Read All the Light There Was Online

Authors: Nancy Kricorian

Tags: #Literary, #Historical, #Fiction

All the Light There Was (8 page)


Yavrum,
why didn’t I think of that?” my mother exclaimed. “Go get her, Garabed. Bring her here and tell them we’ll keep her until they come back.”

“What should we do with this yellow-haired baby?” my father asked. “Think a minute. Who knows where they’re taking them or when they’ll be back?”

“Garabed, enough. Maral, go get the child.” My mother motioned me toward the doorway.

I looked at my father questioningly, and he nodded.

I quietly rapped on the door, and Joseph Lipski opened it, his face grimly set.

“Please come in.” He waved me into the apartment.

Two valises were sitting by the front door. In the kitchen, Sara was folding Claire’s clothes and putting them into a small cardboard suitcase. Claire was sitting on a straight-backed kitchen chair, holding Charlotte in her lap.

I said, “Mr. Lipski, my mother has offered to keep Claire until you come back. But we have to hurry. The police will be here soon.”

“It is a kind offer, but I must ask my wife.”

He spoke to his wife in Yiddish. She glanced quickly from Claire to her husband and finally to me. Her large eyes were bright with tears when she nodded yes.

Sara Lipski snapped shut the suitcase and said something into Claire’s ear, embracing the child tightly before pushing her toward me.

I picked up the suitcase and took the child’s hand, feeling as though the two of us were starting on a long journey. “Let’s go play some games, okay?”

Claire looked up at her mother and her father, both of whom nodded yes, and then she nodded as well.

“Go quickly.” Joseph Lipski escorted us to the door.

Sara said something urgently in Yiddish. I didn’t understand the words, but I heard panic in her voice and knew she was having second thoughts about letting Claire go. I imagined that her heart must feel like a piece of cloth caught on a jagged nail.

Quieting his wife with a firm word, Joseph herded Claire and me into the hall and closed the door behind us.

The door to our apartment opened a crack and then wider to let us in.

“Hello, little one,” said my mother. “We’re so glad you are coming to stay with us for a while.”

Just then Missak returned. “What’s she doing here?” he asked in Armenian.

My mother said, “We’re keeping her until they come back.”

He slapped his forehead. “Have you all lost your minds?”

“What else should we do?” My mother glanced down at Claire.

Claire, who didn’t understand what we were saying, looked with large gray eyes from one face to another.

Missak said through gritted teeth, “Do you not understand how dangerous this is? They’re filling buses they have lined up out on the rue de Belleville. There are some of Doriot’s blue-shirt Fascists in the courtyard watching the entrances. The police have lists of names with addresses and apartment numbers.”

“And you think we should send her with them?” my father asked.

Missak groaned. “It’s done. But keep in mind that if they find her here, we’ll be on our way to prison. I’ll tell the Lipskis what to say if the police ask for her. Then I’m going out.”

I took Claire to my bedroom, and after I shut the door behind us, we opened the tin and spread the buttons on the bed and began to sort them by size and color. When the sounds of loud voices and slamming doors filtered in from the stairwell, I took Claire in my lap and sang her a French lullaby and then an Armenian one. Mercifully, she dozed for a while.

After the building grew still, I led Claire to the kitchen to find some breakfast.

“We have no milk,” I said to my mother. “What should I give her to eat?”

My mother shrugged. “Margarine and toast. I’ll make some tisane.”

I put Claire’s plate on the table, and we perched her atop several folded blankets on a chair so she could reach her food. Auntie Shakeh, whose eyes were rimmed with red, sat in her armchair rocking back and forth, muttering to herself. I caught the words
orphan, desert,
and
shame,
this last repeated again and again.

My mother said, “Shakeh, you’re going to frighten the child. Maybe you should go lie down.”

Auntie Shakeh went to the bedroom, still mumbling under her breath.

When Missak returned, he reported, “Those are municipal buses they are using. I talked with one of the drivers who said he’d made the trip twice already. They’re taking them across town to the Vélodrome d’Hiver.

“You know who’s in charge of this, don’t you? It’s not the Boches. The local cops, city bus drivers, and those creeps in their blue shirts are doing the dirty business,” Missak said with disgust. “Zavig told me they took the Rozenbaums too, but Henri wasn’t home last night so they didn’t get him. He tried to warn them, but it was too late.”

“Denise?” I asked.

He nodded.

I felt sick, and tears smarted in my eyes.

Claire, who didn’t understand Armenian, tapped my arm and asked in French, “What’s he saying?”

“He just told me that your parents are going on a bus,” I explained.

“Where will they go on the bus?” she wanted to know.

“They are going to the Vélodrome d’Hiver,” I said.

“When are they coming back?” Claire asked.

My mother said, “We’re not sure, but you can stay with us until they come home.”

I asked my brother in Armenian, “Do you know where Henri is?”

“Don’t ask for information you don’t need. And you have to keep that kid quiet and out of sight until I figure out what to do with her.”

Claire pulled on my wrist. “What’s he saying?”

I smoothed her hair. “We’re just talking about some other friends who were on the bus with your parents.”

When I went out to the shops a few hours later, the skies were overcast and the mood somber. In front of the grocer’s, people passed stories of the morning’s roundup up and down the line. Some families had been alerted the night before and had gone into hiding. A few people had managed to sneak off the buses and disappear down side streets. A mother on the rue Piat had thrown her children out the sixth-floor window and jumped out behind them rather than be taken by the police.

As I passed through the courtyard of our building on my way home, Madame Girard, the concierge, stopped me at the foot of the stairs. She told me that in our building alone, six families had been rounded up.

Madame Girard said, “It’s a disgrace that they took the Lipski woman in her condition. Those messieurs have no decency, no decency at all.”

I said, “It’s a wretched business.”

“And even the little ones, they took them also. But I didn’t see Claire with her parents.” Madame Girard looked at me. “I wonder what happened to her.”

Our concierge, who was up and down the landings with her mop and bucket, had eyes like a bird of prey and ears as sharp as a dog’s. No matter what her sympathies, we couldn’t afford to let anyone know we had the child. A secret told to one person is a secret no more.

“Maybe they left Claire with their cousins,” I suggested.

Madame Girard eyed me. “They have cousins? Funny, they never mentioned it. You know hiding a Jew is now against the law.”

“That’s too bad. I thought that for a Jew as small as Claire, too young even for the yellow star, they wouldn’t care so much.”

“Even as small a Jew as Claire.” The concierge shook her head and clucked her tongue. “But in this building, the only one who might make a problem is Monsieur Delattre, on the third floor at the back. The rest mind their own business, but that one would sell his own mother if someone offered him five francs.”

When I reached the landing, my father and brother were carrying a mattress out of the Lipskis’ apartment. My mother followed them with a few framed photos and more of Claire’s clothes.

At dinner that evening, we spoke French in deference to Claire. She watched us intently but didn’t say anything unless addressed directly. When we took up our work in the front room after dinner, Claire sat at the table with a pencil and some parcel paper drawing stick figures that had large round heads and fingers like sausages.

My mother said in Armenian, “Look at that little face. It’s searing my heart.”

It was decided that Claire should sleep with Auntie Shakeh and me in our bedroom. It was a hot, breezeless night, so I spread a sheet loosely across Claire and Charlotte. I sat on the end of Claire’s mattress on the floor with my back against the wall, singing the same two lullabies—one in French and one in Armenian. With the hall light falling into the room at an angle across the floor, I waited for Claire to ask an impossible question or to start crying. Soon, though, the sound of deep, rhythmic breathing told me that she had fallen asleep.

The next afternoon, after a family consultation, I rode the bicycle to the Vél d’Hiv, taking a basket of provisions for the Lipskis. I was red-faced and sweaty by the time I arrived, my white cotton blouse sodden and sticking to my back. There were dozens of police officers on the street guarding the entrance to the stadium. After walking up and down the sidewalk a few times, studying the face of each policeman in turn, I sidled up to a young officer whose open expression seemed the most sympathetic.

“Pardon me, sir, but would it be possible to get in touch with someone who is inside?” I asked.

He looked me over carefully. “A relative?”

“Oh, no,” I told him. “I have brought this basket for our neighbors.”

“There are thousands of Jews in there,” he said. “It’s hellishly hot.”

I nodded.

“What’s in the basket?” he asked.

“Bread, cheese, some pickles, and a bit of sausage. The sausage is for you.”

The young officer took the basket and an envelope with Joseph Lipski’s name on it. “Stay here. I’ll be back to tell you if I manage to find them.”

I stood rooted to the assigned spot for what seemed like a long time, but finally the sun was too much for me. Sweat trickled down my neck, and I wished I had money to buy a drink from the café on the corner. I positioned myself across the street in the shade so I could watch and be seen from the entrance into which he had disappeared. I wondered if he would really return as he’d promised or if he had made off with the whole basket and was having a jolly picnic by himself. I wondered if it was even possible to find Joseph and Sara Lipski among all the thousands inside that stadium. I leaned heavily against the wall behind me. I imagined that Denise Rozenbaum and her parents were in there as well. I wished we had been able to send some food for the Rozenbaums, but it had been difficult enough to scrape together the basket for the Lipskis.

Finally the police officer returned with the envelope I had given him. On the back, there were words hastily scribbled in pencil.

 

Dear Maral, Thanks to you and your family a thousand times for this food and all other assistance. When it is possible please send the package we left with you to my sister, Myriam, in Nice. You will find money for postage in the small suitcase. S. Lipski

 

A name and address were printed beneath.

 

“Even if the money they left in the child’s suitcase covers the fare, I don’t see how it is possible,” my father said that night after Claire had been tucked into bed. “How can we get that child to the Free Zone? And even if we got her over the demarcation line, how would we get her all the way to Nice?”

Missak said, “There are people who can help. It may take some time to arrange, but it can be done.”

My mother and father exchanged apprehensive glances but didn’t ask Missak who these people might be. I knew no details, but it was clear to me that Missak felt Claire’s being with us put more than his own personal safety at risk. He was angry because that risk was shared with these unknown associates.

The next day, I tried to keep Claire entertained with buttons, spools, and scraps of cloth. When she tired of these, I tied a half apron around her waist and let her help wash the dishes. My mother ran up a few small dresses for the doll Charlotte, and Auntie Shakeh knit Charlotte a sweater. In the afternoon, before I went to the shoe-repair shop to help my father, we put a sheet over the table in the front room so Claire could play house. She sat under the table changing the doll’s clothes and whispering to her. But it was difficult keeping a child cooped up in the small apartment in the summer heat. And I started to think it was unnatural how polite and cooperative Claire was. She didn’t cry and she didn’t complain; she just stared up at us with round eyes.

The next night, after Claire was asleep, Missak relayed the news that the stadium had been emptied. He heard the Jews had been sent to Drancy, and from there they were being put on trains heading to work camps in the east.

My mother paled when she heard this. “But what work is Sara Lipski fit to do in her condition? She’s going to have a baby in two months.”

Auntie Shakeh said, “Thank God they left Claire with us.”

Even though Claire made little noise, we were painfully aware of any sound or sign that might betray her presence. When my mother washed the child’s clothes, she never put them outside on the drying line. Instead she tied a rope across our bedroom and pinned them up inside. Claire was not allowed in the hall to use the toilet; we had a chamber pot for her in our apartment. When the concierge was outside sweeping and mopping the stairs, we made Claire take off her shoes and told her to pretend to be a little mouse. We didn’t want to scare her, but Missak thought she should understand what to do if anyone knocked on the door: she must immediately go to the bedroom, and if we didn’t call her out within minutes, she should hide under my bed. She should never speak Yiddish when anyone might hear. I taught her some Armenian, which she picked up quickly, and I realized we soon wouldn’t be able to count on her not understanding our conversations.

I barely knew Monsieur Delattre, the tenant the concierge had warned me about, but passing him in the courtyard I forced myself to say good day. He was a mild, balding middle-aged man who replied with a polite nod of the head, and it was hard for me to imagine that he was capable of the craven behavior the concierge attributed to him. We found out after the war that Delattre had indeed been sending denunciatory letters about people in the neighborhood whom he deemed suspicious or whom he disliked, including the concierge, and he sent them to not only the prefecture but also various Nazi offices. Madame Girard was so infuriated when she learned of his treachery that she managed to get him evicted.

Other books

A Knight In Cowboy Boots by Quint, Suzie
Pedestals of Ash by Joe Nobody
Twenty-Past Three by Sarah Gibbons
Due Justice by Diane Capri
Strawberry Summer by Cynthia Blair
Cry For the Baron by John Creasey
The Magnificent Century by Costain, Thomas B.


readsbookonline.com Copyright 2016 - 2024