Besides, they had so many friends – art collectors – whom they believed would protect them. Those friends did try. For two years, the Goldbergs hid in one of the grand houses on the rue de Varenne in the seventh arrondissement, but after the round-up of Jews at the Vél d’Hiver in July 1942 …
After that, they knew it was too dangerous for their friends, for the families and children of their friends. This was not something they could ask of anyone, let alone of friends. Even so, friends hid them for another eighteen months in a country house outside Etampes, far from troop-patrolled Paris, in a village so small that it was not even on most road maps.
But someone informed, and then they were on the move from day to day, safe house to safe house, passed on from one Resistance escort to another. Their journey from St Gilles to New York took ten months. They had taken the long way round. All the French Atlantic ports had been closed, either by the Vichy or the Boche. After the last safe house in France they had gone over the Pyrenees on foot, then to Portugal by train, then from Lisbon to Jamaica, then Jamaica to Miami, then Miami to New York. They took any ship that would let them on board.
The chaos on board the Espiritu Santo as it left the port of Lisbon was extreme. There were too many refugees, there was not enough food. The frail and elderly were dying on deck. Children were frightened and crying. The crew was sympathetic but frazzled. By the time the ship reached New York, twenty-eight passengers had died and been buried at sea. When Myriam went into labour on the arrival wharf on the Manhattan Pier in November 1944, a doctor was summoned and a birth certificate was signed. The baby girl was named Lilith.
The baby died a week later in Brooklyn.
‘My uncle and all my relatives were Orthodox,’ Myriam said. ‘My uncle’s rabbi decreed that a baby who lived for less than thirty days had not really existed and should not be mourned. This was according to Maimonides and the Laws of Mourning in the Mishneh Torah. So there was no funeral and we did not sit Shiva. It was not permitted for me to speak of my baby. It was not permitted for me to cry. For months I lay in bed all day. I pulled a pillow over my head when I cried. I wanted to die. I prayed to die.’
‘I told her that first we had to find Grand Loup and Lilith,’ Aaron said. ‘We had to thank them. After that, she could choose, and I would accept her choice.’
The search took many years. Resistance archives were impossible to come by for more than a decade, and even in the sixties people were still secretive in France. No one wanted to talk about what happened.
But then, in St Gilles, the Goldbergs recognised Grand Loup.
They recognised their own early Modigliani painting on the wall of the chateau.
They had a birth certificate for Lilith Goldberg but no death certificate. Lilith Goldberg was born in November 1944.
Cap, daughter of Grand Loup and Lilith, was probably born the same month, same year, but had no birth certificate.
This seemed to the Goldbergs a sign as clear as was the burning bush for Moses.
‘We never had other children,’ Myriam said. ‘That was my form of grieving, you understand? I felt it would be disloyal to our daughter. Not logical, but trauma and grief aren’t logical.’
‘We think of you as our daughter, miraculously given back by God,’ Aaron said. ‘If you’ll consent, we want to bring you to New York. Your parents belong in the category of those deemed the Righteous Among the Nations. They did what was morally right even though it was against French law at the time, for which your mother was punished by death.’
The Goldbergs had friends who were in immigration law. They had consulted these friends. If Cap would consent to being formally adopted as Lilith Goldberg – this could be done in a legal ceremony at the American embassy in Paris – then the Goldbergs could sponsor her for a Green Card.
‘I have a cousin at NYU,’ Myriam said. ‘I took the liberty of sending her your paper on the seventeenth-century paintings of Philippe de Champaigne, the one you wrote for the convent school in Tours. My cousin is very impressed and we want to sponsor you as a student in art history at NYU.’
In the bistro off the cobbled town square in Chinon, Cap felt as though she were falling from a parachute that had not opened. She had no idea what to say. ‘Let me … let me think,’ she said. She stood so abruptly that her metal chair fell backwards and clattered against the stone floor. She left the bistro. She paced the cobbled stone terrace. The potted geraniums were slumped and brown under mounds of snow like little cupcakes frosted with cream. She stumbled into one terracotta pot and the snow-icing flaked up like feathers from a split goosedown quilt. Head down, hands clasped behind her back, she circled the courtyard three times, four times, five, until a waiter emerged and straightened the terracotta pot. He asked nervously, ‘Are you with Michelin, Mademoiselle?’
Cap blinked at him.
‘We can make amends,’ the waiter said. ‘A free dessert? A glass of Rémy Martin?’
Cap frowned, translating. ‘Oh! No. No. The wine and the food were excellent. This has nothing whatsoever to do … I apologise. I’m upset. It’s a purely personal matter.’
The waiter bowed. ‘In that case, mademoiselle, I apologise for intruding. May I escort you back to your table?’
‘Yes. Thank you.’ Cap sat down again, facing the Goldbergs. She laced and unlaced her fingers. ‘You are overwhelmingly generous, but I can’t accept. I can’t do this. I can’t abandon my father’s grave. I can’t leave ma marraine. It would not be right. She saved my father’s life just as my parents saved yours. She has already lost her son. I can’t do this to her.’
‘Let us speak to her,’ Myriam Goldberg said. ‘Leave this to us. We know she wants you to be an expert on the French baroque. She feels quite passionate about this. We have connections with Sotheby’s and the Metropolitan Museum of Art and MoMA. We can bring her to New York whenever she wishes and send you back and forth to Paris and to St Gilles. Let us speak to her. Besides, I have done another portrait. It is of you and Grand Loup in the gardener’s cottage. I will present it to la comtesse.’
The countess was unavailable for farewells. She had gone, Pierre reported, to Paris. Nevertheless, on the morning of Cap’s departure as Lilith Goldberg, Pierre arrived at the gardener’s cottage with two small but exquisitely gift-wrapped boxes.
Inside one, swathed in tissue, was a jeweller’s sac of gold mesh. The drawstring tie of silk ribbon was also gold. There was a card of linen parchment in an envelope. In beautiful handwritten script the card said: Pour te protéger. Ta marraine.
The gold-mesh sac contained a rosary of lapis lazuli beads on a silver chain.
Cap passed each bead through her fingers and each bead was a prayer for the countess, for Grand Loup, for Ti-Christophe, for Ti-Loup and for the Goldbergs.
The second box contained a somewhat larger silk sac with a drawstring tie. Inside it, tied with a blue ribbon, was a bundle of letters. They all bore New York postmarks dated 1960, were all addressed to Cap, and the handwriting on the envelopes was that of Ti-Loup. The envelopes had never been opened. The deckle parchment card, also handwritten, said in approximate translation: At the time I truly believed that this was best for everyone. I was wrong. I know my son has never forgiven me. I hope you can, Melusine. Ta marraine.
The Goldbergs reported that Pierre had presented them with the Modigliani as a gift. There was a handwritten card:
Chère Madame, cher Monsieur Goldberg,
I am returning what once belonged to you, something you treasured personally, but also something of great value to the world of art. You are taking from me someone I hold precious. I hope she will return to me some day. Until then, I hope I can learn to be as forgiving and gracious about theft and loss as you have been. Comtesse Isabelle de la Vallière Vanderbilt
5.
Lilith Goldberg would not have believed it possible that the human ear could tolerate so much noise at any one point in time. Manhattan caused her auditory pain. She was equally astonished by the
eerie fact that she could leave Madison Avenue, speak to the doorman of the Goldbergs’ building, pass through the lobby and enter the interior courtyard of hostas and ferns and white impatiens and garden benches where nothing but tranquil silence reigned. There was a beautiful cast-iron Lipchitz sculpture that rose like a bird on the wing – or perhaps like a silken scarf unfurling itself in the breeze – from a cluster of white caladiums, green-veined. The plaque at the base of the statue read: Gift of Aaron and Myriam Goldberg. In tribute to Lilith and Grand Loup.
Lilith Goldberg spent hours every day in this courtyard, sometimes reading, sometimes studying, sometimes simply contemplating the sculpture and the lush shade garden. She also spent many hours – sometimes alone, sometimes in the company of Myriam Goldberg – in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in the Frick, in MoMA, in the Guggenheim. They went to concerts and the theatre together. Lilith had a Green Card, a student card, a library card. She learned – with occasional disconcerting moments of error – to think of herself as Lilith Goldberg.
She had developed a habit of passing the lapis lazuli beads of the rosary through her fingers, not as an act of faith or belief (both of which now felt to her far beyond reach) but as a meditational practice. The ritual evoked all her happiest memories. It was calming. She usually did this in private last thing at night, sometimes on waking in the morning, but once, absent-mindedly, in the interior garden of the Madison Avenue apartments. On this occasion she provoked shock. An elderly gentleman, a co-resident in the building, shared her garden bench.
‘That’s a curious sight,’ he said. ‘A Jewish girl with a rosary.’
Lilith Goldberg felt the panic of an imposter caught red-handed.
‘I know what it means,’ the old man said gently. ‘You were kept in hiding in a convent. You acquired the habit of disguise and now you can’t shed it, right?’
‘That’s true,’ Lilith admitted. ‘I can’t shed the habit of disguise.’
‘My own wife and daughter were hidden by nuns for three years,’ the old man said. ‘Until the round-up at the Vélodrome d’Hiver. Then they were sent to Auschwitz and I lost them.’
‘What happened to the nuns?’
‘One of them was executed. The others were simply sent to prison.’
‘How did you get out?’ Lilith asked.
‘I didn’t. I was already here. I was sending back every penny I earned to bring them out. I still send money back to that convent. I still visit the nuns who survived. They gave my wife and daughter three years. That’s something.’
Lilith rested her hand on his frail wrist. ‘I like to hope that there are more good people in the world than evil people,’ she said.
‘I would like to hope that too,’ the old man said, ‘but I don’t. There are good people, however, and our duty in life is to be one of them, even though we will generally be outnumbered.’
Lilith Goldberg had the luxury of three months of summer – June, July, August – before her classes began at NYU in the fall. She filled these months with art museums, concerts, theatre, with reading, with walking in Central Park, a place which seemed to her its own planet, moving in its own separate galaxy, not really a part of Manhattan at all. She discovered the Ramble, a densely wooded promontory jutting into the lake like a question mark at the beating core of the park. From the serpentine trails of the Ramble she could neither see nor hear the city, which was as amazing to her as the existence of the tranquil courtyard within the Goldberg building. She wandered in dappled light for hours, in a state of bliss, imagining herself back in the forest surrounding St Gilles.
One day there was an unexpected guest at the Goldbergs’ when she returned for lunch.
‘This is Shannay,’ Myriam explained. ‘She used to be the housekeeper for the Vanderbilt penthouse. She knew Madame la Comtesse.’
‘Years back, years back,’ Shannay said. ‘Can’t hardly remember her. So this is Capucine?’ Shannay studied Cap intently. ‘Who never answered any of his letters?’
‘Who never got any of his letters,’ Myriam reminded.
‘Such a state he would get into,’ Shannay said. ‘Every hour pestering me, wanting to know. Aren’t there any letters for me, Shannay? He kept the painting of you on his dresser every night, you know, until he went to Dryden, and then he turned into somebody else.’
Cap felt dizzy. She needed to sit down. She was not sure she felt equal to hearing anything more. ‘I don’t think –’ she said.
‘In three years,’ Shannay said, ‘he hardly ever came back to stay with his pa – not that I blame him for that – and when he did come back he didn’t want to talk about nothing. He changed. He turned into a Vanderbilt. I hate to say it, but that is the Gospel truth. And after that march, the March on Washington, which glory be to God I was part of, after that his pa fired me and I haven’t seen either of them since. Never once tried to contact me. Never returned any of my calls, even though I knew him better than either of his parents ever did. I was the one who went to him when he cried in the night. I was the one sang lullabies to him. I was the one took him in his stroller to Central Park. It still hurts, I won’t lie to you, that he never once tried to reach me after that march, never returned a single call. He was someone else. He changed. He turned into a Vanderbilt.’
Cap said carefully and neutrally: ‘We all change. I probably wouldn’t even recognise him if I saw him today.’
‘You could see him today if you wanted to,’ Shannay said. ‘That’s what I come to tell Myriam here. I live back with my family in the Bronx but I know the new housekeeper in the Vanderbilt place. Their kind not going to hire anyone who can afford to live in Manhattan, that’s for sure. We have a network. We look out for each other when someone gets fired, so their new housekeeper also live in the Bronx, one block from me. You want to know what I know?’
‘I’m not sure,’ Cap said.
‘Gwynne Patrice is here this month with one of his upper-crust Boston friends. His pa already hightailed it out to the Hamptons with the latest girlfriend, so it’s just Gwynne Patrice and the Boston Brahmin and I thought Myriam might want to know. Had no idea I would get to meet the famous Capucine. I just thought Myriam might want to drop by and speak to the boy who used to be Gwynne Patrice.’
‘But it would be better if you yourself went, Lilith. Catch him off guard.’
‘I don’t think that would be a good idea.’
‘Don’t you want to know what happened?’ Myriam Goldberg asked.
‘I don’t think so,’ Cap said. ‘Well, don’t we already know? He isn’t Ti-Loup anymore. And I’m not Capucine. I’m Lilith now.’
‘I’ll tell you one thing,’ Shannay said. ‘He brought Myriam’s paintings of you and your father back with him. The new housekeeper told me that. Keeps them wrapped in silk in his dresser drawer but he’s been looking at them every day and then covering them up again. There’s not much a housekeeper don’t know, I can promise you that.’
6.
Lilith Goldberg paced up and down Fifth Avenue from the Frick at East 70th to the corner of East 73rd, up and back, up and back. Each time she passed the ornate facade of the building where Ti-Loup was born, she could not muster the courage to push the buzzer on the great wooden doors and speak to the doorman, an act that now seemed to her far more perilous than her first visit to the Château de Boissy. At East 72nd, on her tenth circuit, she crossed Fifth and entered the park. She walked down the Mall to Bethesda Terrace, crossed the beautiful Bow Bridge to the far side of the lake, and entered the Ramble. She sat on a bench at the lakeshore and watched the ducks.
What is gained if I see him again? she asked herself.
What is lost if I don’t? What is lost if I don’t even try?
She did not have a clear answer to any of her questions but she did know that the memory she and Ti-Loup were both avoiding – and would never be able to expunge – was the death of Petit Christophe. The murder per se was not the crux of the nightmare. The kernel of what had precipitat
ed Grand Loup’s heart attack and subsequent stroke was the disappearance of two bodies, and the key to what troubled Ti-Loup and Cap was that Ti-Christophe’s body, before it disappeared, had multiple stab wounds, that it was slashed with far more wounds than were required for killing, that it was gruesomely marked with post-mortem hate. Perhaps concealing that fact from Grand Loup had done more harm than good. Certainly that weighty secret had haunted both Ti-Loup and Cap.
There is nothing to lose, Lilith Goldberg decided.
‘Which floor?’ asked the doorman in the Fifth Avenue building that was next but one to the north-east corner of East 72nd.
‘The penthouse,’ Lilith said.
When the doorman pressed the intercom buzzer, she expected to hear the voice of the new African-American housekeeper or perhaps the vocal New York equivalent of Pierre of the pantaloons.
She heard Ti-Loup. He was doing one of his accents, an unfamiliar one, but she knew his voice. ‘Who is it?’ he asked.
She made her own voice go low. ‘It’s Petit Christophe,’ she said. She had no idea why she did this. The words came out without forethought, without volition. They shocked her.
The intercom went dead. ‘I’m sorry,’ the doorman said, ‘but he hasn’t buzzed you in.’
‘That’s okay,’ Lilith said, relieved. Her voice was shaking. So were her hands. ‘He wasn’t expecting me. I shouldn’t even be here.’ The doorman had to help her with the heavy outer doors onto Fifth Avenue. At least, she thought, I won’t have to reproach myself for not trying. She waited for the lights at the corner of East 72nd. She would return to the Ramble and sit by the lake for as long as it took. She felt light-headed, as though she were drunk. The light seemed to favour, interminably, the taxis and buses heading south on Fifth. Now, finally, the pedestrian light turned green.
‘Cap!’ someone shouted. And there he was, running from the portico of his building. She did not step into the crossing. She waited. They stood there, inches apart.
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