The Children's War

by Monique Charlesworth

  Paris, October 1939

  From time to time, Ilse left the Red Cross post to walk around the Gare d’Austerlitz. She paced slowly past the people waiting in the queue for tickets and those embracing near the platforms. Each middle-aged couple standing with suitcases gave her a tremor of hope and then disappointment. It was better not to look at all, but she could not stop herself. She had thought that she might go to the zoo or just walk along the river, but as the grey day drew on she knew that these were dreams. Her suitcase was in the Consigne, Winnetou locked safe inside it. German was the language of the enemy. She passed the long hours studying the railway map of France on the wall, reacquainting and then testing herself on the départements of France. She listened to the conversations around her, understanding just about everything. It might be a long wait. No definite arrangement could be made with people trapped in the strange world of Germany. Her thoughts ceaselessly bumped up against the worst eventuality, only to veer away again.

  Around seven o’clock, as people drifted over to the station buffet, the room cleared completely. Stretching out on the bench, Ilse was irritated that the door opened, obliging her to sit up properly, to wriggle back into her shoes.

  The slight man in a raincoat came straight up to her and touched her arm. “Ilse,” he said. “Ilse.”

  Ilse jumped up and put her arms round her father. He smelt of staleness and tobacco, his cheek was rough with stubble. Surely he used to be taller and better-looking? His hair, which she remembered as dark and abundant, was stippled white.

  “I’m late, I’m sorry,” he said, “I overslept.”

  But it was already the evening.

  “Where’s Mutti?”

  He gripped her arm briefly, then let go.

  “Come on,” he said. They collected her suitcase and she remembered, as he stood silent beside her, that he spoke no French. They left the station and walked along a wide road beside the Seine with Ilse carrying her small case. Otto walked ahead and went fast. Paris was not so very cold, but her father, shivering in his raincoat and thin shoes, his hands dug deep into his pockets, brought winter with him.

  She had to hurry, throwing her question into the gap between them. “Is she at the hotel?”

  “Shh,” he said, putting his finger to his lips. “Not in the street.”

  Her mother must have gone ahead with the luggage. Ilse planned how to greet her in French, considered the words she would say. How pleased her mother would be that she had learnt so much and that she had grown. They walked for ten minutes, then turned into another wide boulevard, the Saint-Germain, and from there plunged into a maze of side streets. The buildings were old and had a shabby charm. Paris was beautiful. Together, she and her mother would visit every sight. Ilse smiled at the thought.

  They turned into a side street and then another. Her father stopped at a set of old wooden doors, pushed one open. Behind was a courtyard and to one side a glass-sided room where a concierge sat, a man who nodded; Vati nodded back. They climbed the stairs and went on and on.

  She whispered, “Which floor?”

  “The fifth,” he said.

  Impatient, Ilse ran ahead. There were two doors. She danced from one foot to the other. She could hear her father’s footsteps as he came up behind. He was wheezing. He fumbled for a key and unlocked the first door, which was on the courtyard side. They went in. There was nobody there. The room was small, its two little beds covered with grey bedspreads.

  She spun round, looked, did not understand. “Where is she?”

  “She’s coming as soon as she can. When she’s got her visa. You’d better unpack.”

  Apart from a toothbrush in a glass on the washbasin, the room looked as if nobody lived there at all.

  “How long have you been here?”

  “Ten days.”

  “But there’s nothing here.”

  “I came with nothing. Over the border to Belgium on foot. Then on and off goods trains.”

  “Why didn’t she come with you?”

  “Too risky. I came through the underground. She needs a proper visa. Without papers she’ll be sent straight back if she’s picked up— we’re at war. The enemy. It’s different for me. I have no papers anyway. I lost the last lot to a nosy official. An idiot who thought I’d wait while he checked.”

  Her father laughed abruptly, took off his raincoat, flung it on the bed, paced back and forth. She saw the familiar truncated middle finger of his right hand, where a piece had been shot off in the Great War.

  “Unpack,” he said. “Make yourself at home. How was the journey?”

  It had been a bad crossing in stormy weather and nervous excitement had made her so light-headed that she had thought she might faint. She had had to go up on deck for fresh air. Then there had been a very long wait for the train north. But she could not say these things while her father kept moving about.

  “Fine,” she said.

  The wardrobe was crooked with a door that hung forward and creaked when she opened it. The dark space had a musty smell. In slow-motion disbelief, Ilse hung up her new warm winter coat and the tam-o’-shanter and matching scarf. The coat, chosen by Willy, smelt of happiness and was dimmed by going into this place. She opened her case, took out her dresses and shook them out, found hangers for them all and hung them up. She turned. He was watching her.

  “How could that woman send you back, just like that? What if I’d not been able to meet you?”

  “In times of war, children need to be with their parents,” said Ilse. These words, which Toni had uttered with such weight, made her father snort. “Willy didn’t want me to come. He’s going to fight against Hitler. He’s a good German, like you, Vati.”

  “Willy’s a complete fool. Any pretty girl could wind him round her little finger. Toni must be a beauty. I’ve got you a sandwich. Are you hungry?”

  Her face was burning. She could not bear it, that he criticised them. She was wearing Toni’s bracelet, carefully tucked under the sleeve of her knitted cardigan for fear of thieves. When she came to the brown box she hesitated, then left it. There was also a bottle of perfume in the case, another present from Toni. She snapped it shut and slid the case under the bed. She would not show him these treasures. She did not know how to behave with him. To be alone with her father was so unusual, she could not remember it ever happening before.

  She looked at him, pacing and turning. Ilse was shivering. She undressed and got into bed as quietly as she could. It was warmer under the grey blanket and she pulled it over her head and closed her eyes. Nothing like this had ever been imagined in discussions with her mother, nor in her goodbye talks with Willy. His footsteps stopped and she heard the rustling of paper. He was eating something. Then the feet started up again and went on and on.

  “Ilse?”

  “I’m very tired,” she said.

  “Of course you are. Go to sleep.”

  But he kept walking and the noise of his feet on the bare floor reverberated through her head. The disappointment was overwhelming. Her mother had always been the important one, overshadowing her father, who was so often away. As though to teach him how to behave, she lay completely still and, sliding into darkness, breathed as quietly as she could.

  In the morning, her father did not stir when she dressed. Ilse had French money Willy had given her. She took her purse and found her way back to the wide boulevard, glad to be out of the stale smell of the room and in the crisp autumnal air. A woman just behind was talking German. Ilse whipped round, anxiety mingled with hope. It was not Mutti, of course not: it was two middle-aged women, arm in arm, who at once fell silent. She studied the shops. There was a boulangerie and a charcuterie, a quincaillerie full of pots and pans, a horsemeat butcher with a horse’s head projecting over the sign, a couple of restaurants. No placard announced Judenrein.16 She could not think what the French equivalent would be. Perhaps Juifs interdits or Juifs non admis. Seven weeks ago war had been declared, but she saw no sign of it. Shops were full of
people with normal lives doing their daily tasks. The leaves of the plane trees lining the boulevard were turning gold. The sun slanting onto them lit the whole street with colour; in Meknès, it still gave real heat.

  In a tobacco kiosk she chose two postcards of Paris, asked for stamps for Germany and Morocco. The bread in the boulangerie was cheap and smelt delicious. How hungry she was. French people actually ate in the street. Boldly, Ilse broke off a piece of crust and nibbled at it. She bought coffee next, and milk. Climbing the stairs, she suddenly thought of all the other things they needed and went back down the boulevard to the hardware place she had spotted. There she bought a coffeepot and a saucepan, the right size for the little gas ring in the corner, three plates and cups, a knife, fork and spoon each. She carried the heavy parcel back, lugged it up the stairs. Her father’s eyes opened as the water boiled. Measuring out the coffee, her spirits lifted at the rich smell filling the room. In the Jews’ House, she had prewarmed the coffeepot, waiting for her mother’s weary tread on the stairs before she poured the milk to heat. The restaurant often kept her late; Mutti used to say that it was the thought of Ilse’s good coffee that sustained her through the dark journey back.

  Ilse had milk with a splash of coffee; her father the reverse. The coffee gave his face some colour.

  “What a good housekeeper you are,” he said.

  “Thank you.”

  Ilse poured out more.

  “How long until Mutti comes?”

  He shrugged. “However long it takes. We just have to wait.”

  “Do they have a school with nuns here?”

  “Why nuns?” He smiled. “You are a funny girl.”

  “It’s the system,” she said in an offhand way. He knew nothing about the system.

  “You can’t go to school, Ilse. We have to be invisible,” he said. “The French have interned a lot of German men. Very few have got out again.”

  “But you’re not a Nazi. You’re on their side.”

  “The French don’t know that. And if they know, they don’t care. France and Germany are at war. The French don’t make any distinction between ordinary Germans and Jews or others exiled for political reasons.” This smile he made was an ironical one; she remembered that this was his way of underlining his point. She noticed with a little stab of anguish that one front tooth was badly cracked that had not been before. “I’m not German, as it happens. I’m stateless. But that makes no difference either.”

  “And me?”

  “Children under seventeen are exempt. Don’t worry. You’ll be fine.”

  Adults seemed to imagine that she would believe such talk.

  “Then what are we going to do?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “Wait for your mother.”

  “Mutti must be missing us,” she said. She knew how her mother felt from the heaviness of her own heart. There was a kind of gravity shift in her. Sorrow lay like a sick child, to be tiptoed around.

  While her father went to wash, Ilse found her wooden box and carefully filled her beautiful pen with ink. “Chère Maman,” she wrote, “Paris est tellement belle! On se sent si libre. Nous pensons à toi.”17 She had copied their address from the street sign onto a scrap of paper and now printed it in the top corner in block letters. She wrote the second post-card to Willy and Toni, saying that she had arrived safely and had been met by her father. They had found a room for the two of them. She did not mention her mother. Toni would just have to think whatever she thought. She wondered what address she should use for her mother.

  Returning, her father picked it up and shook his head. “You can’t write to Germany.”

  “Then how will Mutti know where to find us?”

  “We have ways of communicating, but never openly. That would be insane.”

  “I can’t write once?”

  “Not unless you want the Gestapo to know she’s communicating illegally with an enemy of the Reich. And where to find her. And where to pick us up, naturally.”

  He dressed with his back to her. She watched his thin shoulders shrugging on the shirt with a feeling of complete helplessness.

  “This communicating you do. Will you be able to send my love, properly, to Mutti when you do it? Promise?”

  When he turned, he smiled. “Come on. Let’s go for a walk,” he said.

  “Can we go to the zoo?” A thought struck her. “Or the palace of Versailles?” The guide emphasised that this, of all the great sights in Paris, was not to be missed.

  “Something better. I’ll show you a little piece of home.”

  They walked together to the Boulevard Saint-Michel and through the Jardin du Luxembourg. Much of the open area was not green at all, but wide paths of flat-packed earth with a little scattered gravel. It did not seem much of a garden. They came out to a narrow street called the Rue de Tournon. There was a small café a few metres along. Her father pushed in through the double doors in the centre to a wave of heat, of smoke and babbling noise. People leant against the bar which, made of shiny copper, took up half the room to the right; they were rapping on it with coins to attract the attention of a scowling waiter.

  “Otto! Du hast uns gefehlt!”18 a man shouted out. A middle-aged woman got up and kissed him; her father said vaguely that she was a friend, from the old days. The noise was Russian and German and Czech. He pushed his way through to a big table in the corner. The woman followed. Ilse sat beside him and looked around. This warm, busy place where exiles and Jews congregated, this was what he thought of as home.

  “So you’re the daughter,” said the woman, shaking her hand. “He said you were coming. What would we do without your father? Now, Otto, what’s the latest news from Germany?” She drew up a chair. Her father lowered his voice, turned away.

  Ilse sat warming her fingers on a cup of hot chocolate. They all spoke in their own languages and if the Germans were supposed to be hiding, they gave no sign of it. They were discussing where to live and where they should go next, how to get the permits and pieces of paper they needed to be en règle.19 The rules apparently changed all the time. Her father told a little woman with frizzy hair tied up in a knot about dollar bank accounts. Someone else asked about visas to Ecuador. Ilse watched his hands swooping as he explained the intricate details of medical certificates and exemptions and where, if you had the money, a Czech or German national passport could be obtained, one without the “J” for Jude stamp, a good fake but not—of course—as good as the ones the German underground made.

  She tugged cautiously at his sleeve and whispered, “Vati, why didn’t you buy one of those very good fakes for Mutti and you?”

  “No time,” he said shortly.

  Ilse remembered the long year of his absence during which she and her mother had prepared the journey, had waited for the visa, which had been so hard to obtain, being—of course—in her real name.

  At noon he stood up. Lunchtime. On the way back they did the shopping. Ilse’s French did not have the giveaway German accent that others had, which made some French people turn away and shopkeepers act as though they were invisible. It seemed to Ilse a strange reversal. Before, they had been hated for being Jewish and not German; now they were hated because they were Germans and the enemy. Her father stayed outside the shops while Ilse did the talking, then helped carry the food. It helped that she looked so young. She looked Aryan, he said, with her white, intense face and flaming red hair, whereas he looked “like a thousand Jews.” She was not sure that he was right, but it did not matter. In France, luckily, they did not hate Jews.

  They carried the potatoes and cabbage up the long flights of stairs.

  “Let me,” he said, scraping at the potatoes while Ilse attacked the vegetables. Neither of them was good at cooking and they found worms and black parts in the potatoes.

  “What if Mutti can’t get out of Germany?”

  “Of course she can. The Gestapo are delighted to assist with the emigration of Jews and their associates, at a price, naturally,” he said.
Again, he gave the ironic smile.

  “But she doesn’t have a lot of money.”

  “Ilse, we discussed it. It was urgent for me to leave—not so for her.”

  Ilse shivered. “You’re upsetting me,” she said.

  “She needs real papers, properly stamped, that’s all. It’s nothing to be upset about. It’s less dangerous that way. It’s her choice to do it all properly and then nobody can touch her. She’ll come.”

  This was more reassuring.

  “When she comes—where shall we go?”

  “She’ll decide. Italy, maybe. You know your mother.”

  She did know her mother, but she could not think why he mentioned Italy, when the obvious choice was Morocco. She decided not to ask. She did not like his explanations, which did not make sense of things—in fact, rather made them worse.

  Ilse turned up the gas and boiled potatoes and cabbage in the saucepan with violence. That was their lunch. A system developed. She learnt to put the potatoes in first, then the cabbage. Otherwise everything disintegrated into a wet mess. Occasionally, she cracked an egg over the results while hot or threw in a cooked slice of meat from the charcuterie. Sometimes the combination was horrible, but he never complained. She bought lamb, but it was thick and fatty, and boiling it turned out to be a mistake. She could not bring herself to eat the grey blubbery mass, though her father did not mind. The room smelt awful for days. She found couscous in the shops, but when she cooked it, it stayed hard and then suddenly turned to mush. She had found dried apricots and added these to the soggy mixture, hoping for a taste of Morocco, but the effect was peculiar and they were far too expensive to try a second time.

  After lunch, she washed socks and underwear or Vati’s second shirt and tidied the room while he smoked two cigarettes, never more. Often he slept in the afternoons. He was alert or asleep, never anything in-between. Ilse lay on her bed and studied the Paris-Soir, which she bought every couple of days, underlining the words she did not know and looking them up in the dictionary Willy had bought for her. In her head she attempted increasingly ambitious conversations with Anne, imagining her nodding encouragement. Anne was at school learning useful things while she was trapped in a room which stank of cabbage. Sometimes, on a boulevard, the smell of an American cigarette like Willy’s or a sudden burst of laughter carried her to Meknès, piercing her with longing.