Sarah's Key (31 page)

TUSCAN HEAT HAD NOTHING to do with New England heat. It was overly dry, devoid of any humidity whatsoever. As I walked out of the Florence Peretola airport with Zoë in tow, the heat was so devastating, I thought I was going to shrivel up on the spot, dehydrated. I kept putting things down to my pregnancy, comforting myself, telling myself I didn’t usually feel this drained, this parched. Jet lag didn’t help, either. The sun seemed to bite into me, to eat into my skin and eyes despite a straw hat and dark glasses.

I had rented a car, a modest-looking Fiat, which was waiting for us in the middle of a sun-drenched parking lot. The air conditioner was more than meek. As I backed out, I wondered suddenly if I was going to make the forty-minute drive to Lucca. I craved a cool, shady room, drifting to sleep in soft, light sheets. Zoë’s stamina kept me going. She never stopped talking, pointed out the color of the sky—a deep, cloudless blue—the cypress trees lining the highway, the olive trees planted in little rows, the crumbling old houses glimpsed in the distance, perched on hilltops. “Now that’s Montecatini,” she chirped knowingly, pointing and reading out from a guide book, “famous for its luxury spa and its wine.”

As I drove, Zoë read aloud about Lucca. It was one of the rare Tuscan towns to have kept its famous medieval walls circling an unspoiled center where few cars were allowed. There was a lot to be seen, Zoë continued, the cathedral, the church of San Michele, the Guinigui tower, the Puccini museum, the Palazzo Mansi. … I smiled at her, amused by her high spirits. She glanced back at me.

“I guess we don’t have much time for sightseeing.” She grinned. “We’ve got work to do, don’t we, Mom?”

“We sure do,” I agreed.

Zoë had already found William Rainsferd’s address on her site map of Lucca. It wasn’t far from the via Fillungo, the main artery of the town, a large pedestrian street where I had booked rooms in a small guesthouse, Casa Giovanna.

As we approached Lucca and its confusing maze of ring roads, I found I had to concentrate on the erratic driving methods of the cars surrounding me, which kept pulling out, stopping, or turning without any warning whatsoever. Definitely worse than Parisians, I decided, beginning to feel flustered and irritated. There was also a slow tug in the pit of my stomach that I did not like, that felt oddly like an oncoming period. Something I ate on the plane and that didn’t agree with me? Or something worse? I felt apprehension flicker through me.

Charla was right. It was crazy coming here in my condition, not even three months pregnant. It could have waited. William Rainsferd could have waited another six months for my visit.

But then I looked at Zoë’s face. It was beautiful, incandescent with joy and excitement. She knew nothing yet about Bertrand and me separating. She was preserved still, innocent of all our plans. This would be a summer she would never forget.

And as I drove the Fiat to one of the free parking lots near the city walls, I knew I wanted to make this part as wonderful as possible for her.

I
TOLD ZOË I NEEDED to put my feet up for a while. While she chatted away in the lobby with the amiable Giovanna, a buxom lady with a sultry voice, I had a cool shower and lay down on the bed. The ache in my lower abdomen slowly ebbed away.

Our adjoining rooms were small, high up in the towering, ancient building, but perfectly comfortable. I kept thinking of my mother’s voice when I had called her from Charla’s to say I wasn’t coming to Nahant, that I was taking Zoë back to Europe. I could tell, from her brief pauses and the way she cleared her throat, that she was worried. She finally asked me if everything was all right. I replied cheerfully that everything was fine, I had an opportunity to visit Florence with Zoë, I would come back to the States later to see her and Dad. “But you’ve barely arrived! And why leave when you’ve only been with Charla for a couple of days?” she protested. “And why interrupt Zoë’s vacation here? I simply don’t understand. And you were saying how much you missed the States. This is all so rushed.”

I had felt guilty. But how could I explain the whole story to her and Dad over the phone? One day, I thought. Not now. I still felt guilty, lying on the pale pink bedspread that smelled faintly of lavender. I hadn’t even told Mom about my pregnancy. I hadn’t even told Zoë. I longed to let them in on the secret, and Dad as well. But something held me back. Some bizarre superstition, some deep-rooted apprehension I had never felt before. In the past few months, my life seemed to have shifted subtly.

Was it to do with Sarah, with the rue de Saintonge? Or was it just a belated coming-of-age? I could not tell. I only knew that I felt as if I had emerged from a long-lasting, mellow, protective fog. Now my senses were sharpened, keen. There was no fog. There was nothing mellow. There were only facts. Finding this man. Telling him his mother had never been forgotten by the Tézacs, by the Dufaures.

I was impatient to see him. He was right here, in this very town, maybe walking down the bustling via Fillungo now, at this precise moment. Somehow, as I lay in my little room, the sounds of voices and laughter rising from the narrow street through the open window, accompanied by the occasional roar of a Vespa or the sharp clang of a bicycle bell, I felt close to Sarah, closer than I had ever been before, because I was about to meet her son, her flesh, her blood. This was the closest I would ever get to the little girl with the yellow star.

Just reach out your hand, pick up that phone, and call him. Simple. Easy
. Yet I was incapable of doing it. I gazed at the obsolete black telephone, helpless, and sighed in despair and irritation. I lay back, feeling silly, almost ashamed. I realized I was so obsessed by Sarah’s son that I hadn’t even taken Lucca in, its charm, its beauty. I had trudged through it like a sleepwalker, trailing behind Zoë, who seemed to glide along the intricacy of the old winding streets as if she had always lived here. I had seen nothing of Lucca. Nothing mattered to me except William Rainsferd. And I wasn’t even capable of calling him.

Zoë came in, sat on the edge of the bed.

“You all right?” she asked.

“I had a good rest,” I answered.

She scrutinized me, her hazel eyes roving over my face.

“I think you should rest a little longer, Mom.”

I frowned.

“Do I look that tired?”

She nodded.

“Just rest, Mom. Giovanna gave me something to eat. You don’t have to worry about me. Everything is under control.”

I couldn’t help smiling at her seriousness. When she got to the door, she turned around.

“Mom …”

“Yes, sweetheart?”

“Does Papa know we’re here?”

I hadn’t told Bertrand yet about bringing Zoë to Lucca. No doubt he would explode when he found out.

“No, he doesn’t, darling.”

She fingered the door handle.

“Did you and Papa have a fight?”

No use lying to those clear, solemn eyes.

“Yes, we did, honey. Papa doesn’t agree with me trying to find out more about Sarah. He wouldn’t be happy if he knew.”

“Grand-père knows.”

I sat up, startled.

“You spoke to your grandfather about all this?”

She nodded.

“Yes. He really cares, you know, about Sarah. I called him from Long Island and told him you and I were coming here to meet her son. I knew you were going to call him at some point, but I was so excited, I had to tell him.”

“And what did he say?” I asked, amazed at my daughter’s forthrightness.

“He said we were right to come here. And he was going to tell Papa that if ever Papa made a fuss. He said you were a wonderful person.”

“Edouard said that?”

“He did.”

I shook my head, both baffled and touched.

“Grand-père said something else. He said you had to take it easy. He said I had to make sure you didn’t get too tired.”

So Edouard knew. He knew I was pregnant. He had spoken to Bertrand. There had probably been a long talk between father and son. And Bertrand was now aware of everything that had happened in the rue de Saintonge apartment in the summer of 1942.

Zoë’s voice dragged me away from Edouard.

“Why don’t you just call William, Mom? Make an appointment?”

I sat up on the bed.

“You’re right, honey.”

I took the slip of paper with William’s number in Mara’s handwriting and dialed it on the old-fashioned phone. My heart thumped away. This was surreal, I thought. Here I was, phoning Sarah’s son.

I heard a couple of irregular rings, then the whir of an answering machine. A woman’s voice in rapid Italian. I hung up quickly, feeling foolish.

“Now that was dumb,” remarked Zoë. “Never hang up on a machine. You’ve told me that a thousand times.”

I redialed, smiling at her grown-up annoyance with me. This time I waited for the beep. And when I spoke, it all came out beautifully, like something I’d rehearsed for days.

“Good afternoon, this is Julia Jarmond, I’m calling on behalf of Mrs. Mara Rainsferd. My daughter and I are in Lucca, staying at Casa Giovanna on the via Fillungo. We’re here for a couple of days. Hope to hear from you. Thanks, bye.”

I replaced the receiver in its black cradle, both relieved and disappointed.

“Good,” said Zoë. “Now you go on with your rest. I’ll see you later.”

She planted a kiss on my forehead and left the room.

WE HAD DINNER IN a small, amusing restaurant behind the hotel, near the
anfiteatro
, a large circle of ancient houses that used to host medieval games centuries ago. I felt restored after my rest and enjoyed the colorful parade of tourists, Lucchesans, street vendors, children, pigeons. Italians loved children, I discovered. Zoë was called
principessa
by waiters, shopkeepers, fawned upon, beamed upon, her ears tweaked, her nose pinched, her hair stroked. It made me nervous at first, but she reveled in it, trying out her rudimentary Italian with ardor:
“Sono francese e americana, mi chiama Zoë.”
The heat had abated, leaving cool drifts in its wake. However, I knew it would be hot and stuffy in our little rooms, high above the street. Italians, like the French, weren’t keen on air-conditioning. I wouldn’t have minded the icy blast of a machine tonight.

When we got back to Casa Giovanna, dazed with jet lag, there was a note pinned on our door. “
Per favore telefonare
William Rainsferd.”

I stood, thunderstruck. Zoë whooped.

“Now?” I said.

“Well, it’s only quarter to nine,” Zoë said.

“OK,” I answered, opening the door with trembling fingers. The black receiver stuck to my ear, I dialed his number for the third time that day. Answering machine, I mouthed to Zoë. Talk, she mouthed back. After the beep, I mumbled my name, hesitated, was about to hang up when a masculine voice said: “Hello?”

An American accent. It was him.

“Hi,” I said, “this is Julia Jarmond.”

“Hi,” he said, “I’m in the middle of dinner.”

“Oh, I’m sorry …”

“No problem. You want to meet up tomorrow before lunch?”

“Sure,” I said.

“There’s a nice café up on the walls, just beyond the Palazzo Mansi. We could meet there at noon?”

“Fine,” I said. “Um … how do we find each other?”

He laughed.

“Don’t worry. Lucca is a tiny place. I’ll find you.”

A pause.

“Good-bye,” he said, and hung up.