buChildren of the Fatherland

PART ONE

Céleste: Poverty/b/u

My name is Céleste.

I grew up in the France of the late 18th century, the last days of King Louis the Sixteenth, born the youngest daughter of Léonard and Giselle Delabreuille. My mother and father were no wealthy people. We were not among the poorest, as long as we had a roof to protect us against the often bad weather, but even in the rich, prosperous city of Paris, the problems, even to survive, grew greater and greater. Giselle, my mother died soon after childbirth in the cold, icy winter of 1775, when I and my sister Josephine- my twin- were mere children. She died two weeks after giving birth to my youngest brother Bertrand. Killed by a simple cold. We watched her die- though I, of course, hardly realized it- and even my father could not do anything about it. We could not pay a doctor and, after all, what doctor would ever care about us? Doctors were there to serve the rich, and we were the poor. So we died.

It must have been terrible but, after all; such things happened all the time. Women and children, the weakest, constantly died. It mostly even did not come as a shock anymore. We- they, because I was too young to be really part of it- had seen it before.

My sister Geneviève died at the age of four, before I was born. She was, then, the only sibling of my eldest brother Robert. He later on became the most serious of us all, the silent, perhaps partly because of the loss of his little sister. One year later, he received a double portion of sisters in return, but I don’t think that has solved anything. Geneviève was dead, and Josephine, always the most observant, has once entrusted me that she thought he blamed himself. I cannot see why, but I know that she spoke the truth. Robert blamed himself. But what could a child of only four have done, when lack of food and warmth almost killed him as well?

Two years after my and Josephine’s birth, mother died, as I said before, and father remained a widower with four small children. Robert, seven, Josephine and I, two, and little Bertrand, who was little more than a newborn. Four children, one man and not enough money. I don’t know how father managed eventually, but somehow he did and even Bertrand whom he had, I knew, never expected to survive his mother’s death, grew up into a healthy, young boy.

There was never enough money, though.

When father remarried a woman named Alexandrine and got another baby, Jeanne, we were desperate. Alexandrine- a healthy-looking and kind young woman- had Jeanne to take care of, and father did not even earn enough money to feed his new wife and the baby, let alone us, four hungry little children.

So Robert sought and found work. Hard-working and strong, he very soon earned more money than my father did.

Still it was not enough.

As soon as Jeanne was old enough to not having to be breastfed anymore, Sandrine went out working as well, but as a washing woman, she even did not make enough money to feed her own child…

So it was my turn.

I and my sister drew lots to decide which one of us would stay at home and look after the children and which one would go out and find work. Josephine won- or… well, we did not know exactly what “winning” and “losing” meant in the circumstances we were in. Anyway, Josephine would thus stay at home with Betrand and Jeanne- to cook, clean the house and take care of our brother and half-sister-, and I went and searched.

But work is sought by many and not easily found by a frail-looking, pale and even slightly underfed, poor girl of thirteen.

Until fate made one of its strange twists and Mélodie came.