The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell [229]
"Papa! You aren’t going to pay that for an apple!" Claudette cries. "That’s profiteering!" she tells a sharp-eyed woman surrounded by cowed and ragged children. "You’re a profiteer!"
"War is hard on everyone," Albert remarks as much to his daughter as to the peasant.
The woman pockets their coins with chilly self-possession. "Good riddance," she mutters at their backs, and Claudette whirls to stick out her tongue.
"Claudette! You’ve made an enemy," Albert tells her as they walk on. "That woman will always remember that a Jew was rude to her."
"And I’ll always remember that a Frenchwoman was mean to us!"
"As long as you don’t forget how kind a French doctor was to your mother."
Paula’s family is Sephardic-Fleming, wealthy and secure. Claudette inherited confidence from them, as well as height, but Albert himself is the child and grandchild of immigrants who moved from Poland to Germany to Belgium in three generations. His careful clothes, his correctness of manner are protective coloring. He has tailored his soul just as carefully, trying not to give offense. Pride, his grandfather told him, is a Jew’s most dangerous luxury. "Your mother and I spent our honeymoon in Italy," Albert says, to change the subject. "Beautiful country. Such warmhearted people! Talk to an innkeeper for five minutes, and you’re part of his family. "
"What’s my name in Italian, Papa?"
"Claudia," he tells her. "Italian is close to French, but easier to learn. Italians talk with their hands, their faces—they make it easy for strangers to understand."
"You should teach me Italian while we walk." She shifts her suitcase from one side to the other. "This’ll be my fourth language! German, French, Hebrew, and now Italian!"
How long has the road been her classroom? It seems a lifetime since she practiced penmanship at the kitchen table, while Czechoslovakia and Poland and Finland fell. "Will the Germans come here?" Claudette asked her mother when Holland was attacked.
"Belgium’s borders are very strong," Paula said, "and King Leopold has a pact with the French. Finish your homework."
A few days later the bombing began. The Blums packed. "Mama said they wouldn’t come here!" Claudette complained while Albert roped suitcases to the roof of their little Citroën. "Why do the Germans keep winning?"
"We expected trenches." He yanked the knots tighter, while David wept and Jacques clambered into the backseat to claim a spot by the window. "Since 1919, we trained for trenches! This time the Germans came in tanks."
Driving along the coast, Albert made Claudette memorize multiplication tables. She squabbled with her younger brothers most of the time, but had reached six fives when the family reached Coxyde. Everyone spilled from the cramped car. Paula and the children pulled off stockings and shoes and splashed into the waves. Albert negotiated an off-season rate for a month’s stay in a cottage they’d rented in happier times. War was almost unimaginable in the cheerful resort town, with its fresh paint and bright flowers and sea breeze.
Belgium’s defenses held for eighteen days. The Wehrmacht crossed the Meuse, and when they reached the Moselle River, the Blums packed again. "Five sixes are thirty, six sixes are thirty-six, seven sixes are forty-two," Claudette chanted while the Citroën crawled through a stream of refugees headed for Paris. Albert pulled off the main highway onto a country road, only to be trapped at dusk in an immense traffic jam surrounding Dunkirk. They slept in the open that night, and woke to the roar of army vehicles pushing civilian automobiles into weedy ditches, clearing the way for the British retreat, and snapping the Citroën’s rear axle in the process.
The Blums trudged south on foot, joining thousands of Parisians now fleeing Hitler’s Blitzkrieg. "Six sevens are forty-two, seven sevens are forty-nine. Seven eights ... For the life of her, Claudette could not remember seven eights. "Fifty-six!" Albert