by Joanna Gruda
“Julek, come on, wake up.”
Arnold was speaking to me. I didn’t understand why he had come to wake me up in the middle of the night.
“Your mommy is waiting for you in the lounge. She doesn’t have a lot of time.”
It took me a few minutes to get my wits about me. I was lying among the dead leaves just next to the rabbit hutches. There was a pebble under my left buttock and it hurt. I stood up and followed Arnold, docilely; I hadn’t quite emerged from my dream. I had been playing with my friends in Warsaw. Each of us had a big black box which we used as a house, with only one little window drawn onto one of the walls. It was very small and dark inside, but I loved it there, and I no longer existed, for anyone.
“Julek! Mój kochany! Opowiec mi, jak tu ci idzie?”
“I’m fine.”
I didn’t have much to tell her. She asked how my French was coming along. I told her, Bien. In French. She asked me whether Arnold was still speaking to me in Polish so that I wouldn’t forget my language; I said yes. She asked me whether I’d made friends, whether I was having fun, and whether I was eating well. Oui, oui, oui. And so on. Then she told me that she had been on vacation in the mountains, where she did a lot of walking, and she was very tired, but the scenery was beautiful. Just before she left she took a little box out of her handbag. Inside there were pink bonbons and white bonbons, shaped like eggs. And she left me a suitcase with clothes and asked me if there was anything I needed. Non. She kissed me hard on both cheeks and left.
I had lied to her. Ever since I’d started to get on in French, Arnold had stopped speaking to me in Polish. And I was very grateful to him. I was ashamed of that language that reminded me of Lena and made me different from the others. And now I had yet another reason not to speak Polish: I was beginning to understand that the only people for whom I’d want to continue speaking Polish—Hugo and Fruzia—had betrayed me.
All through the years I spent in France, the only thing I remembered of my mother tongue were the few words I taught the children not long after I arrived at L’Avenir Social, when they asked to learn to speak dog language. Four little nothing words: tak, nie, gówno and krolik. Translation: yes, no, shit, and rabbit. I was too young when I arrived to teach them anything more vulgar.
In the weeks that followed my meeting with Lena and my discussion with Geneviève, the truth quietly worked its way into my mind. Before long the theory of a conspiracy would be consigned to the deepest recesses of my memory. In any event, my new life was with the other children at L’Avenir Social, I was finding it harder and harder to understand Polish, and I didn’t want to go back to Hugo and Fruzia anymore. Even though, at night, I often dreamt about Fruzia, and I could feel her warmth, and her fingers stroking my hair.
CHAPTER 9
A Surprise Visit
Several months went by before my mother came back to see me, in the summer of 1937. By then I was a regular boy at L’Avenir Social, with my friends, my habits, my world—in short, my life. I was no longer one of the little boys—affectionately known as the brats—because I was seven-and-a-half years old. When one morning Geneviève came to tell me that Lena was there to visit me, my initial reaction was to refuse to see her. The fact was, after several rainy days the weather was fine again, and we Cowboys would at last be able to take our revenge upon the Indians, who had won the two previous wars. Geneviève had to search for a long time before she found me, because I was tucked away inside my favorite hiding place, ready to attempt an ambush. But she had a loud voice, and after pretending not to hear her repeated calls of, “Jules, where are you?” I finally relented and turned myself in, making sure no one saw me climbing out of my lair. But when she broke the news, I replied that my mother had to let me know in advance when she was coming, because I had other things to do—“And who does she think she is?” This last sentence was, obviously, a grave mistake from a strategic point of view, and I knew it even before Geneviève replied, very calmly, “Your mother?” then went on to add, “And she wants to take you to the movies. But if you don’t feel like it, I’ll tell her to forget about it.” Well, the movies . . . and besides, at the movies you didn’t have to talk.
It was disconcerting to see Lena again. First of all, she came in, all happy, gave me a big hug, and then began talking very quickly . . . in a language I didn’t know. To my great surprise, I could no longer understand Polish. At all. I didn’t recognize a single word pouring from my mother’s lips. Although one word did stand out in the middle of all the gibberish: Tarzan. That must be the film she wanted to take me to see. I was astonished to find out that my mother had such good taste in movies, but I didn’t complain, because it was excellent news.
Off we went on the bus. I told my mother about my friends, our games, the newborn baby rabbits . . . She always answered saying, “Oui, oui,” or “Hmm.” In the beginning I thought it was strange: after all the time she had been in France, my mother must surely speak French. I gave her the benefit of the doubt, and told myself she was probably embarrassed because of her accent.
After the movies, we stopped to eat ice cream. I was excited and completely swept up by the movie, by this Tarzan who lived in the jungle with his friends the apes. I had trouble sitting still and eating calmly. I wanted to talk about the film.
“I wish I could make Tarzan’s jungle cry.”
I made a first attempt. Which left something to be desired.
“Yep, I’ll have to practice.”
Lena laughed.
“I want to go to the jungle. Do you know where they have monkeys, which country?”
“Yes, yes . . . ”
“So where is it?”
“Hmm . . . ”
“I asked you, where do they have monkeys, which countries!”
“Oh, okay!”
“Rats, I don’t believe it!”
I did a fairly successful imitation of a monkey, shrieking and scratching under my armpits.
“Where do they have monkeys?”
This time I spoke very loudly, articulating and exaggerating every syllable, as if I were addressing a half deaf old woman.
“Hmm . . . I do not know.”
I didn’t even feel like talking about Tarzan anymore. I finished my ice cream in a hurry and stood up. On the way home, we hardly spoke. I put my nose to the window in the bus and watched the countryside go by, and I pictured myself running through the tall grasses with my friends the apes, climbing the tallest trees, swinging from branch to branch as I clung to the hanging vines.
When we got to the orphanage, the children were all lined up outside with packs on their backs, as if they were getting ready to go on an expedition. As soon as we were through the gates, I took off at a run. I was afraid I was too late and was going to miss something. Arnold stopped me.
“Hey! Where are you going, running like that?”
“Well, I don’t know, where are you going?”
“We’re going swimming in the canal. If you hurry and fetch your swimsuit and a towel you can come with us. And your mother, too, if she wants.”
“I’ll let you ask her.”
I ran up the steps four at a time, into the dormitory, rummaged through my clothing, took out a pair of underwear that was cleaner than the others, grabbed my towel, trying to fold it the way the others did, didn’t manage, never mind, it didn’t matter; I ran back down the stairs, and not even five minutes later I was lined up with the other children.
To get to the canal, we had to take the main road that led from L’Avenir Social to the village of Villette-aux-Aulnes. We were walking in file two by two, like good little soldiers, with one instructor in the front and two bringing up the rear. No running off to the side would be tolerated, that we knew, and apart from Fabrice, who was a hothead and kept dodging off to climb fences outside the houses we passed, no one left their place in the line. From time to time one of the l
ittle ones would get a clout, or someone would shout something stupid to make the others laugh, or one of the big kids would say, “Hi, gorgeous,” to a girl passing in the street, but we knew we had better behave if we didn’t want to be excluded from the excursion and be forced to stay all alone at L’Avenir Social under Henri’s surveillance.
We walked across a field belonging to the Dumoutiers. They were nice people; they had a very old granny you had to lead home whenever you found her wandering around the field. She always smiled. Whenever she saw us, she would hurry over, usually to the youngest girl, and she would pinch her cheeks and scold her for some reason known only to her.
After the field, a narrow little path led through the woods, and then down the slope to the canal. As soon as we got there, everybody rushed to put on their swimsuit, the boys in plain sight, the girls using their towels as a screen. Those who knew how to swim rushed into the water, splashing about as much as they could. I wasn’t one of them. Never mind, it was fun by the canal all the same, but when it was fine weather and hot like it was that day, I would have given my entire collection of pebbles to be able to jump into the water and swim with the others. Arnold took me discreetly by the elbow and led me over to Lena: “Spend some time with your mother, she has to go back to Paris soon.” Lena said something to him and seemed to be scolding with her index finger, surely a reproach for having lapsed in his role as guardian of my Polish. She should have just left me in Poland if she wanted me to speak Polish. It served no purpose here.
She went on speaking to me in Polish, and I would reply in French, while my mother went, “Oui, oui.” Same old refrain.
“Do you know how to swim?”
“Oui, oui . . . ”
“Well, why don’t you go into the water?”
“Hmm . . . I do not know.”
If she knew how to swim, there was no reason for her to go on sitting next to me carrying on this dialogue of the deaf. I stood up, made a gesture to Lena to do like me, and . . . I shoved her in the water.
Well. The truth was that she didn’t know how to swim, not even a smidgin. Lena’s fall into the water caused quite a commotion. First of all she started screaming, then when she was in the water, she began waving her arms in distress and splashing everywhere. Then people ran towards us, some of them yelling at me, and others shouting contradictory instructions; two or three girls burst into tears, and finally Arnold, the only one who kept his wits in all the commotion, jumped into the water, grabbed hold of my mother and dragged her over to the ladder to get her out of there.
I sat back down on my towel and waited for whatever might happen next, which didn’t take long. Arnold came up to me.
“Would you care to explain to me what happened?”
“Well, I asked her if she knew how to swim, she said yes. How was I to know she would answer any old thing!”
“She didn’t answer any old thing, she surely misunderstood your question, you must have noticed that her French is not very good.”
“Well she shouldn’t answer, if she doesn’t understand! If she answers, I can’t—”
“All right, all right, I know you didn’t mean her any harm. But it is not a very smart idea to push someone in the canal, even if they do know how to swim. You do understand, don’t you, that Lena could have drowned? You’re going to have some time to give some serious thought to all that.”
“Time to give some serious thought” meant three whole days where I was not allowed to take part in any activities. I could only go out and sit on the “thinking chair” located behind the building of L’Avenir Social. And it was from this humiliating position that I heard the Cowboys’ cries of victory when they won their first big battle, without me.
CHAPTER 10
Solidarity
As a name for an orphanage, L’Avenir Social must sound a bit pompous. But it wasn’t just to show off, our establishment was an orphanage for workers, its allegiance was communist, and it advocated the right to universal education. All our instructors sincerely wanted to turn us into adults capable of autonomous reflection, committed to society. We learned to read and write at the village school; at the AS, the instructors made sure to teach us everything else: an appreciation of nature and history, how to show respect, thoughtfulness, compassion, and helpfulness, and how to live with others . . . There was also a political side to our education, and in my case this began with the Spanish Civil War.
One day when we were playing in the yard, Arnold called to us in his loud voice to gather round. There were a dozen or so of us. He squatted down, and in the dirt on the ground he made a big drawing.
“You’ve already heard about what’s going on in Spain. Now I want to explain it all to you in detail. Look at my drawing . . . Do you know what it is?”
“It’s a pair of girl’s underpants!” shouted Marcel, one of the big boys.
“Does someone have a better idea?”
“It must be a map of Spain . . . ”
This came from one of the older girls, Madeleine, who was very serious and had great presence of mind.
“Exactly, that’s what it is. It’s not a very good drawing, but it should help me to fill you in about what is happening in Spain. I think it’s important for you to understand what is at stake in this war, because two days from now, we will be going into Paris to take part in a major demonstration in support of the Republic in Spain.”
For most of us, a demonstration was above all an opportunity to get out of the orphanage, to go and shout and sing at the top of our lungs in the middle of a crowd; in short, it was a holiday, and whatever prompted it was secondary. And if it hadn’t been for Arnold’s solemn manner in gathering us all together, we would have allowed our joy to explode. But we could sense it would be inappropriate to hint at our futile reasons for wanting to take part in a demonstration. So we all looked sidelong at each other with a smile before focusing our interest on that map of Spain that looked nothing like a girl’s underpants.
With the help of lines, arrows, pebbles and bits of wood, Arnold described the confrontation between the Republican and Nationalist troops in Spain. It was very interesting, but fairly complicated. There were other countries getting involved, Italy and Germany to be precise, on the side of the bad guys (the nationalists, led by Francisco Franco)—but nobody wanted to support the good guys (the Republicans, whom Franco had tried to overthrow by a military uprising). Still, there were people coming from all over, putting their lives at risk, to lend a hand to the Republicans. The way Arnold was talking about them, you could see right away that they were heroes, and that it wouldn’t be long before he crossed the border and enrolled in the International Brigades, which were supported by the French Communist Party, among others.
At the end of this lesson about current events, Arnold suggested we make some banners and posters for the demonstration. He was so good at convincing us of the importance of the events on the other side of the border that we abandoned all thought of using our outing as an excuse to fool around. We worked for hours on end preparing our material, for we were professional demonstrators. No one could say that the children of L’Avenir Social—unlike France or England—had abandoned their Spanish friends!
The group that boarded a bus for Paris one fine spring morning was full of enthusiasm and passion. Roger Binet had the delicate task of carrying the banner which he and I had made, and we were very eager to display it the minute we reached Paris. After a long debate we had decided to write, “Solidarity with our Spanish Brothers.” Roger would have liked to put something funnier, more tough-guy, or so he said, but I wanted to show on the contrary that even though we were children we understood the gravity of the situation. I took my participation in this political demonstration very seriously, and I had prepared for it with all my heart. In the end, it was really nice, all yellow, red, and purple, the colors of the Republican flag.
Twenty of us got off t
he bus at Buttes-Chaumont in Paris. From there we had to go to the Communards’ Wall in the Père Lachaise Cemetery, where all the demonstrators were gathering. Arnold, Geneviève, an instructor by the name of Feller, and his wife Margot came with us. In the bus they had explained the rules of the game so we wouldn’t get lost during the demonstration. Each adult had five or six children under his supervision. Each subgroup was divided in two, which meant teams of two or three children who had to keep an eye on each other. They allowed us to choose our teams, and I was with Roger, obviously, because we had to carry our banner together—our work of art! We thought we were very lucky, because the children under seven had not been allowed to come to the demonstration and we had only just turned seven.
We walked very quickly toward Père Lachaise—well, in fact, because we were the youngest, we were trotting behind the others, and almost stumbled over our banner on more than one occasion. Other little groups were walking or running in the same direction as us with their signs, shouting and singing.
