Ever since I put A Bag of Marbles-by Joseph Joffo on my beam, I have been intending to write about it. It's been months, and I'm just getting around to it today. Each time I'd think about it and stop, I'd ask myself what was going on for me to be so blocked about writing this piece? It is a memoir about two young brothers, 10 and 12 years old, whose parents send them from Paris to elude the Nazis and find their older brothers.They criss-cross France with their knapsacks on their backs, by train, on foot, and in wagons. Along the way, they meet new friends and foes alike. It is a story of love, family, war, hate, evacuation, danger, unknowns, survival and being forced to grow up prematurely during times of crisis and trauma! The impact of the loss of innocence screams in these passages:
"Now I can walk for hours without getting blisters. The soles of my feet, the skin of my heels have hardened. I no longer feel those pains I used to get in my calves and thighs. I can tell by my shirt sleeves and the hem of my short pants that I've grown.
Grown, hardened, changed...Perhaps my heart has also accustomed itself; has inured itself to catastrophes; perhaps it has become incapable of feeling real sorrow...the child I was eighteen months ago; that child lost in the Métro, in the train carrying him to Dax-I know he isn't the same today. I know he's been lost forever in some country thicket, on some back road in Provence, in the corridors of the hotel in Nice; each day we were fleeing, he crumbled away a little more...I wonder if I still am a child...I doubt if playing jacks or marbles would appeal to me now; perhaps a soccer match or maybe...But these things do belong to my age; after all, I'm not quite twelve years old."
Joffo goes on to say: "Perhaps I've had the idea up to now that I was going to come through this war unscathed; but that may be my mistake. They haven't taken my life; they've done something worse-they've robbed me of my childhood. They've killed the child I might have been."
I've studied World War II, and always considered myself well-read and knowledgeable on the subject.
At a distance...from "America"...I've always believed that I was "aware", if not at best able to understand the experiences of those times. Now that I'm now living in France full time, I've come to understand that "awareness" and "understanding" are impossible for those of us who weren't here. I've recently read so many more books about England, France, the resistance, and other happenings of those times. My heart broke as I read "The Rape of Europa" and I cried many times during the documentary of the same name, but especially as I watched the staff of the Louvre dismantling the Winged-Victory piece by piece to transport it out of Paris to safety. Being here, each piece feels more real and more personal for me. Joffo's book magnified those times even further through the eyes of himself as an innocent child.
As Americans, we have been attacked on our soil: Pearl Harbor off the coast of Hawaii and the first mainland attack on 9/11. But, we do not have a clue what it would mean to fight on our own mainland or face the occupation of a foreign government. Once I faced the fact that I couldn't have had a clue about what actually happened here during WWII, I was able to sit down and write this piece. At the time of the printing of this book, A Bag of Marbles and Anna and Her Orchestra, were the only two of Joffo's books translated from French into English. I'm going to have to look up one of his other titles, so I can work on my French and enjoy another piece of his writing.
I fell in love with the photo on the cover of A Bag of Marbles...the soft, sweet, innocence of two brothers in Paris, holding a handful of marbles but wearing the yellow stars...the protective hand of the older brother on Joseph's shoulder! It seemed only right, that I bookmarked with my Nannie as I read along and came to understand more of myself.