No Stars at the Circus (3 page)

My sister can even listen to music. She would put her ear to the side of the piano when Mama played and she could tell when the music was Beethoven and when it was Chopin. Well, anybody could do that, I am sure, but Mama thinks it is very clever because Nadia’s ears do not work like everybody else’s.

Nadia says she likes Berlioz best but that’s only because his name is the same as Mama’s. I like Mozart best. Mama says when I pass my next music exams I will begin to learn either the clarinet or the flute. She’ll let me choose.

But all that talk was when we had a piano, and a living room to put it in. I haven’t been able to practise music for a really,
really
long time. And now, even though the Professor has his fine old piano, here I am, stuck up in the attic, like a monkey in a monkey-puzzle tree.

When I was with Signor Corrado’s circus, sometimes I used to play the little organ they kept in its own little tent, but it always sounded funny. People laughed no matter what I played. They laughed most of all if I played a funeral march. Signor Corrado said there was a clown inside the organ and he couldn’t get rid of him.

I will continue my testament tomorrow because it is getting dark now. There is no special black-out bulb in this little room and the Professor told me the curtain must be pulled across all the time, even at night. I can’t even have a candle in case I burn the house down.

He’s just brought me up some beans and cabbage. I heard him coming so I hid the notebook. I didn’t want him to see me writing anything down. He’d probably get too worried. But I wouldn’t say anything bad about him, of course.

Except that the beans and cabbage were cold because this room is so far from the kitchen. Or else maybe he couldn’t heat them because there was no gas. That often happens.

27 AUGUST 1942

The Germans changed the laws of France.

Our neighbour Monsieur Zacharides said they did it just for spite because they were annoyed by the planes that came from England dropping bombs and spies. The spies had to rush off and hide their parachutes and then try to blow up the railways. But Papa said it was a much more serious plan the Germans had. He wouldn’t say what, though, he just seemed to go into himself and got thin in the face. But Papa said it wasn’t just spite: the Germans had a much more serious plan.

Some of the plan was just for Jews. Mama said that some people want Jews to live all together in one place. How stupid is that? But Mama said there was no need for us to worry even though we are Jewish because there was no record of us in any synagogue.

“Our identity cards say nothing about it,” she said. Then she put her hand to her mouth. “You are never to repeat one word of what I just said. Do you hear me, both of you?”

Nadia and I looked at each other. Did Mama really think we talked about things like that?

But then Mama explained that after the Germans arrived we were supposed to have put our names down in some sort of file. There was a special order for all Jewish people to go along to an office and do this. But Papa didn’t want to because he was born in Germany. So he thought the German army might come looking for him to join up.

When he heard we knew about the file we weren’t on he roared, “Do my children think I’m going to fight against France?”

We certainly did not.

The bit about not going to the synagogue is true because neither Mama nor Papa is religious at all. My friend Jean-Paul said I was dead lucky because I didn’t have to go to Mass every Sunday, or be an altar boy like him. He had to wear a kind of dress but you couldn’t call it that or he got mad.

Mama said there were good bits in every religion and it was wrong for anyone to boast that theirs was the best. Papa said she was foolish if she thought the good Catholic Führer, Herr Adolf Hitler, agreed with her on
that
. He said that being Jewish was not just about having a religion anyway, but about having a whole history.

Papa would never have said Mama was foolish before the Germans came. Nadia cried for a long time.

At school, in the yard, we called the Germans “potato bugs” because they chewed their way through everything that was good in France and turned it all rotten.

It’s a good name for them but you had to say anything like that in a low voice because walls have ears. Jean-Paul said there were German-lovers everywhere who would report you if they heard you call the soldiers “potato bug” or “Fritz”.

“Then you’ll be hanged from the nearest bridge and people will pelt you with rocks and dog poo,” he said.

I said they wouldn’t be allowed to do that to children but he got really cross with me.

“They can do what they like, pea-brain. Remember, I saw those pilots shooting people on the roads. You didn’t. There were real bodies that we had to pass by. Even babies in prams. It was awful.”

One of the first new laws was that there were to be two parts of France.

Potato bugs are so stupid they cannot even count on their fingers as far as Julius Caesar did. He divided France into
three
parts even though he had no trucks or tanks to get around the country in. But everyone with a brain knows that France has lots of parts!

Paris and the north are in the worst half. It has the most Germans and the most rules. People say the other part is not so bad, though Papa makes a face if anyone says “Vichy”. That’s the town where the French government ended up after they stopped running away from the Germans. Papa says all there is in Vichy is smelly hot baths and smelly drinking water.

“The people there must smell pretty bad too,” he said.

The head of the government is old Marshal Pétain. He always wears a hat that’s dripping with gold stuff. He’s got more gold than any of the Germans. That’s because he beat them in the really old war. But they like him anyway. Which just shows how stupid they all are.

Whenever you go to the pictures you see the Marshal. He’s always up there in the newsreels, shaking hands with really clean children. They must get hot baths in Vichy because here in Paris we’re filthy! We can’t have baths because there’s no coal to heat the water.

“Wash like Grimaldi does,” Mama said. “Just watch him lick his paw and dab behind his ears.”

Sometimes we use the boiled water from the vegetables. It stinks, but at least it’s warm.

The only bad part about going to the pictures is that you have to watch the potato bug newsreels. The German soldiers tramp all over maps of Europe and cheer when they knock a place down. Everybody in the cinema wants to say “BOO, HISS”, but you can’t because then they’d turn on the lights and find out where you’re sitting. Then it would be off with you to the guillotine, or somewhere like that.

One time Papa looked at his watch and said it had taken nearly an hour before Robin Hood came on. To the rescue!
Tarantara!

But we haven’t been to a film for ages and ages. Jews can’t go any more. That was another law they made.

28 AUGUST 1942

Even though Paris got stuck in the worst part of France, rue de la Harpe is a good place to live. It’s near the river, you can walk to the Luxembourg Gardens to play and it’s got all kinds of good shops. My school is just a few streets away and Nadia’s is only a bit further.

But guess what, that was
why
we had to move. The Germans don’t want any Jews to have nice places to live and work in. And even though we don’t go to the synagogue, they found out we were Jews anyway. We had to get new identity cards and
J
was stamped on all of them.

Mama said it was a mystery how they had found out. Papa said, “Don’t be so foolish, Anne.”

“I’m frightened, Léo,” she said. “What you said about your cousin—”

Then she saw I was listening and she went into the kitchen. She cried and cried for ages.

The next thing was that Papa got a letter from the Germans which said our shop and quarters were to be “requisitioned”. That means
stolen
. The letter said that under the new laws he was not permitted to operate his business
ever
again. It said we had to move to the fourth district and he would have to register our family there. We’d have to show our new identity papers, including proof of our
race
. The letter said Papa was lucky not to be thrown in jail, or sent away this time round, because he hadn’t signed us up as Jews when the special order was made.

I know all this because Papa read the whole letter out to us. He looked like a statue when he finished. Nadia and I knew we’d better not ask any questions at
all
.

But we are French! It was hideous what they did, taking our home and our things. The potato bugs are the ones who should move. They are thieves and bullies. And invaders.

They are the enemy.

Back then, I didn’t know what they meant by “this time round”. Now I know.

We had only one day to get ready. The most important thing was Papa’s tools because he needed them in case there was any jewellery work or clock-mending where we were going. He didn’t care that the new laws said he couldn’t work any longer.

“They’ll not take my hands away from me,” he said. “Every last spanner comes along.”

He put every tool in its place in the leather carry-case. His loupe eye-piece has its own velvet box and the spanners and screwdrivers fit around it like tiny knives. The loupe is my favourite of all his tools. It lets you look into a diamond and see stars.

But of course Papa couldn’t take all the beautiful old clocks in the shop. He picked out all the jewels and watches that were ours and Mama wrapped them up in strips of soft chamois skin. She said we had to hide these in our clothes.

Before Papa did anything else, he wrote notes to everybody whose goods he had in the shop. He told them he was returning them now, in case they were
mislaid
. He underlined that word. I had to deliver the notes and the watches and rings to all those people who lived close by. Some of them were cross because the work wasn’t finished but most were sorry to hear about our shop closing down. Later Papa went out himself on his bicycle to deliver the others. He had so many it was dark when he came home and the curfew had begun.

But there was one order from Orléans. Nobody could travel
that
far so we took it with us for safekeeping. I was glad of that because it was a microscope.

Here is a secret: a flea looks like a space monster when you put it under a microscope.

I don’t know where the microscope is now but if anybody finds it in the apartment in rue des Lions it belongs to Madame Pirotte, 53 rue de la Reine Blanche, Orléans. The full address is written down under the base.

The day we moved, Papa hired a vélo taxi to bring our clothes and schoolbooks across the river. His old friend Monsieur Bambiger had buzzed around like a bumble bee and had found us an apartment.

“But it has only two rooms,” Papa told us. “So you’ll have to leave most of your things behind. I’m sorry. You must be brave about this, both of you.”

I was allowed to bring just one storybook so I took my Alexandre Dumas omnibus which is three books in one.

Nadia took her puppet theatre. She said it folded up like a book but it was at least four times the size of my Alexandre Dumas. Papa said that was fair because Nadia is deaf and can’t go out to play like me.

All the big things like cooking pots and sheets and blankets had to go inside the cabin of the vélo taxi and we were to march along behind it, with Papa wheeling his bicycle. Jews aren’t supposed to have bicycles either but Papa said people could only take so much nonsense.

“Let them come and requisition the poor old bike if they want it so much,” he said.

He and Mama had suitcases full of clothes and Nadia and I stuffed our school satchels with small things like pencils and needles, toothbrushes and soap. I carried the microscope in case the street cobbles shook the vélo taxi about and disturbed the lenses.

The taxi had a sign on the back which said “I’m Yours for a Song”. But that was just a joke. You have to pay the rider for all his pedalling and give him a tip if you can.

Monsieur Zacharides, who owns the Greek pastry shop two doors down on rue de la Harpe, came out to say goodbye to us. He is a big jolly man, but there he was, crying like a baby. That made it very hard for Mama, as she was trying not to cry. We all knew that leaving the piano was breaking her heart but there was nothing we could do about it so we said nothing.

Monsieur Zacharides gave Nadia a box of pastries as a treat for our first meal away from home.

He even gave the vélo man a fresh brioche. “Be careful with that luggage,” he said to him. “Help my friends out when you get there. The Albers are the best neighbours in the whole world.”

Madame Perroneau came down to the door and waved us off. She was crying too, into her handkerchief. That was odd because she was always the first to complain to Mama if Jean-Paul and I made too much noise outside the shop when we were racing up and down on my roller skates, or playing anything at all.

“Where’s Grimaldi?” Nadia asked her.

“Oh, my pet, he’s out with his lady-love from the ironmonger’s shop.”

Nadia nearly cried about that but she made a big effort.

“Give him my love, Madame Perroneau,” she said. “Tell him to be brave always.”

Other people waved at us from their shops as we passed, down as far as the dog-leg bend in the street. But Monsieur Zacharides and Madame Perroneau were the only neighbours who came out to say a proper goodbye. If there was anyone else who wanted to they were too late because we were gone.

29 AUGUST 1942

I have written lots and lots of my Testament in just four days. There isn’t much else to do here, is there?

The Professor has just left the room. He was quite nice today. He spent a lot of time up here and looked at all the books with me and asked me questions.

He didn’t get near this notebook, of course. That is VERBOTEN!