Bérénice 1934-44
An Actress in Occupied Paris
Summary
Bérénice yearns to become an actress, but her parents insist that career is not proper for a girl. She defies her Jewish family to become the leading younger actress in the Comédie-Française, France’s most renowned theater, right when the Nazis occupy France. Bérénice hides her true identity and last name to avoid detection. Living in a world without tolerance and torn between two lovers, Bérénice must choose between her passion for the stage, and her allegiance to freedom and to her Jewish heritage.
<p>Critical Praise for the Original French Edition:
"This is an amazing first novel.”—Le Nouvel Observateur
“Isabelle Stibbe blends real history and fictitious characters in this well-researched first novel, with an impeccable classic style.”—Le Monde
“Her novel doesn’t just document a slice of French cultural life under the Occupation—it also communicates the passion and fervor of its author.”—Livres Hebdo
“Bérénice 1934-44 is Isabelle Stibbe’s first novel, but it feels to the reader like the work of a seasoned writer, particularly in her masterful blending of fiction and historical fact.”—Le Figaro</p>
Excerpt
Table Of Contents
- Cover
- Title
- Copyright
- About the author(s)/editor(s)
- About the book
- This eBook can be cited
- Part One
- · 1 ·
- · 2 ·
- · 3 ·
- · 4 ·
- · 5 ·
- · 6 ·
- · 7 ·
- · 8 ·
- · 9 ·
- · 10 ·
- · 11 ·
- · 12 ·
- · 13 ·
- · 14 ·
- · 15 ·
- · 16 ·
- · 17 ·
- · 18 ·
- · 19 ·
- · 20 ·
- Part Two
- · 1 ·
- · 2 ·
- · 3 ·
- · 4 ·
- · 5 ·
- · 6 ·
- · 7 ·
- · 8 ·
- · 9 ·
- · 10 ·
- · 11 ·
- · 12 ·
- · 13 ·
- · 14 ·
- · 15 ·
- · 16 ·
- Part Three
- · 1 ·
- · 2 ·
- · 3 ·
- · 4 ·
- · 5 ·
- · 6 ·
- · 7 ·
- · 8 ·
- · 9 ·
- · 10 ·
- · 11 ·
- · 12 ·
- · 13 ·
- · 14 ·
- Epilogue
- About the Author
- About the Translators
· 1 ·
She won’t tell about the knowing glances, the conspiratorial smiles. “Oh, there’s no such thing as chance,” “It was inevitable”—she overheard those trite phrases hundreds of times. They were the origin of the family legend that her calling for the theater, which caught hold of her at the age of six and never let go, was because of her first name: Bérénice—like the play by Racine. Only one person had a point of view that differed from this belief, through conviction, derision, or more likely because she just had a mind of her own. “It’s a good thing you didn’t name her Sappho, or she would’ve become a lesbian,” joked her Grandmother Mathilde, who was educated and had a sharp tongue, occasionally adding this variation: “You think if you’d named her Isabelle she would’ve become a Catholic?” This allusion to Isabelle the Catholic, that cursèd queen who expelled the Jews from Spain, was guaranteed to toss lightning bolts into this group—Catholic being, in the hierarchy of the Capel family’s values, almost more reprehensible than lesbian. But it was neither Sappho nor Isabelle, it was Bérénice, Gott zei dank—thank God—well, almost.
She won’t tell her grandchildren or even her children that she entered the world on the 28th of June in the year of grace 1919, even more grace given that it was the year, not to mention the actual day, of the Treaty of Versailles. During the early twentieth century, France was trying to convince itself that the League of Nations, just created, would bring peace to the world. “It was ← 3 | 4 → rough, but this was the war to end all wars, we’ve suffered enough, it’s over, Europe will be at peace,” or so said her father, and how many thousands like him, all in unison.
On that Saturday, June 28, 1919, five years to the day after the assassination of Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, France was hanging on every bit of news, experiencing through the newspapers or radio waves the arrival of the plenipotentiaries in the Hall of Mirrors, the whole country pregnant with expectation to hear about the historic ceremony at Versailles, solemnly awaiting the signing of the treaty that would wash away the humiliation of France’s defeat in 1871. It wouldn’t bring back the dead, it wouldn’t erase the cold, the worms, the suffering, the hell, but still, “they” would pay dearly for it.
Although he had fought right from the beginning in 1914—and proudly served France, mind you, since what could be more honorable for a Jewish immigrant—and though he came back with two wounds, military honors, and the Croix de Guerre, Monsieur Capel had other things on his mind that day than the fate of the Boches: would his wife give birth to a boy or a girl? If it was a boy, they would name him Philippe, of course, like Marshal Pétain, the savior of Verdun. If it was a girl, they had also made up their minds—she would be named Bérénice. Certainly, like the heroine of the Racine play, yes, ladies and gentlemen! He hadn’t read an awful lot, Monsieur Capel, but during the war, he became buddies with an elementary school teacher. A great guy, a young man who had read mountains of books and knew entire poems by heart. Hugo, Baudelaire, Verlaine—especially Verlaine. A long time ago, in the cheder in Russia, Monsieur Capel had a chaver like that who could recite the Torah by heart. You would give him the number of a chapter or a verse, and voilà! he would rattle off the passage without ever making a mistake. Even the rabbi, he was impressed. The “teach,” he was a goy and an atheist (maybe even a freemason—which goes to show, that can happen even in the best families), so he exercised his talents on French literature—which, come to think of it, is an even more remarkable feat than the Bible. Not only that, he was easygoing, not in the least pretentious, didn’t object to mess duty, a real pal, know what I mean? Louis was his name, a good French name, a king’s name.
In the stultifying trenches, to pass the time, to escape the fatigue, the heebie-jeebies, the hunger, they would tell each other their life stories. Those two got along well, even if, on the surface, it looked like they didn’t have much in common, one from a French family that could trace its roots way back, the other Jewish, exiled from his native Russia for not serving the czar whose army was notorious for its virulent anti-Semitism. That didn’t prevent Monsieur ← 4 | 5 → Capel from enlisting in the French army on the day war was declared: “Here, they let me be Jewish, they let me work to feed my wife, it’s my turn to make my contribution to France.”
As a rule, Louis was someone who liked to have fun, always ready to make a joke, to kid around or tell funny stories, but sometimes, when it was freezing or there was nothing to do, when the routines of military life dragged them down, when the confinement of the tunnels, the piles of sandbags became too oppressive, then he let slip in the presence of Monsieur Capel this phrase, so enigmatic: “The day will begin and the day will cease …” just those words, avoiding the ending, always with just a hint of a sad smile, tinged with irony, as if he himself was surprised by this jest from his own unconscious. Realizing that Monsieur Capel didn’t understand the allusion to Racine’s verse, Louis told him the story of the tragedy of Bérénice, of Titus’s passion for Bérénice, the promise of marriage that the emperor of Rome made to the queen of Palestine, and his renouncing it so as not to disobey the laws of Rome, and the sighs of Titus and the lamentation of Bérénice, and everything that makes Racine, Racine.
He also told him about the context of the play, how the former student of Port-Royal was actually talking about the love of Louis XIV for Marie Mancini, the niece of Mazarin, and the king’s giving her up for the good of the state, a renunciation that Alexandre Dumas echoed in The Vicomte de Bragelonne, romanticized of course, when he added to the lovers’ actual meeting, the figure of d’Artagnan and the musketeer’s contempt for the prince’s cowardice. French literature, thought Monsieur Capel, was definitely fascinating … Cross his heart and hope to die (as his friends would say), if he ever got out of this war alive, he would read all the books he would never have known about if not for that teacher. “The day will begin and the day will cease …” it really was hot stuff, it sounded so French … “And Titus will not see his Bérénice.” That concision of the French language: just one sentence could say everything. A shame that there weren’t more books in the barracks library. There were no plays there, so Monsieur Capel had to ask Louis to tell him the plot of Bérénice again and again, like children who beg for a bedtime story, always the same one, and the adults aren’t allowed to change even a comma.
In the end, without realizing it, “Bérénice” became their code word for peace, the dream of a return home, a return to a normal life, the caress of the quotidian, when they could once more fold their wives in their arms, practice their professions again, one would find his students again, those raggedy little rascals, with their gray smocks, their pranks and their ink stains, the other ← 5 | 6 → his furs and his customers, those bourgeois women bedecked with their pearl necklaces, their haughty air, their minks, their demands.
And then … Monsieur Capel congratulated himself silently, Bérénice, hahaha, she was the queen of Palestine. Not that Monsieur Capel had ever thought of living there like those meshuganahs who wanted to rebuild a homeland there and bring back to life a dead language, oy a broch! He wasn’t crazy, oh no, but still, the land of milk and honey, “next year in Jerusalem,” repeated each year at the end of the Passover seder, that meant something, so he loved that Racine for making a Jew the heroine of his play. But he couldn’t say that to his pal Louis, he wanted to show him that he was assimilated, that he was French before he was Jewish. But it was his little secret, and it made him happy.
Yes, no doubt about it, Bérénice was the most beautiful name in the world for his little daughter. It would have made his teacher friend happy, his friend who died in the trenches in 1918, just a few days before the war ended. Poor guy! He was only twenty-five and left a widow, a sweet girl whose photo he had showed him. Twenty-five, what a shame. The best always go first. Louis won’t ever see again the kids in his school, the little brats—so endearing, Monsieur Capel felt as if he already knew them, the teacher had told him so much about them. Camille, the little carrot-top whose papers were flooded with spelling mistakes but was so clever and good as gold; Charles, that big oaf who had grown too quickly and whose pants, never long enough, ended up looking like shorts; Léon, who showed off because his father had lots of dough and owned a convertible; cross-eyed Victor … Louis would never know what would become of those little guys once they grew up. Fucking war!
Details
- Pages
- VI, 234
- Publication Year
- 2019
- ISBN (Softcover)
- 9781433167058
- ISBN (PDF)
- 9781433167072
- ISBN (ePUB)
- 9781433167089
- ISBN (MOBI)
- 9781433167096
- DOI
- 10.3726/b15850
- Language
- English
- Publication date
- 2019 (July)
- Published
- New York, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Oxford, Wien, 2019. VI, 234 pp.
- Product Safety
- Peter Lang Group AG
