‘I want her to have this,’ he said, retrieving a photograph of his father from his pocket and placing it next to her on the bed.
The nurse nodded and promised that she would ensure the picture remained with Maman.
‘Do you have any family I can call for you?’ she asked.
‘No,’ said Pierrot, shaking his head, unable to look her in the eye in case he saw either pity or lack of interest there. ‘No, there’s no one. It’s just me. I’m all alone now.’
CHAPTER TWO
The Medal in the Cabinet
Born only a year apart, neither Simone nor Adèle Durand had ever married, and seemed content in each other’s company, even though the sisters were not at all alike.
Simone, the elder of the two, was surprisingly tall, towering over most men. A very beautiful woman with dark skin and deep brown eyes, she had an artistic soul and liked nothing more than to sit at the piano for hours on end, lost in her music. Adèle, on the other hand, was rather short, with a fat bottom and a sallow complexion, and waddled around like a duck, a species of bird she rather resembled. She was constantly active and easily the more sociable of the pair, but didn’t have a musical note in her head.
The sisters grew up in a large mansion about eighty miles to the south of Paris in the city of Orleans, where, five hundred years before, Joan of Arc had famously lifted the city’s siege. When they were very young they believed that they belonged to the largest family in France, for there were almost fifty other children, aged from just a few weeks old to seventeen, living in the dormitories on the third, fourth and fifth floors of their house. Some were friendly, some were angry, some were shy and some were bullies, but they all had one thing in common: they were orphans. Their voices and footsteps were audible from the family quarters on the first floor below as they talked before bedtime or ran around in the morning, shrieking as their bare feet skittered along the cold marble floors. But although Simone and Adèle shared a home with them, they felt separated from the other children in a way that they did not fully understand until they were older.
M. and Mme Durand, the girls’ parents, had set up the orphanage after they married and run it until their deaths with some very strict policies about who could be admitted and who could not. When they were gone the sisters took over, devoting themselves entirely to the care of children who had been left on their own in the world; and changing some of those policies in important ways.
‘Every child who is on their own will be welcome,’ they declared. ‘Colour, race or creed mean nothing to us.’
Simone and Adèle were exceptionally close, walking around the grounds together every day as they examined the flower beds and gave instructions to the gardener. Apart from their physical appearance, the thing that truly distinguished the sisters was that Adèle could scarcely seem to stop talking from the moment she woke in the morning until the minute she fell asleep at night, while Simone rarely spoke at all, and when she did it was in brief sentences, as if each breath might cost her energy that she could scarcely afford to waste.
Pierrot met the Durand sisters almost a month after his mother’s death, when he boarded a train at the Gare d’Austerlitz, wearing his best clothes and a brand-new scarf that Mme Bronstein had purchased for him in the Galeries Lafayette as a parting gift the afternoon before. She, Anshel and D’Artagnan had come to the station to see him off, and with every step he took Pierrot felt his heart sinking a little deeper inside his chest. He was frightened and lonely, filled with grief for Maman, and wished that he and his dog could move in with his best friend. In fact, he had stayed with Anshel in the weeks following the funeral, and had watched as Mme Bronstein and her son went to temple together on the Sabbath, even asking whether he could go with them; but she had said that wasn’t a good idea right now and that he should take D’Artagnan out for a walk in the Champ de Mars instead. The days went on, and Mme Bronstein returned one afternoon with one of her friends, and he overheard the visitor saying that she had a cousin who had adopted a Gentile child and he’d quickly become part of the family.
‘The problem isn’t that he’s a Gentile, Ruth,’ said Mme Bronstein. ‘The problem is that I simply don’t have enough money to keep him. I don’t have much, that’s the truth of it. Levi left me with very little. Oh, I put on a good show, or try to, but it’s not easy for a widow on her own. And what I have I need for Anshel.’
‘You have to look after your own first, of course you do,’ said the lady. ‘But isn’t there anyone who could—’
‘I’ve tried. Believe me, I’ve spoken to everyone I can think of. I don’t suppose you’d . . .’
‘No, I’m sorry. Times are hard, you’ve said so yourself. And besides, life isn’t getting any easier for Jews in Paris, is it? The boy might be better off in a family more like his own.’
‘Perhaps you’re right. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t even have asked.’
‘Of course you should. You’re doing your best for the boy. That’s who you are. That’s who we are. But when it’s not possible, it’s not possible. So when will you tell him?’
‘Tonight, I think. It’s not going to be easy.’
Pierrot went back to Anshel’s room and puzzled over this conversation, before looking up the word Gentile in a dictionary and wondering what that had to do with anything anyway. He sat there for a long time, tossing Anshel’s yarmulke, which hung from the back of a chair, between his hands; later, when Mme Bronstein came in to speak to him, he was wearing it on his head.
‘Take that off,’ she snapped, reaching forward and grabbing it before putting it back where he had found it. It was the first time in his life she’d ever spoken to him harshly. ‘You don’t play with something like this. It’s not a toy, it’s sacred.’
Pierrot said nothing, but felt a mixture of embarrassment and distress. He wasn’t allowed to go to temple, he wasn’t allowed to wear his best friend’s cap; it was obvious to him that he wasn’t wanted there. And when she told him where he was being sent, there was simply no doubt about it.
‘I’m so sorry, Pierrot,’ said Mme Bronstein after she’d finished explaining things to him. ‘But I have heard only good things about this orphanage. I’m sure you’ll be happy there. And perhaps a wonderful family will adopt you soon.’
‘But what about D’Artagnan?’ asked Pierrot, looking down at the little dog, who was snoozing on the floor.
‘We can look after him,’ said Mme Bronstein. ‘He likes bones, doesn’t he?’
‘He loves bones.’
‘Well, they’re free, thanks to M. Abrahams. He said he’d let me have a few every day for nothing because he and his wife cared for your mother so deeply.’
Pierrot said nothing; he was sure that if things were different Maman would have taken Anshel in. Despite what Mme Bronstein had said, it must have had something to do with the fact that he was a Gentile. For now, he was simply frightened by the idea of being alone in the world, and felt sad that Anshel and D’Artagnan would have each other while he would have no one at all.
I hope I don’t forget how to do this, signed Pierrot as he waited with his friend on the station concourse that morning while Mme Bronstein purchased his one-way ticket.