So I stopped packing my bag of precious things, even though I still felt the twinge of worry each summer.
For a few hours, I scroll through bushfire hashtags online and scour news sites from home. There’s some footage of helicopters flying above burning trees.
When my phone rings – Mum – my stomach lurches with fear.
‘It went, Sofie,’ she says, and her voice is tired. ‘We lost the house.’
‘Okay.’ My voice is very small, and it’s all I can say.
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Why are you sorry?’ My voice cracks, but no tears come. ‘It’s not your fault.’
‘I’m still sorry. And I love you.’
‘I love you too.’
After we hang up, I can’t help going down a news spiral. There have been bushfires before, there have been floods and cyclones, but they’re getting worse every year and no-one is quite sure what should be done about it. There are people who still claim that climate change isn’t real.
The government has said over and over again that it’s essential to invest in coal, that it’s important for the Australian economy. They say we’re doing a good job at reducing carbon emissions. They give tax breaks to the rich mining magnates.
It’s all lies, Crow’s said in the past. They’re even selling our water out from under us. If we don’t cut emissions now, we’re fucked.
For the first time in my life I am genuinely afraid that I won’t have a future. Will I die by flood or fire or famine?
When can I get on a manned mission to Mars? Though as Crow would remind me, more money is poured into the barest possibility of Mars than trying to ensure the world we have doesn’t end.
The world has been on the brink of ending so many times, and terrible things happen every day. I know this. I feel bad sometimes for thinking about kissing and boys when, in some other countries, people even younger than me are being blown up by roadside bombs. When the Amazon burns, and the Great Barrier Reef’s coral becomes bleached and Bezos’s Amazon workers are too worried to take toilet breaks without losing part of their pay cheque just so we can get anything we want delivered right to our doors.
And even though I know terrible things happen, I suddenly feel so terrified, as though my blood has turned to dirty lead in my veins. How is it possible that most of the time this knowledge just slips out from my head? I know all these things to be true, but it is very, very easy for me to forget them. Am I just as culpable as those who perpetuate this devastation?
Texts from Crow have come through while I was talking to Mum.
You heard about the bushfires here? They’re just going to get worse if we keep dragging our feet on climate change.
Mum called me. Grandad’s house just burned down.
Oh shit Sof. I’m sorry.
I feel far away today. I’ve been reading online obsessively. The fires are going to get worse?
Absolutely. And there’ll be more in the future. I’m organising a march. We’re walking out of school this Friday afternoon and going down to State Parliament together.
Even the teachers?
I dunno. I guess. Can you make us a poster?
I feel impotent. I can’t even imagine what kind of a poster I’d make.
I can try.
I feel kind of robotic, and zinging with a low-level hum of anxiety. I wonder if that hum is actually there all the time. I think it is. But when I see something pretty or make something pleasing or hear a piece of music, it covers up the pingingzing and my heart swells instead of contracting.
I hate that being in France has made me so conscious of the thing that I do: use beauty to cover up reality. Because there shouldn’t be anything wrong with beauty. It’s beautiful, for goodness sake! Beautiful for goodness sake. For the sake of goodness. But is it covering up a multitude of sadnesses and truths? And is remaining ignorant about those truths damaging the world?
The world is ending. I know that. But what on earth can I do about it?
That night, during dinner with my host family and chats over tisane and chocolate afterwards, things still feel just as unbalanced and unexpected as my emotions. I don’t have the words to explain what has happened back home, so I don’t say anything.
No-one notices my silence because they are cranky about the grève – all the train drivers in Paris are going on strike, so the metro will be closed. It’s in response to the explosion – they want better conditions, better pay.
‘Métro, boulot, dodo, rien n’a changé,’ says Claudette.
Delphine has been sitting on the sofa, a John Green book in front of her face. ‘Oh là là, maman. Spoken like a true soixante-huitard. You really have drunk the Kool Aid, haven’t you?’
‘Cynical child.’
‘You were five years old in 1968. You weren’t part of it at all.’
‘But my father was out there on the Boulevard Saint-Michel digging up pavés. He was part of Dany le Rouge’s circle.’
‘And your mother? Where was she? Stuck in the house with a child. Like all women throughout time.’
Claudette does that thing with her mouth I’m coming to love from the French. An expulsion of air through the lips, a little fart/raspberry noise. She dismisses Delphine’s point with this sound. She lets Léon know with this sound that she doesn’t give two hoots they’re out of toilet paper and in fact he should buy some. With this sound Claudette delivers a point of view without a word. It’s generally combined with a slow rise of the shoulders, before letting them drop down again: point made.
‘What are you talking about?’ I ask, my mind briefly distracted from what is happening at home. I know they’re speaking another language, but it’s like they’re speaking another language.
‘In the 1960s, France was a very conservative country,’ Claudette says. ‘But it was a turbulent time around the world. You know, with nuclear bombs, the Vietnam War. But at the beginning of 1968 – my father was an engineering student – there was a big student uprising to try to modernise the universities. Then it expanded to all of French culture. They wanted to change the world. The protests went on for months.’
‘Australians, do they protest?’ asks Léon.
Of course they would ask me this today. Of all days.
‘We protest,’ I say. ‘They protest …’ I’m sounding like a lesson in verb conjugation. ‘There are protests. I was just speaking to my best friend at home. She is organising a group of students for a protest this week. She is angry that our government refuses to do anything about climate change.’
I tell them the story – of drought and long summers and unstoppable bushfires. I try to explain about how our futures might be gone, but I don’t know how to phrase it in any language. Before I know it, there are tears running down my face. ‘And I know it’s just a house, but—’
‘Oh là là,’ breathes Claudette. ‘But that’s such sad news, Sofie.’
‘I’m okay,’ I say, looking at their concerned faces. ‘Really. I’m just sad.’ I don’t think I’ve shown this much emotion around the Durants before. I feel terribly far away from my family. I feel wobbly about the future I imagined. ‘I’m just having trouble finding meaning today,’ I say.
Delphine looks me in the eyes, and something about the look we share makes me feel better.
Claudette makes a round of tisane to calm our nerves. Léon shows us the new miniature sculpture he’s been working on. Or he tries to. Delphine is back behind her book, Tortues à l’infini (I’ve read it in English: Turtles all the Way Down), and I’m reading about May ’68, scrolling all the way down to the bottom of Wikipedia.
I feel exhausted when I lie down in bed, like I might cry again. Trying to think about Olivier and recalling our kiss feels weird and far away. I am older than I was this morning. I am different. I have cracked open.
I had to put my emotions in
to words today. I realise now maybe I’ve never had to do this. Before, when I felt sad or overwhelmed, I could slam a few doors or escape down the creek and know that come evening time I could sit on the couch with my mum or my dad and they’d let me cuddle into them, and ask me no questions.
The world is cracking open.
The world is ending.
Maybe one thing I can do is make some posters for Crow.
They protest. You protest. We protest.
I send: OK. So what do you want these posters to say?
I protest.
You protest.
We protest.
‘Do you want to come for a run?’ Delphine asks me, in French, the morning after the fire.
Her tone isn’t soft, but it’s kind. It reminds me of Hana when I’m being annoying but it doesn’t bother her.
Claudette and Léon both look up from their coffee. Their clear surprise shows me that they haven’t put Delphine up to this.
I go to my room and dig out the appropriate outfit. My mum would laugh if she could see me now. Voluntarily going for a run! I had contemplated leaving my running shoes and exercise clothes behind in Australia, but we hadn’t been sure if there were sports components to school in France, so I thought I’d better be prepared (it turns out PE doesn’t exist). This, two-and-a-half months into my exchange, is the first time I’m wearing exercise clothes. It feels wrong to be wearing them out in public in France though.
As we’re going down in the lift, Delphine switches to English. ‘I don’t really have a running club,’ she says dryly.
For a split second I’m embarrassed I’ve misunderstood her. But no. She’s in running clothes too. So what does she mean?
‘You mean you don’t have running club today?’
‘Not ever.’ She is smiling and searching my face for a reaction.
I want to laugh (from being uncomfortable) and I want to ask a million questions at once.
‘Why would you make that up? It seems like such a weird lie.’
She laughs. ‘Let me think. I like running. I run for exercise. And I run to get from here to there, but that’s because I’m trying to avoid the metro. I hate being underground, in that metal box.’
‘Where are you going then?’ I ask. ‘When they think you’re at running training?’
We jog about a block and she doesn’t say anything. I give her time. I side-step three dog poos (could have been one poo split into three) and wait for her to spill the beans.
‘Well …’ she begins. ‘You’ll see.’
Delphine leads me, jogging, to a Belleville backstreet. I’m a bit puffed, and my face feels hot, but I’m completely intrigued. She unlatches a gate covered in overgrown plants, and I follow her through … into a garden. I can’t say what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this.
It’s just an empty city block about six metres wide, but I can’t see how far back it goes. It’s like a tunnel of green. Trees, creepers, and more green.
I step forward and before me are raised garden beds – one, two, three – framed in wood and heaped with straw. I can see pumpkins and a wheelbarrow. There are people here – I can see two people digging in the ground. There’s a trestle table half set up to my left, its top leaning against the legs. As I turn to Delphine, in absolute delighted surprise, I feel her move. There’s an older man coming out of a garden shed, holding an enormous soup pot.
‘Let me help you,’ says Delphine, and she goes to the trestle.
I help her lift the wooden tabletop onto its legs. The man grunts merci and hoists the pot onto the table. They greet each other warmly and give bises.
‘Jean-Michel, let me present Sofie. Sofie, Jean-Michel. He’s the president of this community garden.’
That’s when I learn about les jardins partagés. As well as growing vegetables, fruit and flowers, they have a beehive and a weekly soup kitchen for refugees and homeless people and anyone else who needs it.
‘That’s what’s happening today,’ Delphine explains. ‘A couple of days a week I come here and help to organise food and care packages to hand out to people in the community who need it most.’
Incredible! I feel my reality shifting once again and am surprised to find that this time I don’t hate the feeling. Perhaps I am becoming accustomed to being out of my comfort zone.
‘Why have you brought me here?’ I ask. ‘Not that I’m ungrateful. I’m very grateful.’
She smiles, and it’s the most genuine smile I’ve seen from her. Some wall has come down. ‘No real reason. I just thought you might like it.’
‘Why don’t you want your parents to know about this?’ I ask. ‘Wouldn’t they be happy?’
She is quiet for a moment. I have sometimes felt uncomfortable in Delphine’s silences since I first arrived in France, but I realise now that she is just taking her time to consider what she is going to say.
‘I think I just want something for myself. I don’t want them to be telling their friends I’m some kind of saint because I volunteer. My actions aren’t currency for them to barter goodwill and feel smug about.’
We serve lunch to children and some adults, who all appear in the garden. My heart feels full, but it’s also breaking in fifteen ways.
‘The children are sleeping in tents?’ I ask.
‘Yeah,’ says Delphine. ‘Many of them arrived in France with no family. They’re alone or here with siblings or maybe a family friend and have been camping in a park nearby. But they’ll be moving on this week. The government is going to hide them somewhere.’
They’re clearing the Paris streets of refugees. We have been learning about it at school, as part of a persuasive writing activity. The refugees are being sent to various areas around the country where the French government says there will be more infrastructure available. It sounds fair, kind of, but when you consider the realities it’s hard to get on board with some faceless government body taking people who’ve fled persecution and danger and sacrificed so much and displacing them again, especially if they don’t want to go.
Back home I live in a bubble. I haven’t seen the realities of refugee and migrant life so close to my own. I knew it existed, but I tried not to think about it. Distractions come easily when you live in pursuit of beauty.
In Paris there are camps running along the side of the canals. I saw it on the news. The refugees set up tents on top of wooden packing pallets to keep the cold at bay. I don’t even like camping on summer-hard soil when we go to Echuca on the school holidays.
‘I’ve heard some migrants have drowned in the canal since the camps were set up,’ I say.
Delphine looks grave. ‘Yes. I can’t help thinking that we’ve learned nothing in this country. In the 1960s, there was a massacre of French Arabs in Paris – mostly Algerian Muslims – after a protest against a curfew order. There’s no agreed number of victims, but they pulled bodies out of the Seine – all murdered by the bullets, boots and nightsticks of the French National Police.’
‘That’s horrible,’ I say, my hand flying up to my face.
Delphine nods. ‘Back then, someone graffitied across a bridge: ICI ON NOIE LES ALGERIENS. Here we drown Algerians.’
I remember a photo from a few years ago, of the little refugee boy in his red t-shirt, drowned on a Turkish beach. As I learn more about the past, I feel disbelief about our present. How can we let the lessons of the past go unlearned? Are we doomed to make the same mistakes on a loop?
As the line dwindles and the last of the food is scraped from the pot, Jean-Michel asks me, ‘Are you part of Delphine’s running group?’ He glances at her and winks in a cheerful, friendly way.
I laugh and shake my head. ‘Delphine runs everywhere, but me, I walk.’
I watch Delphine, who looks so at home here. I can’t believe I ever thought she was prim and proper. Now that I’ve seen her in action with
a shovel I can’t un-see it.
‘Tell me about your walks,’ says Jean-Michel.
‘The only way for me to get to know Paris is to wander about without a plan,’ I say. ‘There are so many surprises when you wander without purpose. And I don’t have much money, so I look for activities that are free to do. Walking has been the most satisfying one.’
I get my phone out and show him the maps I’ve been making.
Jean-Michel looks as though he wants to pinch my cheek, as though he thinks I am charmante, perhaps. Then he says something I don’t fully understand – somethingsomething dérive – and then, probably because I look confused, he says, ‘You know, the Situationists.’ Not wanting to look ignorant, I just nod oui oui bien sûr. He wishes me luck before he gives les bises (right, then left, mwah mwah) and he is off, loping down the path towards the park’s gates.
In my pocket, I’ve had a couple of messages from Olivier. Salut. What are you doing?
I’m out with Delphine, I reply. How is your weekend?
He sends a gif back of a cat wearing sunglasses, and no other reply. I hadn’t expected romance to be so cryptic. I shoot back a laughing face and put my phone away.
‘Let’s walk home past the Canal Saint-Martin,’ says Delphine, coming back from the garden shed.
The bare trees and the white sky (it’s just all over clouds) make the whole city look misty or fuzzy. Delphine leads me on a detour away from the canal, and to a boulangerie called Du Pain et des Idées, which has a queue out the door.
We eat and walk and talk. Well, Delphine talks, and I am so interested to finally get to know her I just want her to keep talking.
‘I know I should be trying to eat a vegan diet,’ she says. ‘If we don’t, the world is simply going to run out of resources. But I know it’s a really privileged choice to make. Can you imagine those kids from today saying, No thanks, I can’t eat this because I only eat vegan organic?’
I never expected Delphine’s brain to turn in such ways. From outward appearances she is calm, poised, cool as a cucumber (cucumbers would make up a portion of a vegan diet, wouldn’t they?). But when you get to know her better, you see she’s wired, private, always thinking, always watching.
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