Charlotte. David Foenkinos
Years later, she will finally learn the truth.
In an atmosphere of general chaos.
For now, she comforts her father.
It’s all right, she says.
Mama told me about this.
She has become an angel.
She always said how wonderful it is in heaven.
Albert does not know how to respond.
He wants to believe this too.
But he knows the truth.
His wife has left him.
Alone, with their daughter.
Everywhere he goes, memories haunt him.
In every room, through every object, she is there.
The air in the apartment is the same air she breathed.
He wants to rearrange the furniture, smash it all up.
Or, better still, move to a new house.
But when he speaks to Charlotte about this, she refuses.
Her mother promised to send her a letter.
Once she is up in heaven.
So they have to stay here.
Otherwise mama won’t be able to find us, says the little girl.
Each evening, she waits for hours.
Sitting on the window ledge.
The horizon is dark, gloomy.
Perhaps that is why her mother’s letter has not found its way here.
Days pass, without any news.
Charlotte wants to go to the cemetery.
She knows every inch of it.
She walks up to her mother’s gravestone.
Don’t forget your promise: you have to tell me everything.
But still nothing.
Nothing.
This silence, she can’t stand it anymore.
Her father tries to reason with her.
The dead cannot write to the living.
And it’s better that way.
Your mother is happy, up there.
There are lots of pianos hidden in the clouds.
What he says doesn’t make much sense.
His thoughts get tangled up.
Finally, Charlotte understands there will be no letter.
She is terribly angry with her mother.
2
Now, it is time to learn solitude.
Charlotte does not share his feelings.
Her father hides in his work, buries himself in it.
Every evening, he sits at his desk.
Charlotte watches him, stooped over his books.
Piles of books, high as towers.
Mad-eyed, he mumbles all sorts of formulas.
Nothing can block his progress on the path to knowledge.
Nor on the path to renown.
He has just been given a professorship at the medical faculty in Berlin.
It is a consecration, a dream.
Charlotte does not seem very happy about it.
In truth, it has become difficult for her to express any emotion.
At the Fürstin-Bismarck school, people whisper as she passes.
They must be kind to her, her mama is dead.
Her mama is dead, her mama is dead, her mama is dead.
Thankfully, the building is comforting, with its wide stairways.
A place where pain is soothed.
Charlotte is happy to go there every day.
I took the same walk myself.
Many times, following in her footsteps.
There and back, in search of Charlotte as a child.
One day, I went inside the school.
Girls were running through the lobby.
I thought that Charlotte could still be among them.
At the front office, I was welcomed by the academic counselor.
A very affable woman named Gerlinde.
I explained to her the reason I was there.
She did not seem surprised.
Charlotte Salomon, she repeated to herself.
We know who she is, of course.
. . .
So began a long visit.
Meticulous, because every detail matters.
Gerlinde talked up the virtues of the school.
Observing my reactions, my emotions.
But the most important was yet to come.
She suggested I go to see the biology equipment.
Why?
Because none of it has changed.
It is like diving into the last century.
Diving into Charlotte’s world.
We walked through a dark, dusty corridor.
And came to an attic full of stuffed animals.
And insects spending eternity inside a jar.
A skeleton caught my eye.
Death, the ceaseless refrain of my quest.
Charlotte must have studied it, Gerlinde announced.
I was there, almost a century after my heroine.
Analyzing, in my turn, the form of a human body.
At the end, we visited the beautiful auditorium.
A group of girls was posing for the class photo.
Encouraged by the photographer, they were goofing around.
A successful attempt to immortalize the joy of living.
I thought of Charlotte’s class photo, which I had seen before.
It was not taken in this room, but in the schoolyard outside.
It is a deeply disturbing picture.
All the girls stare into the lens.
All of them, but one.
Charlotte’s eyes are turned in a different direction.
What is she looking at?
3
Charlotte lives with her grandparents for a while.
She stays in her mother’s childhood bedroom.
This confuses the grandmother.
She gets her eras mixed up.
A child with the face of her first daughter.
A child with the same name as her second.
In the night, fearful, she gets up several times.
She has to check that little Charlotte is sleeping peacefully.
The