A Pocket Full of Seeds Page 6

  Dr. Rosten said, “Our Vichy government is a spawning ground for anti-semitism, and it will get worse, mark my words. Yesterday, one of my patients told me he was going to stop coming to me. He planned on using a Christian doctor. ‘Very good, M. Langeron,’ I told him, ‘and perhaps you will be good enough to pay your bill which I have carried for several years now.’

  "Sue me". he said, and of course he knows a Vichy court will very likely decide in his favor.”

  “Langeron,” murmured Mme. Rosten, taking a tiny sip out of one of Maman’s good tea cups. She was wearing a yellow suit, and a brilliant gold and blue scarf. Her small head was covered with short, black curls, each one perfect. “Langeron? Isn’t that the man who dragged you out of bed in the middle of the night when his son fell off the roof?”

  “The times are getting worse and worse for Jews,” her husband said. “Not only in occupied France but here as well. We are no longer safe. Today a Jew can no longer work for the government and a Jewish doctor cannot collect his bills. Tomorrow ... Why do we stay? What are we waiting for?”

  Françoise and I took our tea out on the veranda. But I remembered something so I went back into the room.

  “Jacqueline,” I said, “do you want to come out on the veranda with Françoise and me?”

  “Me?” Jacqueline was startled.

  “Yes, maybe we’ll play Belote.”

  Jacqueline jumped up and came toward me.

  “Me too?” asked Monique, Françoise’s little sister.

  I could hear Françoise groan in back of me.

  “Of course, Monique.”

  We dealt out the cards and began to play. Jacqueline was my partner. I smiled at her, and didn’t say one single word when she made stupid moves—and she made many of them. She didn’t remember. She never did, but I was always sorry later when I picked on her as I had done this morning.

  April 1942

  Lucie had been out of school for two days before we heard what had happened.

  “It’s hard to believe,” Papa said. “He seemed such an ordinary, conventional man, even rather stuffy. I never saw him dressed in anything but a suit, and he always carried a cane.”

  “What, Papa?” Jacqueline asked. “What man?”

  “M. Fiori,” Papa said. “We are talking about him. A terrible thing has happened. The poor man was arrested three days ago and is being sent back to Italy.”

  “But why, Papa?” I cried. “What did he do?”

  “Nothing,” said Maman. “He was a good man, and nowadays it is a crime to be a good man.” Her cheeks were pink and her eyes were full of angry lights. “They always seemed so standoffish. And you remember the time their girl called Nicole a Dirty Jew. I didn’t realize ... and now it’s too late, and his family is gone too. There is nothing we can do to help.”

  “Where is his family? Where is Lucie?”

  “Nobody knows for sure,” Maman said. “Mme. Barras says that Mme. Fiori told Mme. Bonheur that she and the children would go back to Italy with her husband, but then suddenly they disappeared. Mme. Bonheur thinks they were persuaded to go into hiding.”

  “But what did M. Fiori do?” I asked.

  “He was a socialist,” Papa said. “He was a leader in the Socialist Party in Italy, and fought against Mussolini. After Mussolini came to power, the Socialist Party was outlawed, and its leaders were arrested. M. Fiori had to flee or he would have been arrested too. So he came here to France, knowing that he was safe, and that our country would protect him.”

  “And now,” my mother cried, “our country is no better than Italy, and no better than Germany.”

  “Poor man!” Papa said. “Does anyone know who informed ?”

  “No, but you can be sure that whoever it was, he will be punished. The underground will find out. They will track him down and , . .”

  “What will they do?” asked Jacqueline.

  “They will shoot him, of course,” I said.

  “Of course?” said Papa.

  “Yes, of course,” said Maman. “And it will serve him right. There is nothing lower or more despicable than an informer.”

  “But Henriette, did you hear? Your own child talks of shooting as a matter of course.”

  “David,” Maman said, “why don’t we go? It doesn’t make sense to stay here any more.”

  “Where would we go?”

  “To Switzerland.”

  “But Henriette, you know this can’t last. Now that the United States has entered the war, and the Germans are being pushed back in Russia, it’s bound to come to an end. Soon.”

  “Yes, I know, but I’m afraid.”

  Papa said, “The important thing is not to panic. In two years, since we lost the war, the Germans have not come here to Aix-les-Bains. They are certainly not going to come now when every soldier they have is needed up north or on the Russian front. The Vichy government, and that senile, old fool, Pétain, will disappear once the war ends. And we will be here where we want to be instead of homeless in some Swiss prison camp.”

  At school the next day, Mlle. Legrand came into our classroom and spoke to us about what had happened. I was now attending I’école secondaire, and in 1941 Mlle. Legrand had become directress. People said she got the post because she was pro-German. There were pictures of Maréchal Pétain hanging in all the classrooms.

  She waited while we sang “La Marseillaise,” and sat with her head bowed during the moment of silence she had initiated in the past year. In general, most of the girls used the moment of silence to make furtive, funny faces at each other, and there were always stifled giggles which some of the teachers ignored. But this morning, with Mlle. Legrand standing in front of the classroom, there were no funny faces and no laughter.

  “I am sure,” she said, “you have all heard about what has happened to Lucie Fiori’s family. It is impossible for us not to feel sad at the loss of a classmate, and to hope and pray that she will be safe wherever she is.”

  Mlle. Legrand lowered her head again, and several of the girls in the class who were friends of Lucie’s did the same. You could see their lips moving as they prayed.

  “It is sad,” said Mlle. Legrand, “that the innocent must always suffer along with the guilty. In some cases, the guilty do not suffer at all.

  “Today in France, it is you and me, and other innocents who are suffering not only from physical hardships—these are unimportant. You may not have as much to eat as you would like, but none of you is starving. And even if you were, that would be preferable to being starved spiritually and morally.

  “Which is why France is suffering and bleeding today. Because evil, little, grasping men have brought our country to its knees. Men who have thought only of material needs, and not of their country’s honor. Men who have no morality, no religion, no ideals.

  “What a spectacle France has been in the eyes of the world, as one clamorous, mewling republic after another has tottered and fallen. Our poor torn country has been yearning for a strong leader who would restore sanity and order. And now we have him. His name, as you all know, is M. le Maréchal Henri Pétain."

  In front of me, Marie and Georgette were looking at each other. Marie’s eyebrows were raised just a little bit, and Georgette wrinkled up her nose as if something smelled bad. I supposed that their families felt the same way about Maréchal Pétain as mine.

  “His wisdom and courage,” Mlle. Legrand said, “have helped us bear the humiliation of France’s defeat. He has helped us to understand that Germany is not our enemy, and Italy is not our enemy. Our enemy is the rottenness here in our own midst which must be ruthlessly cut out. We must cleanse ourselves of the political agitators, the godless troublemakers who have weakened France in the past, and will destroy her completely unless they are eliminated.

  “We must all, you and I—but particularly you, for you are the future—pledge ourselves to forge a new France, a strong and glorious one. We must obey our leader, Maréchal Pétain, without question, and we must bear wit
hout complaint any little sacrifices he asks of us. We must also understand that if some measures our government takes seem harsh, they are necessary to cleanse our country of weakness, and to restore her to her former place of greatness and glory among the nations of the world.”

  I stood in front of Lucie’s house that day after school and looked at the dust and specks of dirt that lay on the stairs. For three days Mme. Fiori had not swept. There was nobody in the house. I knew it, and yet as I climbed the stairs I felt as if I was being watched. I had never been so close to that door before, and I could feel my heart beating high up in my throat, and behind my ears.

  I put my hand on the doorknob, and turned. But it was locked. Lucie was gone, and now there was no chance that her door would ever open for me.

  It was me screaming that night, not Jacqueline. Me, who Maman was rocking in her arms, chanting, “Shh, shh, ma poupée, shh, shh, what is it?”

  “Oh, Maman,” I wept, “she’s gone now and she’ll never be back.”

  “Who, chérie? Who is gone?”

  “Lucie Fiori. I’ll never see her again. Never, never, Maman. How can I bear it?”

  “Shh, perhaps you will, Nicole. We must hope that the war will end soon.”

  “Maman, why did she hate me so much? I always liked her, and tried to be her friend. And now, there will never be a chance for us to be friends, will there, Maman?”

  Maman kissed my forehead and held me tighter in her arms. “Of course there is a chance. There is always a chance. Once the war is over, no doubt the Fioris will return. And we will plan a big party for them.”

  “But Lucie will not want to come.”

  “Yes, yes, she will come. I myself will invite her, and you know, Nicole, I won’t let her say no to me.”

  “That’s right, Maman, and once she comes here, and sits awhile with me on the veranda, and we talk and maybe play Aux Dames or Belote, she will see that I’m not so bad as she thinks.”

  “Yes, I’m sure she will become your friend once she gets to know you.”

  “Do you really think so, Maman ?”

  “Yes, I really do, Nicole. And now do you think you can sleep again? Look how Jacqueline has slept through everything.”

  “I think I can sleep now, Maman, but come and sit here for just a few minutes more, and talk to me about the party. What kind of food will we serve?”

  That April we celebrated Passover. I had never been to a seder before, and neither had Françoise. It was to be at her house because there would be thirty-two guests, but my father would conduct the seder.

  There were two tables in the dining room with thirty-two chairs, and still there was room to walk around. Each table had bowls of fresh flowers, tall silver candlesticks, gleaming wine glasses, and gold-rimmed china plates that all matched. Even the children had wine glasses and gold-rimmed china plates.

  On each table was a platter containing the symbols of Passover—matzoh (unleavened bread), marror (bitter herbs), haroseth (a paste made of chopped apples, nuts, cinnamon, and wine), the shank bone of a lamb, a roasted egg, and parsley. Next to the platter was a dish of salted water.

  Papa explained that Passover is a holiday which celebrates freedom. It is a very ancient holiday, going back to the time when the Jews were the slaves of the Egyptians. Moses was the leader who led the Jews out of Egypt to freedom. Each of the foods on the platter had a meaning, Papa said. The matzoh is the flat bread which the Jews ate after they fled in the night from Egypt. There had been no time for them to wait for their bread to rise. The bitter herbs symbolize the bitterness of slavery. Haroseth represents the mortar that the Jews used in making bricks for their Egyptian masters. The shank bone stands for God’s mighty arm, and the egg is an allusion to his love and kindness. The parsley symbolizes the rebirth of all things, including hope, and the salt water represents the Red Sea which our ancestors crossed over in their flight out of Egypt.

  Each of the men wore yarmulkas on their heads. Dr. Rosten had a new white one, and he laughed and said he had never worn one in his entire life. He had never been inside a synagogue, he said, and of course had never been to a seder. He had read over the Haggadah my father had given him, and would do the best he could to follow along during the ceremony.

  Papa’s yarmulka was an old one which he said had belonged to his grandfather. It was made of blue velvet with gold embroidery.

  “It’s ironic, isn’t it?” Dr. Rosten said to Papa. “I never knew I was a Jew until Hitler surfaced, and my wife’s family was even more remote. Her great-great-great-grandfather was an adviser to Napoleon, a colonel in his army, and one of the first to be killed in the Russian campaign. We have always been sure of being French but not at all sure of being Jewish. Now, suddenly, we are sure of being Jewish, and not at all sure of being French.”

  “And I,” said Papa, “was trained as a Jew, and tried to forget it, but that too was impossible.”

  Even though Mme. Rosten had a cook—a Jewish one now—most of the women guests were busy in the kitchen, helping to arrange the food in large bowls and platters. The smells of these and the roasting chickens were overpowering. I had not seen so much food in one place for a long, long time.

  “Carrots,” one of the guests was saying to Mme. Rosten, “are so expensive, I don’t think I’ve eaten any for ages... and leeks! ... where did you ever find leeks?”

  Françoise and I helped carry the food out to the table, but it was difficult with all the younger children underfoot.

  It was time to begin. The candles were lit, and my father recited the kiddush in Hebrew, blessing the wine. Then he at his table and Dr. Rosten at ours divided up the symbolic food so that each of us had a taste—the bitter with the sweet.

  At first, everybody was quiet as my father began the long service which told the story of Passover. After a while, the younger children began squirming and then giggling, and even I found myself waiting for the talking to end and the eating to begin. I think my father skipped some portions because it wasn’t too long before all of us were singing the Had Gadyah.

  “The one kid, the one kid, that my father bought for two zuzim, the one kid

  And the cat came and ate the kid that my father bought for two zuzim, the one kid

  And the dog came, and bit the cat that ate the kid that my father bought for two zuzim, the one kid

  And the stick came and beat the dog that bit the cat that ate the kid, etc.

  And the fire came and burned the stick that beat the dog, etc.

  And the water came and put out the fire that burned the stick, etc.

  And the ox came and drank up the water that put out the fire, etc. And the butcher came and butchered the ox that drank up the water, etc.

  And the Angel of Death came and slaughtered the butcher who butchered the ox, etc.

  And the Holy One, blessed be He, came and slaughtered the Angel of Death, who slaughtered the butcher, who butchered the ox, who drank up the water that put out the fire, that burned the stick, that beat the dog, that bit the cat, that ate the kid, that my father bought for two zuzim, the one kid, the one kid.”

  The food was so good, I didn’t start talking until the soup when I said to Françoise, “You know that song we sang, the Had Gadyah? My father said that the kid stood for the Jewish people, and all the animals and people and things that hurt the kid are the countries like Assyria and Babylonia and Persia who used to persecute the Jews in the ancient world. At the end, all of them are destroyed.”

  Françoise blew on a spoonful of soup. She put it into her mouth and swallowed, then she turned toward me. “Yes,” she said, “but the kid is destroyed too, so what good is it?”

  “No, no,” I said. “You are wrong. The kid is not destroyed. It can’t be, otherwise we wouldn’t all be sitting around here arguing about it.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Françoise said. “Of course it’s destroyed. The cat eats the kid, isn’t that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “So that’s the end o
f the kid, no?”

  “No. Because maybe the cat swallows the kid whole, and somehow or other, when they’re all busy killing one another, the kid manages to come out of it alive. I think he is maybe a little bit weak at first, and probably he doesn’t stand up straight for a while, and I think he must wobble when he finally does walk. But he doesn’t die. He can’t die.”

  Françoise reached out for another piece of matzoh.

  “Françoise?” I said.

  “What?”

  “Well, what do you think?”

  “I think,” said Françoise, “that you should eat your soup. It’s getting cold.”

  September 1943

  The Germans occupied Aix-les-Bains in June of 1943. Most people expected them because of the allied victories in North Africa, and the threat of an allied invasion through Italy. Most people said that, in spite of Maréchal Pétain’s assurances, the Germans would take over unoccupied France. My father said they would not come. He believed that when the invasion took place it would be through western France and not Italy. All through the winter, as one town after another was occupied by German troops, my father said they would never come to Aix-les-Bains.

  One day they were suddenly, quietly there. We saw German nurses walking together along the Rue de Geneve. Like the summer tourists, they laughed and talked and acted as if they belonged here. There were no parades, no tanks, no banners as we had expected. We saw very few soldiers—a couple of officers sitting at the café, and politely moving their chairs to allow other people to pass, a few of the soldiers, in their gray-green uniforms with cameras in front of the Arc de Campanus.

  “It’s unreal,” Maman said. “They wipe out towns, kill hostages, imprison, torture, burn ... But here, they enter the town like tourists, and everybody acts as if it’s all very ordinary. For two days we all stay in, but now nobody seems to notice they’re even around.”

  “We’re not important,” Papa said. “Thank God! There’s just a small force stationed here. They don’t have the strength to do anything. They’re harmless.”