Sarah's Key (9 page)

I was rather stunning at twenty-seven. And yes, I
had
been Miss Nahant when I was seventeen. I still had my rhinestone tiara tucked away somewhere. Zoë used to like playing with it when she was little. I’ve never been vain about my looks. But I had noticed that living in Paris, I got much more attention than on the other side of the Atlantic. I did also discover that French men were more daring, more overt, when it came to flirting. And I also understood that despite the fact I had nothing of the sophisticated Parisian—too tall, too blond, too toothy—my New England allure appeared to be just the flavor of the day. In my first months in Paris, I had been amazed at the way French men—and women—stare overtly at each other. Sizing each other up, constantly. Checking out figures, clothes, accessories. I remembered my first spring in Paris and walking down the boulevard Saint-Michel with Susannah from Oregon and Jan from Virginia. We weren’t even dressed up to go out, we were wearing jeans, T-shirts, and flip-flops. But we were, all three of us, tall, athletic, blond, and definitely American-looking. Men came up to us constantly.
“Bonjour, Mesdemoiselles, vous êtes américaines, Mesdemoiselles?”
Young men, mature men, students, businessmen, endless men, demanding phone numbers, inviting us to dinner, to a drink, pleading, joking, some charming, others much less charming. This did not happen back home. American men did not tag after girls on the street and declare their flame. Jan, Susannah, and I had giggled helplessly, feeling both flattered and dismayed.

Bertrand says he fell in love with me during that first dance in the Courchevel nightclub. Right then and there. I don’t believe that. I think, for him, it came a little later. Maybe the next morning, when he took me skiing. “
Merde alors,
” French girls don’t ski like that, he had panted, staring at me with blatant admiration. Like what, I had asked. They don’t go half as fast, he had laughed, and kissed me passionately. However,
I
had fallen for him on the spot. So much so that I had hardly given poor Henry a departing look as I left the discothèque on Bertrand’s arm.

Bertrand talked almost immediately about getting married. It had never been my idea so soon, I was happy enough being his girlfriend for a while. But he had insisted, and he had been so charming, and so amorous, I had finally agreed to marry him. I believe he felt I was going to be the perfect wife, the perfect mother. I was bright, cultivated, well-schooled (summa cum laude from Boston University), and well-behaved—“for an American,” I could almost hear him thinking. I was healthy and wholesome and strong. I didn’t smoke, didn’t take drugs, hardly drank, and believed in God. And so back in Paris, I met the Tézac family. How nervous I had been on that first day. Their impeccable, classic apartment on the rue de l’Université. Edouard’s cold blue eyes, his dry smile. Colette and her careful makeup, her perfect clothes, trying to be friendly, handing me coffee and sugar with elegant, manicured fingers. And the two sisters. One was angular, blond, and pale: Laure. The other auburn, ruby-cheeked, and voluptuous: Cécile. Laure’s fiancé, Thierry, was there. He hardly spoke to me. The sisters had both looked at me with apparent interest, baffled by the fact that their Casanova of a brother had picked out an unsophisticated American, when he had
le tout Paris
at his feet.

I knew Bertrand—and his family, too—were expecting me to have three or four children in rapid succession. But the complications started right after our wedding. Endless complications that we had not expected. A series of early miscarriages had left me distraught.

I managed to have Zoë after six difficult years. Bertrand hoped for a long time for number two. So did I. But we never talked about it anymore.

And then there was Amélie.

But I certainly did not want to think about Amélie tonight. I had done enough of that in the past.

The bathwater was lukewarm, so I got out, shivering. Bertrand was still watching TV. Usually, I would have gone back to him, and he would have held out his arms to me, and crooned, and kissed me, and I would have said he was just too rude, but I would have said it with a little girl voice, and a little girl pout. And we would have kissed, and he would have taken me back to our room and made love to me.

But tonight I did not go to him. I slipped into bed and read some more about the Vel’ d’Hiv’ children.

And the last thing I saw before I turned off the light was Guillaume’s face when he had told us about his grandmother.

H

OW LONG HAD THEY been here? The girl could not remember. She felt deadened, numbed. The days had mingled with the nights. At one point she had been sick, bringing up bile, moaning in pain. She had felt her father’s hand upon her, comforting her. The only thing she had in mind was her brother. She could not stop thinking about him. She would take the key from her pocket and kiss it feverishly, as if kissing his plump little cheeks, his curly hair.

Some people had died here during the past days, and the girl had seen it all. She had seen women and men go mad in the stifling, stinking heat and be beaten down and tied to stretchers. She had seen heart attacks, and suicides, and high fever. The girl had watched the bodies being carried out. She had never seen such horror. Her mother had become a meek animal. She hardly spoke. She cried silently. She prayed.

One morning, curt orders were shouted through loudspeakers. They were to take their belongings and gather near the entrance. In silence. She got up, groggy and faint. Her legs felt weak, they could hardly carry her. She helped her father haul her mother to her feet. They picked up their bags. The crowd shuffled slowly to the doors. The girl noticed how everybody moved slowly, painfully. Even the children hobbled like old people, backs bent, heads down. The girl wondered where they were going. She wanted to ask her father, but his closed thin face meant she was not going to get an answer now. Could they be going home at last? Was this the end? Was it over? Would she be able to go home and free her brother?

They walked down the narrow street, the police ordering them on. The girl glanced at the strangers watching them from windows, balconies, doors, from the sidewalk. Most of them had empty, uncompassionate faces. They looked on, not saying a word. They don’t care, thought the girl. They don’t care what is being done to us, where we are being taken to. One man laughed, pointing at them. He was holding a child by the hand. The child was laughing, too. Why, thought the girl, why? Do we look funny, with our stinking, wretched clothes? Is that why they are laughing? What is so funny? How can they laugh, how can they be so cruel? She wanted to spit at them, to scream at them.

A middle-aged woman crossed the street and quickly pressed something into her hand. It was a small roll of soft bread. The woman was shooed off by a policeman. The girl just had enough time to see her return to the other side of the street. The woman had said, “You poor little girl. May God have pity.” What was God doing, thought the girl, dully. Had God given up on them? Was he punishing them for something she did not know about? Her parents were not religious, although she knew they believed in God. They had not bought her up in the traditional religious fashion, like Armelle had been by her parents, respecting all the rites. The girl wondered whether this was not their punishment. Their punishment for not practicing their religion well enough.

She handed the bread to her father. He told her to eat it. She wolfed it down, too fast. It nearly choked her.

They were taken in the same town buses to a railway station overlooking the river. She didn’t know which station it was. She had never been there before. She had rarely left Paris in all her ten years. When she saw the train, she felt panic overcome her. No, she couldn’t leave, she had to stay, she had to stay because of her brother, she had promised to come back to save him. She tugged on her father’s sleeve, whispering her brother’s name. Her father looked down at her.

“There is nothing we can do,” he said with helpless finality. “Nothing.”

She thought of the clever boy who had escaped, the one who had gotten away. Anger swept through her. Why was her father being so weak, so gutless? Did he not care about his son? Did he not care about his little boy? Why didn’t he have the courage to run away? How could he just stand there and be led into a train, like a sheep? How could he just stand there and not break away, and not run back to the apartment, and the boy, and to freedom? Why didn’t he take the key from her and run away?

Her father looked at her, and she knew he read all the thoughts in her head. He told her very calmly that they were in great danger. He did not know where they were being taken. He did not know what was going to happen to them. But he did know that if he tried to escape now, he would be killed. Shot down, instantly, in front of her, in front of her mother. And if that happened, that would be the end. She and her mother would be alone. He had to stay with them, to protect them.

The girl listened. He had never used this voice with her before. It was the voice she had overheard during those worrying, secret conversations. She tried to understand. She tried not to let her face show her anguish. But her brother . . . It was her fault! She was the one who had told him to stay in the cupboard. It was all her fault. He could have been here with them now. He could have been here, holding her very hand, if it hadn’t been for her.

She began to cry, burning tears that scalded her eyes, her cheeks.

“I didn’t know!” she sobbed. “Papa, I didn’t know, I thought we were coming back, I thought he’d be safe.” Then she looked up at him, fury and pain in her voice, and pummeled her little fists against his chest. “You never told me, Papa, you never explained, you never told me about the danger, never! Why? You thought I was too small to understand, didn’t you? You wanted to protect me? Is that what you were trying to do?”

Her father’s face. She could no longer look at it. He gazed down at her with such despair, such sadness. Her tears washed the image of his face away. She cried into her palms, alone. Her father did not touch her. In those awful, lonely minutes, the girl understood. She was no longer a happy little ten-year-old girl. She was someone much older. Nothing would ever be the same again. For her. For her family. For her brother.

She exploded one last time, tugging on her father’s arm with a violence that was new to her.

“He is going to die! He will die!”

“We are all in danger,” he replied at last. “You and me, your mother, your brother, Eva and her sons, and all these people. Everyone here. I am here with you. And we are with your brother. He is in our prayers, in our hearts.”

Before she could answer, they were pushed into a train, a train that had no seats, just bare wagons. A covered cattle train. It smelled rank and dirty. Standing near the doors, the girl looked out to the gray, dusty station.

On a nearby platform, a family was waiting for another train. The father, the mother, and two children. The mother was pretty, her hair done up in a fancy bun. They were probably off on vacation. There was a girl, just her age. She had a pretty, lilac dress. Her hair was clean, her shoes shiny.

The two girls gazed at each other from across the platform. The pretty, fancy-haired mother was looking, too. The girl in the train knew her tearful face was black with filth, her hair greasy. But she did not bow her head with shame. She stood straight, her chin high. She wiped away the tears.

And when the doors were heaved closed, when the train gave a jolt, wheels clanging and groaning, she peered out through a tiny chink in the metal. She never stopped looking at the little girl. She watched until the figure in the lilac dress completely disappeared.

I

HAD NEVER BEEN FOND of the fifteenth arrondissement. Probably because of the monstrous surge of high-rise modern buildings that disfigured the banks of the Seine just next to the Eiffel Tower, and that I had never been able to get used to, although they were built in the early seventies, a long while before I arrived in Paris. But when I turned up at the rue Nélaton with Bamber, where the Vélodrome d’Hiver once stood, I thought to myself I liked this area of Paris even less.