Invisible Love (9 page)

Miranda shuddered. She was hearing the words she had hoped not to hear.

“Yes, that's right,” the old man went on, engrossed now in his memories. “‘If I don't get another dog, I'll die.' And then he said, ‘I'll never manage if I don't have a dog with me.' When he said that, he wasn't all weepy, like some of these old ladies who can't do without a pet, no, he was indignant, angry, as if someone was about to tear out his liver. I felt sorry for him. I agreed to spread out the payment, and I let him have a puppy, which he called Argos. And it turned out I did the right thing: your father became a doctor, he earned a good living, and he remained loyal to my kennel. At the time, I acted out of the goodness of my heart, but it was also a good investment.”

“Why Argos?”

“The previous one had been called Argos.”

“Is it common for dog owners to do that, to use only one name?”

“No. Apart from Dr. Heymann, I've never met anyone who only called his dogs by one name.”

“Why did he do that, in your opinion?”

“God knows! Clearly, his first dog had meant a lot to him.”

“And his last,” I said. “Dr. Heymann killed himself five days after a truck ran it down.”

Bastien sat there openmouthed, his eyes popping out, torn between his desire to condemn a human being capable of such stupidity and his desire to spare Miranda.

We continued the conversation for another twenty minutes, but François Bastien was devoid of anecdotes and couldn't find anything more in his lackluster memory, which was as worn as an old lighter. We thanked him and set off again.

The return journey was long and silent. We were both thinking, both unable to figure out if we should give credence to what Bastien had told us. Samuel Heymann a prisoner? Samuel Heymann giving up on life if he was deprived of his dog at the age of twenty and then at eighty? Far from answering us, these words brought new questions, bewildering doubts . . . The case of Samuel Heymann wasn't getting any clearer, but increasingly obscure.

Miranda and I parted with a few kind words. We each preferred to brood on our disappointment alone.

 

*

 

The next day, as I was idly dipping some defrosted, greasy, burned croissants in a cup of coffee, the bell rang.

I thought it was Miranda. It was actually the postman, delivering an intimidating-looking registered letter. I made a face and signed for it, said goodbye to him, and examined the object. Immediately, I shuddered. The sender was Dr. Samuel Heymann.

It had been sent on the third, the day of his suicide. I closed the door and leaned back against it, looking around suspiciously, like a spy dreading to be observed. I had received a message from a dead man! My hands were shaking so much that I was afraid I would tear the contents as I opened the envelope.

Three documents awaited me inside.

A short letter, only one page.

A photograph.

Some sheets of paper stapled together.

I read the letter first:

 

Dear writer who talks more than he writes,

I am turning to you because I suffer from two unfortunate infirmities: I possess neither tact nor a gift for writing. But in order to emerge from a silence that has lasted sixty years, I need at least those qualities.

The papers that accompany this note are addressed to my daughter but I'd like you to convey them to her, by reading them aloud and, above all, by improving them. You alone are capable of giving them a certain grace; I don't know how to go from silence to music. Do it, please, do it for me and for her. The silence I imposed on Miranda was intended to protect her. Breaking it during my lifetime would have amounted to making her vulnerable. Now that I am leaving, this armor will become a burden. Tell her that a father's love is a difficult love because it cannot be content with spontaneity, it has to be more calculating than any other love. I have tried to be a father. With all my strength, with all my intelligence. It is Miranda I'm thinking about before leaving this earth. She is what I am leaving behind me. I am happy to have given the world this miraculous gift, her beauty, her sensitivity, her personality, so radiant, so powerful, so . . . My little girl, I am very proud of you.

 

The text stopped there, the last lines tilting unsteadily to the right. Emotion must have prevented him from continuing.

Can you conclude with words when, a few minutes later, a gun will have the last word?

In my opinion, at the bottom of that page, Samuel Heymann had not only stopped writing, he had also deliberately stopped feeling. Confessing more might have led him to give up on the idea and remain among us . . . Courage and cowardice are very close, two sides of the same feeling.

I went upstairs to my room, lay down on the bed, and began reading the sheets of paper covered in Samuel Heymann's handwriting:

 

I often feel as if I never had a childhood. The memories I still have of it belong to someone else. That wasn't me, that affectionate, confident boy, with his arms open, quivering at the splendor of the world, safe in the conviction that he could last forever, outlive the animals, the men, the clouds, the sun, the sea and the plains. In the morning, when he got out of bed, he would run down to the courtyard of the building, lift his head, and cry to heaven, “You can go to bed, God, it's all right, I'm awake now, I'll take care of everything.” No, that wasn't me, the boy who always found a shoulder to curl up against, who would go to sleep on his mother's breast, the invincible boy who dreamed that he would learn music, literature, dancing, painting, medicine, architecture, and that he would live in a castle. That all-conquering, optimistic child endowed with an impatient joy, boosted by the love of his family, that prince who didn't doubt that he was loved or lovable, was someone else. Not me.

Because I only began to exist later. I began with a separation . . .

One day, they came to our house to arrest us. There were six of us, my grandparents, my parents, my elder sister, and me.

Of course, we should have been more aware of the dangers threatening us, but, faced with the rise of the Nazis, the growing anti-Semitism, we Heymanns tended to downplay the horror of each new development, assuming that “this was the last one,” that “after this, they couldn't go any further.” The reality, alas, could only be brought home to us through violence.

In 1942, then, the police came for us. My sister and I were reading in our room when they knocked at the door. Hearing the men attack our parents, Rita hid me at the bottom of the toy chest and covered me with her dolls. “Don't move!” Then, when the police burst into our room, she ran to the window and screamed as if I was out on the street, “Run, Samuel, run! Don't come back to the house! They want to arrest us.” They slapped her to shut her up but fell into her trap: they didn't bother to check and left me behind.

When, an hour later, I resolved to get out of the chest, I cursed Rita as I walked through the empty apartment. Oh, yes, I was free, but what was I to do with this freedom? I would have much preferred being with my family. My wicked sister had deprived me of my parents and grandparents, the selfish girl had kept them for herself and doomed me to solitude. Because I wasn't accustomed to misfortune, I turned my sadness into anger. I punched the furniture, I insulted my absent sister. Overcome with rage, I had forgotten who the real villains were.

Because of the noise I was making, one of our neighbors realized that, in spite of the raid, there was still someone in the Heymanns' apartment. Madame Pasquier came down, found me in tears, sized up the situation, and that very night took me to her cousins in the country.

After that, Miranda, I became that hidden child I briefly—all too briefly—mentioned to you. Hidden at first in several barns, thanks to the resistance network, I was placed under a false name as a Christian orphan in a Catholic boarding school in Namur. It took me a few months to get over my anger; it required all the indulgence, sympathy, and intelligence of Father André, the priest who was sheltering us, for me to finally realize that my sister had saved me from a tragic fate. When I admitted that, I was struck down with flu, and spent two weeks writhing on a bed in the infirmary with a temperature of 104.

But—and this is something I concealed from you—this situation didn't last until the end of the war.

In 1944, somebody gave me away and the Nazis took me.

It all happened in a rather strange way. The Germans had grown nervous since the Allied landings, and Father André, our protector, was becoming more and more fearful of being visited by them, so he faked our escape. As far as the school knew, we had run away one night in June 1944, but in reality we had taken refuge in the attic of the steward's lodge, where we had to move about quietly, speak in low voices, never put our heads out through the dormer window, and not smoke. Twice a day, Father André would bring us provisions and leave again with our dirty water. The entrance to the attic was hidden at the back of a closet: to get through, Father André had to take down the shelves. One Thursday, though, on the stroke of noon, we heard the sound of cars on the gravel of the courtyard. The Nazis headed straight for the closet, took out the contents, knocked down the door, and came upstairs to arrest us.

They hadn't hesitated. It was as if they had known where to find us.

I won't linger over what happened next. All my life, I've tried to blot out those months, tried to convince myself that I didn't live through them.

There was the journey by truck, the arrival at the Dossin barracks in Mechelen, the transit camp for the Jews. Already, there was the hunger, the lack of sleep, the confiscation of what little we owned, the blocked toilets, the moaning of the women, the cries of the children. And above all the waiting. The absurd waiting . . . we were waiting for the train we dreaded to arrive at any moment. We weren't living: as we expected the worst, we had stopped ourselves from living. It was the same thing I went through when your mother left us: the doctors had told me she only had a few hours left and I had decided to watch over her. She was unconscious, and breathing heavily. I don't know if you'll believe this, but at about three in the morning, exhausted, I dozed off and what woke me with a start was the silence! Yes, not the noise, but the silence, because it meant that Édith had drawn her last breath. A hundred times, every time her breath was late coming, I sat up on the extra bed, in a panic.

So, stupidly and obstinately, we waited in the transit camp. My classmates and I had already learned from the BBC what was happening to Jews sent to Poland. Many of those around us didn't know, while even more denied it. I kept silent—why add horror to fear?

Then the time came for my train.

Yes, I say “my train,” because I had been waiting for it, preparing myself for it, my destiny was being fulfilled. Forced into a cattle truck by Flemish SS guards, the only thing I wondered was whether it was the same one that had taken Grandmother, Grandfather, Daddy, Mummy, and Rita away.

I wasn't afraid. Or else I was numb with fear. In fact, I no longer felt anything at all. An understanding deeper than my consciousness was protecting me from suffering by making me indifferent.

One train followed another.

One stop followed another.

We were dying of cold, thirsty, huddled together. Nothing belonged to us anymore, not time, not space.

German SS guards ordered us out.

Why here and not somewhere else?

On the platform, I discovered what my parents had lived through: the selection process, separation from the people you know. In a few minutes, I lost my classmates.

The group I was assigned to walked in the darkness to a hut, where we were piled in. Not finding a place free on the straw mattresses filthy with excrement and cockroaches, I crouched with my back to the wall and, sucking a splinter of wood to fool my appetite, dozed off.

I was fifteen.
 

 

I broke off reading, opened the window, and breathed in the country air, the scent of burned wood mingling with the pungent odor of decaying leaves.

Samuel Heymann was taking me to a place I didn't want to go. A place nobody would want to go . . .

Would I be capable of enduring the rest of his story?

Shaken, I found a few diversions for myself, sorted some books, folded three shirts, and convinced myself that I couldn't do without tea. Taking refuge in the kitchen, I became engrossed in contemplating the water as it simmered then boiled, then poured it, and watched attentively as the herbal teabag spread its brown tentacles through the teapot. Once the liquid had taken on the aroma of bergamot, I savored it as if drinking it for the first time.

Reassured by this ritual, I went back to what Samuel Heymann had written:

 

In the morning, I woke up feeling different, with an indisposition that was going to prove tenacious in the days that followed: hope.

The meaning of my previous patience was becoming clear . . .

The only reason I had endured that harassment was because I wanted to see my family again. I didn't care what was done to me: being stripped naked, washed, deloused, my hair shaved, a number tattooed on my forearm, being forced to eat revolting food, working in the factory after exhausting marches. I never wavered, I looked everywhere, even in the most distant of the huts, certain that I would see my family.

I questioned as many of the prisoners as I could. Whenever I approached, they saw how young and strong I was, and guessed what had happened to me, even what I was going to ask them. Some shook their heads long before I told them my parents' names. Those among us who had the luck not to be gassed became beasts of burden who barely lasted more than six months. It was unlikely that Mother, Father, Grandmother, Grandfather, or Rita had survived.