The Fractalist Page 6

Arriving in France speaking imperfect French taught by unreliable Uncle Loterman, I went straight to the local elementary school for boys, located at 119, avenue Simón Bolívar, in the Nineteenth Arrondissement. Next door was a separate girls’ school, and behind it was a nursery school.

  The energetic and cooperative school director had decided that Léon and I would settle in more easily by repeating fourth and fifth grades, respectively. So in 1936 I started in the class of Monsieur Poupard. Halfway through that year, we were both promoted, and I moved to the class of Monsieur Leblanc. Both teachers were excellent, helpful beyond the call of duty, never to be forgotten. Of my classmates, only one went on to high school—the same as I did. A classic slum dweller named Repkowski, he was to stay in Paris and vanish during the Holocaust.

  The Parisian Dialect of French

  Learning to speak French proved to be an interesting challenge. I remember having to memorize many historical dates, including those of battles that Napoléon won in Italy in the 1790s. These turned out to be real tongue twisters, since in French, “ninety-seven” is “four score and seventeen.” For once Mother was forced to drill me.

  Working hard I rapidly became a fluent speaker of what we thought was proper French. But in fact, I learned a significantly different language. In Belleville, they spoke “Parisian,” a fully blown counterpart of London’s famed Cockney. For example, marrant (funny) and marron (brown), when spoken, were hard to tell apart.

  In the Paris lycée where I went next, everybody spoke High French, which began as the local dialect of the province of Touraine, like Italian began as Tuscan. Later, I transferred to a lycée in Tulle, where nearly everybody had a strong southern accent. Therefore, my spoken French never quite stabilized, and I keep an accent that varies in time and cannot easily be traced.

  Certificat d’Études, Spelling, and a Good Eye

  After attending French elementary school for a year, I graduated by passing the dreaded exam for the certificat d’études élémentaires. More than five spelling errors in a dictation forced a student to either repeat the last grade or graduate with an incomplete. I do not remember making even one.

  I believe that at grade school level, spelling in both French and English is largely a matter of visual memory. Two words may be pronounced identically but spelled differently, depending on the meaning of the word, such as “there” and “their.” Given my chaotic schooling and my nonstandard life choices, a good eye was going to lead me far, again and again.

  Each time I recall that successful exam, my heart rejoices. Lady Luck is blind and needs assistance. In 1936, my parents assisted by moving out of Poland. In 1937, I was called to assist—and I did.

  Parallel French Public School Streams

  In France, many decisions are made in dusty cubicles of the Ministry of Education, where the constant political concern over minor details hides the important agendas, allowing some odd policies to remain law for longer than they should. The next stage in my life would be difficult to understand without some background on the educational system in place at that time. Until 1937, there were two distinct educational tracks. While called primary and secondary, they were in fact parallel and quite separate.

  The primary track started at age six with the écoles primaires élémentaires, like the one I attended. The earliest the certificat d’études—to which it led—could be awarded was in the year of a student’s thirteenth birthday. Very few students continued in school, but this track did not stop there, merely narrowed down in stages to écoles primaires supérieures, and then to écoles normales d’instituteurs, which trained elementary school teachers, who did not go to high school.

  The track called secondary started at age six with preparatory classes, and grades were numbered backward, beginning with an eleventh grade. The sixth grade—two years before the minimum age for the certificat d’etudes—began the proper lycée that continued up to the first grade. Finally, an essential extra wrinkle—a terminal grade where students had to choose between mathematics (the sciences) or philosophy (humanities).

  Those two parallel streams closely mirrored social class, and transfers from one track to the other were rare, as intended—similar to ways of impeding social mobility in many other countries. This system was overhauled in 1936, when the prime minister was Léon Blum (1872–1950), a dandy who had become the moderate Socialist leader by default. He established two-week paid vacations for everyone, and his minister of education, Jean Zay, merged those parallel tracks. Zay became controversial and hated, and during the German occupation he was murdered. His intention was admirable—but breaking an old and stable arrangement is not a simple matter. The French educational system continues to be constantly “reformed.”

  In 1937, following a key part of my ambitious parents’ plan, I moved to an academic high school, a lycée. The nearest high school, Lycée Voltaire, had only recently been upgraded from a trade school and—according to the grapevine—had underqualified teachers. The next nearest, to the west, was Lycée Rollin, now called Lycée Decour to honor a teacher who became a Resistance hero and martyr during World War II.

  The education I received in two years at Rollin was bizarre but truly outstanding. In academics I was way ahead, reading and dreaming on my own, and not heavily school-bound. So the notorious rigidities of the system did not matter, and I benefitted immensely from another feature. Because university careers were very rare, the kinds of people who today would supervise Ph.D. dissertations were teaching eleven-year-olds. They lavished on me far more than any rightful share of their time, often under the thin excuse of asking me to let the class share my broader experiences. The low point concerned gym—of which I recall only a narrow courtyard where, weather permitting, we tried to learn the long jump.

  (Illustration Credit 3.1)

  Rollin soon revealed another virtue. Not only did it serve all of northeast Paris, but it was nearest to the northern and eastern railroad stations that serviced the leftist, working-class “Red Belt” suburbs without a local lycée. Many of my classmates had long commutes and levels of commitment matching mine.

  For a short metro ride, the ticket cost was not negligible. To walk was cheaper and healthier. The shortest path followed the boulevard de la Chapelle, along a neighborhood called the Goutte d’Or, somewhat east of the more widely known Pigalle and even older and lower on the scale of ancient and notorious red-light districts.

  Too young to be bothered by the ladies of the night (or the day), I could not help watching the scene from the boulevard—but avoided the menacing side streets. Bored after a while, I preferred to detour with my suburban friends to their rail stations, then continue through characterless streets.

  A Master Guide to French and Latin—and Paris

  The study of Latin began with dreadfully dull stuff: Cicero’s lawyer’s orations and Julius Caesar’s bone-dry report on his generalship—with no mention of the million Gauls he killed or enslaved. I did not start liking Latin until we moved on to the poets and the historian Tacitus. A belated benefit from my years of Latin is that they helped me correctly coin new words—like “fractal.”

  My sixth-grade teacher in charge of French and Latin was Monsieur Gilbert Rouger. Not only was he excellent, but he had edited a selection of poems by Gérard de Nerval (1808–55). M. Rouger was unforgettable for an ancillary reason: his true love was Paris. Every Sunday, he would walk through an old neighborhood, and after he had finished reacquainting himself with that neighborhood, he would start afresh. He invited the kids he taught to join him in his version of the popular book Promenades à Paris. M. Rouger’s erudition was phenomenal—far beyond anything found on maps or in guidebooks and classic literature. His lessons served me well, notably on three occasions.

  In the summer of 1945, the Allies having won in Europe, the United States decided to bring its troops home fast. A huge transportation backlog ensued, hence the need to provide the soldiers barracked near Paris with something to do. So I volunteered. As an i
nterpreter and guide, I would be paid and not only fed but allowed to “doggie-bag” enough for Father and Mother. In 1945 Paris, Spam tasted delicious. A forceful program manager tested my spoken English and credentials, took me on enthusiastically, and gave me a variety of assignments. On the monuments and their glorious hidden courtyards, I was a walking, talking encyclopedia. My first group provided a form of hazing: foulmouthed and war-hardened WACs broadened my colloquial English, but they were bored stiff by dirty old buildings and disappointed that I neither understood their jokes nor welcomed their advances. They soon dispersed to seek fun. After that, I was assigned the legal staff of the army’s headquarters—Ivy Leaguers already familiar with the guidebook stuff. They pressed me on fine points and became avid students by proxy of M. Rouger. They kept me busy even when I was trying to get loose and go home. Never a dull day.

  Years later, in the 1950s, when wooing Aliette, I loved to introduce her to those classic neighborhoods. My advance descriptions of what was about to be seen were intended to impress (I was unencumbered by map or guidebook) and were numbingly accurate—except on one occasion. Between my visits, an ancient palace I had announced as lying just around the next corner had inconveniently collapsed.

  More years later, in 1972, Aliette, our two boys, and I rented an apartment on the rue du Regard, in Paris. I was mystified by two buildings near that short street’s other end. The lessons of M. Rouger still fresh in my mind, I agonized about style. Was it before or after 1715? When Louis XIV was ancient or when his great-grandson Louis XV was a child? But of course every Parisian I knew owned a book answering these earthshaking queries. It turned out that, during a transition period between an old king and a child, not much was built. By chance I happened to hit examples that were in a then-remote neighborhood, viewed as minor, and from a rare period that M. Rouger had omitted.

  Dark Clouds

  Paris had reunited our family. Compared to Poland, this was a colossal improvement. But there was no reason to relax. November 11—the anniversary of the 1918 armistice—was celebrated in grand ceremony. We all went together to the Champs-Élysées to watch the traditional military parade. In orderliness and precision, the soldiers of France did not equal those of Poland—nor the goose-stepping soldiers of Germany. I still remember Father’s unease and foreboding.

  My parents were trained to hope and work for the best—but also to be ready to manage the worst. It soon became clear that war was coming. One day when Szolem was visiting, he mentioned that his physicist colleague at the Collège de France, Frédéric Joliot-Curie (1900–58), had revealed to his entourage that artificial radioactivity might make powerful bombs. We were sternly warned not to mention this to anybody. I complied, and this is the first time I bring up this episode.

  On another of Szolem’s visits, Father made a point of telling him in my presence that to survive and help his siblings, he had abandoned study and instead he became an apprentice. Must I follow the same path? Different trade schools were discussed, but Szolem did not know about them, so this discussion petered out. War broke out soon afterward.

  4

  Dirt-Poor Hills of Unoccupied Vichy France, 1939–43

  WORLD WAR II REMAINS in my mind like a whirlwind. Much of the rest of my life has been dominated by what I learned—or failed to learn—during those years.

  War broke out in September 1939, and from mid-1940 until 1942, northern and western France (including Paris) came under direct occupation. My parents, Léon, and I spent that time in the center and southeast—an officially unoccupied rump state in one of the poorest mountain regions of France that everybody called Vichy France.

  Until 1943, we lived there in the open—conspicuous but insignificant—in an austere little town of about fifteen thousand called Tulle. We were in the most literal sense saved by devoted friends of Szolem—descendents of hardscrabble farmers and teachers from a village school, who valiantly helped Lady Luck. We have stayed in touch with two of the families that helped us survive—the Eyrolles and the Roubinets, whom you will meet.

  Our constant fear was that a sufficiently determined foe might report us to an authority and we would be sent to our deaths. This happened to a close friend from Paris, Zina Morhange, a physician in a nearby county seat. Simply to eliminate the competition, another physician denounced her. (Miraculously, she came back; her daughter wrote a good book about the experience, Chamberet: Recollections from an Ordinary Childhood.)

  We escaped this fate. Who knows why? At one point, my perfect school grades presented a clerk at the prefecture with a conflict: endemic local ill will toward Parisians and other strangers versus meritocratic ideals that ran high. In that very poor region, dreams of the good life included passing tough state exams and moving away. That clerk, a classmate’s sister, played God. Xenophobia lost, meritocracy won, and she deliberately misplaced my family’s files.

  Luckily, we did not compete with the locals and did not seem like strangers. My parents’ systematic efforts at acculturation having worked, Léon and I sounded and looked almost native.

  Fearful but Intermittent Storms

  “Intermittence” is a word for the old quip that army service consists of endless boredom punctuated by scary, irregular, and unpredictable interruptions. During the occupation, France saw dreadful events. All too many people experienced near-continuous horrors. Vichy France was a mixed bag, and we were lucky. I recall that period as only “intermittently” stormy.

  Different arms of Vichy did not know what others were doing. One arm of the state deeply disapproved of and actively harmed unwelcome aliens like us. For example, it was illegal for my father to have any gainful occupation—and he had none. However, another arm of the same state viewed us as bona fide refugees from Paris. Being unable to go back home entitled us to public welfare: tables, bunks, and other household goods, possibly rent relief, and even a bit of money. Best of all, it included free medical service with seemingly no restriction—and the doctors in Tulle lavished house calls on our slum. Additional money must have come from relief organizations and cousins in America—who could ill afford it and deserve eternal gratitude.

  When I was nearing forty, my work became devoted to the phenomenon called intermittence, present in both nature and the financial markets.

  The Appalachia of France

  Raised mostly in cities (Warsaw and Paris), I had been much affected by the summer I spent in that little hamlet of Połoczanka at age ten—and far more by my four years in Tulle, the southern part of the province of Limousin, the egg-shaped department of the Corrèze.

  In addition to the constant help from friends, I survived thanks to tacit complicity of the Tullois, or Tullistes. Inhabitants of Tulle had the reputation of being unfriendly to foreigners—which included Parisians and most other French people. But after we broke down the wall of distrust, they became the most generous of hosts and helped us survive the war.

  In the Limousin dialect, the word corrèze corresponds to the standard French coureuse (runner) and denotes a mountain torrent. It also denotes a little town upriver from Tulle and a not-so-close railroad stop. Its inhabitants call Tulle a city of seven hills—not one less than Rome or Paris—but it is more accurately described as built on the bottom and the sides of a very long, winding, and deep hollow with several branches. Many streets go straight uphill, and not a few include endless and infamous staircases in stone or concrete. The benefit, according to legend, is that the girls of Tulle had nicer legs than the girls of the wealthier Brive-la-Gaillarde, in the wide plain downstream along the Corrèze River. Gaillarde means “prosperous, strong,” a contrast to Tulle’s nickname, Tulle-la-Paillarde—“the poor one who sleeps on straw.”

  The sober Church of Saint-Martin sits on the more or less flat piece of land where another torrent joins the Corrèze. Some parts date to the Romance period of the early Middle Ages, but construction took many centuries. The surrounding area is also called medieval, but most private houses are probably from the sevente
enth century.

  (Illustration Credit 4.1)

  In my time, a single main street switched at each meander of the river from one bank to the other. Proper locals called it Quai (where it follows the torrent), then Rue Nationale, and then Faubourg. City hall preferred other names—the one in honor of the wartime chief of state Marshal Pétain came and went—but the locals paid no attention. Since then, that main street was made one-way, and a second was dug from old paths along the surrounding hills.

  The Tulle train station, downstream from the church, was hemmed in by the torrent and hills. The Tortillard, the little train that joined Bordeaux to Clermont-Ferrand, went up the Corrèze as far as it could, then backtracked and meandered up a steep hill. The small, flat area next to the station was largely filled by an armory begun in the seventeenth century to make use of the ample waterpower. Now, of course, this armory—along with most of the local industrial jobs—is gone.

  We lived near the armory. In summer, the heat in the hollow made the swimmable stretch of the river very attractive, but it was a long haul upstream from the church, even after we scrounged beat-up bicycles.

  What Brought Us to Tulle?

  As often happened, the indirect agent of destiny was Szolem, whose first tenured professorship had been at the University of Clermont-Ferrand. The musical chairs game of university positions might have put him in more desirable locations—Normandy, Flanders, or Alsace—with incalculably negative consequences, since those rich provinces were occupied.

  In Clermont-Ferrand, Aunt Gladys and Szolem befriended a colleague, Lucie Eyrolle, called Eyrollette, who introduced them to her parents, Pierre and Louise, who worshiped hard work and the spirit of self-improvement.

  Near the Corrèze train station—the second stop northeast of Tulle—the Eyrolles found Szolem an inexpensive piece of land, mostly filled with rushes, and an underemployed architect. Proud to work for a university professor, he charged nothing for supervising the builder and adapted a simple box design; unimaginative, but for slum dwellers, sheer luxury. The locals called that house la maison du chavant—Limousin for “the house of the scientist.” A neighbor manufactured canned fruit and marmalade under a brand—Valade—that survives to this day. As a welcome gift, he brought them a big box with samples of his goods.