Just Genevieve

Chapter one

Hello everyone! Here is chapter one in all it's glory. So if you like this beginning please do send me a vote and if you want to share your opinions please don't hesitate to leave a comment. Now enjoy the read and tell me what you think of it.

The best novels about great heroines start with a little girl who was ignored, ostracized and abused. Then some great benefactor comes into their lives and despite the odds they rise within the ranks and became liked and respected. In Jane Eyre it was the intervention of a Doctor who helped send her to school. In Mansfield Park it was the arrival of those new guests that made Fanny Price highly respectable in comparison. Or, to give a more updated example, it was Hitler's time in Prison that made him the tragic hero to his people when they read 'Mein Kampf'. His benefactor was solitude and clarity and his time in the sun was taking place right now, in the winter of '33. That was good for him but bad for me. His reward was war against the Jews and I was one of them.

But the Jewish question wasn't what made my childhood difficult. My peers did a pretty good job at that already. You see when my parents, or whoever was caring for me at the time, dumped me on my school door-step they left just two details about who I was. One was my name; Genevieve Lambeck. Two was my only hint of heritage; Jewish. It seemed so cruel now that I thought about it. I was an orphan; a clean-slate. They could've just made me Gentile and be done with it. But in a way I couldn't blame them for it. How were they to know being Jewish could become a crime in my future? If only they could've had some intuition. If abandoning me wasn't enough for them, making me Jewish and an orphan almost felt like an insult. Adults were wary of me at best and teenagers were downright cruel to me at worst. I was still living my 'difficult childhood'. Still waiting for my benefactor to come into the picture.

Still, being a ward of the school still had a few upsides. I was closest with Mutter Elbe, the School's nursery mistress and Luba, the cook. I was friendly with Fritz, the gardener and I got on fairly well with the head-mistress, Frau Hollande. On the outside a stern, severe woman but beneath the surface was a fair, decent person of a hidden compassion. It was she who found me on the doorstep, she who brought me inside and took care of me, she who obtained custody from the state so I could stay at the school. Together they were my family. Despite being strangers to one another they made a closer, more loving family than many nuclear families I've seen.

So this was my life. Despite the loneliness and solitude I'd gotten used to it. I could use the studio to practice whenever I wanted, I could use the library past closing hours and I had an entire room to myself. One of the smallest rooms in the school but my own bit of space nonetheless. It wasn't an ideal life but I told myself things were going to get better. Once I graduated from the academy I would leave Germany for good and go somewhere new. Switzerland perhaps or Paris. I knew how to speak French and it was considered an honour to perform in the Moulin Rouge. I could go by a different name, give myself a new heritage and leave behind all the people who made my life difficult. This was my dream, my ambition, and the only thing that helped me to put up with all my bullies.

It happened after school. I was in the studio, where I always was, when Madame Fleuri found me and told me Frau Hollande wanted to talk later that evening. I was puzzled to say the least; Frau Hollande never spoke to me unless she absolutely had to. This was, well...unexpected. My grades were fine, I never got into trouble and I never snuck out. What could she possibly want?

After I changed from my leotard and my pointe-shoes I put my mufti-clothes back on and went to the dining hall for supper. Eunice waiting for me, at the smallest table, as per usual. My only friend at the Academy, Eunice was brought here by her wealthy, unaffected parents who threw a cheque under Frau Holllande's nose and left within the same hour of taking her there. These days all she got from them were brief letters and the ever-present question of 'have your grades improved?'. The reality was that her grades were almost perfect; it was just a front they used to play the concerned parents.