‘He’s ill,’ replied Émilie, holding a hand to her face. ‘And when someone we love is ill, it’s our job to help them get better. If they will let us. But if they won’t . . . She took a deep breath before speaking again. ‘Pierrot,’ she said. ‘How would you feel if we were to move away?’
‘All of us?’
She shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Just you and me.’
‘And what about Papa?’
Maman sighed, and Pierrot could see the tears forming in her eyes. ‘All I know,’ she said, ‘is that things can’t go on as they are.’
The last time Pierrot saw his father was on a warm May evening, shortly after his fourth birthday, when once again the kitchen was littered with empty bottles and Papa began shouting and banging the sides of his head with his hands, complaining that they were in there, they were all in there, they were coming to get their revenge on him – phrases that made no sense to Pierrot. Papa reached over to the dresser and threw handfuls of plates, bowls and cups on the floor, smashing them into hundreds of pieces. Maman held her arms out to him, pleading with him in an attempt to calm his temper, but he lashed out, punching her in the face, and screaming words that were so terrible, Pierrot covered his ears and ran into his bedroom with D’Artagnan and they hid in the wardrobe together. Pierrot was shaking and trying not to cry as the little dog, who hated any kind of upset, whimpered and curled himself into the boy’s body.
Pierrot didn’t leave the wardrobe for hours, until everything had grown quiet again, and when he did his father had vanished and his mother was lying on the floor, motionless, her face bloody and bruised. D’Artagnan walked over cautiously, bowing his head and licking her ear repeatedly in an attempt to wake her, but Pierrot simply stared in disbelief. Summoning all his courage, he ran downstairs to Anshel’s apartment, where he pointed towards the staircase, unable to utter a word of explanation. Mme Bronstein, who must have heard the earlier commotion through her ceiling but was too frightened to intervene, ran upstairs, taking the steps two or three at a time. Meanwhile Pierrot looked across at his friend, one boy unable to speak, the other unable to hear. Noticing a pile of pages on the table behind him, he walked over, sat down, and began to read Anshel’s latest story. Somehow he found that losing himself in a world that wasn’t his own was a welcome escape.
For several weeks there was no word from Papa and Pierrot both longed for and dreaded his return, and then one morning word came to them that Wilhelm had died when he fell beneath a train that was making its way from Munich to Penzberg, the same town where he had been born and in which he had spent his childhood. When he heard the news, Pierrot went to his room, locked the door, looked at the dog, who was snoozing on the bed, and spoke very calmly.
‘Papa is looking down at us now, D’Artagnan,’ he said. ‘And one day I am going to make him proud of me.’
Afterwards M. and Mme Abrahams offered Émilie work as a waitress, which Mme Bronstein said was in poor taste as they were simply offering her the job that her dead husband had had before her. But Maman, who knew that she and Pierrot needed the money, accepted gratefully.
The restaurant was located halfway between Pierrot’s school and home, and he would read and draw in the small room downstairs every afternoon while the staff wandered in and out, taking their breaks, chatting about the customers and generally fussing over him. Mme Abrahams always brought him down a plate of whatever that day’s special was, with a bowl of ice cream to follow.
Pierrot spent three years, from the ages of four to seven, sitting in that room every afternoon while Maman served customers upstairs, and although he never spoke of him, he thought of his father every day, picturing him standing there, changing into his uniform in the morning, counting his tips at the end of the day.
Years later, when Pierrot looked back on his childhood, he experienced complicated emotions. Although he was very sad about his father, he had plenty of friends, enjoyed school, and he and Maman lived happily together. Paris was flourishing and the streets were always buzzing with people and energy.
But in 1936, on Émilie’s birthday, what should have been a happy day took a turn towards tragedy. In the evening Mme Bronstein and Anshel had come upstairs with a small cake to celebrate, and Pierrot and his friend were munching on a second slice when, quite unexpectedly, Maman began to cough. At first Pierrot thought that a piece of cake must have gone down the wrong way, but the coughing continued much longer than seemed normal, and only when Mme Bronstein gave her a glass of water to drink did it come to an end. When she recovered herself, however, her eyes appeared bloodshot and she pressed a hand to her chest as if she was in pain.
‘I’m fine,’ she said as her breathing returned to normal. ‘I must be getting a chill, that’s all.’
‘But, my dear . . .’ said Mme Bronstein, her face growing pale as she pointed towards the handkerchief that Émilie held in her hands. Pierrot glanced across and his mouth fell open when he saw three small spots of blood in the centre of the linen. Maman stared at them too for a few moments before crumpling it up and tucking it away inside her pocket. Then, placing both hands carefully on the arms of her chair, she rose, smoothed down her dress and attempted to smile.
‘Émilie, are you quite all right?’ asked Mme Bronstein, standing up, and Pierrot’s mother nodded quickly.
‘It’s nothing,’ she said. ‘Probably just a throat infection, although I am a little tired. Perhaps I should get some sleep. You were so thoughtful to bring the cake, but if you and Anshel don’t mind . . .?’
‘Of course, of course,’ replied Mme Bronstein, tapping her son on the shoulder and making her way towards the door with more urgency than Pierrot had ever seen before. ‘If you need anything, just stamp on the floor a few times and I’ll be up in a flash.’
Maman didn’t cough any more that night, or for several days afterwards, but then, while she was waiting on some customers in the restaurant, she seemed to lose control of herself entirely and was brought downstairs to where Pierrot was playing chess with one of the waiters. This time, her face was grey and her handkerchief was not spotted with blood but covered in it. Perspiration ran down her face, and when Dr Chibaud arrived, he took one look at her and called for an ambulance. Within an hour she was lying in a bed in the Hôtel-Dieu de Paris hospital as the doctors examined her and whispered amongst themselves, their voices low and worried.
Pierrot spent that night in the Bronsteins’ apartment, top-to-tail in the bed with Anshel, while D’Artagnan snored on the floor. He felt very frightened, of course, and would have liked to talk to his friend about what was happening, but as good as his sign language was, it was no use to him in the dark.
He visited Maman every day for a week, and each day she seemed to be struggling for breath more and more. He was the only one with her on that Sunday afternoon when her breathing began to slow down entirely and her fingers fell loose around his own; then her head slipped to one side of the pillow, her eyes still open, and he knew that she was gone.
Pierrot sat very still for a few minutes before quietly pulling the curtain around the bed and returning to the chair next to his mother, holding her hand and refusing to let go. Finally an elderly nurse arrived, saw what had happened and told him that she needed to move Émilie to a different place where her body could be prepared for the undertaker. At these words, Pierrot burst into tears that he felt might never end, and clung to his mother’s body while the nurse tried to console him. It took a long time for him to calm down, and when he did, his entire body felt broken on the inside. He had never known pain like this before.