by Marge Piercy
I am ashamed that I was so embarrassed for her, to be so stupid and rude, that I could not say one word. I’m afraid my manners simply automatically caused me to thank her and hasten away. She was a well-dressed lady of middle age, wearing a navy suit with the new shoulder pads they are showing and a crisp white blouse with a bow tie, an oversized hat with an entire little dead bird on it.
I wish I had struck her, but that would be absurd, and actually an evil reaction to return verbal violence with physical violence. Perhaps I did the best thing. But then I took no stand. What should I have done? If I were truly a noble soul such as Antigone in Sophocles, the words would have come to me and I would have said something clear and ringing that would have shown her how foolish she was to speak that way of an entire people.
As it was I felt humiliated and simply proceeded along the broad sidewalk toward the crowd ahead. Right on the front of the Palais Berlitz between the pillars was hung an enormous four-story-high poster of an old man with a beard and long nose supposed to be a Jew and digging claws into a globe, where France was drawn in. It was ghastly. I became very hot and I did not know where to look. I was afraid I would burst into tears right on the street. As I saw all these ordinary people, my countrymen whom yesterday I might have sat beside in the cinema or said hello to at the news vendor’s kiosk all waiting to cram into this Nazi display put on by a French organization L’Institut Français des Questions Juives, I felt like a cockroach they were trying to crush under their well-shod feet.
I wanted to climb a soap box and shriek at them, How dare you imagine that the ugly picture you’ve drawn has anything in common with me? It’s your own disgusting imagination you revel in, resembling those filthy drawings the boys used to make and then try to force us to look. Tell us what that is, tell us what that is. Your own ugly mind, I told them: one time I did think up the right thing to say.
I think one of my worst flaws is that while my mind seems to work more quickly than other people’s, often I see too many sides to a question, causing me to be weak in my response. I should strive to be simpler. Sometimes I think simplicity is virtue, and when I write that, I think of Maman, who always seems to go straight to the heart of a matter.
When I came home, I thought whether I should say anything about what I had seen, and then I looked at Maman, so careworn and exhausted from working all day at the furrier’s and then rushing about trying to find something to make into soup for supper, and little Renée, so subdued and quiet these days I worry about her. I thought, when Papa comes home at last, I’ll talk to him about it, but in the meantime, as he said to me, I must take care of Maman and Renée, because in some ways I really am cooler headed.
3 octobre 1941
Last night six of the synagogues of Paris were blown up! I went with Renée this morning and we looked at our own where we go on High Holidays and there was nothing but a shell with glass and mortar and pieces of cloth and blowing papers. Jews of the neighborhood were milling around picking through the rubble trying to save something. It made me so indignant I burn with helplessness. What a vile idiotic act. Blowing up a building of worship. What kind of fools think this is a proper political act?
All the gross newspapers are screaming that this was a spontaneous act of the French people who want us, the so-called foreign element, thrust out. Who are rejecting us as they reject a disease or a poison. I must say, it is great to have become a microbe. I walk around Paris these days and it is just as if some lout is striking me in the face every twenty paces, when I see one of those newspapers going on about how great the recent roundup is, and how France is being cleansed and purified, or when I see some truly crude and disgusting caricature supposed to represent me or Papa or Maman, or when I try to find out what is happening in the world, and in place of the newspapers that for all their partisanship at least carried the world’s news, we have nothing but these rags that shriek hatred and call for death for us.
Sometimes I cannot believe it still, that all these Frenchmen run about sucking up to the Germans and flattering them and parroting their ideas. I have silly fantasies of rushing into the offices of one or another of these rags or the magazines that pretend to literary or philosophical merit. Les Nouveaux Temps, La Gerbe, Aujourd’hui, Nouvelle Revue Française, they all hew to the occupiers’ line and none of them defends us. They are only politer forms of L’Appel and Au Pilori which shriek their diarrhea of abuse at us daily and call openly for our death. I feel as if I live in a rabid city, where every other man froths and foams in violent insanity.
I remember how even last year when I was studying for my bac, I thought I would be so happy once I had entered the Sorbonne. I would meet other students who share my interests, I would lead a life of rich intellectual ferment and austere dedication to ideas. Mostly I keep away from the other students, as I fear the shock of discovering they too are anti-Semites. The business of survival is so demanding, I take classes for granted. Often I pass the café Dupont, which is also in the Latin Quarter, with its message, NO JEWS OR DOGS. As some converts are more Catholic than the pope, some of these imitation Nazis are passionate to outdo their masters.
29 novembre 1941
What a sad subdued birthday the 24th was for me. Then we received a message from Papa. Some callow youth in a Boy Scout uniform appeared with it, a most unlikely carrier of clandestine messages, but he made a point of telling me he is in the EIF, which stands for the Eclaireurs Israélites de France, the Jewish Boy Scouts. He shrugged off our thanks, saying it is not difficult for him, because he has his ways of crossing the border to Vichy.
He also brought a bottle of cassis to us as a present from Papa, which is certainly welcome because Maman and I particularly miss the warmth of a little wine with supper, and it has been months since we have tasted anything alcoholic. We trade our tiny wine ration to Mme Cohen for a little butter and some skim milk for Rivka. Cassis, Maman says, is particularly welcome because our stomachs are so often upset from eating rotten food or bread that has strange additives—we suspect everything from ground-up bones to plaster dust from demolition. Cassis we will measure out a tablespoon at a time after supper to warm us and soothe our poor suffering stomachs.
Papa is in Toulouse, the boy told us. He seems to admire Papa very much. He said Papa cannot cross back to Paris, but that he is a great force in resisting the Germans and the Vichy government. He almost got caught twice, but he escaped. He said Papa is a very brave man and we should be proud of him. Papa had told him to secure papers for us, which he hopes to deliver on his next trip, but that what was needed now were recent photographs for counterfeit identity papers. Then we will be able to rejoin Papa safely in Toulouse.
At that point the three of us went into the bedroom, shut the door and examined Papa’s note carefully to make sure it was really from him, and this was not some Fascist youth in disguise, trying to entrap us. But the handwriting was obviously Papa’s. The note was short and said only that he loved us, missed us powerfully and that we should give the young man what he needed, because he would carry it back to Papa on his next rounds, as Papa put it.
The trouble was that we had not had pictures taken of ourselves for several years, and we hardly dare pry the photos off our cards stamped with a big red JUIVE much as we hate them. We told the young man we could try to get pictures taken the coming week. We scarcely have any money. He said we should see what we could do, but that he couldn’t wait, as he had something to do farther north. He would drop in on us on the way south, he said, to pick up the new photos.
Needless to say I do not intend to say a word to anyone outside the family, and I cautioned Maman, who is always sensible, and Rivka, who is not, to keep their mouths tightly shut on this visit. I have given in to my sister’s desire to be called by her Hebrew name, for she has so little to make her happy these days.
Then a present arrived from Naomi in Detroit in the U.S. I was astonished that the little mischief-maker had remembered my birthday, but then I imagined tha
t probably her aunt arranged for the package. It had been mailed two months ago, but everything was intact and we were delighted. She sent us a big kosher sausage, so I guess they make them there too, a kilo of sugar, a jar of strawberry, a jar of apricot and a jar of raspberry jam. Anything sweet makes a big hit with us. She also put in two bars of Camay soap and a jar of liver pâté.
Naomi writes regularly, but her French grammar is dreadful and growing worse. She is becoming a barbarian. I do not know if Papa did the right thing sending her off that way, by herself. We also receive letters from Rose Siegal in Yiddish, a language I cannot read, although Maman translates. Aunt Rose (Maman’s oldest sister) assures us that Naomi is well and improving her English (while deproving her own language, I comment) and growing rapidly. So is Rivka, but she is too thin. If only we could get a little more food for her. At school they give the children vitamin cookies. Some of the children trade theirs, but I have ordered Rivka to eat hers every day. Aunt Rose asks about Aunt Batya, their sister, who is still in Drancy. Maman will write her what little we know, for we are not permitted to visit the prisoners.
It was thoughtful of Naomi or Aunt Rose to send us these gifts. Winter is setting in early and we are freezing. We have no heat. Maman is developing chilblains. We go to bed with a hot water bottle, but it stays warm for only an hour. We shuffle about the house wrapped up like packs of old clothes and wearing gloves except when we must take them off to wash a dish.
The soap is a particular treat, because we can institute a regular system of bathing once a week. We have had no soap since October as we have been trading it for food. Rivka must eat and so must Maman. I fare the best because I am petted by my friends who are well connected with the black market and they are always giving me tidbits and even meals. I try to slip a roll or a bite of chicken into my pocket for Rivka and Maman in secrecy whenever I can, because once Céleste caught me stuffing a half a Croque-Monsieur into my pocket and said, Well if you aren’t hungry, I’ll eat it, and she did.
Yes, I eat ham outside the house. I would eat a toad if someone served it to me. I would have given the ham to Rivka and told her it was corned beef. I felt miserable because I was hungry and I wanted dreadfully to eat it, but I had wanted even more to give a little to Rivka, who is so skinny and almost blue. Maman thinks she might be anemic, but what can we do about it? Henri has not been treating me to lunch this week. He has decided I have a virginity fetish, he says, and must overcome such bourgeois hang-ups.
Fine, I said, I’ll go out on the Boule Mich’ and stop the first pedicab to offer myself.
A stranger might have a disease, he said. I’m only thinking of you.
I know how you are thinking of me, and dream on, I said. I act very cool as it is the way to behave, but it makes me feel peculiar to sit at the table with him and have him constantly as if casually touching my knee, my elbow, my shoulder. If we did not wear so many layers of clothing, he would be able to see that sometimes I get goose bumps. Luckily for me, we are both wound up in our clothes like mummies in a museum and even when he tries to kiss me, he gets no nearer than six inches because of all our padding. Still I dream of his light brown eyes like wet sand fixed on me, wanting.
12 décembre 1941
So now Germany is at war with the U.S. Henri says the Germans have finally bitten off more than they can chew, but they seem to have digested us easily enough. I have little concrete hope except that by the time I am an old lady, I may live in a saner world. We will enjoy no more packages from Naomi and no more letters either. We are cut off from our sister as if she were on the moon! Maman cries about Naomi a great deal, and then berates herself for selfishness, since at least one of her children is safe. Rivka has never been the same since Naomi left; she is half a child, quiet, subdued and deeply lonely in spite of how much more time I spend with her.
Yesterday something simply unimaginable occurred. The Nazis rounded up one thousand French Jews, including all the lawyers who practice at the Paris bar, yes, every one of them. They took doctors, lawyers, writers and intellectuals and simply arrested them. Nobody seems to know where they have been taken, except that this time it is not Drancy, where the poor Balabans are still imprisoned. We brought them little parcels, but they would not let us in. The place stinks from a block away. It is an unfinished housing project surrounded by barbed wire and watchtowers. You would imagine the poor Balabans to be violent rapists, murderers, terrorists, instead of a family of factory workers.
Where they have taken the terribly dangerous writers, lawyers and doctors is anyone’s guess. We speculate and fear, we pass on rumors and wait for the Boy Scout to return, but he has not. The excuse for this roundup—for some reason the Nazis like to have excuses, no matter how perfunctory—is punishment because somebody fired at a German air force officer. That is all.
Everyone at café Le Jazz Hot makes jokes about how I am the last virgin in Paris. Céleste announced today they are going to have me stuffed and stuck in a case in Le Musée de l’Homme. I said that was fine with me if I could be stuffed with roast chicken and veal chops and steaks. Henri said how about his salami. Sometimes what they say makes me blush inside but I remain very cool. I said, no thank you, your salami isn’t kosher.
Then afterward when Henri was walking me to the Métro, he asked me if that was why I wouldn’t sleep with him, because he isn’t Jewish. He wanted to have a serious discussion on the sidewalk about what I said as a joke to shut them up. I ended having to kiss him in a doorway. Then he tried again to put his hand up under my sweater. I said, Don’t you try to do things by degrees, Henri. You won’t move me along that way. When I decide, I will do the whole thing, but until then, don’t paw at me, I think it’s vulgar. He got mad and went off, but I know the problem isn’t going to go away.
RUTHIE 2
Of Rapid Pledges
Ruthie stood on a chair. Mama was pinning the hem of the skirt of a smart grey gabardine suit she had found at Goodwill, only slightly worn in the cuffs but Mama had turned them back, and under the arms, where Ruthie herself had repaired the seams. The skirt was longer than the girls were wearing them now, so Mama was turning it up. It was all having to be done in a great hurry because Leib and Trudi were getting married that afternoon in the study of a local rabbi.
Ruthie did not know what she thought of the marriage yet. Leib had been working for a place that made novelty balloons, but they could no longer procure rubber and everybody was laid off. He had got on the line at Chrysler Tank, but when his number was called by the draft, he had not been there long enough to be exempted for doing essential war work. Now he was entering the Army in three days, and he and Trudi were marrying at once. He had been seeing Trudi on and off since he had broken up with Ruthie, but Trudi had complained that she did not think he was in love.
When Trudi told her, Ruthie said, “But, I didn’t think things were that good between you.”
“Yeah, but it’s all changed. Now he wants to marry me. Go on, Ruthie, you’d have married Leib if he’d ever asked you, and don’t tell me different. Talk about tall, dark and handsome. Besides, it’s patriotic.” Trudi was the fourth of her girlfriends to marry since December seventh, all to men about to go into the services.
When Trudi had asked Ruthie to stand up for her, Ruthie had longed to make an excuse. She did not like to run into Leib; it still hurt. She did not think she had truly loved him. Always there had been something in him she had mistrusted. She had taken that for granted, as how it was with men—but with Murray it was not that way.
“Mama, I don’t like to pressure you, but maybe I’ll have to go with the hem pinned. Listen, it doesn’t matter it isn’t perfectly straight all the way around. It’s not my wedding, nobody’s going to be looking at me.”
“My daughter, going to a wedding in front of Rabbi Honig with her skirt stuck up with pins? You may not dress up like a movie star, but we don’t need to go out before people full of pins.”
Mama had lost some weight and she wore
her hair pinned up on her head now instead of pulled back in a ragged knot. She was running a little nursery for babies and toddlers of women in the neighborhood who had gone to work. Thirty-one dollars was all the allotment a husband overseas sent home. Nobody could live on that. What few nurseries existed cost a fortune.
Mama charged sixty cents a day for toddlers, fifty for babies and two meat coupons. She gave them two meals and an afternoon nap. Sharon had her own kids mixed into the pack and was helping. The house was crammed with howling babbling kiddies from seven in the morning till seven at night. Mama and Sharon were clearing about twenty a week. Art had finally been taken on at Fisher Body, working the graveyard shift, meaning they had to keep the little ones downstairs so he could catch his sleep. Arty didn’t care for the project, saying they’d get in trouble with the law because they weren’t licensed. Ruthie had researched the Wayne County law, and there was just no way anybody in their position could meet those requirements—or the neighborhood women could afford it if such a fancy place were set up.
“Have you heard anything from your fellow?” Mama asked, her mouth full of pins.
“Mama, you get the mail before I see it every day. I only answered his Saturday letter on Tuesday.” She wished Mama wouldn’t ask her about Murray’s letters, for they meant too much to her. He was down South, which she pictured as an area of swamps, magnolias, live oaks, Spanish moss and night riders in sheets indistinguishable from storm troopers, who burned crosses and Jews and colored people. It was a dangerous place, almost as dangerous as wherever he might next be sent. Murray had finished out his semester; then in February he had enlisted.
“But why did you join the Marines?” she had asked him. “I thought we agreed on the Army and to try to get into the Signal Corps.”
“I can’t really tell you. There I am, I’ve just been through one of the most humiliating experiences of my life, treated like a side of beef, poked, prodded and I’m thinking what an idiot I am for my own survival to have gone into this willingly, and actually to feel relieved, to feel pleased when some bozo at a desk picks up an ACCEPTED instead of a REJECTED stamp. I’m standing there naked, Ruthie, stark naked, and these guys are sitting comfortable in their uniforms. I think I went for the one that seemed to cover the most. The marine seemed snappier than the others. He seemed to take it more seriously. The Army and the Navy, they were officers and they were making jokes to each other and when they looked at me, I felt they had contempt. I thought to myself, that’s what I want, somebody who understands this is a serious matter, fighting a war, and isn’t sitting there cracking jokes.”