Sarah's Key

by Tatiana de Rosnay

  Was it possible this man did not know the truth about his mother's past? Her religion? Was it possible that Sarah had not ever told the Rainsferds?

  As I watched his puzzled face, his anxiety, I felt I knew. No, she had not told them. She had not revealed her childhood, her origins, her religion. She had made a clean break with her terrible past.

  I wanted to be far away. Far from this town, this country, this man's incomprehension. How could I have been so blind? How could I have not seen this coming? Not once had I ever thought that Sarah could have kept all this secret. Her suffering had been too great. That was why she had never written to the Dufaures. That was why she had never told her son about who she really was. In America, she had wanted to start a new life.

  And here I was, a stranger, revealing the stark truth to this man, a clumsy bearer of ill tidings.

  William Rainsferd pushed the photograph back toward me, his mouth taut.

  "What have you come here for?" he whispered.

  My throat felt dry.

  "To tell me my mother was called something else? That she was involved in a tragedy? Is this why you are here?"

  I could sense my legs trembling under the table. This was not what I had imagined. I had imagined pain, sorrow, but not this. Not his anger.

  "I thought you knew," I ventured. "I came because my family remembers what she went through, back in '42. That's why I'm here."

  He shook his head again, raked agitated fingers through his hair. His dark glasses clattered to the table.

  "No," he breathed. "No. No, no. This is crazy. My mother was French. She was called Dufaure. She was born in Orleans. She lost her parents during the war. She had no brothers. She had no family. She never lived in Paris, in that rue de Saintonge. This little Jewish girl cannot be her. You've got this all wrong."

  "Please," I said, gently, "let me explain, let me tell you the whole story--"

  He pushed his palms up to me, as if he meant to shove me away.

  "I don't want to know. Keep the 'whole story' to yourself."

  I felt the familiar ache tug at my insides, plucking at my womb with a deft gnaw.

  "Please," I said, feebly. "Please listen to me."

  William Rainsferd was on his feet, a quick, supple gesture for such a big man. He looked down at me, his face dark.

  "I'm going to be very clear. I don't want to see you again. I don't want to talk about this again. Please don't call me."

  And he was gone.

  Zoe and I stared after him. All this, for nothing. This whole trip, all these efforts, for this. For this dead end. I could not believe Sarah's story could end here, so quickly. It could not just dry out.

  We sat in silence for a long moment. Then, shivering despite the heat, I paid the bill. Zoe did not say a word. She seemed stunned.

  I got up, weariness hindering every move. What now? Where to go? Back to Paris? Back to Charla's?

  I trudged on, my feet as heavy as lead. I could hear Zoe's voice calling out to me, but I did not want to turn around. I wanted to get back to the hotel, fast. To think. To get going. To call my sister. And Edouard. And Gaspard.

  Zoe's voice was loud now, anxious. What did she want? Why was she whining? I noticed passersby staring at me. I swiveled around to my daughter, exasperated, telling her to hurry up.

  She rushed to my side, grabbed my hand. Her face was pale.

  "Mom. . . ," she whispered, her voice strained thin.

  "What? What is it?" I snapped.

  She pointed at my legs. She started to whimper, like a puppy.

  I glanced down. My white skirt was soaked with blood. I looked back to my seat, imprinted with a crimson half moon. Thick red rivulets trickled down my thighs.

  "Are you hurt, Mom?" choked Zoe.

  I clutched my stomach.

  "The baby," I said, aghast.

  Zoe stared at me.

  "The baby?" she screamed, her fingers biting into my arm. "Mom, what baby? What are you talking about?"

  Her pointed face loomed away from me. My legs buckled. I landed chin first on the hot, dry path.

  Then silence. And darkness.

  I

  OPENED MY EYES to Zoe's face, a few inches from mine. I could smell the unmistakable scent of a hospital around me. A small, green room. An IV in my forearm. A woman wearing a white blouse scribbling something on a chart.

  "Mom . . . ," whispered Zoe, squeezing my hand. "Mom, everything is OK. Don't worry."

  The young woman came to my side, smiled and patted Zoe's head.

  "You will be all right, Signora," she said, in surprisingly good English. "You lost blood, a lot, but you are fine now."

  My voice came out like a groan.

  "And the baby?"

  "The baby is fine. We did a scan. There was problem with placenta. You need to rest now. No getting up for a while."

  She left the room, closing the door quietly behind her.

  "You scared the shit out of me," said Zoe. "And I can say 'shit' today. I don't think you'll scold me."

  I pulled her close, hugging her as hard as I could despite the IV.

  "Mom, why didn't you tell me about the baby?"

  "I was going to, sweetie."

  She looked up at me.

  "Is the baby why you and Papa are having problems?"

  "Yes."

  "You want the baby and Papa doesn't, right?"

  "Something like that."

  She stroked my hand gently.

  "Papa is on his way."

  "Oh, God," I said.

  Bertrand here. Bertrand in the aftermath of all this.

  "I phoned him," said Zoe. "He'll be here in a couple of hours."

  Tears welled up in my eyes, slowly trickled down my cheeks.

  "Mom, don't cry," pleaded Zoe, frantically wiping my face with her hands. "It's OK, everything is OK now."

  I smiled wearily, nodding my head to reassure her. But my world felt hollow, empty. I kept thinking of William Rainsferd walking away. "I don't want to see you again. I don't want to talk about this again. Please don't call me." His shoulders, rounded, stooped. The tightness of his mouth.

  The days, weeks, months to come stretched ahead, bleak and gray. Never had I felt so despondent, so lost. The core of me had been nibbled away. What was left for me? A baby my soon to be ex-husband did not want and that I'd have to raise on my own. A daughter who would shortly become a teenager, and who might no longer remain the marvelous little girl she was now. What was there to look forward to, all of a sudden?

  Bertrand arrived, calm, efficient, tender. I put myself in his hands, listened to him talking to the doctor, watching him reassure Zoe with an occasional, warm glance. He took care of all the details. I was to stay here till the bleeding stopped completely. Then I was to fly back to Paris and take it easy until fall, till my fifth month. Bertrand did not mention Sarah once. He did not ask a single question. I retreated into a comfortable silence. I did not want to talk about Sarah.

  I began to feel like a little old lady, shipped here and there, like Mame was shipped here and there, within the familiar boundaries of her "home," receiving the same placid smiles, the same stale benevolence. It was easy, letting someone else control your life. I had nothing much to fight for, anyway. Except this child.

  The child that Bertrand did not once mention either.

  W

  HEN WE LANDED IN Paris a few weeks later, it felt like an entire year had gone by. I still felt tired and sad. I thought of William Rainsferd every day. Several times, I reached out for the phone, or pen and paper, meaning to talk to him, to write, to explain, to say something, to say sorry, but I never dared.

  I let the days slip by, the summer move into fall. I lay on my bed and read, wrote my articles on my laptop, spoke to Joshua, Bamber, Alessandra, to my family and friends on the telephone. I worked from my bedroom. It had all seemed complicated at first, but it had worked out. My friends Isabelle, Holly, and Susannah took turns coming and making me lunch. Once a week, one of
my sisters-in-law would go to the nearby Inno or Franprix for groceries with Zoe. Plump, sensual Cecile would make fluffy crepes oozing with butter, and aesthetic, angular Laure would create exotic low-calorie salads that were surprisingly savory. My mother-in-law came less often but sent her cleaning lady, the dynamic and odorous Madame Leclere, who vacuumed with such terrifying energy it gave me contractions. My parents came to stay for a week in their favorite little hotel on the rue Delambre, ecstatic at the idea of becoming grandparents again.

  Edouard came to visit every Friday, with a bouquet of pink roses. He would sit in the armchair next to the bed, and again and again, he would ask me to describe the conversation that took place between William and me in Lucca. He would shake his head and sigh. He said, over and over, that he should have anticipated William's reaction, how was it that neither himself, nor I, could possibly have imagined that William never knew, that Sarah had never breathed a word?

  "Can we not call him?" he would say, his eyes hopeful. "Can I not telephone him and explain?" Then he would look at me and mumble, "No, of course, I can't do that, how stupid of me. How ridiculous of me."

  I asked my doctor if I could host a small gathering, lying down on my living-room sofa. She accepted and made me promise not to carry anything heavy and to remain horizontal, a la Recamier. One evening in late summer, Gaspard and Nicolas Dufaure came to meet Edouard. Nathalie Dufaure was there as well. And I had invited Guillaume. It was a moving, magical moment. Three elderly men who had an unforgettable little girl in common. I watched them pore over the old photos of Sarah, the letters. Gaspard and Nicolas asked us about William, Nathalie listened, helping Zoe pass around drinks and food.

  Nicolas, a slightly younger version of Gaspard, with the same round face and wispy white hair, spoke of his particular relationship with Sarah, how he used to tease her because her silence pained him so, and how any reaction, albeit a shrug, an insult, or a kick, was a triumph because she had for one instant emerged from her secrecy, her isolation. He told us about the first time she had bathed in the sea, at Trouville, in the beginning of the fifties. She had stared out at the ocean in absolute wonder, and then she had stretched out her arms, whooped with delight, and rushed to the water on her nimble, skinny legs, and dashed into the cool, blue waves with screeches of joy. And they had followed her, hollering just as loud, entranced by a new Sarah they had never seen.

  "She was beautiful," Nicolas recalled, "a beautiful eighteen-year-old glowing with life and energy, and I felt that day for the first time that there was happiness within her, that there was hope for her ahead."

  Two years later, I thought, Sarah was out of the Dufaures' lives, forever, carrying her secret past to America. And twenty years later she was dead. What had those twenty years in America been like, I mused. Her marriage, the birth of her son. Had she been happy in Roxbury? Only William had those answers, I thought. Only William could tell us. My eyes met Edouard's, and I could tell he was thinking the same thing.

  I heard Bertrand's key in the lock and my husband appeared, tanned, handsome, exuding Habit Rouge, smiling breezily, shaking hands smoothly, and I couldn't help remembering the lyrics of that Carly Simon song that reminded Charla of Bertrand: "You walked into the party like you were walking onto a yacht."

  B

  ERTRAND HAD DECIDED TO postpone the move to the rue de Saintonge because of the problems with my pregnancy. In this odd, new life I still couldn't get used to, he was physically present in a friendly, useful way, but not there spiritually. He traveled more than usual, came home late, left early. We still shared a bed, but it was no longer a marital bed. The Berlin wall had sprouted in its middle.

  Zoe seemed to take all this in her stride. She often talked about the baby, how much it meant to her, how excited she was. She had been shopping with my mother during my parents' stay, and they had gone crazy at Bonpoint, the outrageously expensive and exquisite baby-wear boutique on the rue de l'Universite.

  Most people reacted like my daughter, my parents and sister, and my in-laws and Mame: they were thrilled by the upcoming birth. Even Joshua, infamous for his scorn toward babies and sick leaves, seemed interested. "I didn't know one could have kids at middle age," he had said snidely. No one ever mentioned the crisis my marriage was going through. No one seemed to notice it. Did they all secretly believe that Bertrand, once the child was born, would come to his senses? That he would welcome this child with open arms?

  I realized that both Bertrand and I had locked each other into a state of numbness, of not talking, of not telling. We were both waiting for the baby to be born. Then we'd see. Then we'd have to move on. Then decisions would have to be made.

  One morning, I felt the baby start to move deep within me, to give those first tiny kicks one mistakes for gas. I wanted the baby out of me, into my arms. I hated this state of silent lethargy, this waiting. I felt trapped. I wanted to zoom to winter, to early next year, to the birth.

  I hated the end of summer that lingered on, the fading heat, the dust, the stealthy minutes that oozed by with the laziness of molasses. I hated the French word for the beginning of September, back to school, and the new start after summer: la rentree, repeated over and over again on the radio, on television, in the newspapers. I hated people asking me what the baby was going to be called. The amniocentesis had revealed its sex, but I had not wanted to be told. The baby did not have a name, yet. Which did not mean I wasn't ready for it.

  I crossed out every day on my calendar. September merged into October. My stomach rounded out nicely. I could get up now, go back to the office, pick Zoe up at school, go to the movies with Isabelle, meet Guillaume at the Select for lunch.

  But although my days felt fuller, busier, the emptiness and the ache remained.

  William Rainsferd. His face. His eyes. His expression when he had looked down at the little girl with the star. "Jesus." His voice when he had said that.

  What was his life like now? Had he erased everything from his mind the moment he turned his back on Zoe and me? Had he already forgotten once he had reached home?

  Or was it different? Was it hell for him because he could not stop thinking about what I had said, because my revelations had changed his entire life? His mother had become a stranger. Somebody with a past he knew nothing about.

  I wondered whether he had said anything to his wife, his daughters. Anything about an American woman turning up in Lucca with a kid, showing him a photo, telling him his mother was a Jew, that she had been rounded up during the war, that she had suffered, lost a brother, parents he'd never heard of.

  I wondered if he had researched information concerning the Vel' d'Hiv', if he had read articles, books about what took place in July 1942 in the heart of Paris.

  I wondered if he lay awake in bed at night and thought of his mother, of her past, of the truth of it, of what remained secret, unspoken, shrouded in darkness.

  T

  HE RUE DE SAINTONGE apartment was nearly ready. Bertrand had arranged for Zoe and me to move in just after the baby's birth, in February. It looked beautiful, different. His team had done a wonderful job. It no longer bore Mame's imprint, and I imagined it was a far cry from what Sarah had known.

  But as I wandered through the freshly painted, empty rooms, the new kitchen, my private office, I asked myself if I could bear living here. Living where Sarah's little brother had died. The secret cupboard did not exist anymore, it had been destroyed when two rooms had been made into one, but somehow that changed nothing for me.

  This is where it had happened. And I could not erase that from my mind. I had not told my daughter about the tragedy that had taken place here. But she sensed it, in her particular, emotional way.

  On a damp November morning, I went to the apartment to start working on curtains, wallpaper, carpeting. Isabelle had been particularly helpful and had escorted me around shops and department stores. To Zoe's delight, I had decided to ignore the quiet, placid tones I had resorted to in the past, and make a wild go at n
ew, bold colors. Bertrand had waved a careless hand: "You and Zoe make the decisions, it's your home, after all." Zoe had decided on lime green and pale purple for her bedroom. It was so reminiscent of Charla's taste that I had to smile.

  A cluster of catalogues awaited me on the bare, polished floorboards. I was leafing through them studiously when my cell phone rang. I recognized the number: Mame's nursing home. Mame had been tired lately, irritable, sometimes unbearable. It was difficult to make her smile, even Zoe had a hard time doing so. She was impatient with everybody. Going to see her recently had almost become a chore.

  "Miss Jarmond? This is Veronique, at the nursing home. I'm afraid I don't have good news. Madame Tezac is not well, she has had a stroke."

  I sat up straight, shock reeling through me.

  "A stroke?"

  "She is a bit better, with Docteur Roche now, but you must come. We have reached your father-in-law. But we cannot get hold of your husband."

  I hung up feeling flustered, panicky. Outside, I heard rain pattering against the windowpanes. Where was Bertrand? I dialed his number and got his voice mail. At his office near the Madeleine, nobody seemed to know where he was, not even Antoine. I told Antoine I was at the rue de Saintonge, and could he have Bertrand call me ASAP. I said it was very urgent.

  "Mon dieu, the baby?" he stammered.

  "No, Antoine, not the bebe, the grand-mere," I replied and hung up.

  I glanced outside. The rain was falling thickly now, a gray, glistening curtain. I'd get wet. Too bad, I thought. Who cared. Mame. Wonderful, darling Mame. My Mame. No, Mame could not possibly go now, I needed her. This was too soon, I was unprepared. But how could I ever be prepared for her death, I thought. I looked around me, at the living room, remembering that this had been the very place where I had met her for the first time. And once again I felt overwhelmed by the weight of all the events that had taken place here, and that seemed to be coming back to haunt me.

  I decided to call Cecile and Laure to make sure they knew and were on their way. Laure sounded businesslike and curt, she was already in her car. She'd see me there, she said. Cecile appeared more emotional, fragile, a hint of tears in her voice.