by Judith Kerr
“C’est bien pourvu que ça dure,” she would say disapprovingly at the news of every new triumph, which meant, “It’s good as long as it lasts”.
Then he told them how her forebodings came true, how half the French army was destroyed in the disastrous campaign against Russia, and finally of Napoleon’s lonely death on the tiny island of St. Helena.
Anna and Max listened entranced.
“It’s just like a film,” said Max.
“Yes,” said Papa thoughtfully. “Yes, it is.”
It was nice, thought Anna, that Papa had more time to talk to them these days. This was because owing to the Depression the Daily Parisian had been reduced in size and could no longer print so many of his articles. But Mama and Papa did not think it was a good thing at all and Mama, in particular, was always worrying about money.
“We can’t go on like this!” Anna once heard her say to Papa. “I always knew we should have gone to England in the first place.”
But Papa only shrugged his shoulders and said, “It’ll sort itself out.”
Soon after this Papa became very busy again and Anna could hear him typing till late at night in his room, so she assumed that it had indeed “sorted itself out” and stopped thinking about it. She was, in any case, much too interested in school to pay much attention to what was happening at home. The certificat d’études loomed ever larger and closer and she was determined to pass it. After only a year and nine months in France she thought this would be a very splendid thing.
At last the day arrived and early one hot morning in July Madame Socrate led her class through the streets to a neighbouring school. They were to take the exam supervised by strange teachers so as to make it quite fair. It had all to be got through in one day, so there was not much time for each of the many subjects they were to be examined in. There was French, arithmetic, history, geography, singing, sewing, art and gym.
Arithmetic came first—an hour’s paper in which Anna thought she acquitted herself quite well, then French dictation, then a ten-minute break.
“How did you get on?” Anna asked Colette.
“All right,” said Colette.
So far it had not been too bad.
After break they were given two papers of questions on history and geography, each lasting half an hour, and then—disaster!
“As we are a little short of time,” announced the teacher in charge, “it has been decided that this year, instead of examining candidates in both sewing and art, and adding the marks together as in previous years, you will be examined in sewing only and that this will count as a whole subject.”
Sewing was what Anna was worst at. She could never remember the names of the different stitches and, perhaps because Mama was so bad at it, she thought the whole business was an awful waste of time. Even Madame Socrate had never been able to persuade her to become interested in it. She had cut out an apron for her to hem, but Anna had been so slow at getting on with it that by the time it was finished she had grown too tall to wear it.
The teacher’s pronouncement therefore plunged her into deep gloom which was confirmed when she was given a square of material, a needle and thread and some incomprehensible instructions. For half an hour she guessed wildly, tore her thread and picked frantically at knots which seemed to appear from nowhere, and finally handed in a piece of sewing so ragged and crumpled that even the teacher collecting it looked startled at the sight of it.
Lunch in the school playground with Colette was a glum affair.
“If you fail one subject, do you automatically fail the whole exam?” Anna asked as they sat eating their sandwiches on a bench in the shade.
“I’m afraid so,” said Colette, “unless you get distinctions in another subject—then that makes up for it.”
Anna ran through the exams she had already taken in her mind. Except for sewing she had done well in them all—but not well enough to have got distinctions. Her chances of passing seemed very slender.
However, she cheered up a little when she saw the subjects set for French composition in the afternoon. There were three to chose from and one of them was “A journey”. Anna decided to describe what she imagined Papa’s journey must have been like when he had travelled from Berlin to Prague with a high temperature, not knowing whether or not he would be stopped at the frontier. There was a whole hour allowed for it and as she wrote Papa’s journey became more and more vivid to her. She felt she knew exactly what it must have been like, what Papa’s thoughts must have been and how, owing to the temperature, he would keep getting confused between what he was thinking and what was actually happening. By the time Papa had arrived in Prague she had written nearly five pages, and she just had time to check them through for punctuation and spelling before they were collected. She thought it was one of the best compositions she had ever written, and if only it had not been for the beastly sewing she would be sure now of having passed.
The only exams still to come were singing and gym. The singing tests were held separately for each child but as time was getting short they were very brief.
“Sing the Marseillaise,” commanded the teacher but stopped Anna after the first few bars. “Good—that will do,” she said and then cried, “Next!”
There were only ten minutes left for gym.
“Quickly! Quickly!” cried the teacher as she herded the children into the playground and told them to spread out. There was another teacher to help her, and together they arranged the children in four long lines a metre or two apart.
“Attention!” cried one of the teachers. “Everyone stand on your right leg with your left leg raised off the ground in front of you!”
Everyone did, except Colette who stood on her left leg by mistake and had surreptitiously to change over. Anna stood dead straight, her arms held out to balance herself and her left leg raised as high as she could. Out of the corner of her eye she could see some of the others, and nobody’s leg was as high off the ground as her own. The two teachers walked between the lines of children, some of whom were now beginning to wobble and collapse, and made notes on a piece of paper. When they came to Anna they stopped.
“Very good!” said one of them.
“Really excellent,” said the other. “Don’t you think...?”
“Oh, definitely!” said the first teacher, and made a mark on the piece of paper.
“That’s it! You can go home now!” they called when they got to the end of the line, and Colette rushed up to Anna and embraced her.
“You’ve done it! You’ve done it!” she cried. “You’ve got distinctions in gym, so now it won’t matter if you’ve failed in sewing!”
“Do you really think so?” said Anna, but she felt pretty sure of it herself.
She walked home through the hot streets glowing with happiness and could hardly wait to tell Mama all about it.
“You mean to say that because you were so good at standing on one leg it won’t matter that you can’t sew?” said Mama. “What an extraordinary exam!”
“I know,” said Anna, “but I suppose it’s things like French and arithmetic that are really important and I think I did quite well in those.”
Mama had made some cold lemon squash and they sat drinking it together in the dining-room while Anna rattled on. “We should have the results in a few days’ time—it can’t be much more because it’s nearly the end of term. Wouldn’t it be grand if I’d really passed—after less than two years in France!”
Mama agreed that it would indeed be grand, when the door bell rang and Max appeared looking pale and excited.
“Mama,” he said almost before he had got through the door. “You’ve got to come to the prize-giving on Saturday. If you’ve got anything else on you’ve got to cancel it. It’s very important!”
Mama looked very pleased.
“Have you won the Latin prize then?” she asked.
But Max shook his head.
“No,” he said, and the rest of the sentence seemed somehow to stick in h
is throat. “I’ve won...” he said, and finally brought out, “I’ve won the prix d’excellence! That means they think I’m the best student in the class.”
Of course there was delight and praise from everyone. Even Papa was interrupted in his typing to hear the great news, and Anna thought it was just as wonderful as everyone else. But she could not help wishing that it had not come just at this very moment. She had worked so hard and thought so long about passing the certificat d’études. After this, even if she did pass, how could anyone possibly be impressed? Especially since her success would be partly due to her talent for standing on one leg?
When the results were announced it was not nearly as exciting as she had expected. She had passed, so had Colette and so had most of the class. Madame Socrate handed each successful candidate an envelope containing a certificate with her name on it. But when Anna opened hers she found something more. Attached to the certificate were two ten franc notes and a letter from the Mayor of Paris.
“What does it mean?” she asked Madame Socrate.
Madame Socrate’s wrinkled face broke into a delighted smile.
“The Mayor of Paris has decided to award prizes for the twenty best French compositions written by children taking the certificat d’études,” she explained. “It seems that you have been awarded one of them.”
When Anna told Papa he was just as pleased as he had been about Max’s prix d’excellence.
“It’s your first professional fee as a writer,” he said. “It’s really remarkable to have earned it in a language not your own.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
The summer holidays arrived and Anna suddenly realised that no one had said anything about going away. It was very hot. You could feel the heat of the pavement through the soles of your shoes and the sun seemed to soak deep into the streets and the houses, so that they did not cool even at night. The Fernands had left for the seaside right after the end of term, and as July turned into August Paris gradually emptied. The paper shop at the corner was the first to put up a sign saying “Closed until September” but several others soon followed. Even the owner of the shop where Papa had bought the sewing machine had put up his shutters and gone away.
It was difficult to know what to do during the long hot days. The flat was stifling, and even in the shady square where Anna and Max usually played the heat was too great for them to do anything very interesting. They would throw a ball about or play with their spinning tops for a while, but they soon became tired and sank on to a seat to dream of swimming and cold drinks.
“Wouldn’t it be lovely,” said Anna, “if we were sitting by the edge of Lake Zurich and could just jump in!”
Max pulled at his shirt where it had stuck to his skin.
“It’s not likely to happen,” he said. “We’ve hardly enough money to pay the rent, let alone go away.”
“I know,” said Anna. But it sounded so gloomy that she added, “Unless someone buys Papa’s film script.”
Papa’s film script had been inspired by his conversation with the children about Napoleon. It was not about Napoleon himself but about his mother—how she had brought up her children without any money, how all their lives were changed by Napoleon’s success and how at last she outlived him, an old blind lady, long after his final defeat. It was the first film script Papa had ever written and he had been working on it when Anna imagined that things had “sorted themselves out” with the Daily Parisian. Since the paper was now in greater difficulties than ever she hoped that the film would make Papa’s fortune instead—but up to now there had been little sign of it.
Two French film companies to whom Papa had shown it had returned it with depressing speed. Finally Papa had sent it to a Hungarian film director in England, and this seemed an even less likely bet since it was not known for certain whether the Hungarian could read German. Also, thought Anna, why should the English, who had been Napoleon’s greatest enemies, be more eager to make a film about him than the French? But at least the script had not yet come back, so there was still hope.
“I don’t really think anyone’s going to buy that film, do you?” said Max. “And I don’t know what Papa and Mama are going to do for money.”
“Oh, something will turn up,” said Anna, but secretly she was a little frightened. Suppose nothing turned up. What then?
Mama was more irritable than they had ever known her. Quite small things seemed to upset her, like the time when Anna had broken her hairslide.
“Why couldn’t you have been more careful?” Mama had stormed, and when Anna pointed out that the hairslide only cost thirty centimes, Mama had shouted, “Thirty centimes is thirty centimes!” and had insisted on trying to glue the hairslide together again before buying a new one. Once she had said, out of the blue, “How would you children like to stay with Omama for a while?”
Max had answered, “Not at all!” and they had all laughed, but afterwards it did not seem so funny.
At night in the dark, hot bedroom Anna worried what would happen if Papa’s financial situation did not improve. Would she and Max really be sent away?
Halfway through August a letter arrived from England. It was signed by the Hungarian film director’s secretary. She said that the Hungarian film director thanked Papa for the script and that he looked forward to reading anything written by so distinguished an author, but that he felt he must warn Papa of the general lack of interest in films about Napoleon at present.
Mama, who had got quite excited at the sight of the English stamp, was deeply disappointed.
“He’s had it nearly a month and he hasn’t even read it yet!” she cried. “If only we were in England! Then we could do something about it!”
“I can’t think what,” said Papa—but lately “if only we were in England” had become Mama’s constant cry. It was not only because of the nice English governess she had had as a child, but she kept hearing of other refugees who had settled in England and found interesting work. She hated the French papers for not asking Papa to write for them and she hated the French film companies for rejecting his film, and most of all she hated being always so short of money that even the purchase of small necessities like a new tube of toothpaste became a major worry.
About two weeks after the letter from England, things came to a head. It began when something went wrong with Mama’s bed. She was trying to make it after breakfast, and when she had packed the sheets and pillows away and was about to turn it back into a sofa, it suddenly stuck. The padded seat-cum-mattress which was supposed to slide over the bedding refused to move. She called Max to help her and they both pushed, but it was no use. The seat stuck obstinately out into the room while Mama and Max mopped their faces, for it was already very hot. “Oh, why does something always have to go wrong!” cried Mama and then added, “The concierge will have to fix it. Anna, run and ask her to come up.”
This was not a very attractive task. Recently, in order to save money, Mama had terminated the arrangement by which the concierge came up each day to help with the cleaning, and now the concierge was always very bad-tempered. But fortunately Anna met her just outside the door.
“I’ve brought up the mail,” said the concierge—it was only a circular—“and I’ve come for the rent.”
“Good morning, Madame,” said Papa politely as always, meeting the concierge in the hall, and, “Could you have a look at this bed?” asked Mama as the concierge followed Anna into her room.
The concierge gave the bed a perfunctory push.
“I expect the children have been messing about with it,” she said and then repeated, “I’ve come for the rent.”
“The children haven’t been near it,” said Mama crossly, “and what’s all this about the rent? It’s not due till tomorrow.”
“Today,” said the concierge.
“But it’s not the first of September.”
In reply the concierge pointed silently to the date on a newspaper she was carrying in her hand.
“Oh, ver
y well,” said Mama and called to Papa, “It’s the rent.”
“I didn’t realise it was due today,” said Papa. “I’m afraid I shall have to give it to you tomorrow,” whereupon a peculiarly unpleasant expression came over the concierge’s face.
Mama looked worriedly at Papa.
“But I don’t understand,” she said quickly in German. “Didn’t you go to the Daily Parisian yesterday?”
“Of course,” said Papa, “but they asked me to wait until this morning.”
Recently the Daily Parisian had been in such difficulties that the editor sometimes found it hard to pay Papa even for the few articles that he was able to publish, and just now he owed him for three of them.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about to each other,” the concierge interrupted rudely, “but the rent is due today. Not tomorrow but today.”
Both Mama and Papa were surprised by her tone.
“You’ll get your rent,” said Mama, the colour rising in her face. “Now will you please fix this ramshackle contraption so that I shall have somewhere to sleep tonight!”
“Hardly worth my while, is it?” said the concierge, making no move to do so. “I mean—people who can’t even pay the rent on time...!”
Papa looked very angry.
“I will not have you talk to my wife in that tone!” he said, but the concierge was unimpressed.
“Giving yourself airs,” she said, “with nothing to show for it!”
At this Mama lost her temper.
“Will you please fix this bed!” she shouted. “And if you can’t fix it, get out!”
“Ha!” said the concierge. “Hitler knew what he was doing when he got rid of people like you!”