Sarah's Key (35 page)

“I am most relieved to be able to tell you this today, all these years later.”

William Rainsferd nodded.

“Thank you, sir,” he said, his voice low. His face was pale, too, I noticed. “I don’t know much, I came here to understand. I believe my mother suffered. And I need to know why.”

“We did what we could for her,” said Edouard. “That I can promise you. Julia will tell you. She will explain. She will tell you your mother’s story. She will tell you what my father did for your mother. Good-bye.”

He drew back, an old man all of a sudden, shrunken and wan. Bertrand’s eyes watching him, curious, detached. He had probably never seen his father so moved. I wonder what it did to him, what it meant to him.

Edouard walked away, followed by his wife, his daughters, bombarding him with questions. His son trailed after them, hands in pockets, silent. I wondered if Edouard was going to tell Colette and his daughters the truth. Most likely, I thought. And I imagined their shock.

WILLIAM RAINSFERD AND I stood alone in the hall of the nursing home. Outside, on the rue de Courcelles, it was still raining. “How about some coffee?” he said.

He had a beautiful smile.

We walked under the drizzle to the nearest café. We sat down, ordered two espressos. For a moment, we sat there in silence.

Then he asked: “Are you close to the old lady?”

“Yes,” I said. “Very close.”

“I see you’re expecting a baby?”

I patted my plump stomach. “Due in February.”

At last he said, slowly, “Tell me my mother’s story.”

“This isn’t going to be easy,” I said.

“Yes. But I need to hear it. Please, Julia.”

Slowly, I began to talk, in a low hushed voice, only glancing up at him from time to time. As I spoke, my thoughts went to Edouard, probably sitting in his elegant, salmon-colored living room on the rue de l’Université, telling the exact same story to his wife, his daughters, his son. The roundup. The Vel’ d’Hiv’. The camp. The escape. The little girl who came back. The dead child in the cupboard. Two families, linked by death, and a secret. Two families linked by sorrow. Part of me wanted this man to know the entire truth. Another yearned to protect him, to shield him from blunt reality. From the awful image of the little girl and her suffering. Her pain, her loss. His pain, his loss. The more I talked, the more details I gave, the more questions I answered, the more I felt my words enter him like blades and wound him.

When I finished, I looked up at him. His face and lips were pale. He took out the notebook from the envelope and gave it to me in silence. The brass key lay on the table between us.

I held the notebook between my hands, looking back at him. His eyes egged me on.

I opened the book. I read the first sentence to myself. Then I read out loud, translating the French directly into our mother tongue. It was a slow process; the writing, a thin, slanted scribble, was hard to read.

Where are you, my little Michel? My beautiful Michel
.
Where are you now?
Would you remember me?
Michel
.
Me, Sarah, your sister
.
The one who never came back. The one who left you in the cupboard. The one who thought you’d be safe
.
Michel
.
The years have gone by and I still have the key
.
The key to our secret hiding place
.
You see, I’ve kept it, day after day, touching it, remembering you
.
It has never left me since July
16, 1942.
No one here knows. No one here knows about the key, about you
.
About you in the cupboard
.
About Mother, about Father
.
About the camp
.
About summer 1942
.
About who I really am
.
Michel
.
Not one day has gone by without me thinking of you
.
Remembering
26,
rue de Saintonge
.
I carry the burden of your death like I would a child
.
I will carry it till the day I die
.
Sometimes, I want to die
.
I cannot bear the weight of your death
.
Of Mother’s death, of Father’s death
.
Visions of cattle trains carrying them to their deaths
.
I hear the train in my mind, I have heard it over and over again for the past thirty years
.
I cannot bear the weight of my past
.
Yet I cannot throw away the key to your cupboard
.
It is the only concrete thing that links me to you, apart from your grave
.
Michel
.
How can I pretend I am someone else
.
How can I make them believe I am another woman
.
No, I cannot forget
.
The stadium
.
The camp
.
The train
.
Jules and Geneviève
.
Alain and Henriette
.
Nicolas and Gaspard
.
My child cannot make me forget. I love him. He is my son
.
My husband does not know who I am
.
What my story is
.
But I cannot forget
.
Coming here was a terrible mistake
.
I thought I could change. I thought I could put it all behind me
.
But I cannot
.
They went to Auschwitz. They were killed
.
My brother. He died in the cupboard
.
There is nothing left for me
.
I thought there was but I was wrong
.
A child and a husband are not enough
.
They know nothing
.
They don’t know who I am
.
They will never know
.
Michel
.
In my dreams, you come and get me
.
You take me by the hand and you lead me away
.
This life is too much for me to bear
.
I look at the key and I long for you and for the past
.
For the innocent, easy days before the war
.
I know now my scars will never heal
.
I hope my son will forgive me
.
He will never know
.
No one will ever know
.
Zakhor. Al Tichkah.
Remember. Never forget
.

THE CAFÉ WAS A noisy, lively place, yet around William and me grew a bubble of total silence.

I put the notebook down, devastated at what we now knew.

“She killed herself,” William said flatly. “There was no accident. She drove that car straight into the tree.”

I said nothing. I could not speak. I did not know what to say.

I wanted to reach out and take his hand, but something held me back. I took a deep breath. But still the words did not come.

The brass key lay between us on the table, a silent witness of the past, of Michel’s death. I sensed him closing up, like he had done once before in Lucca, when he had held up his palms as if to push me away. He did not move, but I clearly felt him drawing away. Once again, I resisted the powerful, compulsive urge to touch him, to hold him. Why did I feel there was so much I could share with this man? Somehow he was no stranger to me, and more bizarre still, I felt even less a stranger to him. What had brought us together? My quest, my thirst for truth, my compassion for his mother? He knew nothing of me, knew nothing of my failing marriage, my near miscarriage in Lucca, my job, my life. What did I know of him, of his wife, his children, his career? His present was a mystery. But his past, his mother’s past, had been etched out to me like fiery torches along a dark path. And I longed to show this man that I cared, that what happened to his mother had altered my life.

Thank you,” he said, at last. “Thank you for telling me all this.” His voice seemed odd, contrived. I realized I had wanted him to break down, to cry, to show me some form of emotion. Why? No doubt because I myself needed release, needed tears to wash away pain, sorrow, emptiness, needed to share my feelings with him, in a particular, intimate communion.

He was leaving, getting up from the table, gathering up the key and the notebook. I could not bear the idea of him going so soon. If he walked out now, I was convinced I would never hear from him again. He would not want to see me, or talk to me. I would lose the last link to Sarah. I would lose him. And for some godforsaken, obscure reason, William Rainsferd was the only person I wanted to be with at that very moment.

He must have read something in my face because he hesitated, hovered over the table.

“I will go to these places,” he said. “Beaune-la-Rolande, and rue Nélaton.”

“I could come with you, if you want me to.”

His eyes rested upon me. Again, I perceived the contrast of what I knew I inspired in him, a complex bundle of resentment and thankfulness.

“No, I prefer to go alone. But I’d appreciate it if you gave me the Dufaure brothers’ addresses. I’d like to see them, too.”

“Sure,” I replied, looking at my agenda and scribbling the addresses down on a piece of paper for him.

Suddenly he sat down again, heavily.

“You know, I could do with a drink,” he said.

“Fine. Of course,” I said, signaling to the waiter. We ordered some wine for William and a fruit juice for me.

As we drank in silence, I noticed inwardly how comfortable I felt with him. Two fellow Americans enjoying a quiet drink. Somehow we did not need to talk. And it did not feel awkward. But I knew that as soon as he had finished the last dregs of his wine, he’d be gone.

The moment came.

“Thank you, Julia, thank you for everything.”

He did not say,
Let’s keep in touch, send each other e-mails, talk on the phone from time to time
. No, he said nothing. But I knew what his silence spelled out, loud and clear.
Don’t call me. Don’t contact me, please. I need to figure my entire life out. I need time and silence, and peace. I need to find out who I now am
.

I watched him walk away under the rain, his tall figure fading into the busy street.

I folded my palms over the roundness of my stomach, letting loneliness ebb into me.

WHEN I CAME HOME that evening, I found the entire Tézac family waiting for me. They were sitting with Bertrand and Zoë in our living room. I immediately picked up the stiffness of the atmosphere.

It appeared they had divided into two groups: Edouard, Zoë, and Cécile, who were on “my side,” approving of what I had done, and Colette and Laure, who disapproved.

Bertrand said nothing, remaining strangely silent. His face was mournful, his mouth drooping at the sides. He did not look at me.

How could I have done such a thing, Colette exploded. Tracing that family, contacting that man, who in the end knew nothing of his mother’s past.

“That poor man,” echoed my sister-in-law Laure, quivering. “Imagine, now he finds out who he really is, his mother was a Jew, his entire family wiped out in Poland, his uncle starved to death. Julia should have left him alone.”

Edouard stood up abruptly, threw his hands into the air.