Revolution Baby

by Joanna Gruda

  Once the fire was out, we all stood there looking at each other. The German observed us for what seemed an endless time, then he took his companion by the arm and walked away.

  This encounter put an end to our first evening of fireworks. But we gave it another try a few days later, then one more time after that, which turned out to be the last time. One day, the Germans caught us red-handed, stealing ammunition. We expected the worst—to be handcuffed, taken away, and shot—but all we got was a scolding from the officer: “Must not to do that, stealing, not nice. You do again, you go prison. Now, go away!”

  Georges apologized profusely and thanked him, in a strange mixture of French, English, and German: “Désolé, vraiment, so sorry, danke, danke schön, thank you, vraiment désolé.” Jacques tugged him by the arm: “Quick, before he changes his mind. Don’t insist.” And we ran off without looking back. When we reached our cabins, we collapsed on the ground and burst out laughing.

  CHAPTER 23

  Back to Paris

  All good things must come to an end, and that has been truer for me, in my life, than for most. Toward the end of the summer, a lady by the name of Françoise came to see me. She said she was a friend of my mother’s and that she had to take me back to Paris. Without a word of explanation. So I packed my bags, said my farewells . . . Even Rolande seemed sad. Imagine how I felt! While I walked away, dragging my suitcase, Roger and Pierre did their monkey imitation. Even when I could no longer see them I could still hear their simian squealing. I wondered if I would ever see them again.

  “Are you taking me back to the rue Aubriot?”

  “The address I was given is that of a certain Paulette on the boulevard de la Villette, in the 19th arrondissement.”

  Paulette was one of my mother’s sisters. I remembered having visited her a few times. And I remembered being bored. Really bored. I made up a rhyme: “At Paulette’s, it’s such a bore, please don’t bring me anymore,” or something like that. I never pretended to be a great poet . . . To my complete surprise, it wasn’t so bad living with her. She even made me laugh, with her accent that was just like Lena’s; it was as if they had taken French at the same school, right in the middle of the Jewish quarter in Warsaw. And she left me a lot of freedom.

  We got ration cards which entitled us to a certain number of tickets each month for milk, sugar, meat, butter and bread. We weren’t dying of hunger, but we were never quite full either.

  One day Lena showed up at her sister’s with a mournful face. She had bad news: Geneviève had just been arrested. My mind was racing.

  “But how, why?”

  “You know why.”

  “But who arrested her?”

  “French police. She is in prison.”

  “I want to go see her. Can I?”

  “I don’t know . . . If someone follows you, afterwards . . . ”

  “So what? I have nothing to feel guilty about, I’m a kid, I could be her son or her nephew. And even if someone follows me, I’ll just come calmly back to Paulette’s. As far as we know, she hasn’t been doing anything compromising.”

  “You’re right. I’ll give you some fruit and other things for her.”

  This was probably what Lena had wanted from the start, for me to go and visit Geneviève. She had even put together a package. But first of all she had to play her role as a mother looking out to protect her son.

  My first visit to Geneviève was at the prison of La Roquette. She looked thinner, but she was full of vitality. She asked me about school, my friends, what I was reading. I brought her fruit and cookies, and she thanked me warmly. As I was leaving, she whispered in my ear: “Dear Julot, next time, could you bring me some cigarettes? It’s forbidden, so you’ll have to get them to me discreetly.”

  Of course I would bring her cigarettes; I was only too happy to have another opportunity to do something dangerous for her sake.

  Since cigarettes were rationed, I used Lena’s tickets to get some, because she didn’t smoke. On my second visit I went back with fruit and little cakes and, hidden in my pocket, two packs of Gauloises. When I got there I said, proudly, to Geneviève: “I brought you everything you need.”

  “Thank you, my boy.”

  She came closer and gave me a big hug, a tighter squeeze than usual. I took me a second to realize that this was so that I could hand her the cigarettes, after I glanced around to make sure no guards were watching us. Mission accomplished. It might not have been as glorious as my first wartime mission, but Geneviève’s shining eyes made me feel as if I had done something truly heroic.

  Every time I went to see her, either at La Roquette or, later, at the prison in Fresnes, I would take two packs of Gauloises.

  CHAPTER 24

  A Summer in Sarthe

  When school was over for the year, my mother and Paulette agreed that it would be better for my physical and mental health to send me to the country for the summer. I would have better food and more space to run around and play outdoors. Paulette thought I spent too much time with my nose in a book, and it was time to see something of the real world. My mother didn’t care one way or the other, the main thing for her was that I got enough to eat.

  They arranged for me to stay in Volnay, in the Loire region, with some farmers. This time it was a very nice lady by the name of Lise who took me there. She looked serious, even a bit strict, but I liked people who didn’t feel obliged to smile to show that they were amiable: they were more intriguing than people who smiled at any old thing.

  So at the beginning of July 1941, I found myself staying with Claude and Huguette and their two adolescent sons Benoît and Paul. If the purpose of sending me to the country was to give me a chance to play outdoors, well, it was a flop. I didn’t have any time—there was too much to do on the farm. Anyway, I couldn’t imagine playing by myself all day long while the others were working.

  This was what I had to do: feed, groom, and harness the oldest of the three horses, Picot; churn; gather the eggs from the henhouse; take the eggs, butter and cheese to the village co-op; feed the three rabbits with grass from the ditch; help with the harvest, gathering the wheat; take the horses to the blacksmith . . . I hardly managed to read even two books all summer! But what I liked best of all was that our efforts were rewarded by food in unlimited quantities. Here I could eat as much lard and butter as I wanted! The first days, I was like a cat in a cage full of mice. I gobbled down huge pieces of bacon and eggs, and butter by the spoonful. I think in one week I managed to ingurgitate all the fat I should have eaten for the entire year. Huguette laughed so hard watching me devour it all that she almost choked. She said she’d never seen a more joyful spectacle. And she urged me to have more, and then more after that. And she went on watching me, her shoulders shaking with laughter.

  The first time she sent me to the butter churn with a few buckets of cream, she couldn’t believe the tiny quantity of butter I came back with. I just couldn’t help dipping into the butter as soon as it formed. Same thing when I went to the henhouse to gather the eggs. I’d put two in the basket, then I’d swallow one whole (I’d make a hole at both ends, tilt my head back, place the egg above my mouth and suck in the sticky contents). “Hmm,” said Huguette, ruffling my hair, “it looks like the hens haven’t been laying much lately, now have they.”

  After one week, maybe two, my excessive appetite for anything containing fat eventually waned. And now that they could send me to the henhouse or the churn without fear, I came back with acceptable quantities of eggs and butter.

  When I went to the village co-op, I was impressed by the range of food for sale, and the prices. One day I came upon some lovely dried cheese in ash that I couldn’t resist. I would never have found that in Paris! I bought four of them, wrapped up three in paper, and the next time I went to the village, I stopped off at the post office to send them to Lena. A few days later I received an envelope containing a lette
r from my mother and some money. Lena wrote that she was delighted with my little parcel, and she’d like to have some more like that. No more was needed to launch me on my career as a food trafficker.

  I tried to vary the merchandise. I was governed by the laws of supply and demand. What had been in shortest supply in Paris since the beginning of the war? Meat, of course. Lena would surely be delighted to get some, she could even give it to her comrades in the Resistance. I spoke about it with Huguette—not mentioning the comrades—because I’d never had to buy meat in my life. She suggested we find some live rabbits, and she offered to show me how to kill and prepare them. Oh dear, there was me, the great friend of animals, and I would have to kill cute little bunnies! But I figured I just had to make the best of things.

  The next morning on my way back from the village I stopped off at the Bouvier farm and chose two plump rabbits. Huguette would kill the first one, and I would deal with the other one. I swore I would behave like a true peasant and not let myself be overwhelmed with pity for these little creatures who would feed my mother for several days. As for Huguette, her gestures were very precise and she seemed to feel no emotion, other than some amusement at the sight of my face, because I didn’t manage to remain as stoic as I would have liked. When my turn came, I took a deep breath, grabbed Lena’s second meal by the ears, and imitated Huguette’s gestures as best I could: I struck the rabbit in the neck, bound his rear paws, plucked out an eye so the blood would drain into a bowl (blood which would then be used for Huguette’s fricassee). My little sacrificial beast shrieked a bit longer than his companion in misfortune, but I discovered I had a certain talent as a butcher. Then Huguette showed me how to dress the animal, and I wrapped it up and made a package that I sent to Lena. Who sent me yet another envelope with more money.

  At the end of the summer the Bouviers came to me with a big crate full of apples—pippins—and made me an excellent deal. They looked juicy, and I filled my cart. As I’d be going home to Lena soon, I sent her nearly the entire crate.

  But back in Paris I was met with the dismal truth: I would not be enjoying my share of the harvest after all, because Lena had already sold all the lovely winter apples to her comrades—at cost, naturally. If I had known—but I’d never figure her out!—I would have saved a few for my suitcase. But then when I thought of my comrades in the Resistance, who were risking their lives for our freedom, and how happy they’d be to bite into a good juicy apple, I got over my disappointment.

  CHAPTER 25

  Clandestine

  September, 1941. Once again Lena took me in at the rue Aubriot. Paris had changed a lot in a few months during my “vacation” in the country. People stood in line everywhere, bicycles had replaced cars, it was hard to find food, people looked sad, the atmosphere was gloomy.

  The first months, I did what I had to do. Even if I didn’t particularly like my life with my mother, or school, or Paris, in fact. I would have preferred to be out in the country, not doing any homework, living with other children like in the days of L’Avenir Social. But those days were over, and I wasn’t the kind to wallow in nostalgia.

  One morning Lena informed me that we had to leave the little apartment we were living in at once. And as usual, she gave no details. I realized it was pointless to ask her anything, because the less I knew, the better it would be for everyone. She would move in with her sister Annette, and I would be safer with Anna, Emil’s sister. As she lived not very far away from the rue Aubriot (in the 5th arrondissement, on the rue des Boulangers), I’d be able to go to the same school. I didn’t think it was a convincing argument—I had nurtured the faint hope that they’d stop sending me to school—but I agreed.

  Anna was the one who had been handicapped since the day she fell under the tram in Warsaw. She spoke almost no French, but she managed to earn her living cleaning house for people. We got along well and every time I wanted to go to the movies she gave me some of her meager earnings. Although technically she was my aunt, Anna behaved like a doting grandmother with me. Which was not surprising, given the fact she had breast-fed my father!

  My twelfth birthday came along. Anna offered to buy me two tickets to the movies. I invited François, my new friend, to go after school. On my way out of the building I ran into Brigitte, the concierge from the rue Aubriot, and she stopped me.

  “Hi there, Jules. Haven’t seen you in the neighborhood in ages.”

  “Well, I’m kind of busy.”

  “Look, I’m very glad to see you, there’s something I absolutely have to tell you. There’s a letter that came for your mother and I don’t know if she got it. I don’t see her a lot.”

  “I don’t know either . . . ”

  “Yup, I don’t know what to do. I gave it to Monsieur Hurteau on the fourth floor, but then he never mentioned it again, and I thought maybe I shouldn’t have. Look, don’t worry about it, I’ll take care of it myself. See you around sometime!”

  And off she went. I never thought that chatterbox was very clever, but this time, she’d outdone herself.

  I didn’t worry about the matter, because I didn’t have much time to waste if I wanted to go to the movies. François and I crossed the Seine, walked to Aunt Anna’s, who gave us tea and cookies to mark my birthday, but I really didn’t want to hang around because her son Stach was there. He was a pretentious, arrogant know-it-all. He was an anarchist, and he enjoyed insulting my mother for being a communist. He didn’t say anything to me, because he thought I was still just a little brat, and he wouldn’t stoop to talking politics with me. In his opinion anarchism was the only system that offered true freedom to the people. It was one thing for him to talk and argue about it with Lena. But one time when he was completely drunk, I’d seen him beat up Olga, the woman he lived with. If all anarchists were like that, I found it hard to believe that their doctrine could lead to freedom. Whatever the case, whenever Stach was with Aunt Anna, I made myself scarce.

  I made my excuses to Anna, telling her that we had to hurry if we didn’t want to be late for the movies, and off we went to the Boulevard Saint-Michel. It turned out to be hard to choose a film. I wanted to see The Well-Digger’s Daughter with Fernan­del again. But François laughed so hard whenever he saw Fernandel’s face that he would wee in his pants. And then his mother would get cross. So he didn’t want to go to that one. I asked him to choose another film, but the only one he wanted to see was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and it had already started half an hour earlier. And anyway, I’d already seen it.

  So we stood there in the cold not knowing what to do. At that time of day there were loads of people out and about on the sidewalks around Boul’Miche. François suggested we have a race, zigzagging between people. We would set off at the same time and run to the rue Saint-Antoine, where he lived.

  This was by no means our first race, and I knew François ran faster than me, but because I was smaller than him I thought I’d be better at dashing through crowds. Our rules stated that we mustn’t make anyone stumble, or cause anyone to yell at us.

  We ran for a long time. At one point I thought François had gotten lost, but then I saw he was ahead of me. I managed to catch up with him at the very end, but then I bashed into an old man who grabbed me by the scruff of the neck with unimaginable strength. François was the winner, but if it hadn’t been for the old man I’m sure I would have passed him at the finish line.

  I left François and trotted along to the rue des Écouffes, where my mother had been hiding ever since she left the rue Aubriot.

  Parentheses. To clarify things, I’m going to do what I should have done a long time ago: introduce Lena’s family. I’ll just mention her immediate sisters, all from the same parents. There were four daughters. In order, the eldest was Tobcia, with whom I lived for a while before going to L’Avenir Social; then there was Paulette, with whom I lived before my vacation in Sarthe; Annette, with whom my mother was hiding at the moment; and
Lena. Why were they all in France now? I didn’t know. Their father also had several children from his first marriage, whom I didn’t know. Close parentheses.

  I went up the steps four by four to the third floor, using up the little energy I had left after my race through the streets of Paris. I was famished by the time I got there, Aunt Annette gave me a bowl of cabbage, which wasn’t exactly what my belly was dreaming of.

  During the meal I told my mother about my strange encounter with the concierge.

  “She is really odd! She stopped me as if she absolutely had to speak to me about this incredibly important thing, and then she went, ‘Okay, I have to go.’ I’ve never seen such an idiot.”

  Suddenly Lena went very quiet. She asked me to tell her exactly, as best I could recall, what Brigitte had said. I didn’t see why, but I made a real effort, because I could tell my mother had something at the back of her mind and this was no time for goofing around. When I’d finished, Lena stood up, opened the curtain and looked outside, before saying to me, her tone very grave: “I think that when she came to speak to you it was to point you out to plainclothes policeman. Story about letter is ridiculous. And it was not by chance she was outside your school when you got out. Surely the police asked her to speak to you, so that they would know who you are. Once she showed you, she could leave. Right. You have to think carefully. Did you notice anything, between the school and here? Any signs that someone was following you?”

  I thought carefully.

  “Well, we played a game on our way here, with my friend François. We had to run, zigzagging between people. For sure if there had been an adult following us we would have noticed. I even think it would have been impossible.”