While Paris Slept

by Ruth Druart

  “How does everyone else who survived manage?” Sarah wonders how others have coped. Maybe the only solution is to block it out. “Sometimes I wonder if it really even happened.”

  “It’s hard for everyone, but no one really wants to hear about it. They don’t want to have to imagine what we went through. But nothing’s ever the same once you’ve seen hell, is it?”

  She leans into him. “No, nothing’s the same.” She pauses. “Sometimes I feel so alone.”

  “I’m here, Sarah.” He takes her hand. “I know I’m no good at saying things, saying how I feel. But I’m here for you.” Unshed tears shine in his eyes.

  “I know you are.” She squeezes his hand. “David, what we lived through—it’s not of this world, is it? Not this world now. It can’t be.”

  “It’s not.” He wipes away the silent tears running down her face. “We came back from hell. Somehow we have to learn to forget what we saw there.”

  “Learn to forget. Yes. If only we could.”

  “Maybe we can’t forget, but we can forgive.”

  His words take her by surprise. She realizes it’s not something she’s ever considered, and she’d always assumed he hadn’t either. Forgiveness.

  “I don’t think I can. I don’t even think I want to.”

  He looks down at the table. “I want to. I won’t make excuses for them, but… but I think I would… I would be able to forgive if I were a better man.”

  “No! You are a good man. It’s too much to ask. You always ask too much!”

  “What do you mean?”

  She didn’t mean to say it, but now the words are out. “You expect so much from everyone: Samuel, me, yourself. But we’re only human. Sometimes it’s just too hard.” Her tears start afresh, and she pulls a handkerchief from her pocket to wipe her nose.

  He takes his hand away, scratching his beard. “I’m sorry if I’ve been hard on you both. I didn’t mean to be.”

  She looks sideways at him, watching his Adam’s apple going up and down as though it were a heavy weight. She can feel his pain, can almost hear the words blocked in his throat. She wishes she could ease it. “David, we should be grateful for what we have. It’s a miracle Samuel survived. And he saved us too.”

  “Yes, he did.”

  “Isn’t that enough?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe we’ve been asking for too much. Isn’t it enough that we are all alive?”

  He grips his beard as if gripping on to life. “What are you saying?”

  She closes her eyes, praying for courage. “David, you know what I’m saying.”

  “No! No, I don’t.”

  Scraping her chair back, she gets up and goes to the sink, where she starts to scrub down the already clean surfaces, swallowing her tears.

  Then she feels her husband next to her. “Sarah, maybe you should go and meet Beauchamp. It might help you.”

  “Will you come?” She turns to him, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.

  “No. I couldn’t bear to see him.”

  Chapter Eighty-Four

  Paris, November 2, 1953

  SARAH

  After Sarah drops Sam off at the school gates, she can’t stop thinking about it. Should she go to the prison? If she goes, she might gain some insight, something that will help her understand Sam. Something that will help her take the next step.

  She knows where the prison is—in the 14th arrondissement, at Montparnasse. It will take about thirty minutes to get there. That’s thirty minutes there, thirty back, and she has three hours before she has to pick Sam up for lunch. It should be enough time. But she’s afraid, anxious about how she will feel toward Beauchamp, how he will feel toward her. He probably hates her.

  But she wants to see her son through his eyes. From the photos they were shown, it was clear he was a happy, healthy child, full of the joys of life. She wants a glimpse of this boy.

  The psychologist assigned to them advised them against bringing up the past. “I know Freudian theory would have you going through it all,” she said, “but we believe the human brain suppresses certain memories for good reasons. It’s a kind of survival instinct; life moves forward, never backward. Well, not yet anyway—we’ll have to wait for time travel for that.” And she laughed, a horrible shallow laugh.

  Sarah hurries down to the Métro at Saint-Paul. When she gets off at Montparnasse and walks to Rue de la Santé, she realizes it’s an area of Paris she’s never visited before. The prison imposes itself on the narrow street, tall and gray. With a trembling hand, she knocks on the wooden doors.

  She hears a latch being moved aside, and a man peers through a small square opening. “Yes?”

  “I’m here to visit a prisoner.”

  “Visiting starts at ten.” He stares at her.

  She looks at her watch—it’s 9:20.

  “You can go in now and wait. You need to leave your ID here.”

  She feels herself break out in a cold sweat. With trembling hands she produces her identity card, reminding herself again that it’s no longer a crime to be Jewish. He takes it from her and writes the number down. “Who are you visiting?”

  “Monsieur Beauchamp.”

  “You have to be out by ten thirty. Go and wait inside.”

  She hurries over to the entrance.

  A guard meets her there. He rifles through her handbag, then shows her to the waiting area. She sits down on a cold metal chair, a shiver running down the back of her neck. Dampness clings to the room, leaving it cold and humid. Auschwitz comes crashing into her mind. The freezing cold, the starvation, and the twelve-hour days of physical labor were hard enough to endure, but it was the fear of the unknown that was truly petrifying and soul-destroying. She shudders, attempting to dislodge the memories she’s tried so hard to suppress, reminding herself that this isn’t the same thing at all. And it’s not. It’s really not. It’s just that the loss of freedom, loss of control over one’s own destiny is there in the cold plain room, the unnatural hush, and the vinegary smell of stale sweat and fear seeping through the walls.

  She tries to compose her thoughts, working out how best to approach him. She wants to know what Sam was like at one, at two. What were his first words? What made him happy? What made him sad? What might comfort him?

  “You can go through now.” A guard interrupts her thoughts.

  Taking a deep breath, she walks into a room containing scattered tables and chairs. She’s shown to a small table at the back with a chair on each side. As she sits down, more visitors enter the room, shuffling to chairs at other tables.

  A door opens. She glances up to see a line of handcuffed prisoners slouching through. The sound of the guards’ boots and the odd barked order interrupt the soft pad of their open shoes shuffling along the floor. Will she recognize him? Will he know her? She’s almost too scared to look.

  “Beauchamp!” a guard shouts.

  That can’t be him! A thin, hunched man shuffles his way toward her. She thought he was taller, much taller. She holds her breath.

  Then he looks up, stopping in his stride as their eyes meet. It is him! She sees the scar running down the side of his face.

  “Hurry along now!” A guard pushes him in the back. “Your visitor is waiting.”

  Involuntarily she flinches, as though it were she who was pushed.

  She stands up, not sure how she’s supposed to greet him. Then he’s right in front of her, stretching out his fingers from the handcuffs. Briefly, she touches them. They sit down opposite each other. She notices a bruise on his cheekbone. For a moment she wonders what it’s like for him, here in prison. It’s not what she wanted. She only wanted her son back.

  “Is Sam okay?” His voice is hoarse, and she sees him swallow.

  “No.” The rest of her words stick in her throat. She looks away, blinking back tears.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She watches his Adam’s apple go up and down as he sticks his chi
n out. She sees Sam in this gesture, when he’s trying to be brave, trying not to cry.

  “He’s been uprooted from the only family he’s ever known.” She sits up straight, trying to control her emotions. This wasn’t how she wanted to start.

  He bows his head, his eyes on the table now instead of on her.

  “He doesn’t know us. And we don’t know him. For God’s sake, we don’t even speak the same language!”

  He won’t look at her. His silence goads her.

  “It would have been better for you if we hadn’t survived, wouldn’t it? Certainly easier for Sam.”

  “No!” He looks up now. “I didn’t want that! When I saw the photos… what happened in the camps, it was… it… I didn’t see how anyone could have survived that. And I thought of you, I thought…”

  “That they’d sent me straight to the gas chambers!” Her voice cracks. This wasn’t what she wanted to talk about. The bitterness of her words makes her feel sick.

  A guard strides over to their table, banging his baton down onto it.

  Sarah jumps back, sweat breaking out on her brow, running down her ribs. She closes her eyes in an attempt to distance herself, to calm herself. She’s making a total mess of it.

  “Keep it quiet.” He hits Jean-Luc on the shoulder with the baton. The thud makes Sarah cringe, but Jean-Luc doesn’t flinch, though she sees a flash of light cross his eyes.

  “Please. We’re fine. It’s my fault.” She tries to quell the pity welling up inside her.

  The guard walks away.

  “Why didn’t you look for us after the war?” she whispers across the space between them.

  “I… I was scared.”

  “Scared? Why? They would have considered you a hero—saving a baby from Auschwitz.”

  “No… scared of losing Sam.”

  “How can you say that? Don’t you think I was scared of losing him? Do you know how much courage it took for me to give him to you?”

  “I know.” He holds eye contact with her.

  “Tell me about Sam, when he was little. What was he like?”

  He smiles, a lopsided smile, and her heart jumps. It’s Sam again.

  “He was a quiet baby, hardly cried at all. But once he could walk, there was no stopping him. He wanted to explore everything, always sticking his fingers into things, pulling things apart. I was forever putting his toys back together for him. He’d watch me, fascinated.”

  “Just like my father. He always had to understand how things worked. Tell me something else.”

  “He’s a great runner. He… he was going to run in the state championships.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Yes. You should get him to show you how fast he is. He’s got the long limbs for it.”

  She shakes her head, thinking of Sam’s legs, his awful skin rash. “Did he suffer from eczema before?”

  “What?” His eyebrows come together in a frown.

  “Eczema,” she repeats. “A skin rash.”

  He doesn’t speak for a moment, but she knows what he’s thinking. The day she gave him to Jean-Luc, he had dry red patches on the inside of his thighs.

  “When he was a baby, that day at the station…”

  “Yes, I know.” She swallows. “We didn’t have any cream for him. It was awful. But it was just diaper rash.” She stops, overcome by feelings of guilt and longing, a yearning to care for her baby.

  “Don’t worry. It soon cleared up. He’s got great skin, he never gets sunburned, not like me.” His cheeks redden. “But of course, there’s no reason why he would take after me. I didn’t mean to…”

  “I know.”

  “He has your eyes. Most people think they’re just brown, but if you look carefully, you can see there are specks of green too. It depends on the light and what mood he’s in.”

  Her heart sinks. She’s never seen the green in them.

  “What about sleeping? When did he start sleeping through the night?”

  “We moved around a lot when we first arrived in America, so it took awhile for us to get into a routine.”

  She imagines them as refugees, looking for a place to settle. She’s not getting the picture of Sam she was hoping for, the one that will bring him closer to her.

  “And walking?” she persists. “How old was he when he first walked?”

  “I don’t remember the dates so well. I’m sorry. Charlotte is better than me at those details.”

  “Charlotte…” She pauses, the thought of her being Sam’s mother cutting into her like a knife. “What was she like as a mother?”

  “She…” Sarah hears the crack in his voice. “She is… was a good mother.” Tears gather in his eyes. Then he sticks his chin out again.

  “Go on.” Her voice comes out harsher than she intended.

  “I don’t know what else I can say.”

  “I… I don’t know how to be a mother to him.” The words come tumbling out. “You can’t suddenly become a mother to a boy who doesn’t know you, who doesn’t even speak the same language.”

  The guard strides away, coughing loudly.

  Sarah watches his back as he walks away. He’s just a prison guard, but she hates him. They’re bullies. All of them.

  “You know, he’s a wonderful kid,” Beauchamp says abruptly.

  Sarah brings her eyes back to him, grateful that he’s talking, bringing her back to the present.

  “He’s such a happy kid, he was born with an easygoing disposition. You’ll find a way to reach him. But he will need time.”

  “Time. Everyone talks about time, as if it was a friend. But it’s not, is it? Time has been our enemy. If only we’d found him earlier, when he was two, three even, it would have been different.”

  “I know. It was wrong of me to keep him from you.” He pauses. “On the other hand, he has been loved, and he is stable, well balanced. We love… we love him as if he were our own.”

  “Love him?” Her anger rises up again in a tidal wave. “I loved him too!”

  “Loved?”

  “I mean love. I love him.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

  “You took away our chance to build that bond with him. And now you dare to question my love for him.” Tears of rage sting her eyes. “I’d walk through fire for Samuel.”

  He stares at her, as though weighing her last statement. “Would you put his happiness before your own?”

  “Yes! How dare you even ask me that?”

  “How about your husband? Would he?”

  “Of course he would!”

  “Good.”

  She’s fuming now. The audacity of the man! Taking a deep breath, she calms her indignation. “We love Sam more than life itself. If you’d loved him half as much, you would have looked for us after the war.”

  Beauchamp raises his chained fists to his eyes. Then he lowers them, shaking his head as if he can shake away his sorrow.

  She watches him closely, noticing the slump of his shoulders, the deep regret in his eyes, his eyelashes flickering over them as he tries to make sense of it all. She’s seen it before—in her son. That bewildered look, as though the world is just too complicated to comprehend. Compassion threatens to take over, but he is not a child, she reminds herself.

  “What else can you tell me about my son?”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “What was his first word?”

  He frowns. “I’m not sure. I can’t remember.” He looks uncomfortable, and she wonders if he’s embarrassed that he can’t remember these details.

  Then suddenly she knows it as if he’d said it out loud.

  “I think it was car,” he mumbles. “He loves cars, knows all the models. He helped me choose our car; he came to the garages with me, checked out the engine capacities, the motor, everything.”

  She looks into his eyes and he tries to hold her gaze, but eventually he has to look away.

  “It wasn’t car, was it?” She blinks. “It was
Mama.”

  Chapter Eighty-Five

  Paris, November 2, 1953

  SARAH

  The school bell rings out just as she turns the corner into Rue Hospitalières-Saint-Gervais. The children come swarming out, some boys pretending to be fighter planes swooping down. They’re noisy and hungry, eager to get home. All except Sam. Standing back from the mass of mothers and children, she waits for him to slouch out. But the playground is empty, suddenly quiet.

  What if he’s run away again? She runs through the gate, into the school and along the corridor to his classroom. Then she stops dead. He’s there, standing next to the principal. He looks tiny, his shoulders slumped and his head hanging low. An overwhelming feeling of sorrow drowns her.

  “Madame Laffitte.” The principal looks at her. “I’m glad you came in. We need to talk. Let’s go into my office.”

  “Yes, monsieur.” She feels like a child again, a child in trouble. Following him down the corridor into his room, the silence is threatening. She reaches for Sam’s hand, and he lets her take it for the first time. They are both in trouble. Once in the room, the principal sits at his desk, signaling for them to sit opposite. As Sarah takes her seat, she glances at Sam, hoping to make eye contact, but he stares blankly ahead.

  “Madame Laffitte,” he starts, “I know this isn’t easy for anyone, least of all for Samuel. But we have to think of all our students. Look, I’ll get straight to the point. We don’t know what to do with Samuel, and it’s not just a problem of language. He shows no interest in learning whatsoever. This is unusual in such a young child. He’s sullen, uncooperative, and today he was caught fighting in the playground and—”

  “Please stop,” Sarah interrupts him, surprising herself as much as him. “I know he doesn’t want to be here. He’s homesick.” She reaches out, touching a strand of Sam’s hair. “I’m going to take him home now. He won’t be coming back again.”