by Joanna Gruda
Geneviève and Arnold often came to visit us on the rue Aubriot. They were friends with Lena now or, at least, comrades-in-arms. They no longer hid the fact that they were in love. So much so that Geneviève had a baby in her belly. Well, that is, she used to have one, but she lost it. Of course I knew nothing about these things, but Geneviève explained it all to me: she and Arnold held each other very very tight, all naked, and after that a tiny baby began to grow in Geneviève’s belly, because of the seed that Arnold had sown inside her. In the beginning it had been a bit like a flea. Then a strawberry. Then it kept on growing, but one day there was some blood that came out of Geneviève’s belly and the baby came out with it. And because it was too small to live outside her belly, it died, or rather she did, because her name was Mireille. I listened to the adults talking about this business, and they all seemed to think that because of the war it was for the best. But I could see that Geneviève’s eyes were still sad when she said that. I asked her why, and she explained that even though she was resigned, her heart, of which her eyes were the mirror, was not so easily resigned.
Arnold knew how things worked, where gas and electricity came from, how the radio sent signals, and all sorts of fascinating things. As for Geneviève, she knew what was good and what was bad, how you should behave, the questions you should ask yourself. This was reassuring because we learned vital things with her, without ever feeling stupid for not having known them before. And I think she thought of me as a good person. So much so that one day she looked me right in the eyes and asked me if I wanted to carry out a mission for “us,” without saying exactly what it was about. If Geneviève asked me something, I said yes, no matter what. But I acted as if I had to think it over.
“Well, that depends, what sort of mission is it?”
“You’ll have to take a document to someone.”
“I suppose it’s dangerous.”
“A little bit, but no one will suspect a kid your age. I only want you to agree if you feel comfortable, otherwise we’ll find someone else.”
Well, sure, hey, as if I would want them to find someone else!
“When?”
“As soon as possible.”
And thus I find myself carrying out my first (and last) wartime mission. I am given an envelope in a bag. I memorize the address of the place I have to go. And off I go, into the blue, into the streets of Paris.
The air is cool. I’m not nervous, just a bit excited, and above all very focused. All my senses are on the alert, I notice the houses, the people, the sounds . . . I walk quickly, to the rhythm of the music playing in my head, a sort of military march. I get the impression that passersby are turning around to look at me and that they are impressed with what they see. A Parisian street urchin on a mission for a great cause. I know it would be better if it wasn’t obvious, that I should go by unnoticed, that I should blend into the crowd. But I can’t help my piercing gaze and my determined steps.
Given the special nature of my task, you will understand that I cannot record the address where I am expected, nor my itinerary to get there. Here I am. I knock on the door. The sound of footsteps getting closer. “Who’s there?” “It’s Marco, I’ve come to see if Paul is there,” I reply, according to Geneviève’s instructions.
They open the door. I go into a dirty little room, with stuff everywhere, mountains of boxes piled everywhere, which have made corridors that you can hardly get through. I see two gentlemen, the one who opened the door to me and who replied, as agreed, that Paul has gone to play in the park, and another one, with a hat; unlike the first man, he is very well dressed. I hesitate . . . Although Geneviève has prepared me very well, she didn’t tell me another man would be there. While I go on inquiring about “Paul,” my mind is racing. And I eventually tell them that I will go and find Paul in the park, goodbye, thank you, and off I go, back to the rue Aubriot.
This time I walk even more quickly, I am worried and I am in a hurry to tell Geneviève everything. And when I stand before her, I hand her the envelope. She looks at me, astonished.
“You didn’t give him the envelope?”
“No, I thought it would be better if I didn’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because the man I was supposed to give it to, he wasn’t alone, there was another man there you didn’t tell me about. I thought it might be someone who was trying to trick him, so I went away again.”
“And what did the other man look like?”
“Well, he was very tall, with dark skin, and a gray beard. He was very well groomed.”
Silence. I am afraid I may have let Geneviève down. Finally, she bursts out laughing, gives me a hug and says, “You are a great militant, my Julot. You did that very well. But the gentleman was there precisely to take the envelope. So now off you go again, run back there as fast as you can.”
I never knew I could run so fast for such a long stretch. Mission accomplished.
Geneviève never gave me any others, but she assured me it was only because it was out of the question to use a child on a regular basis, and not because I had almost botched the first one. She even told me I had acted very intelligently, that I had proved I had great presence of mind. I’m not so sure . . .
Many years later, after the war, Geneviève would tell me that “the man with the gray beard” was the head of their network, and he was waiting for the other man to print up copies of the tract I had brought them. This was one of the wartime anecdotes that were handed down to posterity in the family. And which Geneviève would never tire of telling.
CHAPTER 19
Roman and Genia
Lena couldn’t keep me at her place anymore. As usual she gave no explanation, but I concluded that it was because of her activities that she preferred to send me away for a while. She took me to stay with Roman and Genia—the first of a long list of people who would take me in during the war—a Polish couple, Communist Jews. That gave us a few things in common.
Roman and Genia were very nice. They lived opposite the Parc Montsouris and they let me go there on my own whenever I wanted. I loved walking around in the park; it reminded me of the orphanage, the vast property with its tall trees and birds. They lived in a big villa. From my room I couldn’t hear Roman coughing at night. He had tuberculosis. He had to be careful always to cough or spit into a handkerchief so that his saliva wouldn’t fly about all over the place. And we had to stand back at a distance when he spoke. As the living room was big, Roman would lie there on the sofa, and I would sit on a bench at the other end of the room to listen to him.
This brief period in my life was marked by the air raids. They began with wailing sirens, rhythmic waves of long ascending sounds. Then silence . . . the air raid was under way. Finally a long note would sound, announcing the end of the raid. And even though they occurred regularly, I was always afraid. During the raids Roman would talk to me. About all sorts of things that had nothing to do with war. I could see it was a trick to keep me calm, but it worked. He was so interesting that I had to concentrate not to miss anything, so I forgot all about the sirens.
One of his favorite subjects was relations between men and women. He said it was important always to respect women. That seemed to make sense, but I decided I would wait to find out exactly what that implied before making up my mind once and for all.
Roman was also passionate about inventions. He told me about all sorts of things that didn’t exist yet, such as this very powerful bomb, more powerful than anything anyone had ever seen, and which he called an atomic bomb. What made it explode was nuclear fission, and Roman explained the principle to me, but it was sort of complicated. Another invention, that he was awaiting impatiently, was a box where you could see moving images from your home. Movies, or people speaking, a bit like on the radio, but with the pictures.
Roman had a huge library, and he lent me book after book. Once I finished reading something, he�
��d ask me to share my impressions with him. For my tenth birthday he gave me 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, by Jules Verne, and it became my favorite book. It’s a very fat book. I could lose myself in it for hours, because I wasn’t going to school anymore—it had become too complicated to sign me up at a third school in the middle of the same school year. Roman had read all of Jules Verne in Polish when he was young. I intended to do just the same, but in French. Roman was really very talkative, so it was lucky that I was interested.
1940 began with a spell of polar cold. I don’t know whether it was that or fear of the Germans that compelled Roman and Genia to move to the south, but what I do know is that I had to move back in with Lena. It was freezing in the room on the rue Aubriot.
I went back to school on the rue Moussy, in Monsieur Francheteau’s class, and he didn’t like me any better than before. So I kept my mouth shut and looked out the window. With the other pupils things were okay, even though some of them called me a Polack and laughed at me. I didn’t react. At the age of ten I knew that if there were children who pissed me off I must refrain from jumping on them and hitting them like a crazy man. At recess I would melt into the mass of kids playing hide and seek, and time passed quickly. But as soon as I was back in the classroom, the hours seemed to drag on forever, almost as if the clock hands were stuck.
At home I often heard Geneviève and Lena talking about the Germans: they were getting closer to Paris. One time they were talking about what they should do with me. As I hadn’t stopped writing to Rolande, I came up with a plan. She was still with the other children from L’Avenir Social at the holiday camp in Royan. She hadn’t responded to my declaration, but she wrote to me often, and every time she said how much I would like it there at the holiday camp.
I set my plan in motion. Rolande wrote to me with the name and address of the organization in Paris which ran the camp. There they explained that I’d have to have my mother’s written permission to go to the camp. When I first broached the subject with Lena, she seemed reluctant.
Then one day, on June 13, to everyone’s surprise, Paris was declared an “open city.” In other words, it was being abandoned, given up without a fight! This was terrible news, and I was devastated, but in my case the tragedy had a good side. Lena’s situation was likely to become more difficult. So I told her about my plan: if I went to join the other children at the camp, she wouldn’t have to worry about me. Once I saw that she was actually considering it, I pulled out all the stops: “And anyway, all the children are being evacuated from Paris. And there are loads of kids from my orphanage there, so I’d be really at home, and safe, and you could go on with your activities without worrying about me.” Eventually she gave in.
A few days later I left the house together with Lena and Geneviève heading toward the Gare d’Austerlitz. Paris was chaos. Everybody wanted to get out, there were people pulling carts, others rushing in every direction, and airplanes—German, French, it was hard to tell—were flying over the city. Geneviève and Lena held my hands and hurried me through the streets, practically dragging me. When we got to the station, the train doors were already closed, and the platform was so crowded, it was practically impossible to walk down it. Lena and Geneviève didn’t seem to know where to go. Finally Geneviève cried out, “This is the carriage for the holiday camp!” At the same time, we could hear them blowing the whistle for the train. I was hoisted off the ground and shoved through the window into the carriage. By the time I could wave to Lena and Geneviève they were already tiny.
CHAPTER 20
At the Holiday Camp
There were a dozen or so children in the carriage. And two women, Lisette and Suzanne. Some of the children were sad, others were frightened or seemed lost. I was delighted. I loved traveling by train, and I was eager to see Rolande and all my friends again. It was as if I had come back to life after the long Parisian winter. I sat down where Suzanne showed me to and I took a fine book from the Bibliothèque verte collection out of my bag, In Search of the Castaways, by Jules Verne.
The train kept stopping, sometimes for a few minutes, and sometimes it sat for hours without moving, without anyone knowing why, and we didn’t dare go out. Sometimes, too, it would stop out in the countryside and we could hear planes flying overhead and the sound of explosions. We would rush out of the train and lie on the ground until the sounds went away. In the beginning I was terrified, because I was convinced my final hour had come. But after this happened three or four times, I was already less anxious and I didn’t run as far.
Each child had brought a little bag of things to eat, and Lisette came prepared with a huge bag full of food. When it became obvious that the journey was going to be a long one, she decided to make up a communal bag by requisitioning everything the children had brought and instigating a rationing system, to try and last as long as possible with supplies that were really only sufficient for half a day. I think Lisette wasn’t very good at arithmetic, because already by the second day we had nothing left to eat. For me and the other big kids, that was all right. But I felt sorry for the poor woman when I heard her say for the hundredth time, “I know you’re hungry. I’m hungry too, but we have nothing left to eat,” or any other variant which was supposed to placate the little five- or six-year-old kids, who thought that war was not a good enough reason to starve to death.
On the morning of the third day, the train pulled into the station at Royan. In my head, everything was all mixed up: at last I’d be able to eat and drink my fill, I was going to see Rolande again—which filled me with a mixture of excitement and fear—and I was going to be with all the people whom I considered my true family. I was so happy to have arrived in the place I’d been dreaming about for nearly a year that I instantly forgot the hardship of the last few days.
While we waited for the bus that would take us to the holiday camp, we could drink at the water fountain, and somewhere Lisette managed to find a baguette which she broke up into tiny little pieces to share out with each child. The bus arrived, and ten minutes later we were outside the gate to the camp.
Lisette and Suzanne thought that the most urgent thing was to feed us. I would have preferred to see my friends again first. But as we got closer to a big building which, given the smells wafting our way, must have contained the refectory, my jaws clenched and my mouth filled with saliva. I started walking faster. I was almost at the door to the building when I heard some children shout, “Look, it’s him!”
“Quick, quick, bring him a dog or a rabbit!”
“What’s his name, again?”
“Jules, but that’s not the name he uses when he talks to animals.”
“Tell him to call the dog, he should be able to make it come.”
All this commotion left me feeling a bit confused, but eventually I understood what was happening: my reputation had preceded me! All during my stay at L’Avenir Social, ever since our vacation on the Île de Ré when I’d befriended the dog, the children had been perpetuating the myth about my ability to speak animal language. And as I never contradicted them . . . Nor could I bring myself to do so now, because it would enable me to befriend the other children in the camp more easily, the ones who weren’t from the orphanage. I had only just arrived, and already they respected me. So while I didn’t confirm anything, I didn’t deny anything, either.
The only children I recognized in the group who ran up to me were the little ones, no doubt more easily impressed by my linguistic talents with animals. They shouted the few words they knew of that language (and which I have re-transcribed here phonetically): “Tak, nye, guvno, krulik” (yes, no, shit, and rabbit). I played along and told them that first of all I wanted to eat, and in the meantime they had to find an animal for me. As I was turning away, I caught sight a bit farther along of a girl whom I instantly recognized from her long brown curls. Rolande turned around and saw me. My stomach went into a knot . . . but someone was pulling me by the arm. It wa
s Lisette, who told me that if I didn’t come to the refectory immediately, I wouldn’t have anything to eat until evening. That was out of the question. So I tried to send a little smile in Rolande’s direction, and followed Lisette.
After the meal, they took us to the wooden cabins, where we left our luggage. I saw the two Binet brothers come running, shouting that I absolutely had to move in with them. I was very happy to see them again; now I really felt I was with my family. And they were so happy that Pierre gave me his place on top of the bunk bed. There were no two ways about it: I was really glad to be there at the holiday camp.
I scarcely had the time to put my suitcase on the bed before Pierre and Roger were begging me to go with them so they could introduce me to their new friends. I would have preferred to go first to say hello to Rolande, but I didn’t see how I could explain to the Binet brothers that I thought it was more urgent to see a girl again than to make the acquaintance of some of their good friends.
I met Lucien, a little boy with a dark complexion and a mischievous gaze; Jacques, a tall thin boy who reminded me of Philippe; and Georges—a little on the chubby side, with thick eyebrows and a determined air. This little group took charge of taking me on a tour of the camp, showing me the trees that were easy to climb, the places you could pick grapes without being seen, a little embankment where you could have jumping contests and, the nicest thing of all, which they kept for last: the sea! They warned me that you had to be discreet because normally you weren’t allowed to go there without an adult. We walked through the tall grasses and I could hear it getting louder and louder, a rumbling sound that used to comfort me at night during our vacation on the Île de Ré when I first stayed at L’Avenir Social. We climbed the little hill and when we reached the top I stood there in awe. The huge waves, the foam, the endless sky, the cries of the birds . . . The last time I saw the sea there had been no war, and I was under the delusion I’d been kidnapped, and that someday I might return to Poland. It all came back to me in a flash and I had to fight with all my strength for it not to spill over through my eyes. The other boys had already run down the hill, flinging off their clothes, and they had their feet in the water. I ran to join them, undressing very quickly, but I didn’t know how to get in the water, because there was no beach there, only rocks. You had to jump, and right away you were in water up to your thighs, as the waves ebbed and flowed unceasingly.
