Page 4 of Atlas: The Story of Pa Salt
Next time you go, I will come with you to carry the box.
‘That is most kind of you, young man, and if this weather keeps up, I might just hold you to it.’
The weather did keep up and I did go and help her. On the way along the street, she chatted away about her son, telling me proudly he was at university studying to become an engineer.
‘He’ll make something of himself one day, you’ll see,’ she added as we’d picked our way through the vegetables displayed at the stall, me holding the box for those that passed her muster. Out of everyone in the Landowski household, Evelyn was my favourite person, even though I’d been dreading her return, having heard the maids’ chatter through the walls about when ‘the dragon’ would be back. I’d been introduced to her as ‘the boy with no name who can’t speak’. (It had been Marcel, the Landowskis’ thirteen-year-old son, who had said that. I knew he regarded me with suspicion, which I totally understood – my sudden arrival into any family would have ruffled a few feathers.) Yet Evelyn had simply shaken my outstretched hand and given me a warm smile.
‘The more the merrier, that’s what I say. What’s the point of having a great big house like this and not filling every room?’ Then she’d given me a wink and later that day, seeing me eyeing the leftover tarte tatin from lunch, had cut a slice for me.
It was odd, really, how a middle-aged lady and I could forge some kind of secret and most definitely unspoken (on my part, anyway) bond, but I knew we had. I’d noted a familiar look in her eyes which told me she had suffered deeply. Perhaps she recognised something similar in me too.
I had decided that the only way to make sure everyone in the house found no way of complaining about me was to either make myself invisible (to Landowski’s children and, to a lesser extent, Monsieur and Madame Landowski) or very available to those in need, which basically comprised the servants. Evelyn, Berthe, Elsa and Antoinette had what I think they realised now to be a useful little helper at hand any time they needed. At home, it had often been me that had cleared up the tiny space that housed us. Even as a very young boy, I had always had an urge to make sure everything was in its place. Papa had noted that I liked order, not chaos, and had joked that I’d make someone a very good wife one day. In my old home, it had been impossible because every activity had happened in the one room, but here at the Landowski house, the very orderliness of it thrilled me. Perhaps my favourite job of all was helping Elsa and Antoinette take sheets and clothes from the line after they had blown dry in the sunshine. Both maids had laughed at my need to make sure each corner met perfectly, and I could not help but stick my nose into whichever item of laundry I was unpegging to breathe in its clean scent, which to me was the most beautiful of any perfume.
Anyway, after I had chopped the tomatoes as precisely as I folded the laundry, I went to join Monsieur Landowski and Laurent at the table. I watched them break the fresh baguette and cut a slice of cheese, and it was only when Monsieur Landowski indicated I should do the same that I shared in the feast too. Papa had always told me how wonderful Frenchfood tasted, and he was right. However, after my bouts of sickness when I had stuffed anything I was given at top speed down my gullet as if it was the last meal I was ever offered, I proceeded to eat like the gentleman I’d been brought up to be rather than a savage, as Berthe had once said within my hearing.
Still the chatter was of theCristoand Sun Yat-sen’s eyeballs, but I didn’t mind. I understood that Monsieur Landowski was a true creative – he had won the gold medal in the Olympic art competition in the summer and was apparently renowned for his gifts around the world. What I admired the most about him was the way that fame hadn’t changed him. Or at least, I imagined it hadn’t, because he worked every hour he could, often missing supper, which Madame Landowski scolded him for because his children needed to see him and so did she. His attention to detail and the fact he strove for perfection, when he could easily have had Laurent finish his work for him, inspired me. Whatever in this world I was meant to do or be, I promised myself that I would always give all I had to it.
‘And what about you, boy? Boy?’
Yet again, I pulled myself out of my thoughts. It was a place that I had become so used to inhabiting that having people showing any interest in me took some getting used to.
‘You weren’t listening, were you?’
Making an apology with my eyes, I shook my head.
‘I asked you whether you thought that Sun Yat-sen’s eyes were yet right? I showed you the photograph of him, remember?’
I picked up my pencil, thinking carefully about my answer before I wrote it. I’d always been taught to tell the truth, but I needed to be diplomatic as well. I wrote the words I needed to, then passed the book to him.
Almost, sir.
I watched Landowski take a sip of his wine, then throw back his head and laugh.
‘Spot on, boy, spot on. So, this afternoon, I will have another go.’
When the two men had had their fill, I cleared away the leftover bread and cheese. Then I brewed the coffee for them, the way I knew Monsieur Landowski liked it. Whilst I was doing so, I stuffed the remains of the bread and cheese into my shorts pocket. This was one habit I was yet to break – one never knew when one’s supply of food might be cut off. After I’d served them the coffee, I nodded and returned to my attic. I stowed the bread and cheese in the drawer in the desk. More often than not, whatever leftovers I put there would be secretly thrown away the next morning in the bin outside. But as I said, one never knew.
After a wash of my hands and a brush of my hair, I went downstairs to begin my afternoon round of being useful. Today it involved polishing silver, which, because of my precision and patience, even Evelyn had said I was good at. I glowed with the pride of someone starved of compliments for so long. The glow hadn’t lasted long, though, because she’d stopped at the door and turned round as Elsa and Antoinette were replacing the knives and forks in their velvet beds.
‘Perhaps you could both learn from the young man’s skills,’ she’d said, then walked out, leaving Elsa and Antoinette to glare at me. But as they were both lazy and impatient, they’d been happy to hand over the polishing. I loved sitting in the peace of the big dining room at the mahogany table, which always glowed with a shiny sheen, my hands busy and my mind free to roam wherever it pleased.
The main thought on my mind now, and almost every day since my body and senses had begun to recover, was how Icould make money. However kind the Landowskis were, I knew that I was at their mercy. Even tonight, it could be that they would tell me that for whatever reason my time with them was up. Once again, I’d be cast out onto an unfamiliar street, vulnerable and alone. Instinctively, my fingers went to the leather pouch that I wore under my shirt. Just the touch of it and its familiar shape comforted me, even if I knew what it contained was not mine to sell. The fact it had survived the journey was a miracle in itself, yet its presence was a blessing and a curse. It alone held the reason why I was currently in Paris, living under the roof of strangers.
Having finished polishing the silver teapot, I decided there was only one person in the house I trusted enough to ask advice. Evelyn lived in what the family called ‘the cottage’, but in reality was a two-roomed extension to the main house. As Evelyn had said to me, at least it had its own private bathroom facilities, and most importantly, its own front door. I had not yet seen inside it, but tonight after supper I would pluck up my courage and knock on that door.
I watched through the dining room window as Evelyn made her way to the cottage – she always left once the main course had been served, leaving her two maids in charge of the dessert and then the washing-up. I ate my supper and listened to the family chatter. Nadine, the oldest sister, wasn’t yet married and spent much of her time leaving the house with an easel, brushes and a palette. I had never seen any of her paintings, but I knew she also designed the backgrounds for theatre stages. I had never seen a play on a stage, and of course couldn’t speak to her to ask her about her work. As she spent so little time in the house and seemed very wrapped up inher own life, she took little notice of me, offering me the occasional smile if we crossed paths early in the morning. Then there was Marcel, who’d stopped me in my tracks one day, then puffed out his chest, put his hands on his hips and told me he didn’t like me. Which, of course, was silly because he didn’t know me, but I had heard him calling me a ‘bootlicker’ to his younger sister Françoise, because I helped in the kitchen before supper. I understood how he felt; his parents taking in a young ragamuffin who’d been found in their garden and refused to speak would have made anyone suspicious.
However, I forgave him everything from the moment I’d first heard the sound of beautiful music coming from a room downstairs and drifting into the kitchen. I’d stopped what I was doing and stood there, entranced. Even though Papa had played me what he could on his violin, I’d never actually heard the sound that piano keys could make when they were expertly handled by a human being. And it was glorious. Since then, I had become slightly obsessed with Marcel’s fingers, wondering how they managed to cross the piano keys so fast and in such perfect order. I’d had to train myself to avert my eyes. One day I would pluck up the courage to ask him if I could watch him play. However he acted towards me, I thought him a magician.
His older brother Jean-Max seemed indifferent to me, being on the cusp of adulthood. I knew little about what he did when he left the house, but he did once try to show me how to play the game of boules: the national pastime of France. This involved throwing balls at the gravel in the back courtyard, and I picked it up pretty easily.
Then there was Françoise, the Landowskis’ youngest daughter, who was not much older than me. She had been friendly when I’d first arrived, though very shy. I was gratified when she’d wordlessly given me a sweet in the garden, somekind of sugar on a stick, and we’d sat side by side licking our respective treats and watching the bees collect their nectar. She joined Marcel in his piano practice, and enjoyed painting like Nadine. I’d often see her sitting at an easel facing the house. I had no idea if she was good or not, because I’d never seen anything she’d painted, but I suspected that a lovely pastoral view of a field and a river that hung along the downstairs hallway was hers. We were never to become great friends, of course – it must be quite boring for anyone to spend time with someone they cannot conduct a conversation with – but she often smiled at me and I could feel the sympathy in her eyes. On the odd occasion – normally Sunday, when Monsieur Landowski was free – the family would play boules or decide to go for a picnic together. I was always asked to join, but declined, out of respect for their family time, and because I’d learnt the hard way what resentment could do.
After supper, I helped Elsa and Antoinette with the dishes, and once they had gone upstairs to bed, I slipped out of the kitchen door and scurried around the back of the house, so that no one would see my departure.
Standing in front of Evelyn’s front door, my heart knocked hard in my chest. Was this a mistake? Should I simply go back the way I had come and forget all about it?
‘No,’ I whispered under my breath. I had to trust someone at some point. The instincts that had kept me alive for as long as they had were telling me that it was the right thing to do.
