Mme Proust and the Kosher Kitchen (13 page)

“Yes, M. Letksy. I remember now, I remember your shop.”

“I was the stationer,” he nodded, “but your father, he was some fancy lawyer. Well, yes, the camps were great levellers.” He ejected the words in a bitter laugh.

“We had all been told to register with the Germans that winter, that must have been before you left. There were stories of roundups, people disappearing in the night or volunteering
for work camps. I didn’t bother to give them my name, but they found me anyway. Your father too. First, they concentrated on the Eleventh Arrondissement, but they got to us eventually. They rounded up many in this neighbourhood the next autumn and winter. Bad luck your father was a lawyer. They were obsessed with lawyers. ‘Too many dirty Jewish lawyers.’ We were sent to Drancy. You’ve heard of it? Outside Paris.”

Sarah nodded. It was the transit camp, not twelve kilometres from Paris, more than twelve hundred from Auschwitz. She had heard of it in Canada when she started making inquiries.

M. Letsky continued, speaking in short, staccato sentences as though his own words might soil him if they were to linger one moment longer than necessary on his tongue and lips.

“The conditions were foul. Pee-pee and ca-ca everywhere. Not enough food. Maybe it weakened your mother. We were sent to Auschwitz. She must have died soon after we arrived there. I don’t know when. Your father never spoke of it. I could just tell she was gone. The men and women were kept separately, but sometimes messages got through. Someone must have told him. Or maybe he just realized what happened to the weak ones.

“He never mentioned her name. He spoke of you sometimes, though. ‘My daughter in Canada.’ Kanada. It was our name for the lucky bastards who sorted through all the stuff that was confiscated every time a new transport arrived, piles of coats, ladies’ purses. Sometimes they could smuggle things out into the camp, little things, and trade them for a bit of extra food or something, a kind of black market. Kanada,” he snorted. “Wealth beyond our dreams. Sometimes we would imagine what you were eating there.
Your father was a man who liked his food, I think. A nice
blanquette de veau
for lunch; a sole, a sole
meunière …

You could say he survived. He died the day after liberation.”

“He died. How did he…?”

“The hunger. Malnutrition. I don’t know.” “But…”

“He died, mademoiselle.”

Sarah looked at the old man’s face and saw his speech had exhausted him. She wanted to pay for the drink, but felt later that she must have badly botched her offer, for he rebuffed her rudely. She tried another gesture, asking politely, “Do you still have your shop?” before realizing her mistake.

“I lost the shop,” he said briefly. “I have my pension now.”

She put all the gratitude she could into her final attempt: “Thank you. You have been so kind.”

He shrugged his shoulders and she left the café.

She went the next day to the Red Cross office but the young man behind the counter was not there. In his place was a motherly figure in her fifties who greeted Sarah with a friendly smile.

“Can I help you?”

“The man who works here…”

“Michel? You are looking for Michel? He has moved back downstairs, to Blood Services. You can find him there.”

“Oh.” Sarah paused, feeling bereft somehow. “Why did he leave?”

“Well, I suppose he is better suited to work in Blood Services.” The woman smiled tactfully. Sarah swallowed.

“But I have a file here…”

“Oh. I thought you wanted Michel. I can help you with a file. Are you Mademoiselle Simon? Michel told me you might come by.”

“Yes. I have found information about my parents. He said I needed only one witness.”

She had her witness. The woman listened to M. Letsky’s information, opened the huge ledger that still lay on the trestle table, and inscribed the words: “Sophie Alice Weil Bensimon. Born April 30, 1908. Died winter 1942–43 at Auschwitz, exact date and cause unknown.”

Then she turned to another register, looked up the date of liberation, and added one day. “Philippe Jean-Jacques Simon Bensimon. Born March 27, 1900. Died as the result of malnutrition at Auschwitz, January 28, 1945.” She proceeded to copy the information onto a piece of foolscap, a few black lines at the top of the long white sheet, and then went round to the filing cabinets to tuck the paper away. She returned to the counter, opened another ledger, and made a few notes in its pages.

She looked up and smiled at Sarah.

“It’s a relief, information.” She smiled again. “We can contact your witness and arrange to have an affidavit signed. I’ve just made a note here. Then you can get copies of the file whenever you require them.”

“Yes, I’ll come back,” Sarah said, anxious now to be gone. She left and went downstairs, wondering what to do next. She lingered in the hall for a while. There was a sign clearly pointing the direction to Blood Services, so eventually she followed it, pushing through a great swinging door with a window of frosted glass. She entered a pristine white room that seemed entirely empty, with no clerk serving at its
shining stainless-steel countertop and no file in sight. She stood there for a while, unsure what to do. Just when she was debating whether she had the courage to cough loudly or would simply leave, a figure in a white lab coat emerged through another swinging door, behind the counter. It was the young man from the Tracing Bureau, Michel.

“So, you found me.”

“Yes.” Sarah felt embarrassed, but persisted. “Why did you leave?”

“Some people just aren’t suited for Tracing.” He said the words archly, as though mimicking an officious but friendly superior. Then in his own natural voice, he added, “You have to have hope to work in Tracing, a bit of hope.”

“I found a witness.”

“Yes. Did Madame record it for you?”

“Yes.”

He looked at Sarah, still standing there, and felt both pity and annoyance rising within him. He was tired of these Americans, with their belief in justice and knowledge, as though knowing would make any difference. He had lost both parents and two brothers to the camps, while he hid with a Catholic family in the unoccupied zone. He saw also that she wanted to tell him. Trying to keep all exasperation from his voice, he asked, “What did you find?”

Sarah hesitated. It was her first test. She knew that she must now learn how to tell this story.

“My parents were sent to Auschwitz. My mother died soon after they arrived, we don’t know exactly how, but my father survived. He died the day after liberation.” She paused. “The man, the man I found, he had been there with my father, he said it was malnutrition.” She stopped again, uncertain. “But they had been liberated. They must have had food by then.”

Michel looked at her, and with something that was almost cruelty, but perhaps it was a certain kind of generosity, who can say, he gave Sarah one further piece of information.

“The Soviets liberated Auschwitz from the East. It was one of the first camps they encountered. The only prisoners left were sick and dying. The Nazis had cleared out anyone who could move. The Russians did not know what to expect, how to treat the diseases. When you are famished, your stomach shrinks. They gave the liberated prisoners full rations…”

The next week Sarah took the train to Le Havre and sailed for home.

Paris has erupted into the most spectacular spring, perhaps made more intense by the cold winter. There is a green haze along the boulevards as the chestnut trees come into leaf. I took a carriage into the Bois yesterday afternoon, and from its windows I could smell the soft breezes and hear the cries of the children. I had forgotten the feeling of anticipation that accompanies the spring, an intensity filled to bursting with the sense that something is about to happen. You have to shake your head to remind yourself that life is the same, and unlikely to suddenly become any different. Husbands are unfaithful, children get sick, parents die, and there is little to look forward to except a nice piece of beef for dinner—and the sight of the leaves on the trees after a long winter.

Marcel is all agog for he has met the famous Comte de Montesquiou at Mme Lemaire’s. He joined me at breakfast this morning, an unusual event, but I gather he had been so excited by the musical evening at Mme Lemaire’s that he could not sleep and was just waiting for dawn. He described the Count in such detail, I could almost see the man, and could not help laughing—both at Marcel’s enthusiasm and at the description itself. Apparently, the Count lives up to all the little stories one hears society ladies telling about him: he is both fabulously handsome and fabulously rude. To think, yesterday evening he
asked his hostess why her guests were particularly ugly this evening and was this to continue next season too!

Marcel said even the ever-garrulous Madeleine Lemaire seemed at a loss as to how she should reply and just said, “Oh Count, you’re so witty.” Marcel and I agreed that was quite inadequate as a response and amused ourselves thinking up alternatives, arguing how much moral disapproval one could risk expressing without fear of losing the great man from one’s guest list! “Why, M. le Comte, beauty is quite out of fashion these days,” was our best effort. Naughty Marcel repeated to me a remark of Mme Straus that he felt was appropriate for the occasion. Last year, she defended the literary tone of her salon to some great lover of women by saying, “I provide brains, not bosoms.” More seriously, I warned Marcel that there is some great hurt inside a man who would take such a perverse pleasure in shocking others, but he would not hear a word against the Count and is quite captivated.

We would do well to remember our Montesquieu—only one letter different, but how much more wise: “Running after wit, one catches only foolishness.”

Surprising news from India, good news, I should say. The cholera epidemics have been fierce and Adrien has been following reports with grave concern. Without a source of drinking water uncontaminated by their own filth, pilgrims at Mecca have been dying in the thousands, and it seemed India was just as bad, but one of the Germans has cut the death rate in half by
using a vaccine he had tested on himself. Adrien is considering a trip. He is getting too old for such things, but there is no point my trying to dissuade him if he decides to go.

Marcel remains very busy with his parties, and is quite enchanted with the company he meets at Mme Lemaire’s, including this week a pianist and a poet.

Marcel is being pursued by the Comte de Montesquiou no less. I gather the Count is to be seen not only chez Mme Lemaire on Tuesdays but also at the Princesse Mathilde’s Wednesdays, where Marcel is now regularly invited, and the great man has taken an interest in Marcel’s idea of a literary career. This all came out yesterday when I was arguing with Marcel about his future, urging him to heed his father’s advice and reserve what strength he has for pursuing an occupation. He replied that not everyone agreed with us, and indeed the Count himself had urged him to consider literature as a profession. Marcel has agreed to dine with him soon. I don’t trust the man: from all I hear he is decidedly odd despite his breeding.

Marie-Marguerite is having terrible problems with her ankle. She sprained it last week in the Bois, wearing solid shoes but a stone tripped her up nonetheless, and now the swelling just will not go down. When her servant told me she could not see me yesterday, I sent a message saying I would visit today or tomorrow. She would not
hear of it at first, but really she does not need to stand on ceremony with me, and we can have a good talk while she rests. I suggested Adrien attend to her, but he says Dr. Pozzi-will give her excellent care. He is such a flirt I wonder that M. Catusse would want him at his wife’s bedside, but Adrien says his medical skills are never in doubt, even if his fidelity to his wife always is!

Marcel’s new friend, the young pianist M. Hahn, dropped by yesterday to pick him up to go out for the evening. The hour was late, but he very politely came into the salon to meet us. He is a fabulously handsome young man, darker than Marcel, with a lovely nose, strong but very straight, and black, curly hair, much thicker than Marcel’s or Dick’s. Apparently his family is from Venezuela, but have lived in Paris since he was a boy. Jewish on his father’s side, but quite literary and integrated from Marcel’s description. His manners are very pleasant, and I told him he must come to tea with his mother one day soon. (She knows the Neubergers apparently, so we have that connection.) He said that he would, and would be honoured if he could play for me too.

Marcel is full of high spirits these days, and when not racing out to some dinner or party with Reynaldo Hahn, he is busy writing in his room. I am not sure these literary ambitions are wise, but one does not like to question him when he is so obviously happy. He is already weighing his many invitations for summer house parties.

I may well spend my holidays alone this year. The doctor expects to be very busy in the next few months getting research out of the way, so he can really concentrate on the plans for the
cordon
next autumn, and does not expect to get much time away. And Dick will want to spend as much of the summer as possible with his comrades before he has to start his dreaded service. They are not soldiers, my little wolves! I am debating the merits of Trouville versus Cabourg, and wondering if I might convince Marie-Marguerite to accompany me for a bit. I might even luxuriate in some time away from family after all.

It certainly has been a relief in these years, although I would never tell Adrien this, not to have to make the annual trek to Illiers. It is a lovely little town, to be sure, and the walks we did there were so beautiful. Elisabeth was very kind, but I never did feel completely comfortable in that little house. Marcel loved it dearly and was so sad when his asthma just made it impossible to keep going, but I always wondered what the Amiots really thought of us. When the boys were babies it was easy enough, little children always build a natural bond between their elders, but as they grew it had been increasingly difficult to find ready subjects of conversation. Well, the differences between the families were starting to show, that was all. Adrien really did travel a long journey from Illiers to the Hôtel Dieu and the Faculty of Medicine. Perhaps it would have been easier had I been Catholic, although, of course, the Prousts and the Amiots were always open-minded about my religion, I have no complaint there. But I was never one of them.