the worst in us,” Father Marcel continued calmly. “It’s nothing more than a way to survive. We have to be patient, to understand other people. No one wants to die, and fear can do terrible things to us.”
Father Marcel understood it would be too much to suggest to Danielle that she kneel at the altar and pray for those aggressive boys. Praying was not a priority for any of these children who woke each day with one sole idea: how to survive.
“I’ve got something for you,” he said, holding out a small book without a cover. “When was the last time you read?”
Danielle’s eyes lit up, and Father Marcel thought he could detect a smile on her face. The last thing she could remember reading were the loose pages from Madame Sternberg’s botanical album, but it was best not to mention that. Taking the little book from the priest, she thanked him without speaking, afraid her anger would still be obvious if she said anything.
Cigarette in mouth, the man with the dark shadows under his eyes came panting up to them. He whispered something in Father Marcel’s ear, and the two men hurried away.
Danielle didn’t pay much attention to this, but Elise glanced at her conspiratorially and told her of her suspicions.
“Father Marcel is in the Resistance.”
Danielle remained silent for a few moments, then burst out laughing. Elise’s idea seemed to her so ridiculous, the product of her childish fantasies. She recalled how over their Friday night suppers the priest used to praise those who risked their lives to confront the Germans, but couldn’t believe he was one of them. Lately, any man who left the village was said to have gone to join the maquis.
“They’re up to something, I’m sure of it,” said Elise, waiting for Danielle to respond. “And one of them is going to dress up as a magician to fool the Germans. I saw proof,” she added. “They were hiding leaflets.”
“If they’re part of the Resistance, it’s better that we don’t know about it. What you’re saying is very dangerous.” Danielle knew she shouldn’t add anything to encourage Elise’s uncontrollable imagination, but at the same time had to admit her sister had raised a doubt in her own mind.
Jacques was playing happily with other children of his age in the middle of the courtyard, throwing stones at the dry fountain. Taking Danielle by the hand, Elise led her to the supposed plotters’ room. They came to a halt outside the closed door. Elise looked around to make sure they hadn’t been followed, while Danielle surreptitiously turned the door handle. The door opened a crack, enough for her to see the room was empty. She decided to go in.
“See? There’s no one here. No conspirators, no Germans, no magicians,” she mocked Elise. She spoke slowly, as if she also wanted to convince herself they really were protected inside the abbey. Although she was worried they could be sharing it with people plotting, she also felt a shiver of satisfaction that somebody close to her was willing to teach the dreadful occupying forces a lesson.
Elise was searching every corner of the room for some evidence that would stop Danielle from thinking she was a spoiled little girl whose imagination ran wild. She was sure of what she had seen and heard. She paused at the window, looking out at the monks’ cloister in the distance, and next to it the abandoned cemetery where the remains of friars and abbots had lain since time immemorial.
The rabbit and the cage had disappeared, so had the top hat and the magic wand. All that was left was the smell of tobacco and cigarette ash on the floor.
37
Whenever Danielle went off to a corner to read a book she had come across, Elise would roam the abbey with Jacques, who had become her constant companion. She devoted herself to him, putting him to bed, getting him up in the morning, feeding him, taking him out into the sunshine. She talked to him as if she was his mother, and the boy joined in merrily.
She would lie down beside him every night and invent stories about terrifying dragons and tremendous battles. Watching over Jacques’s nightmares helped ward off her own. Ever since she had begun to look after him, she was no longer tormented by her nighttime imaginings, or awakened by the fear of what the next day might bring. For her, the future was limited to the games she would play with Jacques when they got up.
When he fell asleep and she went back to the bed she shared with Danielle, her mind would be filled with wild speculation until she herself dozed off. She was convinced no one would come for them after the war. There would be no uncles or absent parents, no cousins lost in lands on the far side of the earth.
In the morning, the pleasure of seeing Jacques so content and happy revived her. The little boy ate slices of butter as if it was cheese, and drank his soup like water. His great fear was that one day a relative would appear to take him away from Elise, to a town in Alsace, where it was said no one felt French because the German border was so near that the sidewalks, houses, and even the rivers became confused and went from one side to the other without asking permission.
The summer days were lengthening. Elise chose to spend the greater part of them in the abbey kitchen, where daylight filtered in through high windows. Every morning, she sat in the half-light with Jacques awaiting the arrival of Marie-Louise, the cook, who came before sunrise. Since Elise didn’t sleep much, and Jacques even less, they would slip silently into the kitchen to greet their new friend. Elise didn’t much like peeling potatoes or onions, still less being close to the boiling water or the wayward flames of the stove, which blew everywhere. She was no lover of fire, but her visits to the kitchen allowed her to find out everything going on in the abbey: who was ill, if any new child had arrived, if the Germans were pulling out, or the Allies were taking over the nearby villages, whether or not the bishop was a collaborator, and, most important of all, if there was enough food for them to survive another week.
Marie-Louise felt comfortable with her, because Elise spoke very little, whereas she spoke a lot. If he had something to eat, Jacques was quiet, although that could be dangerous because he greedily swallowed anything he found on the kitchen floor.
“During a war people always lose the ability to listen,” the cook would say, busily peeling potatoes and throwing them into a giant blackened and dented pot.
Even though she talked a good deal, the cook liked lengthy silences, and Elise had learned not to interrupt them. She sat silently next to her until the words started pouring from the mouth of this kindly, wise woman once more.
“Everybody has their opinion. Everybody thinks they’re right, but where does that get them? Nowhere. Nobody does anything,” she would say, occasionally raising her arm and trying to wipe her runny nose. “I at least cook potatoes and fill lots of people’s stomachs.”
Even though she didn’t look it, Marie-Louise was a city woman. All that remained of her golden years were her elegant neck and glossy hair. Her breasts were so big and heavy that she tended to lean backward in order to keep her balance. She would tell the children that her eyes had once been green, but that with all the suffering during the war they had turned a sad, yellowish gray. Her s
kin was still white and firm, although sometimes it turned red round her nose.
Hearing other people’s stories helped Elise forget her own suffering, or rather left it somewhere where it couldn’t hurt her. One morning, Marie-Louise began to tell her about her past. She had once run a small café in Le Marais, close to Place des Vosges, inherited from a Russian uncle on her husband’s side of the family. Until the Germans came, her customers had been the “infidels,” as the majority of those who lived in the neighborhood were known.
“I was very young. I’d just arrived in Paris, and I met my husband in the café soon after he’d inherited it. His hair was jet-black. How could I have imagined it would end up as white as snow? When I learned he was an infidel . . .” Marie-Louise saw that Elise didn’t understand, and so explained, “I mean, he was Jewish,” she added in a low voice, while Elise swallowed hard. “We decided we wouldn’t want to bring a child into this world to have it suffer.”
After a pause, she added, “A crisis always brings out the worst in Parisians.”
This was followed by another long silence. Elise waited calmly for the cook to continue her diatribe against the capital’s inhabitants.
Her husband was rounded up one summer’s day. The café was destroyed, and so Marie-Louise decided to return to her village, to the house her mother had left her, which she rented to a family from Paris who had left the capital the day of the occupation.
“When he was taken away, everyone slammed the door in my face. Nobody lent a helping hand. A lot of our former clients, whom we sometimes didn’t even charge, turned their backs. Garbage, that’s what they are. Garbage.”
Marie-Louise never saw her husband again. Along with all the other Jews in the neighborhood, he was taken to the Vélodrome d’hiver and from there to who knows where.
“I’ll never forget that night, the sixteenth of July, 1942,” she said. “I was left all alone. And guess what the people who had been renting the house for so long did? They sold all the furniture. Yes, all my mother’s furniture. Why? Because they were hungry, they told me.”
Now she had to sleep on a mattress on the floor, but she made it clear that was all she needed.
“You’re my family now, you, Father Marcel, and Father Auguste. Garbage into the garbage can.” She repeated phrases like this every day, usually adding some new criticism. “We French have lost our dignity. They burn a village, savagely kill six hundred people, and what do we do? Run away.”
Marie-Louise had just said this when she noticed Elise’s tear-filled eyes and shrunken body.
“Oh, forgive me, my child, forgive me!” she said, her voice choking. She went over to Elise. “I can’t imagine what you and your sister must have been through. But now I’m here. For whatever you need.”
The cook wrapped her in her arms, and Elise’s face was plunged into the folds of her dirty apron. It reeked of onions and sweat, but that didn’t stop her from feeling an immense tenderness toward this woman who had taken her in and who she felt was part of her new family. She nestled between her enormous breasts like a puppy protected by its mother, and forgot fear, the Germans, and the older boy who ever since her arrival had done nothing but attack her.
Father Marcel interrupted them, bringing a chunk of butter wrapped in greaseproof paper.
“Here you are, almost four pounds of it,” he said, laying the lump of butter on the table. “I don’t think we’re going to get any more for some time. My contact has disappeared.”
“The altar’s soon going to be bare,” said the cook. “A ruby for a piece of butter. My God, what are things coming to?”
Elise pictured the saints and virgins stripped bare, the chalice without rubies, and no more silver cruets or candlesticks. The mass would soon be reduced to the sign of the cross.
“I’ve been promised some meat for this evening,” added the priest.
“So this evening we’ll have a good supper, but what about tomorrow?” Marie-Louise wondered aloud. She was troubled that Father Marcel found it necessary to sacrifice the altarware, the only treasures the abbey still possessed.
“I’d rather barter things for food than let the Germans come and plunder everything,” he said, without ill-feeling.
“All you need are dark glasses and an umbrella and you’d look just like a young man in the city, one of those protesting against the occupation. If it weren’t for the cassock, you’d be the image of a zazou, a provocateur, strolling round Place du Trocadéro,” said the cook, gesticulating at him.
“You’ll soon see him on his knees praying Our Fathers,” she went on, whispering in Elise’s ear so the priest wouldn’t hear, although he was casting glances at her and smiling. “He thinks he has to atone for all his sins. Why? The war has led a decent, kindhearted man like him to steal from his own church. Because, whichever way you look at it, what he’s doing is stealing.”
Elise was increasingly convinced that Marie-Louise was a saintly woman who would one day be beatified, like the figures in white gowns who appeared, eyes turned up to heaven, on the cards Maman Claire kept in the chest of drawers in her bedroom. The cook was as compassionate as Father Marcel; it gave Elise a warm feeling to know they were both protecting her. And to know they were also protecting Danielle and little Jacques.
“Ever since the war started, the vegetable gardens have withered away,” complained Marie-Louise. “Nothing is fertile in the abbey.”
One morning, Elise was surprised that Jacques had not run over to her bed to wake her up. Disturbed, she asked Danielle if she had seen him, but her sister was still asleep and simply muttered an unintelligible reply. Elise rushed to the kitchen, where she found Marie-Louise already busy with her morning chores. The cook only had to glance at her to see what a state she was in; there was no need to ask why. She paused by the kitchen table and eyed her tenderly, feeling very sorry for her. Such a young girl didn’t deserve so much loss.
“You know we’re all only passing through here, don’t you? This isn’t our home, is it?” She was carefully weighing every word, but Elise couldn’t understand what she meant. “There are too many mouths to feed here, and I’ve no idea how many candlesticks are left to barter for food. In a few months, I don’t know how we’re going to survive. How much longer will we be able to shelter so many small children in the abbey?”
When her explanations still didn’t seem to have any effect on Elise, she decided to come out with her news directly.
“At first light this morning, Father Marcel took Jacques away,” she said, immediately turning her back on Elise. She didn’t want to see her angry face, and didn’t know how she would cope if she burst into tears. She herself had woken up that morning feeling completely exhausted.
She said nothing else, and Elise didn’t want to break the rule tacitly established between them about her silences. She was aware that Marie-Louise told her stories in her own time, and this was a very important one for her to hear: Elise needed to know what had happened to Jacques. Until now, no one had shown the slightest interest in him, and so she had somehow felt that the boy belonged to her. She had looked after him, fed him, was teaching him things: What more could be expected of her? She knew he was too young, that the children taken in by the abbey had to learn to fend for themselves, but she was there to help, and so far no one had complained.
“Father Marcel found a cousin of his. A man from Bordeaux. Can you imagine? Jacques is going to Bordeaux,” said the cook, laughing to relieve the tension. “They left in a car for the train station. Somebody is waiting for him there.”
Elise flinched when she heard that word “somebody.” So it wasn’t Jacques’s cousin! They had sent a stranger to pick up the boy. But so what, the cousin was a stranger as well.
“He’ll have a better life there, Elise. You can be sure of that. I think you should be happy for him,” added Marie-Louise.
Elise was surprised no tears came to her eyes, that she didn’t have the slightest inclination to cry. It was more like a f
eeling of emptiness: Jacques’s departure had left a hole, and yet she was lighter somehow. She would no longer have to worry so much about him, to keep him amused, look after him. It was better this way: if when the war was over she and Danielle managed to get to Paris, they wouldn’t be able to cope with another mouth to feed. Marie-Louise was right about that. Thinking over all the advantages of not having Jacques constantly at her side, she felt relieved. Another one who had gone to the land of shadows.
“At least they didn’t take him to Alsace, and starting tomorrow I’ll be able to sleep in,” she said, trying to sound ironic. But no sooner had she said it than she burst into tears. Oh, she should have kept quiet: she didn’t want anyone feeling sorry for her.
Marie-Louise looked up at the ceiling, shook her head, and smiled.
“This weekend you’re to sleep at my house. Father Marcel already knows. I need your help on Sunday morning.”
Her words worked like magic. Elise quickly calmed down: her face lit up, and she ran off to tell Danielle, who like always was caught up in her tattered books. Marie-Louise was able to return to her chores: she scarcely had time to console a little girl who had lost her friend.
38
Halfway along the road, a few meters from the first houses, Elise saw that Marie-Louise was out of breath and sweating profusely. It didn’t seem as if it was any cooler now that the sun had set; the cobbles were scorching, and unpleasant waves of heat radiated off the stone walls. The streets, windows, shops, and cafés were deserted. It was as though most of the villagers had fled to the south, and the few who remained had taken shelter indoors. A village emptied even before the curfew.
When they reached Marie-Louise’s two-story house, Elise noted that all the buildings in the street were different, despite the fact that they formed an untidy line, as if each house needed its neighbor to stay upright. Helped by the light of a streetlamp, Marie-Louise was just putting the key into her front door, when she was blinded by the headlights of a slowly approaching car.
The Daughter's Tale Page 17
