by Ruth Druart
When she gets back, she lets herself in with her key, but is surprised to hear voices coming from the living room. Puzzled as to why David would be home in the afternoon, she walks on through to the living room.
“Bonjour.” She looks at the stranger drinking tea from their best china.
“Sarah, this is Jacob Levi. I met him at the synagogue.” David rises from the couch.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you.” The stranger stands, stepping forward to kiss her on each cheek. “David has told me so much about you and your incredible story.”
Incredible isn’t the word she would use. Tragic, maybe, shocking, terrible, unimaginable, but not incredible. She doesn’t know what to say, so she moves to the couch, sitting down. The men follow suit. An awkward silence hangs in the room, making Sarah wonder what they were talking about before she arrived.
David coughs. “There’s some coffee left if you want it, Sarah.”
“No thank you.”
“We were just talking about Paris during the war, how frightening it was.” Jacob looks at her with dark, serious eyes. “I got out in 1939, before it became… impossible. We had family in New York. They took us in.” She wonders why he feels the need to explain himself.
“If we’d known, we would have left too.” David stares down at his cup.
“Of course. But no one back then imagined… could imagine what would happen…” Jacob trails off.
“No.” David picks up the conversation. “It was one thing deporting immigrants, but French-born citizens too. That wasn’t expected. By the time we knew we had to get out, it was too late.”
“Quite.” Jacob puts the cup he’s holding back onto the saucer. He looks pensive, and Sarah wonders what’s really brought him into their home. “But I’d seen it before.” He pauses. “It always starts with almost insignificant measures, you know, things you can live with, like not being allowed to own a bike or a radio. It makes you feel uneasy—alienated, but life goes on. Then further restrictions make it much more awkward: limiting the places you can go, where you’re allowed to shop. You can no longer mix with non-Jews.” He picks the cup up again. “And finally they take away your livelihood. Then it becomes almost impossible to support your family; your children go hungry, and you begin to think to yourself: they’re trying to kill us. But by then, it’s too late. You no longer have the money or the connections to get out. You’re basically a sitting duck.”
Sarah’s heard it before, and every time she feels embarrassed about their naïveté during the occupation of Paris, imagining that because they were French citizens with a French name, going back two generations and living in the chic 16th arrondissement, they would be safe. They’d witnessed the huge round-up in ’42, but still they hadn’t made any plans to escape. They hadn’t wanted to run away. Was it pride, courage, or denial?
She knows David will try to defend their lack of initiative.
“A sitting duck? Yes. First, we had to wear that yellow star, then we could only travel in the last carriage of the Métro. The Boches were in the front, so that was fine! Then we were not permitted to cross the Champs-Élysées, enter theaters or restaurants. And then they stopped us from shopping in certain places.” He coughs, pulling on his beard. “But life went on. Shows continued, people dressed up, went out, fell in love.” He pauses. “Sarah and I met in the summer of 1940. We had a quiet wedding a few months later and moved into a small apartment my parents owned in the sixteenth.”
“Were you working?”
“Yes, I was one of the few Jewish people who still had a job, and I managed to keep it till ’43.”
“You did well.”
“The research I was doing at the time into cancer was important; they needed me. I thought we were safe. We didn’t really understand the danger of our situation, not until it was staring us right in the face.”
“Indeed. It was beyond imagination. Beyond anyone’s imagination. But you two must have had your wits about you to survive for so long in Paris.”
“Survive is indeed the word.” David releases his beard. “Once I lost my job, we understood it was all we could hope for—to survive.”
“You must have had good friends to help you.”
“We did, but we didn’t go into hiding, we just tried not to leave the apartment. Friends brought us food when they could, and when Sarah had to go out, she wore her coat without the yellow star.” He pauses. “It was always a dilemma, whether to wear the star or not. If you did, you invited random arrest, but if you didn’t, well, you know: if they asked for your papers, that was it. But you couldn’t wear it one day and then not the next. People got to know who was Jewish and who wasn’t. And there was always someone ready to denounce you.”
“That’s what I find hardest to understand… all those denunciations.”
“Do you know that before the war, hardly anyone even knew we were Jewish? Our name gave nothing away—my father wasn’t Jewish; it was my mother.” He pauses, pulling on his beard again. “They were taken away a year before us. They wouldn’t move to a safe house one night when we gave them the warning.”
“I’m sorry.” Jacob bows his head.
Silence fills the room.
After a few minutes, David picks up the conversation again. “Sarah is technically more Jewish than me; both her parents were Jewish.”
They both look at Sarah. But she doesn’t want to think about her parents. She swallows the hard lump in her throat and forces herself to speak.
“It was safer for me to go out. It was more likely that they would stop David. They’d taken most of the men from Paris, so a man stood out. But a scrawny woman like me barely attracted attention. There were many of us, queuing for food for hours. They ignored us more often than not.”
“When you came back after the war…” Jacob hesitates. “Why didn’t you go back to your home in the sixteenth?”
“Too many memories,” Sarah says quickly.
“We wanted to be among our people.” David nods. “We couldn’t go back to the life we’d had; besides, someone else was living in our apartment.”
Jacob shakes his head. “It happened. Many people are still fighting to get their places back.” He coughs and sets his cup back into its saucer. “It’s a miracle you survived Auschwitz.” He turns to look at Sarah. “Both of you.”
“One hundred and ninety days,” Sarah whispers.
“We were young,” David says. “And we were stronger than a lot of the prisoners who’d been there longer. Remember? We were on one of the last trains. When did it leave, Sarah?”
This date is etched on her mind: May 30, 1944. The day she gave their son away. She knows David knows it too; he’s just trying to keep her included in the conversation.
“One week before the D-Day landings,” she says. “One week exactly.” She’s never been able to say the date itself.
“We knew the war couldn’t last much longer,” David continues. “We just had to hang on. Knowing that Samuel was alive kept us going. He was our hidden strength, our guiding light.”
“David managed to get messages through to me.” Sarah speaks quietly, her voice dream-like as the memories come seeping back into her mind.
“We were young, and our hearts were strong.” David rises, moving over to where Sarah is sitting. He puts his hand on her shoulder. “We had every reason to fight for our lives. And we did.”
Silence fills the room as they think about the ones who never returned. Sarah would like Jacob to leave so she can go and lie down. Her heart is heavy, and all the energy has seeped from her body, leaving her feeling listless.
He seems to sense her thoughts and stands up. “Well, I’ve taken up enough of your time. I look forward to meeting Samuel, but there’s no hurry. God will always be ready to welcome him into the fold. Whenever you feel it’s right.”
Sarah nods, leaving David to see him out. Then, without a word, she goes into the bedroom and lies down in the dark, the shutters still closed from the night
before.
Chapter Seventy
Paris, September 17, 1953
SAM
“Want to play marbles?” Zack asks at recess time. We join a group of boys kneeling on the ground, and Zack pulls out a small green bag. “You can share mine today.” He gives me three. They’re the see-through kind with colors spreading out like feathers in the middle. I look closely at the blue one; it’s not plain blue, but has two shades, just like my favorite one at home. I hold it tight in my fist, my tummy aching for home so bad.
I watch the other boys make triangles with their fingers, screwing up their eyes as they get ready to flick their marbles. I sit on the ground with them. The smell of hot tarmac makes me think of the boardwalk, burning my feet in the hot summers. The memory hits me hard in the gut, and my eyes sting with tears. But I blink them away and make myself think of the game instead. I’ve always been pretty good at marbles. I’ll show them what I can do. I lie down, taking my time to line my marble up. With one eye screwed up tight, I flick it with just the right amount of force. Too much and it will fly past the target. Too little, and it won’t make it far enough.
Yes!
“Pas mal,” one of the bigger boys says. He means not bad, which means really good actually. It feels like when a teacher says your work is excellent, but it’s an even better feeling.
I look at the boy. “Merci.”
He nods at me. A nod like that is a sure sign of respect.
Another boy pushes me out of the way. “Mais dépêche-toi. La cloche va sonner.”
I understand what he said—the bell is going to ring. French words are creeping into my head like ghosts walking through walls. I don’t mind so much, but there’s no way I’ll ever speak the language.
After recess, we have music. Zack tells me that they call the teacher Tonton Marius, because he’s from the south. I must look blank, because he adds, “You know, from Marcel Pagnol.”
“Who’s he?”
“Mon Dieu! You really don’t know anything, do you? He’s a famous writer and he makes films, and the main character from his best books is called Marius and is from the south. Haven’t you seen Manon des Sources? It came out last year.”
I shake my head, feeling the heat rise to my cheeks. I’m not used to being the one who doesn’t get stuff.
“I went to America once,” Zack says in a softer voice. “But I can’t remember it—I was only one. My dad said he’d take me back when I was older. Is it true everyone has a TV there?”
“I guess so.” Everyone I know has one, but I’m not sure that means every single person in America does.
“Wow! Is everyone rich?”
“I don’t think so.” I remember the street sweeper. He didn’t look rich. I’ve never really thought about it.
After music with Tonton Marius, it’s math. I’ve always been pretty good at math, and there are no words involved, just a long list of sums. I get on with them quickly.
The teacher walks up and down the lines between the desks, tapping now and again on a desk with a ruler when she finds a mistake. She comes and stands over my desk. “Bien, Samuel, ça se voit que tu as déjà fait des mathématiques.” Her voice is soft, like a song. I look up and smile. I guess she just told me how well I’m doing. “Maintenant, il faut travailler ton français.”
Later, Zack says, “Do you want to come to my place after school?”
“You bet!” Anything’s better than going back to the dreary apartment. “Can you get your mom to ask Sarah?”
“Who’s Sarah?”
“The lady who picks me up.”
“What? I thought she was your mom.”
“No, my mom’s in America.”
“But Monsieur Leplane said you were coming to Paris to live with your parents. He said you’d been moved—displaced, he said, ’cause of the war.”
“Did he? Well, he doesn’t know the whole story. It’s secret.”
“Secret? What do you mean?”
“I’m not really supposed to talk about it.”
“But I’m real good at keeping secrets. Swear on my life.” He puts his hand over his heart and looks so serious it makes me want to laugh.
“I’ll tell you as soon as I can, Zack, promise. Just not yet.”
“Okay.” Zack shakes my hand. It makes me feel real grown up.
“But I’m sure Sarah will let me come.”
So, as planned between us, after school, Zack gets his mother to ask Pretend Mom if I can come for a play date. She looks pleased with the idea, smiling over at me as if it’s the best news she’s ever heard.
“Come on, she said yes.” Zack pulls me along. I glance back and see Pretend Mom following us, chatting away to Zack’s mom.
“Is she coming too?” I ask.
He looks back at them. “Yeah, guess so. Why?”
“Nothing, just wondered.” Damn! She’s probably telling Zack’s mom the whole story. Now Zack will find out. And then he’ll know I lied to him and that will be the end of our friendship. What can I do?
“Zack,” I say, “I have to tell you a secret. When we’re on our own.”
Chapter Seventy-One
Paris, September 17, 1953
SARAH
Sam has a friend. It’s the glimmer of light she’s been praying for. She’s spent a lovely afternoon chatting to Zack’s mother, and in her new friend she’s found a sympathetic audience, eager to listen and help if she can. A wave of optimism sweeps through her as she envisions a future where Sam plays with his new friends while she and David talk with the parents; outings together over the weekends, picnics in the summer, visits to the zoo, the parks, museums.
“More tea?” Zack’s mother offers.
“Thank you, but no. It must be late; we should probably be going. It’s been lovely.” She glances at her watch: 6:30! David will be back from work any minute now. He’ll be worried to find them gone. “I’m so sorry.” She stands up. “I had no idea it was so late. Thank you so much for your hospitality.”
Sam drags his feet as they walk back. He’s doing it deliberately because he can see she’s in a hurry. When he stops to look in a shop window, she grabs his hand, pulling him along. “Come on, Sam. It’s late.”
The force of the resistance in his thin arm makes her gasp. She lets go. There’s no point fighting him, it will only make matters worse, so she pretends instead to look at the window display too. She knows it won’t take long for him to get bored and move on.
Two minutes later, he walks on, and this time she pretends they’re in no hurry at all.
When they enter the apartment, David is standing behind the door. “Where have you been?”
She feels Sam freeze by her side.
“Samuel made a friend at school. I met his mother and we had goûter together.”
She sees David let out his breath. “I was worried.”
Sarah touches his arm. “I’m sorry, I didn’t notice the time fly by.”
“No, I’m glad you had a nice time. What did you do?”
“We just drank tea and chatted.”
Sam slips away to his room.
“I’ll go and say hello to him properly,” David says.
Sarah follows him down the corridor to Sam’s room. When they knock and walk in, Sam looks up from his desk, quickly shoving a piece of purple paper into his drawer.
“Bonsoir, Samuel.” It looks like David’s pretending he hasn’t seen anything, but she can’t help wondering what was on that piece of paper. “Alors, c’était comment, l’école?” He strolls farther into the room.
Sam looks from David to Sarah and back again. “Okay,” he finally says.
“Bien, bien.” David is smiling. “C’est une bonne nouvelle. Je suis content.”
She leaves to prepare dinner. David follows her into the kitchen a few minutes later. “He seems happier now that he’s started school. I knew that being with children his own age would help.” He takes out two wineglasses, putting a dash of cassis in each before add
ing white wine. “So what’s this friend of his like?”
“Zack? He’s lovely, very polite and well brought up. His mother is charming too.”
“How do the boys communicate?”
“You know children. They always find a way.” She coughs to hide her unease at the white lie. She doesn’t want to see the disappointment on his face when she tells him Sam’s new friend is anglophone.
“Yes, of course.” He pauses. “It’s going to be all right, isn’t it, Sarah?”
She takes her glass, waiting for him to take his. They clink them together, looking each other in the eye, but she can’t answer his question. She’s still not sure that everything will be all right.
She takes a sip of her kir. “He’s hard to reach. Very hard. It feels like we have a high mountain to climb, and we’re not even sure what the view will be like from the top.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, he will adapt. He’ll have no choice. But I don’t know if he’ll ever be able to love us.”
Chapter Seventy-Two
Paris, September 17, 1953
SAM
I only just managed to shove the letter into the drawer when they came into my room. Not that they would understand it, but they’d see it was in English and they’d guess who I was writing to.
I take it out again. This time I put a book nearby in case I need to cover it up suddenly. I read it back to myself.
Dear Mom,
I love you. I miss you so much, it hurts me inside. Your the best mom in the world and Daddys the best dad. I dont care what anyone else says. They dont understand. Pretend Mom and Dad are weirrd. I call him Beard Man cause he’s got this real bad wirry beard. You and Daddy are my real parents and I’m gonna find a way to come home. So dont worry. I wish wed gotten to Mexico. I hate it here. I love you.
I concentrate hard on my writing, careful not to lift the pen off the paper except between words. I wonder what else to tell her. I don’t have a plan yet, but I want her to know I’m going to try.
