green apples too, eggs, a bag of flour and a tiny tub of butter.
“Well, you know I can’t make an apple tart,” Mama said. “We’ve no oven, only that useless fireplace. So don’t you people get your hopes up too high.”
But she was smiling. She made pancakes with apple sauce instead. You see? She always does her best.
You’d have thought Papa would be really happy that he was able to bring back some really nice food that day, just like in the old times. But no, his face was like thunder. I heard him mutter something to Mama about enjoying the food because there wouldn’t be much more like it.
“I got a miserable price from someone I trusted,” he said. “They have us over a barrel.”
I guessed the food had been very dear, wherever he’d bought it. You could see it was black market stuff, the kind that comes up from the country, or from somewhere that isn’t ordinary. Black market stuff is always dear because you can’t use your food coupons.
But when we were in our room that night Nadia told me about Papa taking the watches out of the hiding place. She said he must have sold them. Of course she hadn’t heard what he’d said at dinner, so I didn’t tell her. She was still so happy about the pancakes.
She said there must be at least ten more watches left in the safe place. “Because I carried six and so did you. I don’t know how many rings there are. Enough for years, I bet.”
The next chance I got I lifted the floorboard and counted them. There were twenty-two rings left.
LESSONS
Nadia was a year older than Giselle Bauer but she used to play with her anyway, even though Giselle didn’t really understand about Nadia being deaf. She kept yammering away, like a stupid little budgie in a cage, just baby stuff and doll stories. It drove Mama mad to listen to her, never mind me.
It was a funny thing but right where we lived on rue des Lions all the other children were girls – or boys who were very young, just babies, really. I had nobody to play with. Mama began to say things about me going to school after all because I needed the company, but Papa was dead set against it. He had a notion something would happen to me there and he wouldn’t be able to stop it.
He began to teach me some mathematics, and even a bit of chemistry, which only happens when you go to the collège. Except we didn’t have any materials, just flour and salt, cooking things like that.
“What about our gold and silver?” I asked. “They’re elements. Couldn’t we do something with them?”
Papa had shown me their names on the periodic table of the elements. Gold is
Au
; silver is
Ag
. I thought it was a smart idea but he just got cross.
“Don’t be silly, Jonas,” he said. “Just learn the names. It’s a start.”
He wasn’t a bad teacher but he wasn’t as good at explaining things as Mama was. She told great stories. I suppose it’s easier to tell stories when the lessons are about history and books. Mama was very good at giving descriptions of people from history, like Vercingétorix and Roland, who were great French fighters. And she was really sorry for poor Napoléon, cruelly locked up on his island in the middle of the ocean.
“Maybe he had a cat for a friend,” Nadia said. “Or hens.”
Mama also told us proper stories that she remembered. Some were written by Charles Dickens, who was English, and some came from the
Arabian Nights
. She read out bits from the book she’d brought with her from rue de la Harpe,
Les Misérables
, and made me and Nadia copy them out, to practise our handwriting and spelling. But there was no paper so we had to use the back pages in our school books. My eraser was just about rubbed out with all the work it had to do.
I think what upset Mama most was that I had no music. So she made me sing scales and taught me all the songs she knew.
“Remember, your voice is an instrument too.” she said. “So learn to use it.”
I don’t have a great voice, though. Not
“Well, you know I can’t make an apple tart,” Mama said. “We’ve no oven, only that useless fireplace. So don’t you people get your hopes up too high.”
But she was smiling. She made pancakes with apple sauce instead. You see? She always does her best.
You’d have thought Papa would be really happy that he was able to bring back some really nice food that day, just like in the old times. But no, his face was like thunder. I heard him mutter something to Mama about enjoying the food because there wouldn’t be much more like it.
“I got a miserable price from someone I trusted,” he said. “They have us over a barrel.”
I guessed the food had been very dear, wherever he’d bought it. You could see it was black market stuff, the kind that comes up from the country, or from somewhere that isn’t ordinary. Black market stuff is always dear because you can’t use your food coupons.
But when we were in our room that night Nadia told me about Papa taking the watches out of the hiding place. She said he must have sold them. Of course she hadn’t heard what he’d said at dinner, so I didn’t tell her. She was still so happy about the pancakes.
She said there must be at least ten more watches left in the safe place. “Because I carried six and so did you. I don’t know how many rings there are. Enough for years, I bet.”
The next chance I got I lifted the floorboard and counted them. There were twenty-two rings left.
LESSONS
Nadia was a year older than Giselle Bauer but she used to play with her anyway, even though Giselle didn’t really understand about Nadia being deaf. She kept yammering away, like a stupid little budgie in a cage, just baby stuff and doll stories. It drove Mama mad to listen to her, never mind me.
It was a funny thing but right where we lived on rue des Lions all the other children were girls – or boys who were very young, just babies, really. I had nobody to play with. Mama began to say things about me going to school after all because I needed the company, but Papa was dead set against it. He had a notion something would happen to me there and he wouldn’t be able to stop it.
He began to teach me some mathematics, and even a bit of chemistry, which only happens when you go to the collège. Except we didn’t have any materials, just flour and salt, cooking things like that.
“What about our gold and silver?” I asked. “They’re elements. Couldn’t we do something with them?”
Papa had shown me their names on the periodic table of the elements. Gold is
Au
; silver is
Ag
. I thought it was a smart idea but he just got cross.
“Don’t be silly, Jonas,” he said. “Just learn the names. It’s a start.”
He wasn’t a bad teacher but he wasn’t as good at explaining things as Mama was. She told great stories. I suppose it’s easier to tell stories when the lessons are about history and books. Mama was very good at giving descriptions of people from history, like Vercingétorix and Roland, who were great French fighters. And she was really sorry for poor Napoléon, cruelly locked up on his island in the middle of the ocean.
“Maybe he had a cat for a friend,” Nadia said. “Or hens.”
Mama also told us proper stories that she remembered. Some were written by Charles Dickens, who was English, and some came from the
Arabian Nights
. She read out bits from the book she’d brought with her from rue de la Harpe,
Les Misérables
, and made me and Nadia copy them out, to practise our handwriting and spelling. But there was no paper so we had to use the back pages in our school books. My eraser was just about rubbed out with all the work it had to do.
I think what upset Mama most was that I had no music. So she made me sing scales and taught me all the songs she knew.
“Remember, your voice is an instrument too.” she said. “So learn to use it.”
I don’t have a great voice, though. Not
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