I TUG ON THE STRING a little harder. I’m afraid the
box will tear. The shoebox is jammed against the
sidewalk. It’s because of my mother. She’s pushing
me. We have to hurry. When I’m with my mother
we’re always late. I run to free the box. My doll has
come halfway out from the jolt, and her blue eyes are
almost open. It’s my first doll, which can open and
close its eyes. The scraps of cloth have come out, too.
I rear range them. I like old cloth. It’s so soft when you
touch it, and you can rumple and tear it and you still
have a piece of cloth.
The passersby are laughing because the shoebox is
dragging and making a noise. They stop. They don’t
see that it’s a little baby carriage. My mother can’t buy
me a real one. I also wanted a mechanical doll that
could walk by itself. My mother has no money. But we
are not poor. I don’t like poor people or beggars. I am
warmly dressed and well fed. My mother says that’s the
main thing. She deals in the “market.” Everyone says
she manages very well. Aunt Ida—that’s her sister—is
always coming to the house to ask where she can find
work. But she doesn’t like to deal in the market. She
loves to dress up, to play the coquette, and my mother
says she is looking for a husband. Aunt Ida does every -
thing I want. She is afraid of me. I’m a spoiled child.
We arrive at the railroad station. It’s still very dark.
We got up early. We can hardly see through the smoke
billowing over the engine. Two cars are linked. I love
it. It makes a funny noise when they touch each other
where the big nails are. A very tall lady, holding two
little girls by the hand, stops us on the platform. She’s
wearing a long black veil with a little red cross—it’s the
Red Cross lady. I recognize her. One of the little girls
has long black stockings on. I’d like some, too.
My mother is wearing her everyday green coat. I
hate her. I don’t want the other girls to see me with
her, and I won’t take her hand. She doesn’t look like a
French woman. What’s more, she speaks with a foreign
accent. When she’s not speaking she keeps her mouth
open the way foreigners do, like the refugees on the
rue des Jardins Saint-Paul. That’s where we live, at
number 24. But across the street, at 35, almost no one
speaks French. They’re disgusting. As for me, I speak
without an ac cent, like a real French girl. I was born
in Paris, at the Hotel-Dieu. Only I don’t have a French
name. When I’m called on in class I blush. The teacher
can’t pro nounce my name. Everyone laughs. But I am
not a foreigner. They say my name is German. But if
the Germans question me they’ll soon see that I’m really
French. I look at my shoes, they’re shining. I have
to keep an eye on my doll in the box. One never
knows in wartime; there are a lot of thieves, especially
in train stations.
My mother is holding a paper bag. I recognize the
smell of oranges—I know it’s from the black market. I
see grease stains through the paper. There must be
some heavily buttered bread—it mustn’t show—people
mustn’t know. I’m supposed to eat bread every day, and
a lot of other nourishing things. But I won’t eat unless
I get a story. My mother tells me what’s happen ing at
the market. She tells me that they’re cheating her. That
makes me sad, but I want her to keep on talking.
When she tells the same story twice, I stop eating. That
gets on her nerves. She forces me but I clench my
teeth. Then she cries and says I make her miserable.
When she cries it makes me cry, too. I don’t like to cry
in front of people. My mother is always making me eat
on the trains, in gardens, in the street, places where nobody
eats.
I like stories and the street, too. Running in the
street with a gang of little girls. They never come to
my house. We swing on the chains around Ave Maria
Square, across the street from the school where I’m
learning to read. And then we run into the Metro
Saint-Paul and push the buttons on the map that has
all the different-colored lights. They chase us. We run
away. I’m always the last and they shout at us, “You
little brats!” We run back to St. Paul’s Church, near the
steps. I run faster. I’m afraid of churches. When the
bells ring it’s sad and grand. The great door is always
closed, except for marriages. I love to see the bride in
her white veil. I would like to get married like that
when I’m big.
The stationmaster shouts and whistles—people
rush around. I like the buttons on my new coat, I
touch one of them through the buttonhole. For several
evenings, my mother’s been doing some sewing across
the street at our neighbor’s house, Number 35. She also
made some new dresses for my trip. And she left me
all alone in the house. Locked in. I don’t like to be
locked in. I’m afraid my mother will be run over crossing
the street and there’ll be no one to open the door
for me. She always leaves while I’m asleep, but I wake
up; I scream and turn the light on in the blue room,
which my mother painted all by herself. The last time
I turned the light on I got very frightened. Someone
yelled, “Light, third floor!” The Germans. I thought,
It must be across the street, at Number 35.
I tried to open the door. I banged on it with my
fists. You needed tools to open it. I saw the locksmith
break one open once when I was at my nurse’s in the
country. I went to look for my father under the side -
board. My father—that’s the toolbox. My mother says
the tools are his and nobody’s to touch them. I’ve never
seen my father. He saw me when I was little. But I
don’t need him. According to my mother, he’s traveling
far away in Palestine. It’s a hot country. When I eat
figs—I don’t like figs but they’re nourishing—I think
of him. They are fruits from over there. I also think of
the old book that’s on the toolbox. But I never say “my
father” like other little girls; that seems funny to me.
I’m not like them. My father is an engineer, that’s very
im portant. The old book is his, too. He knows how to
read French. My mother doesn’t. The beginning and
end are missing pages. But there are still a lot of them
left hang ing from threads. Rats have eaten it. Each
time I look at the book, “It’s serious,” I say to myself.
I sit on my little wooden stool and leaf through with
the finger I put in my mouth, like I saw a very welldressed
lady do in the Tuileries gardens. I know the
name of the book, but I always get up and go to my
mother to ask her again. She says, “I’ve told you a
thousand times, The Wandering Jew.” My mother
doesn’t pay attention when I talk to her. She’s always
thinking of something else. I don’t like to read alone.
There are no pictures. I open the book again, sit down,
and ask her once more what it says. She’s busy, naked
in the kitchen, washing herself in a basin. It’s not nice;
the French hide them selves when they wash.
It’s strange, I think, that the Jews should be in a
book. They have a book all to themselves. I picture
them in the street and at Number 35, talking Yiddish.
It’s not only rue des Jardins Saint-Paul. I think it over.
I know that there are faraway things in the book which
I don’t know about. I repeat, “Wandering Jew, Wanderingjew”—
Wandering is not part of his name, it
doesn’t sound Jewish.
We are Jews, too. Didn’t want to say it before—got
to be careful, you never know. But “nothing doing,”
it’s like that. My mother always says “Nothing doing”
when I insist and cry, she doesn’t want to give me what
I’m asking for. My family says I don’t look it. But when
I’m playing in the street I’m always afraid they’re going
to call me a Jew. That’s why I don’t want to be seen in
the street with my mother except when she’s wearing
her nice navy-blue suit to go to the Tuileries gardens.
My mother looks like a Jew. And often when I’m with
the other girls I don’t want them to come up to my
house—I’m the first to say I don’t like Jews, and every -
one repeats it after me. Inside myself I feel uneasy. At
home I’m Jewish. But in the street I could be French.
But then, I have very curly hair. The teacher says it’s
pretty. All Jews have curly hair, that’s how I recognize
them. It’s very important. Being with Jews is just like
being at home; you can do what you want. But you’ve
got to be careful when you are with French people. At
our house we speak only Yiddish. Don’t like Yiddish. I
hate it when my mother talks it in the street or in the
Metro with Aunt Ida. I’m ashamed. Don’t dare tell my
mother—she does it on purpose in the Metro; people
look at us. I pinch her.