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CHAPTER TWO: AGE FIVE
"Happy birthday!" said Papa as he hugged me and handed me a book which looked full of promising adventures. It had colourful pictures on the cover, and I asked him to read me a story from it right away. Like every Saturday night, I had been waiting for him anxiously, hoping that nothing would prevent him from making his weekly visit. Once, he could not make it and I was very upset. Since that time, I was always worried when he arrived a bit late. I was in bed, as usual at this hour, and I was glad that I had not fallen asleep before his arrival. He would always bring me something from Antwerp, like a toy, or a drawing that he had made especially for me, but tonight was a special gift for my fifth birthday.
"I'll just read you a short one, and then you should go to sleep. And imagine, now that you are a big boy of five, you will soon be going to kindergarten, and a teacher will tell you all sorts of new stories, and show you how to read the letters of the alphabet and many other things. Isn't that nice?"
"I know how to read, Bon-papa taught me."
"Is that so? Well why don't you show me then?"
I hopped out of the large bed where I slept next to Bonne-maman, and I went to get a small book with a dark worn-out cover. I wanted to show off the few words which I had learned to read in Yiddish. They were amusing stories from a little town in Poland, and Bon-papa was occasionally reading them to me and teaching me at the same time the Hebrew alphabet. I had even accompanied him a few times to the "cheder" where he was a teacher, he said, although Bonne-maman would always make fun of him. She said that it was just an excuse to go and have a talk with the men, instead of making himself useful at the store.
I climbed back to bed with the book, and read a few lines from a story.
"Very good!" said Papa. "And when you go to school, you will learn to read in French as well! Now, do you want me to read to you from your new book?"
"Oh, yes!" I closed the old book and put it on the night table, settled comfortably under the blankets, and closed my eyes in anticipation. At home we always spoke Yiddish - although Papa would read me the stories in French - but outside, I had to speak like everyone else, or they did not understand. I had learned to speak Flemish when I was in Antwerp, but here, in Charleroi, everyone spoke French, and so did I.
When Papa had finished the story, I was still wide awake, and Bonne-maman came in with some tea. I said that I wished that Maman would be here for my birthday, and I saw Papa and Bonne-maman give each other a certain look. I knew then for sure what I had long suspected. Maman had abandoned me for good, and I would never see her again. I was very sad and angry at the same time.
I had asked a few times before why I could not go and see her at the hospital. At first I was told that children were not allowed into hospitals, and another time I was told that she had gone very far away, too far to visit. But I always knew that something was not quite right, particularly when the grown-ups would start speaking in Polish so that I would not understand what they were saying.
I felt suddenly very tired and I closed my eyes. Papa and Bonne-maman talked on for a while, and when they thought that I was asleep, they went into the kitchen and shut off the light in the bedroom, although I really did not go to sleep for a long time. Lots of things went through my mind, like the trip to the sea, and the airplanes, and me riding on the cart with Maman. It all seemed so far away. I was not even sure if I had dreamed it all or if it had really happened. Did I really live in Antwerp with Papa, and Maman, and all my animals? I could not even speak Flemish any more! The only thing that was real now was Charleroi.
Everything was different here. There was no park with ducks to feed, or a zoo to visit, or some cousins to play with when we did visit each other. But there was a market place with lots of stalls, and many people selling vegetables, and chickens, and clothes, and old things. We went there often, and Bonne-maman knew a lot of people with whom she talked while I played with some of their children. Sometimes she bought one of the chickens to take home; not one of the live ones that were in a cage at the foot of the butcher's table, but one that had been killed and that was hanging by its feet at the top of the stall.
Once we got home, she would put on her big apron, take a chair out in the courtyard and sit on it while she plucked out the feathers. I always liked watching her undressing the chicken until it was all naked and the feathers were all over the place. She would then light a candle and singe off the remaining little tufts that were left on the bare skin. After that she would take it to the kitchen and cut it up. She let me play with the feet, and it was like playing with a puppet. By pulling one of the tendons, I could make the claws open and close, as if I opened and closed my hand. When the chicken was ready to be cooked, I gave her back the feet and she put everything in a big pot with water to make the soup. Sometimes there were eggs on the inside of the chicken, eggs without any shells. It all went into the soup, the eggs, the heart, the stomach, and everything else. Except for the liver. She would leave it out to fry up with some onions as an entrČe just for me.
She also collected all the fat and put it in a bowl for Bon-papa. That was his special treat. He would slather thick layers of chicken fat on a piece of bread and gobble it up, smacking his lips, with great enjoyment.
There were lots of other fun things to do, or to watch, beside the market. Like the wedding I went to, where there was music, and singing, and people dancing.
It was my uncle Moniek who had married Henya. She was now my new aunt. They stepped under an awning, and my uncle Moniek broke a glass with his foot after they had drunk wine from it, and afterwards the fiddlers started to play and everyone began to dance. I liked dancing. I also liked music, and I wanted to learn to play the fiddle like the musicians at the wedding.
We even had music at home, and I learned to put on the records on our gramophone all by myself. First you had to open the cover and put in a fresh needle in the arm. The needle had to be changed for each record, and there was a big box of them. The used ones were dropped in a special container. When all was ready, you put the record on the turn table, cranked up the machine with a metal handle that was on the side of it, until it was tight. Then you carefully lowered the needle onto the edge of the record, and the music would start to come out of the box. Bon-papa liked opera arias, Bonne-maman preferred the Russian songs, and I liked everything. There was even one of the songs that Papa used to sing to me while he played the banjo, and I sang along when the record was on.
Tout va trĖs bien, madame la marquise,
Tout va trĖs bien, tout va trĖs bien...
I woke up early. I was excited that Papa was here on my fifth birthday, and that he was going to take me to the merry-go-round at the market where I would ride on one of those white horses.
Bon-papa was already praying in a corner of the room. I was used to it by now, but when I had first arrived at his house, I had been fascinated by this morning and evening ritual. He would wrap some leather ribbons around his arm, put on a little black box on his forehead -- "tefillin" he called them -- and envelop himself in a white shawl. Then he would start mumbling while twisting from side to side, or forward and backward, in a slow rhythmic motion. He said that he would some day teach me to pray like that, so that I would grow up as a proper Jew and maintain the tradition. I was not sure what tradition meant exactly, but I wanted to do as he did, although not everything. Like sucking the eyes out of the head of a fish, that I did not want to do. Every week, Bonne-maman would buy a big carp at the market, and then she'd put it in a tub of water where I watched it swim around and around. The next day she would take a hatchet and hack off its head. She would then chop up the rest of the fish in tiny pieces, add some carrots and onions, and cook the Friday night supper. Bon-papa always received the head. I thought he was an ogre when he slurped every part of it noisily. I always found that a bit scary, but I could not keep my eyes off him.
There was no real toilet at Bonne-maman's house, so I had my own potty, like when I was little. There was an outhouse at the back of the courtyard where the adults went, but it was dark, and it stank, and the seat was so high that when I first saw it, I was afraid that I might fall into the hole while trying to sit on it. That is why Bonne-maman bought me my own potty which we kept in the house in a closet.
I woke up Papa by sitting on him on the couch where he was sleeping, and we tumbled around, and he tickled me. After breakfast, we went outside and made our way to the market. I told him about everything that I had done at Bonne-maman's since his last visit. When I did not accompany Bon-papa to the "cheder", I helped Bonne-maman set-up the cigarettes and the newspapers which people would come to buy in the front room. The front room had a big window where all the items were displayed and could be seen from the street.
Bonne-maman had been sick last week, and a nun dressed all in black came to the house with a big jar of blood suckers. She took out some of them and put them behind Bonne-maman's ears. I watched them swell up with blood until they were removed. That nun frightened me. She made me think of the witch all dressed in black in the movie with the dwarves. I had seen her before, a few weeks ago, when she came to the house with a box full of drinking glasses. She would light a candle, put a glass above the flame, and then quickly put it down on Bonne-maman's bare back. You could see the skin swell up under the glass, and she looked funny after awhile with all the glasses stuck to her back. She looked like the hedgehog in one of my animal books.
Right next door there was a tavern where madame Patrice worked behind the counter serving all kinds of drinks. Madame Patrice lived in the back of the courtyard, near the outhouse. She liked me, and when I went to sit with her at the tavern, she served me fizzy sweet red grenadine in a tall glass. I liked her too, she reminded me of a horse. She had a long nose and big teeth and a lot of grey hair, like a mane, which she put up in a bun when she was working.
The other day I saw her step off the curbside, and with one foot on the street and the other on the sidewalk, she hitched up her dress to her knees, and made pipi like a horse before going back to the tavern.
Papa laughed when I told him, and then we had a good time at the merry-go-round before going back to Bonne-maman's house. I was always sad when he had to leave, and I looked forward the whole week for his arrival.
Bon-papa and Bonne-maman were always fighting about something or other. Almost every day they ended-up screaming at each other. I was frightened at first by all the shouting, but I got used to it fairly quickly, and I even looked forward to these episodes to see what new curse Bonne-maman would be able to invent.
The other day, they fought because of me. I had been in a bad mood the whole day, playing with my food, whining, wanting this or refusing that, until I knew that I had managed to make Bon-papa really angry. He pulled out his belt and said that he was going to teach me to behave, just as he did when his students did not do their work. Bonne-maman jumped up from her chair and grabbed her rolling pin. "Don't you dare!", she roared, and they had another shouting match with lots of new curses. I had been worried at first when I saw that threatening leather belt, but after they had stopped screaming at each other, and Bon-papa had stalked off outside, I knew that Bonne-maman would always be there to defend me, no matter how much I got Bon-papa irritated. And she always ended up winning. Even though she was shorter than him, she was strong and large. She even wore a corset that had to be laced up every morning, or else her belly would have stuck out almost as much as her balcony -- that is how she called her breasts. She was always busy cooking, or sewing, or cleaning, beside taking care of the customers who dropped in for a newspaper or a package of cigarettes.
Bon-papa was tall and thin, and he spent most days after his morning prayers reading and smoking, unless he had to go to the "cheder". Sometimes I accompanied him there and I sat at a desk with the pupils who all had long side curls. He always had to shout at them because they talked to each other when he was trying to teach them something.
At other times, he took me for a walk in the neighbourhood and introduced me to some of his friends. One day last week he took me to the barbershop where he got his hair trimmed. I became engrossed with all the mirrors, the sharp and dangerous looking razors, the odd-shaped clippers, and all the bottles with their multicoloured liquids. I was particularly interested in the chair that would go up or down when the barber pumped a lever with his foot.
When Bon-papa was finished, I was told that it was now my turn. I was quite frightened as I had never had a haircut, and I had to be coaxed with the promise of a lollipop before I consented to sit on that fascinating chair. I was very apprehensive when I heard those scissors slicing close to my ears, and I was quite disturbed when I saw my locks falling down all around me. This haircut was all in preparation for my starting school shortly, and I wondered what other surprises were in store for me before that momentous day. When the barber was finished, he removed the white cloth that he had wrapped around my neck and shook it onto the floor. I almost cried when I saw all those pieces of me tumbling down and scattering everywhere, before he picked up a broom and swept them all up.
I received my lollipop and we walked home. I was sure that everyone was staring at me, as if I was naked, but when Bonne-maman saw me, she exclaimed how nice I looked, like a big boy, and I felt a bit better. Papa also liked it when he came to visit me on the following week-end.
In preparation for my starting school, I received a wooden pencil case with a pencil and an eraser, a slate and a special stick to write on it, as well as a cloth to wipe it clean. Also a scrapbook, and a satchel to put everything in. The satchel had straps so that I could carry it on my back, like the soldiers in my picture books.
The day finally arrived when Bonne-maman took me by the hand and we walked over to the school. I carried my satchel very proudly, but I was nervous about what awaited me. There were other children there with their parents, and we looked at each other with some curiosity, until it was time for all the parents to leave. At that point some of the other children started to cry, but they stopped once our teacher had shown us to our classroom and assigned each one of us a seat at a desk. She spent the rest of the morning taking our names down and showing us around the school. Then it was recess, and she told us where we would have to line up when she rang the bell. It was a big bell that was fixed on top of a wooden handle. She picked it up, and then she shook it back and forth. It gave a loud clanging noise that could be heard anywhere in the playground. She said that whenever we heard it, we had to stop playing and come immediately to the spot that was assigned to our class, or else... I did not know what she meant by "or else", but I understood that something bad would happen if we did not do what she said.
After recess, she read us a story, and then we were allowed to play with the wooden blocks and all the other toys that were set up on a table along the wall. After that we received some paper and crayons to draw pictures. She also showed us how to trace the first letter of the alphabet, but I continued to draw because I already knew how to write the letter "A".
Then it was lunch time. Bonne-maman was waiting for me with some of the other parents, and as we walked home, I told her all the things we had done.
The next day and from then on, it was Bon-papa who walked me to school. At first, I liked school, and I did what I could to please the teacher. I learned to read all the letters of the alphabet, and to write them in my scrapbook. But after a while, I got bored. I did not have much to do with the other children. Sometimes they called me names, like carrot-top, and it made me mad. I looked forward to get home at the end of morning, because I had more fun there than at school.
Last week I helped Bon-papa build a "sukkah" and we ate apples and pears. Bonne-maman cooked and baked a lot of food, and on the last day of the festival, we went to the synagogue for "simchat torah" and I danced around the table with the other men, clutching to my chest a little torah with a green velvet cover. I had a lot of fun and we came home very late.
When Papa arrived on Saturday afternoon, I told him all about that exciting week, and I asked him if he had also danced with a torah. He said that he had to work and that he did not have time for that type of dancing, but that some day he would show me how to do another type of dancing.
Hannukah arrived shortly after, and Bon-papa told me the story about the miracle of the oil. Every night Bonne-maman lit some candles, and I received some chocolate gold coins. I also received some chocolate cigarettes so that I could smoke, just like the grown-ups.
And then we had our winter holidays. They went very fast, and I had to go back to school. In the mornings, it was kindergarten, and in the afternoons it was either playing at home, or going with Bon-papa to the "cheder". When Passover arrived, I looked through the whole house to make sure that there was no bread to be found. We could eat only matzah. When it got dark, Bonne-maman lit the candles, and Bon-papa sat on a big cushion and recited all the prayers. Bonne-maman kept after him to make it faster because, she said, everybody was hungry and the food was getting cold. I proudly read out the questions from the Haggadah, and at the end of the meal I went looking for the "afikoman", the matzah that had been hidden. I found it and Bon-papa gave me a coin when I returned it to him. I drank grape-juice, but the grown-ups drank wine. I only got to taste a bit of it, and it was strong and sweet.
Summer arrived, and there was no more kindergarten. I could stay home all day and help Bonne-maman in the store, or go to the market for her daily shopping. Saturday was the day I liked best, because it was on that evening that I could expect Papa to arrive for his visit.
For my sixth birthday, he brought me a new story book, and on Sunday we went to see a movie.