by Maude Julien
I can’t stand mealtimes anymore. I’ve had enough of being made to eat everything. Enough of being forced to swallow the steak my mother cooks until it’s hard as shoe leather, served swimming in burnt butter. With eyes like daggers, my father says, ‘Eat it all, you have less than a minute to finish.’ Furious, I stuff the whole steak in my mouth. It won’t go down. I’m choking, help, I can’t breathe. My throat is blocked. I’m going to suffocate…He doesn’t move. In the end I put my fingers into my mouth, do my best to grab the piece of meat blocking my throat, and eventually manage to fish it out onto my plate. My head is spinning. ‘Pick that up and go and put it in the toilet,’ my father says.
I have had enough of swallowing everything like a machine. Enough of suffocating and retching under my father’s contemptuous eye. There’s a fight every Friday, the day my mother serves another dish I loathe: fish in mustard sauce. For years I’ve repressed my nausea, but now I refuse. I don’t say anything but sit there with my arms crossed. Lunch comes to an end and my mother clears the table. My father says his usual, ‘You won’t get down from the table until you’ve eaten everything.’ He stays sitting opposite, glowering at me. Resolute, I keep my head lowered. Hours go by. A gnawing rage inside me has turned me to stone. In the end he gets to his feet, saying, ‘Don’t move.’ Fine, I won’t move. Suppertime comes. They eat in front of me, pretending not to see me. I couldn’t care less; all I’m thinking about is how badly I need to use the bathroom. They go up to bed, and I have to help with my father’s bedtime routine. This must be the only time I’ve ever been happy to empty that chamber pot, and I use the opportunity to go to the toilet. Then my mother takes me back downstairs and sits me in front of my plate again. I stay in the darkened dining room, facing that horrible fish in its horrible mustard sauce that I refuse to eat.
The next day, after my father’s morning routine, he says, ‘Right, we’ll take it away for lunchtime. You can eat it later.’ At supper that evening the fish comes back, but only half the quantity. It’s doable, I eat it. The hatchet has been buried until next Friday.
I’m prepared to start over. Or rather, Mathilde is prepared to start over. Maude is a pathetic failure; she trembles with fear and obeys. But Mathilde is a warrior; she’s the one putting up a fight. I met her in The Red and the Black, and she dazzled me. I adore her energy, her passion, her uncompromising nature. She would sacrifice her life for her ideals. She has become my secret friend, encouraging me and backing me up. One time my father launched into a lecture about the name Maude spelled with or without the letter ‘e’. Maud without an ‘e’ is derived from Madeleine. Madeleines are crybabies. But Maude with an ‘e’ comes from Mathilde. I don’t know whether it’s true, but I immediately see myself somehow related to the courageous, intelligent and beautiful Mathilde. Now I’m not only Louis Didier’s daughter, I’m Mathilde’s twin sister. And she comes to the fore every time I have to wage a battle.
One thing Mathilde will not tolerate is when my father wants me to play the accordion for guests, whether it’s just Albert and Rémi when they’re having an aperitif, or one of our rare Freemason visitors. My father must know by now that I’ve never agreed to be his performing monkey. One morning he invites Raymond in for a Ricard. Not only do I have to wait on this pig, but now my father is telling me to play ‘Sous les Ponts de Paris’. I refuse. He insists, I hold my ground; he gets angry and starts shouting. I don’t recall what he says but Mathilde sees red. I grab my accordion and throw it at his face. I receive a good caning on my back and sixty hours of accordion practice on top of my normal schedule: ‘You can go to bed an hour later and get up an hour earlier for a month,’ he tells me.
It’s a heavy punishment. But let it be known that Mathilde will not play the accordion for Raymond.
The Calf
The Killer’s quarterly visits are becoming an obsession of mine as I find it increasingly hard to play the hypocritical role of soothing the poor condemned calf. In the lead-up to the Killer’s visit, I picture myself freeing the doomed animal and making the most of those few minutes when the gates to the house are open for the delivery truck to run away with the calf. But when the day comes, the calf is always treacherously killed.
This time when the calf is chained up, I notice that the hook is smaller than usual. As soon as I’m left alone with the animal I try to release the hook. It works! I push the calf towards the open gate, urging it under my breath: ‘Run, get out!’ But it starts lurching in every direction, making an indescribable noise. The Killer runs after it, yelling. My mother screams at me to catch it. My father, who must have been woken by the noise, appears at his window and fires shots in the air. The calf runs into the electric fencing, leaping about frantically, and panics more and more.
In the end the Killer catches it. We now have to wait twenty-four hours for the animal to calm down again before it’s killed. No one saw me release the snap hook so I’m not punished. But I’m consumed with shame for failing to save the poor creature and causing it even more terror instead.
I don’t know whether this is something to do with Mathilde’s rebellions, whether it’s a roundabout way of bringing her to heel and silencing her, but my father has taken a pair of crutches from his cupboard and has started behaving as if he’s handicapped. He hasn’t fallen or injured himself and, even though he could walk unaided perfectly easily, I now have to support him if he wants to walk a few paces. I have to help him sit down, and help him on and off the toilet. While we tend to him in the morning and the evening, he now does absolutely nothing for himself. He doesn’t lift his buttocks when my mother and I have to put on his pants. He doesn’t raise his legs to make it easier for me to put on his socks. Every day I also have to massage his feet, which smell horrible and make me feel sick, with their long black nails. I feel guilty for being such a bad daughter, but at the same time I hate him. He can feel my hatred; he wants to ‘tame’ me.
It is summertime and we are having lunch out on the verandah. I am asked to cut a piece of old Dutch cheese that is so hard I struggle to get the knife through it. Irritated, my mother takes the knife from me and accidentally cuts herself. They both fly off the handle, saying I am responsible for her injury. My father tells me he is going to give me a punishment ‘that will hurt’. All of a sudden I snap. I pick up the knife and drive it as hard as I can into my other hand on the cheeseboard. I scream with all my might, ‘Go on, then! What are you going to do to me now?’ His eyes bore right through me. I don’t look away. He can go ahead and kill me, I won’t back down. I don’t know how long this goes on; I still have the knife stuck in my hand. Finally, he gives in; he is the one who gives in. ‘Go and get the whisky,’ he says to my mother, ‘and get yourself a bandage while you’re at it.’
‘Yes, that’s right!’ I bellow at my mother. ‘Go and get the whisky. If there’s something stronger, bring that too. If you like I’ll pour some on your cut too.’ She comes back with the bottle of Johnnie Walker. I draw the knife out of my hand and pour the whisky over the wound, which bleeds profusely. The whisky is dribbling onto the ground but I don’t give a damn. I’m still staring at my father. He can’t make me look away.
Eventually I go back to my piano and the keys end up smeared with blood. Mathilde is pleased, but there is something bothering me. As I poured the whisky I noticed something in the depths of my father’s blazing eyes. I saw a hint of…pride. And now I’m suddenly not so satisfied with my rebellion. Am I not giving him exactly what he wants: a display of my strength, courage, determination and power? What if deep down I’m just a pathetic puppet who doesn’t realize she’s still just obeying his mental orders?
I don’t know whether he’s manipulating me. I don’t know whether I have control of my own actions. My infuriation is indescribable. I dwell on this as I pick up fallen twigs on the lawn before mowing the grass. My father is nearby, sitting on his wooden crate. My back hurts from bending over, so I stand up. But this is forbidden: I must neither put a knee to the ground, which would be la
zy, nor stand up. My father roars at me furiously. I pick up a long earthworm, which squirms between my fingers. I pretend to fling it at him and he ducks aside. Then, with a malicious glint in my eye, I dangle the worm above my face and drop it into my mouth. I chew it, looking him right in the eye. ‘You can’t do anything to me,’ I yell. ‘You’ll never be able to do anything!’
My heart is beating wildly. I can’t ride the wave of anger for much longer. I’m trying to swallow the worm but it turns my stomach. Every inch of me is shaking from the inside and I feel out of my depth, as if I’m losing my mind. Whatever I do, I end up harming myself. Will I never get out of this hell? I bend over to continue picking up twigs. I feel I’m in terrible danger. Help, I am going mad. My mother is right: all I’m good for is the asylum in Bailleul.
From my father’s office I steal a small penknife I had noticed in a bottom drawer. I hide it under the carpet in my bedroom. That night I open it and look at it: it’s old and the blade is worn. During the war my father knew people who would rather slit their own wrists than give in to the enemy. That’s what I want to do now; then he will know that I see him as the enemy. I draw the knife backwards and forwards across my wrist. It breaks the skin but my veins slide beneath the blade, unharmed. Is it because it’s too blunt? Or because I’m not pressing hard enough? I can feel a strong instinct battling against what I have decided to do. But I’m so desperate to get out of here…
Although nothing is changing in my life, I get the feeling something important is going on outside. We now hardly ever hear trains passing on the railroad tracks just fifty metres from the house. There are fewer trucks on the main road too. At night there is almost total silence. ‘Jeannine,’ my father says, ‘call the co-op tomorrow and ask to have forty kilos of sugar and twenty litres of cooking oil delivered.’ He says we must open the freezers as little as possible because we’re likely to have power cuts. There’s a generator that usually takes over if that happens, but we still need to keep the temperature of the freezers down as much as possible. He decides we should eat eggs for lunch and supper to avoid taking meat from the freezers.
What kills me is that Raymond now comes three times more often than usual. Apparently there are strikes in the port of Dunkirk, so he’s not going to work. When we have our aperitif he talks to my father about ‘events in Paris’, students in the streets and people throwing cobblestones. It reminds me of Gavroche from Les Misérables. But my father avoids the subject. ‘And your wife, how is she?’ Or ‘When do you think we should prune the trees?’ The situation would be almost exciting if the diabolical Raymond weren’t here just waiting for an opportunity to corner me. I can’t bear it any longer, I want him to go back to work. How much longer is this strike going to last?
The Key
Winter is over but all the shutters overlooking the street are still closed. Never again will I see the workers walking to the Cathelain factory, nor the trucks setting off for England. My father issues the same instruction for all the ground-floor shutters that open onto the garden. The large downstairs rooms are now huge mausoleums filled with shadows.
As all of the life gradually drains out of the house, my father intensifies his inspections and searches. He never does the work himself but appears with no warning in my bedroom or my mother’s and says, ‘Now, take the covers off the bed.’ He watches while we strip back the blankets, untuck the sheets and turn over the mattress…Then he nods at us to make the bed again and leaves. This can happen once a year or three times a month. I don’t know what it is he’s looking for. I think he mostly wants to create a mood of uncertainty. My mother is irritated that she is treated the same as I am. She doesn’t say anything but it’s obvious from her abrupt movements.
My parents haven’t spoken to me for six weeks, as punishment for knocking over a pile of plates and, more to the point, almost giving my father a heart attack. I think I’m beginning to prefer these periods, when their disdain for me is so obvious, to the times when it is distilled into subtle soul-destroying slights.
I resume the habit of making vicious scratches on my thighs and arms. I also wind the cords of the thick curtains around my arms, wrists, thighs or calves. I pull them as tight as I can; sometimes I take a deep breath and pull tighter, until the pain knocks the breath out of me. I stop when I can’t pull any harder. Now if I’m weeding the garden, I grasp stinging nettles and thistles with my bare hands. I no longer have any fear of pain because I’m the one inflicting it and can decide when it stops. My parents can see my hands are full of thorns but they make no comment.
I now know what I want to be when I grow up: not ‘master of the world’ but a ‘surgeon of the head’. I’ve just finished reading Albert Camus’s The Plague and, thanks to Dr Rieux, I understand that the mind can suffer just as much as the body. Since reading The Idiot I’ve had a burning desire to cure the wonderful Prince Myshkin’s epilepsy. ‘Doctors are asses,’ my father always says. I wouldn’t know because I’ve never met one. When I’m sick, my father looks after me with doses of white wine and a few Aspro. But the doctors I come across in books make my heart swell in admiration. Take Balzac’s The Country Doctor—now there’s a truly good man who won’t settle for healing the body alone: he also helps the village live healthily, grow and become more attractive. That’s what I would call a Being of Light.
The things I read are starting to rub off on me; I’m a melting pot of ideas, characters and stories. When my mother leaves me alone to do my homework, I turn to writing a sort of poem-novel whose hero is a bird that perches on the highest branch of the Australian poplar tree that sits on the grounds. From up there he watches the inhabitants who live in this weird house. Seeing the ducks swimming in the pond at the poplar’s feet, he assumes they’re masters of the house and that they have a zoo with lions (Linda), zebras (Périsaut) and giraffes (my parents and me). The bird wonders how these animals ended up so far from their natural habitats.
I’m rather pleased with my story, which I think is both entertaining and instructive. My mother, who makes me write essays, might enjoy it. I so wish she could see that I’m not as bad as she thinks. I decide to dedicate my poem-novel to her. When she reads it, maybe she’ll stop hating me.
During my French lesson I hand it to her, a little apprehensive. Surprised, she glances over the piece of paper, scanning the text. Then throws it back in my face. ‘When I see everything your imagination can come up with, how do you expect me ever to believe you’re telling the truth?’ In my mother’s opinion, imagination and lies are one and the same. I can also tell she’s horribly offended to have been compared to a giraffe. I’m very upset and try to explain that to a little bird she would surely look extremely tall. ‘Seeing as you seem to have time to waste, I’ll go and get the orange book for you and you can do some arithmetic exercises for us…’ I back down. I won’t be dedicating anything else to her.
But stories keep proliferating inside my head. They make me almost giddy and I need to get them out. I steal some onion-skin paper from my father’s desk and in the evenings I sit up in bed and cover the paper with tight rows of writing. Before going to sleep, I fold the paper in two and slide it between the rug and the carpet on the stairs. My parents tread on that step every morning, unaware of what I’ve hidden there, and it makes me shiver with a mixture of delight and fear.
But this system is too risky. To get to the staircase I have to pass my mother’s bedroom door and she might hear me. I start looking for a hiding spot in my bedroom, and notice that the base of my wardrobe is about eighty centimetres from the floor. I lift up a plank to find that it is resting on a bed of bricks. I decide to dig a hiding place underneath.
First I have to attack the mortar around a brick. I steal the key to a second-floor bedroom, and it turns out to be strong enough to scratch away at the mortar. I work on this every evening. I put the loose chunks in my pocket and throw them away in the garden the next day. It doesn’t take long to loosen the joints between the bricks. Now I ne
ed a tool hefty enough to tackle the bricks but small enough to fit in the gaps between them.
There’s no way I can use one of my father’s tools, which hang in front of their own silhouettes painted above the workbench. I think of the large key Raymond sometimes brings, which he has used to hurt me. Oh, that one! It would be perfect for digging out bricks. I want it. I’m going to get it from him. Every time he comes, I find an excuse to go into the greenhouse near the chicken coop, where he leaves his jacket. I rummage through his pockets, but there are no keys. I don’t give up, though, and after many long weeks, luck smiles on me: the keys are there. I take them, then I dig a hole in the ground and bury them.
I’ve taken a huge risk, but what jubilation I feel! I know that losing them matters to Raymond. It’s not just that he won’t be able to get home this evening, but that he’ll have to explain to his employers—the Dunkirk Council—what he’s done with the key to the municipal stores…I hope they take a fat deduction from his wages. In the meantime, I watch Raymond’s desperation with covert but intense pleasure: he’s running all over the vast estate, frantically trying to find his keys.
As soon as I can, I dig up the key ring, remove the big key and throw the rest into the latrines in the garden. Raymond’s key proves to be the perfect tool. Over several months, I dig at the bricks by night and empty my pockets by day. I’m Edmond Dantès and Abbot Faria rolled into one. Nothing can have a hold over me now that I’m working towards my spiritual escape. When the hiding place is big enough to hold my manuscripts and a flashlight, Raymond’s key joins the others at the bottom of the latrines.
My mother must be aware on some level that I’m carrying out illicit activities. Now she’s making her own searches, unbeknownst to my father. She’s a far more tenacious inspector than he is: she overturns drawers, empties the closet, looks under the rug and behind the skirting boards. She is convinced I’m hiding something. But my cache is undetectable. When she’s had enough of these fruitless searches, she turns to me and says, ‘Don’t you worry, I’ll find it.’
