Sarah's Key

by Tatiana de Rosnay

  After an initial stay at her house, Charla had helped me find a place to live, a simple, white, two-bedroom apartment with an "open city view" and a doorman, on West 86th Street, between Amsterdam and Columbus. I sublet it from one of her friends who had moved to Los Angeles. The building was full of families and divorced parents, a noisy beehive of babies, kids, bikes, strollers, scooters. It was a comfortable, cozy home, but there, too, something was missing. What? I could not tell.

  Thanks to Joshua, I'd been hired as the New York City correspondent for a hip French Web site. I worked from home and still used Bamber as a photographer when I needed shots from Paris.

  There had been a new school for Zoe, Trinity College, a couple of blocks away. "Mom, I'll never fit in, now they call me the Frenchy," she complained, and I couldn't help smiling.

  N

  EW YORKERS WERE FASCINATING to watch, their purposeful step, their banter, their friendliness. My neighbors said hi in the elevator, had offered us flowers and candy when we moved in, and joked with the doorman. I had forgotten about all that. I was so used to Parisian surliness and people living on the same doorstep barely giving each other curt nods in the staircase.

  Perhaps the most ironic thing about it all was that despite the exciting whirlwind of a life I now had, I missed Paris. I missed the Eiffel Tower lighting up on the hour, every evening, like a shimmering, bejeweled seductress. I missed the air sirens howling over the city, every first Wednesday, at noon, for their monthly drill. I missed the Saturday outdoor market along the boulevard Edgar-Quinet, where the vegetable man called me "ma p'tite dame" although I was probably his tallest feminine customer. Like Zoe, I felt I was a Frenchy, too, despite being American.

  Leaving Paris had not been as easy as I had anticipated. New York and its energy, its clouds of steam billowing from its manholes, its vastness, its bridges, its buildings, its gridlock, was still not home. I missed my Parisian friends, even if I'd made some great new ones here. I missed Edouard, who I had become close to and who wrote to me monthly. I especially missed the way French men check women out, what Holly used to call their "naked" look. I had gotten used to it over there, but now, in Manhattan, there were only cheerful bus drivers to yell "Yo, slim!" at Zoe and "Yo, blondie!" at me. I felt like I had become invisible. Why did my life feel so empty? I wondered. As if a hurricane had hit it. As if the bottom had dropped out of it.

  And the nights.

  Nights were forlorn, even those I spent with Neil. Lying in bed listening to the sounds of the great, pulsating city and letting the images come back to me, like the tide creeping up the beach.

  S

  ARAH.

  She never left me. She had changed me, forever. Her story, her suffering, I carried them within me. I felt as if I knew her. I knew her as a child. As a young girl. As the forty-year-old housewife who crashed her car into a tree on an icy New England road. I could see her face, perfectly. The slanted green eyes. The shape of her head. Her posture. Her hands. Her rare smile. I knew her. I could have stopped her on the street, had she still been alive.

  Zoe was a sharp one. She had caught me red-handed.

  Googling William Rainsferd.

  I had not realized she was back from school. One winter afternoon, she had sneaked in without me hearing her.

  "How long have you been doing this?" she asked, sounding like a mother coming across her teenager smoking pot.

  Flushed, I admitted that I'd looked him up regularly in the past year.

  "And?" she went on, arms crossed, frowning down at me.

  "Well, it appears he has left Lucca," I confessed.

  "Oh. Where is he, then?"

  "He's back in the States, has been for a couple of months."

  I could no longer bear her stare, so I stood up and went to the window, glancing down to busy Amsterdam Avenue.

  "Is he in New York, Mom?"

  Her voice was softer now, less harsh. She came up behind me, put her lovely head on my shoulder.

  I nodded. I could not face telling her how excited I'd been when I found out he was here, too. How thrilled, how amazed I'd felt about ending up in the same city as him, two years after our last meeting. His father was a New Yorker, I recalled. He had probably lived here as a little boy.

  He was listed in the phone book. In the West Village. A mere fifteen-minute subway ride from here. And for days, for weeks, I had agonizingly asked myself whether I should call him, or not. He had never tried to contact me since Paris. I had never heard from him since then.

  The excitement had petered out after a while. I did not have the courage to call him. But I went on thinking about him, night after night. Day after day. In secret, in silence. I wondered if I'd ever run into him one day, in the park, in some department store, bar, restaurant. Was he here with his wife and girls? Why had he come back to the States, like I had? What had happened?

  "Have you contacted him?" Zoe asked.

  "No."

  "Will you?"

  "I don't know, Zoe."

  I started to cry, silently.

  "Oh, Mom, please," she sighed.

  I wiped the tears away, angrily, feeling foolish.

  "Mom, he knows you live here now. I'm sure he knows. He's looked you up as well. He knows what you do here, he knows where you live."

  That thought had never occurred to me. William Googling me. William checking out my address. Was Zoe right? Did he know I lived in New York City, too, on the Upper West Side? Did he ever think of me? What did he feel, exactly, when he did?

  "You have to let go, Mom. You have to put it behind you. Call Neil, see him more often, just get on with your life."

  I turned to her, my voice ringing out loud and harsh.

  "I can't, Zoe. I need to know if what I did helped him. I need to know that. Is that too much to ask? Is that such an impossible thing?"

  The baby wailed from the next room. I'd disturbed her nap. Zoe went to get her and came back with her plump, hiccupping sister.

  Zoe stroked my hair gently over the toddler's curls.

  "I don't think you'll ever know, Mom. I don't think he'll ever be ready to tell you. You changed his life. You turned it upside down, remember. He probably never wants to see you again."

  I plucked the child from her arms and pressed her fiercely against me, relishing her warmth, her plumpness. Zoe was right. I needed to turn the page, to get on with my life.

  How, was another matter.

  I

  KEPT MYSELF BUSY. I did not have a minute to myself, what with Zoe, her sister, Neil, my parents, my nephews, my job, and the never-ending string of parties Charla and her husband Barry invited me to, and to which I relentlessly went. I met more new people in two years than I had in my entire Parisian stay, a cosmopolitan melting pot that I reveled in.

  Yes, I had left Paris for good, but whenever I returned for my work or to see my friends or Edouard, I always found myself in the Marais, drawn back again and again, as if my footsteps could not help bringing me there. Rue des Rosiers, rue du Roi-de-Sicile, rue des Ecouffes, rue de Saintonge, rue de Bretagne, I saw them file past with new eyes, eyes that remembered what had happened here, in 1942, even if it had been long before my time.

  I wondered who lived in the rue de Saintonge apartment now, who stood by the window overlooking the leafy courtyard, who ran their palm along the smooth marble mantelpiece. I wondered if the new tenants had any inkling that a little boy had died within their home, and that a young girl's life had been changed that day, forever.

  In my dreams, I went back to the Marais, too. In my dreams, sometimes the horrors of the past that I had not witnessed appeared to me with such starkness that I had to turn on the light, in order to drive the nightmare away.

  It was during those sleepless, empty nights, when I lay in bed, jaded by the social talk, dry-mouthed after the extra glass of wine I should not have given in to, that the old ache came back and haunted me.

  His eyes. His face when I had read Sarah's letter out loud. It all
came back and drove sleep away, delving into me.

  Zoe's voice dragged me back to Central Park, the beautiful spring day, and Neil's hand on my thigh.

  "Mom, this monster wants a Popsicle."

  "No way," I said. "No Popsicle."

  The baby threw herself face forward on the grass and bawled.

  "Quite something, isn't she?" mused Neil.

  J

  ANUARY 2005 ALSO BROUGHT me back, again and again, to Sarah, to William. The importance of the sixtieth commemoration of Auschwitz's liberation made every headline around the world. It seemed that never before had the word "Shoah" been pronounced so often.

  And every time I heard it, my thoughts leaped painfully to him, to her. And I wondered, as I watched the Auschwitz memorial ceremony on TV, if William ever thought of me when he, too, heard the word, when he, too, saw the monstrous black-and-white images of the past flicker across the screen, the lifeless skeletal bodies piled high, the crematoriums, the ashes, the horror of it all.

  His family had died in that hideous place. His mother's parents. How could he not think of it, I mused. On the screen, with Zoe and Charla at my side, I watched the snowflakes fall on the camp, the barbed wire, the squat watchtower. The crowd, the speeches, the prayers, the candles. The Russian soldiers and their particular dancing gait.

  And the final, unforgettable vision of nightfall, and the railway tracks aflame, glowing through the darkness with a poignant, sharp mixture of grief and remembrance.

  T

  HE CALL CAME ONE May afternoon, when I was least expecting it. I was at my desk, struggling with a new computer's whims. I picked up the phone, my "yes" sounding curt even to me.

  "Hi. This is William Rainsferd."

  I sat up straight, heart aflutter, trying to remain calm.

  William Rainsferd.

  I said nothing, dumbstruck, clutching the receiver to my ear.

  "You there, Julia?"

  I swallowed.

  "Yes, just having some computer problems. How are you, William?"

  "Fine," he said.

  A little silence. But it did not feel tense, or strived.

  "It's been a while," I said lamely.

  "Yes, it has," he said.

  Another silence.

  "I see you're a New Yorker now," he said, at last. "Looked you up."

  So Zoe had been right, after all.

  "Well, how about getting together?" he asked.

  "Today?" I said.

  "If you can make it."

  I thought of the sleeping child in the next room. She had been to day care this morning, but I could take her along. She wasn't going to like having her nap interrupted, though.

  "I can make it," I said.

  "Great. I'll ride up to your part of town. Got any ideas where we could meet?"

  "Do you know Cafe Mozart? On West 70th Street and Broadway?"

  "I know it, fine. See you there in half an hour?"

  I hung up. My heart was beating so fast I could hardly breathe. I went to wake the baby, ignored her protests, bundled her up, unfolded the stroller, and took off.

  H

  E WAS ALREADY THERE when we arrived. I saw his back first, the powerful shoulders, and his hair, silver and thick, no longer bearing any trace of blond. He was reading a newspaper, but he swivelled around as I approached, as if he could feel my eyes upon him. Then he was up on his feet, and there was an awkward, amusing moment when we didn't know whether to shake hands or kiss. He laughed, I did, too, and he finally hugged me, a great big bear hug, slamming my chin against his collarbone and patting the small of my back, and then he bent down to admire my daughter.

  "What a beautiful little girl," he crooned.

  She solemnly handed him her favorite rubber giraffe.

  "And what's your name, then?" he asked.

  "Lucy," she lisped.

  "That's the giraffe's name--," I began, but William had already started to press the toy and loud squeaks drowned out my voice, making the baby shriek with glee.

  We found a table and sat down, keeping the child in her stroller. He glanced at the menu.

  "Ever had the Amadeus cheesecake?" he asked, raising one eyebrow.

  "Yes," I said, "it's positively diabolical."

  He grinned.

  "Hey, you look fabulous, Julia. New York certainly suits you."

  I blushed like a teenager, imagining Zoe looking on and rolling her eyes.

  Then his mobile rang. He answered it. I could tell by his expression it was a woman. I wondered who. His wife? One of his daughters? The conversation went on. He seemed flustered. I bent over the child, playing with the giraffe.

  "Sorry," he said, tucking the phone away. "That was my girlfriend."

  "Oh."

  I must have sounded confused because he snorted with laughter.

  "I'm divorced now, Julia."

  He looked straight at me. His face sobered.

  "You know, after you told me, everything changed."

  At last. At last he was telling me what I needed to know. The aftermath. The consequences.

  I did not quite know what to say. I was afraid that if I uttered one word, he'd stop. I kept busy with my daughter, handing her her bottle of water, making sure she didn't spill it all over herself, fumbling with a paper napkin.

  The waitress came to take our orders. Two Amadeus cheesecakes, two coffees, and a pancake for the child.

  William said, "Everything went to pieces. It was hell. A terrible year."

  We said nothing for a couple of minutes, looking around us at the busy tables. The cafe was a noisy, bright place, with classical music emanating from hidden speakers. The child cooed to herself, smiling up at me and at William, brandishing her toy. The waitress brought us our food.

  "Are you OK now?" I asked tentatively.

  "Yes," he said, swiftly. "Yes I am. It took me a while to get used to this new part of me. To understand and accept my mother's history. To deal with the pain of it. Sometimes I still can't. But I work at it, hard. I did a couple of very necessary things."

  "Like what?" I asked, feeding sticky bits of crumbled pancake to my daughter.

  "I realized I could no longer bear all this alone. I felt isolated, broken. My wife could not understand what I was going through. And I just could not explain, the communication between us was nonexistent. I took my daughters to Auschwitz with me, last year, before the sixtieth anniversary celebration. I needed to tell them what had happened to their great grandparents, it wasn't easy and that was the only way I could do it. Showing them. It was a moving, tearful trip, but I felt at peace, at last, and I felt my daughters understood."

  His face was sad, thoughtful. I did not speak, I let him do the talking. I wiped the baby's face and gave her more water.

  "I did one last thing, in January. I went back to Paris. There's a new Holocaust memorial in the Marais, maybe you know that." I nodded. I had heard of it and planned to go there on my next trip. "Chirac inaugurated it at the end of January. There's a wall of names, just by the entrance. A huge, gray stone wall, engraved with 76,000 names. The names of every single Jew deported from France."

  I watched his fingers play with the rim of his coffee cup. I felt it hard to look him fully in the face.

  "I went there to find their names. And there they were. Wladyslaw and Rywka Starzynksi. My grandparents. I felt the same peace I had found at Auschwitz. The same pain. I felt grateful that they were remembered, that the French remembered them and honored them this way. There were people crying in front of that wall, Julia. Old people, young people, people of my age, touching the wall with their hands, and crying."

  He paused, breathed carefully through his mouth. I kept my eyes on the cup, on his fingers. The baby's giraffe squeaked but we hardly heard it.

  "Chirac gave a speech. I did not understand it, of course. I looked it up later on the Internet and read the translation. A good speech. Urging people to remember France's responsibility during the Vel' d'Hiv' roundup and what followed.
Chirac pronounced the same words my mother had written at the end of her letter. Zakhor, Al Tichkah. Remember. Never forget. In Hebrew."

  He bent down and retrieved a large manila envelope from the backpack at his feet. He handed it to me.

  "These are my photos of her, I wanted to show them to you. I suddenly realized I didn't know who my mother was, Julia. I mean, I knew what she looked like, I knew her face, her smile, but nothing about her inner life."

  I wiped the maple syrup off my fingers in order to be able to handle them. Sarah, on her wedding day. Tall, slender, her small smile, her secret eyes. Sarah, cradling William as a baby. Sarah with William as a toddler, holding him by the hand. Sarah, in her thirties, wearing an emerald ball dress. And Sarah, just before her death, a large color close-up. Her hair was gray, I noticed. Prematurely gray and oddly becoming. Like his, now.

  "I remember her as being tall, and slim, and silent," said William as I looked at each photo with growing emotion. "She didn't laugh much, but she was an intense person, and a loving mother. But no one ever mentioned suicide after her death. Ever. Not even Dad. I guess Dad never read the notebook. No one did. Maybe he found it a long time after her death. We all thought it was an accident. No one knew who my mother was, Julia. Not even me. And that's what I still find so hard to live with. What brought her to her death, on that cold snowy day. How she made that decision. Why we never knew anything about her past. Why she chose not to tell my father. Why she kept all her suffering, all her pain, to herself."

  "These are beautiful pictures," I said at last. "Thank you for bringing them."

  I paused.

  "There's something I must ask you," I said, putting the photos away, gathering courage and looking at him at last.

  "Go ahead."

  "No harsh feelings against me?" I asked with a weak smile. "I've been feeling like I destroyed your life."

  He grinned.

  "No harsh feelings, Julia. I just needed to think. To understand. To put all the pieces back together. It took a while. That's why you never heard from me during all that time."