The Storyteller of Casablanca (69)

I’m struggling to find the right words to put down what has happened. But I know that if I want to be a writer I have to record everything. And even though I can never again be carefree I have to trust in Papa’s advice to put things in my journal and get them out of my head when they are too hard to bear. So I will try . . .

When Madame Bénatar and Miss Ellis both appeared on the doorstep this afternoon, I knew what they were going to say before they opened their mouths. Their faces already told me the answer to the questions we’d been asking ourselves every second of every day for the past week.

Maman had plucked up all her courage and been to the Préfecture de Police to ask for information about the abduction of her husband, but the stony-faced French policeman behind the desk couldn’t – or wouldn’t – give her any information. He simply said it was a matter for the German authorities and that it was nothing to do with him, even though Felix had told us that the French police had been helping the Gestapo with the round-ups in the mellah the previous weekend. He’d cycled over, looking for Papa, and I think he was as devastated as we all were to hear he’d been taken too.

Maman knew it was too dangerous for her to pursue things further with the Germans. They might arrest her as well and then Annette and me. So she’d asked Miss Ellis to let Mr Reid and Madame Bénatar know, as she hoped they might be able to hold some sway with the authorities.

When the two ladies came to call, Maman showed them upstairs to the drawing room, as if it were a social visit. With all of my heart I wished it was. I wished we could sip cups of mint tea and make small talk about the weather and the progress I’d been making in my lessons. I’d have been happy to make polite conversation for once. But I already knew that wasn’t what they’d come for. I don’t think any of us wanted to speak, because until the words were said we could cling on to a tiny shred of hope and still believe that Papa would come home one day soon.

Miss Ellis came and sat next to me and Annette on the chaise longue and Madame Bénatar knelt on the floor at Maman’s feet and held her hands very tightly. ‘Delphine, I’m so sorry. It’s the most awful news. We tried very hard to get him released. But yesterday they found twenty of the men they rounded up guilty of spying for the resistance movement. I hate to have to tell you this, but Guillaume was among them.’

A noise came out of Maman’s throat that wasn’t a word, it was more like the strangled cry of an animal in pain. Madame Bénatar gripped her hands even harder – I could see her knuckles go white.

I was the one who found my voice first. ‘Is he . . . ?’

Miss Ellis reached over and put an arm around my shoulders and there were tears running down her cheeks. ‘Josie, I’m so terribly sorry. All twenty of the men were executed at dawn today. The Gestapo wanted to make an example of them, to deter others.’

My ears were filled with noise then, and my brain couldn’t seem to register what it was or where it was coming from. It took a few seconds for me to realise that it was the sound of Annette’s screams, filling the room and echoing in the vast emptiness that I felt within my heart.

It’s still there now, that emptiness in my heart, as I write these words in the journal that my papa gave me a year and a half ago in order that I could write down the thoughts that were in my head and stop being so anxious. But there aren’t enough pages in the world for me to express the way I miss him.

I’m trying to remember the dreamseller’s words. She said I’m stronger than I know. She also said it’s only when you let go of fear and grief that you will find your freedom. I don’t feel strong at all tonight. And my fear and grief close in around me like the bars of a prison. I wonder whether Papa was held behind bars. I wonder whether he was able to stay strong until the end. I can see his eyes now, when I close mine, trying to say so many things. But mostly telling the story of his love for me and Maman and Annette.

I think I understand the dreamseller’s words about the moon shining in one hundred bowls of water differently now. Perhaps she was also saying that when someone dies, their love is still there, bathing you in its light. The only trouble is, it doesn’t feel that way at all to me at the moment.

Yes, my heart is empty now. How can it hold the moonlight when it’s been shattered into a thousand pieces? Because without Papa our lives seem as bleak and desolate as the Sahara Desert.





Zoe – 2010

I hear the faint whispers of the Duvals’ story in every room in the house now. As I come in through the front door, on my return from the library or Monsieur Habib’s shop in the Habous, I shudder, picturing the Gestapo standing on the steps and Guillaume Duval glancing back over his shoulder towards Josie, his eyes trying to communicate so much to her in those final moments. I can hardly bear to sit on the couch in the drawing room, imagining that terrible day when Hélène Bénatar and Dorothy Ellis arrived to break the news to Delphine, Annette and Josie that Guillaume had been executed. I can find little peace indoors, now I know what these walls have witnessed. The plasterwork surely still holds resonances of the women’s words and the echoes of Annette’s screams.

How did they manage to keep going, Delphine, Annette and Josie? Their money was running out and the clock was ticking for the refugees in Casablanca.

There are only a couple of places I can bear to sit. One is upstairs in Grace’s room, keeping watch over my sleeping daughter and bearing witness to the phantom presence of Josie, alone and afraid without her papa.