Read Online Mme Proust and the Kosher Kitchen by Kate Taylor - Free Book Online
Authors: Kate Taylor
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events—but his father, he says, was in the Resistance. The older childrenhave heard his stories many times, and hoot with laughter when we younger ones earnestly inform them that M. Delvaux’s father fought the Nazis.
These stories are not new to me either. Indeed, I cannot remember ever not knowing the fate of six million European Jews. Her brief words clipped by embarrassment, my mother has told me that I will bleed every month, that babies are made by the union of an egg and a sperm, and that there are other things I will learn when I am older, but she has dwelt with firm patience on the lessons of history. She and my father were teenagers when the war ended and the unspeakable news came out of Europe. In the sixties, as the world did begin, slowly at first but with increasing desperation, to discuss the stories of Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz, they were new parents doting on their new baby, their first and only child. My mother expresses her daily anxieties—what if the gas leaks? what if you catch cold? what if your father is late? what if the franc falls? what if the Socialists win the election?—with cramped tones and furrowed brow. Only when giving voice to the greatest fear of all does she become large and gracious: “It must never happen again.”
At the dinner table, my parents are instantly, unspokenly alarmed when I tell them of the slide show in Delvaux’s history class. They can catch a whiff of prurience a mile away, for it is the very odour they are most anxious should not attach itself to their gentle attempts to share the greatest horror of the adult world with their twelve-year-old daughter. There is a lengthy pause, and I sense, too late, that I have stumbled across taboo. My father speaks.
“Were you frightened by the pictures?”
“Oh, no, Papa. I wasn’t frightened.”
No, I am not frightened, but rather awed by the great weight of history that has carried these people away. I feel small and inadequate in my security, and sure no such powerful event could ever mark my life. These suffering skeletons in their striped pyjamas seem to me as noble and as distant as the bleeding Christ and weeping Virgin whose image hangs on the wall of the small classroom where we dully receive instruction in our catechism every Wednesday afternoon.
David, of course, is exempt from catechism class, and may spend his Wednesdays as he pleases. This freedom only enhances the aura of easy good fortune that seems to surround him. I long for David; I long to be David, to be that lucky, that blond.
Yet, for all his happiness and health, David too makes some claim to the special status of historic victim. He has told a circle of breathless French schoolgirls that David Smith—that bland, Anglo-Saxon label he bears—is not his real name. His real name is David Aaron Goldberg, but his parents changed it when they moved here, to his mother’s homeland, fearing that anti-Semitism would impede his father’s progress in the world of European business. The other girls are deeply impressed. An exotic name change beats Philippe’s recent holiday in Martinique and Bernard’s dark eyes. “People are stupid, you know,” David says, and they all nod wisely. “Oh yes. Your father was right to be careful,” says one. But I am not sure whether to believe David.
Certainly, he has a mischievous streak, and often urges me to cut catechism class to join him on a Wednesday afternoon. When I do so, it is within the safety of the group. Our ringleader Sylvie has decided we shall all skip class and head for the Métro.
At the top of the Champs-Elysées, underneath the triumphal arch at the Place Charles de Gaulle, three lines of the Paris Métro intersect. The result is a labyrinth of connecting corridors that schoolchildren have discovered is ideally suited to tag. As you tear down the hallway leading towards the platform
Direction Porte Dauphine
, you can vaguely hear pounding feet and joyful cries below you in some other
These stories are not new to me either. Indeed, I cannot remember ever not knowing the fate of six million European Jews. Her brief words clipped by embarrassment, my mother has told me that I will bleed every month, that babies are made by the union of an egg and a sperm, and that there are other things I will learn when I am older, but she has dwelt with firm patience on the lessons of history. She and my father were teenagers when the war ended and the unspeakable news came out of Europe. In the sixties, as the world did begin, slowly at first but with increasing desperation, to discuss the stories of Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz, they were new parents doting on their new baby, their first and only child. My mother expresses her daily anxieties—what if the gas leaks? what if you catch cold? what if your father is late? what if the franc falls? what if the Socialists win the election?—with cramped tones and furrowed brow. Only when giving voice to the greatest fear of all does she become large and gracious: “It must never happen again.”
At the dinner table, my parents are instantly, unspokenly alarmed when I tell them of the slide show in Delvaux’s history class. They can catch a whiff of prurience a mile away, for it is the very odour they are most anxious should not attach itself to their gentle attempts to share the greatest horror of the adult world with their twelve-year-old daughter. There is a lengthy pause, and I sense, too late, that I have stumbled across taboo. My father speaks.
“Were you frightened by the pictures?”
“Oh, no, Papa. I wasn’t frightened.”
No, I am not frightened, but rather awed by the great weight of history that has carried these people away. I feel small and inadequate in my security, and sure no such powerful event could ever mark my life. These suffering skeletons in their striped pyjamas seem to me as noble and as distant as the bleeding Christ and weeping Virgin whose image hangs on the wall of the small classroom where we dully receive instruction in our catechism every Wednesday afternoon.
David, of course, is exempt from catechism class, and may spend his Wednesdays as he pleases. This freedom only enhances the aura of easy good fortune that seems to surround him. I long for David; I long to be David, to be that lucky, that blond.
Yet, for all his happiness and health, David too makes some claim to the special status of historic victim. He has told a circle of breathless French schoolgirls that David Smith—that bland, Anglo-Saxon label he bears—is not his real name. His real name is David Aaron Goldberg, but his parents changed it when they moved here, to his mother’s homeland, fearing that anti-Semitism would impede his father’s progress in the world of European business. The other girls are deeply impressed. An exotic name change beats Philippe’s recent holiday in Martinique and Bernard’s dark eyes. “People are stupid, you know,” David says, and they all nod wisely. “Oh yes. Your father was right to be careful,” says one. But I am not sure whether to believe David.
Certainly, he has a mischievous streak, and often urges me to cut catechism class to join him on a Wednesday afternoon. When I do so, it is within the safety of the group. Our ringleader Sylvie has decided we shall all skip class and head for the Métro.
At the top of the Champs-Elysées, underneath the triumphal arch at the Place Charles de Gaulle, three lines of the Paris Métro intersect. The result is a labyrinth of connecting corridors that schoolchildren have discovered is ideally suited to tag. As you tear down the hallway leading towards the platform
Direction Porte Dauphine
, you can vaguely hear pounding feet and joyful cries below you in some other
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