“Yes,” he says. “I’m taking the hotel school exam in October.”
“But you were contemplating math, history, philology, archaeology... you never mentioned cookery.”
“That was...” Etienne considers. “That was before circumstances made it necessary that I...” He hesitates again. “I can’t stay at Saint-Ignace, I can’t take my bac, so I have to choose a métier now,” he finally says. “And I like to cook, so...”
Why can’t you stay at Saint-Ignace, I want to ask. Why can’t you take your bac? But I know why.
“Is this what you want? Really?” I finally ask.
“It’s what the situation demands.”
Lourdes
Every morning before breakfast Mother listens to a fitness program in the bathroom, and she does all the exercises on a mat covered with a blue towel. Meanwhile, we’re all around, brushing our teeth, shaving, getting dressed. There’s ample room for all of us — the bathroom is nearly as large as our bedroom. It’s also very sunny, with a view of the avenue, wide and windswept, the Café de la Gare, and the railway station’s forecourt. Often, you can even see the Pyrenees in the background. This morning the radio is still on as Mother brushes her hair and rubs cream onto her face. The next program is about vacation camps for children, where you get to climb rocks, sail and row, with instructors, and without any parents around.
At the end of the morning, I catch Father alone in the tasting room and ask him if I could go to one of those camps. “Youth camps?” he says. “I heard about them during the Occupation. Pétain set them up. But they were for boys. Paramilitary, I think.”
Forget it. He doesn’t have a clue. I ask Mother just in case, and as usual she doesn’t seem to hear. But in the afternoon as she’s having tea with her friends I mention the idea again, and Cami Espeluque brightens.
“You know, I’m going to look into this,” she says. “Vacation has hardly started and the girls are already complaining about being bored. I don’t feel like going away this year, we’ll just spend some time with my mother in the country. Fine for the twins, but Anne-Claude is always so restless there.” Cami seems to remember that an acquaintance of hers from Narbonne once mentioned a camp somewhere in the Pyrenees; maybe her daughters could go, with Coralie and me. Mother says why not.
Cami soon comes up with the news: we can all go in August, for two weeks. Coralie is enthusiastic, so are Anne-Claude and her sister Sylvie. The camp takes place far away in the Pyrenees, near Lourdes, a town famous for apparitions and miracles, where millions of the crippled and sick go to drink the water or bathe in it. And get healed (or not).
On the first Monday in August, before sunrise, Cami drives the four of us, with our bags, to a place near Narbonne and leaves us in the yard of what looks like a convent, with scores of other girls who all seem to know each other. When she kisses me, I have a hard time keeping back the tears. Cami is so cute with her black curls, her big red mouth, her scent of hyacinth and peach. I want to get back in the car with her.
But here I am, and here are my friends. I look around. Coralie is climbing a statue — an angel with large worn-out wings. Anne-Claude is looking for something in her bag. Sylvie sucks her thumb, huddled against her sister. All the other girls are busy talking to each other, laughing, jumping around and making faces. No, there’s one near the chapel door who doesn’t seem to belong. I go over to her. She’s tall, muscular, with a wide placid mouth. “Hello,” I say. “I’m Tita, I come from Cugnac.”
I don’t know who starts it, but we shake hands like grown-ups. Her hand is big and strong. “Françoise,” she says. “My mother’s family is from Narbonne, but we live in Berlin. Where’s Cugnac?”
Françoise doesn’t know anybody here, but she knows that this place is a patronage or patro, a club her mother and aunt used to attend every Thursday when they were kids. They didn’t have camps for girls back then, and her mother was envious because the boys’ club went camping in the summer.
“When my mother talked about a camp,” Françoise says, “I thought we’d sleep in tents. Then the nuns told us we wouldn’t, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to go any more. But my mother just inherited a house in Sigean, full of all kinds of stuff. My parents are busy sorting it all out, so they said I’d be better off in the mountains. We’ll see!”
A nun in the middle of the yard is telling us to get in line, two by two — the bus is outside. “That’s Mother Honorine, the camp leader,” Françoise says. She also points out Sister Brigitte and Sister Gisèle, Mother Honorine’s assistants. She met them last week when she came to register with her mother. Nothing but nuns? How are we going to sail, let alone climb rocks? Will they take off their tunics, their coifs and veils and wimples?
Sister Brigitte is busy making Coralie climb down from the angel’s wing she’s been riding. Coralie takes my hand to get in the bus. “Can we go home?” she asks in a small helpless voice I’ve never heard before. I settle her next to me, give her the latest issue of Mickey before shoving our bags under our seats. “I’d rather you told me a story of little girls who hide in garrets,” she says. So I do, until she falls asleep in my lap.
After many hours in the bus, we stop in front of a long white house on the flank of a mountain, with a view of Lourdes far away in the valley. The nuns make us fill glass jugs with water from the sinks and carry them to the Formica tables in the refectory.
“Choose a seat and drink some water as an apéritif,” Sister Brigitte says. “Lunch will be ready soon.” But there’s something very wrong with this water: the smell is revolting. I don’t even try to bring the glass to my lips, but others do, and they all start hollering. “What’s this? Horrible! Poison!”
“Shush! There’s nothing to worry about,” Mother Honorine barks. “We had it checked. The pipes are new, that’s all. It will get better by and by.” Everybody’s still grumbling, but some girls let themselves be persuaded, Coralie among them.
The whole place has a dismal odour of plastic, burned coffee and dishwater. I run outside through the back door. Mountains all around. I decide I don’t like mountains, not when they’re this close. Their shapes: the silly folds, the pompous peaks.
An electric bell: lunch, inside. A girl they call Delphine, who looks around twelve, brings a large transparent gratin dish from the kitchen, and shovels the contents onto our plates: hard potatoes in lukewarm milk, stinky bits of veal. I’d die rather than touch any of this. Coralie, Anne-Claude and Sylvie hesitate. Françoise cuts a slice of meat, brings it to her mouth, chews for two seconds, then puts down her fork and runs to the bathroom. The other girls at our table are half-heartedly moving the food around, nibbling bread.
Françoise is back. “If the cook hasn’t arrived,” she says, “why didn’t they just give us sandwiches?”
Sandwiches, like for a picnic? Is this something they do in Berlin?
Delphine shakes her head. “There won’t be a cook. Last year and the year before, my mother came along to organize the cooking. This year she couldn’t, because my grandfather broke his hip. So in the kitchen it’s just Sister Bri and a local volunteer who looks terrified of her. I asked if I could help, but I was only allowed to carry the dishes.”
“Why didn’t they bring Sister Anne?” another girl asks.
“Sister Anne needs to stay at the convent to cook for the nuns,” Delphine says. “And for the visitors. There are quite a few Spanish girls at the school who came for the summer to learn French.”
Convent, patro, school, camp — all these words are floating dizzily around in my head, touching, separating, blending. I keep my hands in front of my nose so as not to smell the gratin. The other girls sigh and wait until Sister Gisèle, who has a soft, quavering voice and looks more tractable than the other two, comes to tell us that for once she’ll make an exception because it’s our first meal and we must be tired from the bus ride. As a rule, we won’t get dessert until our plates are clean.
“Try to eat as much as you can,” she says. �
��When you’re done, you can go and empty your plates into the big plastic pan on the kitchen table. But remember, this... shouldn’t happen again. You have to eat, because you’re going to get a lot of exercise.”
Dessert, in another of their long transparent dishes, smells of burnt milk. The patro girls call it a tart: over a hard black bottom, lumps of flour and... something watery. Coralie and Sylvie, after some shilly-shallying, scrape off as much as they can from the charred crust and actually eat a few spoonfuls of the filling. I’m not in the least hungry, but horribly thirsty, and I can’t imagine what to drink. Not that water. Then Mother Honorine growls that we must all take our bags into the dormitories, put them away in the boxes by our beds, and take a nap.
A nap! I don’t think I’ve had a nap in the last five years. Naps are for babies. Coralie and our friends are muttering, but the other girls seem to be taking this in stride. I catch sight of Sister Gisèle. “Do we have to take a nap?” I ask. “If we’re not sleepy, can we just play quietly?” I’m trying to be diplomatic.
“You do have to take a nap,” she says. “And you’ll feel the need for it when we’ve started our activities. There will be days when we do whole-day outings, and you’ll miss it. You’ll see.”
I doubt it. But at least this woman has a soft voice. From my bag, I take out a heavy book with a tacky cover: a woman with golden hair, half-closed eyes and glutinous lipstick on her chunky mouth; below her, a city skyline, high buildings, before a setting sun.
Yesterday I was wondering what book I’d take to camp. Mother said we were only allowed one book. We could only have in our bags what was on a list they sent her. Mother called to make sure. Her problem was that the list said only one woolen sweater, and she worried about what would happen if it got wet, or dirty. The camp leader was adamant: our bags would be checked before we got on the bus, and anything that was not on the list would be given back to the parents.
One book for two weeks! I’m definitely into grown-up books now, but I didn’t feel I could steal one from Father’s shelves. I was walking around the house, trying to think. In one of our attics I found, at the bottom of a heap, a thick collection of La Petite Illustration, but the cover looked fragile, with a corner already torn off, so I thought I’d better leave that for later. Then I wandered into Justine’s room. On her desk was a book that seemed to be waiting for me. As soon as I opened it I knew I’d want to read on, even though the main character was seventeen, not seven.
Her name, Marjorie Morgenstern, is also the title of the novel. No! I can see now that the title is Marjorie Morningstar, the name she chooses for herself as an actress. Marjorie reminds me of Justine, but she lives in a place called New York. Last night before going to bed I looked at the globe in Father’s study and found New York, a city on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.
Last night! I was in my own bed, with only Coralie in the room, in our comfortable-smelling house, doing mostly what I liked. What madness made me want to come here? Why did I believe the words of a stranger on the radio, who was probably talking about something completely different anyway? And the net result is that not only I but my sister and my friends are exiled for two weeks in this realm of reeking water, noxious food, and preposterous naps.
The whole dorm has been whispering and tittering for quite a while. Coralie wiggles out of her bed. “Mother Ho is a witch!” she enunciates in my ear.
“Mother Ho?” I ask.
“That’s what the patro girls call her.”
“Quick, get back to your bed,” I say. Mother Ho, from the other end of the dormitory, is booming, “Shush, all of you! I don’t want to hear a peep!” Soon she’s standing in front of my bed, a malevolent look on her tiny slat of a face. “You must sleep, not read!”
I look her straight in the eye. “Yes, Mother,” I say, and set the book on my night table. Marjorie Morningstar is certainly not a children’s book; I hope the cover won’t give this away. But Mother Ho doesn’t even glance in its direction. She’s scrutinizing me as if I were an incongruous insect. But she’s not going to spend the whole afternoon checking on us. As soon as she starts back to the door, I take up my book. I don’t even wait.
The Bronx. What a strange word. It rumbles inside the mouth before hissing out. Marjorie no longer lives in the Bronx but in Manhattan, and she’s very happy about this. El Dorado is the name of her building, her flat is on the seventeenth floor. Seventeenth floor! And it sounds real, I mean possible, not like a fairy tale. She’s been to a dance at a place called Columbia, with young men who “live in the dormitories”.
In our dormitory, the whispers are back. Coralie in the next bed is masturbating. I learned this word from Etienne last week; he said everybody does it, so I must be an exception. He also said that it’s good for your health. Sylvie, her eyes on Coralie, sucks her thumb and fondles her fluffy tiger. Anne-Claude’s eyes are closed. Françoise is at the other end of the dorm. There are no curtains on the windows, so the room is inundated with light. I go on reading for a while. Suddenly, a lull: Mother Ho is again stalking the narrow passage between the two rows of beds. I go on with my book, and she doesn’t stop.
Grotto
After our nap, time for bread and chocolate in the dining room, and tinny water flavoured with grenadine. The syrup can’t overcome the foul taste, but my mouth is parched so I drink a whole glass anyway. I also have a slice of bread. The bread at least is okay, huge loaves like you find in villages.
After this, Mother Ho and her sidekick Sister Bri take us out in front of the house. They have whistles hanging from their necks. As they start wielding them, the girls jump into rows. Then, each time a nun blows her instrument, the first girl in a row turns around towards the others, shouts something and makes weird gestures, imitating maybe some animal. The rest of the row yells something back. With the next round of whistles, each row of girls, in turn, recites something in unison, with words like “faith”, “obedient”, “cheerful”, “heart” and “Jesus”.
The four of us Cugnacaises are standing against the wall with Françoise, and nobody’s paying any attention to us, they’re all so busy with their thrilling rites. When they’ve exhausted themselves shouting and moving around the place in rows and circles, they scramble down into the forest, apparently on some kind of mission. There we are, alone on the terrace, and the two nuns finally catch sight of us. “What are you doing here?” Mother Ho says. “Which is your patrol?”
“No patrol,” Anne-Claude says. “We’re from Cugnac.”
“I’m not from Cugnac,” Françoise says, “but...”
“Oh, I see. Well, just follow the rest.”
Françoise dashes down the slope, leaving us to dawdle. At the bottom, she turns around. “Are you coming?” she calls. “Shall I wait for you?”
Anne-Claude and I glance towards the house: the nuns have gone in. “No, thanks!” Anne-Claude shouts back to Françoise. “Go ahead!”
We stroll down to the forest and sit on tree trunks. “Do you think these girls are Guides?” Anne-Claude asks me. “Last year I read a novel about Guides. I think it took place in England, though.”
“What are Guides supposed to do?” I ask.
“I’m trying to remember. Sleep in tents? Wear uniforms? Have a totem, exchange their name for an animal’s? Get badges? Play hare and hounds?”
“At least the patro girls don’t have uniforms,” I say.
“Why do they shout at each other so?” Sylvie whimpers. “They don’t even sound like they’re angry, but they hurt my ears.”
I feel especially bad about bringing Sylvie to this place. In Cugnac, I hardly paid any attention to her. She’s nearly my age, but for me she was just Anne-Claude’s sister, a quiet kid in Group One. Since we came here I’ve been worrying about her, because she’s not grown-up and sensible like Anne-Claude, or energetic like Coralie. She’s sweet and dreamy, unprepared for hardships.
“We’ll have to blend in somehow,” Anne-Claude says. “We might even need to
become like them. Or pretend.”
“I want to be an Indian!” Coralie cries. “In this forest! Why didn’t Mother let me pack my Red Indian outfit? I’m an Indian anyway. Sylvie, you’re a cowboy. Look at that branch over there! That can be your horse. Let’s play!”
Anne-Claude and I say we’ll be the cowboy’s mother and the Indian’s wife; we’ll keep house here while Coralie fights Sylvie and her horse. I don’t feel like moving.
Anne-Claude could remind me that this was all my idea, but she just lies down on the moss and hides her face with her arms. Her long black hair is spread out around her head, and bedecked with pine needles. “Tomorrow we’re supposed to go to Lourdes,” she says after a while. “There’s holy water there. Maybe we can drink some! Or could it be the same as the water here? Is it the holiness that tastes so rank?”
“Then we can buy Vichy,” I say. “I have some money.”
“At least we’ll get away from here,” Anne-Claude says.
The patro girls are back, stumbling and puffing. It sounds like the first patrol won: they tracked down whatever booty they were supposed to find.
Anne-Claude stands up. “I guess we’d better head back to the house,” she says. “Sylvie, Coralie, come on! Time for prizes and prayers!”
We wash our hands while the bell rings again. When we come into the refectory, we see Françoise sitting with a bunch of older girls at a table where two seats are still free. “Shall we?” Anne-Claude asks me. “No,” I say. “You go, and I’ll sit here with Coralie and Sylvie.”
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