Maybe it was better this way, with no one knowing.
Oncle Henri sat beside her and Françoise while they studied to make sure that their eyes did not stray to the open windows. Montaigne said, My life has been filled with terrible misfortune, most of which never happened, and the cool smell of the garden washed over her and she glanced at the dark hairs on the backs of Oncle Henri’s hands and the braids down Françoise’s back—how steadily they both read—and she would have kissed them, too, except that she didn’t want to startle them.
In the night, hearing bombs and sure they wouldn’t live till morning, Yvonne crawled into her mother’s bed.
“What is it?” Maman asked sleepily.
“I was afraid.”
“Yvonne?” Maman asked, waking fully. “I thought you were Françoise. What are you doing here?”
“A bad dream.”
“Sh-sh,” said Maman. “You’re too big.” But she put her arm around Yvonne, and Yvonne curled into her soft, faintly sour body.
The next day dawned more beautifully than the last—the clouds, all violet and gray, were blowing off—and Yvonne, hastily dressing in the room she loved so much, saw no reason why they should die that day or why the boy with the red hair, belatedly learning that the convent had sent all its pupils home, should not come by after all.
She went down to her bowl of chicory and gaily refused to brush her teeth after, because, she laughed—the joke never grew old—they might be dead by nightfall.
Maman sighed: there was an awful lot of work to be done. The windows hadn’t been washed in a month and there was a rabbit to kill.
Yvonne stood on her balcony after lunch, staring down at the end of the street, and though she imagined a hundred reasons why he might not show up—why should he have heard that the convent had sent the girls home?—her arms trembled at her sides and she felt as if she would be sick.
The clock struck one thirty and though he’d never come that early, not once, the sound of the planes overhead became confused in her mind with the whisper of his bicycle tires, so that it was only as her clothes burst into flames that she gave up hoping it was he.
News of Our Loved Ones
The sun was perfectly still, a white hole in the middle of the sky. The other mothers had collected their daughters long ago, but my mother was always late. She was very busy, because my father had been sick in bed for years, and my sisters, Yvonne and Françoise, were still in diapers, and there was the whole garden to tend to, the eggs to collect, the rabbit cages to clean, so many chores! My older brothers, Louis and Simon, could walk to and from school by themselves, but I was not allowed to go out in the street alone.
Sister John of the Cross opened the door and called out to me, “You don’t need to cling to the gate like a little convict, your mother will be here soon enough. Do you need to use the latrine?” I stopped hopping from foot to foot and went to the other side of the yard where the benches were. I could not risk going to the latrine. Suppose Maman came while I was squatting down and I didn’t see her?
A cloud slipped over the sun, darkening the yard, and the gate swung open—it was Maman’s sister, Tante Chouchotte. “Come, ma pauvre,” Tante Chouchotte said. “Come, ma chérie.” But I was afraid to stand up. “Oh,” Tante Chouchotte said, lighting a cigarette and touching the back of my dress. “It’s nothing. You’ll be dry before we even get home.” My legs were sticky and I must have been ashamed—I was five, too old to have an accident—but I don’t remember that part, only the stickiness, and the sour smell.
Tante Chouchotte walked fast, long gray hair bouncing on her shoulders. I had to run to keep up, and after a while, she threw her cigarette down and carried me. Once, I’d overheard Maman talking about Tante Chouchotte to Sister John of the Cross: Tante Chouchotte’s son had drowned, her husband was killed in the war of 1914, her daughter had died of the flu when she was six weeks old. Tante Chouchotte had had to go into an asylum. She had turned her back on God. The word “asylum” meant nothing to me, of course, but I often pictured everything else: God on His throne, a soldier on a horse, a boy in the river, a coughing baby.
I was afraid of Tante Chouchotte—her voice was low and rough—but it was nice being carried above the street, bumping along. If Tante Chouchotte walked fast enough, I could see my older brothers before they went back to school for the afternoon. Simon and Louis were thirteen years old—twins—and they’d been adopted, but we weren’t supposed to say so.
Grown-ups insisted it was impossible to tell them apart, but that wasn’t true: Simon was quiet and had a short leg because he’d had polio. Louis, Maman said, was too loud. He threw his ball against the side of the house, and he laughed when he wasn’t supposed to. Once, he’d jumped from the cliffs near Etretat, far out into the ocean, where the waves and the rocks could kill you. Besides my mother and father, I loved Louis best of all.
I laid my head on Tante Chouchotte’s shoulder, and it was like being on a horse, up and down and up and down.
When I awoke, I was in the living room, on Maman’s lap, and my grandmother was crying. She cried often, because she was old. Louis and Simon were sitting on the sofa, staring at the floor. I wanted Louis to wink at me, the way he’d done before when Grandmère cried, but he wouldn’t. Oncle Henri, Papa’s friend, who was not our uncle, was there, too, with his hand on Maman’s shoulder.
Grandmère’s cries grew louder, and Maman told Tante Chouchotte she didn’t need to stay. “Henri will help with the arrangements, Chouchotte. You should go back to Paris. I’ll see you on Sunday for the funeral.” I didn’t know what a funeral was, any more than I knew about asylums, but I loved my mother’s smell—warm, like the chicken shed.
Tante Chouchotte lit another cigarette.
“It’s fine,” Maman said. “You can go.” She touched the cross at her neck.
“For God’s sake,” Tante Chouchotte said.
Maman closed her eyes the way she did when we wore her out and she wanted us all to be quiet. I asked if I could visit Papa in his room. It was what I did every day after school. Before lunch, before anything, I climbed up beside my father on his bed and kissed him. Over and over, butterfly kisses. His face was long and covered with stubble, and he smiled when I kissed him. But Oncle Henri said absolutely not, that was no place for children.
I looked up at Oncle Henri, who was staring at my mother. I hate you, I thought. It was a new thought, one I’d never had before, and I liked it. It was like sucking on a cool stone.
“Ma pauvre chérie,” Maman murmured, standing up. “Poor dear, you’re all wet.”
* * *
When I was seven, Oncle Henri and my mother were engaged to be married. I didn’t want Oncle Henri for a stepfather, but Louis ruffled my hair and laughed. “It won’t change anything. Besides,” he added, “there’ll be champagne, and you’ll get to wear your pretty frock.” I stopped worrying then. I loved the pink silk dress Maman had made for me. It was the first beautiful thing I had ever owned, and Maman, who didn’t believe in frivolous things, had worked on it night after night, sewing tiny pink roses around the waist, which weren’t necessary at all, just beautiful.
The house had to be cleaned for the wedding party, new bed linens bought, the cake assembled and decorated. The day before the party, Maman and I took the long way back from the market. “We’ll avoid the crowds,” she murmured, turning away from the main street. “We can make a little stroll of it, just the two of us, before everyone arrives for the party.” We walked along the river and the salt air blew in from the coast. I skipped a little, carrying the basket with all the last-minute things: a sprig of parsley, a kilo of cherries, a new white tablecloth, and napkins with red roses embroidered along the edges.
But a motorcar sped past, raising a cloud of dust; it swerved to avoid a dog, made a thumping sound, and vanished in the distance. Maman gasped, grabbed my hand, and ran as if she meant to catch up with the car—and then she stopped and the air shifted, grew still. The skin t
ightened around my bones: Mademoiselle Duchaté, who gave piano lessons in her home, lay on her stomach in the ditch, her dress lifted almost to her underwear, the side of her face slick with blood. There was dirt everywhere: in her hair and on her dress, covering the bread and cheese that had spilled out of her bag.
I screamed. I kept screaming while Maman scrambled down into the ditch, put her face close to Mademoiselle Duchaté’s, scrambled back out, and slapped me. “Don’t be an idiot!” she said, pulling me down into the ditch. “Here.” She took one of the lovely, rose-patterned napkins and pressed it to Mademoiselle’s forehead. “Hold this until I get back.”
Maman ran down the road, and I was alone in the ditch with Mademoiselle Duchaté. Mademoiselle Duchaté’s breath came out of her in hard gasps, as if she were pushing something heavy, and warm blood seeped through the linen onto my fingertips. The air grew damp, as if it would rain, and I wanted to run after my mother, to grab her hand and go wherever she was going, but the burn of her palm print held me still. I glanced down at the blood-soaked roses, at Mademoiselle’s matted hair and long, dirty nose, and I began to cry. I cried quietly at first, afraid of disturbing her, and then I cried as loudly as I could, louder than Grandmère had cried when Papa died, until my throat was raw and I was done with crying. The day hung heavy and still around us, and the only sound in the ditch now was Mademoiselle’s panting, like a dog’s.
An automobile drove past finally, stopped, and backed up. Maman jumped out with a couple I didn’t know. The man stepped down beside me in the ditch, lifted Mademoiselle in his arms, put her in the back of the automobile, and drove away. When they were gone, Maman sighed and collected our things: the cherries and parsley and linens, the bloody napkin. She touched my face. “Fear is a form of selfishness,” she said. Her voice was soft, the way it was after I’d had a nightmare. “You’re a big girl now, and you must set yourself bravely to the task before you. You don’t want to make a spectacle of your feelings.” I looked away, my eyes burning, and pretended to search for cherries. Louis was wrong: the wedding had ruined everything, and it hadn’t even happened yet.
* * *
By the time I was fifteen and war broke out with Germany, I knew how to freeze my face, the way my mother did. The newsboy was shouting down the street, my grandmother was standing in the doorway, saying, “No, no, no, no, no, no,” my mother hid her face in her hands and wept, but I kept clearing the breakfast dishes as if nothing had happened. I felt a moment of scorn for my mother’s display. I wasn’t afraid at all. Louis still lived with us—Simon had moved to Paris, gotten married—and Louis said we could beat the boches in no time. He’d been saying it for weeks.
Louis raised racehorses, and in the evenings, when he came home, dirty and smelling of horse sweat, he tousled my hair and called me his favorite girl. Yvonne and Françoise were twelve and eleven, pretty girls with dark eyes and long dark braids, so alike they could have been twins themselves. Everyone praised their charm—I was pale and awkward—but I didn’t mind, because Louis loved me the best. I played the violin, and though I wasn’t very good, Louis stood in the door of my bedroom sometimes and clapped at every pause. What did I care that he couldn’t tell the end of a movement from the end of a piece?
The day before Louis left to join the cavalry, he took me riding with him. He lifted me onto an old mare he’d retired, and we rode out past the farms and orchards west of town. The sun fell before us toward the coast, too bright to look at. Just after sunset, we stopped at the edge of Ouistreham, the horizon burnished red, and then we turned back, and followed the river home. There were women he went dancing with in the evenings, but I didn’t take them seriously. In the fading light, with his thin mustache and light brown hair, he seemed to belong only to me. I wondered if, having no blood ties, we might marry in a few years. I wondered the same thing every day for the next three months, until they returned Louis’s helmet and tags to us.
We lost the war. I turned sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. My sisters’ beauty failed to blossom, their hair dry and thin and their bodies stunted, like the bodies of perpetual children. I kept to my room and practiced the violin, as if I could drown out every other sound: the German melodies outside my window, the noise of horses trammeling Louis into the mud. Maman wanted me to practice in the living room, where everyone could hear me—she wanted us all together—but Oncle Henri said to leave me be. He’d studied the piano when he was young, and bad playing gave him a headache. They ought to get a thicker door for my bedroom, he said.
Every week brought the announcement of a new set of rules—who could do what and where and when. An endless list of prohibitions and punishments. We stepped off the sidewalk when the boches passed, our gazes fixed on the pavement, and all we talked about was food: where to find it; how much it cost; what to substitute for sugar, coffee, butter, meat, flour. My stomach hurt, and I was always cold.
I began to dream that I’d done terrible things: I’d drowned the rabbits we were saving for stew, I’d dug Louis’s body out of the ground. The dreams always began at the end, when it was too late to undo my crime, so that night after night, I watched the aftermath of my cravenness. The sun burned Louis’s skin, and rabbits gazed at me from the bottom of a pool. In the morning, exhausted, I prayed for forgiveness.
Grandmère said the Germans were not as bad as all that—they were very well behaved—and Maman said Grandmère didn’t know what she was talking about. What about the Naquets and the Schwarzes? Maman asked. Did Grandmère think they were on a cruise? “They’re only Jews,” Grandmère said, and Oncle Henri shoved himself away from the dinner table. But, of course, he came back. The soup might be mostly water and Grandmère senile, but we had to eat.
Maman had no patience for any of us. She threw my door open when I was practicing, insisted that I hadn’t washed the potatoes well enough, hadn’t properly weeded the garden. She’d demand to know why I didn’t spend more time with my sisters, but my sisters had each other. They didn’t need me. “You don’t value your family,” my mother said.
It was Oncle Henri who released me, finally, in the summer of ’43. Oncle Henri! One morning at breakfast, he announced that he’d written to a friend in Paris, Jean Crunelle, professor of violin at the National Conservatory. Maître Crunelle would be happy to help me prepare an audition.
I thought he was joking. A terrible, elaborate prank, holding out the promise of freedom—but Maman froze, her face as blank as if she’d suffered a stroke.
“She can commute,” Oncle Henri said, brightly. “Crunelle will arrange for her to get a pass, and she can spend the week in Paris at Chouchotte’s and come back to Caen on the weekends.”
“The Allies are bombing the trains,” Maman said in a low, strangled voice.
“Not the passenger trains, but in any case, she can stay full-time at Chouchotte’s if you prefer.” It’s to get rid of me, I thought, and I could feel my heart pounding. The long sentence of childhood was ending. I would be able to do as I pleased.
There was no room for me in Tante Chouchotte’s little garret, Maman said, and when Oncle Henri said I could stay with Simon, she waved her hand impatiently. Simon’s apartment, which she’d never seen, was also too small. “Besides,” she added, “there’s the baby now. Michelle’s exhausted. Colic day and night. Geneviève isn’t going anywhere.” Maman was tone-deaf, otherwise she would have realized what Oncle Henri knew perfectly well: I’d never be admitted to the conservatory.
“A pension?” Oncle Henri suggested mildly, putting his hand on Maman’s.
* * *
Tante Chouchotte was waiting for me at the station in Paris. “Chérie,” she said, taking my face in her hands. Whatever had once unsettled me about her moved me now: her deep, smoke-ravaged voice, her tangle of gray hair, even the gold cap that had appeared on her front tooth. She was taller and bonier than my mother, and much more brilliant—she taught literature at the Lycée Victor-Duruy—but their smiles, despite the perfect teeth of one, the go
ld glint of the other, were identical. And they had the same gray eyes. She was like my mother, I thought, but with none of the moralizing.
“Come,” Tante Chouchotte said. “Let’s get you settled.” It was an overcast day, threatening rain, but the long avenues, the rows of chestnut trees, the fashionably dressed women who did not even glance at me—they hadn’t known me since birth, had no opinion of me at all—made me want to laugh out loud. I might have skipped, if Tante Chouchotte hadn’t been pulling me along, hurrying me toward my new, false life as a serious violinist. She would introduce me to Maître Crunelle in the morning, she said. She’d known him for years and he was the best. I was very lucky, and must work very hard. She hadn’t realized I was so gifted, but if Henri said I was, I must be. My pension was on rue d’Assas, around the corner from her own apartment, and she knew the landlady, Madame Charpentier.
We passed through the gates of the Luxembourg, and the rain came all at once in great, cold drops. We ran down the path, past the flower beds and the fountain—rain streaming into my ears, between my shoulder blades—and then, as suddenly as it had begun, the torrent ceased. The sun broke through, glittering, washed, dripping off the trees and the gold-tipped gates. As if the city herself were welcoming me, showing herself off.
I stood in my new, small attic room, drenched to the bone, my stomach light and nervous. Cabbage-rose wallpaper covered the sloping ceiling and the low walls, as if I were in a garden. All warts and missing teeth, Madame Charpentier handed me the key and turned to leave. “Dinner is in half an hour,” she said, over her shoulder. “If you’re late, you won’t be served. WC and bath down the hall, bathing privileges on Monday evening. No guests.”
News of Our Loved Ones Page 2
