Revolution Baby (7 page)

I sat back down on my towel and waited for whatever might happen next, which didn't take long. Arnold came up to me.

“Would you care to explain to me what happened?”

“Well, I asked her if she knew how to swim, she said yes. How was I to know she would answer any old thing!”

“She didn't answer any old thing, she surely misunderstood your question, you must have noticed that her French is not very good.”

“Well she shouldn't answer, if she doesn't understand! If she answers, I can't—”

“All right, all right, I know you didn't mean her any harm. But it is not a very smart idea to push someone in the canal, even if they do know how to swim. You do understand, don't you, that Lena could have drowned? You're going to have some time to give some serious thought to all that.”

“Time to give some serious thought” meant three whole days where I was not allowed to take part in any activities. I could only go out and sit on the “thinking chair” located behind the building of L'Avenir Social. And it was from this humiliating position that I heard the Cowboys' cries of victory when they won their first big battle, without me.

As a name for an orphanage, L'Avenir Social must sound a bit pompous. But it wasn't just to show off, our establishment was an orphanage for workers, its allegiance was communist, and it advocated the right to universal education. All our instructors sincerely wanted to turn us into adults capable of autonomous reflection, committed to society. We learned to read and write at the village school; at the AS, the instructors made sure to teach us everything else: an appreciation of nature and history, how to show respect, thoughtfulness, compassion, and helpfulness, and how to live with others . . . There was also a political side to our education, and in my case this began with the Spanish Civil War.

One day when we were playing in the yard, Arnold called to us in his loud voice to gather round. There were a dozen or so of us. He squatted down, and in the dirt on the ground he made a big drawing.

“You've already heard about what's going on in Spain. Now I want to explain it all to you in detail. Look at my drawing . . . Do you know what it is?”

“It's a pair of girl's underpants!” shouted Marcel, one of the big boys.

“Does someone have a better idea?”

“It must be a map of Spain . . . ”

This came from one of the older girls, Madeleine, who was very serious and had great presence of mind.

“Exactly, that's what it is. It's not a very good drawing, but it should help me to fill you in about what is happening in Spain. I think it's important for you to understand what is at stake in this war, because two days from now, we will be going into Paris to take part in a major demonstration in support of the Republic in Spain.”

For most of us, a demonstration was above all an opportunity to get out of the orphanage, to go and shout and sing at the top of our lungs in the middle of a crowd; in short, it was a holiday, and whatever prompted it was secondary. And if it hadn't been for Arnold's solemn manner in gathering us all together, we would have allowed our joy to explode. But we could sense it would be inappropriate to hint at our futile reasons for wanting to take part in a demonstration. So we all looked sidelong at each other with a smile before focusing our interest on that map of Spain that looked nothing like a girl's underpants.

With the help of lines, arrows, pebbles and bits of wood, Arnold described the confrontation between the Republican and Nationalist troops in Spain. It was very interesting, but fairly complicated. There were other countries getting involved, Italy and Germany to be precise, on the side of the bad guys (the nationalists, led by Francisco Franco)—but nobody wanted to support the good guys (the Republicans, whom Franco had tried to overthrow by a military uprising). Still, there were people coming from all over, putting their lives at risk, to lend a hand to the Republicans. The way Arnold was talking about them, you could see right away that they were heroes, and that it wouldn't be long before he crossed the border and enrolled in the International Brigades, which were supported by the French Communist Party, among others.

At the end of this lesson about current events, Arnold suggested we make some banners and posters for the demonstration. He was so good at convincing us of the importance of the events on the other side of the border that we abandoned all thought of using our outing as an excuse to fool around. We worked for hours on end preparing our material, for we were professional demonstrators. No one could say that the children of L'Avenir Social—unlike France or England—had abandoned their Spanish friends!

 

The group that boarded a bus for Paris one fine spring morning was full of enthusiasm and passion. Roger Binet had the delicate task of carrying the banner which he and I had made, and we were very eager to display it the minute we reached Paris. After a long debate we had decided to write, “Solidarity with our Spanish Brothers.” Roger would have liked to put something funnier, more tough-guy, or so he said, but I wanted to show on the contrary that even though we were children we understood the gravity of the situation. I took my participation in this political demonstration very seriously, and I had prepared for it with all my heart. In the end, it was really nice, all yellow, red, and purple, the colors of the Republican flag.

Twenty of us got off the bus at Buttes-Chaumont in Paris. From there we had to go to the Communards' Wall in the Père Lachaise Cemetery, where all the demonstrators were gathering. Arnold, Geneviève, an instructor by the name of Feller, and his wife Margot came with us. In the bus they had explained the rules of the game so we wouldn't get lost during the demonstration. Each adult had five or six children under his supervision. Each subgroup was divided in two, which meant teams of two or three children who had to keep an eye on each other. They allowed us to choose our teams, and I was with Roger, obviously, because we had to carry our banner together—our work of art! We thought we were very lucky, because the children under seven had not been allowed to come to the demonstration and we had only just turned seven.

We walked very quickly toward Père Lachaise—well, in fact, because we were the youngest, we were trotting behind the others, and almost stumbled over our banner on more than one occasion. Other little groups were walking or running in the same direction as us with their signs, shouting and singing.

It was getting noisier and noisier, with chanting, and music, and horns blowing. People were screaming slogans through loudspeakers. All around I could see all sorts of signs and banners, not all of them referred to the war in Spain. I eventually understood that some of the crowd were demonstrating in support of the striking farm workers, another important cause in those days.

Arnold led us to a group of adults he seemed to know well who were shouting slogans for France to intervene on the side of the Republicans. Then we found our place. Roger and I unfurled our banner. We got jostled this way and that, and it wasn't easy to hold it above our heads, but in the end, two big kids who didn't have anything to carry helped us out. Once we had everything worked out, I added my voice to the general commotion. In our group there was a man with a big mustache who seemed to have a monopoly on the slogans. It was perfect, all you had to do was listen to him and you knew what to shout. I loved it.

“Solidarity among nations!”
“¡No pasarán!”
and the same slogan in French,
“Ils ne passeront pas!”—
they shall not pass. “Bread, peace and freedom for our Spanish friends!” The songs were tougher, because in the general uproar it was hard to make out the words, and Arnold had neglected this very important aspect of our preparation as demonstrators. We managed to join in with the others all the same, on certain refrains, only a few seconds behind them in what was a chaotic choir. I told myself I would ask them to put the revolutionary songs on the program of the choir at L'Avenir Social, which I had joined not long before.

Right in the middle of all the fun Arnold told us it was time to leave. Some of the kids thought the atmosphere at the demonstration was very exciting and they said his decision was too hasty: they called for a vote. Arnold put on his loud voice (but I am sure I saw a twinkle of amusement flash furtively in his eyes) and declared that this was a good idea, but that if we didn't want to miss the very last bus for the AS we would have to leave at once, unless we felt like walking all evening long and well into the night. His explanation won over the majority of the insurgents; only Marcel continued to shout, “Out of the question, democracy or death!” Geneviève went up to Arnold and murmured something in his ear. Arnold smiled and said, “Okay, those who want to leave now to catch the last bus, raise your hands.” Everyone except Marcel raised their hand.

And thus our participation in the demonstration came to a very democratic end.

During my years at L'Avenir Social, there were a number of times when I went over the wall that separated us from the rest of the world. I knew we were not allowed to go out without permission. But if I thought it was for a good cause, and no one noticed my short absence, what possible harm could it do?

My first escapades were in the spring of 1938, under the reign of Feller, who replaced Henri at the head of L'Avenir Social for a few months. My relations with Henri had always been strained. I had never forgiven him for the extreme punishment I'd received at the beginning of my stay at the orphanage, and no doubt he had never forgiven me for my obvious hostility toward his son, Roland the owl. However, now when I think back on it, I tell myself that it wasn't simply a war of pride between us: in fact, our personalities were not compatible. Henri was a very serious sort, with very little sense of humor and a narrow, authoritarian vision of his role as director of L'Avenir Social. So I greatly appreciated the “Feller months,” as we later called them among ourselves.

What I remember about Feller is that he was always badly dressed, his ginger hair was never combed, he had round blue eyes like marbles, and a good-humored communicative nature. I can still see him at his window calling to his wife, who was also his secretary, “Margot, come to the office!” to the tune of Schubert's
Unfinished Symphony
. (I learned the name of the work and of its composer thanks to Arnold, who was a great music lover and who always tried, generally to no avail, to transmit his passion to the children.)

One day Feller decided to hold a gardening contest to encourage a love of and respect for nature among the children. There were two gardens on the grounds of the orphanage: the kitchen garden, where Gros Pierre, the gardener, grew the vegetables that ended up in our plate, and another purely decorative garden. Gros Pierre was always pleased when the children showed an interest in his work, and he loved explaining how to choose the seeds, how to fertilize the plants and how to care for them when they were sick. He was delighted when Feller came up with this idea of a contest, where each participant would have a little plot that he or she could plant as they saw fit.

I was one of the first to sign up. I always loved watching Gros Pierre diligently sowing his seeds, and he would come back every day to see how they grew, and to encourage them. I knew that sometimes you had to pull the uglier plants out to give the others a chance to bloom, that you had to separate the babies from their mother and that you had to rethink the entire disposition of the garden on a regular basis, depending on the color, shape, and height of the plants. That was the part I liked best, when Gros Pierre would stand back and look at his garden then lean to one side and examine it from every angle, knitting his brows, chewing with great concentration on his right thumbnail. It was as if I could see the plants changing position in his head, like pieces on a chessboard.

Feller and Gros Pierre, with great pomp, called a meeting among all the children who had signed up for the L'Avenir Social in Bloom contest. There were a dozen of us who came, only four boys among them: Bernard, my first friend at the AS, whom I had found much less interesting once I was able to understand everything he said; Philippe, the intellectual of the group of older boys, not always popular, but whose sense of the ridiculous made me laugh; Marcel, the braggart; and me, Jules. The rest were girls, particularly the older ones I didn't know well at all, but there was also beautiful, shy Rolande, who was eight years old like me and had long brown curls: her presence sufficed to explain Marcel's participation in the contest.

“I'm very happy to see there are so many of you who are interested in the little contest that Pierre and I have devised. This will be a nice way for you to do something useful and have fun at the same time. You will acquire some notions of biology and natural sciences, and everyone at L'Avenir Social will be able to enjoy the beauty of our enhanced flower garden. Pierre, would you like to explain the rules of the contest to our young enthusiasts?”

Marcel was trying to make Rolande laugh by imitating Feller's big eyes and his excessive exuberance. At first Rolande blushed, then she gave him a very stern look, but Marcel seemed to interpret it as an invitation to continue.

“Marcel! This contest is open to everyone who wants to look after a garden. I must confess I have reason to doubt your motivation. Am I right?”

“Uh, no, I really like flowers.”

“A garden takes a lot of work, my boy, you really have to want to do it.”

“Well, yeah, I do want to do it.”

Some of the children giggled. Philippe rolled his eyes skyward. Gros Pierre tried to get back to more serious things.

“Feller, I could start by explaining the rules of the contest, and then the children will see if they want to take part, what do you think?”