Charlotte. David Foenkinos

is pregnant, he finally sighs.

      In the months that follow, he tries to return to Berlin as often as possible.

      But most of the time, Franziska is alone with her belly.

      She walks along the hallway, already speaking to her child.

      So desperate to put an end to her solitude.

      Deliverance comes on April 16, 1917.

      It is the first appearance of a heroine.

      But also of a baby that cries constantly.

      As if she refused to accept her birth.

      Franziska wants to call her Charlotte, in homage to her sister.

      Albert does not want his daughter to bear a dead woman’s name.

      Still less one who committed suicide.

      Franziska weeps, outraged, infuriated.

      It is a way of making her live again, she thinks.

      Please, Albert begs, be reasonable.

      But he knows that she isn’t.

      It is part of why he loves her, this gentle madness.

      This way she has of never being the same woman.

      She is by turns free and submissive, feverish and dazzling.

      He senses that conflict is pointless.

      Besides, who ever feels like fighting during a war?

      So Charlotte it will be.

      4

      What are Charlotte’s first memories?

      Smells or colors?

      More likely, they are notes.

      The tunes sung by her mother.

      Franziska has an angel’s voice and she plays piano too.

      From her first days of life, Charlotte is soothed by this.

      Later, she will turn the pages of sheet music.

      And so her early years pass, enveloped in melody.

      Franziska likes going for walks with her daughter.

      She takes her to Berlin’s green heart, the Tiergarten.

      A small island of peace in a city still sunk in defeat.

      Little Charlotte observes the damaged, mutilated bodies.

      She is scared by all these hands reaching out toward her.

      An army of beggars.

      She lowers her eyes to avoid seeing their broken faces.

      And does not look up again until she is in the woods.

      There, she can run after the squirrels.

      Afterward, they must go to the cemetery.

      So they never forget.

      Charlotte understands early that the dead are part of life.

      She touches her mother’s tears.

      This mother who mourns her dead sister as she did on the day of her death.

      Some sorrows never pass.

      On the gravestone, Charlotte reads her name.

      She wants to know what happened.

      Her aunt drowned.

      Didn’t she know how to swim?

      It was an accident.

      Franziska quickly changes the subject.

      And so comes the first arrangement with reality.

      The play begins.

      Albert disapproves of these trips to the cemetery.

      Why do you take Charlotte there so often?

      It’s a morbid attraction.

      He asks her to visit less frequently, not to take their daughter.

      But how can he know if she obeys?

      He is never there.

      He thinks of nothing but his work, say his parents-in-law.

      Albert wants to become the greatest doctor in Germany.

      When he is not in the hospital, he spends his time studying.

      Never trust a man who works too much.

      What is he seeking to avoid?

      Fear, or simply a feeling.

      His wife’s behavior is increasingly unstable.

      She seems absent at times, he notices.

      As if she were taking a vacation from herself.

      He tells himself she’s a daydreamer.

      Often we try to find pleasant reasons for other people’s strangeness.

      In the end, the way she acts becomes worrying.

      She lies in bed for days on end.

      She doesn’t even pick Charlotte up from school.

      And then, suddenly, she becomes herself again.

      In the space of a minute, she snaps out of her lethargy.

      Without the slightest transition, she starts taking Charlotte everywhere.

      Into town, to the park, to the zoo and museums.

      They must walk, read, play piano, sing, learn all there is to learn.

      In lively moments, she likes organizing parties.

      She wants to see people.

      Albert loves those soirées.

      They are his deliverance.

      Franziska sits at the piano.

      It’s so beautiful, that way she has of moving her lips.

      As if she were conversing with the notes.

      For Charlotte, her mother’s voice is a caress.

      When you have a mother who sings like that, nothing bad can happen to you.

      Like a doll, Charlotte stands up straight in the middle of the living room.

      She greets the guests with her brightest smile.

      The smile she worked on with her mother, until her jaw ached.

      Where is the logic?

      Her mother shuts herself up for weeks at a time.

      Then, suddenly, the social demon possesses her.

      Charlotte enjoys these transformations.

      She prefers anything to apathy.

      A deluge is better than a drought.

      But the drought returns now.

      The rain of life ceases as abruptly as it started.

      And once again, Franziska lies in bed, exhausted by nothing.

      Lost in contemplation of some other world at the far end of her room.

      Faced with her mother’s mood swings, Charlotte is docile.

      She tames her melancholy.

      Is this how one becomes an artist?

      By growing accustomed to the madness of others?

      5

      Charlotte is eight when her mother’s state worsens.

      The depressive phases drag on.

      She no longer has any desire to do anything, feels useless.

      Albert