Julius (3 page)

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.

Grandpère was the real merchant, the true salesman; he watched the faces of the people as they pressed against the stall, as they hurried past, rubbing shoulders with one another, and his blue eyes twinkled, his mouth widened, and a woman would turn, laughing at him over her shoulder. He had a word for everyone, a nod here, a joke there, a whisper somewhere else. They flocked around his stall, buying as he suggested; he played with the fringed shawl of an old woman who gaped at him coquettishly, showing toothless gums, he kissed his hand to a dark-eyed girl whose slim ankles showed beneath her petticoat.

And Mère smiled too, with her fair frizzed hair, her tiny ear-rings, the dimples at the corners of her mouth, her full breasts shaking. ‘Get on with you,’ she said, ‘get on with you,’ and she looked boldly at a young man whose cap was pulled on one side, who passed his tongue over his lips.As the morning passed the cries became more shrill, the clamour more deafening, and the smell of the produce pungent and strong. Folk did not linger so long over their choice, they bought hastily, scrappily, elbowed from their place by newcomers, their bags bulging open, their hands fumbling for the sous in their purses. Julius, lifted down from his barrel, played now round the legs of the stall. He found clippings of cheese and put them in his mouth, he sniffed about like a little dog amongst the scraps, his eyes darting here and there, and already his sharp ears noted the passing of time as the prices fell, as the voice of Grandpère became hoarse and strained, as the smiles of Mère became more artificial, her hair escaping from its pins, and when she lifted her hands to arrange it, large patches of perspiration showed under her arms.

The child was cold now and tired, scarcely hungry because he had fed himself from scraps here and there, but the bustle and clatter were now too much for him, the scene was no longer fresh and exciting, it was stale and familiar, the very sight of the food itself unappetising and high.

Grandpère and Mère, those shouting noisy Blançards, jarred upon his nerves, he crept to the back of the stall where Père was counting money, he whined pitifully, pulling at his knee, begging to be taken up. Then Père took him in his arms, first tying the sous carefully in a little bag with a string round it, and Julius was carried to the cart and laid to sleep on an old coat and a box for a pillow.

When he awakened
midi
would be striking, the deep boom echoing strange and hollow in the cold air, the sound of the bell taken up by other churches, and Julius would climb to the opening of the covered cart and look outside.

The last stream of buyers straggled away from the market across the Avenue, their shawls over their heads, their shoulders bent, scurrying over the cobbled stones like black beetles, and the people of the market were packing away the remains of their produce, unhinging the boards, unfolding the overlapping stalls.

A group of small boys in cloaks and casquettes came hurrying along, their cheeks glowing red, and Julius watched them as they slipped past him, chattering shrilly, a fat sinister priest bringing up the rear, his stomach protruding from his gown, his beady eyes darting to right and left.

Flakes of snow were falling from the sky, soft and white they melted on Julius’s hands as he lifted them, and he held up his face too that they might linger for an instant on his cheek, wet and gentle, then vanishing to nowhere. The sky was full of the snow, it fell from the heavy clouds like scraps of paper, strangely silent, covering the street and the remaining stalls, blocking the hitherto uninterrupted view of the Avenue stretching back to the bridge, and in the other direction widening and rising, to the distant gates of Paris.

Julius watched the snow fall, and listened to the deep tolling bell of a church; he saw the trail of little boys disappear with the priest down one of the streets branching from the Avenue, he heard the horse stamp impatiently on the cobbled stones, and another cart rumble by.The market smell was still in his nostrils, he was no longer tired, but hungry.

‘Mère,’ he called from the cart. ‘Mère, I want to go home.’

Soon the last basket was packed, the last box shut, and they climbed into the cart ready to return to Puteaux, Julius high in front beside Grandpère, forgetting his hunger, drumming his legs against the ledge in excitement, begging to hold the whip.

‘Hué-dada, Hué-dada,’ he shouted, and the horse plodded forward, the wheels moved, and they were being carried along the Avenue towards the bridge, the sight of the flowing Seine looming faintly through a mist of falling snow.

 

When Julius was older he was allowed to sell in the market. He was sharp, he knew how to tackle the customers.

His quick eyes detected the shadow of hesitation on the face of a passer-by, and he leaned forward, touching her arm. ‘What’s the use of going any further, madame? Don’t you want value for your money?’

The woman smiled at the eager face of the boy, but she drew her shawl tight around her, shaking her head in doubt. ‘It’s too dear,’ she said, ‘I can’t pay that price for butter.’

Julius shrugged his shoulders, turning from her in contempt.

‘The stuff that is sold in the market cheaper than this is not butter at all, it is vomit. You are welcome to poison yourself.’