Generally we couldn’t get across the Avenue de la Victoire to get back to our hotel from the beach, because it was closed off for a procession. We saw a lot of the procession: giant colourful wagons with giant masked people.
Sometimes we sat by the sea on white chairs on the Promenade des Anglais. We saw lots of rich tanned beautiful people, and cars too, and very poor old men and women. The American women were mostly wearing flat straw hats that the locals made.
A tiny child in Nice costume was selling violets in the cafés, and always seemed to lose about half of them. The grown-up flower-sellers wore local costume too, and they looked beautiful and jolly, and the Americans and English sometimes had their pictures taken with them arm in arm in front of the café Savoy. When you got close to the beach, there were very few French, and almost only Americans and English. (I only got to tell them apart much later.)
Again, my father kept us waiting for a long time, but eventually he came. My mother could no longer stand to see the wonderful shops selling langoustines and vegetables, and all for so little money. She wanted to cook, that was the thing she most wanted to do in the world, and she no longer talked about anything else. To distract her, my father took us to Menton and to Monte Carlo, where my mother and I saw a huge wonderful aquarium while my father lost a hundred francs in the casino, playing roulette.
I know how to play roulette too, and I’ve been to the casino once in Ostende and once in Nice. I don’t enjoy it very much, though, and it costs a lot of money; I like slot machines much better. For roulette you have to buy little different-coloured tokens made of horn that look very pretty, and it’s actually a bit of a waste laying them on different squares on the green baize table, just for men with long-handled rakes to come along and rake them all up. Sometimes you get given a few, but by the end they’re all gone again.
One hot day, when the sun was stabbing not just at midday but all day long, we drove to Juan les Pins, to go swimming there, because that’s the only place on the whole Côte d’Azur that has soft sand. Everywhere else there are just those white stones that look so pretty and that hurt your feet when you go in the water. The water looks like the cleanest water in the world, but if you get really close to it, you’ll see it’s not that clean after all.
Suzanne our chambermaid gave us a little bouquet of lacquered olive twigs to pin to us. I don’t like to eat olives, but my father does. Suzanne liked my father a lot. She was always laughing with him; she seemed to laugh all day anyway, and only cry very briefly and unexpectedly, and not because anything sad had happened.
Suzanne didn’t like my father to be bothered by his room neighbours. There was an old woman who squawked all day like a parrot, or like the exhibition of cockerels. But Suzanne made sure she moved out after three days – even though she’d planned to stay for three months.
Chambermaids have a lot of power, and Suzanne was especially good at exercising hers. When the old lady rang, Suzanne wouldn’t go, but just unscrewed the signal-light on the bell-board, so that the hotel management wouldn’t be able to complain. When the lady was asleep, Suzanne would go up and down outside the door with the vacuum cleaner, and sometimes bash it against the door. When the lady spilled coffee in her bed, Suzanne didn’t give her fresh sheets right away. She waited till the normal day for sheet-changing came round.
But if my father was having a bath, Suzanne very quickly made the room so that we could sit in it and be cosy. When the lady went out, Suzanne made all the other rooms first, so that the lady’s room still wasn’t made by the time she came back. There are really a hundred and one things a chambermaid can do to annoy a guest – who wouldn’t even notice they were being annoyed deliberately.
People always tell my father their secrets. Suzanne said there are some chambermaids who steal, and what they usually do is this: they bury the guests’ pyjamas or nightdresses so far down under the bedclothes when the guest is about to leave that the guest doesn’t see them and generally forgets them, or else thinks they’ve been packed already. If the guest can be bothered to write a letter, they find the things and hand them over to the management honestly to have them forwarded to them.
Suzanne said she knew chambermaids who stole more than that. We don’t really know very many who do, but once my mother complained that they always stole her best blouses and underthings. But then Suzanne said with a very serious face that there was absolutely no sense in stealing bad things if you were going to steal. And that’s true. Firstly, there’s no pleasure in having bad things, and if it gets out, you can find yourself in just as much trouble over a torn old blouse as over the finest new silk stockings.
There were lots of other German writers in Nice. They all said you couldn’t live anywhere on as little money as you could in the South of France. My father mostly sat with the other writers in the big Café Monnot on the Place de la Victoire, and drank Mirabelle and sometimes Pale Ale. Or he sat on the Place Massena, where lots of sailors came and went from all over the world. He came to know a great many sailors, who generally drank more than the poets, and my father generally preferred them to the poets too.
My mother made friends with a writer’s wife who had rented three furnished rooms with her husband, and did the cooking and lived on next to nothing. When my mother heard that, she could stand it no longer. Finally my father was forced to concede that if we were prudent we could easily live for half a year, whereas otherwise we would be in dire straits again in just four weeks. He agreed that we should settle down and be prudent and avoid dire straits.
My mother rented two rooms and a stove. I have never seen her so happy. We bought pots and pans in the bazaar and spoons and knives and forks, and some very cheap pretty cotton print for summer dresses, because it was getting very hot now. My mother was able to run up the dresses on the concierge’s sewing machine.
The next day we cooked, and I helped. We had artichokes with vinaigrette, which my father loves, and calf’s liver and cauliflower, and then we each had a slice of pineapple, and saved the rest for another time. Then my father got cheese as well, and a cup of coffee with cognac, and a copy of Paris-Soir, and he was allowed to crawl on to the sofa.
My father was very happy and he thanked my mother and said there was much to be said for having this sort of quiet life. He asked for an exact breakdown of what everything had cost.
The calf’s liver was a little charred, but that was because the pan was still new and not properly seasoned yet. The next day we planned to have celeriac and Provençal tomatoes with garlic, and we were going to buy a pot with a pink geranium. And for that evening we invited all the poets, and my father had permission to bring along a couple of sailors as well.
In the afternoon I went for a walk with my mother to Saint Maurice and from there into the mountains, where there are roaring waterfalls and a little village is built on a rocky outcrop. On our way back we went through the Italian quarter, which is terribly dirty and noisy and rambleshack, and where you can buy things especially cheaply. On the mountain pastures we had picked an olive branch and some lovely colourful flowers.
At home my father was sitting restlessly on the sofa, and he clapped his hands and said: ‘Children, children, life can be so wonderful sometimes, maybe everything will pan out now, and our fortunes are going to change. This afternoon I visited the American Consul and Thomas Cook. I have our American visa, and our steamer tickets. I wanted it to come as a surprise to you, darlings. I’ve got some wonderful letters from over there. It looks as though I’ll make a deal with MGM, but of course so much depends on being on the spot, instead of doing everything through intermediaries. Of course we won’t stay there; our home remains in Europe – that’s where my heart is, and if everything goes pear-shaped, that’s where I want to be. Our ship is leaving Rotterdam in five days’ time. Before that we need to meet some people in Saint Raphaël and in Avignon. The town of the Popes, Annie, remember! Then one last stay in Paris. The day before yesterday I met this very nice silk manufactu
rer from Lyons. He’s leaving today, and invited us all to go and stay with him in Lyons. But we won’t manage that this time, and he’s probably not about to give money to start a magazine either. But he collects works of art, and I know someone with a Botticelli that always strikes me as remarkably genuine-looking – I have the feeling you just need to scratch it, to find a real old Italian master underneath. Somehow the thing seems more than just a fake to me. Well, it’s worth bearing in mind anyway.
‘Annie, sweetheart, we’re going to offer hospitality to my dear colleagues tonight. I finally decided not to ask the two sailors along; there’s no knowing what they might do to your pretty flat if they get drunk, or maybe actually they’ll feel a bit inhibited. You’ve managed to make everything so cosy here, Annie! I can understand the appeal of domesticity, only I’ve never liked flowers on my desk.
‘Now instead of the sailors I’ve brought along a couple of bottles of old Napoleon, and a bottle of dry champagne for you, Annie. Do we have any glasses? No, of course not. And no waiter to hand either. I must say, those bell-boards are deuced useful things to have around! And you’re going to cook us something wonderful, Annie – I really had no idea I was married to such a first-rate cook. What are we having today? My God, Annie! Do you see from my question what a starchy paterfamilias I’ve become already? Are you happy, Annie?’
‘No,’ said my mother quietly and tired-sounding.
‘Now, Annie, you’re not about to spoil one of the few happy evenings of my life, are you? Come and give me a kiss! And Kully, are you looking forward to America?’
‘Will we take our pots and pans with us?’ I asked.
‘Dear me, no, Kully,’ exclaimed my father and laughed. ‘What would we be needing all that junk for over there?’
*
In the end it all happened very quickly. We went to Amsterdam in one fell swoop, because there was no time and no money to break the journey and go anywhere else.
We arrived in Amsterdam in the evening, and were met by Herr Krabbe. Before we had left the platform, my father relieved him of every penny that he had on his person. Unfortunately, Herr Krabbe never has enough, and he even said that my father’s last book hadn’t made any money, even though it was surely his best.
My mother was so tired she almost fell out of the train. All through the journey she was thinking of Nice, and the blue sky, and our little flat, the wonderful cheap groceries, and the cooking pots and the geranium we’d left behind. She hated America, and didn’t want to go.
My mother was nauseous, which I sometimes get too, after being on a train for a long time. Once when I flew on a plane from Vienna to Prague on my own, I didn’t feel sick at all. The only reason I had to vomit was because everyone else was all around me. We encountered some turbulence; sometimes you have a feeling like that in a lift.
My father took my mother to a hotel near the station, put her to bed and tucked her in. She didn’t feel up to travelling on to Rotterdam. She was to rest for a few hours, because our ship wasn’t leaving Rotterdam till midnight. She wasn’t to worry about a thing. My father went on to Rotterdam with me and our luggage, because he was excited and wanted to put everything behind him, especially the formalities, which are always very trying. I wasn’t the least bit tired, because I had slept all the way up on the train, in my mother’s lap.
My father had instructed Herr Krabbe to wake my mother in time to get her to the ship. At that time, Herr Krabbe was still terribly nice, and always wanted to be helpful and obliging. He was someone you could depend on.
The night and the port of Rotterdam were a black building, lights flickering and nothing clear. Everything was humming and buzzing; I could no longer tell the people from the lights reflected in the black water – none of it looked like the sea, but none of it looked like people either.
The ship was a castle with red carpets and servants. I didn’t realize till much later that it was a ship. I had been on it for a long time without knowing I was. I kept on walking all over the ship, thinking it was a sort of overture to the real ship. I was laid out on a bed in a little room.
A woman like a nurse promised me my father would come soon with my mother. You couldn’t see out of the window in the little room, but there was a little square of patterned tinted glass somewhere. Laughter and noise ran down the long corridor outside my room, and I could hear music far away.
When I woke up, my bed was shaking quietly and insistently, and there was a dull stamping sound coming from way down below me. On the bed opposite I saw my father with wild-looking hair. The ship was going. My mother hadn’t come.
Later on we heard that Herr Krabbe had gone to the hotel, and had tried to get my mother woken up by phone. But out of ignorance and stupidity the staff of the hotel said my mother had already left. When my mother woke up, there was just enough time to get to the ship in Rotterdam. But she didn’t have a penny to get to Rotterdam, and Herr Krabbe couldn’t be found anywhere. All the time, my father supposed my mother was on the ship, and in the cabin with me.
First, my father ran with me to the ship’s telegraphist. We wired Herr Krabbe to say that she should fly to Boulogne or Cherbourg, where our ship was stopping. Then we had a terrible panic that something had happened to my mother, and we sent another wire. My father didn’t get undressed; all night he didn’t sleep, while I kept on waking up.
Early in the morning, we got a telegram from Herr Krabbe saying my mother was still alive and healthy. But she couldn’t fly to Boulogne, because my father had her passport with him. We had completely forgotten about that.
I really wanted to get out in Boulogne, but we didn’t have any money for that. All we could do was send my mother the passport from Boulogne, and get her to take the next ship after us. But even that couldn’t be done easily, because the ships didn’t go every day. It had to be a ship of the same company and in the same price range. Because there are also much more expensive ships, which are bigger and sail faster.
Our ship was very big too. A couple of times I walked from one end of it to the other. But once we were in the middle of the ocean, it didn’t feel so big to me any more. I had a clear sense that it was a ship, and it seemed to get smaller with each passing day. A real ship, on the other hand, would have to be smaller still, so that you could reach out and touch the water, and feel you really were sailing.
I did once go sailing in Denmark, and that’s why I was hardly afraid at all now. In fact, I wasn’t ever really afraid; just on the third day I badly wanted to get off. I had to keep thinking of my mother, who was never alone in her life, only sometimes without my father. But now she didn’t even have me to protect her. I could picture her crying, and doing unbalanced things.
Who will be sleeping with her? She’s always so afraid at night; she needs to have somebody with her at night, definitely. My father’s good at sleeping by himself, but I don’t like it much myself. Even if you’re fast asleep, it’s good to have the feeling that there’s someone sleeping lovingly near you. I hope my mother doesn’t have to sleep all by herself, and I hope she finds some kind creature that doesn’t bite her or thrash around in its sleep.
I spoke to my father about it, and suggested he wire Herr Krabbe and get him to sleep with her, but my father refused point-blank to do that, and it wasn’t even a question of money for the telegram either; he even wired the lady with the bird’s nest, and asked her to keep an eye on my mother. But my mother won’t want to sleep with the bird’s nest, because she doesn’t smell nice, and she snores so foully that you’re amazed at how a human being who’s fairly quiet in the daytime can make such a racket at night. We got some sense of what it was like when she had an afternoon nap for an hour or so on the sofa in our hotel in Ostende.
There’s never any point in telling people that they snore like rattlesnakes or like trumpets with sore throats – they never know what they do when they’re asleep, and they never believe you when you tell them.
I thought Herr Krabbe was much more appr
opriate to take over sleeping duties with my mother, but unfortunately it seems his nights are already spoken for. That’s why he can’t help us out this time. My mother ought to get hold of a little Dutch child from somewhere, but I’m afraid I don’t know of a suitable one.
We’re travelling first class on the ship, because that way they’ll let us out on land more readily, but also because an American friend of my father’s lent him some travelling money.
The wind and the waves are both capable of moving our gigantic ship, and if my bed didn’t have rails I could hold on to, I would fall out of bed at night sometimes. When you want to go down to the dining room, the steps seem to move – it’s all as exciting as a funfair.
The doors that open out on to the deck and the fresh air are held shut so tight by the wind and rain that I can’t open them by myself. A fat friendly sailor in a white suit always helps me. At first I took him for the captain, but his name is Deck Steward. Later on, I did meet the captain with my father, and tried hard to be nice to him. I addressed him as ‘Mr Deck Steward’. But my father said that was wrong, and a captain was more important. He’s something like the king of a ship. Everything goes by the number of golden rings that seamen have sewn on to the sleeves of their navy blue jackets.
The captain and the chief officer are supposed to steer the ship, but usually they let it go by itself, because they’re too busy attending to the travelling ladies, dancing with them and taking them on tours of the ship. I expect those ladies have to pay a higher price for the privilege. Only when there’s fog, and a foghorn toots, do the officers get all excited and run off.
A lot of passengers got seasick and didn’t want to eat any more, or even go down to the dining room, because that’s where the floor shook the most. On such a ship, you’re given the most wonderful things to eat, and you can have as much as you want. I ate so much, my belly got to be as round as a ball. My father said he felt embarrassed to be arriving in New York with such a fat emigrant child as me.
Child of All Nations Page 11
