A Time of Miracles Read online

  Also by Anne-Laure Bondoux

  The Killer’s Tears

  A Mildred L. Batchelder Honor Book

  (for an outstanding children’s book originally published in a foreign language)

  Life as It Comes

  Vasco, Leader of the Tribe

  The Destiny of Linus Hoppe

  The Second Life of Linus Hoppe

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2009 by Bayard Éditions Jeunesse

  Translation copyright © 2010 by Y. Maudet

  Map illustration copyright © 2010 by Rick Britton

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in paperback in France as Le temps des miracles by Bayard Éditions Jeunesse in 2009.

  Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Bondoux, Anne-Laure.

  Temps des miracles English]

  A time of miracles / Anne-Laure Bondoux ; translated from the French by Y. Maudet — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: In the early 1990s, a boy with a mysterious past and the woman who cares for him endure a five-year journey across the war-torn Caucasus and Europe, weathering hardships and welcoming unforgettable encounters with other refugees searching for a better life.

  eISBN: 978-0-375-89726-9

  [1. Refugees—Fiction. 2. War—Fiction. 3. Secrets—Fiction. 4. Survival—Fiction. 5. Caucasus—History—20th century—Fiction. 6. Europe—History—20th century—Fiction.] I. Maudet, Y. II. Title.

  PZ7.B63696Ti 2010

  [Fic]—dc22

  2010008539

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v3.1

  For my mother

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Map

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  About the Author

  Koumail’s Journey

  1. The Complex: Learns the different cuts of beef and how to use his fists.

  2. Souma-Soula: Tumbles into the lake and falls in love for the first time.

  3. Sukhumi: Goes to a hammam, gets his catalog of France, and falls in love for the second time.

  4. Odessa: The samovar and radio are stolen.

  5. Moldova: Bullied by a farmer.

  6. Romania: Meets the Gypsies.

  7. Romania: Climbs into the back of a truck at a gas station.

  8. German-French border: Apprehended by customs officers.

  9. Poitiers: Learns French and meets Prudence.

  10. Mont-Saint-Michel: Understands what is most vital to him.

  11. Paris: Starts his life as a French citizen.

  12. Tbilisi: Learns the pure and simple truth.

  chapter one

  MY name is Blaise Fortune and I am a citizen of the French Republic. It’s the pure and simple truth.

  I was almost twelve years old the day the customs officers found me in the back of the truck. I stank as badly as the garbage shed where Abdelmalik slept, and all I was able to say was “Mynameisblaisefortuneandiamacitizenofthefrench-republicitsthepureandsimpletruth.”

  I had lost nearly all of my precious belongings along the way. Fortunately, I still had my passport; Gloria had made sure to stick it deep in my jacket pocket when we were at the service station. My passport proved that I was born on December 28, 1985, at Mont-Saint-Michel, on the French side of the English Channel, per page 16 of the green atlas. It was written in black and white. The problem was my photo: it had been removed, then glued back, and even though Mr. Ha had faked the official seal with the greatest care, the customs officers didn’t believe that I was really a French boy. I wanted to explain my story to them, but I didn’t have the vocabulary. So they pulled me out of the truck by the neck of my sweater and took me away.

  This is how my childhood ended: brutally, on the side of a highway, when I realized that Gloria had disappeared and that I would have to cope without her in the country known for human rights and for the poetry of Charles Baudelaire.

  After that I spent countless days in a triage zone, then in a shelter. France was just a succession of walls, fences, and doors. I slept in dormitories that reminded me of the Matachine’s attic, except that there was no dormer window to watch the stars through. I was alone in the world. But I couldn’t let despair eat away at my soul. More so than ever, I had to go to Mont-Saint-Michel to find my mother! It was easy to explain it all, but I didn’t know the language. I couldn’t give details about the Terrible Accident or the hazards of life that had brought me here. And when you can’t express yourself, it’s like dying of suffocation.

  Things are different today. Many years have gone by, and now I can name everything; I can conjugate verbs, use adjectives and conjunctions. I have a new passport in my pocket—all in good order, as required by the laws of the world.

  Not long ago I received a letter from the French Embassy in Tbilisi, Georgia, saying that they might have tracked down Gloria. That’s why I’m sitting at a Charles de Gaulle Airport gate with a suitcase, a heart that beats madly, and the crazy hope that I will see Gloria again. But, before anything else, I must put my thoughts in order.

  Let me begin: My name is Blaise Fortune. I am a citizen of the French Republic, even though I spent the first eleven years of my life in the Caucasus, a vast region located between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, per page 78 of the green atlas. At the time I spoke Russian and people called me Koumaïl. It might seem strange, but it’s easy to understan
d. I just have to tell my story. All of it. And in the right order.

  chapter two

  MY oldest memories date back to 1992, when Gloria and I lived in the Complex with other refugee families. I don’t remember the name of the town. I am nearly seven. It is winter, and we no longer have electricity or heat because of the war.

  There is a smell of laundry mingled with that of vinegar.

  Women are gathered in the center of the courtyard, around a huge iron vat set above blazing logs. The skin on their bare arms is red up to the elbows. They speak and laugh loudly. As the laundry boils in the scum of our dirt, a cloud of steam rises, leaving a thick condensation on the window-panes of the floors above.

  Farther away, under the canopy, creepy Sergei sharpens his razor. Schlick, schlick, schlick.

  He calls us over, one by one.

  “You! Come here!” he hollers.

  Creepy Sergei doesn’t know our names. There are too many kids in the Complex, and he drinks so heavily that his memory is completely shot. He just yells, “You,” as he points his razor at one of us. Nobody dares disobey him, because we’re terrified of his upturned eye and his flattened nose.

  Before becoming a barber, creepy Sergei was a boxer, the best one in town, or so they say. But everything changed the day a high-strung Armenian knocked him out cold. It was before the war. According to Gloria, on that day Sergei had a brush with death. That makes him special now, and he deserves our respect. So when he points his razor at me, I dash under the canopy.

  I sit on the three-legged stool, my back turned to him, my heart beating madly, and I lean my head back. Sergei’s razor cuts across my scalp, his strokes methodical, until all my hair falls to the ground. Then creepy Sergei dips a towel in a barrel of vinegar and rubs my head with it. My scalp stings. I whine. He pushes me from the stool.

  “Go see your mother, little brat!” he says.

  I stand up, my head shorn and filled with a vague pain, and I rush to snuggle in Gloria’s arms. She’s not my mother, but she’s all I have.

  “Beautiful!” she exclaims as she runs her soapy hands over my skull.

  I look up at her and she bends down to kiss my cheek. “You’re truly magnificent, Monsieur Blaise,” she adds.

  I smile through my tears. I love it when she calls me “Mr. Blaise” in French, because no one else can understand.

  “Now go and play, Koumaïl,” she says loudly. “You can see I’m busy!”

  I dry my eyes and run off to join the group of shaved kids who are playing in the courtyard.

  The laundry, the laughter, the razor, the vinegar … that’s how we wage war against lice, fleas, and all forms of parasites—including, according to Gloria, the most feared parasite of all, despair. Despair, she says, is more dangerous and more clever than the Armenian who knocked out Sergei. It is invisible and slips into everything. If you don’t fight against it, it nibbles at your soul. But how do you know you’ve caught a despair if you can’t even see it? I wonder. What do you do if even the razor can’t get rid of it? Gloria holds me tight against her chest when I ask her about this. She explains that she has a cure.

  “As long as you stay close to me, nothing bad will happen to you, OK?”

  “OK.”

  chapter three

  THE Complex is a group of three buildings that form a U around a courtyard. Gloria and I have a room on the second floor.

  I can take six steps from one wall to another, going around the wood-burning stove. The wallpaper is coming loose, and behind it the paint is chipping. When I scratch the plaster with my nail, the bricks appear. The Complex is full of cracks—totally eaten away by the dampness that seeps up from the ground because it’s built near a river. It’s so rotten that it was supposed to be demolished, but the war stopped the bulldozers; now it’s our refuge, a good hiding place that protects us from the wind and the militia.

  I’m very familiar with the wind: it blows down from the mountains as fast as an avalanche and rushes under doors to freeze you to the bone. But I have no idea what the militia is. All I know is that it scares me even more than Sergei’s upturned eye, and that everybody here has some reason to be wary of it. That’s why we’ve set up rotating shifts of people who keep watch: night after night, teams of four take turns watching the entrance to the Complex. Kids can hang around only if the grown-ups allow them to.

  I was told that if I see men wearing boots, if I see their leather jackets and their clubs, I’m supposed to rush into the courtyard and pull hard on the bell that’s suspended under the canopy.

  There are three other times when we’re supposed to ring the bell with all our might:

  If the Complex is on fire

  If the Complex starts to crumble down

  If the Psezkaya River is overflowing

  Except under these circumstances, no one is to touch the bell. If you do, you’ll be immediately expelled from the Complex.

  When I ask Gloria what the militia would do if it were to catch us, her face hardens and I regret my question.

  “A seven-year-old boy doesn’t need to know everything,” she tells me. “Just be satisfied following the rules, Koumaïl.”

  I nod and go off to play with the others in the stairwell. Depending on our mood, the staircase becomes our fortress or our warship.

  My playmates are Emil, Baksa, Rebeka, Tasmin, and Faïna. They are thin and lice-ridden, as supple as eels. Some speak Russian like me, others not, but children don’t need words to understand each other. We run until we’re out of breath. We sprint up and down the stairs. We hide in the toilets, or behind the sheets that are drying on the roof, all the better to scare old Mrs. Hanska. Our laughter echoes throughout the Complex, from top to bottom, faster than any draft.

  Gloria says that she likes to hear me laugh, that laughter is the most important thing in the world.

  I like to hear Gloria laughing too. But Gloria also coughs, which I don’t like to hear. Coughing makes her turn purple, and she loses her breath; I have the impression that a great big dog is barking inside her chest. I’m no doctor, but it’s not hard to guess that her cough sounds deadly. What would happen if Gloria were to die? I worry.

  “Tsk, tsk, tsk!” she says, and laughs when her coughing fit ends. “Don’t look so gloomy. You’re not burying me yet, Monsieur Blaise! You know very well that I’m as sturdy as the trees. Now come on, Koumaïl! Go and fetch us some water if you want to eat tonight!”

  I hurry with the bucket to the hose in the courtyard. I’m always ready to help or to do somebody a favor because I’m in a rush to grow up. I sense that the world in which we live is hostile to children. I dream of the day when my legs will be long enough that I can run very fast, and when I will be strong enough to carry the khaki canvas bag that Gloria calls our “gear.”

  Ever since we’ve lived in the Complex, the gear has been put away on a shelf just above the door. For the time being, it contains only the tin box where Gloria hides her secrets, and I am not allowed to open it.

  Everything else we have is scattered in the room—our clothes, my green atlas, the blankets, the basic cooking utensils, the stringless violin, the radio, and Vassili’s samovar to make tea. If I ever hear the bell ring, I know what to do: climb on a chair, grab the gear, and stuff it with our belongings as fast as I can. Sometimes I train mentally for this emergency—the chair, the gear, the belongings—and I imagine how the Complex will empty itself of its occupants as quickly as a draining bathtub. I ask Gloria what we would do next.

  She shrugs. “Exactly what we’ve done so far, Koumaïl,” she says. “We will walk straight in front of us toward a new horizon.”

  “OK.”

  In the Complex everybody has a story to tell. Whether it’s about earthquakes, collapsed mines, jail terms, poker games in shady ports, childbirths, separations, or reunions. Even Old Max will tell you how he lost three of his fingers when he worked in a slaughterhouse. Everything is new to me; I ask endless questions and I learn fast, but no story
fascinates me more than my own, especially when Gloria whispers it in my ear before I go to sleep at night.

  “Again?” she asks while putting a log in the stove.

  “Yes, again! Don’t leave anything out!” I say.

  She sits on the bed. Her face moves in the flickering light of the stove. She pulls the lambskin blanket up to my nose.

  “It was the end of summer, and I lived with my father, old Vassili, in his home,” she begins.

  “The one who gave you the samovar?”

  “Yes, Koumaïl. At that time Vassili owned the most beautiful orchard in all of the Caucasus. You should have seen the apple trees, pear trees, apricot trees—acres upon acres covered with trees! With the river on one side and the railroad track on the other.”

  “That’s where you used to walk with Zemzem!”

  A fire lights up in Gloria’s eyes. “Hold on, you’re going too fast. I always tell things properly, in the right order, you know that.”

  I take hold of one of her hands and keep quiet. I listen to my story. In the right order.

  chapter four

  OLD Vassili has a long, tapered mustache and wears a pair of suspenders solidly attached to his pants. When he smiles, his mustache tickles his ears, and when he raises his arms to the sky, the suspenders pull up his pants so high that you can see his hairy calves.