The Debt of Tamar (20 page)

In a brutal roundup the French authorities referred to as “Operation Spring Breeze,” The Herzikovas, along with 12,800 other Jews, were transferred to the
Vélodrome d’hiver,
a racing stadium in Paris that Jacob had frequented as a child. He had always had fond memories of the place, of cheering crowds and sticky, melting peanut chews. Towards the end of a tight race, his father would start huffing, then leap out of his chair, red-faced and smoldering, as the cycling contenders sprinted across the finish line. He loved that stadium and had always anticipated the annual spring racing season.

It was in that racing stadium that they were left without food or water. A stinking cloud of feces, sweat and tears hovered overhead, while flies and ticks plagued
les misérables
inside. On the fifth day of their confinement, they were transferred to Drancy, a concentration camp on the outskirts of Paris. After a few months of forced labor and slow starvation they were swept up like dead ants and loaded onto a train bound for Auschwitz. Jacob was twenty-seven and Haya was seventeen. The young couple was torn apart, separated between cattle car number four and cattle car number five. For several days the train trekked east. Maggots nested in Haya’s puss-filled wounds, while Jacob fought for gulps of air along the small slivers and holes in the planks of a train that crossed over to Poland and passed under a sign that read “Work will set you free.” Somewhere along the tracks between Drancy and Auschwitz, Davide Herzikova became an orphan.

Davide Herzikova was raised in the same Marais district that had once been flooded with the city’s vanished Jews. He was brought up as a Catholic in the home of a kind baker and his wife. Marie had given birth to her own child at the time, and so, the couple had successfully convinced the neighbors that the pleasantly plump young woman had actually been pregnant with twins. The boys worked in their father’s bakery, pilfering bits of honey cake and custard croissants, servicing friendly customers and enjoying the pleasantries of a simple life. Davide was happy with the notion of taking over his father’s shop one day. He worked long hours in the cozy corner bakery, while his twin brother, Edward, spent the afternoons on the roof, fashioning paper planes from street flyers and the glossy pages of magazines he tore away from unsuspecting street vendors.

From the rooftop of the crumbling building, planted between the chimneystacks and the steady rumble of the rusty radiator, Edward launched all sorts of air-born origami. From that rooftop, he launched his dreams of serving his country as a pilot in the royal French air force.

Davide had grown to become a hauntingly beautiful boy, with a quiet smile and a lingering shadow. The couple had believed that by christening him, they had saved Davide’s soul. They did the best they could to bring him up as their own, but as the boys grew, so did the gossip. Even the closest of neighbors began to question whether Davide was the couple’s natural child. Rumors circulated around town and the stark difference in the brothers’ appearances caused people to wonder when they passed.

It was the end of the school day. Davide and Edward descended three flights of stairs down to the busy boulevard below. They walked beside one another passing cafes and flower shops before turning onto the narrow alleyway leading up towards their small second story apartment. Leaving the hustle of the boulevard behind, the alley grew quieter as they ascended the shallow hill. Suddenly, David felt something sharp strike his shoulder.

“Swine!” a voice shouted from behind. Tossing a small pile of stones in his hand, Jean-Pierre Prideux stood with three other boys from their class. In his free hand he held a glass bottle of soda. “Thirsty?” He stepped forward as though he were going to offer Davide a sip.

Edward stepped up instinctively. “Hey. Knock it off!” He dropped his book bag and moved towards Jean-Pierre.

“I heard a rumor that your brother is a pig. What do you have to say about that?”

Edward stopped. The expression of astonishment was apparent to all. He looked over at Davide and the two boys exchanged confused glances.

“So you didn’t know? It’s impossible to have brown eyes if both your parents have blue.” Jean-Pierre laughed caustically. “I thought the Krauts had slaughtered all the swine in Paris.”

“Edward, you can go. This doesn’t concern you,” Sebastian, the smallest of the three boys, stepped in when it was clear Edward would not budge.

“So you’re a Jew lover?” Jean-Pierre squinted as he stared down Edward.

“I don’t understand…”

“Just get out of here!” He picked up Edward’s bag and shoved it in his direction, then spun around and faced Davide. “But not you. You’re not going anywhere.” He smashed his cola bottle against the crumbling bricks as his three cronies wrestled Davide against the wall. A shrill sound echoed through the alley as a stream of fizzy soda descended downhill towards the boulevard below.

Jean-Pierre held the broken bottle up and examined the protruding shards as he spoke. “If you’re a pig like they say you are, you should be circumcised.” He raised the jagged glass up to a single ray of light that streaked diagonally across the alley.

Davide struggled as three boys pinned him against the brick wall. His head twisted from side to side as he tried to bite the forearms of his aggressors.

Jean-Pierre took the glass and held the jagged edges up towards Davide’s face. “You want to be a good piggy don’t you?” He offered up a toothy grin. “We can help you.”

“No!” Edward shouted as he leapt upon Jean-Pierre’s back, digging his fingers into the sockets of his eyes.

Within seconds, Edward was pinned to the ground with Jean-Pierre kneeling over him. He took his soda bottle and struck it across Edward’s face, eliciting a bright stream of blood from a deep gash above his eye. “I don’t know what I find more disgusting, a Jew, or a Jew lover.” He spat in Edward’s face, stood up and kicked him in the gut. “Next time, I’m gonna take out your eye.”

Edward cried out, his body curled and twisting in pain.

The three others gave Davide one final shove against the wall before they released him and moseyed off the way they’d come.

Blood trickled down Edward’s face leaving bright red spots all along the length of his shirt. He took a few wobbly steps and nearly collapsed before Davide lifted him up and carried him in his arms up the narrow cobbled street towards their home.

When they arrived, Davide could see Marie rolling dough behind the counter through the window. A few customers were hunched over the pastry counter having their pick of chocolate croissants and marmalade biscuits.

As soon as she caught a glimpse of Edward, Marie dashed out of the store. “What’s happened!” she shouted as she followed them up towards their second-story flat.

“I need you to grab hold of his legs!” Davide shouted as they ascended the stairwell.

“Who did this? Tell me who did this,” Marie pressed as she lifted Edward’s legs off the ground.

“Just follow my lead, slow and steady. That’s it. Just a few more steps…”

“My G-d! He’s covered in blood.”

“I’ve got him,” Davide said as he hugged his brother’s back up against his chest. “Now go ahead and open the door.”

Marie placed Edward’s legs down on the ground and hurried to follow Davide’s instructions.

“Let’s lie him down over on the couch,” Davide directed once inside. “And some clean linens, we’ll need them right away.”

“Who did this!” Marie begged Davide for an answer.

“Call for a doctor,
Maman
. That cut won’t heal on its own.”

A half hour passed before Dr. Pinoire appeared with his black doctoring kit. Edward moaned groggily while the gash above his eye was sewn up. When he was done, the doctor gave Marie instructions on how to clean and care for the wound. She, in turn, paid him with what few francs she had, promising to get the rest of the payment to him by the end of the week.

Once Edward was sleeping soundly in his bed, Davide lowered himself onto an armchair and examined Marie curiously. “
Maman
,” he called to her gently.

“What is it, Son?” She sat with her eyes closed and her head resting against the sofa back.

“Son? Is that what I am to you?”

She opened her eyes and sat up. “Davide?”

“It’s suddenly obvious,” he continued calmly.

“What’s this about?”

He laughed sadly. “Perhaps I knew it all along.”

“What have you heard?”

“I often wondered about my brown eyes. It seemed so unusual. You, Papa and Edward, all with your ice blue eyes…”

“Davide, what’s happened?”

He leaned forward and took her hands in his own. “Just tell me.”

“Tell you?” Her voice was almost a whisper.

“The truth.”

Marie looked into Davide’s eyes.

“It will be all right,” he assured her.

“I…I…” She could barely get a word out.

“I know it now. I just need to hear you say it.”

“I prayed this day would never come…” She gazed at him lovingly. Her words, so soft and breathlessly delicate, fell upon him like a gossamer. “Your name is Davide,” she told a wide-eyed, teary youth. “Davide Herzikova.”

The name rolled through his ears and through his heart and settled in his mind like a beautiful song he could not shake.

She reached for a heap of yarn, her fingers quickly going to work on the scarf she’d been knitting throughout the week. “She was lovely …” Marie began after a long, lingering silence.

Davide fought to catch his breath. “My mother?”

Marie winced. “Your birth mother.”

He struggled now to speak. “How did you know her?”

Marie sighed deeply. “She’d come into the bakery often. We shared an unspoken bond, your mother and I. You see, we were both due to give birth at the very same time.”

“Go on.”

“Toward the end of her ninth month, she came in one day. The bulge in her belly was gone. Before I could congratulate her, she said something strange to me. ‘I hear you are expecting twins,
n’est-ce pas
?’”

“But you were not expecting twins?” Davide cut in.

“Just the one. But I understood what she was asking of me. The roundups, the lootings, rumors of death camps in the east. Your mother slid a basket over the counter and told me she’d return for you as soon as it was safe. We hid you until Edward was born three days later. Everyone just assumed I’d given birth to twins.”

Davide swallowed hard. “She never came back.”

Marie frowned. “Never.”

He nodded.

“They left something.” She put down her yarn and shuffled toward a closet at the end of the hall, returning a moment later with a small tweed sack. “For you,” she said, then handed over the sack.

Dust flared out as Davide struggled to loosen a knot in the drawstring opening. Inside, he found several gold coins and a locket on a long gold chain. Within the locket, he discovered a faded photo of his late mother, the expression on her face peaceful, the thick curls in her hair apparent despite being pulled back into a low chignon. He traced the edge of the locket’s frame with the tip of his finger and gazed at the photograph of Haya Herzikova.

Then, very slowly, he found his way to the floor as mourners do. After a moment of absolute stillness, he wrapped his arms around Marie’s legs and wept in the lap of the only mother he’d ever known.

After that day, Davide refused to return to the Catholic boy’s school and politely informed customers at the bakery that his name was Davide Herzikova. He learned of the impressive chateau just Northwest of Paris that lay on the jutting seaport of Cherbourg. It was the summer retreat on the edge of Normandy that the Herzikova family had held in their family for generations before the war.

That year, he sought out the estate with Edward by his side. It was a devastating site. The grand chalet looked more like a mausoleum than a summer vacation spot. When the Nazis invaded Paris, they had scoured the coast for grand structures they could confiscate and convert into army bases. Bullet shells littered the grass, peeking out from the shadows of overgrown weeds and tall, slinking wildflowers. Disjointed canon artillery lay in a red, rusted heap. It loomed over the edge of the steep, rocky cliffs, boasting empty threats to the passing sailors of the English Channel. Like the bones of a long gone beast, it evoked an eerie sense of unease, but no longer had the power to hurt.

The chateau had been in his family for as far back as anyone could remember. It had once been a place of weekend vacations, where his father, along with his aunts and uncles, would retreat for the Sabbath, away from the hustle and smog of the
Marais
district. Blossoming trees flourished in an apple orchard that refused to succumb to years of neglect. He imagined his father and uncles as youths, sipping on fresh cider, playing hide and seek among the trees, coming home only at sundown, when they were called in for supper.
What were their names,
he wondered.
What did they look like? Did they play the piano like he did? Were they lonely like he was? No, they were a real family. They had each other. But then the Germans came one cool night in June, their bombs overhead, and their U-boats just off the shores of this rocky retreat. They took them away…and the big house was empty…

“I don’t know who I am,” Davide said to Edward as they looked up at the crumbling beauty of the majestic chateau. They sat in the tall grass uprooting daffodils and listening to the sound of the waves. “I only know who I’m not.”

Edward put his arm around Davide but said nothing. Then he fashioned a paper plane from one of several old newspaper pages that were scattered about the abandoned property, and jettisoned it over the edge of the cliffs towards the pastel embers of the glowing horizon.

That year, Davide took the few gold coins his birth parents had left him, bid farewell to his adopted parents and immigrated to a region that had, until recently, been called Palestine. He boarded a ship and waved goodbye to the people he had known as Mother, Father, Brother.

He turned to Marie and looked into her kind eyes for the last time.