She held a wet sponge with the very tips of her short, stubby, fingers, bathing him with the same repulsion one might bathe a flee-bitten stray. Selim looked away, ashamed that, at thirty-two years of age, he was being washed by a stranger. Every so often, she would look at him and say, “Very good Mr. Osman.” When she was done sponging his back, she came around facing him. She peered into his eyes with such intensity that he was forced to look back at her. Smiling sweetly, her fat cheeks gathering into two pink rolls.
“Are we done?” he said shivering.
She nodded, then patted him down with a rough towel.
At three o’clock that afternoon, Hannah Herzikova entered his hospital room. Her low heels clicked against the hard, cold floor.
Selim looked up.
“Excuse me,” she whispered. “Just visiting my father.” She pointed towards the room divider as though they could both see the man behind it, then passed the foot of his bed, disappearing behind a pale blue curtain that divided the room. The legs of an armchair screeched against the tiles as she made herself comfortable.
“Hi, Papa,” Selim heard her say.
“Chérie, I’ve missed you.” The man’s voice was hoarse, his strained breathing louder than his words.
“Let me help you.”
“That’s all right, I can do it on my own.”
Selim could hear the man fidgeting with the manual controls to his adjustable bed.
“How am I feeling? I’m fine. It’s you that I’m worried about. Tell me, how’s the portrait coming along?”
“Not too bad, still working on it, but haven’t been able to get the eyes right.”
“You need to get them right. If the eyes aren’t right, then nothing else is.”
“Pop, I’ll get them right. We’ve plenty of time.” She sounded irritated.
“Hannah—”
“I know.”
“You need to finish it,” he said.
“I’ll finish it when I finish it.”
The legs of the small wooden chair screeched once more against the tiles. Selim could hear her shuffling with her things.
“I found this box in the attic,” she said after a few minutes. “There’s a bunch of old stuff inside. Some photos, I thought you might want to see them.” When he didn’t answer, she continued, “I looked through them.”
“Did you?” The man sounded irritated.
“I didn’t recognize a single person in those pictures, Papa. Not a single one besides you.”
“No. You wouldn’t.”
“Who is the little boy in this picture? The one with the scar above his eye? Was he a friend? And the small woman with her hair pulled tight? Was that your mother? You always said you didn’t have any photos from France.” There was a moment of silence, then, “Are you upset, Papa?”
“The boy was not my friend and that was not my mother.”
“Papa?”
“Put the box away.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ll put it all back where it was.”
“No. Just leave it, now that it’s here.” A quiet moment passed. “What is it?” he asked.
“This ring was in the box.” He could hear her going through her bag for a moment. “It’s beautiful, Papa. Is that a ruby?”
“I honestly don’t know. Go ahead. Try it on.”
“Really?”
“Just take it. No point leaving it in an old box for another forty years.”
“It’s a little tight.”
“Good. It won’t slip off.”
“There’s an inscription.”
“Where?”
“Right here, beneath the band.”
“Ah, yes. I think someone once told me that it was Old Ottoman.”
“What does it mean?”
“I’ve always wondered.”
A light drizzle began to rap against the windowpane. They sat for some time, not speaking, and Selim could sense it was the silence of people who understood that in the noise of petty banter, meaning was often lost. Selim, the man, and the girl, all sat quietly listening to the sound of the rain.
When she finally emerged from the other side of the curtain, Selim had the vague sense they’d met before. Her green eyes glowed in his memory. As she moved, he was struck by her bold, almost feline posture.
She had an elongated, heart-shaped face, framed by free-flowing pale hair that fell in messy waves to her elbows. Her nose was distinctive, yet appealing, punctuated by high cheekbones, a broad forehead and a small red mouth.
She kept her eyes to the ground and a large canvas tote slung over her shoulder. She folded her fingers around the strap exposing a crimson ruby, bold and luminous against the stark backdrop. As she passed Selim’s bed, she glanced up and smiled. Her long hair fell before her emerald eyes as she made her way towards the door leaving behind the strange aroma of fresh, wet paint. It was the very first scent he could pick up since the tracheotomy. Selim felt as though he had just been born.
23
Davide Herzikova watched as his only child left the room. He lay in his hospital bed contemplating a lifetime of secrecy. They were all soon to be laid to rest, the important ones, the petty ones, and the ones he wished he could forget. The discovery of the box had aroused his daughter’s curiosity. She wanted to know about the parts of his life that he longed to erase from his memory. She was a stubborn girl, but she was not as stubborn as death. Death was imminent. Death would finally lay to rest the secret burdens of the past.
Davide examined the tin box she’d left behind. Plastered on the lid, an old French poster he’d stuck on years back—a pin-up girl in a polka-dot dress with a bright red flower in chestnut-colored hair. The old latch was rusted and jammed tight, and Davide struggled to open it. Inside, scores of old photos, ticket postcards from the annual Marais street fair, letters from people whose names he had not uttered in decades. She would not have understood any of it. He was relieved that his pain was still his own. Before closing the box he withdrew a gold locket on a long chain. He returned the photos, tickets and postcards to the box then called the nurse’s aide and had her place the box under the bed.
When she left, she neglected to pull the curtain back behind her. Davide looked over at the man in the bed beside his own. A young foreigner—the latest in a rapid succession of terminally ill roommates—moaned groggily from a state of almost sleep.
Unlike his roommate, Davide Herzikova had no bandages on his face, no scars or bulging tumors. Aside from his balding scalp, there were no outward indicators to suggest that Davide Herzikova was dying. Like the secrets he would take to his grave, Davide Herzikova’s cancer was invisible to all, but not very far from the heart. With the box securely stowed under the bed, he could finally rest. He turned to his side and dozed off with the gold locket tucked in his palm, dreaming of a mother and of a father that he had never even known.
PART III
24
The Herzikovas
Paris 1941
It was on the Jewish holiday of Passover, in the spring of 1941, that Jacob Herzikova first laid eyes on his future bride. He caught a glimpse of her soft, round face through the lace partition that separated men and women in the tiny synagogue of the Marais district in Paris. After services, he inquired about her and discovered that she was only sixteen, ten years his junior. She was the daughter of a widowed doctor who could barely make ends meet. He was from a prominent family of bankers and was a well-respected member of France’s burgeoning Jewish community.
With her father’s permission, Haya and Jacob spent the day together. He invited her to listen to records in a charming place he knew over on the Rue Soufflot, not far from the Sorbonne, where he’d spent breezy afternoons in the courtyard of the student center. Later, they headed over to Luxembourg Gardens, where they purchased old postcards, played checkers and drank tea.
On their next outing, they boarded the metro and headed toward his family’s summer villa in Cherbourg. The day’s magic was interrupte
d momentarily as the train conductor glanced disdainfully at the yellow stars stitched on their overcoats. He instructed them to sit in the last carriage before punching a hole in their tickets. They shuffled to the back and were quiet for a while, but the unpleasant event was soon forgotten upon their arrival in Cherbourg.
The sky was bright and the chestnuts were in bloom. Mme Herzikova came to collect them at the station. They spent a few hours in the orchard, getting to know one another and picking apples his mother would bake into a pie later that day. They traipsed through the garden between a fortress of sweet smelling roses and a wall of ivy that cloaked the south side of the house like a lush, green blanket.
Later, he escorted her to the outskirts of the estate where they sat with legs dangling over the edge of a cliff. Their eyes were on the ocean when he said, “We should do this again.”
“I’d like that,” she simply replied.
He mustered all his courage. “Can I kiss you?”
She turned to him and when she did, he knew he need not wait for her response. Several months later, the two were engaged.
The Nazis had occupied France for nearly a year and life was becoming more difficult for the Jews of Paris. Jacob imagined that he would wait a year to marry his fiancée, so she would at least reach her seventeenth birthday, but when thousands of Jews were randomly arrested in the middle of May, Jacob decided they should marry immediately. No one knew when they would be taken away, or where they would be taken to.
Jacob Herzikova was determined to move forward with the wedding as if there was no war. The Jewish community was abuzz as the guest list was rumored to contain no less than two hundred names.
Some of Jacob’s old university friends declined the invitation. The Jewish star stitched to his jacket had caused a quiet discomfort even in the most wholesome of friends. Its very existence caused some people to look at him with disdain. Others seemed ashamed in his presence, ashamed over the state of the affairs that had taken over France. In every conversation, the star was like a third character, an unwanted interloper hovering dismally over every encounter, lurking suspiciously over seemingly innocent tête-à-têtes. It was nothing more than an ordinary piece of fabric stitched against his overcoat, yet it tore at his dignity and chipped away at his spirit.
Over the next few months the wedding list quietly dwindled. Names were crossed off as distant friends and acquaintances were summarily arrested and never heard from again. Talk of the wedding served as a dreamy respite, a fairy tale to the Jews of the Marais district of Paris. It was a dangerous delusion that the community could ill-afford to indulge in. None-the-less, the human spirit hopes.
They could talk of the impending dangers, of the anti-Semitic laws that were creeping up day by day, but it was much more pleasant to talk about the upcoming wedding. Those invited gripped the invitation with anticipation and desperation. The sweet-scented stationary and swirling calligraphy seemed to promise a secure future; Ne vous inquietez pas, it seemed to say. The world was not coming to an end. On the contrary, the future held merriment and celebration. A wedding. October 3, 1941... It was a promise, printed in black and white, swirling calligraphy. In the autumn misery of Nazi occupied Paris, the Herzikova wedding fanned the hopes of all Parisian Jewry. The invitation bid its recipients, “Join us, la vie est déjà belle.”
Prominent bankers and diplomats from Luxembourg and Belgium regretfully declined the invitation, as France’s neighbors were abruptly isolated by the German occupying forces. And yet, the dressmaker was busily preparing the bride’s sumptuous, taffeta gown. It would be a morning celebration, as a strict evening curfew had been imposed throughout Paris.
The night before the wedding, the banquet hall of the synagogue dripped with freshly picked flowers and crystal candelabras. The tables were set with satin linens and fine, porcelain china. Silver cutlery gleamed expectantly as the chefs busily prepared the kosher meat that had been sacrificed for the occasion. For just one lovely day in October, the war would cease to exist. Hundreds of the district’s Jews would not have to wait on ration lines like paupers, but would dine leisurely as the carefree bourgeoisie they had been, not long ago. Slender Parisian beauties would don their most elegant attire, paint their nails red, and coif their hair as if, for just one day, fashion was still something that mattered in Paris.
The eve before the wedding was a crisp October night and the synagogue lay in wait to welcome the city’s most beloved young couple. The ceremony would take place in the same synagogue Jacob’s parents had been married in some thirty years earlier, and the reception to follow would be in a large banquet hall adjacent to the sanctuary. The bride, the groom, the guests, the flowers, the china, and chuppah, all waited anxiously for the sun to rise, for the day to arrive.
On the evening of October 2nd, 1941, the Nazis set dynamite to six synagogues in Paris. The porcelain china shattered. Perfectly polished silver cutlery shot through the night like shrapnel. Scorched Torah scrolls and rose petals danced a hideous dance, wriggling in the inferno of the Nazi bombardment. Instead of attending a wedding celebration, a number of the guests were rounded up by Nazis, never to be heard from again.
Jacob wed his bride in the cold, damp basement of the chief rabbi’s home. There were no guests. There were no flowers. The bride did not wear white.
That night, they consummated their marriage quickly and quietly. Both of them wept silently. Davide Herzikova was born nine months later.
*
“You should be resting,” Jacob said when he found Haya standing in the doorway with a basket in her arms. Her skin seemed rugged and aged. She had given birth only hours earlier and he found it odd that she should be out of bed and walking about.
A little hiccup sounded from the basket.
“I can go out and fetch whatever you need,” he continued. “Why not go back to bed?”
“You’ve heard the reports,” she said quietly.
“Reports?”
“Of death camps.”
“Haya, you’re wearing a coat and hat. Where are you going?”
The sallow look in her pale eyes said everything he needed to know.
Jacob turned away and grit his teeth.
“In the east,” she continued.
“Rumors, all rumors!” he said defiantly.
“Ovens, Jacob. They say they are sending Jews into ovens!”
“They say a lot, don’t they?”
“We have a son to protect.”
“There’s panic in the streets.”
“They’re barbarians, Jacob.”
“They’re Europeans! As are we!”
“Don’t you see what is happening around us?” she said.
“You’re worried. It’s understandable. But the able-bodied are sent to labor camps. Work! That’s what they want us for. It’s a fact of war.”
“And what of those who cannot work? The sick, the elderly, and the children? Family, neighbors, they’ve just disappeared. Where have they gone to, Jacob. Tell me, where have they been sent to?”
“I’ve got friends at the municipality and they’ve assured me—”
“We haven’t any friends, Jacob. Open your eyes.”
“A few more weeks. We’ve at least a few more weeks. And who knows, the war could be over by then,” he said lamely.
“They’re rounding people up, block by—”
“This will all be over soon.”
“Days, Jacob. They’re coming for us. One, maybe two. He’s not safe here with us.”
“For G-d’s sake! He’s not even a day old!”
“He’s not safe.”
“You’re not taking my son from me. I won’t let you.”
“You can’t stop me. You won’t stop me.”
“Now just wait a minute—”
“You won’t, because you know it’s right.”
Jacob swatted his newspaper to the ground.
“I need you to trust me.”
“If any harm comes to him…” H
e shook his head.
“When this is all over, we’ll come back for him. I reckon a few months? A year? The war can’t drag on beyond another year, could it?”
“I think I hear the kettle,” Jacob said numbly.
“I haven’t put the water on to boil.”
He looked up towards the kitchen door. “I swore I heard the kettle whistle.”
Haya swallowed hard. “Perhaps you should go in and check.”
“A good idea,” he continued wearily. “Go into the kitchen and check.” He rose slowly, carefully, the weight of the war bearing down on his shoulders. He stood there looming over the basket for a long moment without daring to touch it. Then he disappeared into the kitchen to check on the imaginary whistle of an imaginary kettle.
When she walked out the door Jacob was not there to stop her. Several hours later she was back empty-handed.
Jacob and Haya had hoped to escape to the unoccupied south, but the tentacles of the Nazi regime reached deep into the Vichy governed territory. They were caught hiding under the loose floorboards of a priest’s home in the tiny village of St. Martin. Nazi officers arrived with dogs, which were unleashed on Haya while Jacob was held back and made to watch. They were beaten and dragged away, leaving only a stained trail of blood along the dusty road up to the house.
In a brutal roundup the French authorities referred to as “Operation Spring Breeze,” The Herzikovas, along with 12,800 other Jews, were transferred to the Vélodrome d’hiver, a racing stadium in Paris that Jacob had frequented as a child. He had always had fond memories of the place, of cheering crowds and sticky, melting peanut chews. Towards the end of a tight race, his father would start huffing, then leap out of his chair, red-faced and smoldering, as the cycling contenders sprinted across the finish line. He loved that stadium and had always anticipated the annual spring racing season.
The Debt of Tamar Page 15
