Julius (6 page)

Père said nothing, he laid down the big mattress he had brought from their bed in Puteaux, he arranged it in one corner with the pillow, the blankets; he even fixed up a spare blanket, pinning it to the wall to serve as a screen.

The fireplace Mère must squabble over with half-witted Madame Tripet, they would have to eat in common, but at least there could be some small measure of privacy behind the blanket screen.

Firewood was scarce, Paul Lévy saw that they would have to ration their sticks. Mère argued at once, hysterically, ready to hit her husband. ‘My limbs are numb and chill, and the child too. Do you want us to freeze?’ She shivered, glancing at the crack in the window. Somebody had covered it with a rag, but even so the draught whistled through, and when it rained, drips of water crept down the wall and spread in a pool on the floor.

Julius blew on his fingers and thumped his little body, hell - but it was cold in Paris, colder in these huddled, twisting streets than back in the country at Puteaux. He was hungry, too, it seemed as though he was always hungry now. He longed for the rich good smell of the market, for Grandpère’s face smiling at him, breaking off a piece of cheese. The room in the Rue des Petits Champs smelt of Madame Tripet’s bed-clothes, of Jacques Tripet’s red hair, of his feet in the boots he never took off. Stuffy, high, unwashed - and yet all the time the cold air blew through the crack in the window.

‘How long must we stay here, Père, how long? When can we go back?’

‘I cannot tell you, my Julius. When the siege is over, when the war is finished. Nobody knows.’

Like almost every citizen Paul Lévy enrolled in the Garde Nationale. He was put into a uniform, he drilled, he marched; he was stationed on the fortifications at different hours during the day and night; he received one franc fifty centimes a day for his services. He was seldom in the Rue des Petits Champs, he returned at odd hours, chilled and tired, flinging himself on the mattress with his uniform splashed with mud.

In the morning Mère wrapped herself in a shawl, stuffing her shoes with paper against the cold, and she took up her station in the queue outside the butcher’s. Sometimes she waited there in the crowd two hours, sometimes three. Soldiers guarded the door of the shop. Snow fell on to the cobbled streets from a leaden sky, at her side a little girl crouched, the skin drawn tight over her bones, whimpering from the cold. At the end of the three hours, numbed and almost senseless, Mère received her portion of meat - thirty grammes of horse flesh for each person - and she stumbled back to the room through the maze of little streets, the snowflakes brushing her face. Two members of the Garde Nationale whistled to her as she passed, they were lounging against a wall, yawning, drunk.The Garde Nationale were always drunk. What was the use of one franc fifty unless you spent it on liquor? Besides, there was nothing else to do but drink in a besieged city.

The Prussians would not attack - they waited on the hills.

‘Mère, I’m hungry, let me have another piece, just a little piece.’

‘No, my darling boy, there will be none left for to-night - to-night you will be hungry again.’

Jacques Tripet came in, reeling a little, smelling of spirits.

‘Look here, why are you such a devil to me, Madame Lévy? I don’t harm you, do I?’

‘Oh! go on with you - I haven’t the mood for silliness.’

‘I bet you’re a hot one, when you feel like it, eh? With those eyes and that body. Tell me, eh?’

‘Maybe - go off, don’t breathe at me and keep your hands to yourself, young fellow. When a woman’s limbs are cold and her stomach is empty she does not want to be bothered with men.’

‘You’re a devil, you are, you’re playing with me, you’re putting me off. You shouldn’t smile at me as you do. Listen, I know a fine way to warm those limbs - don’t you want it?’

‘No, you puppy, you fool. Leave me alone.’

Julius nibbled at his nails, his little belly empty.

‘Mère, give me a sou - give me a sou to buy some bread.’

‘I haven’t any - you must wait till Père comes home.’

‘Here, young fellow - here’s a sou for you. Run and play, maybe you’ll find something with your sharp eyes and nose, Jew-baby. Go on, leave your mother and me to talk.’

Julius went out in the streets. Most of his time was spent in the streets now, away from the cheerless room and the moans of the old woman in her corner, away from Jacques Tripet harping at Mère. He was beginning to know the quarter. He found his way through the maze of the Halles to the wider streets, and out on to the Place du Châtelet. Here a bridge crossed the Seine to the Ile de la Cité. He wandered along the quays, his mind working hard, peering into the holes and crevices, feeling with his hand up the pipes that led from the sewers. In a scavenge heap on one of the quays he found the remains of a stale crust of bread. He stuffed this at the end of a sewer pipe and waited, a heavy stone in one hand, crouching behind the pipe. In twenty minutes or so he saw the bright eyes of a rat peering from the edge of the pipe. The rat hesitated a moment, sniffing the air, and began to nibble the crust. Julius raised his hand slowly, then hurled the stone, crushing the head of the rat. When he lifted the stone he saw that the creature was dead. Julius smiled, a queer, pinched smile in his thin face, and he rubbed his hands together, gloating, wishing that Grandpère was not rotting in a ditch but was standing by his side, laughing at him.

‘Something for nothing,’ said Julius, ‘something for nothing.’ By the end of the afternoon he had caught six rats in this way. It was getting dark, and a fog was rising over the Seine. The houses loomed drab and gloomy through the mist, the streets ill-lit. People with their heads low hurried home to their cold rooms. There were no shops open, even the churches were closed. The streets were bare of
fiacres
and carriages, the horses had been killed for food. Only one or two omnibuses plodded their customary route, half empty, along the dark silent streets.

Julius swung his rats by the tails, beating his feet on the pavement to keep warm, humming a little tune to himself. He walked down the long Rue St. Antoine to the Place de la Bastille. He knew his quarter - he knew the poverty-stricken queues of starving work-people who would be grouped there, waiting outside the butcher’s for their thirty grammes of horse-flesh. They would be tired, frozen, their bellies aching for food.

He pushed his way amongst them, holding up his rats for all to see.

‘Forty sous a rat, messieurs, mesdames, forty sous a rat.’

 

On Christmas Day old Madame Tripet died. She had been lingering for over a fortnight, suffering from dysentery brought on by starvation and the cold. No one was sorry to see her taken away. Her groans had been too irritating, the dirt and the smell she caused had become unbearable. Jacques Tripet bought a wooden coffin for his mother, but the thought of burning the wood for fire proved too strong for him, and the old woman was buried in the common ditch.

The room could be heated at last. The Lévys and Jacques Tripet spread out their hands to the blaze and sighed for sheer luxury, the incredible pleasure of self-indulgence. Even Père drank wine that first evening, wine supplied by the bereaved son, and Julius wondered to see the colour rise in his pale cheeks, Père, thin as a corpse himself, in his uniform that hung on his bones. He played upon his flute, his eyes closed, his black hair falling over his face, and as the sound of his music fled and was lost in the air he smiled to himself.

Mère also closed her eyes, she was drowsy from the wine. She breathed heavily, her sensual mouth half open, and she leant against the shoulder of Jacques Tripet. They were friends now. People could not be enemies for long living in one room. Jacques Tripet listened to her breathing, his green eyes hot and silly, and he ran his hand up her leg under her petticoats. Julius thought him a fool, ugly with his red hair.

Julius yawned, stretching his arms above his head. He went close to Mère, and curled himself up against her, glad of her warm body, pillowing his head on her lap. She smiled in her sleep and sighed. Jacques Tripet stroked her gently, secretly, watching Paul Lévy out of the tail of his eye, and Père slept with his face in his hands, never moving, scarcely breathing, lost in his secret city.

The days dragged by, endless and wretched, the January mornings were bitter cold, and to stand in a queue for rationed meat became physical torture.

Still the guns rumbled and the shells fell on defenceless citizens, still the pathetic efforts of the imprisoned troops to pass the Prussian batteries continued, always in vain - back they came wounded, bleeding, faith and courage gone from them. The strictly rationed food was practically uneatable, nor would the tough horse flesh, the black bread, nor even the rats last much longer.

It was the beginning of the end. The surrender of Paris, inevitable, fatal, loomed into the minds of the people. On the fortifications of Auteuil Paul Lévy stood on sentry duty, his hands clasping his bayonet, his head bent low. He had not slept for twenty-four hours. He had no other thought in his brain, no other desire in his body, but to lie down, anywhere, in a ditch and sleep. His feet were like two solid lumps of ice, frozen in his leaking boots, he had lost the feel of them and the feel of his fingers, blue knobbly bones sticking out from his hands. Paul Lévy was no longer a magician who breathed music, who dreamed dreams, he was a senseless thing of no will, who could not even raise his head to watch shells whistle through the air from the Prussian batteries. He wanted to sleep, he wanted the warm body of his wife next to him, her arms to cradle him, her breast to pillow him. He wanted to lose himself, he wanted to sleep.

In the room in the Rue des Petits Champs, Louise Blançard was preparing supper. She had stood for four hours outside the butcher’s and when her turn had come the doors were shut in her face and a soldier, his face a wooden mask, told her the rations were finished for the day.

‘But we have nothing in the house?’ she pleaded, clutching his arm, ‘what are we going to eat? My little boy is hungry.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said the soldier, pushing her away,‘it’s not my fault, is it?’

She climbed the seven flights to the cold room, her shawl over her head. There was no fire now, and a trickle of water ran down the wall by the window. One flickering candle was stuck in a bottle.

Jacques Tripet knelt by the fireplace. He had three sticks of green wood which he was trying to light.

‘I took them off a peasant who had been scavenging outside the gates,’ he said, ‘they are damp, they will not give much warmth. Have you any food?’

‘The butcher’s was shut,’ she told him, ‘we shall have to make wine soup. We must have something inside us.’

Julius looked up from his corner. His skin was drawn tight over his bones. ‘I don’t like wine soup,’ he said fretfully, ‘it gives me a pain. I always have a pain now.’

‘There is nothing else,’ said Mère, ‘you must bear with it. Wine soup is good, it puts warmth into you.’

The boy began to cry, the tears slowly rolled down his cheeks. He brushed them away so that no one should see. He was ashamed to cry. He did not know it was weakness. He stuffed his fingers in his mouth. The nails tasted good.

‘You will feel better when you have had some wine soup,’ said Mère.

Jacques Tripet produced a flame from the green sticks. Mère put the saucepan on top of them, and began to stir slowly, a soft watery mixture.

Julius could not manage more than half a bowl. It made his head muzzy and gave him a pain in his belly.

‘When Grandpère used to give me wine I felt fine,’ he complained. ‘I don’t see why this soup should disagree with me.’

‘It’s because you have nothing solid inside you,’ laughed Jacques Tripet, ‘it goes to your head at once. That’s why it’s good - it makes you forget you are hungry.’

He and Mère had two bowls and could have wished for more. They smiled at each other, Jacques Tripet kept laughing for no reason. He breathed heavily as though he were hot; he opened his blouse.

‘You know what I want, don’t you?’ he said to Mère, ‘and you want it too. I can tell, don’t you try and put me off.’

Mère made a face at him.

‘What if I do?’ she said. ‘You’re only a big bumping boy.’

He shook his finger at her, smiling foolishly. ‘You didn’t say that last time, did you?’ he said, ‘you told me a different story. You were pleased enough, I know.’

‘Shut your silly mouth,’ she said.

Julius rubbed his hand on his stomach.

‘Go outside in the street.The air will do you good,’ said Mère.

Julius went out of the room.When he came on to the landing he began to cry again, softly to himself. He could not help it. It was that beastly wine soup. After a little while he felt better, but his head still ached. The air was bitterly cold. He thought perhaps if he walked fast his headache would pass away. He found his way down through the maze of streets, scarcely looking where he went. Hoo! But it was cold. He stamped on his feet and bit his fingers. He had walked some way and the moving had not warmed him at all. He would like to be inside again. He found himself in a square surrounded by cloisters. There was comparative shelter here, the sleet did not blow in his face. Somebody was knocking at the door of one of the houses. After a moment the door opened and the person went inside. Later one or two other people came to the door and knocked and were also admitted. There was an old man with a white beard, there was another man, and then another. A woman came carrying a child. Julius was puzzled.

‘Can they all live there?’ he wondered. Perhaps food was being given away free. He went and knocked on the door. A face peered at him through a little grille. The face of a man whose dark eyes stared from a white face, whose black beard came to his chest. The eyes smiled at him, and the door opened. Julius found himself in a stone corridor, looking up at the bearded man. He wore a queer-shaped cap on his head.