Sarah's Key (23 page)

EDOUARD TÉZAC GRIPPED THE steering wheel with his hands till his knuckles turned white. I stared at them, mesmerized.

“I can still hear her scream,” he whispered. “I cannot forget it. Ever.”

I felt stunned with what I now knew. Sarah Starzynski had escaped from Beaune-la-Rolande. She had come back to the rue de Saintonge. She had made a hideous discovery.

I couldn’t talk. I could only look at my father-in-law. He went on with a hoarse, low voice.

“There was a ghastly moment, when my father looked into the cupboard. I tried to look too. He pushed me away. I couldn’t understand what was going on. There was this smell … The smell of something rotten, putrid. Then my father slowly pulled out the body of a dead boy. A child, not more than three or four. I had never seen a dead body in my life. It was the most heartbreaking sight. The boy had wavy blond hair. He was stiff, curled up, his face resting upon his hands. He had gone a horrible, green color.”

He stopped, the words choking in his throat. I thought he was going to retch. I touched his elbow, tried to communicate my sympathy, my warmth. It was an unreal situation, me trying to comfort my proud, haughty father-in-law, reduced to tears, a quivering old man. He dabbed at his eyes with unsure fingertips. Then he went on.

“We all stood there, horrified. The girl fainted. She fell, right to the floor. My father picked her up, put her on my bed. She came around, saw his face, and backed away, screaming. I began to understand, listening to my father, to the couple who had come with her. The dead boy was her little brother. Our new apartment had been her home. The boy had been hidden there the day of the Vel’ d’Hiv’ roundup, on July 16. The girl thought she was going to be able to come back to free him, but she had been taken to a camp, outside Paris.”

A new pause. It seemed endless to me.

“And then? What happened then?” I said, finding my voice at last.

“The old couple came from Orléans. The girl had escaped from a nearby camp and had ended up on their property. They had decided to help her, to bring her back to Paris, to her home. My father told them that our family had moved in at the end of July. He did not know about the cupboard, which was in my room. None of us knew. I
had
noticed a strong, bad smell, and my father thought there was something wrong with the drains, and we were expecting the plumber that week.”

“What did your father do with … with the little boy?”

“I don’t know. I remember he said he wanted to take care of everything. He was in shock, terribly unhappy. I think the old couple took the body away. I’m not sure. I don’t remember.”

“And then what?” I asked, breathless.

He glanced at me sardonically.

“And then what? And then what!” A bitter laugh. “Julia, can you imagine what we felt like when the girl left? The way she looked at us. She hated us. She loathed us. For her, we were responsible. We were criminals. Criminals of the worst sort. We had moved into her home. We had let her brother die. Her eyes … Such hatred, pain, despair. The eyes of a woman in the face of a ten-year-old girl.”

I could see those eyes too. I shivered.

Edouard sighed, rubbed his tired, withered face with his palms. “After they left, my father sat down and put his head in his hands. He cried. For a long time. I had never seen him cry. I never saw him cry again. My father was such a strong, rugged fellow. I was told that Tézac men never cry. Never show their emotions. It was a dreadful moment. He said that something monstrous had happened. Something that he and I would remember our entire lives. Then he began to tell me things he had never mentioned. He said I was old enough now to know. He said that he had not asked Madame Royer about who lived in the apartment before we moved in. He knew it had been a Jewish family, and that they had been arrested during that big roundup. But he had closed his eyes. He had closed his eyes, like so many other Parisians, during that terrible year of 1942. He had closed his eyes the day of the roundup, when he had seen all those people being driven away, packed on buses, taken God knows where. He hadn’t even asked why the apartment was empty, what had happened to the family’s belongings. He had acted like any other Parisian family, eager to move into a bigger, better place. He had closed his eyes. And now, this had happened. The girl had come back and the little boy was dead. He was probably already dead when we moved in. My father said that we could never forget. Never. And he was right, Julia. It has been there, within us. And it has been there for me, for the past sixty years.”

He stopped, his chin still pressed down onto his chest. I tried to imagine what it must have been for him, to carry that secret for so long.

“And Mamé?” I asked, determined to push Edouard on, to drag the entire story out.

He shook his head slowly.

“Mamé was not there that afternoon. My father did not want her to find out what had happened. He felt overcome with guilt, he felt it was his fault, even if, of course, it wasn’t. He couldn’t bear the idea of her knowing. And perhaps judging him. He told me I was old enough to keep a secret. She must never know, he said. He seemed so desperate, so sad. So I agreed to keep the secret.”

“And she still doesn’t know?” I whispered.

He sighed again, deeply.

“I’m not sure, Julia. She knew about the roundup. We all knew about the roundup, it had happened right in front of us. When she came back that evening, my father and I were so strange, peculiar, that she sensed something had taken place. That night, and many nights after, I kept seeing the dead boy. I had nightmares. They lasted till well into my twenties. I was relieved to move out of that apartment. I think maybe my mother knew. I think maybe she knew what my father went through, how he must have felt. Maybe he ended up telling her, because it was too much for him to bear. But she never talked to me about it.”

“And Bertrand? And your daughters? And Colette?”

“They know nothing.”

“Why not?” I asked.

He put his hand on my wrist. It was frozen, its cold touch seeping through my skin like ice.

“Because I promised my father, on his deathbed, that I would not tell my children or my wife. He carried his guilt within him for the rest of his life. He could not share it. He could not speak to anyone about it. And I respected that. Do you understand?”

I nodded.

“Of course.”

I paused.

“Edouard, what happened to Sarah?”

He shook his head.

“Between 1942 and the moment on his deathbed, my father never uttered her name. Sarah became a secret. A secret I never stopped thinking about. I don’t think my father ever realized how much I thought of her. How his silence regarding her made me suffer. I longed to know how she was, where she was, what had happened to her. But every time I tried to question him, he would silence me. I could not believe that he no longer cared, that he had turned the page, that she no longer meant anything to him. It seemed like he had wanted to bury it all in the past.”

“Did you resent him for that?”

He nodded.

“Yes, I did. I resented him. My admiration for him was tarnished, forever. But I could not tell him. I never did.”

We sat in silence for a little moment. The nurses were probably beginning to wonder why Monsieur Tézac and his daughter-in-law were sitting in that car for so long.

“Edouard, don’t you want to know what happened to Sarah Starzynski?”

He smiled for the first time.

“But I wouldn’t know where to begin,” he said.

I smiled, too.

“But that’s my job. I can help you.”

His face seemed less haggard, less ashen. His eyes were suddenly bright, full of a new light.

“Julia, there’s one last thing. When my father died nearly thirty years ago, I was told by his attorney that a number of confidential papers were being held in the safe.”

“Did you read them?” I asked, my pulse quickening.

He looked down.

“I glanced through them, briefly, just after my father’s death.”

“And?” I said, breathlessly.

“Just papers about the boutique, stuff concerning paintings, furniture, silverware.”

“That’s all?”

He smiled at my blatant disappointment.

“I believe so.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, baffled.

“I never had another look. I went through the pile very fast, I remember being furious there was nothing there about Sarah. I resented my father all the more.”

I bit my lip.

“So you’re saying you’re not sure there is nothing there.”

“Yes. And I’ve never checked since.”

“Why not?”

He pressed his lips together.

“Because I didn’t want to be certain there was nothing there.”

“And feel even worse about your father.”

“Yes,” he admitted.

“So you don’t know what’s in there for sure. You haven’t known for thirty years.”

“No,” he said.

Our eyes met. It only took a couple of seconds.

He started the car. He drove like a bat of hell to where I assumed his bank was. I had never seen Edouard drive so fast. Drivers brandished furious fists. Pedestrians scooted aside with terror. We did not say a word as we hurtled along, but our silence was a warm, excited one. We were sharing this. We were sharing something for the first time. We kept looking at each other, and smiling.

But by the time we found a place to park on the avenue Bosquet and rushed to the bank, it was closed for lunch hour, another typically French custom that aggravated me, particularly today. I was so disappointed I could have cried.

Edouard kissed me on both cheeks, pushed me gently away.

“You go, Julia. I’ll come back at two, when it opens. I’ll call if there is something there.”

I walked down the avenue and caught the 92 bus, which would take me straight to the office, over the Seine.

As the bus drove away, I turned around and saw Edouard waiting in front of the bank, a solitary, stiff figure in his dark-green coat.

I wondered how he would feel if there was nothing in the safe about Sarah, just masses of papers about old master paintings and porcelain.

And my heart went out to him.

ARE YOU SURE ABOUT this, Miss Jarmond?” my doctor asked. She looked up at me from over her half-moon glasses.

“No,” I replied truthfully. “But for the moment, I need to make those appointments.”

She ran her eyes over my medical file.

“I’m happy to make the appointments for you, but I’m not certain you are entirely comfortable with what you have decided.”

My thoughts ran back to last evening. Bertrand had been exceptionally tender, attentive. All night long, he had held me in his arms, told me again and again he loved me, he needed me, but that he couldn’t face the prospect of having a child so late in life. He felt that growing older would bring us closer, that we would be able to travel often, while Zoë was becoming more independent. He had envisaged our fifties like a second honeymoon.

I had listened to him, tears running down my face in the dark. The irony of it all. He was saying everything, down to the very word, that I had always dreamed of hearing him say. It was all there, the gentleness, the commitment, the generosity. But the hitch was that I was carrying a baby he did not want. My last chance of being a mother. I kept thinking of what Charla had said: “This is your child, too.”

For years, I had longed to give Bertrand another child. To prove myself. To be that perfect wife the Tézacs approved of, thought highly of. But now I realized I wanted this child for myself. My baby. My last child. I longed for its weight in my arms. I longed for the milky, sweet smell of its skin. My baby. Yes, Bertrand was the father, but this was my child. My flesh. My blood. I longed for the birth, for the sensation of the baby’s head pressing down through me, for that unmistakable, pure, painful sensation of bringing a child into the world, albeit with pain, with tears. I wanted those tears, I wanted that pain. I did not want the pain of emptiness, the tears of a barren, scarred womb.

I left the doctor’s office and headed toward Saint-Germain, where I was meeting Hervé and Christophe for a drink at the Café de Flore. I hadn’t planned to reveal anything, but they took one look at my face and gasped with concern. So out it came. As usual, they had opposite opinions. Hervé believed I should abort, my marriage being the most important matter. Christophe insisted that the baby was the crucial point. There was no way I could not have that child. I would regret it for the rest of my life.

They became so heated that they forgot my presence and started to quarrel. I couldn’t stand it. I stopped them by banging on the table with my clenched fist, making the glasses rattle. They looked at me with surprise. That wasn’t my style. I excused myself, said I was too tired to go on discussing the matter, and left. They gawked at me, dismayed. Never mind, I thought, I’d make it up another time. They were my oldest friends. They’d understand.

I walked home through the Luxembourg Garden. No news from Edouard since yesterday. Did that mean he had been through his father’s safe and found nothing concerning Sarah? I could imagine the resentment, all the bitterness resurfacing. The disappointment, too. I felt guilty, as if this was my fault. Rubbing salt on his old wound.