Life feels like a game of snakes and ladders for everyone right now: we were almost at the one hundredth square but we landed on the head of the huge snake that lurks at the top of the board and slithered all the way back down to the start. I don’t think I’ll ever want to play that game again if I have the choice.
The war is also a bit like a snakes and ladders board: sometimes the radio reports that the Germans and the Japanese have won battles and they shoot up a ladder towards victory; the Allies seem to be slipping down a lot of snakes, if the newsreaders are to be believed. At the moment, it feels as though everyone is struggling somewhere around the middle of the board and it’s not at all clear who is going to be the eventual winner.
Maman has got very thin. All her dresses seem too large for her these days and her hair is turning grey. I’ve always thought of her as being as strong as a stone fortress, but the constant buffeting of the waves of war are eating away at her, just as the ocean eventually wears away the strongest fortifications, like the ones I saw in Mogador.
Even Annette seems to have given up hope. She’s stopped curling her hair now that Olivier has gone, she just pins it back and mopes around the house. I’ve tried lending her books to read, but she can’t seem to concentrate for very long before it’s time to write another letter to Géraldine complaining about how tough life is. To try to cheer her up, I pointed out to her that if she thinks life in a nice townhouse in Casablanca is tough then she should try going back to France, where there are Nazis running the country and the people are starving, or living in a work camp in Germany or Poland from where, according to Miss Ellis, rumours of things even worse than starving to death have been coming through. As usual, Annette didn’t seem to appreciate my encouragement and she threw my copy of Murder on the Orient Express across the room at me so hard that it broke the binding. So now I’m going to have to explain that to Mademoiselle Dubois and there may be a fine to be paid. If so, I told Annette, she’ll have to cough up for it. That made her scream for Maman, yelling that I was being annoying again. So I’ve retreated upstairs to my room for some peace and quiet.
Papa has gone back to his old routine, standing in queues and spending time at secret meetings in the mellah.
It’s good seeing Nina and Felix again, at least that’s a silver lining to still being stuck in Casablanca. Felix is busier than ever with his deliveries, and not just of bread. He confided in me that, since America joined the war, there have been more notes than ever going back and forth between the port, the nouvelle ville and the mellah. The other news is that Miss Josephine Baker is still in poor health in the hospital here in Casablanca. According to Felix, in spite of the many operations she has to have, she’s in pretty good spirits and is visited often by officials from the American consulate and also Moroccan leaders. I said they must be very worried about her being so unwell, but he shook his head and said that wasn’t the only reason such important people gathered there. When I asked him what he meant he got all puffed up with importance again and said he couldn’t tell me, but that there were plans afoot. He can be quite pompous sometimes. And he shouldn’t try to keep secrets and then drop hints about them because I can deduce exactly what’s going on, although I didn’t tell him that because then he would clam up and not say anything.
I’m glad that Papa is still helping the people who are trying to fight back against the Germans in any way they can. A few times he’s asked me to pass messages on to Miss Ellis when he has to go out for a meeting or to stand in another queue, which shows how much he trusts me – otherwise he’d wait and do it himself. He also still takes me with him to the café quite regularly, although there’s rarely any Coca-Cola these days and things like ice cream are very scarce and very expensive. Once, to my utter dismay, it was Monsieur Guigner who turned up again at our table. He didn’t even pretend to ask Papa the time or to borrow his newspaper, just sat himself down and waved to the waiter to bring him a p’tit noir, grinning all the while and showing those yellow teeth. He made no mention of the money Papa had loaned him and gave no sign whatsoever that he meant to repay it. After he’d downed his coffee, he slipped a piece of paper across to Papa and then waited, expectantly, his hand resting, palm up, on the table. Very slowly, Papa reached into his pocket and handed over a rolled-up wad of notes. I hated seeing what passed between them so much, not just the money but also my papa’s humiliation and Monsieur Guigner’s smug glee. After that, the vulture got up and left. Papa even had to pay the bill for his coffee as well.