A Pinch of Time

by Claude Tatilon

  “You did well. Anything else you can tell me?”

  You can go straight to hell! But he didn’t tell him that. He showed him to the door in a completely civil manner.

  No one ever saw Mr. Moretti again. Had he realized he’d been unmasked? Probably not. Unlike Mireille, his young, naïve sister-in-law, Uncle Eugène wasn’t born yesterday. In fact, he was quite the actor and had been rehearsing for years with his dear Virginie. Had this strange Mr. Moretti been stabbed without pomp or circumstance on the corner of some dimly lit street by a Resistance fighter, à l’agachon? Had the Nazis given him a new mission of treachery? Or had they simply put him behind bars to thank him for his loyal services?

  Whatever the situation was, he never bothered us again.

  But a few days after this second visit, a policeman, escorted by two German soldiers, came to ask Grandma Rose a few questions about my mother and me. She was posted at her usual spot on the Joseph-Étienne Square, not too far from the Saint-Victor church, where she’d been selling fish for the past two decades. While setting up her day’s offerings on a bed of seaweed – red mullet, sardines, gurnard surrounded by a sea of mussels, and to one side, a large piece of tuna, its flesh a dark red, that she would cut into thick slices and sell well before ten in the morning – the escort arrived. She had no trouble understanding, despite the policeman’s debonair attitude, that at seven in the morning, this was no friendly visit. And since she often went to the cinema, she’d been able to hide the shudder that ran up and down her spine and to soften up the nice policeman, who did not suffer from excess zeal. She was nothing but a mother, worrying herself sick for her lost children. Where are they? Oh, dear! I would give, sirs, all the fish I own to know. The policeman did not insist, and he walked away with his goose-stepping escort.

  But the Gestapo did not stop there. The next day, around seven-thirty in the evening, another escort made its way to Rose and Henriette’s, who were about to sit down for supper. This is a search, ladies! Every corner of the house investigated, especially the cellar that was level with the yard.

  “And their apartment, upstairs?”

  “Empty.”

  “Do you have the key?”

  “Yes.”

  The little kitchen, the bedroom, the alcove and the bathroom. Empty.

  Rose and Henriette were never bothered again.

  At the time, when it came to food, the country no doubt offered superior resources to the city. Marseille, far from good agricultural land, wasn’t supplied very well. There was fish, of course… Except that a third of the local catch was skimmed off by the occupying army, another third sold at top prices to restaurant owners and the rich, and the stallholders had to scramble for what was left – the smallest third – at the morning auction at the Rive-Neuve Quay. Tricks and schemes of all sorts were devised. We called it the “G” system – G for get by or get hungry. It was hard to make your way through the maze of the black market and reel in your line without having it stripped. Rose knew this only too well, for she was able to open her modest, open-air business only three or four mornings a week. And despite all the effort she put into it, considering the difficulty of the times, the plates and bellies of her daughters were never full. Yet she wasn’t stingy, keeping for her family, despite the monetary losses, a large part of the fish she’d been able to get through pòti (a curious Provençal word meaning “barter”), though it was not always to her advantage: a monkfish tail for half a kilo of artichokes, traded with Eugène and Rachel, her neighbours, who owned a small fruit and vegetable business a few metres from her stall. Or she’d barter with François, the owner of the bar that opened onto the square: two slices of tuna for a measure of sugar. Like most French people, Rose panicked at the idea of running out of sugar. In fact, we ran out of everything. Nothing we ate, in too small quantities, could fill our stomachs.

  Which is why, at the end of the summer of 1943, when the danger of being taken by the Marseille Gestapo vanished along with my father, who in July was sent on the painful path to the concentration camps (so Jo the Goï had told Uncle Eugène), my mother decided to extend our stay in Moustiers. “When school starts again, the children will attend here.”

  FOUR

  In October of 1943, we found ourselves in Madame Dupuis’ one-room schoolhouse. Gérard, 11 years old by then, was in the older boys’ division. I would be turning seven in January and was part of the youngest group. My first time in a classroom! About time, too: the Wehrmacht’s occupation of the free zone in November 1942 and the far too common sound of air-raid sirens had dissuaded my parents from putting me in school when I turned six.

  One-room schools are an excellent solution, if I’m to trust my own experience. By January I could read, having learned – the Berlitz method, the intensive kind – by listening to others. At first there weren’t many of us – less than ten, if memory serves me. Three older kids: André Jauffet, Louis Achard, and Gérard. Four in the middle: the Bourjac sisters, Jackie and Anne, Antoine Audibert, the mayor’s son, and Dany, our teacher’s daughter. Three young ones: the Lemoine kids, Jean and Martine, and I, Dominique (Dodo during recess). The older kids wanted to show the younger ones what they knew, and we, admiringly, took them as models and did everything to impress them. As for the children in the middle group, they lived under the double influence of emulation and domination. A situation that seems to me pedagogically ideal, especially when I compare it to the overloaded classrooms I’d sit in later, in Marseille and Aubagne, where I’d often find myself with more than thirty other children.

  Ah, but wait, there were actually eleven of us with Jésus Fernandez! How could I have forgotten him, with his skin much darker than ours – probably from his gypsy or Berber blood, for he came from Córdoba – and his blue eyes? He is at the source of one of my most striking memories.

  It was toward the end of the first semester, in November, during a visit by the superintendent. Madame Dupuis had told us not to worry. Everything would be fine, the superintendent was a nice man; we shouldn’t feel intimidated and should offer polite and clear answers to his questions.

  He certainly was a nice man. And far from intimidating with his slight lisp. “Hello, kidsh… I will ashk a few queshtions and you will anshwer me ash if I were your teacher.”

  He had a soft voice, and asked his questions with smiles of encouragement.

  “What ish your name?”

  “Gérard, sir.”

  “All right, Gérard, how did you sholve the problem?”

  Madame Dupuis seemed happy that Gérard had been chosen, while I feared for him. I remember clearly: there were two trains that would meet each other, one leaving Nice, the other Marseille. And not at the same time, to top it off! We had to figure out the time and place they would meet. And the trains weren’t even travelling at the same speed – talk about tough!

  “Can show us how you did it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He pointed convincingly to the graph Madame Dupuis had drawn for us. “Train A leaves Nice at 7:45 a.m. and is going at 60 kilometres an hour. Between Marseille and Nice, there are 200 kilometres, and the train doesn’t make any stops. Train B leaves Marseille at 8:15 a.m. and travels 90 kilometres an hour; it doesn’t stop either.”

  “Very good. And then?”

  “By the time Train B leaves the station, Train A has gone… I used the rule of three: 60 times 30 divided by 60. Simplifying, 60 on one side, 60 on the other, that makes 30 kilometres. That means there is a distance between the two trains of 200 minus 30, or 170 kilometres.”

  “You’re on the right track. Continue.”

  “Now, I express the proportions between the two speeds as fractions, as our teacher showed us.”

  He wrote on the blackboard: “Speed of A: 2/5; speed of B: 3/5.”

  “That’s good. Now you have to figure out the time and place the trains meet. How will you do that?”

  “I use fractions. First, I calculate distance. When the trains meet, Train A will h
ave gone two-fifths of 170 kilometres. I divide by 5 and multiply by 2. That makes 68 kilometres. Add to that the 30 kilometres it travelled before B started. Total distance: 98 kilometres.”

  “And how far will B have travelled?”

  “Well, there are two ways to calculate that. Either you subtract 98 from 200, or I recalculate with the fraction 3/5. Either way, I get 102 kilometres.”

  “And by doing both calculations, you’re also verifying your sums.”

  “Yes, sir. I check that my results are correct.”

  “Continue: the time and place where both trains meet.”

  “The location is easy. It is 102 kilometres from Marseille and 98 from Nice (98+102 = 200). The time is easy, too: Train A is going 60 an hour so it travels the 98 kilometres in… the rule of three: 98 times 60 divided by 60 makes 98 minutes. So 1 hour and 38 minutes, that I add to its departure time: 7:45 + 1 hour and 38 minutes… 8 and 5 make 13, I put down 3 and carry the 1, 4 and 3 make 7; 7 and 1 make 8… 83 minutes, so 1 hour and 23 minutes. Total: 9:23 a.m. That’s when the trains meet.”

  “Now what do you do?”

  “Now I check my results with Train B: 102 minutes times 60 divided by 90. I’ll simplify that: multiplied by 2 and divided by 3. So 68 minutes. So 1 hour and 8 minutes. I add to my departure time, which also gives me 9:23 a.m.”

  “Impresshive, young man!”

  We were all impressed. Madame Dupuis was beaming, as much as her daughter and almost as much as me, and much more than Jauffret and Achard. I’m proud to have such a smart cousin. He’s proud as a peacock, too. Tomorrow I’ll go get the water at the fountain instead of him. If Maman lets me.

  Things didn’t go as well with the vocabulary lesson. I remember it was based on a small text – by Anatole France, I think – that talked about the Tuileries, in Paris, and some sparrows splashing around in a puddle.

  “You, Jesús.”

  “Whew! It wasn’t me, it was Fernandez! When the superintendent pronounced his name with a Spanish accent, with the jota sound, his lisp disappeared.

  “Tell us, what is the sparrow doing in the second sentence?”

  A long silence and a desperate look.

  “Go on, make an effort… Can’t you see? Read us the sentence.”

  Embarrassed by his strong Spanish accent, our classmate complied.

  “You know, sir, our little Spanish refugee has only been in France since last spring.”

  So much tenderness in her voice: “Our little Spanish refugee.”

  “I see, only six months…”

  The superintendent spoke to him in Spanish. Probably to tell him something like, “Jesús, yo también, cuando hablo tu lengua, tengo un acento extranjero muy fuerte.” He continued in French: for a young boy like him, there would be no problem and that very soon he’d be speaking as well as his classmates. And he was right. Barely six months later, our little refugee could have passed for any one of us, at least on a moonless night.

  “Your accent will get better very soon. Just by listening to your classmates. Now, tell us, what does hop mean, as in the sparrow hops?”

  A heavy, stubborn silence.

  “Now, you know this. Look at me.”

  So the superintendent, ruddy, smallish, sixty, and paunchy, began courageously – nothing must halt militant pedagogy – to jump up and down. For a few long seconds.

  “Jesús, look at me. What am I doing?”

  Still no answer. The superintendent kept on trying, stoically, though he seemed in desperate need of dance lessons. Meanwhile, he lavished endless and slightly breathless encouragements on Jesús.

  “All right, at least try, son.”

  So, finally, opening his mouth – does not pedagogical perseverance break down all walls? – our Jesús took a deep breath and dove in, though he wasn’t sure he knew how to swim. Hunching his shoulders and casting his distressed blue eyes at his comical inquisitor, he spoke, timidly, but oh so audibly.

  “You acting estupid!”

  It was the right answer.

  During recess, Gérard was a hair’s breadth from beating him up. “Damn Spaniard, can’t you learn to speak French? You made trouble for Madame Dupuis!” He was a bit of a hothead as a child, my dear cousin, and not too politically correct.

  Luckily for Jesús, Jauffret intervened. “Leave him alone, Gé! Or else…” And since he was a head taller than Gérard… Besides, Jesús was the son of the sexton of the very Catholic church of Moustiers-Sainte-Marie. You can imagine, with a name like Jesús…

  But things didn’t stop there. There was no love lost between Gérard and Jauffret. One day, I imprudently sat in the spot that was exclusively his under the covered part of the playground. Jauffert chased me off with insults and began to run after me, hand in the air, across the playground and even a few times around the tall plane tree that occupied its centre. Gérard came to my rescue: with a well-placed foot, he sent Jauffret flying through the air as the other students laughed and mocked him. But he picked himself up in a flash, with his fists up this time. Gérard stood a few metres away, as stiff as justice. The magisterial sound of the whistle stopped play. Madame Dupuis came and took the petulant boy by the ear and put his nose against the tree that would be his cell until the end of recess.

  Knowing his day of glory had arrived, Gérard put on a wide smile, making sure it was seen by Jauffret, who could do nothing but look at him menacingly.

  FIVE

  My mother had invited him for supper. I was sitting on the terrace when he arrived, playing ludo with Gérard on the ground. I can still see him as he stood before us, tall in the open gate. It’s the first image I remember of him.

  He was wearing big black shoes, corduroy pants, a dark jacket over a white shirt. His open collar showed off a powerful neck. He stood in the silence, as if leaning against the mountain to his right, pink now with the setting sun. His face, lit by a radiant smile, was as wide as the sky. He was a handsome man, and tall. Yet he didn’t wear his encroaching baldness well. He wasn’t old – older than Maman, sure, but not old. He was strong, Monsieur Roger, and seemed nice.

  “Just call me Roger, kids! Roger.” On the first day, no less. Uncle Roger, only a few months later.

  He did everything to make our stay in the country as comfortable as possible. For example, with Gérard’s help, he carried a big metal basin all the way to our house. He’d borrowed the basin from his friend Bertrand, the mechanic, who’d used it for oil changes. He cleaned it up in the little yard below, then set it in one corner of the kitchen, next to the fireplace. It would become our bathtub.

  During the lavender harvest, a distillery on the road to Riez, just before the switchbacks that led to the village, would shower Moustiers with its perfume. Two or three times a week, Roger would bring large demijohns filled with lavender water, still hot. And so it was, two or three times a week, we were energetically scrubbed and scoured by strong hands deaf to our protests; my mother didn’t joke around when it came to personal hygiene.

  My father also had his tubs: the ones that belonged to the Marseille Gestapo on Rue Paradis, then in Paris, on Rue des Saussaies, in which only his head would be immersed. Then the ones in the camps, perfumed with disinfectant, in which he was completely immersed, head and all. The Germans had an awful fear of lice, which could spread typhus.

  My Popual also took relatively frequent showers. “The first time I took one,” he told me once, “was at Neue Bremm, my first station of the Cross. We were naked in a row in front of the bathhouse. People started to whisper that some of the camps had gas chambers and that they were disguised as showers… You can imagine the reaction! The Krauts had to push us in with the butt of their guns. Once we got inside, under the showerhead – would it be water or gas? – we were panicking like sheep at the slaughterhouse! So Caraco, in a funereal voice, starts in: ‘Brothers, now is the time to recommend your soul to God and say your prayers! And if I were you, I’d do it on the double!’ His sense of humour gave us courage and we star
ted laughing – even those who didn’t speak a word of French. He actually started praying for real. His prayer was answered, and we were saved.”

  In the evening, when the mountain disappeared and the horizon started to fade, the time came for us to leave the terrace and go into the kitchen, already in shadow. Maman would make her way through the dark room and pick up the large box of matches she left on the mantelpiece. Then she went to the white porcelain oil lamp that a complicated weight and counterweight system kept hanging from the ceiling, above the table. She lifted the glass tube, cracked a match and touched the wick: the kitchen would light up. It was a large square room with sooty walls, the patina of years of flames from the fireplace at the far wall. In all seasons, an indescribable scent hovered in the room – burnt wood, old things. That smell will remain in my nose and my mind, even if I live to be a hundred. Just like childhood memories.

  We sat around the large table in the centre of the room. The table was covered by a yellow oilcloth with small red and blue flowers, faded in places from having been scrubbed too often. To the left of the door, the stone pile and its copper tap. “Nicou, turn off the tap all the way, please, that dripping will drive me mad!” Next to it, the water pump. “Go on, Gérard, work those biceps!” On the far side, facing the door, a large buffet built into the wall, much too large for the meagre food inside. To its left, the imposing fireplace and its mantelpiece, on which stood a series of yellowing photos displaying the generations of Uncle Émile’s family. There, the third from the right, our dear uncle, whom Gérard noticed straight away because of his harbour fireman’s uniform. In another picture, a whiskered married man on his bicycle and his timid wife, surrounded by a crowd of family members squeezed one against the other. My favourite: Émile’s father. His moustache is slightly smaller, he’s wearing hunting clothes, his cartridges around his waist, his game-sack slung over his shoulder (from which a rabbit or a hare’s ears seemed to be sticking out), rifle at his feet. Next to the pictures, another oil lamp, a portable one, and the big box of matches.