Sarah's Key (10 page)

“God-awful street,” muttered Bamber. He took a couple of shots with his camera.

The rue Nélaton was dark and silent. It obviously never got much sunshine. On one side, bourgeois stone buildings built in the late nineteenth century. On the other, where the Vélodrome d’Hiver used to be, a large brownish construction, typically early sixties, hideous in both color and proportion. MINISTÈRE DE L’INTERIEUR, read the sign above the revolving glass doors.

“Odd place to build governmental offices,” remarked Bamber. “Don’t you think?”

Bamber had only found a couple of existing photographs of the Vel’ d’Hiv’. I held one of them in my hand. Big black lettering read: VEL’ D’HIV’ against a pale façade. A huge door. A cluster of buses parked along the sidewalk, and the tops of people’s heads. Probably taken from a window across the street on the morning of the roundup.

We looked for a plaque, for something that mentioned what had happened here, but could not find it.

“I can’t believe there is nothing,” I said.

We finally found it on the boulevard de Grenelle, just around the corner. A smallish sign. Rather humble. I wondered if anyone ever glanced at it. It read:

On July 16 and 17, 1942, 13,152 Jews were arrested in Paris and the suburbs, deported and assassinated at Auschwitz. In the Vélodrome d’Hiver that once stood on this spot, 1,129 men, 2,916 women, and 4,115 children were packed here in inhuman conditions by the government of the Vichy police, by order of the Nazi occupant. May those who tried to save them be thanked. Passerby, never forget!

“Interesting,” mused Bamber. “Why so many children and women, and so few men?”

“Rumors of a big roundup had been circulating,” I explained. “There had already been a couple before, especially in August of 1941. But so far, only men were arrested. And they hadn’t been as vast, as minutely planned as this one. That’s why this one is infamous. The night of July 16, most of the men went into hiding, thinking the women and the children would be safe. That’s where they were wrong.”

“How long had it been planned for?”

“For months,” I answered. “The French government had been working on it intently since April ’42, writing up all the lists of the Jews to arrest. Over six thousand Parisian policemen were commissioned to carry it out. At first, the initial chosen date was July 14. But that’s the national
fête
here. So it was scheduled a little later.”

We walked toward the
métro
station. It was a dismal street. Dismal and sad.

“And then what?” asked Bamber. “Where were all these families taken?”

“Penned in the Vel’ d’Hiv’ for a couple of days. A group of nurses and doctors were finally let in. They all described chaos and despair. Then the families were taken to Austerlitz Station, and then on to the camps around Paris. And then sent straight to Poland.”

Bamber raised an eyebrow.

“Camps? You mean concentration camps in France?”

“Camps that are considered the French antechambers to Auschwitz. Drancy—that’s the one closest to Paris—and Pithiviers, and Beaune-la-Rolande.”

“I wonder what they look like today, these places,” said Bamber. “We should go there and find out.”

“We will,” I said.

We stopped at the corner of the rue Nélaton for a coffee. I glanced at my watch. I had promised to go see Mamé today. I knew I wouldn’t make it. Tomorrow, then. It was never a chore for me. She was the grandmother I had never had. Both of mine had passed away when I was a small child. I just wished Bertrand would make more of an effort, considering she doted upon him.

Bamber dragged me back to the Vel’ d’Hiv’.

“Sure makes me glad I’m not French,” he said.

Then he remembered.

“Oops, sorry.
You
are now, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” I said. “By marriage. I have dual nationality.”

“Didn’t mean what I said,” he coughed. He looked embarrassed.

“Don’t worry.” I smiled. “You know, even after all these years my in-laws still call me the American.”

Bamber grinned.

“Does that bother you?”

I shrugged.

“Sometimes. I’ve spent more than half of my life here. I really feel I belong here.”

“How long have you been married?”

“It will soon be sixteen years. But I’ve been living here for twenty-five.”

“Did you have one of those posh French weddings?”

I laughed.

“No, it was simple enough. In Burgundy, where my in-laws have a house, near Sens.”

I fleetingly remembered that day. There had not been a great deal exchanged between Sean and Heather Jarmond, and Edouard and Colette Tézac. It seemed like the entire French side of the family had forgotten their English. But I hadn’t cared. I was so happy. Brilliant sunshine. The quiet little country church. My simple ivory dress that my mother-in-law approved of. Bertrand, stunning in his gray morning coat. The dinner party at the Tézacs’, beautifully done. Champagne, candles, and rose petals. Charla delivering a very funny speech in her terrible French, and that only I had laughed at. Laure and Cécile, simpering. My mother and her pale magenta suit, and her little whisper in my ear, “I do hope you’ll be happy, angel pie.” My father waltzing with the stiff-backed Colette. It seemed so long ago.

“Do you miss America?” Bamber asked.

“No. I miss my sister. But not America.”

A young waiter came to bring us our coffees. He took one look at Bamber’s flame-colored hair and smirked. Then he saw the impressive arrays of cameras and lenses.

“You tourists?” he asked. “Taking nice photos of Paris?”

“Not tourists. Just taking nice photos of what’s left of the Vel’ d’Hiv’,” said Bamber in French, with his slow British accent.

The waiter seemed taken aback.

“Nobody asks about the Vel’ d’Hiv’ much,” he said. “The Eiffel Tower, yes, but not the Vel’ d’Hiv’.”

“We’re journalists,” I said. “We work for an American magazine.”

“Sometimes there are Jewish families who come in here,” recalled the young man. “After one of the anniversary speeches at the memorial down by the river.”

I had an idea.

“You wouldn’t know of anybody, a neighbor on this street, who knows about the roundup, who could talk to us?” I asked. We had already spoken to several survivors; most of them had written books about their experience, but we were lacking witnesses. Parisians who had seen all this happen.

Then I felt silly; after all, the young man was barely twenty. His own father probably wasn’t even born in ’42.

“Yes, I do,” he answered, to my surprise. “If you walk back up the street, you’ll see a newspaper store on your left. The man in charge there, Xavier, he’ll tell you. His mother knows, she’s lived there all her life.”

We left him a large tip.

T

HERE HAD BEEN AN endless, dusty walk from the little train station, through a small town, where more people had stared and pointed. Her feet ached. Where were they going now? What was going to happen to them? Were they far from Paris? The train ride had been fast, barely a couple of hours. As always, she thought of her brother. Her heart sank lower with each mile they covered. How was she ever going to get back home? How was she going to make it? It made her feel sick to think he probably thought she’d forgotten him. That’s what he believed, locked up in the dark cupboard. He thought she had abandoned him, that she didn’t care, that she didn’t love him. He had no water, no light, and he was afraid. She had let him down.

Where were they? She hadn’t had time to look at the name of the station as they had pulled in. But she had noticed the first things a city child pays attention to: the lush countryside, the flat green meadows, the golden fields. The intoxicating smell of fresh air and summer. The hum of a bumble bee. Birds in the sky. Fluffy white clouds. After the stink and heat of the past few days, this was glorious, she felt. Maybe it wasn’t going to be that bad, after all.

She followed her parents through barbed-wire gates, with stern looking guards on each side holding guns. And then she saw the rows of long dark barracks, the grimness of the place, and her spirits sank. She cowered against her mother. Policemen started to shout orders. The women and children were told to go to the sheds on the right, the men on the left. Helpless, holding on to her mother, she watched her father be pushed along with a group of men. She felt afraid without him by her side. But there was nothing she could do. The guns terrified her. Her mother did not move. Her eyes were dulled. Dead. Her face was white and sickly.

The girl took her mother’s hand as they were shoved toward the barracks. The inside was bare and grimy. Planks and straw. Stench and dirt. The latrines were outside, planks of wood astride holes. They were ordered to sit there, in groups, to piss and defecate in view of all, like animals. It revolted her. She felt she could not go. She could not do this. She looked on as her mother straddled one of the holes. She bowed her head in shame. But she finally did what she was told, cringing, hoping no one was looking at her.

Just above the barbed wire, the girl could glimpse the village. The black spire of a church. A water tower. Roofs and chimneys. Trees. Over there, she thought, in those nearby houses, people had beds, sheets, blankets, food, and water. They were clean. They had clean clothes. Nobody screamed at them. Nobody treated them like cattle. And they were just there, just on the other side of the fence. In the clean little village where she could hear the church bell chime.

There were children on vacation over there, she thought. Children going on picnics, children playing hide-and-seek. Happy children, even if there was a war, and less to eat than usual, and maybe their Papa had gone away to fight. Happy, loved, cherished, children. She couldn’t imagine why there was such a difference between those children and her. She couldn’t imagine why she and all these people here with her had to be treated this way. Who had decided this, and what for?

They were given tepid cabbage soup. It was thin and sandy. Nothing else. Then she watched as rows of women stripped naked and fought to wash their dirty bodies under a trickle of water over rusty, iron washbasins. She found them ugly, grotesque. She hated the flabby ones, the skinny ones, the old ones, the young ones; she hated to have to see their nudity. She did not want to look at them. She hated having to see them.

She huddled against her mother’s warmth and tried not to think of her brother. Her skin felt itchy, her scalp too. She wanted a bath, her bed, her brother. Dinner. She wondered if anything could be worse than what had been happening to her over the past few days. She thought of her friends, of the other little girls in her school who also wore stars. Dominique, Sophie, Agnès. What had happened to them? Had some been able to escape? Were some safe, hiding somewhere? Was Armelle hiding with her family? Would she ever see her again, see her other friends again? Would she go back to school in September?

That night, she couldn’t sleep; she needed her father’s reassuring touch. Her stomach hurt her, she felt it contract with pain. She knew they were not allowed to leave the barracks during the night. She clenched her teeth, wrapping her arms around her belly. But the pain grew worse. Slowly she got up, tiptoed through the rows of sleeping women and children, to the latrines outside the door.

Glaring spot lights swept the camp as she huddled over the planks. The girl peered in and saw thick pale worms writhing in the dark mass of shit. She was afraid a policeman up there in the watchtowers would see her bottom, and she pulled her skirt down over her loins. She quickly made her way back to the barrack.

Inside, the air was stuffy and foul. Some children whimpered in their sleep. She could hear a woman sobbing. She turned to her mother, gazing at the sunken, white face.

Gone was the happy, loving woman. Gone was the mother who used to sweep her into her arms and whisper love words, Yiddish nicknames. The woman with the glossy honey locks and the voluptuous figure, the one all the neighbors, all the shopkeepers would greet by her first name. The one who smelled a warm, comforting, motherly smell: delicious cooking, fresh soap, clean linen. The one with the infectious laugh. The one who said that even if there was a war, they’d pull through, because they were a strong, good family, a family full of love.

That woman had little by little disappeared. She had become gaunt, and pale, and she never smiled or laughed. She smelled rank, bitter. Her hair had become brittle and dry, streaked with gray.

The girl felt like her mother was already dead.