Sarah's Key (14 page)

I had felt incompetent for a long time. The Tézac family had been kind and discreet about the whole thing, but I still felt like I had not been able to provide Bertrand with what he wanted most badly, a second child. And, most importantly, a son. Bertrand had two sisters and no brothers. The name would die out if there was no heir to carry it on. I had not realized how important that factor was for this particular family.

When I had made it clear that despite being Bertrand’s wife, I was still to be called Julia Jarmond, I was greeted with surprised silence. My mother-in-law, Colette, had explained to me with a wooden smile that in France that sort of attitude was modern. Too modern. A feminist stance that did not go down well here at all. A French woman was to be known by her husband’s name. I was to be, for the rest of my life, Madame Bertrand Tézac. I remember smiling my toothy white smile back at her, and telling her glibly I was going to stick to Jarmond. She had said nothing, and from then on, she and Edouard, my father-in-law, always introduced me as “Bertrand’s wife.”

I looked down at the blue line. A baby. A baby! A feeling of joy, of utter happiness, took over. I was going to have a baby. I glanced around the all-too-familiar kitchen. I went to stand by the window and looked down at the dark, grimy courtyard the kitchen gave onto. Boy or girl, it didn’t matter. I knew Bertrand would hope it was a son. But he would love a girl, too, I knew that. A second child. The child we’d been waiting for, for so long. The one we had stopped hoping for. The sister or brother Zoë had given up mentioning. That Mamé had stopped being so curious about.

How was I going to tell Bertrand? I couldn’t just call him and blurt it out on the phone. We had to be together, just the two of us. Privacy, intimacy, was needed. And we had to be careful after that, not letting anyone know until I was at least three months pregnant. I longed to call Hervé and Christophe, Isabelle, my sister, my parents, but I refrained. My husband was to be the first to know. Then my daughter. An idea came to me.

I grabbed the phone and dialed Elsa, the babysitter. I asked her if she was free tonight to watch Zoë. She was. Then I made reservations at our favorite restaurant, a brasserie on the rue Saint-Dominique we had been to regularly since the beginning of our marriage. Finally, I called Bertrand, got his voice mail, and told him to meet me at Thoumieux at twenty-one hours sharp.

I heard the click of Zoë’s key in the front door. The door slammed, then she walked into the kitchen, her heavy backpack in her hand.

“Hi, Mom,” she said. “Good day?”

I smiled. As ever, like every time I laid eyes on Zoë, I was struck by her beauty, her slender height, her lucid hazel eyes.

“Come here, you,” I said, engulfing her in a wolfish embrace.

She pulled back and gazed at me.

“This has been a good day, hasn’t it?” she asked. “I can feel it in your hug.”

“You’re right,” I said, longing to tell her. “It has been a very good day.”

She looked at me.

“I’m glad. You’ve been weird lately. I thought it was because of those kids.”

“Those kids?” I said, brushing her sleek brown hair from her face.

“You know, the children,” she said. “The Vel’ d’Hiv’ children. The ones who never came home.”

“You’re right,” I said. “It made me sad. It still does.”

Zoë took my hand in hers, twisting my wedding band round and round, a trick she had since she was small.

“And then I heard you talking on the phone last week,” she said, not looking at me.

“Well?”

“You thought I was asleep.”

“Oh,” I said.

“I wasn’t. It was late. You were talking to Hervé, I think. You were talking about what Mamé had told you.”

“About the apartment?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said, looking at me at last. “About the family who lived there. And what had happened to that family. And how Mamé lived there all those years and didn’t seem to care much about it.”

“You heard all that,” I said.

She nodded.

“Do you know anything about that family, Mom? Do you know who they were? What happened?”

I shook my head.

“No, honey, I don’t.”

“Is it true that Mamé didn’t care?”

I had to be careful.

“Sweetie, I’m sure she did care. I don’t think she really knew what happened.”

Zoë twisted the band around again, faster this time.

“Mom, are you going to find out about them?”

I clasped the nervous fingers pulling at my ring.

“Yes, Zoë. That’s exactly what I’m going to do,” I said.

“Papa won’t like it,” she said. “I heard Papa telling you to stop thinking about it. To stop bothering about it. He sounded mad.”

I pulled her close, laying my chin on her shoulder. I thought of the wonderful secret I carried within me. I thought of tonight at Thoumieux. Bertrand’s incredulous face, his gasp of joy.

“Honey,” I said, “Papa won’t mind. I promise.”

EXHAUSTED, THE CHILDREN AT last stopped running, ducking behind a large bush. They were thirsty, out of breath. The girl had a sharp pain in her side. If only she could drink some water. Rest a bit. Get her strength back. But she knew she couldn’t stay here. She had to move on; she had to get back to Paris. Somehow.

“Take off the stars,” the man had said. They wriggled out of the extra clothes, torn and tattered by the barbs. The girl looked down at her chest. There it was, the star, on her shirt. She pulled at it. Rachel, following her glance, picked at her own star with her nails. Hers came off easily. But the girl’s was too tightly sewn on. She slipped out of the shirt, held the star up to her face. Tiny, perfect stitches. She remembered her mother, bent over the pile of handiwork, sewing on each star patiently, one after the other. The memory brought tears to her eyes. She cried into the blouse with a despair she had never known.

She felt Rachel’s arms come around her, her bloody hands stroking her, holding her close. Rachel said, “Is it true, about your little brother? Is he really in the cupboard?” The girl nodded. Rachel held her harder, stroked her head clumsily. Where was her mother now? the girl wondered. And her father. Where had they been taken? Were they together? Were they safe? If they could see her at this very moment … If they could see her crying behind the bush, dirty, lost, hungry …

She drew herself up, doing her best to smile at Rachel through her wet lashes. Yes, dirty, lost, hungry, perhaps, but not afraid. She wiped her tears away with grimy fingers. She had grown up too much to be afraid anymore. She was no longer a baby. Her parents would be proud of her. That’s what she wanted them to be. Proud because she had escaped from that camp. Proud because she was going to Paris, to save her brother. Proud, because she wasn’t afraid.

She fell upon the star with her teeth, gnawing at her mother’s minute stitches. Finally, the yellow piece of cloth fell away from the blouse. She looked at it. Big black letters. jew. She rolled it up in her hand.

“Doesn’t it look small, all of a sudden?” she said to Rachel.

“What are going to do with them?” said Rachel. “If we keep them in our pockets, and if we are searched, that’s the end of us.”

They decided to bury their stars beneath the bush with the clothes they had used for their escape. The earth was soft and dry. Rachel dug a hole, put the stars and clothes inside, then covered them up with the brown soil.

“There,” she said, exulting. “I’m burying the stars. They’re dead. In their grave. Forever and ever.”

The girl laughed with Rachel. Then she felt ashamed. Her mother had told her to be proud of her star. Proud of being a Jew.

She didn’t want to think about all that now. Things were different. Everything was different. They had to find water, food, and shelter, and she had to get home. How? She didn’t know. She didn’t even know where they were. But she had money. The man’s money. He had not been that bad after all, that policeman. Maybe that meant there were other good people who could help them, too. People who did not hate them. People who did not think they were “different.”

They weren’t far from the village. They could see a signpost from behind the bush.

“Beaune-la-Rolande,” read Rachel out loud.

Their instinct told them not to go into the village. They would not find help there. The villagers knew about the camp, yet nobody had come to help, except those women, once. And besides, the village was too close to the camp. They might meet a person who would send them right back there. They turned their backs on Beaune-la-Rolande and walked away, keeping close to the tall grass by the side of the road. If only they could drink something, thought the girl. She felt faint with thirst, with hunger.

They walked for a long time, pausing and hiding when they heard an occasional car, a farmer taking his cows home. Were they going in the right direction? To Paris? She didn’t know. But at least, she knew they were heading farther and farther away from the camp. She looked at her shoes. They were falling apart. Yet they had been her second best pair, the pair for special occasions, like birthdays and the cinema and visiting friends. She had bought them last year with her mother, near the Place de la République. It seemed so long ago. Like another life. The shoes were too small now, they pinched her toes.

In the late afternoon, they came to a forest, a long, cool stretch of green leafiness. It smelled sweet and humid. They left the road, hoping they might find wild strawberries or blueberries. After a while, they came upon an entire thicket of fruit. Rachel uttered a cry of delight. They sat down and gobbled. The girl remembered picking fruit with her father, when they had spent those lovely days by the river, such a long time ago.

Her stomach, unused to such lavishness, heaved. She retched, holding her abdomen. She brought up a mass of undigested fruit. Her mouth tasted foul. She told Rachel they had to find water. She forced herself up, and they headed deeper into the forest, a mysterious emerald world dappled with golden sunlight. She saw a roe deer canter through the bracken and held her breath with awe. She wasn’t used to nature, she was a true city child.

They came to a small, clear pond farther into the forest. It was cool and fresh to their touch. The girl drank for a long time, rinsed out her mouth, washed away the blueberry stains, then glided her legs into the still water. She had not gone swimming since that river escapade, and didn’t dare enter the pond completely. Rachel knew, and told her to come in, she’d hold her. The girl slipped in, grasping Rachel’s shoulders. Rachel held her under her stomach and her chin, the way her father used to. The water felt wonderful to her skin, a soothing, velvety caress. She wet her shaved head, where the hair had started to grow back, a golden fuzz, rough like the stubble on her father’s chin.

All of a sudden, the girl felt drained. She wanted to lie down on the soft green moss and sleep. Only for a little while. Only for a quick rest. Rachel agreed. They could have a short rest. It was safe here.

They cuddled close to each other, reveling in the smell of fresh moss, so different from the stinking straw of the barracks.

The girl fell asleep quickly. It was a deep and untroubled sleep, the kind she hadn’t had for a long time.

IT WAS OUR USUAL table. The one in the corner, on the right, as you came in, past the old-fashioned bistro zinc bar and its tinted mirrors. The red velour banquette formed an L. I sat down and watched the waiters bustling about in their long, white aprons. One of them brought me a Kir royal. Busy night. Bertrand had taken me here on our first date, years ago. It had not changed since. The same low ceiling, ivory walls, pale globe lights, starched tablecloths. The same hearty food from Corrèze and Gascogne, Bertrand’s favorite. When I met him, he used to live on the nearby rue Malar, in a quaint rooftop apartment that was to me unbearable during summer. As an American raised on permanent air-conditioning, I had wondered how he put up with it. At that point, I still lived on rue Berthe with the boys, and my dark, cool little room seemed like heaven during the stuffy Parisian summers. Bertrand and his sisters had been raised in this area of Paris, the genteel and aristocratic seventh arrondissement, where his parents had lived for years on the long, curving rue de l’Université, and where the family antique shop flourished on the rue du Bac.