Julius Read online

  Julius set snares to catch birds, he fixed lines on the banks of the Seine below Puteaux in the hope of finding fish.

  Soon it would not be a question of selling meat to feed others, but of finding meat to feed themselves.

  Any day the Prussians might take it into their heads to descend upon Paris, and might not they march through Puteaux, down the wide high road towards the Pont de Neuilly, burning and destroying as they went? ‘Would they kill us?’ asked Julius, ‘we who are not even soldiers and cannot fight?’ And nobody could tell him. Nobody knew how long they must wait, how soon the evening would come.

  They drove in the cart along the high road, Grandpère and Julius, leaving Puteaux and Courbevoie behind them, striking out towards the village of Nanterre over the brow of the hill. The road was rough, the wheels of the cart kept sinking into deep ruts, and there were puddles everywhere, and mud, and from the pallid sky a wet sun shone into the puddles, reflecting a space of blue no larger than a man’s hand, and a loose, straggling cloud.

  ‘Ha! Ha! my beauty,’ called Grandpère, cracking his whip, and the horse flicked his ears and sniffed at the air. It was cold, sharp autumnal weather. Julius blew upon his hands.

  ‘In Nanterre we shall find meat,’ said Grandpère, ‘there is a fellow there who used to own a couple of strong mules. They will make excellent eating, and will fetch a good price in the fortress.’

  ‘Perhaps he won’t want to destroy them,’ said Julius. ‘Who would kill animals that have served well and worked hard?’

  ‘It isn’t a time for sentiment, my darling,’ said Grandpère; ‘when he sees my money he will slaughter everything he owns. I can bargain better than he. He is a peasant, he knows nothing. I shall sell the meat for treble the sum in Puteaux.’

  The cart splashed through the puddles. The sun peered once more through the grey clouds, and shone upon the bare, white head of Grandpère. He smiled, cracking his whip, and sang - swaying from side to side in his seat:‘Bismarck, si tu continues,

  De tous tes Prussiens il n’en restera guère;

  Bismarck, si tu continues,

  De tous tes Prussiens il n’en restera plus.’

  Grandpère loved the sun, the fresh morning and the crisp air.

  ‘When this war is over we’ll amuse ourselves, eh, my Julius? Soon you’ll be a big boy, you’ll go shares in the market. You’re going to be heavy and strong, a real Blançard. Even though I’ll be an old fellow when you grow tall, I’ll show you things. We’ll laugh, won’t we? we’ll trick the world.’

  ‘Yes, Grandpère, my dear.’

  ‘You won’t forget me when I’m good-for-nothing. You’ll come and tell me when you’re angry, when you’re happy, and when you want to run and shout, and when you want to go with women.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s mornings like this that are good, Julius. The sun and the cold air. Open your lungs, boy, and breathe. That father of yours is a queer fellow now. He sits with his thoughts and his music, he doesn’t care for this.You must learn to live with your body, my little one, and laugh and sing, and fill yourself and take everything you want. But don’t be a dreamer.’

  ‘I don’t know what I want, Grandpère.’

  ‘No - not yet - how should you, you silly midget? But when you’re a man - ah! I tell you, living is a great game. Don’t let people do you in. You be the one to win, always, always.’

  ‘Something for nothing - something for nothing,’ sang Julius.

  ‘Go on, laugh at me, you miserable chicken. One day you’ll stretch yourself and wink an eye at the sky, and you’ll do someone down for a hundred sous, and you’ll pocket the money and walk out and have a woman. That’s life, Julius - and you can tap your nose and say, “Ha! - Ha! - Grandpère Blançard, he knew me, he understood.”’

  ‘Shall I do that, shall I then?’ laughed the boy. And Grandpère cracked his whip once more, and threw back his head.

  ‘C’est là qu’est l’plan de Trochu,

  Plan, plan, plan, plan, plan,

  Mon Dieu! quel beau plan!

  C’est là qu’est l’plan de Trochu:

  Grâce à lui rien n’est perdu!’

  ‘When you are sixty-five, will you have lived as fully as Jean Blançard? I wonder, my little son, with your dark eyes and your white Jew face, where will you be, what will you have done?’

  ‘Give me the whip. Let me crack the whip too.’

  Julius flicked the reins, the horse trotted fast along the high road, and Grandpère sat back with his arms folded, smoking his pipe.

  When they came over the brow of the hill and turned to the left down the road to Nanterre they saw a little white cloud of dust far ahead, the road dust that is made by the hoofs of many horses, or the tramping of many feet. It was not the ordinary surface dust raised by a rumbling cart. There was a sound, too, a distant murmur - the movement of people blocked in a mass, foreign, queer. Grandpère flushed, his eyes narrowed, and he swore under his breath.

  ‘What is it?’ said Julius, but not waiting for an answer he gave the reins to Grandpère, and he knew.

  Jean Blançard backed the cart and turned his horse round in the direction of Puteaux once more. ‘If they have seen us,’ he began, but he did not finish his sentence, he cracked his whip on the back of the horse and no longer in the air. The cart jolted over the ruts, flinging them both from side to side. The old horse galloped, his ears laid back. Julius kept looking back over his shoulder.

  ‘They’re coming, Grandpère,’ he said.

  The cloud of dust was drawing nearer, he could see soldiers on horseback, and the leader was shouting out something, waving his arm in the air.

  Jean Blançard chuckled. ‘Go on, my beauty, go on,’ he cried, and he handed the reins to Julius. ‘Drive straight, keep in the middle of the road - don’t look to the right or left.’ The boy obeyed.

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘I’m going to have a shot at them,’ said Grandpère, and he turned in his seat and reached for the old gun in the back of the cart.

  The sound of the clattering hoofs drew nearer, there was shouting behind them, the movement of men, and a voice calling loudly: ‘Halte - Halte.’

  ‘Drive, my darling, drive like the devil,’ laughed Grandpère, and he raised his old musket to his shoulder and fired. The staggering report frightened the horse, caring nothing for the light hands of Julius on the reins he took the bit firmly between his teeth and bolted.

  The cart rocked, pulled first one side then the other, by the terrified, maddened animal.

  ‘Take no notice of me, little fool, keep in the middle of the road,’ said Grandpère, and he lifted his musket and fired again.

  ‘Got him - the stinking vandal, got him!’ he shouted, and now there came the sound of another shot, from behind, from further away, and the clattering hoofs coming nearer, nearer, and Julius looked at Grandpère, and saw blood coming from his eye, running down his cheek.

  ‘You’re hurt,’ whispered Julius, and he felt a cold shiver go through him and began to cry.

  ‘Drive, you silly idiot - get home, get back to Puteaux,’ said Grandpère, and there came another shot, and the blood ran all over his face splashing down on to his blouse. It was not Grandpère any more, it was a strange inhuman thing of torn flesh and streaming blood, it was someone who rose high in the cart and shook his fist in the air, who raised his old gun and fired again, who threw back his head and called in a voice of thunder: ‘Go on - go on - try and split my guts, you louse-ridden Prussian bastards’ - it was someone who flung his gun away, who fell upon his face into a ditch and died. And a little Jew boy white with horror clung to the reins of the maddened horse, thrown from side to side in the tottering, jolting cart, seeing nothing but the dust of the high road, the stones flying, the sudden rain falling from the sky and beating his eyes, washing the blood on his sleeve, hearing nothing but his own child’s voice crying in the cold air: ‘The Prussians are coming . . . the Prussians . . . the Pruss
ians.’

  Now Père was looking into his eyes, was whispering softly, and Mère was shaking his shoulder, her hair falling over her face, and she was calling to him: ‘But where is Grandpère, tell us, where is Grandpère?’ And he pushed them away from him, bewildered and frightened, pointing towards the high road but murmuring nonsense, inarticulate, running to a corner and snatching his little cat in his arms, stroking her, burying his face in the fur.

  Why must they ask him questions? why could not they leave him alone? He was tired, tired . . . Mère gave him a crust of bread and he chewed it hungrily, crying softly to himself. Did not they understand that Grandpère was dead and the Prussians were coming? He could not tell them any more than this.

  Mère was rolling a heap of things into a blanket, she gazed about her wildly, a strange, distracted figure, grasping at odds and ends of no value or use, a pair of slippers belonging to Grandpère, a frying pan, a mat from the floor, the pillow from the bed.

  ‘The Prussians are coming - the Prussians are coming—’

  Père made a bundle of clothes, he found sticks too for firewood, and a small sack of potatoes. He piled all these things on top of one another, the cart was bulging, there would only be room now for themselves. Julius watched them from his corner, he knew now that they were going away from Puteaux because of the Prussians, that if they had gone before Grandpère would not be dead.

  ‘Where are we going, Père?’

  ‘We’re crossing over the bridge to Paris.’

  ‘But the gates are all shut.’

  ‘They will let us in.’

  ‘Where shall we live?’

  ‘We will find somewhere.’

  And Julius looked around the room he would not see again, the dirty, untidy floor, the table stained with wine, spilt long ago by Grandpère, an old pair of clogs on the hearth, the dull smouldering fire.

  ‘When shall we come back?’

  Nobody answered him, they were out in the street now surrounded by a little cluster of people, who also carried bundles, who also loaded their carts.

  ‘The Prussians are coming - the Prussians are coming ...’

  The bedroom was not swept, the mattress lay turned on its side. Père came in and carried it away, lifting it into the cart. There was some dirty water in the basin. Would it never be emptied away? Would it stay there until the war was over? And the grey ashes in the grate, and the bowl of thin soup - cold and congealed - on the table?

  ‘Why are you looking back, Julius? What do you see? There is no time ...’

  He didn’t want to leave the house, he did not want to leave Puteaux. It was his home and his room, those dingy walls, that dirty floor, the creaking tumbled bed, the ticking clock, the queer familiar stuffy soup smell. He did not know anywhere else but this.

  ‘But you cannot take the cat with you, you must leave her behind, she will find food,’ said Mère, plucking at his arm, her large, frightened face close to his.

  ‘No - no, my little Mimitte, my sweet. I will not leave her to the Prussians, they will hurt her.’ He clasped the cat next to his heart, he beat his mother away with one hand.

  ‘They won’t touch her, you child, why should they harm an animal? Someone will take her and give her milk.’ Mère scolded impatiently. There was no thought in the mind of anyone but to fly, to run.

  ‘The Prussians are coming - the Prussians are coming.’

  An old woman stroked the cat’s head, she bent down to Julius.

  ‘I am not going, I’m staying in Puteaux, little one. Give me your cat to look after, she will be happy with me. Don’t cry, my poor little one.’

  But Julius shook his head, he wiped his eyes on the sleeve of his coat.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘no, she is my own cat. No one will ever have her but me.’

  Now they were climbing into the cart, the faces of people gaped up at them, white masks, shadowy and distorted, a girl with a handkerchief tied over her hair, an old man with a long beard.

  They were driving away from Puteaux down the muddy, twisting street to the bridge, and somebody trudged beside them, a bundle over his shoulder, and somebody ran in front, hitting a donkey with a stick, a donkey laden with sacks and pillows.

  From the fortress of Mont Valérien came the boom of the cannon, a low rumble of thunder. ‘The Prussians are coming - the Prussians are coming ...’

  Somewhere on the high road to Nanterre Grandpère lay dead in a ditch.

  They came to the Pont de Neuilly. They looked back over their shoulders, up the high road to the distant brow of the hill. No time - no time. On, on towards the deserted Avenue de Neuilly, the rattle of carts, the trudging of footsteps.

  When they came to the other side of the bridge Julius pulled at Père’s arm.

  ‘Will my little cat starve in Paris?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Père. ‘I don’t know who will take us in or where we shall go. Cats are never happy in strange places. You ought to have left her behind. She would have fed herself. Someone would take care of her.’

  ‘No,’ whispered Julius,‘no - never, never anyone but me.What is mine cannot belong to another person. Père, do you understand? Tell me you understand.’

  He looked up at Père, his thin face white, his nose pinched, and he was shivering from the cold and the rain.

  ‘Yes,’ said Paul Lévy, ‘I understand.’

  He stopped the cart and Julius climbed down. People passed by, bending low under their packs, and another cart rattled over the cobbled stones, and another.

  ‘Why do you wait? The Prussians are coming - the Prussians are coming—’

  Julius picked a stone from the gutter and folded it in a handkerchief. He tied the handkerchief round the neck of the cat. The animal purred, arching her back, patting the boy’s face with her paw. He buried his face in her fur and closed his eyes. Then he ran to the rail of the bridge and threw her over into the Seine.

  Mère cried out in horror, clutching the side of the cart. ‘Oh! poor little Mimitte, poor little beast. How could you? You cruel hard-hearted child, someone would have fed her - someone would have taken care of her.’

  Julius said nothing. He climbed up on the cart once more beside Père and he did not look back. The rain mingled with the tears on his face, they splashed down on his sleeve, they became part of the stain that was Grandpère’s blood. Julius was indifferent, caring no more, heedless of the people who walked along the Avenue, heedless of the murmur rising from them like the echo of a cry: ‘The Prussians are coming - the Prussians are coming ...’

  He sat with blazing eyes in a white face, silent, proud, his small arms folded, a Lèvy - a Jew.

  And so they came to the Porte Maillot and the barriers of Paris.

  Paul Lévy of Puteaux and his wife and son were refugees. They lodged in one room, on the seventh floor of an old house in the Rue des Petits Champs. Instinct had taken Paul Lévy to this quarter, close to the Halles. This warren of narrow streets was the only part known to him, a villager from Puteaux, a poor market salesman. And they were not alone in their comfortless garret. They must share it with an old woman and her son, Madame Tripet, toothless, half-witted, who mumbled to herself in a corner, and Jacques, a big, hulking brute of twenty-two, apprentice to a butcher, handsome in a coarse, bold way, his mass of red hair standing up on his head like a bush.

  Mère and Jacques Tripet fought at once, she scolding in her shrill voice, protesting at the small space of the room, and he grinning contemptuously, letting forth a flood of meaningless jargon, sending her to the devil.

  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 s
carce, 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.