The Travels of Daniel Ascher

by Déborah Lévy-Bertherat

  She hadn’t grasped that Sam Seligman was inviting them to a special dinner, he’d said Passover, but she didn’t recognize this English word for what it was. There to welcome them were Sam, his wife Libby, who was much younger than him, their teenage daughter, and Sam’s other daughter from his first marriage. They were all dressed up for the evening, Sam was in a suit and tie, and, in taking off his blue tunic, he had also lost his professional reserve. Guillaume was very soon asking, may I call you Uncle Sam, which made him laugh out loud, and the two of them headed off toward the dining room.

  By the time Hélène joined them, Guillaume was wearing a white satin kippah. Libby asked her daughter to let Bubbe know everyone was here, and Hélène imagined she was referring to a young man. The teenage girl came back after a few minutes and she held the door open while a home nurse steered in a wheelchair, in it was an elderly lady with carefully curled white hair and wearing an indigo blue jacket, her red lips and highly rouged cheeks made her look like an old photograph that had been touched up with color. Hélène didn’t realize straightaway that this was Aunt Mala. She’d pictured her in faded colors, swathed in grief, like a relic from a bygone age, and only her eyes were close to what she’d imagined, an even paler blue than Daniel’s, as if they’d been washed out.

  Mala looked at Guillaume and Hélène for a long time, one after the other, even after Sam had done the introductions, my mother, we call her Bubbe which means grandma in Yiddish, and Julia who’s from the Philippines and who looks after her. Julia pushed Mrs. Seligman’s wheelchair up to the table and sat to her right, the old lady didn’t take her eyes off Hélène. Daniel had said whatever you do don’t go and see her, she won’t have a clue who you are, and yet she seemed to know exactly who Hélène was.

  Sam was at the far end of the table, officiating as the patriarch with a Haggadah, a silver pitcher and a round dish of peculiar foodstuffs. Hélène watched Sam’s younger daughter take the pitcher and pour some water over her father’s hands, she felt cut off from home by more than an ocean. She’d associated Hebrew rituals with a world of age-old stones that were buried or had been lost, but here was an American teenager with braces on her teeth quite naturally reenacting these ancestral gestures.

  As the youngest person there, the teenager had been given the responsibility of asking the ritual question, why is this night different from all other nights, and her father replied by reading out an account of the exile from Egypt, the plague of Egypt, and the crossing of the Red Sea. Hélène gradually shook off the uncomfortable feeling that she had gate-crashed a family celebration to which she didn’t belong. Sam listed the gifts of the Lord, and after each one the gathering had to chant Dayenu, that would have been enough. Hélène murmured the word at first, afraid of feeling ridiculous, but her voice slowly grew stronger and mingled with the others, Julia chanted the loudest, as if to lend half her voice to Mrs. Seligman. The old woman nodded her head in time, her eyes pinned on her son and a dazzling smile on her face.

  THEY SHARED ROOTS, bitter herbs, salty water like tears, and still other foods that recalled the suffering of the Hebrew slaves during their flight from Egypt. After every prayer they all said Amen, and Hélène felt she was back among more familiar liturgies.

  Sam raised his glass, and suddenly his tone of voice changed; from the way all heads turned toward him, Hélène could tell he’d broken with the immutable ritual. He spoke of his cousin Daniel who hadn’t been back to New York since 1950, I would so love him to be here with us tonight. Hélène pictured Daniel sitting among them, to Libby’s right perhaps, his hair awry and his collar askew. She could now see the similarities between the two cousins. When Sam wasn’t smiling, his lips were just like Daniel’s, the upper one thin and almost straight, and the lower one fuller, more like a child’s. She looked at Mala but couldn’t see whether her mouth was the same too under all that lipstick that was gradually rubbing off as Julia fed her spoonfuls of broth and wiped her mouth with a napkin. Julia whispered something in the old lady’s ear, she opened her eyes, then nodded very slowly. Sam was still talking, Dan and I could have grown up together, like brothers, my parents would have been his parents, we could all have been so happy, but it didn’t work out like that. No one, apart from Hélène, seemed to notice that the old lady had grabbed Julia’s wrist and was squeezing it astonishingly hard. She sat like that, frozen, eyes closed, for some time.

  When Hélène and Guillaume were leaving, Julia tugged at Hélène’s arm, come over at two o’clock tomorrow, apartment 412, on the same floor, come on your own. Hélène wondered whether Julia herself had taken the initiative to invite her, or whether Mala had instructed her to with some hidden sign.

  18

  Mala’s Secret Card

  MALA SELIGMAN WAS SITTING at the far end of the living room, near the window, her hair was less neatly arranged than the day before and her tired face looked more vulnerable. She straightened herself up slightly when she heard Hélène come in, and she looked at her for some time without smiling, studying her face, then scrutinizing her as a whole, right down to her feet. She turned to look outside for a moment, and then back at Hélène, and she nodded gently, to indicate that she recognized her and was perhaps inviting her to sit down.

  Julia gestured toward the sofa opposite the old lady and served three cups of very weak American coffee, which Hélène rather liked. Mala had thin, very white hands with bright red nails, and she kept them crossed. The callus Daniel had mentioned was clearly visible on one of her fingers. There was a pile of photo albums beside her, Julia explained that they’d spent hours looking through them together, discovering details that no one had so far noticed, a train in the distance, the striped fabric of a garment, a chimney on a roof. Hélène was surprised to hear Julia talking about it in front of the old woman, but Mala nodded slowly in agreement and then pointed to the bottom of the pile. Julia pulled out an album that was more worn than the others and came over to sit near Hélène, they were old photos, and she told the story as if it were her own. The little town was called Kamiensk, look, there, that’s Mrs. Seligman’s father’s house, he was a watchmaker. This is her with her sister, they were born the same year, Rywka in January and Mala in December, people thought they were twins, their own parents got them mixed up sometimes, they had fun passing themselves off as each other. Their mother always had the same dresses made for them, you can’t see in the picture but these ones here were pink, the fabric was bought in the market in Manila, I’m sorry, I mean Radomsko. Julia started laughing, I’m confusing things with my own memories. Other people only noticed how alike they were, but they themselves were interested in their differences, Rywka was slightly taller, half an inch or so, and Mala had a beauty spot under her left eye. This is Rywka with her husband and little Hana, just before they left for France. And this is Mrs. Seligman’s parents, it’s the last picture of them that was sent to her, her father the watchmaker was always photographed with a watch in his hand, her mother is sitting up nice and straight, and smiling, so that her children who are now so far away don’t worry. This is little Sammy in Central Park, pointing at an airplane, wasn’t he cute, old Mala in her wheelchair agreed with a tilt of her head.

  Julia carried on turning over the pages, Rywka’s husband was a photographer, she sent a lot of pictures from Paris. They featured Daniel, almost always sitting on someone’s knee, held in someone’s arms, being kissed, he was a lovely-looking child, with his lock of hair over his forehead, sometimes smoothed sleekly to one side, sometimes tousled, perhaps that was what Aunt Paule had meant by a spoiled child. The last photo showed all four of them, on Daniel’s tenth birthday, June 2, 1942, it was written in the margin, he was holding a book so small that his hand almost completely obscured its cover. Julia lowered her voice, the father, mother, and daughter were murdered by the Germans, she turned the page swiftly, the old lady was looking out the window again.

  They ate very crumbly biscuits made without flour or yeast, for Passover, Julia expl
ained. Mala reached a hand toward the sideboard, and Julia took something from behind a stack of plates, an old red-and-white can labeled Carnation Powdered Milk, she opened it but Mala couldn’t get her gnarled hands inside it. Julia took out a fob watch in tarnished silver, it was the one her father had given her as a wedding present, the hands were forever frozen on ten past twelve, it could have been midday or midnight. He’d given the same model to each of his children, Lord alone knew where the others were. Julia took a newspaper cutting from the can, a half page of the New Jersey Herald from July 16, 1962, with a picture of a group of children taking part in a soap bubble contest, giant bubbles drifted away above their heads. A ring of blue ink circled a woman standing alone on a balcony in the background, leaning down so you couldn’t see her eyes, Mala pointed to her and produced a sort of rolled r sound, Rywka, Julia asked, she nodded yes, but Rywka had been dead a long time by 1962, and Mala shrugged her shoulders as if to say go figure. And it had to be said that the woman on her balcony did look like Rywka, a Rywka who hadn’t aged. Julia took one of the old woman’s hands in her own slender hands and held it for a long time, Mala looked exhausted, she closed her eyes and seemed to go to sleep.

  Almost immediately Julia delved deep into the can and peeled something from the side. It was an airmail envelope addressed to Mr. Daniel Ascher, it had been there for years. The day Julia had suggested mailing it, Mala, who could still talk at the time, had threatened to throw her out. The envelope had never been sealed, inside it was a second, yellowed envelope containing a card that Julia handed to Hélène. On its back was a postage stamp featuring Marshal Pétain and stamped by the Office of Censorship, there were also two addresses, on the left Madame R. Ascher, Drancy Camp, and on the right, Madame Le Guillou, 16 rue d’Odessa, Paris XIV. On the front were a few lines of sloping handwriting with large assertive letters, I guess they had to write in French, Julia said, but I understand most of it.

  July 27, 1942

  Dear Madame Le Guillou, My mother and I are in Drancy, we will soon be leaving for an undisclosed destination. We know that my father has also been arrested, but he isn’t with us. My mother would very much like you to forward this card to her sister: Mrs. Seligman, 3139 Coney Island Avenue—Brooklyn—New York—United States. Dear lady, we would like to thank you from the bottom of our hearts for helping us. We will write again as soon as we can. Annette Ascher. Below, in different writing with poorly joined-up letters and several crossings-out, were three lines in which every word appeared to have been spelled out, Mala, my sister, take care of Daniel as if he were your own son. I entrust him to you. Don’t forget us. Your Rywka.

  On the yellowed envelope, above the New York address copied out by the neighbor, the postmark indicated September 9, 1945. Madame Le Guillou could have sent the card immediately after the Liberation, but she’d kept it languishing in the bottom of a drawer. Was she the neighbor who’d warned the Aschers before the roundup, or the wife of the upholsterer who took over the shop and the apartment, one and the same perhaps?

  A sudden clattering of crockery made them jump, Julia ran to hold back Mala’s arm before she smacked her cup against the table again. The old woman was surprisingly strong, Julia could hardly restrain her one hand while she parried the blows that Mala was aiming at her with the other. Come on, Julia tried to laugh about it, she gets like this every now and then, she even hurts herself on purpose sometimes, stop that please, I’ll put everything away if you let go of that cup. The old woman let go of the broken handle she was still holding, she was breathless, eyeing Julia furiously as the latter put the card and the envelopes back into the can and shut it all away in the sideboard. When Mala had the key in her hand, which was bleeding slightly, she finally slumped deep into her wheelchair, and she sat there inertly, staring at the blank screen of the television. Below her reddened eyelids, her irises looked an even paler blue. She didn’t so much as turn her head when Hélène came over to say goodbye, close enough to notice, under her left eye, a beauty spot that made a sort of tear shape.

  19

  The Doldrums

  SAM TOOK HÉLÈNE AND GUILLAUME TO THE AIRPORT two days later, it was a Sunday, early in the morning, Hélène sat in the back of the Range Rover and she could see Sam’s eyes in the rearview mirror. He was talking about Daniel again, we spent the war like the two halves of the afikomen, the broken Passover matzo, half of which is hidden and then later reunited. When they saw each other for the first time in 1950, it was like a reunion, Dan was the brother he wished he’d had, Sam confided in him and in the evenings they went out together with friends. Sam introduced him to girls, pretty Jewish girls from Little Odessa, but Dan was shy, or perhaps he’d left a sweetheart in France, although he never mentioned one.

  When it came to drinking, though, he didn’t hold back, he’d end the evening totally drunk every time, and when he was drunk he said and did the funniest things. One time he started singing at the top of his lungs in the middle of a street, another he insulted a bartender who wouldn’t serve him because he was underage, and still another time it took three of them to stop him throwing himself into the bay, shrieking that he was going to get himself arrested. Sam laughed as he related these memories, Hélène could see his eyes in the rearview mirror. I remember another night, it was his birthday, June 2nd, we had to carry him all the way home, that was the day I realized he was homesick and he was prepared to invent whatever it took to go back to France. He kept saying, let me go, I have to get back there, she’s expecting a baby and I’m the father, I’m eighteen, I can marry her now. I quieted him down and put him to bed, but he kept on going, they drove me out, I’m an ungrateful good-for-nothing, a bad son, they sent me to New York, I must go home. He was crying like a little kid, I was worried he’d wake my parents, I did my best to console him, stop ranting, Dan, you came to New York because it was planned a long time ago, you know that, you promised my mother. Then the next day, as usual, he didn’t remember any of it, it was really funny. Sam tried to make eye contact with Hélène in the rearview mirror, perhaps to see whether she was laughing too, and his eyes froze. From the Brooklyn Bridge he showed them the city silhouetted behind them, look at that, the New York skyline, that’s America for you, when you come back they’ll have built new skyscrapers, even taller ones, everything’s possible here.

  HÉLÈNE WANTED TO SLEEP ON THE PLANE, but the things Sam had told them lingered in her mind. Of course you could see it as the fabrications of a teenager on vacation, a drunken evening and a few empty words, an excuse to go back to France, but it might be more than that. And what if Daniel’s ranting wasn’t fabrication, what if the drink had simply loosened his tongue, and this business of fathering a baby were true? The woman expecting his child might have been from Clermont, Daniel had been a boarder at the lycée in those days, he must have gone out from time to time, or perhaps a girl from Saint-Ferréol.

  He’d promised his aunt he would go see her when he was eighteen. Yet he didn’t wait until his birthday, he left in April, before his school exams. Maybe that was because of this business with a pregnancy. He hadn’t gone to run away but because he’d been forced, because he’d been driven out of Saint-Ferréol, and out of the Roche family. If Joseph, her great-grandfather, took him all the way to the liner, and waited until it left the quay and dwindled on the horizon, then it was to be sure that Daniel didn’t get back off the thing. He had to go into exile, disappear, be forgotten. Abandon his child. He was almost a child himself. He could at least have waited until his sister’s marriage to Maurice in June. Hélène remembered that Suzanne was four months pregnant at the time. Pregnant with Alain, her father.

  The plane banked around toward the dark blue ocean so suddenly that some passengers screamed at the dizzying sensation, and Guillaume jolted in his sleep. Hélène didn’t react.

  She was thinking about that photo taken on the beach at Arcachon, the one she’d brought home with her from her grandmother’s house. It showed Maurice hugging his two sons,
Alain and Thierry, in equal measure. The love between the father and his eldest son was clearly there, running along that man’s arm held around that little boy’s shoulders. That love was visible, palpable, in both directions.

  Suzanne was also in the photo, sitting next to them. She was turned not toward the photographer but toward her husband and the two boys, looking at them tenderly but also with a hint of anxiety, as if the balance between the father’s arms was a fragile one, as if it wouldn’t have taken much to upset that balance. But perhaps Hélène was interpreting it like that, a mother’s loving gaze is always a little anxious. That didn’t mean anything.

  There was still her grandfather’s hostility toward Daniel, the foul moods that always gripped him when Daniel was around, so systematically that no one even noticed. It wasn’t hate, but they couldn’t be in the same room together, everything about his brother-in-law exasperated Maurice, his childishness, his showmanship, his loony appearance, as Maurice called it. But that didn’t mean anything either.

  Hélène tried to remember details, words and gestures, the few memories of her father’s childhood she’d been told about. The very day he was born, Suzanne would say, laughing, it was November 3, and Maurice came to the hospital with a bunch of chrysanthemums, poor man, he knew nothing about the language of flowers. There were awkward things said about Alain, he’d become a difficult child, he was compared to his better-behaved, more biddable younger brother who was already taller than him by the time he was eight. People often said that Thierry was the image of his father, with his height and build, and that Alain was like his mother with his almond-shaped eyes, but that’s not what a boy wants to hear. Anyway, thought Hélène, family likenesses don’t mean anything either, your father is the man who gets up in the night when you’re frightened, who finds the lost piece of jigsaw puzzle, who tells you off when you’re naughty. The one who’s there. Alain’s father was Maurice.