Sarah's Key (26 page)

I MADE A ROUGH ESTIMATE, counting over two thousand people grouped by the Seine, along the Bir-Hakeim bridge. The survivors. The families. Children, grandchildren. Rabbis. The mayor of the city. The prime minister. The minister of defense. Numerous politicians. Journalists. Photographers. Franck Lévy. Thousands of flowers, a soaring marquee, a white platform. An impressive gathering. Guillaume stood by my side, his face solemn, his eyes downcast.

Fleetingly, I recalled the old lady from the rue Nélaton. What was it she had said? “Nobody remembers. Why should they? Those were the darkest days of our country.”

I suddenly wished she could be here now, gazing at the hundreds of silent, emotional faces around me. From the stand, a beautiful middle-aged woman with thick auburn hair sang. Her clear voice rose above the roar of the nearby traffic. Then the prime minister began his speech.

“Sixty years ago, right here, in Paris, but also throughout France, the appalling tragedy began to take place. The march toward horror was speeding up. Already, the Shoah’s shadow darkened the innocent people herded into the Vélodrome d’Hiver. This year, like every year, we are gathered together in this place to remember. So as to forget nothing of the persecutions, the hunting down, and shattered destiny of so many French Jews.”

An old man on my left took a handkerchief from his pocket and wept noiselessly. My heart went out to him. Who was he crying for? I wondered. Who had he lost? As the prime minister went on, my eyes moved over the crowd. Was there anyone here who knew and remembered Sarah Starzynski? Was she here herself? Right now, at this very moment? Was she here with a husband, a child, a grandchild? Behind me, in front of me? I carefully picked out women in their seventies, scanning wrinkled, solemn faces for the slanted green eyes. But I did not feel comfortable ogling these grieving strangers. I lowered my gaze. The prime minister’s voice seemed to gain in strength and clarity, booming out over us.

“Yes, Vel’ d’Hiv’, Drancy, and all the transit camps, those antechambers of death, were organized, run, and guarded by Frenchmen. Yes, the first act of the Shoah took place right here, with the complicity of the French State.”

The many faces around me appeared to be serene, listening to the prime minister. I watched them as he continued with the same powerful voice. But every one of those faces contained sorrow. Sorrow that could never be erased. The prime minister’s speech was applauded for a long time. I noticed people crying, hugging each other.

Still with Guillaume, I went to speak to Franck Lévy, who was carrying a copy of
Seine Scenes
under his arm. He greeted me warmly, introduced us to a couple of journalists. A few moments later, we left. I told Guillaume I had found out who lived in the Tézac apartment, that somehow this had brought me closer to my father-in-law, who had kept a dark secret for over sixty years. And that I was trying to trace Sarah, the little girl who had escaped from Beaune-la-Rolande.

In half an hour, I was meeting Nathalie Dufaure in front of the Pasteur
métro
station. She was going to drive me to Orléans, to her grandfather. Guillaume kissed me warmly and hugged me. He said he wished me luck.

As I crossed the busy avenue, my palm caressed my stomach. If I had not left the clinic this morning, I would have been regaining consciousness by now in my cozy apricot room, watched over by the beaming nurse. A dainty breakfast—croissant, jam, and café au lait—and I would have left the place alone in the afternoon, a little unsteadily, a sanitary pad between my legs, a dull pain in my lower abdomen. A void in my mind and in my heart.

I had not heard a word from Bertrand. Had the clinic telephoned him to inform him I’d left before the abortion? I did not know. He was still in Brussels, due back tonight.

I wondered how I’d tell him. How he would take it.

As I walked down the avenue Émile Zola, anxious not to be late for Nathalie Dufaure, I wondered if I still cared about what Bertrand thought, about what Bertrand felt? The unsettling thought frightened me.

WHEN I GOT BACK from Orléans in the early evening, the apartment felt hot and stuffy. I went to open a window, leaned out to the noisy boulevard du Montparnasse. It was strange to imagine that we’d soon be leaving for the quiet rue de Saintonge. We had spent twelve years here. Zoë had never lived anywhere else. It would be our last summer here, I thought fleetingly. I had grown fond of this apartment, the sunlight coming in every afternoon into the large white living room, the Luxembourg Garden just down the rue Vavin, the easiness of being situated in one of Paris’s most active arrondissements, one of the places you could actually feel the city’s heartbeat, its rapid, exciting pulse.

I kicked off my sandals and lay down on the soft, beige sofa. The fullness of the day weighed upon me like lead. I shut my eyes and was immediately startled back to reality by the phone. It was my sister, calling from her office overlooking Central Park. I imagined her behind her vast desk, her reading glasses perched on the end of her nose.

Briefly, I told her I had not gone through with the abortion.

“Oh, my God,” breathed Charla. “You didn’t do it.”

“I couldn’t,” I said. “It was impossible.”

I could hear her smiling down the phone, that wide, irresistible, smile.

“You brave, wonderful girl,” she said. “I’m proud of you, honey.”

“Bertrand still doesn’t know,” I said. “He won’t be back till later on this evening. He probably thinks I’ve done it.”

A transatlantic pause.

“You will tell him, won’t you?”

“Of course. I’ll have to, at some point.”

After my conversation with my sister, I lay on the sofa for a long time, my hand folded over my stomach like a protective shield. Little by little, I felt vitality pumping back into me.

As ever, I thought of Sarah Starzynski, and of what I now knew. I had not needed to tape Gaspard Dufaure. Nor jot anything down. It was all written inside me.

ASMALL, NEAT HOUSE ON the outskirts of Orléans. Prim flower beds. An old, placid dog with failing eyesight. A little old lady cutting up vegetables at the sink, and who nodded at me as I came in.

Gaspard Dufaure’s gruff voice. His blue-veined hand patting the dog’s wizened head. And what he had said.

“My brother and I knew there had been trouble during the war. But we were small then, and we didn’t remember what the trouble was. It was only after my grandparents died that I found out from my father that Sarah Dufaure was in fact called Starzynski, and that she was Jewish. My grandparents had hidden her for all those years. There was something sad about Sarah, she was not a joyful, outgoing person. She was hard to get through to. We had been told she had been adopted by my grandparents because her parents had died during the war. That’s all we knew. But we could tell she was different. When she came to church with us, her lips never moved during the ‘Our Father.’ She never prayed. She never received communion. She would stare in front of her with a frozen expression that frightened me. My grandparents would smile at us firmly and tell us to leave her alone. My parents did the same. Little by little, Sarah became part of our lives, the older sister we never had. And she grew into a lovely, melancholy young girl. She was very serious, mature for her years. Sometimes, after the war, we would go to Paris, with my parents, but Sarah never wanted to come. She said she hated Paris. She said she never wanted to go back there again.”

“Did she ever talk about her brother? Her parents?” I asked.

Gaspard shook his head.

“Never. I only heard about her brother, and what happened, from my father, forty years ago. When I was living with her, I never knew.”

Nathalie Dufaure’s voice piped up.

“What happened to her brother?” she asked.

Gaspard Dufaure glanced at his fascinated granddaughter, hanging on to every word. Then he looked at his wife, who had not spoken during the entire conversation, but who looked on benignly.

“I will tell you about it another time, Natou. It’s a very sad story.”

There was a long pause.

“Monsieur Dufaure,” I said, “I need to know where Sarah Starzynski is now. This is why I have come to see you. Can you help me?”

Gaspard Dufaure scratched his head and shot me a quizzical look.

“What
I
really need to know, Mademoiselle Jarmond,” he grinned, “is why this is so important to you.”

THE PHONE RANG AGAIN. It was Zoë from Long Island. She was having a great time, the weather was fine, she had a tan, a new bicycle, her cousin Cooper was “neat,” but she missed me. I told her I missed her, too, that I’d be with her in less than ten days. Then she lowered her voice and asked if I had made any progress in locating Sarah Starzynski. I had to smile at the seriousness of her tone. I said that as a matter of fact, I had made progress, and I was going to tell her about it very quickly.

“Oh, Mom, what progress?” she panted. “I have to know! Now!”

“All right,” I said, giving in to her enthusiasm. “Today I met a man who knew her well as a young girl. He told me that Sarah left France in 1952 for New York City, to become a nanny for an American family.”

Zoë whooped.

“You mean she’s in the States?”

“I guess so,” I said.

A little silence.

“How are you going to find her in the States, Mom?” she asked, her voice clearly less cheerful. “The States are so much bigger than France.”

“God knows, honey,” I sighed. I kissed her fervently through the phone, sent all my love, and hung up.

“What
I
really need to know, Mademoiselle Jarmond, is why this is so important to you.” I had decided, on the spur of the moment, to tell Gaspard Dufaure the truth. How Sarah Starzynski had come into my life. How I had discovered her terrible secret. And how she was linked to my in-laws. How, now that I knew about the events of the summer of 1942 (both the public events—the Vel’ d’Hiv’, Beaune-la-Rolande—and the private ones—little Michel Starzynski’s death in the Tézac apartment), finding Sarah had become a major goal, something I strove for with all my might.

Gaspard Dufaure had been surprised at my doggedness. Why find her, what for? he had asked, shaking his grizzled head. I had replied, to tell her we care, to tell her we have not forgotten. “We,” he had smiled, who was the “we”—my family-in-law, the French people? And then I had retorted, slightly irritated by his grin: no, me, just me, I wanted to say sorry, I wanted to tell her I could not forget the roundup, the camp, Michel’s death, and the direct train to Auschwitz that had taken her parents away forever. Sorry for what? he had retaliated, why should I, an American, feel sorry, hadn’t my fellow countrymen freed France in June 1944? I had nothing to be sorry for, he laughed.

I had looked at him straight in the eyes.

“Sorry for not knowing. Sorry for being forty-five years old and not knowing.”