The Boy at the Top of the Mountain Read Free

‘Just you and me.’
    ‘And what about Papa?’
    Maman sighed, and Pierrot could see the tears forming in her eyes. ‘All I know,’ she said, ‘is that things can’t go on as they are.’
    The last time Pierrot saw his father was on a warm May evening, shortly after his fourth birthday, when once again the kitchen was littered with empty bottles and Papa began shouting and banging the sides of his head with his hands, complaining that they were in there, they were all in there, they were coming to get their revenge on him – phrases that made no sense to Pierrot. Papa reached over to the dresser and threw handfuls of plates, bowls and cups on the floor, smashing them into hundreds of pieces. Maman held her arms out to him, pleading with him in an attempt to calm his temper, but he lashed out, punching her in the face, and screaming words that were so terrible, Pierrot covered his ears and ran into his bedroom with D’Artagnan and they hid in the wardrobe together. Pierrot was shaking and trying not to cry as the little dog, who hated any kind of upset, whimpered and curled himself into the boy’s body.
    Pierrot didn’t leave the wardrobe for hours, until everything had grown quiet again, and when he did his father had vanished and his mother was lying on the floor, motionless, her face bloody and bruised. D’Artagnan walked over cautiously, bowing his head and licking her ear repeatedly in an attempt to wake her, but Pierrot simply stared in disbelief. Summoning all his courage, he ran downstairs to Anshel’s apartment, where he pointed towards the staircase, unable to utter a word of explanation. Mme Bronstein, who must have heard the earlier commotion through her ceiling but was too frightened to intervene, ran upstairs, taking the steps two or three at a time. Meanwhile Pierrot looked across at his friend, one boy unable to speak, the other unable to hear. Noticing a pile of pages on the table behind him, he walked over, sat down, and began to read Anshel’s latest story. Somehow he found that losing himself in a world that wasn’t his own was a welcome escape.
    For several weeks there was no word from Papa and Pierrot both longed for and dreaded his return, and then one morning word came to them that Wilhelm had died when he fell beneath a train that was making its way from Munich to Penzberg, the same town where he had been born and in which he had spent his childhood. When he heard the news, Pierrot went to his room, locked the door, looked at the dog, who was snoozing on the bed, and spoke very calmly.
    ‘Papa is looking down at us now, D’Artagnan,’ he said. ‘And one day I am going to make him proud of me.’
    Afterwards M. and Mme Abrahams offered Émilie work as a waitress, which Mme Bronstein said was in poor taste as they were simply offering her the job that her dead husband had had before her. But Maman, who knew that she and Pierrot needed the money, accepted gratefully.
    The restaurant was located halfway between Pierrot’s school and home, and he would read and draw in the small room downstairs every afternoon while the staff wandered in and out, taking their breaks, chatting about the customers and generally fussing over him. Mme Abrahams always brought him down a plate of whatever that day’s special was, with a bowl of ice cream to follow.
    Pierrot spent three years, from the ages of four to seven, sitting in that room every afternoon while Maman served customers upstairs, and although he never spoke of him, he thought of his father every day, picturing him standing there, changing into his uniform in the morning, counting his tips at the end of the day.
    Years later, when Pierrot looked back on his childhood, he experienced complicated emotions. Although he was very sad about his father, he had plenty of friends, enjoyed school, and he and Maman lived happily together. Paris was flourishing and the streets were always buzzing with people and energy.
    But in 1936, on Émilie’s