was finished the piece of clothing was black all right but the water was clear as spring water again.
That was when the penny dropped. All of the dye had fixed on the textile, not on the water. “And that,” Boussemard explained, “is what shows that the operation has been successful.” Fascinated, I asked him if I could have some samples of dye to experiment on the offcuts lying around in my father’s workshop—he worked from home as a tailor’s assistant. Every day, as we stirred the clothes in the tub, I would ask more questions, and in the evenings I did my experiments in secret. I’d found my vocation. Boussemard was amused by my interest in chemistry and my dogged determination: “So far I’ve had employees who were happy just to do their work well. With you I have to talk all the time,” he grumbled.
Despite his slightly uncouth manner, he was flattered that for once someone was interested in his knowledge. He explained the chemistry to me in the way you would pass on recipes. With him everything was simple. So you see, if I became interested in the effacing of inks, it was initially as a good dyer, to remove stains from the clothes.
I immediately realized that you could do anything, as long as you were determined and found the right method. I quickly had proof of that. As you know, my first researches were into indelible inks, all of which I managed to delete. From then on at the dyer’s I became the one to deal with difficult, if not impossible orders. From towns all around people would come to me with stained lace communion gloves, silk wedding dresses. Anything that was supposedly beyond repair was my remit.
The recurrent problem for the enthusiastic beginner in chemistry is dealing with material damage. At first I used the family kitchen for my experiments, the pans and my mother’s laundry boiler. But after a few mishaps, notably several explosions, one of which started a fire, chemicals were forbidden in the house.
Since I was something of a handyman and had gotten into the habit of doing little jobs for my uncle, I persuaded him to allow me to use his old house, which he’d simply abandoned, for my laboratory.
At that time I used to cycle past the drugstore in Vire every day without taking any notice of it. That was, until I saw something new in the window. There was a chemical laboratory for sale: retorts, balloon-flasks, a coiled condenser, a real treasure of which I didn’t even dare to ask the price. During the new few days I went past it again and again; the laboratory was still there. One week later I finally made up my mind to go in. M. Brancourt, the pharmacist, was whistling as he put some bottles away.
“D’you want something, my boy?” he asked, seeing me eyeing the chemical laboratory.
“Err… no, that is, yes, I’d like to know how much it costs.”
“What do you want to do with it?”
“Chemistry.”
“What kind of chemistry?”
“Every kind. Experiments. I work at the dyer’s, and I’ve already done some experiments on the effacing of inks. Now I’d like to go farther.”
He didn’t name his price, but it was easy to see that if I wanted all the pieces, it would cost me a fortune. He demonstrated the equipment to me and even other pieces such as a copper vertical microscope I was sure I’d never be in a position to acquire. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched me marvel at every instrument, and he must have taken a liking to me. We talked chemistry. He was very knowledgeable. He had a doctorate in pharmacy.
“Would it be possible to buy the laboratory bit by bit?” I asked timidly.
“If you like, I’ll reserve it for you. You can come whenever you’ve saved enough to treat yourself to one piece.”
I saved all my wages and, one after another, the different components of the laboratory went to my uncle’s old house. Brancourt sold them to me at prices that were one-tenth of their true value and even made a gift of the magnificent microscope, which I would never have been able to afford. In my free time I poured over whole books of chemical formulae. In the flea market in Vire I even managed to get ahold of a first edition of the treatise by Marcellin Berthelot, one of the fathers of chemistry. I devoured everything I could find, right down to the practical advice in the Revue des chaumières (Cottage Review), in which I found thousands of very effective traditional tricks of the trade.
To perfect my knowledge, I also went once a week to assist the chemist of the butter-dairy—without pay, and in return he gave me his theoretical knowledge and a little slab of butter. The producers who sold their cream to the dairy were paid according to the level of fat content. The volume or weight meant little, only the fat content counted, which meant they avoided possible cheating by crafty farmers who might add water to their cream. What we had to do wasn’t very complicated. We just dissolved some methylene blue in a sample of the cream and calculated how long it took for the lactic acid to make it lose the color. That seems a pretty trivial piece of information to you, doesn’t it? To me as well, at the time I would never have suspected it would be thanks to that knowledge that I would be recruited by the Resistance.
Apart from being sacked by the factory, little had changed since the Germans had arrived. The war was still going on, yet it seemed to be happening far away, not really affecting us. There had been no obstacles put in the way of the German soldiers and they behaved in a civilized manner, paying without ever complaining. The storekeepers and tradesmen were delighted.
There were, of course, the first Vichy laws. We were no longer allowed to have a post office account nor a savings bankbook. Under the edict of October 3, 1940, we had to register with the police. I remember going with my father for that. We were well known in the region, partly because of my uncle’s good reputation. The police clerk explained that as Argentines we were not subject to the requirement to declare ourselves Jews. But my father was keen to be irreproachable in fulfilling his civic duty toward France. I sensed that the clerk wasn’t in a hurry to register us, and was insistent about trying to get us to leave. In vain. He added our surnames, first names, dates of birth and address to his file. A few days later we ran into the police clerk in the street. In friendly tones, with a little smile on his lips, he said to my father, “Monsieur Kaminsky, I’ve lost your files, or perhaps they fell into my stove.”
“I’ll come in tomorrow to reregister,”
“But there’s no obligation.”
“Oh but I must. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
This time we were put on file. As far as wearing the star was concerned, my father was less scrupulous. “If our nationality spares us the obligation, then we won’t wear it,” he declared.
Eventually, however, the distressing events began to happen, though not exactly where you’d expect. One Sunday the Demoys, the couple who owned the town’s brothel, knocked at the door of the family home accompanied by a German officer. They wanted to ‘inspect’ the house. My uncle, no little proud of his fine residence, didn’t need to be asked twice. But then when they were upstairs, in the bedrooms, I heard howls of rage, and I saw Léon kick the German officer in the butt, sending him tumbling down the stairs in a thunderous clatter. From experience I could well appreciate Uncle Léon’s kicks. If it had been one of the Demoys who’d received it, I would have laughed, but as it was, I was terrified. On the doorstep my uncle bellowed, “My house a brothel?! Never!”
During the next few days I anxiously awaited the consequences of the incident. For a whole month nothing happened. Then, one evening, two policemen, longstanding friends of Léon, arrived with the disastrous news. The fact that they were in civilian clothes was an ominous sign.
“Kiki, they’re coming to arrest you tomorrow morning. You’ve got to get out of here.”
“Where to?”
“Anywhere you like as long as it’s somewhere far away.”
My uncle left, without a suitcase, hardly with the basic necessities. He took the first train to Paris.
A few weeks later the same policemen came to see us again. They wanted to warn my mother that the Gestapo had intercepted a letter she’d posted to her brother.