All the Light There Was (16 page)

My father grumbled, “You’d think with the modern equipment the Americans have, they could be a little more precise.”

Missak and I consulted with the Kacherians and planned another bicycle trip to Fresnes. My mother and I scraped together the ingredients to make some bread sticks to add to the basket. The tires on our old bicycle had become progressively thinner, but we decided to take our chances.

On a warm, sunny day in May, Missak and I pedaled through the suburbs, where the window boxes on the houses we passed were filled with primroses and hyacinths. Plane trees along the road had unfurled their bright new leaves, and the chestnuts were in bloom. Wildflowers had sprung up alongside ditches and in the fields. Despite the grimness of our destination, I was buoyed by the sunny skies and the wind in my hair. It was hard to believe on such a beautiful spring day that the war could last much longer.

“Hey,” I called over my shoulder to my brother. “Look at the poppies!” I pointed to a field of grasses dotted with red.

We arrived at the prison entrance, and the guard searched his ledger. He went through the pages twice, finally shaking his head.

“They’re not here,” he said.

“Where have they gone?” Missak asked.

The guard pulled out another ledger and flipped through the pages, pausing when he found their names. He replied, “They went to Compiègne over two weeks ago. From there, they would have gone to a work camp in the east.”

Missak pressed him for more details; the guard said he wasn’t certain, but he thought they might have been headed for a camp in Germany called Buchenwald, where most of the political prisoners were sent.

We turned and wheeled our bicycles away from the prison.

My mind felt sluggish, and I was glad that for once my imagination had stalled. “What do we do now?” I asked Missak.

“We go home.”

My brother and I didn’t speak on the long ride back to Paris. As we neared Belleville, our pace slowed, until at the end we walked the bicycles up the hill.

“How far is Compiègne?” I asked.

“Too far,” he said.

“How long would it take?”

“About twice as long as Fresnes. It would be almost impossible to do in one day. And these bicycles wouldn’t make it. Zaven and Barkev are probably not even there anymore. You heard him.”

I said, “Oh, Missak, I’m sorry to be such a coward, but I don’t think I can face Auntie Shushan.”

“You go home,” he told me.

I slowly wheeled the bicycle along the narrow street, stopping to wipe tears with my sleeve. I entered the courtyard and left the bike behind the steps in the bottom of the stairwell.

My mother came running into the hall as I entered the apartment. “
Yavrum!
You look like a sheet. What happened? Tell me what is the matter. Where is your brother?”

“Missak went to tell the Kacherians that Zaven and Barkev have been deported,” I said. “They’ve been sent to a camp in Germany.”

My mother raised her palms and eyes to heaven. “
Yaman, yaman.
Dear God, is death the only end to this suffering?”

That night I lay in bed studying the drawing on the wall. Missak had captured Zavig’s nature in that sketch: the high forehead; the large, soulful eyes; the open smile. I tried every ritual I knew to fall asleep—turning to my habitual position on my side with a hand slipped beneath the pillow, and counting to a thousand in French and then in Armenian. I switched on the bedside lamp and tried reading from Auntie Shakeh’s Bible. But nothing helped, and I lay in the dark as the infernal machine of my imagination began to work: Zaven was in a grimy factory where unwashed, rail-thin men in tattered clothes trundled misfortune around in wheelbarrows. I must have fallen asleep at some point, but when the alarm went off in the morning I felt as though it had been only ten minutes since I shut my eyes.

The news of Zaven and Barkev’s deportation cast a pall over our household for many weeks. I continued having difficulty sleeping and stumbled wearily through the day. My mother’s hands were either frantic with work or still as dead birds. On Saturday evening when Missak was a half an hour late for dinner, my mother wept into her apron while my father scolded her. When Missak finally arrived, no one reprimanded him. We sat at the table and ate dinner to the sounds of cutlery against plates.

One morning at the breakfast table, my father announced with forced cheerfulness that the Germans were in a tough spot and it was only a matter of time before Hitler was defeated. He predicted that the Kacherian boys would be back before the holidays and that life would return to normal soon thereafter.

He said, “The Americans and the British will land on the coast any day now. They’ll break through that wall and roll across France.”

My mother eyed him skeptically. “Did Saint Sarkis tell you all this in a dream?”

“There are rumors going up and down the hill, and I can feel it in my bones,” he said.

“Maybe what you’re feeling in your bones is old age,” she said. “Or maybe it’s going to rain.”

As sad as we were, we returned to the routine of our lives. I studied for my exams. My mother set my father to building several more window boxes out of old crates. She sent Missak out to the park to collect dirt to fill them. I helped her plant tomatoes, peppers, and parsley in the boxes. Then my mother worked her magic on the grocer and came home with another sack of bulgur.

One Sunday, I was dispatched by bicycle to the cousins in Alfortville. My father sent newly made sandals with wooden soles that I traded for onions, eggplant seedlings, and another beady-eyed laying hen. Since the bird would eventually land in a pot, I christened her Havabour—Chicken Soup. On my way back, the bicycle finally suffered a flat tire and I had to walk the last mile home.

I took my exit exams in early June, and days later, as I was standing in line at the market, I heard the long-anticipated news. It was Tuesday, June 6, and the street was buzzing: the Americans and English had launched their attack on Normandy. The Allies had landed on French soil and would soon be heading east.

With the news of the Allied landing, our daily lives felt provisional and petty. But still, the shopping had to be done, the meals prepared, and the table set for dinner. My mother sewed, my father repaired shoes, and I completed my last days at the lycée. We brushed our teeth at night and slept as best we could. I woke in the middle of the night thinking of Zavig and Barkev somewhere deep in Germany, where the war might go on for many months. I tried not to think about how awful it was that they had been deported only weeks before the Americans arrived.

All the girls in my class were concerned that their exam results would disappear into the war’s chaos, but even here, the routine was maintained; French bureaucracy held sway, and the marks were posted on the wall.

My English teacher, Mrs. Collin, pulled me aside. “Marie, what are your plans for next year?”

“I don’t know. I have a knitting job this summer. In the fall, I thought I would look for an office job of some kind—”

Mrs. Collin interrupted. “Young lady, it would be unfortunate if you didn’t continue your education. Would you like me to put in a word for you with the English Literature Department at the Sorbonne?”

As much as I was flattered by my teacher’s concern, and as deeply as I would have loved to study more, the disorder of the war, the closure of the teacher’s colleges, and my family’s strained finances had made me wonder if going to the university made any sense. I hadn’t even brought it up with my parents, and truthfully, I felt that my life was on hold until Zaven returned.

Mrs. Collin peered into my face. “Look, you should at least apply. There is a chance for a scholarship, and the English Department’s library hires part-time assistants. Who knows where we will all be in October. Let me help you so you may at least have a choice.”

So she lobbied on my behalf, and a place and the funds were found. My father grumbled about higher education being wasted on a girl. Studying literature seemed frivolous to him; if I had been studying for something practical, like a teaching or a nursing degree, he might have responded with more enthusiasm. My mother told me not to pay any attention, and in the end he grudgingly gave me his gnomic blessing: “Reading is a golden bracelet.”

C
ARRYING A HEAVY BAG
full of yarn one hot evening, I plodded up the rue de Belleville from the Métro; three boys on bicycles whizzed down the hill, tossing leaflets behind them like confetti. Several of the papers fluttered to the sidewalk at my feet. I picked one up and saw it was a call to action for Bastille Day.

Rise up, rise up, citizens, on the 14th of July, take to the streets of Belleville and show your defiance of the Nazi Occupier.

Since the Allies had landed in Normandy, the atmosphere in the city was electric and mercurial. In our neighborhood, with its history of working-class revolt, each day there was some new act of defiance: Métros were purposely stalled in the tunnels, factory workers walked out on strike, and underground newspapers were openly distributed on corners. The quiet muttering against the Germans turned into a loud discourse in the market lines.

When Bastille Day arrived I was unable to convince my mother to join Jacqueline and me on the streets, but she didn’t attempt to stop us. At the first sign of trouble, I promised her, we would scuttle home. We passed by the shoe-repair shop to pick up my father and Paul, and the four of us made our way to the corner. The Kacherians were already there, as were Jacqueline’s parents and siblings.

Boys were moving along the sidewalks of the rue de Belleville selling miniature paper tricolor flags. The profits were for the benefit of the Resistance, so the boys soon sold all their wares. The street quickly filled—the crowds went up and down the rue de Belleville as far as I could see. People had gathered on one side of the street, while on the opposite sidewalk the police had lined up. But marching down the middle of the street were members of the armed Resistance—the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans—openly carrying their weapons for the first time.

At the sight of the Partisan Snipers, Shushan Kacherian exclaimed, “
Meghah!
If those boys aren’t afraid, it must be true that the Germans are losing!”

My father laughed. “Maybe now you’ll believe me.”

Just then a young man waving a full-size tricolor ran to join the gun-toting irregulars. Suddenly the crowd was singing “La Marseillaise”—singing, bellowing, and shouting with all the rage and joy of believing that the Occupation would soon be over.

My father slapped Vahan Kacherian on the back and yelled over the roar of the crowd, “Those are our men! If only your sons were here to see this. But they’ll be back. The Soviets are headed west and the Americans are headed east. Soon they will crush the Boches in the middle.”

Turning to me, Zaven’s father said happily, “You’ll be pleased to see Zaven when he comes home, won’t you, young lady?”

Everything seemed possible in that moment. As the raucous chorus continued, I imagined that any minute Zaven would round the corner to join us.

There were no Germans to be seen, only the French police. At one point, orders must have been given to disperse the crowds, and police vans started to move in. They attempted to drive down the street, but no one moved. Men shouted, “The police are with us! The police are with us!” And it appeared that they were. The vans retreated and some of the officers themselves joined in singing another round of “La Marseillaise.”

My father grinned. “Too bad your mother and brother aren’t here to see this.”

Missak suddenly bobbed up beside us. “I’m here!”

My father clapped him on the shoulder. “Where have you been?”

“Down on the boulevard de Belleville. It’s a wild party. Everyone’s singing and dancing. It was so jammed it took me a half an hour to get through.”

After a while the police vans arrived again, but people had already started dispersing, leaving the street littered with paper flags, trampled leaflets, and crushed flowers.

Jacqueline, Missak, and I sat on the bench in the courtyard of our building watching Havabour peck and scratch at the weeds growing between the cobblestones.

“Your mother invited me to stay for dinner,” Jacqueline said, eyeing the hen. “Too bad that chicken isn’t in the pot.”

I said, “My mother saved eggs to cook with the bulgur. I think there’s even butter to fry the onions.”

“You’re so lucky. We’re eating badly at my house, or we’re hardly eating. The kids look skinnier every day. All I earn I spend on black-market food, but I can’t buy much. A kilo of butter costs a thousand francs. Can you imagine that? Who has a thousand francs to spend on butter?”

Missak reached into his pocket. “Here,” he said, handing her two fake ration cards.

“Oh, Missak, I could kiss you!” Jacqueline said.

He flushed. “Just because you have the tickets doesn’t mean you’ll be able to find the food.”

I studied Missak out of the corner of my eye. He wasn’t one to embarrass easily. Then I noticed the way we were sitting—with Jacqueline in the middle between my brother and me. I wondered how long their romance had been going on without my noticing.

Jacqueline put her hand on Missak’s arm. “But still, we should be able to get something with these, and something is better than nothing.”

I stood up. “Time to set the table.”

“Do you want me to come with you?” Jacqueline asked, withdrawing her hand from Missak’s arm.

“No need,” I said, scooping up the bird and nestling it in the crook of my elbow. “I’ll come down and let you know when it’s ready. And Jacqueline, will you do me a favor?”

“Sure. What do you want?” Jacqueline asked.

“Will you cut my hair?”

“You want a trim?”

I pointed at my jaw line. “I want it cut to here.”

“Your mother will have a fit,” Jacqueline said.

“So we’ll do it at your place.”

The next day, I went to the Sahadians’ carrying in my bag a purloined pair of my mother’s sharpest shears.