Revolution Baby Read Online Free PDF Page B

other families and a lot of children running all over the place. They were all speaking this language I couldn’t understand. In spite of my situation, I really wanted to run and play with them. I looked at a little boy who was just behind us in the line and I made my ugliest face at him. Instead of laughing or of making an even more hideous face at me, he burst into tears and hid behind his mother’s skirt. French kids were very disappointing.
    Now it was our turn to go into the big metal box known as an elevator. The doors closed. And up we went! All the kids had their noses glued to the window and watched as the ground slipped farther and farther away, and the people below us got smaller and smaller. The elevator stopped on the first floor. Tobcia and Lena asked if I wanted to get out there. Out of the question, I wanted to get to the top as quickly as we could. On the second floor, we had to leave the elevator to take another one . . . which was under repair. Lena informed me in a sorrowful tone that we couldn’t go any higher, but if we liked, we could come back another day, once the second elevator was repaired. She’s a funny one! I noticed some other kids going with their parents up some stairs to the third floor, so I rushed off toward the stairway and started to squeeze past the people who were already on the stairs so that Lena couldn’t catch me.
    And then there I was, all the way at the top! I looked down below me: the people were tiny! Little ants! No, maybe not quite . . . mice? I had to find precise words for my descriptions, to be able to tell my friends everything once I got back to Warsaw. Warsaw . . . I absolutely had to make the most of these few minutes of freedom to find a way to get home.
    When Lena and Tobcia, who had decided to follow me up the stairs, eventually arrived, I already had my plan. I asked for some coins so I could play this little game in a machine that consisted of trying to pick up objects or candy by manipulating a little crane. If you managed to catch something, it was yours. Lena agreed. It was a very hard game, but I was determined: my life depended on it. On the fourth try, I fished out a red cigarette lighter. Perfect!
    Back at the house, after asking Tobcia for some paper and string, I shut myself in the room that I shared with my “cousin” Maggie. Maggie tried to steal the lighter from me, insisted on drawing on my sheet of paper, and generally got on my nerves. I gave her a little pinch on the shoulder and she left the room, howling. Good riddance. It took me a long time but I managed to make a package that looked very classy. As I hardly knew how to write, I resigned myself to asking Lena to help me with the letter to go with my package. I had to be very subtle so I wouldn’t arouse her suspicions. I thought for a long time, and started the message over in my head a hundred times. This was what I came up with that seemed closest to perfection, and finally I dictated it to Lena, acting nonchalant:
    Â 
    â€œDear Papa,
    â€œI’m in Paris now with Lena and her sister Tobcia. We have just visited the Eiffel Tower. I have a little present for you that I fished on the third floor of the tower. It’s so you can light your pipe. I think we’re going to be staying here for a long time. I really want to see you and Mama again soon.
    Julek.”
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    I didn’t write “Aunt Lena,” although normally that’s what I called her. There was also the indication of where we were (with Tobcia) and the penultimate, and very important, sentence in the letter, which should make Hugo understand that something abnormal was going on.
    Lena wrote the letter. I put it in the envelope, and she sealed it.
    â€œYou have to put the address on the envelope.”
    â€œOf course, darling.”
    â€œAnd will you mail my present soon? I’d like him to get it before his birthday.”
    â€œYes, of course. I have