by Marie Sizun
But the best bit is when, after the grandmother has left and the mother’s busy in the kitchen, she finally has her father all to herself.
There. She’s sitting next to him, snuggled up to him on the big sofa. She doesn’t even want him to read the paper. But the news is very exciting at the moment: they’re expecting the Allies to arrive any minute and Paris to be liberated. The father tries to explain it all to the child. But she doesn’t want this. She wants to do the talking. She’s waited too long. She now wants to say things, all sorts of things.
He laughs, her father does, not understanding what’s got into the child, whatever’s come over her. He thinks it’s funny and sweet.
It will be an evening like this when she speaks.
What makes the child speak isn’t her jealousy, her ongoing resentment towards her mother. It’s not that sort of feeling, she’s not old enough for that. It’s just the overflowing love she feels for her father, the excessive tenderness and trust, which urges her to give up her most secret thing. To hand it over.
And her admiration for him. The notion that he knows so much. And that he speaks the truth. So she’s going to ask him the questions no one’s ever answered. Those old questions. The ones from the borderline between dreams and reality. That mystery. He must know, surely. He won’t be evasive, won’t lie like her mother and grandmother.
‘You know, Daddy…’
Perhaps that’s how she started. In snatches at first, tentative steps, disconnected snippets. The child isn’t very artful. Then it all came out. The old story. That memorable trip. Normandy. The hospital. The nurse. The baby. All of it.
In all likelihood a slow, muddled description, punctuated by her father’s questions, indulgent at first, amused and then increasingly urgent, incisive, irritated, brutal.
Then there’s a blank, emptiness. Something happened, something the child didn’t understand, a sort of cataclysm which turned everything upside down, abruptly turned her father into someone completely different, made him go very pale and say in an altered voice that she’s talking nonsense – the very expression the women had used – and made him tell her to shut up, made him shove her aside and get to his feet, and, in a flash, shattered the harmony of that evening.
From that moment on, everything’s confused for the child. She’ll remember only that she was left on her own, looking mechanically through the pictures in a book that was lying around, so upset she couldn’t see anything, while her parents shut themselves away in the kitchen, and from there came the disturbing sounds of an argument, muted at first and then growing more and more violent, an argument in which she could pick out the interwoven patterns of their two voices, her mother’s whispering and tearful, and her father’s harsh and angry.
No one puts the child to bed that evening. She ends up falling asleep on the sofa, filled with the sadness of having failed to secure an answer to her question and with an obscure, very distant sense of having said the wrong thing.
When the child wakes the next morning, very early, in the bed she must have been carried to while she was asleep, she can tell something’s happened. There’s an unusual silence in the apartment. Has her father already left this morning? Isn’t he having breakfast with them? Everything looks different today… The mother, who’s telling the child to get up, has an upside-down face. The face she has on tearful days. She’s obviously been crying a lot. She hasn’t done her hair, hasn’t put on her make-up. She’s wearing an old dress, a boring, ugly one. She sits next to the child, on the bed, and explains in a funny-sounding voice, an odd voice, that she won’t be able to look after her for a few days, that she’s going to take her to her grandmother.
Consternation. The child protests. Why? When? What about the Americans coming to Paris? And other armies too, her father told her, he promised he’d take her to see… he explained it all to her… She wants to see the soldiers, the tanks, everything… It must be soon, her father said…
Her mother says that that’s just it, it’ll be dangerous, that the grandmother’s neighbourhood is quieter. The father will come to fetch the child when it’s all over, when Paris has been liberated. When the Germans have left.
The child cries. The mother won’t budge. Counters her tears with icy silence. She gets the child ready, the child crying, protesting. The mother’s face is unreadable, like a stranger’s. Her movements are hard, abrupt, like an enemy’s.
She packs the child’s bag, and the child watches these preparations fearfully. She’s never been away from her mother. She’s never been anywhere alone. She doesn’t understand what’s going on at all. Why isn’t her father here?
She tries to throw herself into her mother’s arms, to kiss her; she begs her. The mother pushes her away gently but firmly. Just because, she says. That’s the way it is. Be sensible. You’ll come back. It’s not for long. Your daddy will come to fetch you.
The mother’s talking in short, resolute sentences which tear the child apart. She’s never talked to her like this. Perhaps it’s this shift, this difference, this strangeness, this strangerness, that hurts the child. Her mother’s no longer her mother, but someone she doesn’t know.
They take the Métro, the two of them. Like on that first day, that day long ago when they went to see the father. The mother holds the child’s hand, but anyone would think she doesn’t love her, that she’s angry; she doesn’t talk, and there’s a harshness about her fingers that the child doesn’t recognize, that almost hurts her.
The child has stopped protesting, deep in the despair of her exile but of something else too, something more serious that she doesn’t understand. She can’t begin to grasp it, but it’s there. Between them. In that silence.
Of her time with her grandmother, the time in August 1944 – how long was it? A few days, a week, more? – the child would remember almost nothing. Apart from waiting. She waited, waited day after day for it to be over. For someone to come for her. For her father to come for her. She thought he would be the one to come.
She keeps asking the grandmother when she can go home. Aren’t you happy with me, then? is the grandmother’s only reply. She tries to teach the child to sew. She shows her how to throw grain for the three hens she keeps in the yard behind her house. She introduces her to the few customers who are starting to come back. During fittings, the women chatter, look at the child, try to get her to talk.
The child’s bored. Filled with despair.
Just one image from that time, the wallpaper featuring bunches of roses in the bedroom where she sleeps alone. It’s cold in this room, even in August, because the shutters are always closed. Some idea of the grandmother’s. The child’s afraid to turn the light out. So she stays there for a long time, gazing at the roses on the walls, before she goes to sleep.
One evening she’s already been in bed quite a while when she thinks she hears talking downstairs: she thinks she recognizes her father’s voice, down there, along with the grandmother’s. They’re talking loudly. Shouting even. Half asleep, the child gets straight out of bed, goes downstairs in the dark… But she must have made a noise: the grandmother looms in front of her, orders her back to bed this minute. But, the child says. No buts. You were dreaming. There’s no one here.
And the next morning, nothing. The usual waiting.
And then one morning there’s such a noise outside, shots fired, shouting, a great thundering of lorries making the house shake, more shouting, firecrackers, cheers…
‘Thank the Lord!’ cries the grandmother, who’s been at the windows since dawn. ‘Here they are! They’re coming! It’s them! It’s the liberation! We’re saved!’ And she runs all over the house to get a better view, from the best window, calls to her neighbours, more excited than the child’s ever seen her. The child thinks her grandmother’s being unbearable.
‘What about me, when am I going home?’ asks the child.
‘Later,’ says the grandmother. ‘Your parents have had their talk anyway.’
‘About w
hat?’
‘About things that are none of your business,’ says the grandmother.
The father had promised he’d take the child to see the soldiers on the day of the liberation. The liberation’s here now. He wasn’t telling the truth. The grandmother’s liberation, this particular liberation here, is of little interest to the child. And anyway, you can hardly see anything from her windows. The child is filled with sadness.
There is one extraordinary thing, though, one moment: that incredible huge peal of bells which seemed to come from all the churches at once. The grandmother had opened the windows, all the windows and all the shutters, windows and shutters opened at last to the summer and those tumultuous bells, and the old woman cried and pulled a funny face. It’s over, she said, the war’s over. We’re free. And she took the child in her arms, she kissed her. Which really surprised the child: her grandmother never cried, never kissed her. Mind you, her hands were still just as cold.
And she was the one who, the next day, or a bit later, it’s no longer clear, told the child she would take her back to her parents. The father probably hadn’t been able to come. Or perhaps he’d forgotten.
The day the child comes back is a Sunday. Everyone will be at home, she thinks; we’ll all have lunch together. It’ll be just like before. The child drags her grandmother by the hand to get there more quickly and talks nineteen to the dozen. My word, will you ever stop! says the grandmother, but she’s not really angry. The child laughs. In fact everyone looks happy, out in the street, in the Métro. You can tell the Krauts have left, the old woman says. And it’s about time we had something to be happy about. She sighs, the grandmother does, talking to herself, muttering between her teeth about things the child doesn’t understand, doesn’t listen to. The child is entirely absorbed in her delight at being back in the city, and she can’t stop looking around, listening, seeing how pretty everything looks: there seem to be parties going on everywhere, with flags in all directions, people laughing, music on every street corner, lots of people on café terraces. The child keeps thinking they’ll be there soon, she’ll see her parents again. She can’t believe her luck.
On the way her grandmother gives the child advice that she more or less hears: she must be a good girl, she must leave her parents alone, not talk nonsense – you know very well what I mean. Her father’s tired, and her mother too, she mustn’t pester them, etc. All through the partying streets, the old woman’s nagging voice doesn’t really reach the child’s ears as her heart thumps impatiently at the thought of going home.
But when they get there, when the grandmother rings the bell the first time, no one comes to the door. They listen. Everything’s quiet. Perhaps they’ve gone out, says the grandmother. She rings again. More waiting. The child’s frightened, she’s not really sure why, but she’s frightened. At last they hear footsteps. And it’s her father who opens the door. The father looking all strange, or rather similar to how he’d been when the child first met him, even more upright, by the looks of him, more severe, more distant.
He says hello to the grandmother, but takes the child in his arms, without a word. He carries her to the dining room, strokes her hair, looks at her, looks at her as if he’s discovering her.
The child barely has time to believe it’s happening before he puts her down, takes his jacket from the back of a chair and goes out, leaves, closing the door behind him.
‘I’ll be off, I’ll be off,’ the grandmother says quickly. ‘I’ll just say hello to Li, I’m not having lunch with you…’
The father’s already left, without responding to her words. But where’s the mother?
The grandmother calls in vain. The child finds no one in the kitchen. The grandmother opens the bedroom door: Li is lying down, asleep. Curtains drawn. On the bedside table there are pills.
‘Is she ill?’ asks the child, who’s come over and is gazing in awe at her mother’s face, unreadable in sleep, at her pallor, her mess of hair.
The grandmother wakes her daughter and she opens her eyes at last. She looks so peculiar, so befuddled, that the child instinctively backs away. She doesn’t want her mother to touch her. To kiss her.
But no. Nothing like that happens. The mother just says – but in a strange, thick, lazy voice – it would be better if the grandmother left, that it’ll be OK now.
‘Are you sure?’ the old lady asks.
‘Absolutely. What’s the time? Anyway, the child can help me…’
She gets out of bed, puts on a dressing gown and sees the grandmother to the door. The old lady very swiftly slips away.
The child and her mother are left alone. The child frozen in a sort of dread that her mother might want to kiss her. But nothing happens.
The mother, still in her dressing gown, an old pink dressing gown that the child doesn’t like, drifts about the place, puts a few things away. The child notices that the apartment’s very untidy, with clothes on the furniture, the kitchen in a mess, full of dirty dishes.
‘We’re going to have lunch,’ says the mother. ‘I’m bound to find something.’
Outside in the street they can hear a band playing. A woman singing. People join in the chorus.
The child goes off to play under the dining-room table, reunited with her old doll.
Her suitcase, which the grandmother left in the hall by the door, is still there; but perhaps her father will put it away when he comes home.
Of the weeks, the few months that come next, what will one day be left in the child’s memory? A few images, a few snatches of meaning taken from an obscure, muddled, mysterious continuum?
Since she came home everything’s been so strange, her parents’ behaviour so peculiar. The child doesn’t understand any of it. Not lovey-dovey any more, the parents aren’t. Don’t talk to each other now, or look at each other, and suddenly start arguing. About everything and nothing: Li’s untidiness, her lethargy, which ‘goes with all the rest of it’, her inability to run a household, and then there’s the way she dresses, the money she spends. The same old criticisms, but more needling now, spiteful. The father shouts. The mother cries. And then she shouts too. Sometimes they go and shut themselves in the bedroom or the kitchen to shout louder. The child can’t hear the words then, but she understands the tone of voice.
Sometimes the grandmother comes over and it’s worse; the three of them shut themselves in the kitchen and then they talk so loudly, the grandmother’s voice is so squeaky, the father’s so violent, that the child only clutches at words in passing, strange words: Too young. Your fault. Indulgent. Lies. Shameful. Why? Disgusting. Then she hears her mother crying, uncontrollably, like a child.
The child can’t believe it. Grown-ups and their mad goings-on. But she continues playing under the table. She’s perfectly all right under the table, with her old doll. She brushes the doll’s hair for ages and ages, waiting for it to be over, this performance in the kitchen, waiting for the door to open and for them to come out, with the funny faces they have then. After these arguments the grandmother usually picks up her coat in a dignified way and leaves.
And when the father isn’t there, when he’s gone to work, when she’s left alone with her mother, that’s a whole other story, and the child can’t be sure she prefers it. Then there’s a very special kind of silence in the apartment. An icy silence. A terrifying silence.
The mother gets up late. Gives the child something to eat, dresses her without a word. Then she drifts from one room to another, irritated to have the child there, hanging around not knowing what to do with herself. Every now and then the mother starts to cry, and the child is frightened by the puffy, deformed red face her tears give her.
She asks her mother to put the radio on. She needs to hear something, some music, songs, the announcers’ reassuring voices. It’s so cheerful now, the radio: military marches, love songs, jazz, the news delivered in a jaunty voice. The child listens to everything. Indiscriminately.
In fact one day she hears them say on the n
ews that the war really is over, that all the prisoners will be coming home. Families will be able to pick them up at the Gare de l’Est. The child runs to tell her mother. But why does this make her cry and then laugh?
Her mother really has become very strange.
In among all this, it’s as if no one sees the child any more. Almost as if she’s become invisible. No one has time for her now. She is there, though.
When the father comes home in the evening he hardly even kisses her. An absent-minded stroke of her hair as he comes in, acknowledging that she’s been waiting for him, standing in that awkward way she now has. A stroke of his big hand with its freckles. And then, straight away, the arguing starts with the mother, the shouts and tears.
The child would dearly like to be interesting. She follows the conversation as best she can. She watches and listens. She hopes her father will acknowledge her presence, her attentiveness. She comes running at the least sign of conflict, waiting for an opportunity to get involved, to make her father understand that she’s there, with him.
One image in all this confusion will become a memory: the business of the accounts book.
The father feels they’re spending too much in this household. Can’t think where the money’s going. Is flabbergasted. Appalled. He’s asked Li to keep a record of her daily expenses from now on and has bought her a special book for this. A book the child thinks is glorious. On the glossy hard cover there are birds in every colour and on the inside is a printed page for each day of the week. Some days later he asks to check through it. The mother can’t find it. Has she lost it? Mislaid, she says, I’ve just mislaid it. She’ll find it, it’s bound to be somewhere.