Grandma had given me another picture of a holy image to add to my collection. Father’s round face stretched long. He raised his eyebrows, pulling his eyelids up, while his lips rounded into a dot. I saw a question mark on his face. Mother’s face was neither serious nor smiling. The corners of her mouth drooped and her eyes were drawn inward. She waved her right hand a little bit, spreading all five fingers. Obviously, they were not enthusiastic about my holy image!
“Put it in your missal,” Dad ordered. I had received a white pearly missal—my own prayer book— before I had started school. I replied with a determined, “No.” That image had been blessed by the priest and was given to me by Grandma. I wanted to make it part of the altar in my room. “Grandma said it will chase evil spirits away,” I protested. “She even put a few like it over the doorway of the shed!”
Father didn’t insist. He let Mum have the last word, which meant that I could put the image on my private altar. It was good that way. Ever since she bought her new sewing machine, Mum used my room for sewing. She would benefit from the protection of the saint who dominated my altar.
Sitting on the floor with my teddy bear, I was fascinated by the big wheel of the sewing machine that Mother worked with her feet. No one could do it faster than my mother! I loved the sound of the sewing machine and Mum humming. I was inspired by the sight of fabric turning into beautiful clothes and wonderful shirts that made Dad look like a great man.
JUNE 1936
One day, Mother was not humming. She dragged her feet as she walked, and she would stop once in a while and put her face in her hands! She got up and looked out the window. When I asked, “Mum, are you sick?” she shook her head, and turned away. I sat down next to her; she stroked my hair.
Dad left at 1:30 to work the afternoon shift. I waited in vain for Mother to play with me as usual. Bedtime arrived. She came to my room and had me take holy water and make the sign of the cross. Then she said a prayer and kissed me while tucking me in.
Mum would usually close the shutters, but this evening she sat at the edge of my bed. Slowly the night fell and the moonlight shone on my mother’s black wavy hair. Her ivory complexion became even whiter. I couldn’t see her deep blue eyes, but I felt them. Slowly, her silhouette vanished. I fell asleep. It was eight o’clock, my regular bedtime.
Most nights I would wake up at a quarter past ten to the hum of bikes as the workers came home from the factory. I would hear Dad stowing his bicycle in the garage, climbing the creaking wooden staircase, turning the key, and opening the door ever so quietly. My dog, Zita, slept next to the entrance by the toilet, and would jump high up to Dad’s waist and follow him to the kitchen. There, Dad would take off his shoes, put on his slippers, and hang up his jacket. This was the signal for me to pull my bed cover over my nose and squeeze my eyes shut. Then came the delightful moment when Dad would enter my room, lean over me, his warm breath brushing my face, and place a warm kiss like a butterfly upon my forehead. His hands like a breath would caress my short hair. I would feel his loving gaze while I pretended to sleep, enjoying that exquisite moment to the full.
That night, I suddenly awoke with the distressing feeling that I was alone. I called out desperately, and Mother came running into my room in her nightgown, a hair net holding her wavy hair.
“Where is Dad? He didn’t come to kiss me.”
“Shhhh, it’s past three o’clock. Dad must be sleeping. You must sleep too!” She sat next to me stroking my hair, which was soaked by the sweat of my terror.
The following morning, Dad was not at the breakfast table, and there was not even a cup ready for him.
“Dad will be away for a few days,” Mother said, trying to hold back her tears.
Dad has left us! Dad has run away! That’s why he had seemed unusually quiet, sad, and tense. I remembered a conversation between him and Mum. “It was an error; it should not have happened,” he had said quietly to Mum.
“Adolphe, don’t worry; everybody makes mistakes.”
How could Mother accuse Father, saying that he makes mistakes? Dad never makes mistakes. I knew it! Dad must have run away from her.
Where did he go? He must have gone to Krüth, the village at the end of the valley. It was one of my favorite places. I wished I could have gone with him, to get away from my mean mother.
Krüth was where Dad’s stepfather and uncle, Paul Arnold lived. He was my “Grandpa-Godfather.” He would stand in the small doorway of his house, his right hand holding the door post, just underneath the stone-hewn cross with numbers on it. He would smile, his eyes disappearing in all those crinkles and wrinkles. He was so old and dried out, just like a prune! He rolled his trousers several times around his belt. I would like to have visited Grandpa-Godfather again.
Why didn’t Dad let me go along?
I sat in my room sulking. After a while, I started to cry.
“Adolphe, Adolphe, you’ve come home!” Mother’s excited voice woke me up. Was I dreaming? I jumped up and ran into my father’s arms. Mum quickly went back to the kitchen to prepare him a warm meal.
Dad explained what had happened. “The workers shut down the factory and stopped the printing plant without even taking the fabric off the presses! Everybody ran out, but the ones with white shirts had to go back in. Some were even beaten. No one could go in or out anymore.”[2]
“How did you get out?”
“I had decided to sleep among the fabrics along with the engineers. We could hear the workers’ threats and their slogans. It was quite frightening, I’ll tell you! At 2:00 p.m., I figured that my working crew—the printers, the men in the ink shops, and the engravers—would be at the gate. I went down. As soon as they saw me, they opened the gate. They said, ‘He is on our side in spite of his white shirt. Let him go home.’ But I needed their protection against the workers who didn’t know me.”
My father needed protection? He was afraid? He slept in a shop among ink and didn’t have spots on his shirt? So strange!
Father ate and talked all at once, using strange words. I had never seen him so agitated. His face turned red and his voice was tight. I was afraid that he might drop dead.
He continued his speech. Such strange words: proletarian, communists, socialism, slogans, claims, salaries, human rights, dominating class, confidence.
I got tired of listening to all that nervous talk. I went out onto the balcony. The kitchen light shone on the blue and white petunias and the red geraniums, but the night had silenced the birds and the bees.
“Daddy, look! The sky has put on its velvet evening dress with its diamonds.”
Dad finally stopped talking and came out; he lifted me up in his arms, while Mum took the dishes away.
“Simone, those diamonds are stars. They are very big, but they are far away.” Pointing to some of them above our heads, he added, “See those four stars in a square with three stars as a tail?”
“Oh yes, it’s a pan.”
“Those are called the ‘big bear.’”
“I can’t see a bear!”
“You can’t because we cannot see all the stars.”
“Oh, I understand—the bear is in the pan!”
From then on, I kept looking in the dark velvet sky trying to find the “big bear,” but every evening the pan stayed empty.
SUMMER 1936
During summer vacation, Mum and I went up to Grandma and Grandpa’s