Trafika Europe 12 - French Bon-Bons

Louis Armand

‘Don’t interrogate me, young man.’ She looked at me sternly and wiped her hand on her skirt. ‘Of course, you’re curious. Young people are always curious. I was young myself, once.’ Her face softened somewhat. She signalled that we should leave and I held her arm as we walked back down the stairs to the courtyard. ‘It was Alžbětka,’ she said, ‘who arranged for me to come to the city, you know. My father died. We weren’t so well off, so when she offered to take me on… By the time I arrived, they were already living here with Miss N____, who was the eldest of the three, much more worldly than Bětuška, and even Tomáš. She was hand- some, in that vaguely masculine way which was fash- ionable then. Whenever they went out, people would pay her compliments. Her grandfather was supposed to’ve been an aristocrat, who collected wind‐up dolls, he had an entire château filled with them supposed- ly. But when the Reichsprotektor was killed, things changed. Well, as you know, after the War they all em- igrated. They left me here, in fact. Of course, I would have chosen to stay in any case. I had my reasons. But what an awful time! For everyone, I mean. It was like going through the War all over again—the first years especially were the hardest—and then when the purg- es began, ach ! Sometimes I’d receive postcards, from different places here and there in the Ostmark, always in Alzinka’s handwriting, but never a return address. They were afraid, you know, for my sake. I always wrote

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