Page 5 of Atlas: The Story of Pa Salt

My hand shook as it reached out for the door and I gave a timid knock. There was no response – of course there wasn’t, no one who wasn’t standing immediately on the other side of the piece of wood could have heard me. So I knocked louder. Within a few seconds, I saw the drawn curtain being lifted from the window, and then the door was opened.

‘Well, what have we here?’ Evelyn said as she smiled at me. ‘Come in, come in. It’s not often I get visitors knocking at my door, and that’s for sure,’ she chuckled.

I stepped into perhaps the cosiest room I’d ever seen. Even though I’d been told it had once been a garage for Monsieur Landowski’s car and was simply a cement square, everywhere I looked there was something of beauty. Two upholstered chairs sat facing the centre of the room and brightly coloured embroidered quilts were draped over them. Family portraits and still-lifes dotted the walls, and an arrangement of flowers sat proudly on the clean mahogany table by the window. There was a small door which I presumed led to the bedroom and facilities, and a pile of books sat on a shelf above a dresser filled with china cups and glasses.

‘Now then, sit down,’ Evelyn said, pointing to one of the chairs and removing some kind of needlepoint from her own. ‘Can I get you some lemonade? It’s my own recipe.’

I nodded eagerly. I’d never had lemonade before coming to France, and I couldn’t get enough of it now. I watched her walk over to the dresser and take down two glasses. She poured the milky yellow liquid from a pitcher full of ice.

‘There,’ she said as she sat down, her large bulk just about fitting into the chair. ‘Santé!’ She lifted her glass.

I lifted mine too but said nothing, as usual.

‘So,’ Evelyn said, ‘what can I do for you?’

I’d already written down what I wanted to ask and drew out the paper from my pocket to hand it to her.

She read the words, then looked at me.

‘How can you earn some money? That is what you are here to ask me?’

I nodded.

‘Well, young man, I am not sure if I know. I’d have to think about it. But why is it you feel you need to earn money?’

I indicated she should turn the paper over.

‘“In case the kind Landowskis decide they no longer have room for me,”’ she read out loud. ‘Well, given the monsieur’s success and the amount of commissions he’s getting, it’s very doubtful they’d have to move to a smaller house. So, they are always going to have room for you here. But I think I know what you mean. You are frightened because they might one day decide to simply turn you out, is that it?’

I nodded vigorously.

‘And you would just be another young, starving orphan on the streets of Paris. Which brings me to a very important question: are you an orphan? Yes or no will do.’

I shook my head as vigorously as I’d nodded it.

‘Where are your parents?’

She handed the paper back to me and I wrote the words down.

I do not know.

‘I see. I thought that they might have been lost in the Great War, but that ended in 1918, so you’re perhaps too young for that to be the case.’

I shrugged, trying not to let my expression change. The problem with kindness was that it meant you let your guard down, and I knew I mustn’t do that, whatever the cost. I watched as she gazed at me silently.

‘I know you can talk if you want to, young man. That Brazilian lady who was here told us all that you said thank you to her in perfect French the night she found you. The question is, why won’t you? The only answer I can think of – unless you have been struck dumb since, which I doubt very much – is that you are too scared to trust anyone. Would I be right?’

Now I was really torn... I wanted to say yes, she was absolutely right, and to throw myself into those comfortingarms, to be held and to tell her everything, but I knew that still...stillI could not. I indicated I needed the paper, and I wrote some words then handed it back to her.

I had a fever. I cannot remember speaking to Bel.

Evelyn read the words, then smiled at me. ‘I understand, young man. I know you’re lying, but whatever trauma it is that you’ve experienced has stopped you trusting. Perhaps one day, when we have known each other for a little longer, I will tell you something of my life. I was a nurse at the front during the Great War. The suffering I saw there... I will never forget it. And yes, I will be honest, for a time it made me lose my faith – and trust – in human nature. And also in God. Do you believe in God?’

I nodded my head slightly less vigorously. Partly because I did not know whether she was still a religious woman after her lapse of faith, and partly because I wasn’t sure.

‘I think that perhaps you are at the same point I was then. It took me a good long time to trust to anything again. Do you know what it was that brought back my faith and trust? Love. Love for my beloved boy. And that made everything right. Of course, love comes from God, or whatever you wish to call the spirit that joins all us humans in an invisible web to Him. Even if we sometimes feel that He’s deserted us, He never has. Anyway, I really don’t have an answer to your question, I’m afraid. There are many young boys like you on the streets of Paris, who manage to survive in ways I really don’t wish to think about. But... Goodness, I wish you could at least trust me with your name. I promise you that Monsieur and Madame Landowski are good, kind people and would never just throw you out of their home.’

I indicated I needed the paper again and once I’d written on it, I passed it back.