chapter eight

THAT winter I am granted the right to leave the Complex with Gloria. Until now it was out of the question. When grown-ups have work outside, the youngest have to stay protected inside. It’s the rule. But I cry so hard that Gloria finally gives in.

It’s not even daybreak and hail is falling. We dress, layering our clothes on top of us to brave the cold. Emil and Baksa watch me go, feeling jealous, which makes me proud.

We cross streets where drafts whistle, and we go through some dark and muddy lots. We walk along the walls of a factory, behind which chimneys appear. I hold tight to Gloria’s hand. This part of the city seems sad and oppressive. The few passersby we meet walk fast, their heads down.

Finally we reach a place with crisscrossing railroad tracks, and Gloria explains to me that we are going to take the streetcar.

When we board, she pushes me to the rear and follows me, out of breath. Her weight hampers her; I snuggle against her reassuring roundness. We’re compressed in the middle of a wet crowd; unfamiliar faces, tired and mute, shake around us in rhythm with the chaos. I think of the train I was on with my mother when it derailed.

Gloria and I get off at the end of the line, in a neighborhood totally different from ours, with large boulevards, stores, sidewalk vendors, and advertising posters on top of buildings. I look around as Gloria drags me at a quick pace toward the entrance of the largest store. I manage to read the sign: Kopeckochka.

“Is this where you work?” I ask.

Gloria smiles at me. “Here and there,” she says.

Working at Kopeckochka means sitting in the entryway, close to the sliding door, and putting your hand out toward the customers who go in and out with their shopping bags. Hot and cold air alternate with the opening and closing of the door. I cling to Gloria and try to guess which person will stop to give us a coin. Most people go by without seeing us, as if we didn’t exist. Sometimes a purse opens and someone bends down.

“Thank you,” Gloria says. “God bless you.”

I look at her, perplexed. Usually when Gloria talks about God, it’s to swear or to say that he doesn’t exist. If he did, she says, he would have brought order to the Caucasus a long time ago. So is Gloria lying? I wonder.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk! I never lie, Monsieur Blaise. I may embellish things a little from time to time, that’s all.” She strokes my hair. “There’s nothing wrong with making up stories to make life more bearable.”

The door opens and closes. People go in and out. After a while I doze off on Gloria’s knees. I don’t feel the heat or the cold anymore. I just recognize Gloria’s familiar scent of tea and laundry, a scent that I would recognize anywhere.

Gloria shakes me awake when the day draws to a close. I stretch and rub my eyes. I don’t remember where I am. Gloria shows me the coins she collected.

“Come,” she says. “It’s our turn to shop.”

We search between the shelves of Kopeckochka. Flour, tea, sugar, dark rice. When we’re done, all the coins we earned during the day disappear into the store cash register, except for one.

“Here, Monsieur Blaise,” Gloria whispers. “This one’s for you.”

As we leave Kopeckochka, I notice that other people are sitting in the entryway, extending their hands in the draft. I come near a man who looks like Abdelmalik. He’s shivering and has a dog on a leash. I give him my coin.

Before we take the streetcar back, Gloria promises me a surprise. We drag our bags along small streets that run parallel to the boulevard. The wind freezes my fingers and splits my lips. Like wreaths of smoke, food smells escape from basement windows and excite our nostrils. I am so hungry that I feel dizzy.

Gloria points to a large metal bin that sits against a wall at the back of a Turkish restaurant.

“I’m too fat to climb, but you can take a look, Koumaïl,” she says.

I put my bag on the ground and jump up to grab the edge of the bin.

“Look on top!” Gloria advises me. “Take your pick!”

I can’t believe what I see in the bin! I jump down with a large piece of meat—flank steak, I think—and pastries dripping with honey, which we put in a cardboard box that we happen to find.

“They’re crazy to throw all this away!” I say, my mouth watering.

Gloria winks at me. “The cook in the restaurant is a friend of mine,” she tells me. “We have a deal. You don’t believe I’d just let you dig through any old garbage!”

In the evening I ask Emil and Baksa to meet me in the staircase. We smear our faces with honey without saying a word. It’s total bliss.

Emil sighs. “Next time ask your friend to leave you some loukoums,” he says. “I love loukoums.”

I promise him that I will, and for a while we dream about incredible desserts overflowing with cream and stuffed with chocolate. It’s one of the best moments of my life, to be seated in the staircase, my fingers all sticky, and my friends smiling from ear to ear; a moment when we forget about the war and the worries that come with it.

That night, as I sleep like a sated bear, Gloria pulls me out of the blankets.

Her face is deathly pale. In the courtyard someone is ringing the bell like crazy.