by Heather Munn
I heard the doctor finally break his silence as I opened it. “Madame,” he said, “I am very concerned.”
I SAT in the one big chair in the nursery holding Léon tight against my chest. Rocking backward and forward, rocking. “It’s going to be okay, Léon. Sh. Sh. It’s all going to be okay.”
Léon believed me.
It was pneumonia. Zvi had taken cold earlier in the week. Madeleine kept thinking of things that would have made it not happen: she should have put a hat on him, she should have made a fire, it had been so cold for June, she’d thought of making one, and then she’d thought it would be a waste.
“And now, Magali … if I’d just …”
I kept telling her it wasn’t her fault.
I kept seeing his mother, his tall thin mother in her patched skirt. She’d called him “my Zvi.” She’d coughed. Tuberculosis, they said it was.
Madame Sabatier was walking him up and down by the fireplace, up and down. His little eyes screwed up in his red face as he fought to cough and breathe. Madeleine and I had fed all the babies now, and she’d gone to get her mother something to eat, and then us. We could wait. I didn’t feel hungry, I didn’t feel anything but this deep, tight ache all through my chest that nothing could soothe. Except the warmth of Léon’s little body pressed right against it. He was asleep. Breathing deeply. He was all right.
I gripped him tighter.
Madeleine brought bread, and we ate. She went back out to take a turn with Zvi. I hadn’t taken a turn. I hadn’t asked for a turn. I sat and rocked Léon. After a while he woke up and pooped his diaper and I changed it and rocked him some more. When Grigory woke up and started fussing I put Léon down. Grigory cried. I picked him up. He needed a diaper change too. I had just put him down and was pulling the first pin out of his diaper when I heard a cry from the living room.
Sudden. A high, scared, woman’s cry.
I put Grigory back in his crib, fast, and ran out to the living room. Madame Sabatier stood in front of the fire with her hand over her mouth and tears running down her cheeks. I couldn’t see Madeleine’s face. She held Zvi in her arms; I could barely see him at this angle, a tiny bundled form.
Then I heard the sound. I’ve never forgotten it. I’ve tried.
A harsh, gurgling gasp. And then a pause. And then a gasp. Another pause; another gasp. And another.
The pause was longer every time.
And then one more gasp.
And then silence.
THERE WAS a numbness all through my body, and a sound in my ears like the sea. The world blurred. My limbs moved slowly, as if through deep water; I heard the high piercing sound of Madeleine’s voice. I tried to breathe. Come on. Come on, Magali. I heard Madame Sabatier: Listen to me! Vichy killed that child and no one else. You did everything you could and more. Listen to me! I heard Grigory start to wail again from the nursery. I heard so many things and yet none of them covered that silence.
I turned away. The nursery. Grigory. I got in there and I shut the door behind me. I unpinned Grigory’s diaper and wiped his bottom. I had to take his little feet in my hand to lift him up, his soft little warm feet. The feel of them made my hand shake.
The stupidest things were going through my head. Memories of killing chickens with Grandpa. Helping to pluck them. The feathers come out easier if you start right away, while the body’s still warm. A little body like that doesn’t take long to cool. It doesn’t take long at all.
I could almost feel it in my fingers.
I pinned the clean diaper on, my hands still shaking. There’d be fewer diapers to wash now. Zvi’s diapers had always smelled the worst. Something wrong. There’d always been something wrong. His mother had put him in Paquerette’s arms and sent him away hoping. Hoping. I picked up Grigory and rocked his warm live weight against my chest and tried to shut my mind. I could see it coming: an image of Paquerette at the camp again, face to face with her, that tall Polish woman in the thin patched skirt. Saying—
My heart was beating like I was in the camp again. I wanted to run. I couldn’t run. There was a baby in my arms. I rocked him. Go to sleep, Grigory. Please go to sleep. I want to run. Oh please, oh please. I sang the Italian lullaby Mama used to sing me. Star, little star. The ewe has her lamb, the hen has her chick, everyone has her child. My throat hurt so bad. I don’t know how long it took before he started to grow heavier in my arms. Asleep. I put him in his crib so carefully. His little pointed face and his closed eyes made me want to cry, hit something, scream. I had to run. I looked out into the hallway and the living room. They’d ask me to do something. To stop by the parsonage and tell Pastor Alex to plan a—a funeral—
They weren’t there. Neither of them. The bassinet was still on the coffee table. I didn’t look into it.
I ran.
I TOOK the stairwell three steps at a time. In my house you don’t have to go through the living room to get to your room, not if you don’t want to. I didn’t want to. There wasn’t a reason in the world why I should face Mama or Papa and tell them why I’d missed supper. No reason at all.
If Mama hadn’t been in my room.
She was making my bed, tucking the sheet in, when I burst through the door and stopped dead staring at her. The blanket was in a heap by the pillow. She was down on her knees. Making hospital corners, like she tried to teach me to do, and I never learned.
She stood up slowly, not taking her eyes off me. I don’t know what I looked like. But my whole body was shaking like a tree in a storm. “Magali,” she said, “I’m so sorry.”
I think part of my mind knew she couldn’t be talking about Zvi. Part of my mind remembered that I couldn’t work with Paquerette and that it was her fault. I don’t think that was the part of my mind that was running me, anymore. Tears filled my eyes. I couldn’t think, I couldn’t see, I almost couldn’t breathe. She held out her arms and I threw myself into them.
I was shaking, and I couldn’t stop. I wasn’t in charge of my body anymore. I was shaking, and she was holding me. That was all I knew. Somehow we were on my bed, and my face was buried in her shoulder, and my hands were clutching something tight—her skirt, the blanket, I don’t know—as if I could make my fingers forget the coldness of dead flesh. Dead. Dead. I opened my mouth and let out a sound I had never heard anyone make before—a deep, rasping moan. My stomach clenched and for a moment I thought I was going to throw up. Then Mama had me by the shoulders and was pulling me up, shaking me a little, making me look into her face. She was pale. “Magali. What happened? What happened?”
I swallowed. I opened my mouth. I tried to bury my face against her shoulder again. But she wouldn’t let go. “Magali.” She sounded frightened. “What happened?”
The words were like stones, almost too heavy to lift. I forced my voice to come out of my throat. “Zvi … just … died.”
“Magali. Magali.” Her voice was tiny, and came from very far away. My head was back against her shoulder, and she was holding me hard. And she was shaking too. My mama and me, on my bed, holding each other as hard as our arms could hold, and shaking; locked together like one trembling person, shaking with what almost seemed like fear. Like fear that it was true. That this was the kind of world we lived in.
But we weren’t one person.
I stopped trembling. Suddenly. I went stiff in her arms, I pushed myself up, away from her, till I could see her face. There was something in my body, like a kind of wild energy running through it. Fear, maybe. Or anger.
She knew this was the kind of world we lived in. Why else would she be like she was?
And she wouldn’t let me go.
I looked at her. I couldn’t speak.
She looked at me. She was pale, and her lips were trembling. She looked almost exactly the way she had looked that night when I asked to travel with Paquerette. “Magali,” she said slowly, as if she was forcing the words past her lips. “How was he when he left the camp?”
My mind was whirling so hard I almost didn’t k
now what she meant. I swallowed again. My voice came out thin and dry. “There was something wrong with him. I could tell. He didn’t—move enough. When I saw him with his—” Mother, the word was mother, and I couldn’t say it. I could smell the dust of those barracks, the dust on her skin, and her patched skirt, I could see every line of her face. My Zvi. Her eyes on him—Léon’s mother’s eyes as she handed him to me—Promise you’ll take care of my baby. Promise. Promise. I was sobbing so hard I couldn’t catch my breath and Mama was holding the back of my head and dry sobs were ripping through me, sharp pain in my breastbone like I was going to split wide open. My body not even mine anymore—taken over. I fought for breath; breath to speak, to scream. “Mama,” I gasped, “Mama.” Somehow I couldn’t stand the words inside, unsaid. I pushed myself up away from her again. “How—are we going—to tell—his mother?” I wailed.
I thought she was going to pull my head down against her shoulder again, but she didn’t. She stared at me. Her face was white and her eyes were very big and dark. She couldn’t take them off me. I couldn’t either. My whole head and chest hurt, everything hurt more than I’d ever believed it could, and my mother and I looked at each other. She opened her mouth, and I watched it, as if I had never seen it before.
“Magali,” she said very, very softly. “You may travel with Paquerette this summer.”
My mouth opened. I started to cry again. She blurred, everything blurred. My head went back down against her shoulder, and I wept.
It was a long time, I think, before I stopped crying.
WHEN I came to myself it was very dim in my room, the lowering sun painting a last line of tawny red light across the wall. Mama was stroking my hair. The world had changed. Zvi was dead and that was something no one could undo. And I was going to travel with Paquerette. And I was going to save as many as I could.
“Magali,” Mama whispered. “I’m so sorry. I wanted so much for you never to have to know.”
“Know what?” I whispered.
“The things people do to each other.” Her voice was hoarse. “To people who can’t fight back.”
“Like children.” Like Zvi. Like Grigory and Léon and the Spanish kids. Carmela. Manola. Adrián. Their names bloomed up in my mind like little prayers: Keep them safe, God. Keep them healthy.
“Like children. Like women.” I looked up at her. “Like the people you saw in that camp. I’m sorry I never asked you about it. I could picture it so vividly, Magali. I couldn’t bear to picture you there.”
“Mama. Mama, it’s not because—” I couldn’t bear for that to be why. “Is that why you didn’t want me to go? So I wouldn’t see it?”
Her face hardened for a moment. “Tell me this, Magali,” she said. Her eyes were black and bright. “What kind of people are they, these men in Vichy? These men who thought that putting women and children behind barbed wire would be good for France?”
“They’re evil.”
“And do you think that’s enough for them? Do you think that’s good enough for their masters back in Berlin? Penning up Jews and Gypsies and immigrants and letting their children go? Where do you think things are going from here, Magali? Better? Or worse?”
Same way they’d gone every day for the past two years. “Worse.” She’s right. It’s not over. It’s nowhere near over.
“Worse. And it will continue. We have no idea where these people will stop. And now my daughter, my youngest child, is going into their world, beyond my reach. Setting herself against them. Magali.” Her eyes on mine were dark and deathly serious. “It terrifies me.”
She’d said I could go. She had.
“Do you understand that, Magali? Please. Look at me.” I looked at her. “You remember Léon’s mother, giving you her baby? You remember that?” I nodded. There were tears welling in Mama’s dark eyes. She opened her mouth and shut it again. The tears ran down her cheeks, bright lines in the last light from the window. “That’s what it’s like,” she whispered. “That’s what it’s like. Magali, promise me you will be careful out there.”
I looked at her. The time for cheap promises was long, long past. I took a breath. “I promise, Mama.”
She pulled me in again, a hug as tight and fierce as Madame Minkowski’s. “My daughter,” she said. “My grown-up daughter. This whole time I wanted to protect you and all you ever wanted was to protect them.”
I felt something open inside me. Something I hadn’t even known was closed. I felt warmth welling all through my chest and tears in my eyes again. “Mama?” I whispered. “Mama. I love you.”
She held me even tighter. She held me like Madame Minkowski, like Léon’s mother, like she wanted to keep me there pressed against her heart forever.
And then she let me go.
Chapter 8
The Kind of World We Live In
I SLEPT till about noon the next day. The day after that was Zvi’s funeral. Madame Sabatier’s brother-in-law had made up a little pine box for him. About half-a-meter long. It was closed. So I never did see him after he died.
Rosa and Nina were sitting together, in a pew with Rosa’s mother. It was strange seeing them in our church. Nina sat stiffly, casting her eyes around as if she was afraid of something. Rosa was crying, tears sliding quietly down her cheeks. She grabbed my hand when I sat down. I sat and looked at that box and I remembered everything at once: the gasping, and the silence afterward. His mother’s face. The warm weight of Léon against my chest, and the way I couldn’t stop thinking about dead chickens getting cold. Pastor Alex was saying God would welcome Zvi the way Madame Sabatier had. I tried to imagine it, but how are you supposed to imagine that stuff? When I was a kid in Paris I thought heaven looked like the picture of it on the Sunday school room wall—a big green field under a sunrise and kids playing in it. But Zvi was just a baby. I tried to picture Jesus holding him. I even pretended I was Catholic like Rosa and tried the Virgin Mary instead. None of it stuck.
I don’t know. I just can’t do it sometimes. People tell me all this stuff about God, and of course I believe it. But—I don’t know—it’s not there. Sometimes I just have to touch something, you know? It’s not that I don’t believe, it’s just … We go to church and talk about God all the time and yeah, I’ve never seen him and like Papa pointed out when I said that, I never saw Hitler either—but that’s just it. I can see what Hitler does. I’ve seen it up close. But what God’s doing, I don’t know.
Because what’s there is a dead baby in a box. Who has got to be put under the ground before he rots. And if his little soul flew up out of there when he took his last desperate breath, I didn’t see it. And maybe there was an angel standing behind Madeleine just like in an old-fashioned painting, but he quit breathing all the same.
“We are dust,” said Pastor Alex. His voice was rough all of a sudden. I looked up. “And to dust we shall return. We ask you, Lord, for mercy.”
THEY PUT him in the ground. Thierry Sabatier and his son Emmanuel, carrying the box between them, like one of them couldn’t have held it up with one hand. They shoveled the earth onto the lid, and they filled in the hole, and at the end there was this little mound of dirt left over beside the grave. I stood looking at it, and Rosa stood with me, as people started walking away by twos and threes. Then I turned and went over to the low stone wall and leaned on it, looking past the houses at where the land fell away and you could just see a little corner of the river reflecting the sun. The inside of my head felt like it was tied in knots. I kept seeing all these things. The barbed wire and the gate at Rivesaltes, and the guard’s red watering eyes. My mother’s face when she’d said my grown-up daughter. Zvi lying eerily still in his mother’s arms. Eva and Kurt standing in the back of the truck with their hair streaming out in the wind. That little pile of dirt. Zvi is dead, and I can travel with Paquerette. I can travel with Paquerette. And Zvi is dead.
We ask you, Lord, for mercy.
My hands tightened into fists. Mercy. This is your idea of mercy? I wanted to scre
am. Someone touched my arm, and I jumped. It was Rosa. I looked up across the grave and saw Nina standing with my mother.
“Madeleine said you were there,” Rosa whispered. “When … he died.”
“Yeah.”
“Why didn’t you come get me? I could’ve helped.”
I opened my mouth and shut it again. Seriously? “Rosa—it wasn’t—you would’ve hated it.”
She looked at me, her black eyes burning and full of tears. “I said I could have helped. At least you got to help! I didn’t even get to say goodbye!”
“I didn’t either.”
“I tried so hard, Magali. I thought he was getting better. He started eating more …” Her voice was thickening. She’d started to cry again. I grabbed her round the shoulders and hugged her, trying to think of something to say. I remembered her sitting on the couch at l’Espoir bent over Zvi, trying to get him to drink one more swallow of formula. I remembered what Madame Sabatier had said.
“You did everything you could and more, Rosa.”
She didn’t say anything. She just cried. I held her and felt her body shaking, and thought of Mama holding me. Magali, you may travel with Paquerette this summer. The words came into my mind and a shudder went through my body, something like joy and terror at the same time. I clutched my friend hard and looked up into the sky, and it was so deep and blue and thousands of miles high. More words came into my head. I don’t know. I don’t know. Over and over. Those were the only words I could find.
WE WALKED down to the Catholic church afterward. Rosa wanted to light a candle. It was getting hot. We didn’t say anything as we walked down through the streets, and there weren’t a lot of people out. I could hear the doves cooing up on the rooftops. We went from the bright sun into the deep cool dark of the church, and I blinked as my eyes adjusted to the darkness. Rosa rummaged in the candle box and found one, and dropped a coin in to pay for it. It was tall and white, and it stood out in her hands against the dark as she set it up on the candle rack. She got the matches and struck one and put it to the wick, carefully, her face very intent. I almost felt embarrassed to watch. I saw her eyes light when the wick took the flame. It burned blue and gold same as every candle in the world; it lit up the crucifix behind the candle rack and reflected bright against the tears that were streaming down Rosa’s face again. She knelt down and closed her eyes. Her lips moved silently and fast. I looked at the candle flame, how slowly it moved against the dark.