Le Temps des Cerises by Zillah Bethel

Some had been there since midnight, taking it in turns with friends and relations who brought hip flasks, cocoa, mufflers and foot warmers. It was a dirty trick, a ruse, and a source of great aggravation to the women who had no hip flasks or cocoa, no chairs or foot warmers and no friends or relations to relieve them.
    Eveline slipped into line behind a woman in a shawl and a servant’s cap, with a little straw basket at her feet. She’d been standing there less than a minute when a smartly dressed woman came up behind in a muffler, bottines and wearing an amethyst necklace which reminded Eveline temptingly of a string of candied violets. She wondered why such a smartly dressed woman would be waiting in line and stared hard at the necklace. Perhaps it was paste. People did all sorts to gain respect and curry favour from the men who doled out the rations. It was not uncommon for women to offer themselves up for a scrag end of meat and bushel of potatoes. No subterfuge was too small. Everybody’s need was greater than the next: an invalid back home, an ailing mother in law, a tiny baby, a delicate heart. There were those who trickled up and down the line, trying to jostle in higher up, preying on the weak willed, the gullible, the foolish and the holy. The nuns (or the holy crows) came off the worst, too saintly to push themselves forward, too trusting not to trust; and they ended up at the back, a little dark cloud, waiting to snatch up the leftover crumbs. Eveline felt a little sorry for them, they looked so thin and miserable, halfway to heaven already.
    The woman in front stood dogged and immobile as a rock. Eveline tapped her on the shoulder.
    â€˜Any word yet?’ she whispered.
    â€˜Just soup.’ The woman peeked a currant-bun face out of her cap.
    Soup, yes. There was always soup. They’d had soup up to the gills. Watery nonsense with something inedible floating around on the top.
    â€˜Nothing else?’
    â€˜Not yet,’ the woman replied curtly as if she didn’t want to be distracted from her mission.
    Eveline stamped her feet and blew on her hands, wishing she’d brought an umbrella. The rut she was standing in was deepening by the second as drizzle dotted holes in the dirty old snow. Never mind, the shutters would be coming off soon and the line would get going. She stood on tiptoe, craning to see above the brightly coloured umbrellas and the hooded heads of Guardsmen. Suddenly, without warning, the queue surged forward and she almost lost her footing as the smartly dressed woman behind stepped on her heels in her high-heeled boots. A sea of umbrellas sheered off to the left like a serpentine wave or herd of sheep as a dozen or so women broke line and stampeded down the pavement in the direction of the Luxembourg. A rumour had started. Now and then a rumour started like a Chinese whisper and the women got wind of it, got the scent in their nostrils of something edible going cheap somewhere in the city. A boulangerie in the Salpêtrière selling croissants and buns for a franc a piece. Roos on Haussmann letting go fresh crabs and chitterlings for the price of old socks. She waited to see what it was this time and pretty soon word came down the line: smoked herrings from a grocer in the Madeleine. Two National Guardsmen had paraded a couple on the ends of their bayonets so it must be true. You could hear brains ticking out loud as women weighed up the risk of heading off for a chance of smoked herring – smoked herring for Christmas. What a feat! – with the safe bet of the queue. Those new to the job, more daring or simply gullible broke the line and ran off after the others while the old hands and those too tired or worn out to move, stayed put. At first, Eveline had dashed off at the slightest cry or excited murmur, but more often than not it ended in a goose chase; even if there had been any truth to the rumour in the first place, by the time you arrived all that