Julius Read online

  Gradually and naturally from the timid shrinking bundle of flesh and nerves that was a baby, Julius grew to be a child, possessing feelings and intelligence, who used his senses, who began to realise that the faces about him were those of his relatives, that the house and the street and Puteaux were his home.

  Supper would be ready, and they would sit to the table, Julius with a napkin tied around his throat, his black eyes opening wide as Mère placed before him the bowl of steaming soup. After his soup Julius ate pieces of garlic sausage off the end of Grandpère’s fork, and he would taste a lump of cheese from the finger of Mère, and to finish off he would drink his fill from the glass of red wine handed him by Grandpère, the old man rocking the whole table with his laughter as the child’s head nodded foolishly, and his eyes rolled; and to Julius this would seem the essence of peace and plenty, to sit there at the table, his body fully nourished with food and drink, already swaying in his chair as he longed for sleep, and half-consciously he would be aware of the food smell, the drink and tobacco smell, the voices of Mère and Grandpère jabbering through a haze, these people who were part of him and part of each other.

  And just before his head sunk down upon his chest, and Mère picked him up and carried him to bed, the door would open once more and Père come in, white-faced, lean and silent, Père with Julius’s eyes, Julius’s hair, Julius’s long pointed nose. Then the family broke up, they would not be themselves any more, Grandpère would swear and grumble, shaking his shoulders, and Mère would begin to scold shrilly, complaining of this, complaining of that, until the room was full of her and the old man, but in a new key, different to what had been before.

  Père would be silent, like a lean wolf, caring for none of them, and sitting down in the corner he would eat by himself, goading them to fury by his imperturbability; and when he had finished he would reach to a shelf for his flute and sway backwards and forwards in the rocking-chair, his eyes closed, a lock of black hair falling over his face. Sometimes he gazed at Julius, who, with stained pinafore and swollen eyes, cried for his bed, and then he turned to Grandpère and Mère, his teeth bared in a strange smile, more like a wolf than ever, and he said, ‘You want to make a brute of him, do you, a glutton, a little pig? You wish to teach him to live like a beast?’

  They looked back at him, their faces flushed and resentful, Grandpère with his mouth wide open in surprise, his pipe hanging from his lips, and Mère, one hand on her hip, the other picking a piece of meat from her tooth with a brooch.

  ‘What do you think you are doing, mixing yourself in matters that don’t concern you?’ she scolded. ‘Can’t he enjoy himself, poor little soul? Hasn’t he the right to eat? Who pays for his food? Answer me that. Is it you?’ and Grandpère added his voice to hers, rumbling, jeering, letting forth a flow of words pointed and coarse. ‘Stay quiet in your corner and leave your brat alone. Aren’t we all beasts, my poor boy; weren’t you a beast when you lay with his mother? Would the child have been born but for that? Let him learn to enjoy his belly and to enjoy other things, like his father before him.’ Then he laughed, a vast roar that shook the table once more, laughing until he choked, and his daughter had to lean across and pat his back while he spat on his plate, she too laughing, her breasts shaking.

  ‘Go on with you,’ she said; ‘you’re nothing but a filthy old man.’ They looked at each other, both red, both fat, fair-haired, blue-eyed, ridiculously alike, and once more she filled her mouth with the garlic sausage, and he smacked his lips, a thin trickle of wine dribbling from his chin to his blouse. The old man waved his fork in the direction of his son-in-law, ‘Jew,’ he sneered, ‘nothing but a miserable Jew.’Then Paul Lévy stretched out his legs, closing his eyes once more, and lifting the flute to his lips he breathed upon it, calling forth a queer plaintive tune that rose in the air like a cry from the wilderness, and Julius, half asleep on his mother’s lap, would gaze across at his father, so white and strange in the candlelight, and it seemed to him that the song was his, and the cry was his, and these things and the face of Père vanished into nothingness, and were Julius himself.The music went into him and sent him to sleep, carrying him away to some distant place belonging only to dreams and not to the waking day, and he would be aware of an enchantment known only to himself and to Père. Unconscious of the world he was carried to bed, fast wrapped in his secret city, and later when he awoke in the middle of the night, and listened to the harsh splitting snores of Grandpère, asleep in his cupboard of a room, the city would be forgotten, and turning on his side he felt for the large comforting breast of Mère, physical and tangible, nearer to him now than the faint music lost in the air; and the still figure at the other end of the bed was not a magician who called to him and who understood, but only the limp body of Père, a poor thing and a Jew. So Julius smiled to himself in the darkness, curling himself round the body of his mother, and it seemed to him as he fell asleep once more that this feeling of her was more satisfactory than the whisper of a dream heard at odd moments, not fully understood. There were many things to puzzle the mind of a child, and the relationship of these people who belonged to him and cared for him was never clearly defined.

  Grandpère was the most distinct; large, red-faced, broad-shouldered, he belonged to the daily scheme of things, he was a man like no other man would ever be. He was the richness and the pageantry of life, he was a riot of colour and of glory - eating, drinking, laughing, singing, he was a superb figure of incredible dimension in the massed shadows of a small boy’s mind. Even when senseless from drink, when he had to be laid flat on the bed in his cupboard room, washed and undressed like a monstrous child, he lost none of his power, and Julius crept to the edge of the bed and saw before him a full-length portrait, stamping itself upon his brain, Grandpère, a god, his blue blouse stained, his velvet trousers patched, his large and comforting hand limp on the white sheet like a juicy steak, the breath, smelling of cheese and wine, coming in long-drawn sighs from his open mouth.

  And Grandpère was god and Grandpère was life to him.

  His snores were music in their own way, a fuller, more familiar music than the thin wail of the flute, and his loud voice shouting when he awoke, his curses, his laughter, the wild excitement of his very obscenity, they were things that Julius counted upon as part of his daily bread. Mère also belonged to the rich atmosphere, her laughter was pleasure and so was the feel of her body and the touch of her hands, she was colour and movement, but in some incomprehensible way she was mixed up with Père, and this was something that could not be understood. It was as though Père dragged her away from life and would take her to his secret city, it was as though he played to her upon his flute and she had to follow him. In the day he was a Jew, a poor Jew, a good-for-nothing, worse than a mongrel dog, he was wretched Paul Lèvy who could not earn a sou, who lived on his father-in-law, who had no country, who insulted the presence of real live people by his existence, because Grandpère, Jean Blançard, was alive, and Mère, Louise Blançard, was alive, but Père, Paul Lévy, was a dead thing, was a Jew.

  Then at night he played his music, and the candle-light flickered, and the laughter ceased, and the sound of eating and drinking, the clatter of plates and voices, were lulled into silence.

  Grandpère lost his god-head, Grandpère became old Jean Blançard nodding in a corner, drowsy, a fool; and Mère became a woman, her hair brousy about her face, her flesh soft, no more the ruling dominant Mère scolding in her shrill voice; and Père was no longer Paul Lévy the Jew, but a man who whispered, a magician who called, a white still face of beauty crying in the darkness, a spirit with his hands on the gates of the secret city.

  So these things Julius could not piece together, neither the eyes of Père bending to the eyes of Mère in the strange quiet of the night, he a tiny boy beside them on the bed, and the murmur of his voice and hers in answer, two other people in another life; nor the contempt of Mère in the daytime, the ruler, the chief, the anger she had for this pallid, thin miserable spe
cimen of a Père who shrugged his shoulders at her, saying nothing, crouching over a book, a poor thing who could not fight for his rights, a Jew by day, a king by night.

  This very word of Jew grew to be a thing that Julius feared.

  ‘Jew,’ spat his mother, when she wished to scold him; ‘you miserable little Jew. You are your father’s son. You are not my son to-day.’

  And his Grandpère, in angry teasing mood, would seize hold of a lock of his dark, sleek hair, would pinch his little pointed nose between thumb and finger, and slap his pale cheeks so that the blood tingled. ‘Jew,’ he roared, ‘you wretched stinking piece of Jew-lust. Got by a Jew - born of a Jew - you aren’t a Blançard - you’re a Lévy.’

  For to be a real Blançard was the highest praise to which a small boy could attain, he laughed loudly as they laughed, he straddled his legs apart as Grandpère did, he stuck out his little stomach, and glancing triumphantly in the direction of Père he jerked his thumb to his nose and spat. ‘Jew,’ he said, ‘you Jew.’ Then Grandpère picked him up on his lap, his vast shoulders heaving in merriment, and he danced the boy up and down on his knee, while Mère stood beside him, her hands on her hips, her cheeks bulging with the sweets she sucked first and then gave to the child, and Julius screamed in delight and turned his face away so that he should not see the strange white face of Père in his corner, who had not said a word, who stared at him with his burning black eyes, who made him feel ashamed.

  He had tried to show off before Père, he had wished to prove to him in triumph that he was a Blançard, that he was not a Lévy, not a Jew, but in his child’s heart he knew he had failed. His laughter and his rudeness had gone for nothing, he had not won after all, he, and Grandpère and Mère were coarse, gross creatures for whom his cheek burned in humiliation, and Père, silent, aloof, his thin nostrils quivering in contempt - he had won.

  ‘Let me down, Grandpère, I’m tired. I don’t want to play any more,’ he whispered, his voice fretful, his heart sick and his belly too from the sweets he had eaten, and they put him down to grub on the floor.When they were not looking he edged nearer to the bench where Père sat in the corner, and slowly he leant against his knee, waiting for the hand to stroke his hair softly, gently, in the way he did; and clasping his knee he stared up into the face of Père, who stared back at him, and losing himself in the strange depths of those dark eyes, he was lifted up to another world that the Blançards could never know.

  Suddenly, without warning, these moods would come upon him, and he would sit quite still, his chin propped on his fist, his eyes staring straight before him, and ‘What are you dreaming, you creature?’ scolded Mère, and ‘Come and play,’ called Grandpère, but they could do nothing with him.

  ‘Leave me, I don’t want to play,’ said Julius, his lips pressed together, and in these moments he knew he was greater than they, he knew that the Blançards were only people, and he was someone apart, taller than before, someone who stood alone with Père, scornful of the pitiful world, someone who lived with dreams, and beauty and enchantment, who conquered by silence, who dwelt in a secret city - a Lévy, a Jew.

  When he was four years old, life began to develop day by day in regularity, up to that time it had been a question of eating and drinking, petting, scolding and sleeping, but now life was shown to him from its true angle, the business of produce, of buying and selling. Five days a week the Blançards sold at the market. Because of this Julius was clothed and fed, and slept in a warm bed. That much he had learnt. And now, the market took the biggest place in his mind, it looked larger than the drab home at Puteaux, it meant life, and the world, it meant the land beyond the bridge. Every evening of the five days Julius would be awakened at midnight by the light of the candle, and see the figure of Père drawing on his trousers, while Mère talked in a low whisper, shading the child’s eyes from the light; and outside on the cobbled stones came the sound of hoofs, and the wheels of a cart, and Grandpère stamping up and down to keep warm, whistling to his horse, blowing upon his hands, calling to the closed window, ‘Are you coming, Paul? You lazy hound, you sluggard - can’t you leave your wife in peace?’

  And in a moment or so the candle would be blown, and Père himself stumble from the room, and later the cart would rumble away down the street, Grandpère cracking his whip, urging the animal forward with his hoarse, rough voice. Julius closed his eyes once more, pressing next to his mother, glad that he had her alone with him, and he knew that Grandpère and Père had gone to the Halles to fetch the produce for the market. The Halles was a mysterious place which he had never seen, and many times he awoke, half surprised at the absence of Père in the bed, and the silence of Grandpère’s cupboard.

  ‘Where are they, Mère?’ he whispered, and she snuggled him close to her, muttering in her voice swollen with sleep, ‘At the Halles, little one; hush, go to sleep.’

  In the mornings they rose early, before the sun had risen, and the sky was grey and cold, and Mère would draw on her clothes hastily, without washing, frizzing her fair curling hair round her fingers, tying her petticoats, wrapping a thick shawl over her woollen dress, slipping her felt slippers inside the wooden clogs. Julius wore a little black cloak on top of his pinafore, and he too had a thick scarf wound tightly round his body, and covering his mouth so that the air should not come to him.

  He wore black clogs, and a woollen cap pulled down over his ears. If his face was dirty she took her handkerchief and licked it, scrubbing his cheeks hard until the dirt was gone.When they were dressed they went out into the street, Julius holding on to his mother with one hand and eating his bread in the other. His bare legs would be blue with the cold, and the tip of his nose too, but his body was warm because of the scarf. They clattered down the muddy hill to the high road, their breath coming in gasps from their mouths, a thin stream of smoke in the frozen air.They crossed the bridge, the Seine flowing beneath seeming pale and treacherous, and before long, when Julius’s legs were beginning to drag and his small feet trip in their heavy clogs, they came to the long line of stalls in the Avenue de Neuilly. These stalls would be ranged along the trottoir, in front of one another, reaching for ever, it seemed to Julius, and the carts were pulled alongside of them in the gutter, the horses with their noses dipped into food-bags, the backs of the carts open as the market folk lifted out their produce and staggered heavy-laden to the stalls.

  Before long Julius and his mother would come to the Blançard stall, and the boy would leave go of her hand and run to pat the legs of the horse who swished his tail, and shook his head until the bells jingled.

  Then Grandpère would appear from behind the stall, his mouth full, his sleeves rolled up above his elbows. ‘So it’s you, is it, you imp of mischief?’ he cried, and picking up the child he held him so that he could catch hold of the horse’s ears.

  Père was setting out the stall, a dumb mediocre figure, a white apron round his waist, a little black scull cap on the back of his head, but already Mère had pushed him to one side, already she was altering the things that he had placed, arranging them differently with swift, capable hands, letting forth a torrent of abuse at his inefficiency. ‘Is it like that, you would sell food?’ she screamed, ‘you big lump of stupidity, you poor rat. Do I have to show you how to do everything?’ And he let her scream, saying no word himself, moving to the other end of the stall, his nostrils quivering. He would lift Julius, by this time grubbing on the ground under the stall, and put him high up on a barrel, covering his knees with a coat, and he would look at him for a moment with a ghost of a smile, laying one long thin finger on his cheek.

  Julius sat there, perched above them all at the back of the stall, his legs tucked under him, clapping his mittened hands together to keep warm. Soon the stall would be ready, and his eyes bigger than his stomach, he would gaze down at the good things spread before him, the smell mounting to him, delicious, strong, sending a quiver of pleasure and anticipation through his body. Oh! the smell of the market, the wonder it was to him,
never to be forgotten, stamped for eternity upon his eager child’s mind open to impressions. The high pile of butter, rounded and smooth, the great slabs of Gruyère cheese, poignant and keen, studded with little holes, and other cheeses too, the red shining Dutch changing to yellow when it was cut, the Camembert, squashy like juice, the fat white cream cheeses bulging through their thin paper, the crate of eggs, brown and white and speckled. Adjoining the Blançard stall, part of it almost, so close it was, came the sight and the smell of green vegetables, of great flowery cauliflowers, stout cabbages, and a multitude of Brussels sprouts; carrots rough and red like the hands of Grandpère, celery white and hard, the lovely odorous leeks hanging from their green stalks, and little lumpy brown potatoes smelling of wet earth.

  From the stall opposite sausages clung to one another, brown and grey and black, long twisting sausages, short stumpy sausages, rolls as thick as a boy’s arm, rolls as thin as a boy’s finger - rich, red, garlic-flavoured sausages. A little further down grey fishes gleamed on a white slab, their sleek fins wet from the tub of water, their mouths running blood, the whiff of salt sea upon them still. Somewhere the carcass of a bullock hung from an iron nail, the pungent smell of good fresh meat, liver blood-coloured and flabby, a calf’s head, the lips bared strangely over the dead teeth. And somewhere the odour of silks and stuffs, carpets and furs; and somewhere the bright vision of a little girl waving bunches of yellow mimosa and deep purple violets, the dust of the cobbled streets, the feeble sun showing through a grey sky, the cold wind, the ceaseless cry of voices filling the air. All these things merged into one, hopelessly intermingled, a riot of sound and smell and colour, and there floated up to Julius, perched on his barrel, a snatch of smoke from a cigarette, a tang of Gruyère cheese, the great hearty laugh of Grandpère as he waved his hands, the shrill cry of Mère wrapping a pound of butter in white paper.