Sarah's Key (18 page)

She tiptoed toward the kitchen, peeked around the door. There she saw the old couple sitting at the long table drinking from round blue bowls. They seemed concerned.

“I’m worried about Rachel,” Geneviève was saying. “She’s running a high fever and not keeping anything down. And her rash. It’s nasty. Very nasty indeed.” She sighed, deeply. “The state of these children, Jules. One of them even had lice in her eyelashes.”

The girl walked into the room, hesitantly.

“I just wondered . . .,” she began.

The old couple looked up at her and smiled.

“Well,” beamed the old man. “You are quite a different person this morning, Mademoiselle. There’s a little pink in those cheeks.”

“There was something in my pockets,” said the girl.

Geneviève rose. She pointed to a shelf.

“A key and some money. Right over here.”

The girl went to take the objects, cradling them.

“This is the key to the cupboard,” she said in a low voice. “The cupboard Michel is in. Our special hiding place.”

Jules and Geneviève exchanged glances.

“I know you think he’s dead,” said the girl, haltingly. “But I am going back there. I have to know. Maybe someone was able to help him, like you helped me! Maybe he is waiting for me. I must know, I must find out! I can use the money the policeman gave me.”

“But how are you going to get to Paris,
petite
?” asked Jules.

“I will take the train. Surely Paris is not far from here?”

Another exchange of glances.

“Sirka, we live southeast of Orléans. You walked a very long way with Rachel. But you walked farther away from Paris.”

The girl drew herself up. She would go back to Paris, go back to Michel, to see what had happened, no matter what was awaiting her.

“I need to leave,” she said firmly. “There are trains from Orléans to Paris, surely. I will leave, today.”

Geneviève came to her, grasped her hands.

“Sirka, here you are safe. You can stay for a while, with us. Because this is a farm, we have milk, meat, and eggs, we don’t need rationing tickets. You can rest, and eat, and get better.”

“Thank you,” said the girl, “but I am already better. I need to go back to Paris. You don’t have to come with me. I can manage on my own. Just tell me how to get to the station.”

Before the old lady could answer, there was a long wail from upstairs. Rachel. They rushed up to her room. Rachel was twisting and turning in pain. Her sheets were drenched with something dark and putrid.

“It’s what I feared,” whispered Geneviève. “Dysentery. She needs a doctor. Fast.”

Jules hobbled back down the stairs.

“I’ll go to the village, see if Docteur Thévenin is around,” he called over his shoulder.

He was back an hour later, puffing on his bicycle. The girl watched him from the kitchen window.

“Old boy’s gone,” he told his wife. “The house is empty. No one could tell me anything. So I went farther along, toward Orléans. I found a youngish fellow, got him to come, but he was a trifle arrogant, said he had more urgent things to look to first.”

Geneviève bit her lip.

“I hope he comes. Soon.”

The doctor did not turn up till later that afternoon. The girl hadn’t dared mention Paris again. She sensed Rachel was very ill. Jules and Geneviève were too worried about Rachel to concentrate on her.

When they heard the doctor arrive, heralded by the dog’s bark, Geneviève turned to the girl, told her to hide, fast, in the cellar. They didn’t know this doctor, she explained quickly, he wasn’t their usual one. They had to play it safe.

The girl slipped down through the trapdoor. She sat in the dark, listening to every word from above. She couldn’t see the doctor’s face, but she didn’t like his voice; it was strident, nasal. He kept asking where Rachel was from. Where had they found her? He was insistent, stubborn. Jules’s voice remained steady. The girl was the daughter of a neighbor who had gone to Paris for a couple of days.

But the girl could tell by the doctor’s tone that he didn’t believe a word of what Jules was saying. He had a nasty laugh. He kept talking about law and order. About the Maréchal Pétain and a new vision of France. About what the Kommandantur would think of this dark, thin little girl.

Finally, she heard the front door bang.

Then she heard Jules’s voice again. It seemed aghast.

“Geneviève,” he said. “What have we done?”

I

WANTED TO ASK you something, Monsieur Lévy. Something that has nothing to do with my article.”

He looked at me and went back to sit in his chair.

“Of course. Go ahead, please.”

I leaned forward over the table.

“If I gave you an exact address, could you help me trace a family? A family that was arrested in Paris on July 16, 1942?”

“A Vel’ d’Hiv’ family,” he said.

“Yes,” I said. “It’s important.”

He looked at my tired face. My puffy eyes. I felt as if he could read within me, read the new grief I was carrying, read what I knew about the apartment. Read everything I was that morning, as I sat in front of him.

“For the past forty years, Miss Jarmond, I have been tracing every single Jewish person deported from this country between 1941 and 1944. A long and painful process. But a necessary process. Yes, it is possible for me to give you the name of that family. It is all in this computer, right here. We can have that name in a couple of seconds. But can you tell me why you want to know about this precise family? Is this merely a journalist’s natural curiosity, or something else?”

I felt my cheeks heat up.

“It’s personal,” I said. “And not easy to explain.”

“Try,” he said.

Hesitating at first, I told him about the apartment on the rue de Saintonge. About what Mamé had said. About what my father-in-law had said. Finally, with more fluidity, I told him I couldn’t stop thinking about that Jewish family. About who they were, and what had happened to them. He listened to me, nodding from time to time.

Then he said, “Sometimes, Miss Jarmond, it’s not easy to bring back the past. There are unpleasant surprises. The truth is harder than ignorance.”

I nodded.

“I realize that,” I said. “But I need to know.”

He looked back at me, his eyes steady.

“I will give you the name. For you to know, and for you only. Not for your magazine. May I have your word?”

“Yes,” I replied, struck by his solemnity.

He turned to the computer.

“Please, the address.”

I complied.

His fingers flew over the keyboard. The computer gave a little crackle. I felt my heart pound. Then the printer whined, spat out a white sheet of paper. Franck Lévy handed it to me without a word. I read:

26, rue de Saintonge, 75003 Paris

STARZYNSKI

• Wladyslaw, born Warsaw, 1910. Arrested July 16, 1942. Garage, rue de Bretagne. Vel’ d’Hiv’. Beaune-la-Rolande. Convoy number 15, August 5, 1942.

• Rywka, born Okuniew, 1912. Arrested July 16, 1942. Garage, rue de Bretagne. Vel’ d’Hiv’. Beaune-la-Rolande. Convoy number 15, August 5, 1942.

• Sarah, born Paris 12th arrondissement, 1932. Arrested July 16, 1942. Garage, rue de Bretagne. Vel’ d’Hiv’. Beaune-la-Rolande.

The printer emitted another whine.

“A photograph,” said Franck Lévy. He looked at it before giving it to me.

It was of a ten-year-old girl. I read the caption: june 1942. Taken at the school on the rue des Blancs-Manteaux. Right next to the rue de Saintonge.

The girl had slanted, light-colored eyes. They would have been blue or green, I thought. Shoulder-length pale hair with a bow in it, slightly crooked. A beautiful, shy smile. A heart-shaped face. She was sitting at her school desk, an open book in front of her. On her chest, the star.

Sarah Starzynski. A year younger than Zoë.

I looked back at the list of names. I didn’t need to ask Franck Lévy where convoy number 15 leaving Beaune-la-Rolande had gone. I knew it was Auschwitz.

“What about the garage on the rue de Bretagne?” I asked.

“That’s where most of the Jews living in the third arrondissement were gathered before being taken to the rue Nélaton and the
vélodrome
.”

I noticed that after Sarah’s name, there was no mention of a convoy. I pointed this out to Franck Lévy.

“That means she was not on any of the trains that left for Poland. As far as we know.”

“Could she have escaped?” I said.

“It’s hard to say. A handful of children did escape from Beaune-la-Rolande and were saved by French farmers living nearby. Other children, who were much smaller than Sarah, were deported without their identities being clear. In that case, they were listed for example as “One boy, Pithiviers.” Alas, I can’t tell you what happened to Sarah Starzynski, Miss Jarmond. All I can tell you is that she apparently never arrived in Drancy with the other children from Beaune-la-Rolande and Pithiviers. She is not in the Drancy files.”

I looked down at the beautiful, innocent face.

“What could have happened to her?” I murmured.

“The last trace of her we have is at Beaune-la-Rolande. She may have been saved by a neighboring family. She could have remained hidden during the war under another name.”

“Did that happen a lot?”

“Yes, it did. A great number of Jewish children survived, thanks to the help and generosity of French families or religious institutions.”

I looked at him.

“Do you think Sarah Starzynski was saved? That she survived?”

He looked down at the photograph of the lovely, smiling child.

“I hope she was. But now you know what you wanted. You know who lived in your apartment.”

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, thank you. But I still wonder how my husband’s family could live there after the Starzysnkis’ arrest. I can’t understand that.”

“You must not judge them so harshly,” warned Franck Lévy. “There was indeed a considerable amount of Parisian indifference, but don’t forget Paris was occupied. People feared for their lives. Those were very different times.”

As I left Franck Lévy’s office, I suddenly felt fragile, on the verge of tears. It had been a draining, taxing day. My world closed in around me, pressing down on me from every side. Bertrand. The baby. The impossible decision I was going to have to make. The talk I was going to have with my husband tonight.

And then, the mystery concerning the rue de Saintonge apartment. The Tézac family moving in, so quickly after the Starzynskis had been arrested. Mamé and Edouard not wanting to talk about it. Why? What had happened? What didn’t they want me to know?

As I walked toward the rue Marbeuf, I felt like I was being swamped by something enormous, something I could not deal with.

Later on that evening, I met Guillaume at the Select. We sat near the bar, away from the noisy
terrasse
. He had a couple of books with him. I was delighted. They were the exact ones I just could not get my hands on. Particularly one concerning the Loiret camps. I thanked him warmly.

I had not planned to say anything about what I had discovered that afternoon, but it all came tumbling out. Guillaume listened to every word, intently. When I finished, he said that his grandmother had told him about Jewish apartments being plundered right after the roundup. Others had seals fixed on their doors by the police, seals that would be broken several months or years later when it was obvious that no one was coming back. According to Guillaume’s grandmother, the police often worked closely with the concierges, who were able to find new tenants quickly by word of mouth. That’s probably how it had happened for my in-laws.

“Why is this so important to you, Julia?” Guillaume asked, finally.

“I want to know what happened to that little girl.”

He looked at me with dark, searching eyes.

“I understand. But be careful about questioning your husband’s family.”

“I know they are holding something back. I want to know what it is.”

“Be careful, Julia,” he repeated. He smiled, but his eyes remained serious. “You’re playing with Pandora’s box. Sometimes, it’s better not to open it. Sometimes, it’s better not to know.”

Franck Lévy had said the same thing that very morning.