A picture taken by my grandmother of a nurse and Rommel at the Hospital Fochs.
After Richard left and there was no sign of him and no visa came it became clear that they were not going to be going to Africa at all. This was the plan, that all three of them would be going there. They had to return to the flat in Suresnes.
I have a copy of a Larousse, 'ex libris' Richard Steinhardt, which he bought in 1931. Mom was a star student. I imagine her consulting the Larousse. My own children consulted the Spanish Larousse to do their homework. Larousse is an institution. This is a more innocent Larousse. Before WW2.
In the Larousse is a map based on a Mercator projection of Africa. Africa looks a little dumpy and small, but sweet. You can just make out the bottom half of France. I pass my hand over the map. The paper is cool and silky. On the other side of the page is a series of sketches of African animals. Strangely prescient images. Mom loved Gnus. There's a gnu. The lion has the face of an old man and leaps onto the back of a zebra.
I could believe that nature was a cypher. I published one of my mother's letters on this blog a few weeks ago where she describes how the Zebras acquiesce when a lion eats one of their number. Let it be over quickly.
Grandpa invited friends and valued acquaintances home and I think one of these was the Mayor of Suresnes. It might even have been the case that the mayor was a member of Grandpa's Masonic lodge. Granny studied how to make the dishes that grandpa asked her to make. She was a very fast learner, an extraordinary person. She became highly competent at everything she set her mind to learning. Cooking too In this way she was a little like my younger brother Chris.
In any event, whether there had been a prior contact or not, (I think there must have been), she went to see the mayor of Suresnes and told her story. Her philandering French husband had abandoned her and left her alone with her little girl. This is the story she later told my mother, Eve, to use when anyone asked her about her father.
My mother was very young. But in her head she had two stories. That her father had had to leave to Africa and that she was prevented from going with him. And the cover story. That her father was a French philanderer and she had to always stick to that story no matter what. She must have been taught the story from the age of 4. Just think of it. A four year old with a cover story.
The mayor of Sureness, who apparently had secret links with the Resistance, decided to help Lisa and in fact they became good friends. He helped Lisa by getting her a job as a translator at a hospital nearby, Hospital Fochs. People remark on the beauty of my grandmother. That she was slender, blond and blue eyed and naturally joyous. She was also incredibly elegant. And so she was popular at the hospital and made herself useful.
In the picture above there is a nurse - there are lots of little pictures of the hospital Fochs with nurses in them - and a high ranking German officer. It is Rommel. At least I think it's Rommel. Granny boasted:
'I met Rommel once. He came to see his wounded troops and so I met him.'
'Wasn't he a Nazi granny?'
'No, he was just a very good soldier. He was very brave. A German. Everyone admired him. He was against Hitler.'
Lisa took a picture of him when he came. Observe the reaction of the nurse next to Rommel (Is it Rommel?). Was she German too?
'They adored me at the hospital, for some reason,' Lisa said immodestly, 'and they loved Eve too.
Phil, ... a four year-old required to tell a 'cover story' like that. Shudder. How I wish that your mother were still here to tell us how that experience might have affected her in later life.
ReplyDeleteA beautifully written entry.
Rommel was a great subject of discussion at the dining table in my family. Both parents were extremely interested in his brilliance for different reasons. I shut out most of what I heard, but do seem to remember that he annoyed the Nazi high command by refusing to come to heel ... Have his memoir here: fascinating stuff, but it's been too many years since I read it.
Wordy, the officr in the picture doesn't wear an Iron Cross so it might not be Rommel. It looks like him.
ReplyDeleteI am sad to reprot that before my Mom died three or four years ago she was betrayed by her mother.
It was all part of ruthless love-play.
Her mother looked at a picture of my mother when she was little in paris and said: But I thought you were so beautiful (in the tone of What was I thinking?) but look at your big nose.
And my mother, heartbreakingly, wrote:
"Every Friday afternoon I used to wait for my mother outside my boarding school, buttoned up snuggly into my Petite Madeleine uniform, a double breasted navy coat with shining brass buttons, a sailor hat trimmed with white ribbons, and knee high white socks. I usually held a posy tightly in my sweaty little hand, to give my mother as she swooped down to kiss me. At the worst of war times in Paris people sold flowers and I always saved my little bit of pocket money.
"She smelt lovely, better than my favourite snow drops. Her soft blond hair tickled my neck, her velvet skin stroked me, her large blue eyes enchanted me. She was so beautiful and fair, and I was her dark little changeling. I wondered how she could love me, but love me she did. I had proof of this seventy years later when, peering at a photograph taken of me then, she said in a puzzled voice: “But I thought you were so beautiful!”
Type 'memories of Paris during the war' and my mothers last writing will be at the top.
My four year old mother knew enough to be traumatisedby what she knew and to never speak of it.
But my friend tells me of a survivor of Pol Pot. A woman she knew whose children could not understand, but how could they have done that to our mother. According to the story my friend tells me, at seven she lived in a box and she was let out to carry bodies into graves and her back was broken when she was thrown down a flight of stairs.
My memoirs in progress are gradually reaching their conclusion, Wordy. Not far to go now.
So, against stupefying odds, her life was a triumph ... not least because in 2010, she has an exceptionally devoted boy extending the records she made of her exceptional time here.
ReplyDeleteHard to believe what she believed, about her mother having really loved her. It seems that your grandmother loved her own projection of an idealised daughter, not the little girl right in front of her.