Next morning it looks as though Adolf has started to get his own back on Julia. Rather than letting her and Suzanne work together he sends them off in two different gangs. It is like this for the next few days. Julia consoles herself with the fact that once all this beautification of the ghetto is finished, she’ll hopefully get moved into some other type of work and away from Adolf. Or the war might end. In the meantime, there is the book.
Though they didn’t intend it this way – they hadn’t really thought about it all – the book seems to be about to divide naturally into two parts. Part One is Birkita’s outward journey from Britannia, Part Two is going to be her return and her search for revenge on the bull Roman.
Looking at them now, Julia thinks that there has been an inevitability to all of the chapters in Part One. Each one has flowed pretty inescapably from the one that came before it. Right now, Part Two is a blank canvas. Other than the business of Birkita getting her revenge, they have little else. It would have been nice to have been working side by side with Suzanne so that they could have started to talk about all of this but Adolf has put paid to that.
Birkita is going to land in Baeterrae which, as Suzanne has explained, is on the south coast of France – Gaul. Birkita then has to make her way to Britannia. Julia thinks there is no point in covering any of that in the story. The reader wants to know about Birkita’s revenge. A journey through all of France, whatever adventures might occur along the way, is just going to bore people. They need to get Birkita to Britannia as quickly as possible. Of course, that’s the great thing about writing a novel. They can get her there in just one line: ‘As soon as the ship tied up in Londinium, Birkita walked down the gangplank and set off on the road that led north-east.’
So Julia starts to ponder what might happen next? What form will Birkita’s revenge take? Will she really crucify the bull Roman or will it be something else? Does the bull Roman have a family? Children? That’s another thing that Julia loves about writing – the possibilities.
That evening when they have handed in their tools and are heading wearily back to their barracks, Julia notices there is something different about Suzanne. Her usual dreaminess seems to have been replaced by something else. Is she smiling more than usual? She’s always very optimistic and positive but there’s something more this time. There is a sense about her of a secret she will never tell.
Before she has gone to sleep, Julia has worked out what it is. Suzanne has fallen in love.
Julia’s theory is confirmed almost immediately. Suzanne is suddenly less interested in the book. When Julia starts to ask her about Birkita’s revenge, Suzanne says she’ll have to think about it, adding that it’s good that Birkita is on the ship – while she is making the sea voyage, Suzanne and Julia can take their time thinking about what is to come next.
This is completely out of character for Suzanne. Up until now, it is she who has spoken of the urgency to get the book written – how the war won’t end until it’s done. And of course, there has always been – unspoken but constantly in the back of their minds – the worry that they might be separated or deported from the ghetto. After all, there was a deportation of nearly a thousand people as recently as February.
When Julia realises that this is indeed what has happened, the shock is really more than she can bear. And the Pandora’s box that this has opened begins not with Suzanne but with Julia herself.
She has come to hate men. She has seen what they have done to the world. They are all about anger and aggression and violence. Even their bodies show it – the erect penis like a sword, wanting to hurt, to damage, to penetrate, to pierce. How different from the self-contained beauty of the female form. So Julia had come to the conclusion that she wants nothing further to do with men. If there is to be anyone in her life in the future, it will be a woman.
And she had thought that that woman would be Suzanne. Despite what happened the night of the betrayal (as Julia thinks of it), she had still hoped that she and Suzanne could build a future together; that after the war was over they would stay together. It is this prospect, as much as the book that has kept Julia going. Indeed, if it had been somebody other than Suzanne who had proposed the book, Julia sees now that she is not sure if she would have had much interest in it.
A future without Suzanne is the bleakest future Julia can imagine. In fact, it is not a future at all; not a future she would want.
Suzanne seems oblivious to all this and Julia is too distraught to speak to her about it.
Julia is even more distraught when she finds out that the man Suzanne has fallen for – for it is a man – is Adolf.