Sarah's Key (16 page)

The dog was held back by its master. She felt a hand grope inside, grasp her arm, Rachel’s arm. They slithered out.

The man was small, wizened, with a bald head and a silver mustache.

“Now what do we have here?” he murmured, peering at them in the glare of the lamppost.

The girl felt Rachel stiffen, guessed she was going to take off, fast, like a rabbit.

“Are you lost?” asked the old man. His voice seemed concerned.

The children were startled. They had expected threats, blows, anything but kindness.

“Please, sir, we are very hungry,” said Rachel.

The man nodded.

“I can see that.”

He bent to silence the whining dog. Then he said, “Come in, children. Follow me.”

Neither of the girls moved. Could they trust this old man?

“Nobody will hurt you here,” he said.

They huddled together, fearful still.

The man smiled, a kind, gentle smile.

“Geneviève!” he called, twisting back to the house.

An elderly woman wearing a blue dressing gown appeared in the large doorway.

“What is that idiotic dog of yours barking at now, Jules?” she asked, annoyed. Then she saw the children. Her hands fluttered to her cheeks.

“Heavens above,” she murmured.

She came nearer. She had a placid, round face and a thick, white braid. She gazed at the children with pity and dismay.

The girl’s heart leaped. The old lady looked like the photograph of her grandmother from Poland. The same light-colored eyes, white hair, the same comforting plumpness.

“Jules,” the elderly lady whispered, “are they—”

The old man nodded.

“Yes, I think so.”

The old lady said, firmly, “They must come in. They must be hidden at once.”

She waddled down to the dirt road, peered both ways.

“Quick, children, come now,” she said, holding out her hands. “You are safe here. You are safe with us.”

THE NIGHT HAD BEEN dreadful. I woke up puffy-faced with lack of sleep. I was glad Zoë had already left for school. I would have hated for her to see me now. Bertrand was kind, tender. He said we needed to talk it over some more. We could do so that evening, once Zoë was asleep. He said all this perfectly calmly, with great gentleness. I could tell he had made up his mind. Nothing or no one was going to make him want me to have this child.

I couldn’t bring myself to talk about it yet to my friends or to my sister. Bertrand’s choice had disturbed me to such an extent that I preferred to keep it to myself, at least for the time being.

It was difficult to get going this morning. Everything I did felt laborious. Every movement was an effort. I kept having flashbacks of last night. Of what he had said. There was no other solution but to throw myself into work. That afternoon, I was to meet Franck Lévy in his office. The Vel’ d’Hiv’ seemed far away all of a sudden. I felt like I had aged overnight. Nothing seemed to matter anymore, nothing except the child I carried and that my husband did not want.

I was on my way to the office when my cell phone rang. It was Guillaume. He had found a couple of those out-of-print books I needed concerning the Vel’ d’Hiv’, at his grandmother’s place. He could lend them to me. Could I meet him later on in the day, or that evening, for a drink? His voice was cheerful, friendly. I said yes immediately. We agreed to meet at six o’clock, at the Select on the boulevard du Montparnasse, two minutes away from home. We said good-bye, and then my phone rang again.

It was my father-in-law this time. I was surprised. Edouard rarely called me. We got on, in that French polite way. We both excelled at mutual small talk. But I was never truly comfortable with him. I always felt as if he was holding something back, never showing his feelings, to me, or to anybody else for that matter.

The kind of man one listens to. The kind of man one looks up to. I could not imagine him showing any other emotion apart from anger, pride, and self-satisfaction. I never saw Edouard wearing jeans, even during those Burgundy weekends when he would sit in the garden under the oak tree reading Rousseau. I don’t think I ever saw him without a tie, either. I remembered the first time I met him. He hadn’t changed much in the last seventeen years. The same regal posture, silver hair, steely eyes. My father-in-law was overly fond of cooking, and was constantly shooing Colette away from the kitchen, turning out simple, delicious meals—pot-au-feu, onion soup, a savory ratatouille, or a truffle omelet. The only person allowed in the kitchen with him was Zoë. He had a soft spot for Zoë, although Cécile and Laure had both produced boys, Arnaud and Louis. He adored my daughter. I never knew what went on during their cooking sessions. Behind the closed door, I could hear Zoë’s giggle, and vegetables being chopped, water bubbling, fat hissing in a pan, and Edouard’s occasional deep rumble of a chuckle.

Edouard asked how Zoë was doing, how the apartment was coming along. And then he got to the point. He had been to see Mamé yesterday. It had been a “bad” day, he added. Mamé was in one of her sulks. He had been about to leave her pouting at her television, when all of a sudden, out of the blue, she had said something about me.

“And what was that?” I asked, curious.

Edouard cleared his throat.

“My mother said that you had been asking her all sorts of questions about the rue de Saintonge apartment.”

I took a deep breath.

“Well, that’s true, I did,” I admitted. I wondered what he was getting at.

Silence.

“Julia, I prefer that you don’t ask Mamé anything about the rue de Saintonge.”

He spoke suddenly in English, as if he wanted to be perfectly sure I understood.

Stung, I replied in French.

“I’m sorry, Edouard. It’s just that I’m researching the Vel’ d’Hiv’ roundup at the moment for the magazine. I was surprised at the coincidence.”

Another silence.

“The coincidence?” he repeated, using French again.

“Well, yes,” I said, “about the Jewish family who lived there just before your family moved in and who were arrested during the roundup. I think Mamé was upset when she told me about it. So I stopped asking her questions.”

“Thank you, Julia,” he said. He paused. “It
does
upset Mamé. Don’t mention it to her again, please.”

I halted in the middle of the sidewalk.

“Ok, I won’t,” I said, “but I didn’t mean any harm, I only wanted to know how your family ended up in that apartment, and if Mamé knew anything about the Jewish family. Do you, Edouard? Do you know anything?”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that,” he replied smoothly. “I must go, now. Good-bye, Julia.”

The line went dead.

He had puzzled me to such an extent that for a brief moment, I forgot about Bertrand and last night. Had Mamé really complained to Edouard about my questioning her? I remembered how she had no longer wanted to answer me that day. How she had shut up, not opening her mouth once till I had left, baffled. Why had Mamé been so upset? Why were Mamé and Edouard so intent on me not asking questions about the apartment? What did they not want me to know?

Bertrand and the baby came back down on my shoulders with a heavy weight. All of a sudden, I couldn’t face going to the office. Alessandra’s curious gaze. She would be inquisitive, as usual, she would ask questions. Trying to be friendly, but failing. Bamber and Joshua glancing at my swollen face. Bamber, a true gentleman, would not say a thing, but would discreetly squeeze my shoulder. And Joshua. He would be the worst. “Well now, sugar plum, what’s the drama? Ze French husband, again?” I could almost see his sardonic grin, handing me a cup of coffee. There was no way I could go to the office this morning.

I headed back up toward the Arc de Triomphe, picking my impatient but deft way through the hordes of tourists walking along at a sluggish pace, gazing up the arch and pausing for photos. I took my address book out and dialed Franck Lévy’s association. I asked if I could come now, and not this afternoon. I was told there was no problem. Now was perfect. It wasn’t far, just off the avenue Hoche. It only took me ten minutes to get there. Once off the engorged artery of the Champs-Élysées, the other avenues springing out from the Place de l’Étoile were surprisingly empty.

Franck Lévy was in his mid-sixties, I guessed. There was something profound, noble, and weary about his face. We went into his office, a high-ceilinged room filled with books, files, computers, photographs. I let my eyes linger over the black-and-white prints hung on the wall. Babies. Toddlers. Children wearing the star.

“Many of these are Vel’ d’Hiv’ children,” he said, following my gaze. “But there are others, too. All part of the eleven thousand children deported from France.”

We sat down at his desk. I had e-mailed him a couple of questions before our interview.

“You wanted to know about the Loiret camps?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Beaune-la-Rolande and Pithiviers. There’s a lot more information available about Drancy, which is nearer to Paris. Much less on the other two.”

Franck Lévy sighed.

“You’re right. There’s little to be found about the Loiret camps compared with Drancy. And you’ll see, when you go there, there’s not much there that explains exactly what happened. The people who live there don’t want to remember either. They don’t want to talk. Also, there were few survivors.”

I looked again at the photos, at the rows of small, vulnerable faces.

“What were these camps in the first place?” I asked.

“They were standard military camps built in 1939 for imprisoning German soldiers. But under the Vichy government, Jews were sent there as from 1941. In ’42, the first direct trains to Auschwitz left Beaune-la-Rolande and Pithiviers.”

“Why weren’t the Vel’ d’Hiv’ families sent to Drancy, in the Paris suburbs?”

Franck Lévy gave a bleak smile.

“The Jews without children were sent to Drancy after the roundup. Drancy is close to Paris. The other camps were more than an hour away. Lost in the middle of the quiet Loiret countryside. And it was there, in all discretion, that the French police separated the children from their parents. They could not have done that so easily in Paris. You have read about their brutality I suppose?”

“There is not much to read.”

The bleak smile faded.

“You’re right. Not much to read. But we know how it happened. I have a couple of books you’re welcome to borrow. The children were torn from the mothers. Bludgeoned, beaten, drenched with cold water.”

My eyes wandered once more over the little faces in the photos. I thought of Zoë, alone, torn from me and Bertrand. Alone and hungry and dirty. I shivered.

“Those four thousand Vel’ d’Hiv’ children were a severe headache for the French authorities,” said Franck Lévy. “The Nazis had asked for the adults to be deported immediately. Not the children. The strict programming of the trains was not to be altered. Hence the brutal separation from the mothers in the beginning of August.”

“And then, what happened to those children?” I asked.

“Their parents were deported from the Loiret camps straight to Auschwitz. The children were left practically alone in horrifying sanitary conditions. Mid-August, the decision from Berlin came through. The children were to be deported as well. However, in order to avoid suspicion, the children were to be sent to Drancy, and then on to Poland, mixing with unknown adults from the Drancy camp, so that the public opinion would think these children were not alone, traveling east with their families to some Jewish work reserve.”

Franck Lévy paused, looking as I did at the photographs hung along the wall.

“When those children arrived in Auschwitz, there was no ‘selection’ for them. No lining up with the men and the women. No checking to see who was strong, who was sick, who could work, who could not. They were sent directly to the gas chambers.”

“By the French government, on French buses, on French trains,” I added.

Maybe it was because I was pregnant, because my hormones had gone awry, or because I hadn’t slept, but I suddenly felt devastated.

I stared at the photos, stricken.

Franck Lévy watched me in silence. Then he got up and put a hand on my shoulder.