The Travels of Daniel Ascher

by Déborah Lévy-Bertherat

  Hélène was slumped on the divan next to a boy who was trying to explain that, mathematically, the third millennium didn’t start until January 1, 2001. She’d had too much to drink to follow his reasoning. She was thinking about that aunt in America, that Aunt Mala who might still be alive, it was as if a part of Daniel’s family were coming back from the dead. In among the cigarette smoke and the head spin of alcohol, skyscrapers towered before her. In the year 2000, in the spring, she would go to New York.

  16

  Two Fugitives

  ON THE LAST SUNDAY IN FEBRUARY, Daniel invited Hélène to a restaurant as he had promised. She thought he would choose a local brasserie, but he’d told her to meet him on the far side of Paris, at the Petit Navire in Saint-Ouen. While in the area he wanted to show her around the flea market which, he claimed, was worth a quick visit. The manageress at the restaurant called him Monsieur Ascher, he introduced Hélène, my great-niece, so you’re a great-uncle already, oh yes, I was only born yesterday but it’s been a long day.

  He’d recently returned from his travels, Hélène was expecting him to talk about Mauritania and the desert, and for him to go rummaging through a pocket in his parka on the coatrack to produce, say, a desert rose, but no. She was the one who ended up telling him about her trip to the Auvergne, the terrifying storm, her perilous expedition, driving from one obstacle to the next, the big old uprooted oak, she laid it on a bit thick, and he listened, wide-eyed and entertained. Paule told me stuff about you, Uncle Daniel, when you were little, ouch, God knows what that Paulette told you, the Parisian, the spoiled child, I guess. He looked down at his plate and toyed with his knife. She also mentioned your aunt in New York, ah yes, my aunt Mala.

  Mala had managed to get out of Poland from Danzig just before the war, and she reached America with her husband and son. Afterward, along with so many people who went to such lengths to piece their families together again, she’d traced Daniel to Saint-Ferréol and had even taken steps toward adopting him. But the same boy who dreamed of America so ardently through the war years was now frightened by the thought, leaving forever, do you see, I realized I’d become a little Roche, a little kid from the Auvergne, I’d got the accent. He ran his finger around the edge of his plate as if around the shores of a distant island. And then Mala abandoned the quest, she didn’t come to claim him, she just made him promise that when he was eighteen he would come to see her, maybe she felt it was better for me, and she didn’t speak French, it would have been a difficult process for her.

  And so in 1950 he kept his promise and made the crossing. It was the year of his school graduation exams, the “bachot” they used to call it then, but he left in April without even taking the tests. Why didn’t he wait until the summer vacation, let’s just say I wanted to see a bit of the world, he shrugged, I’d got to that stage, young and fancy-free, you know, he added with a laugh, and anyway who said globe-trotters were ever sensible.

  Mala was a beautiful woman, always well turned out and manicured, she was a hairdresser and she had a callus on her finger from the scissors. She and her husband had welcomed him like a son, they wanted to show him the best of America, Uncle Jacob wasn’t the talkative sort but he wore his heart on his sleeve, cousin Sammy took him to see everything, Brooklyn and all that, in fact their neighborhood was called Little Odessa. He and his cousin used to earn a bit of pocket money washing hair and sweeping up in the salon, it was weird, those piles of different-colored hair all mixed together. They’d hoped Daniel wouldn’t leave, but he was homesick and after three months he went back to France.

  Hélène asked whether his aunt was still with us, he coughed, sadly not, he picked up his glass and looked at his red wine in the light, well, could you really call that being with us. Uncle Jacob’s dead, and she, well, she’s lost her mind, she can’t walk, nothing works anymore, at ninety-six it’s understandable. But he still saw Sammy, who came to Paris from time to time. He drained his glass.

  New York, yes, she wanted to go there with Guillaume for the Easter vacation. He didn’t know America either, they could spend a week in a cute hotel. Daniel said why not, why not, but he was shaking his head at the same time, I’d really like to go see your cousin and your aunt in New York. He put his glass down a bit too quickly and the dregs of his wine splashed onto the tablecloth. Sam, of course, he’d let him know, he’d give Hélène his phone number, Sam had done well, he was a dentist, very kind, so was his wife, he had two daughters from two different marriages, but my aunt, what’s the point, she’s a sorry sight, she won’t have a clue who you are, she doesn’t recognize her own son now, Hélène, whatever you do don’t go to see her. Hélène nodded but the more Daniel protested, the more convinced she was that she absolutely had to see this Aunt Mala before it was too late.

  THEY SPENT THE AFTERNOON wandering through the flea market, a whole world in itself, Daniel knew every last little alleyway, look, that’s Ali Baba’s cave, you can find anything and everything in there, crystal door handles, tap shoes, and even Beethoven’s actual ear trumpet, you just have to look. At the Vernaison market on rue des Rosiers, he showed her a tiny shop where they sold butterflies in glass cases, feathers, birds’ eggs, and semiprecious stones from all over the world. Lots of the traders greeted him as he went by, calling him Monsieur Ascher or even Daniel.

  They drifted along, stopping to leaf through a book, a collection of postcards, or a stamp album, to open up a board game or study an engraving. Sometimes he would find something interesting, sometimes she would, they saw each other reduced to miniatures through the wrong end of a telescope, they turned the handle on a toy-sized carousel, tried on an opera hat, an English World War II helmet, it turned out she hadn’t wasted her day. He insisted on giving her a large magnifying glass with a horn handle, it might be useful on her archaeological digs.

  Here, Daniel didn’t have the hurried Charlie Chaplin walk he had in his own neighborhood in Montparnasse, where he always seemed to be playing a part, laughing too enthusiastically, speaking too loudly, walking too quickly. It was as if he’d slowed the film, established the right rhythm. Along these cluttered streets, he adjusted to his own age, an old man surrounded by old things.

  He was keen to introduce Hélène to his great friend Elie Frailich, whose shop was at the far end of one alley. It was like a minimuseum of the history of photography, with display cases full of cameras, flashes, tripods, and electric eyes. Elie was sitting in his shop reading the paper, he was expecting them, hi there, Dani, hi, my old brother. He was a short, thickset man, a jovial character who hugged Daniel then looked at him affectionately. Next he turned to Hélène, Dani’s told me so much about you, I’m Elie Frailich, Dani’s first friend, no doubt about that, I’ve known him since he was born, and that’s saying something. They sat around a small table as if the shop were a living room, and the people strolling around the flea market only yards away from them simply didn’t exist. Elie had some coffee in a thermos and some poppy seed biscuits made by his wife, eat, Hélène, go on, eat.

  The two friends had a distinctive way of talking one after the other and at the same time so that neither voice smothered the other, it was like a dialogue on stage. Elie remembered how they’d met when they were tiny, Daniel picked up the story, at the time of his birth his father worked in the Frailich Studios in the Belleville district of Paris, before setting up his own place on rue d’Odessa. Elie loved Isaac Ascher’s jokes, did you take a shower, no why, there’s one missing. He was five years older than Dani and clearly remembered the first time he saw him, at two weeks old, you were so mies, thank you my old brother, I tell you, Hélène, mies means ugly in Yiddish, they laughed, slapped each other on the shoulder, then Daniel relaxed back into his chair.

  Elie picked up his Sunday paper from behind Daniel, have you seen, this little Cuban survivor, they found him out on the ocean, tied to a life preserver, his name’s Elián, nearly my name, he should really be called Moses, saved from the waters. Moses is my second name, sa
id Daniel, and Elie actually saved my life. No I didn’t, Elie replied, we saved each other, it was the great escape, but you must know this story, Hélène.

  They told her how they’d escaped from a children’s home they were in, it was run by UGIF, the Jewish organization, you know, on rue Lamarck, that was in ’42, in late July. Elie was fifteen, Daniel ten, and they’d ended up in a group of Jewish children who’d been separated from their families and put into care there, it was so boring in that home, the food was terrible, and Elie particularly loathed being locked up and at the mercy of police raids. He was right, Daniel went on, those places were traps, the kids who stayed there were rounded up. The two boys had made the most of an outing to run away, hiding in a lean-to down at the bottom of a yard until people stopped looking for them. While they were hiding, they’d unpicked the yellow stars on their jackets with Elie’s penknife, what had their mothers been thinking sewing them on with such tiny stitches. Obviously, they had to leave all their things in the home, except what they were wearing and one or two treasures in their pockets.

  Elie had taken Daniel all the way to the Luxembourg Gardens, he knew where he was going from there. You know, Hélène, my brother Elie was heroic, a real mensch, it would have been easier for him to run away without me, and on top of everything else, I was so frightened, now that’s true, said Elie, I can confirm that, you were scared to death. Still, you were cleverer than me, they didn’t find you. Why clever, I was just lucky, I met Colette Peyrelevade on rue Vavin, she was just coming out of number 4, she was young and pretty, and I was ashamed of myself, they’d shaved off my hair at the home because of nits, and I wanted to cross the street, but she soon caught up with me and she took me into the building with her. I stayed in hiding with the Peyrelevades until they found someone who could take me to a safe place, as they called it. I spent three weeks reading, they lent me storybooks and a whole adventure series, you knew those ones too, Elie, do you remember, with Prince Eric and the scouts, the mysterious numbers on his gilded silver bracelet, and a camp called Birkenwald. Yes of course, of course I remember.

  DANIEL ESCORTED HÉLÈNE BACK TO THE METRO and then headed off in a different direction. A little way along the line, Hélène realized she’d left the vintage magnifying glass in Elie’s shop. She took the train back in the other direction, and successfully found the Marché Vernaison, but she got lost in the maze of alleyways and when she finally reached Elie’s shop, it was almost dark and most of the stores had lowered their metal shutters. Elie’s was only half closed, and there was a light on inside. She bent down and saw him sitting at the table under a bright light, with some contraption he’d started dismantling, she startled him when she gave a couple of little knocks on the metal shutter, oh, it’s you again. They looked everywhere but didn’t find the magnifying glass.

  Elie showed her what he was repairing, it was an enlarger, a Leitz, a marvel of optical precision, beautiful, isn’t it, he stroked the black metal bulb shape. Hélène took her wallet from her purse, he smiled, I wasn’t saying that to make you buy it. She took out the small piece of paper she’d found behind the picture in her bedroom, she hadn’t shown it to anyone yet, she hadn’t dared, do you know any Hebrew, of course, let’s have a look. He opened it out and started to laugh, it’s not Hebrew, it’s Yiddish, Di gantse velt iz eyn shtot, the whole world is one town, it’s a proverb, the world’s a village, it’s a small world, where did this phylactery come from.

  Hélène put it back in her wallet, you said this was a Leitz, yes, my father had the same one, and Isaac Ascher did, too. Dani loved watching his father developing photographs, their darkroom was downstairs from their apartment, behind the shop, you got to it through a trapdoor. The red light, the way faces appeared in the developer, it fascinated him. I hated all that, my father used to make me hang up the rinsed prints on a line, the water ran down my sleeves, he smoothed his hand over his left arm, and his sleeve bunched up slightly, revealing something that looked like a bruise. And now, it’s funny, I’m the one living with all this stuff, and Dani doesn’t have any of it, not even the simplest little camera. It’s a shame, she said, with the all the traveling he does. No, I think it’s because of the roundup, because he was in the darkroom that day, you knew that. No, you didn’t know. That morning, it was in ’42, July 16th, a neighbor had tipped them off and Isaac just had time to go down to the darkroom before the police arrived. Everyone thought they were only taking the men, not women and children, so there was no need for Dani to hide, but maybe because he loved the darkroom so much, he went down with his father and, because it all had to happen in a hurry, his mother closed the trapdoor.

  They crouch down there in the dark, the father holding Dani in his arms as if to stop him getting away, they hear knocking on the door, footsteps, men’s voices, not loud enough to make out what they’re saying, and then suddenly his sister’s voice, talking loudly, practically screaming, if you take my mother I’m going, too. The father lets go of his son, gets up, but then no, he sits back down and takes the child again, Dani can feel Isaac’s heart hammering against his back, he squeezes the boy harder and harder, puts his hand over his mouth, it’s the first time in his life his father has hurt him. As he talked, Elie stooped over and reassembled the enlarger in the light from his lamp, his salt-and-pepper hair almost luminescent in the glow.

  They stay like that for a long time, a very long time. In the end his father lets go, Dani starts crying, why did you hurt me, Isaac opens the trapdoor, which isn’t easy because the mother and sister had dragged boxes over it to hide it, and they go up to the apartment. Daddy, why, why did you hurt me. His father’s like a statue, he doesn’t answer, he says listen, just that one word, listen, and Dani stops pleading and suddenly he hears it, too. Silence. No one left. His sister was seventeen years old, she was French. They weren’t taking French Jews that day. Weren’t meant to be. On her papers it said Annette Ascher, we called her Hana.

  Isaac took Daniel to the children’s home that same day, then he intended to go to the police station to say there’d been a mistake, he promised Dani he’d come back for him the next day, but Daddy, if you’re coming back tomorrow, why are you blessing me. And it was there, in that children’s home on rue Lamarck, that Daniel and I met up again. The kids were talking about all sorts things, what they’d seen, what they’d heard said. Dani was one of the most talkative. But he didn’t tell me the story of the darkroom until years later, he told the children in the home that he’d secured a rope across the doorway to trip the policemen, that he’d blinded them with feathers by disemboweling a pillow, that he’d knocked over a pile of cardboard boxes in the corridor to slow them down, that thanks to him his whole family had had time to jump out the window and escape along passage du Départ, great name for it, Departures Passage, that they’d caught a ship to America and he’d soon be joining them. Elie had finished putting the enlarger back together and was polishing it with a soft cloth.

  Either way, once we’d run away from the home, he came out of things better than me, Dani did, they didn’t catch him again. I did my bit for the Resistance, took some risks. In all my bad luck, I did have one stroke of luck, I looked older than I was. And that’s what saved me back there. I wouldn’t say I saw death up close in Birkenau. I was inside it, you see, he pulled up his left sleeve, revealing his tattooed forearm. I was right inside death.

  He put the enlarger back in its display cabinet and locked it up. On top of the cabinet, Hélène noticed the plastic bag containing the vintage magnifying glass with the horn handle.

  17

  Dinner with Uncle Sam

  Guillaume slept through most of the flight, lulled by the thrum of the plane, his head lolling sometimes toward the window, sometimes toward Hélène. She woke him when the plane started its descent, as the rising sun sliced almost horizontally onto Manhattan’s skyscrapers. A funny location for archaeologists, this brand-new vertical city with hardly any history. For the first two days they did a lot of walking
around New York, delighted to discover that the design of the paving slabs on the sidewalks matched the layout of the city. They recognized images seen in the movies, a woman with ten dogs on leashes in Central Park, a businessman handcuffed to his briefcase on Wall Street; they bought a pencil from a blind man who had a sign around his neck, please buy a pencil, Guillaume thought he was just like the philosopher-beggar that Ashley-Mill comes across in Meet Me in Soweto.

  On the second evening she called Sam Seligman, and he suggested they come by his office toward the end of afternoon the next day. The huge waiting room with its marble floor and leather chairs was empty at that time of day, and Sam appeared in a blue tunic, smiling at them with his perfect teeth. He was very sorry, a patient had just arrived as an emergency and he wouldn’t be able to see them. He didn’t look much like his cousin Daniel, he was taller and far more muscular, but his hair, which was probably dyed, had the same wave over his forehead. He invited them to dinner at his apartment in two days’ time, his secretary would give them the address. Hélène was disappointed, she’d been expecting a warmer welcome, she read the card on the way back down in the elevator, Your next appointment is, here the secretary had written the address and the date, Thursday, April 20, 7 pm, Hélène felt about as little enthusiasm as she would have for a dental appointment.