Maya answered him quickly, her voice surprisingly deep. Speaking an old-fashioned French she said she’d already recognized the bridge and the church of St. Denis.
“Nearly seventy years ago,” she went on, still holding his hand. “I shall need your help, young man, to protect me from my grandson, who seems to think I’m a fragile old thing who needs to be tucked into chairs with rugs and cups of thin tea in delicate porcelain cups. What I really want is a stiff drink, and unfortunately Yacov removed the decanters which my brother always kept filled with excellent whisky. It was one of the treats I was looking forward to about using David’s car. This Rolls was the apple of his eye, perfectly maintained and waxed and polished and always in its original condition. He even refused to install a newer radio.”
She gestured at the rear of the front seat, where gleaming cabinetry slid down at the touch of a button to form a tray, revealing two crystal glasses. But the space for the decanters was empty.
“Isn’t that a sad sight?” she asked, with a grin that despite her age he could only describe as cheeky.
Bruno liked her at once and said, “Are you a scotch drinker, madame? And please call me Bruno.”
“Yes, and if you want to join me you can call me Maya. I see a bar behind the mairie.”
“You could certainly get a glass of decent whisky there, but if you’d care to follow me to the place where you’re going to stay, I’d be glad to offer you a Lagavulin.”
“I gather you’re the one who found the old farm where we stayed. I don’t think we had policemen like you in my day.” She pressed a button on the armrest and the window separating them from the front seats purred silkily open.
“Yacov,” she called through the window. “Give the policeman the keys. He’s going to drive me and you can have the pleasure of following behind and driving his Land Rover.”
“I’d be terrified of damaging your car, I’ve never driven anything this size except armored cars,” Bruno said, although privately he was yearning for the chance. “And the army never worried about scratches on them.”
“Don’t be silly; with a car like this, everybody else gets out of your way.”
After a brief explanation of the controls from Yacov, Bruno climbed into the front seat and set off, conscious of an extraordinary amount of power in the engine, even though he couldn’t hear it. The hood seemed to stretch away endlessly ahead, and oncoming trucks and cars pulled onto the side of the road to make way, most of them stopping to watch the vehicle’s progress.
Fortunately, there was no other traffic on the narrow road that led to Pamela’s house, but the gates at the entrance to her lane worried him even though they were wide enough for his Land Rover. He climbed out of the car to assess the gap. He would have a couple of centimeters on each side. He reversed a little to ensure he was pointing straight at the gap and crept forward, almost brushing the near side post, and then he was through. Feeling proud of himself, he pressed the accelerator and felt the great beast surge forward like a sports car. Pulling into Pamela’s courtyard, he honked the horn and was startled by a sonorous blare that might have been an elephant’s mating call.
Once Pamela had been introduced, the luggage unloaded and the gîtes inspected and approved, Maya was installed in Pamela’s sitting room with a large scotch. She bent her nose into the glass to sniff as if it were a vintage wine, took a tiny sip and let it evaporate in her mouth before taking a deep breath, her eyes closing in pleasure as the warmth spread down her throat. Bruno smiled to himself. That was how Pamela had taught him to drink whisky; according to her father, that’s the way it was drunk in the Scottish regiments. Maya took a deeper drink, sat back in the leather armchair and opened her eyes to peer inquisitively around her.
Bruno was very fond of Pamela’s long sitting room with the giant fireplace whose lines lifted the eye to the balustraded gallery and all the way up to the roof beams. Lit by two French windows that opened onto the garden, its walls were lined with books, and the floor of terra-cotta tiles was covered in old rugs, their reds and golds still bright despite their age.
“That’s a fine Qashqai and a charming little Varamin,” Maya said, looking at the rugs with an expert eye. “Have they been in your family for a long time?”
“My grandfather spent some time in Persia during the war,” Pamela said. “He made quite a study of their rugs and brought several back with him.”
“Me too, I love them. He chose well. That large one with the touches of green is a Bakhtiari, very hard to find in that size. This is a charming room, and it’s much more agreeable to be here than in some country hotel. Your gîtes are lovely.”
“Thank you, and I’m glad you like the rug. My grandfather used to tell me that the thing that surprised him most about Hitler was that he loved Persian rugs and kept an Ardabil carpet in his office in Berlin. Every time we were in London, Grandpa would take me to see that enormous Ardabil in the Victoria and Albert Museum and tell me its history.”
“I know the one,” Maya burst out, sitting forward excitedly. “Do you know about the inscription?”
“ ‘Except for thy haven, there is no refuge for me in this world,’ ” Pamela recited. “ ‘Other than here, there is no place for my head.’ ”
“The work of a servant of the court, Maqsud of Kashan,” Maya said. “I’m so glad you know it. When I first saw it there they had the carpet hanging on a wall, but now it’s lying flat, as it should.”
The two women looked at one another with satisfaction. A bond had been established, Bruno thought. Yacov gave him a friendly wink.
“You must be tired after your trip, so if you’d like to relax before dinner we can leave your visit to the attic and to the farm for tomorrow,” Bruno said.
“I took Maya to the farm as soon as we arrived, before we called you,” Yacov said. “She brought rubber boots especially because I’d told her what to expect.”
“It brought back a lot of memories, some of them very pleasant,” Maya said. “Do we have time before dinner to go and see the attic in town? I really want to be sure it’s the right place.”
“Dinner will be ready in about an hour or an hour and a half,” said Pamela. “But it’s smoked salmon and then blanquette de veau so don’t worry about getting back at any precise time.”
Maya nodded, finished her scotch and rose easily to her feet. She was evidently very fit, thought Bruno. He’d wondered if they’d have to carry her up to the attic.
“I’m looking forward to seeing these proposals of yours in the morning,” she said. “And at some point I’d also like to see Mouleydier, or what’s left of the place. That’s probably my most powerful memory.”
Mouleydier was a small town on the way to Bergerac, nestled below the long, low rise above the river that nurtured the vineyards of Pécharmant, the noblest of the Bergerac wines. Bruno knew the area well but was surprised that it had stayed in Maya’s mind. Was she talking of the battle that had taken place there? The town had been destroyed by Nazi troops, which presumably explained why she had used the phrase “what’s left of the place.” Might this explain why she had never shown any interest in coming back to this region until her brother’s death?
“I’ll take us all down memory lane over dinner,” Maya said, seeing Bruno’s quizzical look. “In return, you must tell me all about this tragic young man they call the Engineer. The car radio was full of stories about him on the way down. But right now, I want to see that wretched little attic in St. Denis where I was so unhappy.”
“At least it kept you alive,” said Yacov quietly. “No doubt you were unhappy, but you survived, you and David.”
“We survived and then went through three more wars in Israel, and then had to put on a gas mask in the first Iraq War when Saddam Hussein was firing Scud missiles at Israel,” she said. “And then I was in Haifa when the rockets fell there. I must be one of the most bombarded women alive.”
As he led the way out to the car, Bruno thought that Maya must have kn
own a lot more of war than he had, despite his spending over a decade in the French army. But that was the way of modern war, with civilians in the front lines.
Yacov drove them back to St. Denis in silence, and Bruno led the way up the stairs of the old house to the attic. He had borrowed a lightbulb from Pamela and installed it in the attic as Maya followed him up the stairs, much nimbler than he’d expected she would be. The mayor had arranged for someone to clear away the rubbish and have the attic swept out and its tiny windows cleaned.
It still looked dreadful. Maya stood at the threshold, shaking her head, not recognizing the place at all. Then Bruno led her into the rear room and showed her the markings on the wall with her name below David’s. At last she nodded, looked around again, peered out of the window and said, “I remember that view.”
Yacov was examining the chest full of broken crockery, and Maya picked out a large cup with a red line round the rim. “I remember this, too,” she said.
Bruno left the two of them alone and went back down the stairs, checking the message that he’d heard coming into his phone. It was a voice mail from the brigadier, asking him to call back.
“There’s trouble in Toulouse,” the brigadier said when he answered. “Some right-wing militants marched on the mosque and began throwing paint and chanting slogans. People came out of the mosque and there were some rough scenes for an hour or so, some tear gas and water cannons. The police seem to have taken control, but there’s another demonstration called for tomorrow afternoon. And they’re torching cars again in Paris.”
“Is all quiet at the château?” Bruno asked.
“Yes, but half the TV crews in France seem to be camped on the road outside, except for those who raced down to Toulouse. I may go down there. Nancy was asking for you. She seems pleased with her TV interviews and says she thinks the mood might be shifting in Washington. Apparently on one of the major TV shows they had a woman whose son was killed by one of Sami’s bombs. She said Sami sounded like he was just as much a victim as her own boy.”
“She’s right,” said Bruno, thinking that the wisdom of ordinary people never ceased to surprise him.
“I’m pretty sure Sami won’t be heading to Guantánamo after all this. And what are you up to?”
“I’m with the old Jewish lady I told you about, the one who was sheltered in St. Denis as a child during the war. We’re about to have dinner.”
“Bon appétit. I’ll call you if I need you. If I go to Toulouse tomorrow, I’ll want you back here at the château. Deutz has been making a nuisance of himself, furious that your doctor Fabiola was allowed in to see Sami. I thought I’d let you know.”
“It looks like there may have been a bit of personal history between the two of them,” Bruno said. “I’m still trying to get to the bottom of it.”
“Keep me informed,” the brigadier said and hung up.
22
Bruno hesitated before asking Maya the questions that intrigued him. What had become of the two children and their guardians, one of them a gueule cassée, at the end of their time at the farm, and how had they resumed their lives? And why had she and her brother never returned to St. Denis, never returned to the brief sanctuary where they had been saved?
Maya came out of the attic on Yacov’s arm, her face pale and strained. She shook her head as if to forestall any conversation and then wiped away the tears on her cheeks. In the car, she took a small tube of cream from her bag and cleaned off the smudged eye makeup. She now looked much older. When they returned to Pamela’s house she asked for another scotch and this time downed it in a single gulp and then took a refill. Pamela led her to the bathroom, and the two women had remained there for some minutes while Yacov and Bruno talked and opened the wine.
The questions continued to nag at him over dinner even as he told Maya and Yacov what he knew about Sami as a boy, about Momu and Dillah, and of his sadness at Sami’s likely fate. Maya looked like herself again, her makeup refreshed, making polite compliments to Pamela about the food. She took a sliver of cheese and just enough of the tarte au citron to be polite. When the plates had been cleared away, she said, “Let’s stay on around the table. I always prefer talking that way, and you ought to know what happened to us. But bear in mind, these are the memories of a little girl of eight, backed up by what David remembered, but he was just eleven when we left the farm.”
The attic had been the worst time, she said. She and her brother had been whisked away from Paris in the summer of 1942, just after the massive roundup of thirteen thousand Jews and their detention in the Vélodrome d’Hiver, the indoor cycling stadium just down the Left Bank from the Eiffel Tower. Neither she nor David knew why her parents were not arrested at the time, perhaps because her father was a doctor. Through the Jewish Boy Scouts, brother and sister had been assigned to a group of eight children who were taken first to a campsite near Blois in the Loire Valley. Once there, they had photos taken and after a few days were issued with new papers that identified David as a Protestant Scout and Maya as a Protestant Girl Guide to get them through the controls at Vierzon, the border crossing between Nazi-occupied France and that part still nominally ruled by the Vichy government.
They had then gone by train to Brive, and then a bus took them to a Protestant campsite. They stayed there in tents for the summer while Robert Gamzon tried to find somewhere more permanent, but the first of the roundups of Jews in the so-called free zone of Vichy began that August. They were still at the campsite in November when German troops invaded the Vichy zone to occupy France’s Mediterranean coast after the Allies had landed in Morocco and Algeria. Somehow Gamzon persuaded several Protestant pastors to find various places of refuge for the children.
“So it was November, cold and dark, on the morning when David and I left the campsite,” Maya recalled. “A big blond woman, very pretty, told us to call her ‘Tante Simone.’ David later found out that it was Simone Mairesse, one of the people who organized homes for hundreds of Jewish children around the village of Chambon-sur-Lignon. But apparently there had been a panic after some raids, and we had to be taken elsewhere.”
Maya said she remembered a train journey and watching through the window as their train stopped and another train full of German troops went by. David later tried to track down their route, but he was never sure. Then they walked along country lanes for a long time and then waited in some woods outside a small town until it was dark. Tante Simone had some stale bread for them to eat. Then she took them over a bridge into a town with very few lights. It was St. Denis. Simone led the children to a house and up some stairs to an attic, where an old woman was waiting.
“She spoke hardly any French, and I thought she was a witch. I was very scared,” Maya said. “She was bent over as if she had a hunchback and she smelled, but she gave us some soup and tried to be kind to us. Tante Simone said we were not allowed to go out of the attic until market day, when there would be a donkey cart to take us to a farm. A man with a white mask on his face would come about midday.”
“He was a gueule cassée, from World War One, right?” Bruno asked. “That’s how I tracked down the farm of Michel and Sylvie Desbordes. The old woman in the attic was her mother, all of them Protestants.”
“Michel and Sylvie, that sounds right. She told us to call her ‘Tante Sylvie,’ but we had to call him ‘Monsieur’ and we were to say we were her cousin’s children if anybody ever came. But I don’t remember anyone ever visiting except for the old woman from the attic once or twice. Michel hardly ever spoke, and when he did his voice was just grunts. His wife was very kind. I think she’d always wanted children.”
The children stayed there through the first half of 1944, knowing nothing of the world outside the farm. Sylvie taught them arithmetic, read to them from the Bible and sometimes brought back battered copies of Dumas, Victor Hugo and Jules Verne. But they only had candles to read by because they couldn’t afford the oil for the lamp, even when there was lamp oil to be had. There was no gas
, no electricity, and all their water came from a well. At least the woodstove kept the kitchen warm. On Sundays, the children were left alone as the Desbordeses took the donkey cart to the Protestant chapel in St. Denis.
They lived on the eggs and milk the farm produced, made bread from chestnuts, and in the vegetable garden they grew verbena and chamomile to make tea. Occasionally there would be a poule au pot when one of the chickens grew too old to lay. The Desbordeses sold eggs and chickens in the market, vegetables as well in the summer, and in the winter Michel knew a place where he could find truffles and would sell them, when he could find a buyer. Few people had the money except for occasional visitors looking to supply the black market, but dealing with them was a risk the Desbordeses thought it wiser not to take. Foie gras from the ducks was a regular part of the diet on the farm. The Desbordeses made it for themselves.
“Apart from the foie gras, it sounds like living in the Middle Ages,” said Yacov, shaking his head.
“I suppose it was. In winter, we all slept in the same big bed for warmth, me and Sylvie at one end, David and Michel at the other. We had to work, too,” Maya said.
Every day the children were in the woods, getting kindling for the stove or looking for mushrooms for Sylvie to sell. In the summer they took their turns with the scythe, cutting the hay for the donkey. Maya had to watch the chickens when they were out in the yard, and she and David both helped Sylvie in the garden. Maya was taught to sew and knit, because their clothes were falling apart. And although there was no sugar, she recalled a kind of jam from berries.
“Looking back, it was probably a very healthy way to grow up, and we loved Dou-Dou, the little dog. It was he who taught us how to swim, a sort of dog paddle that we copied from him. It was a lovely place to be, in spring and summer …” Her voice trailed away.
The Children Return Page 21