And the mystery of this childish presence seemed to me so breathtaking that I would close my eyes.
This child was… our grandmother. Yes, it was her, this woman whom we saw that evening, crouching down and silently gathering up the fragments of stone scattered over the carpet. Dumbfounded and sheepish, my sister and I stood with our backs to the wall, not daring to murmur a word of excuse nor to help our grandmother retrieve the scattered talismans. We guessed that in her lowered eyes tears were forming…
On the evening of our sacrilegious game we no longer saw an old-fashioned good fairy before us, a storyteller with her Bluebeard or her Sleeping Beauty, but a woman hurt and vulnerable despite all her strength of spirit. For her it was that agonizing moment when suddenly the adult betrays herself, allows her weakness to appear, feels like a naked emperor under the penetrating gaze of the child. Now she is like a tightrope walker who has made a false move and who, off balance for several seconds, is sustained only by the gaze of the spectator, who is in turn embarrassed at having this unexpected power…
She closed the "Pont-Neuf bag," took it into her room, then called us to the table. After a moment's silence she began to speak in French in a calm and steady voice, while pouring tea for us with her familiar gesture: "Among the stones you threw away there was one I should really like to get back…"
And still in this neutral tone and still in French, even though at mealtimes (because of friends or neighbors who often dropped in unexpectedly) we generally spoke in Russian, she told us about the parade of the Grande Armée and the story of the little brown pebble known as " Verdun." We scarcely grasped the sense of her tale – it was her tone that held us in thrall.