A bag of balls

The Bombbor publishing house represents the novel by the French writer Joseph Jofffo “Sagge with balls”.

1941. Paris is occupied by the Germans. 10-year-old Joseph and 12-year-old Maurice play with marble balls. They do not know that that evening they will have to independently run across the country to his older brothers - in a zone free from the German occupation. On the way, they will have to show ingenuity more than once to avoid meeting with the SS. And more than once, good people will come across the way, who will help to get out of dangerous situations.

The name "bag with balls" symbolizes a carefree childhood, with which the brothers have to say goodbye. The reality of the war and the constant threat of life make it grow very quickly. Fortunately, while Joseph and Maurice together, even in such circumstances, happiness is always somewhere nearby: in the cinema of Marseille, on the beach of Menton, in the sun bunnies on the roofs of Nice. Even in a crowded train, where an unfamiliar old woman suddenly treats with lemonade.

Geofffo managed to tell his story so that, reading, in many places I wanted to smile. During wandering, he and his brother are old in a way will quarrel and mutate each other as if nothing had happened. They learn to spin, make friendship with Italian soldiers, and discover new cities for themselves. And they also fall into the clutches of the Nazis and miraculously avoid the ill -fated death train. Needless to say, the story would not be perceived so easily, if she had a more tragic end: almost all members of the Joff family managed to escape.

The autobiographical novel first published in France in 1973. Since then, the book has been translated into 18 languages, and it parted around the world with millions of circulations. Two films were shot on it - in 1975 and 2016. Joseph Joffin criticized the first a lot, personally participated in the creation of the second, advising the director and actors, and was very pleased with the result.

A lot has been said and written about the Holocaust, but Geoffo offers a truly unique look at the darkest head of the history of the twentieth century. This is the look of a child who is forced to run and hide. But this bright look, giving hope. A young look that will remind: the brave live forever.

We offer to read a fragment of the book.

“It's your turn, Jo.”

I go with my jacket in my hands. Eight in the morning, the street is still completely dark. Mom sits at a table with a black thread and a thimble on his finger. Her hands tremble, she smiles at her lips. I turn my head. Maurice sits motionless. He brings his palm with a yellow star sewn in large stitches to the left lapel:

JEW

He looks at me.

- Do not worry, and they will give you the medal.

Naturally, they will give me, and they will give the whole quarter. This morning, when people go outside, they will see that spring suddenly began in the middle of winter and everything bloomed: everyone will be with his huge primrose in the buttonhole.

With this thing on our chests, we have little to do outside the house: it is no longer possible in the cinema, it is impossible to train, or maybe it will soon be impossible to play balls and go to school?

It would not be such a bad racial law.

Mom pulls the thread, bites it at the matter itself, and now, now I have my own stigma. With her fingers, mom slightly lends the star, as the dressmakers do in large fashion houses when they end some complex seam.

When I pull the jacket, dad enters. It will freshly bell, it smells of soap and alcohol. He looks at the stars, then at his mother.

“So-so,” he says, “so ...

I take a portfolio and kiss my mother. Dad stops me.

“You know what you need to do now?”

- No.

- To become the best at school. You understand why?

“Yes,” says Maurice, “in spite of Hitler.”

Dad laughs.

- You can say so.

It's cold outside, our boots with wooden soles knock on the pavement. I don’t know why I wanted to turn around and look at our windows - they were right above the hairdresser. Mom and dad looked after us. They handed over in the past few months.

Maurice goes ahead, breathing deeply to see the steam falls from his mouth. I hear the balls ring in his pockets.

“Do you think we wear them for a long time?”

He stops to look into my face.

- I have no idea. Do you care?

I shrug.

- Well, here. This thing weighs nothing and does not bother to rush, so ...

Maurice grinks.

“So, since you don’t care what are you hiding it under a scarf?”

This type always sees everything.

- I do not hide anything. This wind knocked me a scarf.

Maurice chuckles.

-Yes, yes, friend, it is.

There are less than two hundred meters left to school, I see a lattice and a yard with chestnuts, black at this time of the year. However, the chestnuts in the courtyard of the school on Ferdinan-Flocon Street always seemed black to me. Maybe constrained by iron grates and concrete coating, they have died a long time ago? Trees should not live like that.

- Hey ... Joffo!

It shouts Zerati. We are friends from the preparatory class, how many pants we sat on a couple on these damn school benches.

He runs to catch up with me, and only a red nose is visible in the slot of his woolen helmet. Zerati has a mittens in the arms, and he is wrapped in a cloak, which I see on it every winter.

- Hello.

- Hello.

He looks at me, holds his eyes on my chest and rounds his eyes. I'm swallowing. When you are not enough, silence seems very long.

“That's the devil,” he mutters, “it is lucky for some, it looks amazing.”

Maurice jumps with laughter, and I, too, covers me with a feeling of incredible relief. The three of us entering the yard of the school.

Zerati cannot come to his senses.

- Just think, it's like to wear an order. You are lucky.

I want to tell him that I did not deserve this order in anything, but his reaction reassures me, deep down I agree with him - the star looks like a large medal, she does not shine, but she can clearly be seen.

In the covered gallery of the courtyard, the guys stand in groups or rush, maneuvering between the pillars supporting the roof.

- Boys, did you see Jofffo?

Zerati had no evil intent, on the contrary, he wanted to show me to the comrades, to boast of me a little, as if I had done some kind of feat, and he wanted everyone to know about it.

A circle forms around me.

Craber grins, in the light of the lantern I see his face well.

-You are not the only one here, some came in high school with the same thing.

Exclamations are heard behind him. Two new faces come out of the shadow, and they do not smile.

- So you are a Jew?

It is difficult to answer “no” when it is written on the lapel of your jacket.

-This is because of the Jews there is a war.

It seems that I have already heard something like that recently ...

Zerati is in amazement. He is completely puny, and when we measure with muscles, he is always in the last place: no matter how much he strains his biceps, they almost never see them under his skin. So, despite this, he turns to a high school student.

“Are you just that?” Is this Jo to blame that the war is coming?

- Of course. They all need to be thrown out, these Jews.

Whispering.

But what happened? I was an ordinary boy, played balls, handed out cuffs, rushed along with everyone, played, taught lessons, my dad and brothers worked in a hairdresser, my mother led the household, on Sundays, dad took us to Lonshan to stroke on horses and ventilate, on weekdays I sat behind my desk - that’s my whole life. And suddenly a piece of fabric was fed on me and I became a Jew.

Jew. What does this mean, tell me, please? What kind of "Jew" is this? Anger rises in me, multiplied by anger from a misunderstanding of what is happening.

The circle is compressed.

- I saw what kind of weeded he has?

I remembered a huge color poster hanging above the shoe shop on Markade Street, right on the corner.

It depicted a spider crawling along the globe, a huge furry spider with a human head and with a disgusting face instead of a face: eyes-shifts, protruding ears, fleshy lips and terrifying sizes, bent like a blade of saber. Downstairs was written something like: "A Jew who wants to take possession of the world." Maurice and I often passed by, but the monster from the poster did not take us a drop: what would he have to do with us? We were not spiders and, thank God, did not possess similar physiognomies. I was blond, blue -eyed and with the same exactly my nose as everyone in the world. Therefore, there could be no talk about the fact that this “Jew” is me.

And unexpectedly, this idiot is melting to me that I have a nose like a poster! And only because I have a star on my jacket.

- What is wrong with my nose? Is he not the same as yesterday?

To this, Kertin-Average did not find what to say. He was still looking for words when the bell rang.

Before lining up, I saw Maurice on the other end of the courtyard, there were a dozen guys around him. There was a skirmish. When he got in a row, his appearance was gloomy. I felt that if it weren’t for the call, the fights were not to pass.

Pulling a little time, which was usually not behind me, I got up at the very end of the line. We followed two people in a row in front of the old man Bulleta, and I found myself in my place next to Zerati.

The first lesson was geography. I have not called me to the board for a long time, and I sensed that the teacher would almost certainly ask me. He looked around us, as he did every morning, but his gaze did not linger on me; In the end, Rafar went to the board for his deuce. This made a bad impression on me: what if I did not mean anything, was no longer the same student as everyone else? A few more hours ago I would rejoice at such a turn, but now I was not laughing.

Why did they all take off on me? They either tried to hang me, or did not notice me.

- Take the notebooks. Put the date on the fields. Subbalization: "The furrow of the rones."

I did like everyone else, but that which did not call me did not give me rest. It was necessary to understand this, it was necessary to find out whether I still exist or became an empty place.

Old Boule had a mania: silence in the class. He wanted to hear a fly flying away, and if someone began to chat, dropped a feather or something else, he immediately instructed his index finger on the guilty and brought down a sentence, like a guillotine knife: “You go to a corner at a break and fill thirty lines in a notebook with an expression“ reducing less noise ”-you will have a future, the future and the future and the future and the future and the future, the past time ".

I put my headboard on the edge of the desk. It was a real neckboard, which in those days was a rarity - almost all of my classmates had something like rectangles made of black cardboard, which were afraid of moisture and which were difficult to write about. And mine was a real, with a wooden frame and a hole in which a sponge rope was found.

I slightly pushed it with the tip of my finger. Swaying a little, she collapsed to the floor. Babah.

The teacher who wrote on the board turned around. He looked at my board lying on the floor, and then at me. All eyes in the class were chained to us. Not so often the student suggests itself for punishment. This probably never happened at all, but this morning I would give dearly for the teacher to poke a finger at me and said: "You stay after class." This would be evidence that nothing has changed, that I was still an ordinary schoolboy who can be praised, punished, called to the board.

Monsieur Boule looked at me, and then his gaze became detached, as if all his thoughts suddenly evaporated together. He slowly took a large ruler from his table and poked it into a map of France hanging on the wall.

Drawing a line from Lyon to Avignon, he said:

- The furrow of the rones separates the ancient mountain massifs from the younger mountains of the central massif ...

The lesson began, and I realized that the school was over for me.

I mechanically wrote the presentation, and then a call was heard. Zerati poked me with his elbow.

- Let's go soon.

I went out into the yard, and at the same moment a whirlwind spun around me.

- Jew! Jew! Jew!

They danced around, as in a round dance. One of the guys pushed me in the back, and I ran into someone’s chest, another push-and I was thrown back; Somehow holding on my feet, I rushed forward to break through the ring. I succeeded, and I saw Maurice, who fought back twenty meters from me. Screams rang out again, and a new blow fell upon me.

- Jew! Jew! Jew!

I threw a fist forward and received a strong blow to the hip.

There was a feeling that the whole school was piled on me and I would suffocate now.

There was a crack of my tearing shape, and I received a powerful blow to my ear.

The end of this laid the whistle of the caretaker. Through the fog, I saw him approaching.

- What is happening here? Well, diverged, lively!

Feeling how my ear swells, I looked for Maurice's eyes. A handkerchief was tightly tied on his knee. The spots were brown, the blood had already dried up. We did not have time to spread a few words, we had to go to class.

I sat in my place. Right in front of me, above the black board, I saw a portrait of Marshal Peten1. Beautiful, full of dignity of a person in General Kepy. Below were the words: “I am fulfilling my promises, even if they are given to others” and a stroke.

I was thinking about whom he could promise that I would have to wear a yellow star. Why is all this going? What will happen next? And why do they want to get me away here?

Most of all at that morning I remembered not cuffs and not the indifference of adults, but the fact that I could not comprehend the meaning of what was happening. My skin was the same color as others, my face did not stand out.

I heard that there were different religions in the world, and at school they said that people were persecuted before, but I had no religion.

On Thursdays, I even walked with the boys from our quarter for extracurricular activities at the Catholic Church, in the backyard of which we played basketball. I really liked it there, we were given bread and chocolate, the same chocolate from the times of the occupation, which had a white, slightly viscous sweet filling inside. And sometimes the abbot even added a dried banana or apple to this treat ... Mom was calm when we were there, she liked it much more than our staggering in the streets and in the flea market at Port Saint-Uan, or, worse, looting in the ruins of demolished houses, where we dragged the boards to build ourselves a hut or wooden swords. So how did I differ from others?

Half of the twelfth. The ear still hurts. I dress and go out into the street. It is cold, Maurice is waiting for me. His taned knee no longer blood. We do not exchange a single word, there is no need. Together we go up the street.

- Jo!

Someone runs after me.

This is Zerati.

He was a little out of breath. He has a canvas bag in his hand, tied with a lace. He holds it out to me.

- Let's change.

He eloquently points a finger at the lapel of my jacket.

- On your star.

Maurice is silent, he waits for what will happen next, tapping one wooden sole about another. I decide without hesitation.

- OK.

The star is sewn in rough stitches, the thread is not very durable. I put my finger, then two and jerking it off.

- On.

Zerati's eyes shine.

My star. In exchange for a bag with balls.

This was my first deal.

1. Henri Philip Peten, a French military and politician, the hero of the First World War, became famous in the battle of Verden. During the occupation of France, German troops, already at a very advanced age, headed the collaborationist government.