by Joanna Gruda
“Sometimes I wonder.”
CHAPTER 33
Saint-Maur-des-Fossés
You might be tempted to think that it had something to do with the episode of the sneezing powder, but Francine assured me it didn’t: one month after my three-day suspension, she informed me that I would no longer be going to Jean-Baptiste-Say, that I would no longer be living with Michel and her, and that I would be a boarder in a little school in Saint-Maur-des-Fossés, not far from Paris. For the first time, I spoke up to protest against this change in my life the adults had planned for me.
“I like it here, nobody suspects a thing, I have friends, everything is great. Why do I have to move again?”
“It’s your mother’s decision. She has her reasons.”
“Then let her come and explain them to me in person. She’s not the one who has to make up a new story every time, and always has to be careful not to make mistakes whenever she opens her mouth. I want to know her reasons, and if they’re no good, I don’t see why I should move from here!”
Francine didn’t say anything. She looked sad. Suddenly I felt uncomfortable. What if it was Michel and Francine who were afraid, and wanted to avoid putting their own son’s life in danger because of me?
“You know, your mother isn’t doing this just to annoy you. I am sure that someday, when you grow up, she’ll be able to justify every decision she has made. And that she won’t regret a single one.”
“But I’m big now, I’m fourteen! Let her come and justify her decisions, and if it’s true she has good reasons, then I’ll go to Saint-More-of-the-Fussies without a fuss, and I’ll re-re-rehearse my story all over again, or even make up a brand-new one.”
“She can’t come right now, it would be too dangerous, for her and for us. You have to trust her and not ask any questions. I promise you that you’ll understand someday, when the war is over.”
Lena. Her maternal instinct was not very developed. I’d had several mothers in my life, and so I was able to compare. And at times I suffered because of it, and this must have influenced my opinion of her. But it would be unfair not to mention her superb qualities as a militant, which were the reason for this new change in my life. Lena was a very important member of the Resistance. She was brave. And intelligent. And extremely intuitive, which is no doubt what helped her to survive the war.
According to what she told me later on, one of my mother’s resistance strategies was to always leave the house well dressed, wearing makeup, and perfectly groomed. In France, roundups were generally carried out by French policemen, so it was surely a good tactic. One day she was standing on the platform in the métro when she saw some police officers asking everyone for their papers. In her handbag my mother had some leaflets from the Resistance. Like a shot, she went straight up to be first to be checked by the officers. She begged them, simpering, “Oh please, oh please, officer, I’m in the most terrible hurry, I have a date with my lover, and I’m already terribly late.” She went ahead of everyone without even having to show her papers, while the policeman gave her a knowing wink.
I had no choice, I had to get ready to move yet again. We came up with a new version of Roger Binet’s life, somewhere in between the one used in Normandy and the one used in Jean-Baptiste-Say. Once again I had fun learning the broad outlines and inventing new details.
One week after learning that I would have to move, I was boarding with Monsieur Barbier, a math teacher at my new school, the lycée at Saint-Maur-des-Fossés. There were about a dozen of us boys living upstairs in a huge house, while the teacher lived on the ground floor. We tried to avoid him as much as we could, this surly old man with a white beard full of tiny relics of his meals.
This time it was the French teacher I liked best of all, Monsieur Noiret. He had us read books we really liked, not just the things “you have to have read in order to show you have some culture.” And I found out that required reading can bring you as much happiness as a book you’ve chosen yourself. Maybe because we didn’t expect anything, and we thought we’d be bored to hell. So when, instead, you find yourself captivated, and you become feverishly absorbed in the story, and you keep delaying the time to switch off the light to go to sleep, it’s even more intoxicating than with an author you know in advance you will like. Monsieur Noiret gave us novels that were for young people, not children, books that had bad words in them, for example. Like The War of the Buttons, which has this sentence I adore: “Fancy-schmancy, super-duper, shit, how amazing,” which became the favorite expression of the fifth-year students at the Collège in Saint-Maur-des-Fossés. And there were the shorter versions: “That’s fancy-schmancy, super-duper!” or “Shit, that’s super-duper!” And of course, a new insult was added to our repertory: “candy-ass.”
We were in the thick of the war. It was the real thing, with heavy bombing and all. You could sense the end was in sight . . . and victory. When we were at the lycée and heard the air raid sirens, we had to rush out into the trenches dug in the schoolyard. Sometimes we were glad to have a break, it was almost like recess. For example, there was one time when the English teacher had just asked me a tricky question, and the sirens started up. And when we got back to class and the teacher asked, “Right, where were we, before the air raid?” the others were terrific, no one said a thing. But in the long run you got tired of it, those endless minutes when you were all crammed together in the trenches. So a few pals and I began discreetly slipping off to run and jump in the Marne. After all, we had all learned that the bombing only killed other people. And besides, there was no danger that the Americans might start bombing swimmers! By day, it was mainly the Americans bombing, from very high up, with their immense flying fortresses.
At night, at Monsieur Barbier’s, we would go down into the cellar when the sirens started wailing. There too, we began to see how pointless it was, and above all, how boring. So after the first few times, we went to sit rather out on the roof of the house. From there we could watch a magnificent show: the DCA, the antiaircraft defense, lit up the planes with huge searchlights (at night, these were mainly English planes, flying very low) and shot at them; we also saw the fireworks created by the rockets the planes fired to show where to bomb . . . This was a hundred times better than any fireworks display. And sometimes, if we were lucky, the bombing was close enough for everything to begin to vibrate around us. When this happened, it was more than just fireworks, it was like being at an amusement park. In Saint-Maur-des-Fossés, during this period near the end of the war, we were rarely bored.
On Saturdays I went back to Paris. I would take the train as far as the Bastille, and from there I walked to Lena’s house (Madame Hélène Colombier) on the passage Montgallet in the twelfth arrondissement. I didn’t have any friends in the neighborhood, so I took a lot of reading along.
I also spent Easter vacation at Lena’s. One evening, looking very distraught, she told me that Saint-Maur-des-Fossés had been bombed! I immediately wondered whether the school had been hit and whether we’d have a long vacation. Imagine, what a thing to think . . . Naturally I soon realized that there might be people I knew among the wounded or the dead . . . but nearly all the students had left town for the vacation, and the teachers . . . Of course I’d be sad if any of the teachers had been killed . . . But if the school had been hit during the bombing raid and we had a nice long break, that wouldn’t be bad at all!
Except there are the things you imagine and there’s reality. The school wasn’t even remotely hit, and we went back to class on Tuesday morning as if nothing had happened. In the days that followed, we heard on the BBC that the bombing in Saint-Maur was an error which the Allies “sorely regretted” . . . As the town is on a bend of the Marne, they mistook it for Villeneuve-Saint-Georges, which is on a bend of the Seine, and where there is a major rail network.
One of my new friends in Saint-Maur was the Parakeet. We couldn’t figure out whether he was super smart or slightly touched in the head.
My theory was that he was always ready to play the idiot to make others laugh, but that he was actually quite a bit smarter than most of the students. But sometimes, I swear, he really got into it, his role as an idiot. Most of the boys really liked him because he made them laugh. At school he could be the best and sometimes the worst of dunces. And even then it was hard to come to a consensus about what it was that made him go from top to bottom of the class.
One day the Parakeet and I were trying to solve a particularly thorny math problem (he really was the best at math); he stopped working all of a sudden, raised his eyes to the heavens and said, “Do you realize, Roger, this is “April 4th, April 4th, 1944”. The fourth day of the fourth month, in the year 1944. We have to celebrate!”
We decided to leave our homework and do something really special. The only thing we could think of was to go and jump in the river, but the water was still icy. “We have to stay four minutes in the water, naturally!” shouted the Parakeet. Four minutes in the water on April 4th, it’s not all that easy. But my companion felt that we had no choice if we wanted our gesture to have any significance at all. So we started counting, both of us, screaming louder and louder to give ourselves courage, up to 240. When we came out of the water we were all wound up. We rolled in the grass like animals to dry off, and then we put on our clothes as quick as we could, over our bodies covered in grass and sand. Then we jumped up and down to get warm, before collapsing exhausted on the ground.
“What a great idea that was! Can you imagine, Roger, we might not have thought of it, we might not have realized the date, or come up with such a good idea for a celebration.”
“Yeah, that would’ve been a waste.”
“A real waste, pal, a real wasteful waste wasted wastefully!”
We watched silently as the sun set.
“It would have been even better to go into the water just as the sun was disappearing below the horizon,” said the Parakeet.
“Nothing is perfect. But you know what? We should do something special again together on May 5th, 1955.”
“Yeah . . . but what? We may not even be in touch anymore . . . ”
“Well, we can plan to meet all the same. We can decide on a place, a date . . . But we know that already, duh. And this time, we can make it at sunset.”
I could tell that in his head the Parakeet was thinking as fast as I was, trying to find THE good idea.
“I know!” said my friend with a shout. “The Eiffel Tower! On top of the Eiffel Tower, May 5th, 1955, at sunset. In eleven years, one month, and one day.”
Nothing wrong with that. It was perfect. We looked at each other: our pact was sealed.
I didn’t go to the meeting. On May 5th, 1955, I was in Moscow, a student at the University, and it wouldn’t have been possible to ask for permission to go on such a “futile” trip to France. I never found out whether the Parakeet had gone up the Eiffel Tower or not. But if I had been in Paris that day, I would have shown up, beyond the shadow of a doubt.
June 7, 1944. First class that morning: French. Monsieur Noiret was already seated when we came in, which was not like him. He looked at us with a smile, then adopted a solemn expression.
“I can see, from your excitement, that you are already aware of the events that occurred during the night. I think it would be a good idea to devote some of the class to discussing them together.”
We were all for it. As a rule, the adults preferred to tell us as little as possible, under the pretext that war wasn’t good for children. But Monsieur Noiret knew that we weren’t children anymore. And that we weren’t quite adults, either.
“Right. The things that are happening at the moment are so important that they eclipse what you’re learning at school—even literature, up to a point. For the time being, anyway . . . The Americans and their allies have finally decided to get seriously involved in the war. Something we’ve all been expecting for a long time. I think that this is a historical moment, that in a way this represents the beginning of the end for the Germans. I’m telling you this, something you already know, to emphasize the fact that there are soldiers from a number of different countries who, with their tanks and their weapons, landed in Normandy during the night. What is my point? It is that I was once your age, even though that might be difficult for you to imagine. And I know what idealism is, the desire to do something important, something heroic for one’s country, that can fill the souls of young people like you. So to conclude . . . ”
He broke off and looked around the classroom, pausing at length to stare at certain faces.
“To conclude, I want you to know that I believe we will be liberated soon. But also that anything you might do or not do will not change by one minute or one second the moment when that liberation comes. So I implore you, don’t do anything stupid! Concentrate on your studies, and let the grown-ups get on with the war.”
And he looked at us with his big gray eyes. I felt my cheeks burning . . . and my ears too. I lowered my head somewhat. Because he had not missed the mark, Monsieur Noiret, on the contrary. And I think I was not the only boy who knew he was on the money. I saw other lowered heads in front of me. It was true that I had given it some thought, and that we had spoken about it together, at night during the bombing, sitting up on the roof of our boarding house. That we had dreamed about it . . . I had even come up with a fairly precise plan. All I had to do was find a German officer and go up behind him without him noticing, grab his weapon, kill him, and then go off hunting for more German soldiers. It seemed normal to want to be a part of the liberation of France, to do my bit.
I wonder how many lives Monsieur Noiret saved that day.
CHAPTER 34
The Liberation Comes to Champagne
Summer had arrived, vacation time, and I was delighted to go back to Paris where I hoped to be when the city was liberated. I had grasped Monsieur Noiret’s point, and I had no intention of getting involved in anything, but I would have a front row seat for the show. Or at least, that’s what I wanted.
No sooner did I reach my mother’s place than she informed me that I would be going back to spend the summer with the Brisson family in Champagne. This was too much, she was going too far. It seemed to me that someday she would have to start taking my opinion into account regarding decisions that concerned me. But Lena was adamant.
“You are going, everything has been arranged.”
“And if I refuse?”
“You won’t refuse. This is not a suggestion, it’s an order. You are going.”
The argument went on late into the night. Two days later I was on the train to Épernay. Then another train as far as Mézy-Moulins. Where Albert was waiting for me with his horse and cart.
Back with the Brissons, I picked up my old habits from the previous summer. I saw Suzanne again, and she gave me some smiles that at least looked encouraging. But when I suggested going to the cinema, she gave me a funny look and told me she couldn’t. Then she stood there before me, looking at me with her eyes wide open. So I ventured, “Well, maybe some other time?”, less because I believed it than to fill the silence. She shrugged and walked away without answering. I had to resign myself that as far as this vacation was concerned, there would be no languorous kisses in the movie theater. Nor would it be Suzanne who helped me understand something about women.
Albert decided that I was big enough now to go with him to visit the villagers who wanted their pigs transformed into ham. Under the Occupation it was illegal to slaughter, sell, or eat one’s own pigs, because they were meant for the German occupier. But who was about to go and inform on Albert or the people who hired him? As I had some experience in slaughtering rabbits, I was neither too impressed nor disgusted by all the blood. It was just the animal’s cries as its throat was being cut that upset me. What I liked best of all were the delicious cutlets we brought home, which Yvonne made into a veritable feast.
Dow
n at the bottom of the village some Germans were posted to keep watch over the locks. The war had been going on long enough for their French to be rather good. I made friends with a certain Dieter, and played dice with him (our local Germans made excellent partners for games, because in general they had nothing to do). He also taught me how to go fishing with hand grenades—there were a great many fish in the river, so when I got the feeling I hadn’t done a bloody thing all day, I would ask Dieter to go fishing with me and I took a few fish home to the Brissons. Dieter also became my swimming instructor.
I was in the middle of a meal, sitting in the Brissons’ dining room, when I heard on the radio that there was an uprising in Paris. The police, sensing that the liberation was imminent, had begun firing on the Germans. People from the opposition, both communists and Gaullists, had joined in. Germans were being killed and arrested. Paris was seeing to its own liberation. We spent the day and part of the night listening to the news on the BBC.
Champagne was still occupied. But given the increasingly palpable tension that reigned, we could see that it was only a question of time. The German soldiers were leaving their cabins less and less frequently, which deprived me of my games of dice and fishing expeditions with Dieter.
One night I woke up with a start. There was shouting, banging, the sound of footsteps. I could hear cries of “Schnell, schnell,” and other orders I couldn’t understand. I rushed over to the window to look out. German soldiers seemed to be arriving from every side all at the same time, requisitioning everything in their path that might be useful: horses, bicycles, even donkeys. They went on shouting, pouring through the village all night long, then they disappeared shortly before dawn.
In the morning it was dead silent in Mont-Saint-Père. It was as if a hurricane had blown through there. The soldiers hadn’t hurt anyone, all they’d wanted was to find vehicles or animals so they could get out of there. Albert looked around glumly then turned to Yvonne and said, “I’ll bet that’s the last time any German soldiers go through here.” And he was right.