“When I think today of those first mornings, I tell myself that an irresistible movement pushed us towards each other, as if we had waited, thirsty, in a desert before finally meeting and recognizing each other. writes Liliane, nonagenarian narrator of The girl with the braid, remembering the beginnings of his friendship with Solange Ast in 1937. A story of friendship so unconditional that it has stood the test of time. A story of friendship so moving that the real Liliane, 98, mother of a friend of Françoise De Luca, wanted to tell it to the novelist.
“When I feel that something beats in my body and scares me, I tell myself that it must be written. And that scared me. I had to tell this story. It was really like a necessity”, confides the author, met in the studio of the To have to.
Without the initiative of teachers from Châlons-en-Champagne, the story of Liliane and Solange would not have seen the light of day under the fine pen of Françoise de Luca. Thus, in 2017, students from the Duruy college were invited to do research on two young Jews from Châlons. The local press appeals to those who would have known the young resistance fighter whose name a gym bears. It was then that Liliane spoke to her daughter for the first time about her prodigious friend, about her hatter parents who had fled Poland, about her resistance comrade Sally Wilder.
“At the beginning, it was emotionally difficult to write about it because I knew the end”, recalls the one who told her own story of friendship in her first novel, pascal (Varia, 2003). “Afterwards, I said to myself that it was really necessary to emphasize the light of these people and pay homage to them in a certain way. This story is terrible, and the more you dig, the less you understand how it could have been possible on this scale. »
When I started writing, I had trouble finding my place; afterwards, I completely appropriated the story. There is a mourning to do after each book, but less for
The girl with the braidbecause deep down, I feel that Solange is still there and that she will remain there.
Fact, The girl with the braid transports the reader to the France of the Vichy regime, where the innocent Liliane does not perceive the first manifestations of anti-Semitism, ignores why Solange is hiding things from her: “Liliane has trouble understanding what is going on; even today, she says it was unthinkable to imagine it was possible. At first, Solange didn’t want to burden their relationship with what she already shared with Sally; she needed a mental place where she could be light. What Solange understood very well was that to become discouraged, to sink into despair, was to play the occupier’s game. Staying light was something essential and political. »
female resistance
Besides the friendship between Liliane and Solange, which prompted Françoise de Luca to write The girl with the braidit was the desire to reveal an unknown facet of the Occupation.
“There are more and more books on the resistance of women and we realize that many of them served as mailboxes, liaison officers, put their lives in danger. They were very active and indispensable. We could be resistant in a thousand and one ways. Because of the restrictions, we know that women had to fend for themselves to be flirtatious. What is less known is that it was an act of resistance to remain flirtatious. It was to oppose the occupier, to taunt it. »
Inspired by her milliner mother, Solange will train Liliane and her friends to make and proudly wear the toilet item par excellence to outrage the Nazi soldiers.
“At the time, the hat was the only accessory left for women to be elegant and inventive. They took everything they had on hand: newspaper, crepe, feathers…. It was wonderful, the ingenuity of these women! To wear a hat is to show your identity; during the Occupation, it was very frowned upon, because you straighten up with a hat. For a while, there were totally wacky and increasingly high hats to show that women were not going to resign themselves and allow themselves to be humiliated. Then there was the turban, with which you could do very, very beautiful things. »
As creative as she is reckless, Solange, a refugee in Lyon, will even go so far as to make dapper turbans with “Marshal’s squares” (scarves) in order to circulate information.
“Pétain, who was an eyesore, something terrible for France, blamed women and their frivolity for the defeat. As a writer, writing that Solange makes fun of Pétain in this way was a real pleasure, because she has a lot of humor. »
To see her eyes shine when she speaks of Solange, it is clear that, like Liliane, Françoise de Luca was seduced by the personality of the young woman who, until the end, refused to let herself be TO DO.
“Solange is a character from a novel, someone rebellious, cultured, very lucid for her age. She was a feminist before her time! She knew very well what was expected of women and she knew that was not what she wanted. He is such a magnificent character that there was almost nothing to add. »
On the strength of her conversations with Liliane and her visits to Châlons-en-Champagne, Françoise de Luca testifies so accurately to the ties uniting the two friends, while showing a concern for authenticity in her way of recreating the anxiety-provoking atmosphere of the time, which one would think was his own story.
“When I started writing, I had trouble finding my place; afterwards, I completely appropriated the story. There is a mourning to do after each book, but less for The girl with the braid, because deep down, I feel that Solange is still there and that she will remain there. »
And Liliana? “She told me that I really knew how to capture the essence of her friendship with Solange. I think it did her a lot of good and she was able to accept what was beautiful and make what was painful something luminous. »