Julius (2 page)

I was seventeen when he decided not to see me any more. The rejection - signalling the end of so much pain and uncertainty - felt more like relief than trauma. It seems far too easy and unfair to brand my father a monster. I know now (more than a decade after his lonely suicide) that he wasn’t. I know now that he was a sick, sad man who needed help. But, very like Julius, he’d felt powerless as a child - deprived of love, shown only coldness and dislike. And like Julius, he’d discovered that inflicting pain on those he loved was as good a way as any to take control, to give his life value and momentum.

I see this now, but did I recognise any of it as I lay on the carpet of my room reading my Gollancz
Julius
? It’s hard to remember, impossible to know for sure. I used my novels back then as comfort and, yes, escape. And the best, most vividly exciting thing about great novels is the way you don’t always know what you’ve read until years later, when the sediment has drifted and settled. And you find what remains - what you really remembered - is the thing that most mattered. And what I remember is that I read a book about a hurt and hurtful man, a man who worked and strove for no purpose and ultimately was left bereft. I do not remember a book about a Jew.

 

H
is first instinct was to stretch out his hands to the sky.

The white clouds seemed so near to him, surely they were easy to hold and to caress, strange-moving things belonging to the wide blue space of heaven.

They floated just above his head, they almost brushed his eyelids as they passed, and he had only to grasp the long curling fringe of them with his fingers and they would belong to him instead, becoming part of him for ever. Something within him whispered that he must clutch at the clouds and bring them down from the sky. So he held out his hands to them and they did not come. He cried out to them and they did not come. They passed away from him as though they had never been, indifferent and aloof; like wreaths of white smoke they were carried away by the wind, born of nothing, dissolving into nothing, a momentary breath that vanished in the air.

Nor yet did he understand, for a queer puzzled look crept into his eyes, and he would frown his ancient baby frown of an old man; while from the innermost part of his being came the long-drawn pitiful wail that can never be explained, the plaintive cry of a child born into the world who knows not what he wants, the eternal question of the earth to the skies - Who am I? Where from? Where to? The first cry and the last. The sigh of the baby, the sigh of the old man.

The white clouds had gone, and now others appeared over the rim of the world, coming into his little sphere of sight; so that the frown went from his face and the look of longing came upon it once more, and again he must stretch out his hands and call to them, the lesson unlearnt, the question in his eyes. A child newly born and he must know the answer - continuing from this first moment until the last for ever seeking, a bright spark rising in the cold air.

Julius Lévy was born in Puteaux, at that time little more than a village on the banks of the Seine. The street and the house in which he lived - now demolished and built over by large factories, their tall chimneys belching smoke into the air - was in his childhood the Rue Jean-Jacques, a long twisting cobbled street leading downhill from the village towards the high road to Paris. The houses were grey-coloured and drab, leaning forward, nearly touching, the air coming with difficulty to the dark rooms.

The last house in the street, cramped and unhealthy like the rest, possessing two rooms and another space scarcely more than a cupboard, was owned by Jean Blançard, the grandfather of Julius. Here he lived with his daughter Louise and his son-in-law Paul Lévy. Beyond the house were rough uncultivated plots of ground, as yet unbuilt upon, where the people of the quarter threw their waste and rubbish. This waste was never removed, and here dogs and cats came to scavenge; lean, wretched animals who would prowl at night and disturb those who slept with their thin hungry cries.

In the daytime children played on the rubbish heap; squatting on their behind they delved amongst the filth and sewage for hidden treasure, and often they would find odds and ends of food, half an apple thrown away or a crust of bread, cheese rind and peelings, and these they would thrust in their mouths with squeals of delight, relishing the joy of forbidden food.

Once he was able to walk, Julius found his way here too, and he would batter open the lids of old tins and thrust his little nose inside, working with his tongue round the edges to catch the last lingering taste of what had been, and then, scratching his body with one hand, he would glance slyly out of the corner of one eye to find the whereabouts of the nearest child, who might, if he were not careful, snatch the tin from his grasp.

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 specimen 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.