by Cesca Major
Being new is fun too. We get a lot of attention. We’re the newest people to join the school and the only ones from Paris, and a lot of the other pupils love my stories about the Eiffel Tower and the busy honking of the Champs-Élysées. I am a glamorous city boy and I try to keep people happy, telling tales about Parisian life: women dressed in scarlet silk dresses and long, buttoned evening gloves, smoking cigarettes and drinking champagne; films; the newest motorcars I saw advertised; music I heard.
I am yet to decide on a best friend. They ask funny questions here – one boy asked me if everyone in Paris could see the Eiffel Tower from their house. Also some of the boys here have never been to the pictures, haven’t even heard of some films and some of them don’t have telephones in their houses! I have promised Michel to show him ours. He says he wouldn’t know who to telephone on it.
The small hand on the clock hanging in the corridor shows that the first lesson starts any second. A couple of others arrive, puffing, behind me, and I am glad I’m not last. Unlike in Paris, I want to be there at the start of the lessons, I don’t dawdle when break is over and I’ve stopped making up illnesses at home to get out of school. I’ve been doing very well in my classes and enjoy the feeling of being right for once, winning a lot of merits and praise – not just from Mademoiselle Rochard – and only sometimes wonder whether I should admit to covering some of the things at my school in Paris.
As I sling my satchel over the back of my chair, Michel nods a hello in my direction. The sun is pouring through the windows onto our desks and the butterfly wall display is as happy as I am. From the windows I can see the wide blue sky, dots of birds far, far away. The caretaker of the school is fixing a hole in one of the goal nets. The sunlight bounces off his bald head. I turn to point this out to Michel but Mademoiselle Rochard arrives and everyone scrapes their chairs back to stand up.
There are a few whispers as a small boy walks in nervously behind her.
‘Good morning, class.’
‘Bonjour, Mademoiselle Rochard,’ we chant, but everyone’s eyes are on the boy.
‘We have a new addition to our class this morning. Boys, can you all welcome Samuel. He is new to the area too, so I want you to make room for him and be helpful and polite.’
I notice André – the tallest boy in our class and an excellent goalkeeper – steer the new boy to the desk next door to his. He takes his seat and opens his bag quickly to try and hide his red cheeks behind it. I wonder if he is old enough to be in our class – he seems impossibly small, his feet dangling above the floor.
Our homework was to read a story. I quickly looked at it last night but then I got bored and Luc and I played a new game we made up and the winner got to wear Dimitri’s glasses, which make the whole world go blurry. Anyway, we read the book last year in Paris.
We are looking at where fairy tales come from. Some are based on true stories that actually happened, and this story is one of those. Mademoiselle Rochard asks the class to describe the central character, Bluebeard, and I close my eyes to try and see him. I think his beard is blue but can remember little else about him. I turn to a page that I think talks about him but Samuel has got there first. He raises a hand and the class looks at him curiously.
‘Yes, Samuel,’ Mademoiselle Rochard says.
Samuel describes Bluebeard perfectly, he floods into my mind in colour. He is massive and tall and scary, so strong he can smash the door to the tower down.
‘Well done, Samuel, beautifully put.’ Mademoiselle Rochard smiles at him. ‘So, can anyone tell me a story that reminds them of this fairy tale? What is the relevance of the door that she should not enter?’
Fast as light I put my hand in the air.
‘It is like the fairy tale “La Belle et la Bête”, because the beast in that is very nasty to the woman and that is the same in this story,’ I say, waiting for her praise.
Mademoiselle Rochard looks at me. ‘That is not quite what I was asking.’ She looks round the classroom.
‘Anyone else?’
When no one moves Samuel raises his hand again.
‘It’s similar to the story of Adam and Eve when God has forbidden Adam to eat the fruit from the Forbidden Tree. When Bluebeard tells her not to look in the room, it is tempting her to.’
‘Well done, Samuel – a merit. Excellently put.’
Suddenly, as if God has switched off the sun, the classroom seems darker, clouds form outside, it might rain. The new boy is blushing. André pats his arm.
The new boy is sitting in the seat next to mine, pouring some ink into the well in the desk, getting ready for our next lesson: dictation. His book is filled with neat pages of writing, no ink blotches or smears.
Mine is in a bad way after I dripped ink right across my last piece of work which then got stuck to another piece of paper, leaving a blurry mess on both sheets.
He sticks out a hand and says hello. ‘I’m Samuel.’
‘Tristan,’ I reply.
We shake hands awkwardly.
‘I’ve heard you’re from Paris,’ he begins.
I nod, looking around the room.
‘Which district?’
‘Sixteenth, Villa Herran,’ I say, taking the books out of my bag, removing my little pot of ink, taking out my pen from its case.
‘Where is that?’ he asks.
‘Quite near the Seine,’ I mumble, knowing this would be little help as lots of Paris is near the river that runs through it.
I don’t ask, but he continues: ‘We had a house in the third.’
Papa has mentioned the area in the past and not in a nice way. Maybe some of his workers lived there. I imagine it’s nothing like where we used to live. I think back to our huge town house with its shuttered windows, rooms three times as high as my papa, the hallway as big as any room we had in our new house, the wide staircase always polished, the chandeliers throwing light into every corner, making everything shine. The park outside our house was also what Maman called ‘the height of elegance’, with great trees stretched out, lots of paths and places for people to picnic, and a sort of little house made of wood where a band played.
I look at Samuel. ‘I haven’t heard of that part.’
‘It’s nice.’ He pauses. ‘It’s home.’
He says this in a way that makes me think he won’t be going back to it. Like it’s already in the past. And for this I dislike him even more.
‘Why did you leave?’ Samuel asks, still looking at me curiously.
‘I don’t know,’ I admit, realizing I didn’t. Not really. ‘Because of the war, I suppose.’
Samuel nods. It is obviously the reason he left too.
I remember when we left then – all the people on the road. I remember the boy.
‘Are you going back?’ he asks.
I blink and then shrug, cross that he is asking the same questions I have asked Maman for months and months. Questions to which I don’t have the answers.
Luckily, Monsieur Garande appears in the doorway. He is so enormous he makes me feel like a little toddler. There is no greeting or instruction; his big, booming voice begins our dictation: ‘Je me trouvais sur le champ de bataille …’
I jump into my seat and lean over the page, concentrating hard. I start to write.
For the next forty minutes the only sounds are quiet scratches on the paper and Monsieur Garande’s footsteps as he walks slowly up and down the classroom. I remain bent over the page, careful to make it as neat as I can, keen to avoid any attention from Monsieur Garande. He calls, ‘Sit up, boy,’ to Michel and the whole class sits up straight. André said Monsieur Garande used to be high up in the French army and has a bullet hole in his leg. No one has seen it but on some days he rubs his left leg so it’s probably true.
Two pages are covered in lines and I think I have spelled things right. My hand feels like it might
drop off. Monsieur Garande announces that the dictation is over. He walks slowly around the room, leaning over our desks, his shadow blocking out the light as he corrects our spelling mistakes, grammar and punctuation. When he gets to me I stand behind my chair. My hands twist nervously as he scans the page. Finally he writes a big ‘M’ on my work. It is my fifth merit since arriving at the school.
‘Neat hand, boy,’ he growls, as he passes me back my work. The book is small in his hand.
‘Thank you, sir,’ I squeak.
He turns to Samuel’s work, barely looking at it. Instead he looks straight at him. Samuel looks anywhere but up at his face. Monsieur Garande waves a hand at him like I have seen Papa do at waiters when he’s cross and walks off, muttering something about ‘more of them’.
Samuel’s face falls. My smile grows a little wider.
SEBASTIEN
Lilies are my mother’s favourite flowers so I have bought some artificial ones for the living room. She was heartbroken when the florist closed his doors a few weeks ago. Although they aren’t quite what she wants, I know she will appreciate the thought.
The apartment is strangely quiet when I arrive home from work and I close the door softly behind me, placing the flowers on the side table in the entrance hall. A little pile of letters, addresses written in thick blue ink in my father’s sloping handwriting – one to an address in England – are waiting to be posted. I shrug off my coat, flinging it onto a hook on the hat stand. The streets were wet outside from a light rain shower earlier and I know Mother has spent some back-breaking hours cleaning the carpets, so I do the polite thing and remove my shoes. I don’t want to give her any ammunition.
Padding over the carpet, past the archway to the sitting room, I can smell a soapy scent still in the air, a light breeze from a half-open window in the sitting room wafting the smell around the apartment. Not for the first time I see my mother’s pride in our home: the ornaments, delicate figurines of musicians, are dusted on a regular basis; sideboards are polished; cutlery is cleaned; clothes are magically brought from the back room after being scrubbed at and ironed. The whole place is immaculately presented and when people arrive at the door they are instantly charmed, commenting on the prints Mother has selected for the walls, the crocheted cushion covers, the lamps she has picked up in little shops in narrow alleyways. Father and I do not compliment her enough on our surroundings. Suddenly, the lilies seem horribly out of place. I must get hold of some fresh flowers, but it is not easy during a war.
I take the stairs two at a time. As I put a hand on the banister to turn the corner to my bedroom, I notice the door to my parents’ bedroom is ajar. In the thin gap through which I can normally make out the cream bedding and large linen chest at the foot of my parents’ carved wooden bed, a figure sits. Pushing the door open slightly, I see it is my father, sitting on the edge of the bed in his dressing gown, his feet dangling inches from the carpet. His feet are bare, and he is smoking a cigarette. The room smells stale, the curtains are still half-drawn, the bedclothes rumpled.
I clear my throat to signal my presence.
He looks up wearily at me and I shrink back a little. The ashtray overflows with spent cigarettes and the shadow on his chin suggests he hasn’t been up at all today.
‘Are you ill, Father?’
‘Apparently,’ he states, dragging on his cigarette and then grinding it aggressively into the ashtray. His left hand grips the mattress but his voice is steady, a little higher than normal. ‘God only knows,’ he continues.
This dishevelled man in pyjamas is not my father. He is usually fastidious about his appearance, and not because he is vain. His combed hair is always in a neat side parting – baldness is not a family trait and he used to remind me that his thick head of hair was at least one piece of inheritance I could be grateful for. He wears braces over spotless shirts and polishes his shoes as if he were in the military and turning out for parade. He keeps a clean handkerchief in his top pocket and is never seen without his hat once outside. He ensures his clothes are laundered and kept flat, and has admitted to me that he would never do business with a man who had dirty nails. He bemoans my mop of hair that never quite rests flat and has, on occasion, left a tin of shoe polish outside my door that he obviously thinks I should use, or trip over.
This man, sitting on the edge of the bed, grey hairs poking up sporadically from his collar; this unshaven man who doesn’t appear to have the energy for slippers, is not him.
‘Where is Mother?’ I ask.
‘Out.’
‘Father, what is it? What’s happened?’
‘Don’t you read the papers?’
I take in the newspaper at his side, pick it up, shake out its pages to scan the print.
‘It’s happened,’ Father says, drawing another cigarette from its case and searching for his matches. ‘Shit,’ he swears, uncharacteristically, as he realizes he has used up the last one. ‘Match?’ He looks at me hopefully.
I automatically shake my head. ‘What does this mean?’ I step backwards, taking a seat on the little stool by the dressing table.
‘It means everything.’
We sit in silence, my thoughts whirling.
‘Jean-Paul can help,’ I say.
‘Perhaps.’
‘But …’ My eyes glance at the paper again. ‘There has always been this hatred of the Jewish race. Banned from public office—? I mean, of all the …’
‘And teaching, running newspapers, running cinemas …’ Father rattles off. ‘Just think what they’re doing by this one act.’
‘They can’t do this.’ My protest sounds pathetic.
‘People can do anything.’
We sit, listening to the only sounds in the room: our own breathing, irregular in contrast to the gentle tick of the carriage clock.
‘It has always been there. They don’t want us here, Sebastien. They don’t even have the excuse of occupation. They simply want rid.’
‘That’s not true,’ I insist.
‘Is it not?’
‘What does it mean for us?’
‘The business?’
I nod.
‘The beginning of the end.’
‘But it doesn’t say anywhere that we can’t continue to run the bank—?’
‘No, not yet.’
‘What do you mean “yet”?’
‘I don’t know what I mean, Sebastien.’ Father rubs his eyes. He seems to have aged ten years in the last ten minutes. My head is spinning with it all, what it means.
‘What is “Jewishness” anyway?’ I continue. ‘How are they to know?’
‘We’ve told them, haven’t we?’ Father laughs, a dull sound. ‘We’ve trooped along like good little citizens and signed their census, admitted to the great sin of being Jewish.’
I’d ticked the box without a second thought.
‘Soon they’ll be testing our facial features, measuring our noses, our ears … like sizing up cattle for market. We’ll be herded in the same way as those animals, shunted to somewhere, out of the way.’
‘Surely not in Vichy? They can’t touch us here. It’s not in their interest – we’re fighting a war, so why turn on their own men?’ ‘This was passed in Vichy,’ Father points out. ‘But …’ I am flailing now. Father sighs. ‘No one will stand up for us, Sebastien. No one will come to our aid.’ ‘But we won’t be affected,’ I stress again, wanting confirmation, wanting something, feeling the floor disappear from under my feet.
Father is talking as if to himself. ‘We should have left months ago, but the business, I didn’t … your mother …’ He trails off, staring at the cigarette he’s snapped in half as I pace the room trying to help, to solve, to control this.
A cold, creeping fear squeezes the edges of my heart and I shiver.
There is a scrape of a key in a lock and the sound of footste
ps up the stairs. Mother has returned from shopping. She clutches a little posy of pink flowers to arrange in the vase by the bed, a smile on her face as she enters the room.
‘Mother bought flowers,’ I point out stupidly.
Father hasn’t heard. He is still staring hopelessly at the halves of his cigarette.
ISABELLE
From the bench outside the town hall I watch a family nearby: the little boy, who can’t be more than six, is playing with his older sister. The game involves a lot of complicated hand-clapping and chanting some made-up song. Their parents are scanning the tram timetable, the mother looking over every now and again to check on them. The pace increases and I giggle as the boy loses the rhythm, his older sister cuffing him gently before ordering him to start again. Children are so wonderfully uncomplicated. This kind of game is popular in our village school.
I have loved the last few months as Mademoiselle Rochard.
I remember my own childhood with Paul. I think I bored him for years but was still always a playmate when no one else would do. I watched him and Papa fish down by the river and spent hours dangling upside down from tree branches, something that always got me a telling-off from Maman. We fought of course, ridiculous arguments that embarrass me now, but we became closer in our later years. I miss him now.
The family is leaving. The mother, taking the hands of her children, smiles at me as they pass. I wish them a good day and go back to my book, a rather dull book that I haven’t the energy for, encouraging my restless mood. It’s a relief to finally see the familiar figure of Sebastien walking along the pavement in the distance, heading in my direction.
This bench has become a regular meeting place, mostly due to an excellent café around the corner that still manages to produce pastries, of varying qualities, despite the shortages. He hasn’t seen me yet. He is wearing a suit and hat, his thick brown hair just visible above the collar of his jacket. He’s an ideal height, just over six foot, which is tall enough to make me feel suitably dainty and feminine and short enough that I don’t have to crane my neck backwards to look at him. He is a man you can’t help noticing: even if I try to focus on something else, one eye will peek, just to see what he is doing. There is something in his movements, fluid, like water, his face open; an easy raise of his eyebrows or a twitch of his lips that makes me want always to be in on the joke.
