The Children's Hour

The children had been playing in the snow all morning, the snow that had fallen softly throughout the night, covering Paris with its mantle. The branches of the trees in the Luxembourg gardens were bowed under its weight. The Grand Bassin, that octagonal pond where other more privileged children sailed small boats on summer days, was frozen over. The Notre Dame rising above the silent streets looked like a giant iced cake.      These children of the Marais scarcely left their district, they had little money but they knew how to improvise with a wooden box, for example, to which they attached two ropes and pulled each other over the snowy pavement of tiny rue Hospitaliere Gervase.  I passed them on my way to the shops and saw they had built a snowman with two coals for eyes, a carrot nose and a scarlet muffler round its throat. Their shrill, bird like calls rang through the icy air, their happy laughter, they were having the time of their lives. For me the snow was a hindrance. It clung to the hem of my trousers and I had to watch my step on a stretch of impacted snow as I walked between the street traders, heading for Finkelstein’s bakery where the cakes would be waiting, the selection I had ordered for the end of term tea party. 

            When the children came into the room, their hands icy from throwing snowballs, rosy cheeked, happy and hungry, everything was ready for them. We had pulled the school tables together to form a double line down the centre of the room and upon this we had laid a clean cloth before loading it with plates of honey cake, apple cake, kichlak and banana loaf. A cheery fire burned in the grate and we had hung tiny lights around the mantelpiece and the windows. The children shrieked with joy and scrambled for their seats. 

            ‘Children, children!’ cried Mademoiselle Isabelle:  ‘calm down. If you make too much noise, Monsieur Duval will not tell you a story.’

             Instantly every child was still. Although I was a mathematics teacher, I had lately discovered in myself the ability to tell a good tale. They began to eat, small hands stretching out for the biscuits and cakes. The plates swiftly emptied and were refilled. They ate with the appetite of young dogs, seeming insatiable.  I watched them, the small plump boy in a green pullover whose hand returned again and again to a plate of kichlak. Another boy, obviously his brother, ate more slowly, watchful of the younger one, and finally moved the plate out of his reach. A skinny child with sandy hair and round spectacles had a huge wedge of apple cake on his plate, which was obviously proving too much to cope with. He had reached the point of sitting and staring at it. Then my gaze fell on a little girl and immediately my attention was held. She had smooth olive skin, huge dark eyes and her hair hung in dark curls about her face. She looked like an angel. This child ate delicately, wiping her mouth with her napkin, seeming oblivious of the chatter going on around her. Suddenly she became aware of my gaze and started out of her dream, shyly lowering her eyes. The afternoon wore on, the room grew warmer and we had to open a window, the volume of the children’s voices rose. 

            Mademoiselle Isabelle clapped her hands. ‘Children, children, shh!  Monsieur Duval is going to tell you some stories.’ 

            This was my moment, my brain working swiftly .I always made up my stories on the spot. What would I tell them today? Ah yes, the geese. A few months ago, I had heard a loud honking and looking up had seen a marvellous sight: the perfect formation of a flock of geese against the autumnal sky. I caught the impatient glance of the boy in the green pullover and began: 

            ‘Have you ever watched the wild geese when they fly?  Each one takes a turn and when the goose that leads is weary it falls to the back of the V and slowly works its way back to the head. If a member of the flock falls ill or is injured by hunters two fellow geese will fall back with the injured goose. These two will stay with their injured companion until it is well enough to again embark on their journey Geese are wonderful birds, they take care of each other. When it starts to become cold, they gather together and fly away to warmer place. Now the geese I want to tell you about are magic geese. They fly not to a warmer place on the Earth but up up high into the sky, past the stars to stay on the moon. That is why, if you look up on a winter’s night, you will see all those marks on the moon; it is the wild geese flying across it. And you know, my children, the feathers of these geese are magic, also. If any child finds one he or she can turn into a goose and fly with the others. Why, any of you could go on a marvellous journey to the moon.’ I paused. I looked around. The expression on the little girl’s face was uncertain.  ‘But of course, it is just for a little while and then you can come home to your Mummy and Daddy. They will always be there, waiting for you.' 

            The children were greedy for more stories. I told them of marvellous happenings, straying into fantastical realms. There were tales of wizards and magic spells, animals that talked, a tree that grew leaves of gold.  The children were silent and intent. We all seemed to draw together, wrapped in the magic of this winter’s day: snow beyond the window, cosiness and joy within. At the end of the afternoon they filed past me, murmuring their thanks, and the angelic child put her arms round my neck and said she loved me. 

            The snow fell again that night but the next day the weather turned milder. As I passed the spot where the snowman had stood, I saw the muffler lying in a pool of water. 

The spring came then summer, the children played marbles in the street. In September, Germany invaded Poland and suddenly we were at war. 

            There was hunger and cold in the Marais, probably more so than any other part of France. The buildings in this neighbourhood press close together, there was sparse green space to grow vegetables. When the shopkeepers had a quota of food, they would put a selection of numbers in their window, ‘good numbers’ they were called. Woe betide if you did not regularly check your own; by evening your share would be sold. False ration books wee circulated but often so badly copied they didn’t fool the shopkeepers of Rue de la Turenne. Some turned a blind eye but others did not. Then there came the Night of the Stars when every Jew had to present themself for the word ‘Jew’ to be stamped on their identity cards .Law followed law in quick succession. Jewish businesses were seized, apartments and furniture seized. The curfew was imposed; Jews must do their shopping during one authorised hour between four and five. Telephones, radios, bicycles were all forbidden. Jewish inhabitants were not permitted to enter a public garden, theatre, cinema or swimming pool. How could one live like that?  When you had to queue for meat there was not enough time to queue for bread. One mother, desperate to feed her family, carried on shopping after five. She was arrested and deported to Auschwitz.          Another new law: it was now obligatory for all Jews to wear a yellow star at the height of the heart, even the children over the age of six.  At first some of the boys thought it a joke and paraded the streets like little sheriffs. As if these humiliations and fears were not enough, the arrests began. Numerous inhabitants of the Marais received a green ticket ordering them to report to the town hall with sufficient personal effects for three days. They were never seen again. It began with Jews of foreign origin but then the rope tightened to include French Jews, first men but soon women and children, too.  

            We did our best at the school. We helped a number of families by furnishing them with false papers and ration books. The good sisters of the religious community saved hundreds of children, finding them places in the provinces where they were safe. But we couldn’t rescue them all.  That terrible night came in July that Black Thursday when the French police knocked on the doors and thousands of the people of the Marais were taken away. There was no escape, the narrow streets created a real mousetrap. They came to the school to arrest teachers and children bound for the death camps.  The little angel with the wide dark eyes was among them. 

             I took to walking through the streets of the Marais. Once they had sung with the whirr of sewing machines, where mothers sat at the windows and sewed, darned and repaired their children’s clothes to make them last longer. Now silence. The hatters’ shop had been taken over by a French couple who had never made a cap in their lives. The cries of the streets vendor, the watercress seller, the sound of a flute which always announced the arrival of the goat herd and his goats, meandering along rue Saint-Antoine: all were no more, No more the stout figure of Lev with his flowing beard, wearing a black fedora, carrying a black prayer book as he leaves shul. No more: it rang in my head as aimlessly, I wandered.   Maybe I would stop for a cup of the vile tasting roasted grains that now passed as coffee for there was nothing for me to do, the school was closed, the children no longer played at marbles, there were no Jewish couples spending Saturday night seeing a film at the Odeon.  It was a time of darkness and despair.

              Sometimes, as I traced and retraced the narrow streets, tormented by my powerlessness in the face of the Holocaust, like a bird whose nest has been plundered and yet returns again and again in the vain hope it will find its chicks have been restored, a picture would come into my mind; a memory that comforted me and perhaps saved me from going insane. It was an image of that snowy day, the snowman with his black stare and scarlet muffler. I heard the call of the children’s voices at play. I saw again the warm fire lit room, the table laden with festive food and the happy smiling faces turned to me as I told them about the magic wild geese and for a brief hour, we drew close together, into the delightful, innocent world of make believe. 

                                                            ENDS