Sarah's Key

by Tatiana de Rosnay

  Some people had died here during the past days, and the girl had seen it all. She had seen women and men go mad in the stifling, stinking heat and be beaten down and tied to stretchers. She had seen heart attacks, and suicides, and high fever. The girl had watched the bodies being carried out. She had never seen such horror. Her mother had become a meek animal. She hardly spoke. She cried silently. She prayed.

  One morning, curt orders were shouted through loudspeakers. They were to take their belongings and gather near the entrance. In silence. She got up, groggy and faint. Her legs felt weak, they could hardly carry her. She helped her father haul her mother to her feet. They picked up their bags. The crowd shuffled slowly to the doors. The girl noticed how everybody moved slowly, painfully. Even the children hobbled like old people, backs bent, heads down. The girl wondered where they were going. She wanted to ask her father, but his closed thin face meant she was not going to get an answer now. Could they be going home at last? Was this the end? Was it over? Would she be able to go home and free her brother?

  They walked down the narrow street, the police ordering them on. The girl glanced at the strangers watching them from windows, balconies, doors, from the sidewalk. Most of them had empty, uncompassionate faces. They looked on, not saying a word. They don't care, thought the girl. They don't care what is being done to us, where we are being taken to. One man laughed, pointing at them. He was holding a child by the hand. The child was laughing, too. Why, thought the girl, why? Do we look funny, with our stinking, wretched clothes? Is that why they are laughing? What is so funny? How can they laugh, how can they be so cruel? She wanted to spit at them, to scream at them.

  A middle-aged woman crossed the street and quickly pressed something into her hand. It was a small roll of soft bread. The woman was shooed off by a policeman. The girl just had enough time to see her return to the other side of the street. The woman had said, "You poor little girl. May God have pity." What was God doing, thought the girl, dully. Had God given up on them? Was he punishing them for something she did not know about? Her parents were not religious, although she knew they believed in God. They had not bought her up in the traditional religious fashion, like Armelle had been by her parents, respecting all the rites. The girl wondered whether this was not their punishment. Their punishment for not practicing their religion well enough.

  She handed the bread to her father. He told her to eat it. She wolfed it down, too fast. It nearly choked her.

  They were taken in the same town buses to a railway station overlooking the river. She didn't know which station it was. She had never been there before. She had rarely left Paris in all her ten years. When she saw the train, she felt panic overcome her. No, she couldn't leave, she had to stay, she had to stay because of her brother, she had promised to come back to save him. She tugged on her father's sleeve, whispering her brother's name. Her father looked down at her.

  "There is nothing we can do," he said with helpless finality. "Nothing."

  She thought of the clever boy who had escaped, the one who had gotten away. Anger swept through her. Why was her father being so weak, so gutless? Did he not care about his son? Did he not care about his little boy? Why didn't he have the courage to run away? How could he just stand there and be led into a train, like a sheep? How could he just stand there and not break away, and not run back to the apartment, and the boy, and to freedom? Why didn't he take the key from her and run away?

  Her father looked at her, and she knew he read all the thoughts in her head. He told her very calmly that they were in great danger. He did not know where they were being taken. He did not know what was going to happen to them. But he did know that if he tried to escape now, he would be killed. Shot down, instantly, in front of her, in front of her mother. And if that happened, that would be the end. She and her mother would be alone. He had to stay with them, to protect them.

  The girl listened. He had never used this voice with her before. It was the voice she had overheard during those worrying, secret conversations. She tried to understand. She tried not to let her face show her anguish. But her brother . . . It was her fault! She was the one who had told him to stay in the cupboard. It was all her fault. He could have been here with them now. He could have been here, holding her very hand, if it hadn't been for her.

  She began to cry, burning tears that scalded her eyes, her cheeks.

  "I didn't know!" she sobbed. "Papa, I didn't know, I thought we were coming back, I thought he'd be safe." Then she looked up at him, fury and pain in her voice, and pummeled her little fists against his chest. "You never told me, Papa, you never explained, you never told me about the danger, never! Why? You thought I was too small to understand, didn't you? You wanted to protect me? Is that what you were trying to do?"

  Her father's face. She could no longer look at it. He gazed down at her with such despair, such sadness. Her tears washed the image of his face away. She cried into her palms, alone. Her father did not touch her. In those awful, lonely minutes, the girl understood. She was no longer a happy little ten-year-old girl. She was someone much older. Nothing would ever be the same again. For her. For her family. For her brother.

  She exploded one last time, tugging on her father's arm with a violence that was new to her.

  "He is going to die! He will die!"

  "We are all in danger," he replied at last. "You and me, your mother, your brother, Eva and her sons, and all these people. Everyone here. I am here with you. And we are with your brother. He is in our prayers, in our hearts."

  Before she could answer, they were pushed into a train, a train that had no seats, just bare wagons. A covered cattle train. It smelled rank and dirty. Standing near the doors, the girl looked out to the gray, dusty station.

  On a nearby platform, a family was waiting for another train. The father, the mother, and two children. The mother was pretty, her hair done up in a fancy bun. They were probably off on vacation. There was a girl, just her age. She had a pretty, lilac dress. Her hair was clean, her shoes shiny.

  The two girls gazed at each other from across the platform. The pretty, fancy-haired mother was looking, too. The girl in the train knew her tearful face was black with filth, her hair greasy. But she did not bow her head with shame. She stood straight, her chin high. She wiped away the tears.

  And when the doors were heaved closed, when the train gave a jolt, wheels clanging and groaning, she peered out through a tiny chink in the metal. She never stopped looking at the little girl. She watched until the figure in the lilac dress completely disappeared.

  I

  HAD NEVER BEEN FOND of the fifteenth arrondissement. Probably because of the monstrous surge of high-rise modern buildings that disfigured the banks of the Seine just next to the Eiffel Tower, and that I had never been able to get used to, although they were built in the early seventies, a long while before I arrived in Paris. But when I turned up at the rue Nelaton with Bamber, where the Velodrome d'Hiver once stood, I thought to myself I liked this area of Paris even less.

  "God-awful street," muttered Bamber. He took a couple of shots with his camera.

  The rue Nelaton was dark and silent. It obviously never got much sunshine. On one side, bourgeois stone buildings built in the late nineteenth century. On the other, where the Velodrome d'Hiver used to be, a large brownish construction, typically early sixties, hideous in both color and proportion. MINISTERE DE L'INTERIEUR, read the sign above the revolving glass doors.

  "Odd place to build governmental offices," remarked Bamber. "Don't you think?"

  Bamber had only found a couple of existing photographs of the Vel' d'Hiv'. I held one of them in my hand. Big black lettering read: VEL' D'HIV' against a pale facade. A huge door. A cluster of buses parked along the sidewalk, and the tops of people's heads. Probably taken from a window across the street on the morning of the roundup.

  We looked for a plaque, for something that mentioned what had happened here, but could not find it.

  "I can't belie
ve there is nothing," I said.

  We finally found it on the boulevard de Grenelle, just around the corner. A smallish sign. Rather humble. I wondered if anyone ever glanced at it. It read:

  On July 16 and 17, 1942, 13,152 Jews were arrested in Paris and the suburbs, deported and assassinated at Auschwitz. In the Velodrome d'Hiver that once stood on this spot, 1,129 men, 2,916 women, and 4,115 children were packed here in inhuman conditions by the government of the Vichy police, by order of the Nazi occupant. May those who tried to save them be thanked. Passerby, never forget!

  "Interesting," mused Bamber. "Why so many children and women, and so few men?"

  "Rumors of a big roundup had been circulating," I explained. "There had already been a couple before, especially in August of 1941. But so far, only men were arrested. And they hadn't been as vast, as minutely planned as this one. That's why this one is infamous. The night of July 16, most of the men went into hiding, thinking the women and the children would be safe. That's where they were wrong."

  "How long had it been planned for?"

  "For months," I answered. "The French government had been working on it intently since April '42, writing up all the lists of the Jews to arrest. Over six thousand Parisian policemen were commissioned to carry it out. At first, the initial chosen date was July 14. But that's the national fete here. So it was scheduled a little later."

  We walked toward the metro station. It was a dismal street. Dismal and sad.

  "And then what?" asked Bamber. "Where were all these families taken?"

  "Penned in the Vel' d'Hiv' for a couple of days. A group of nurses and doctors were finally let in. They all described chaos and despair. Then the families were taken to Austerlitz Station, and then on to the camps around Paris. And then sent straight to Poland."

  Bamber raised an eyebrow.

  "Camps? You mean concentration camps in France?"

  "Camps that are considered the French antechambers to Auschwitz. Drancy--that's the one closest to Paris--and Pithiviers, and Beaune-la-Rolande."

  "I wonder what they look like today, these places," said Bamber. "We should go there and find out."

  "We will," I said.

  We stopped at the corner of the rue Nelaton for a coffee. I glanced at my watch. I had promised to go see Mame today. I knew I wouldn't make it. Tomorrow, then. It was never a chore for me. She was the grandmother I had never had. Both of mine had passed away when I was a small child. I just wished Bertrand would make more of an effort, considering she doted upon him.

  Bamber dragged me back to the Vel' d'Hiv'.

  "Sure makes me glad I'm not French," he said.

  Then he remembered.

  "Oops, sorry. You are now, aren't you?"

  "Yes," I said. "By marriage. I have dual nationality."

  "Didn't mean what I said," he coughed. He looked embarrassed.

  "Don't worry." I smiled. "You know, even after all these years my in-laws still call me the American."

  Bamber grinned.

  "Does that bother you?"

  I shrugged.

  "Sometimes. I've spent more than half of my life here. I really feel I belong here."

  "How long have you been married?"

  "It will soon be sixteen years. But I've been living here for twenty-five."

  "Did you have one of those posh French weddings?"

  I laughed.

  "No, it was simple enough. In Burgundy, where my in-laws have a house, near Sens."

  I fleetingly remembered that day. There had not been a great deal exchanged between Sean and Heather Jarmond, and Edouard and Colette Tezac. It seemed like the entire French side of the family had forgotten their English. But I hadn't cared. I was so happy. Brilliant sunshine. The quiet little country church. My simple ivory dress that my mother-in-law approved of. Bertrand, stunning in his gray morning coat. The dinner party at the Tezacs', beautifully done. Champagne, candles, and rose petals. Charla delivering a very funny speech in her terrible French, and that only I had laughed at. Laure and Cecile, simpering. My mother and her pale magenta suit, and her little whisper in my ear, "I do hope you'll be happy, angel pie." My father waltzing with the stiff-backed Colette. It seemed so long ago.

  "Do you miss America?" Bamber asked.

  "No. I miss my sister. But not America."

  A young waiter came to bring us our coffees. He took one look at Bamber's flame-colored hair and smirked. Then he saw the impressive arrays of cameras and lenses.

  "You tourists?" he asked. "Taking nice photos of Paris?"

  "Not tourists. Just taking nice photos of what's left of the Vel' d'Hiv'," said Bamber in French, with his slow British accent.

  The waiter seemed taken aback.

  "Nobody asks about the Vel' d'Hiv' much," he said. "The Eiffel Tower, yes, but not the Vel' d'Hiv'."

  "We're journalists," I said. "We work for an American magazine."

  "Sometimes there are Jewish families who come in here," recalled the young man. "After one of the anniversary speeches at the memorial down by the river."

  I had an idea.

  "You wouldn't know of anybody, a neighbor on this street, who knows about the roundup, who could talk to us?" I asked. We had already spoken to several survivors; most of them had written books about their experience, but we were lacking witnesses. Parisians who had seen all this happen.

  Then I felt silly; after all, the young man was barely twenty. His own father probably wasn't even born in '42.

  "Yes, I do," he answered, to my surprise. "If you walk back up the street, you'll see a newspaper store on your left. The man in charge there, Xavier, he'll tell you. His mother knows, she's lived there all her life."

  We left him a large tip.

  T

  HERE HAD BEEN AN endless, dusty walk from the little train station, through a small town, where more people had stared and pointed. Her feet ached. Where were they going now? What was going to happen to them? Were they far from Paris? The train ride had been fast, barely a couple of hours. As always, she thought of her brother. Her heart sank lower with each mile they covered. How was she ever going to get back home? How was she going to make it? It made her feel sick to think he probably thought she'd forgotten him. That's what he believed, locked up in the dark cupboard. He thought she had abandoned him, that she didn't care, that she didn't love him. He had no water, no light, and he was afraid. She had let him down.

  Where were they? She hadn't had time to look at the name of the station as they had pulled in. But she had noticed the first things a city child pays attention to: the lush countryside, the flat green meadows, the golden fields. The intoxicating smell of fresh air and summer. The hum of a bumble bee. Birds in the sky. Fluffy white clouds. After the stink and heat of the past few days, this was glorious, she felt. Maybe it wasn't going to be that bad, after all.

  She followed her parents through barbed-wire gates, with stern looking guards on each side holding guns. And then she saw the rows of long dark barracks, the grimness of the place, and her spirits sank. She cowered against her mother. Policemen started to shout orders. The women and children were told to go to the sheds on the right, the men on the left. Helpless, holding on to her mother, she watched her father be pushed along with a group of men. She felt afraid without him by her side. But there was nothing she could do. The guns terrified her. Her mother did not move. Her eyes were dulled. Dead. Her face was white and sickly.

  The girl took her mother's hand as they were shoved toward the barracks. The inside was bare and grimy. Planks and straw. Stench and dirt. The latrines were outside, planks of wood astride holes. They were ordered to sit there, in groups, to piss and defecate in view of all, like animals. It revolted her. She felt she could not go. She could not do this. She looked on as her mother straddled one of the holes. She bowed her head in shame. But she finally did what she was told, cringing, hoping no one was looking at her.

  Just above the barbed wire, the girl could glimpse the village. The black spire of a church.
A water tower. Roofs and chimneys. Trees. Over there, she thought, in those nearby houses, people had beds, sheets, blankets, food, and water. They were clean. They had clean clothes. Nobody screamed at them. Nobody treated them like cattle. And they were just there, just on the other side of the fence. In the clean little village where she could hear the church bell chime.

  There were children on vacation over there, she thought. Children going on picnics, children playing hide-and-seek. Happy children, even if there was a war, and less to eat than usual, and maybe their Papa had gone away to fight. Happy, loved, cherished, children. She couldn't imagine why there was such a difference between those children and her. She couldn't imagine why she and all these people here with her had to be treated this way. Who had decided this, and what for?

  They were given tepid cabbage soup. It was thin and sandy. Nothing else. Then she watched as rows of women stripped naked and fought to wash their dirty bodies under a trickle of water over rusty, iron washbasins. She found them ugly, grotesque. She hated the flabby ones, the skinny ones, the old ones, the young ones; she hated to have to see their nudity. She did not want to look at them. She hated having to see them.

  She huddled against her mother's warmth and tried not to think of her brother. Her skin felt itchy, her scalp too. She wanted a bath, her bed, her brother. Dinner. She wondered if anything could be worse than what had been happening to her over the past few days. She thought of her friends, of the other little girls in her school who also wore stars. Dominique, Sophie, Agnes. What had happened to them? Had some been able to escape? Were some safe, hiding somewhere? Was Armelle hiding with her family? Would she ever see her again, see her other friends again? Would she go back to school in September?

  That night, she couldn't sleep; she needed her father's reassuring touch. Her stomach hurt her, she felt it contract with pain. She knew they were not allowed to leave the barracks during the night. She clenched her teeth, wrapping her arms around her belly. But the pain grew worse. Slowly she got up, tiptoed through the rows of sleeping women and children, to the latrines outside the door.