The Department of Missing Persons

by Ruth Zylberman

  Like a stream that continues flowing invisibly under a city’s paving stones—even though outside things were heating up, things were changing, there were protests, the settling of scores—the old friendships, division, and promises persisted and shaped what was happening, without anyone on the surface (the surface of daily life where the years complacently went by) noticing the actual flow of history. And it was strange to see the old president seem to forget in the last months of his reign his most recent metamorphoses (into the good father from your hometown and the humanist for a new France) and rediscover—though an old man, though he was fragile but combative and sharp, and even mean—the conservative and scheming young man he had never ceased to be.

  The president had gone stale. The expiration dates were coming closer, it must be said, and time was whipping by at greater and greater speeds, just like emails and text messages. At first we were surprised; we were suspicious and then overjoyed by the feeling that we were carrying out a marvelous ritual which eventually, over time, would be rid of its magic and become an unremarkable daily act.

  But from now on the speed, the ubiquity, and the disembodiment went without saying; this was how we would learn to live.

  7

  IT WAS THE END of the twentieth century and love had emerged from out of the mouth of a boy I was introduced to one night, Daniel. “That’s hurting you,” Daniel had said to me. There were ten of us at dinner and I was all over the place, talking spiritedly about one thing and then another; I’d forgotten as I was speaking, too loudly, too intensely, the grief that came with it. Vodka, I drank it, cigarettes, I smoked them, and, I thought, with panache. And he was right there, uppercut, “That’s hurting you.”

  He was an analgesic sorcerer, this Daniel! Immediately, something had unwound on the inside of my body. All he had done was say those few words while looking at me thoughtfully, and the tumors of fear and worry—invisible, transparent tumors I was not immediately aware of until the very moment they were set to disappear—had dissolved all at once. The pain, the sadness, the hardness of things, and my own hardness were obsolete relics that had been ripped out of me.

  First there was the abandon of his brown body, asleep at a diagonal on the bed. And as months went by, then years, there was the time each evening when I would glue myself to the black railing outside the window and watch for his return. In front of me, the roofs soared upward as far as the eye could see, as did the sky. We were all waiting together, the roofs, the sky, and me, for the thin silhouette’s arrival on the corner of the narrow, sloping street that led to our place. As soon as he appeared, I’d start whistling like a caged bird calling for its liberator. I whistled silly melodies to make him laugh, sad melodies to make him cry. He’d stop on the sidewalk below the railing and answer by whistling back. These exchanges would last for a while until he’d rush up the staircases to climb the floors.

  At night, burrowed into a narrow red sofa and facing one another, we’d murmur to each other for hours like two children conspiring unbeknownst to the adults. We closed ranks against fear; we vowed mutual, unconditional protection. Then, tired of words, lying down, this time next to each other with our heads touching, we’d look up through the glass roof above us at the shades of the darkening sky.

  Days, days, months, months, years, years. In real life it was passing by, but under the glass roof, in our shared childhood, time was long and marvelously repetitive.

  Daniel, his fragile body, his unchanging gentleness, was my first line of defense against the world. I could leap, jump, growl, and creep slowly toward him, somewhat menacing, my claws in the air, but he would always escape like an elf; like an elf he’d get scared and suddenly, out of his mouth and eyes, his laughter would unfurl.

  The library was my other high wall. Between the white wooden shelves, the cruel century lay stacked, compiled, and collected. A paradoxical wall I had patiently constructed, an incongruous assemblage of book-bricks: memoirs, stories, and biographies by the hundreds; silent people whose groaning, assertions, commitments, and betrayals nevertheless invisibly invaded the room. Destruction, Gulag, Ghetto, Komintern, Revolution. Nothing escaped my inquisitions.

  I learned topographies, itineraries, networks, and trajectories by heart. I reconstructed lives, looked at photos, and cross-checked the evidence. I juggled accumulations of names and histories until the encyclopedic polyphony of tragedy eventually took shape in the peaceful Parisian apartment. As for the horrors themselves, I read every one. Bombings, camps, Sonderkommandos, ruined ghettos, failed revolts, deaths by the hundreds, the thousands, the millions, bloodlines hastily buried, futile attempts to flee. Fascinated, I observed the apocalyptic hand of History shattering human hope even in its most wretched corners.

  But even in the most horrific of those readings, mixed with the terror, in the abandon and the morbidity, I felt vaguely that there was also an element of pleasure. The horror I visited every day by proxy accentuated the sense of vitality in my own existence and an awareness of its miraculous permanence. And perhaps all of those dead people, in order to make it that much more joyful, were hiding in the whistling that welcomed Daniel’s arrival each evening.

  And how bright the apartment was where we lived on that small street in Montmartre, how radiant and perfectly proportioned. How ideal a setting it was—with its soft light, skillfully chosen paintings, its impeccable mixture of simplicity and good taste—for remembering. And in the end, how the grime of evil inevitably came knocking on the dependable filter of glass roofs and patterned objects.

  I had come down the sloping hill to meet him. I caught sight of him on his way up: the quick gait, his brown edges cut out on the buildings behind him. I ran toward him, light, as light as a shadow. He stopped. He watched my body coming closer, already double. Where did his gaze find that grace? He had understood. He welcomed the joy, the joy and also my turmoil.

  I heard the child who came stirring in her cradle, which was placed a few yards from the sofa. From the street I also heard a car starting, workmen renovating an apartment in the building across the way, and also, once in a while when the street was calm in the hot hours of the afternoon, the far off humming of the périphérique.

  The child was moving in her sleep; sometimes she would wake up without me noticing and I would find her immobile, still clammy from sleep with her eyes open, for she, too, was attentive to the murmuring of the city. She looked at me and it was as if she were waiting for me to translate this murmuring for her, waiting for me to come up with an explanation for this acoustic chaos. So I would whistle again, imitating the starting car, the hammering of the tool, and she would laugh.

  She learned to walk, to speak. I held her to me, breathing in the smell of her hair, which had grown naturally into the tonsure of a monk, and at nightfall we danced one against the other, banishing in our body-to-body the melancholy of the sky dying down outside the window. Then I’d lie down next to her, waiting for her to fall asleep. One night, sitting on the edge of her bed, I watched her pupils rolling beneath her eyelids; she was almost asleep. She suddenly reopened her eyes and reached her arms toward me.

  “Maman, you will save me,” she murmured, looking at me.

  “My bijou, yes, I will save you.” I closed the door and glanced at the library. Its radioactive matter was glowing in the darkness.

  And I was radioactive, too.

  With Daniel, we would go into Paris. We would walk in the middle of the night. Rue Saint-Vincent and rue des Saules were covered with an immaculate snow that muffled our steps. We went without a sound, without a shadow, like fraternal specters relieved of our biological bodies. We pushed our explorations as far as the boundaries of the 17th arrondissement. Under the gray of the sky, on those wide streets with their unobstructed views, an immense and disparate story was building in which, via links that appeared to be random but were, beneath the surface, necessary, the expensive and blended generations of Plaine Monceau appeared one after another: the Sunday austerities of C
atholic families, the heroic silences of wise young resisters, the boredom of autumn Sundays in apartments crudely lit by a halogen lamp.

  For us, this was the nostalgia of the 17th arrondissement! For us, there were memories of huge rooms that were dark even in the heart of summer; in one corner of the kitchen, the maid would have fleetingly fallen asleep, her head on top of her arms. The glass in the stairwell windows, and everywhere was the silence of families, the mother reading in an easy chair, the sons measuring, one foot in front of the other, the dimensions of the unending hallway. They were ours, the orangey reflections, the balanced frames, the doors with twenty-five little panes; they were ours, order and harmony and silence. We thought we had the power to understand the street signs perfectly, as well as the buildings: Prony, Fortuny, Meissonier. We had to return constantly to the same windows, to see how things were arranged inside Villiers, Meissonier, and Prony, and most of all to understand the movements behind the windows, the succession of generations. The structure of families unfolding into life in the quietness: parents, children, staff. The lunches every day around the table, the father reading the newspaper, the mother scolding the maid, the children scratching their heads. The children, April 1920, April 1950, April 1986, their return to Lycée Carnot for afternoon classes, looking at the tree leaves on avenue de Villiers as they walked.

  To Daniel—my shadow, my soul, my brother—I would say how important it was to understand what switches on, what turns off; what comes in, what goes out; what leaves, what stays. Daniel and I had to make the rounds on rue Fortuny and avenue de Villiers and painstakingly tie the threads together because I knew, and I told him this as if it were a secret, that the stone we were looking at—such an unusual texture, the holes spread along its surface like so many dilated pores on a face—concealed the mysterious movement of life.

  As for my mother, she was looking for her father. She was like a little Gretel who would search pebble by pebble for a way out of the woods, carried by the stubborn belief that she would find her home again. Except that now the pebbles weren’t in forests, they were on the last floor of the archives at Fort de Vincennes, in the basements of the archives of the Ministry of Armed Forces. She crossed Paris, climbing up and down staircases, a valiant soldier. She outwitted the temperaments of archivists worn out by her beginner’s zeal. She put up with their contempt, the boxes laughingly thrown onto the table, the irascible sarcasm (“Of course, Madame, if you’re not in the habit of looking through archives …”).

  She took good notes. She filled notebooks. Prefecture of Police: STERN OVADIA, born 26 October, 1901, Warsaw, Poland. STERN OVADIA, son of Emanuel and Amalia STERN, profession: employed. STERN OVADIA, first known residence in France: 20 rue Riquet, Choisy-le-Roi. 1.76 m, 70 kg. Oval face. Blue eyes. Languages spoken: French, Polish, Czech, German, English. STERN Ovadia, born in 1901 in Warsaw, of Polish nationality, was married on 6/13/30 in Paris 5th with his fellow countrywoman JANKEIL Mendla, born in 1905 in Rozan. From their union is produced one child: STERN Perla, born on 5/9/1936 in Paris 12th, French by declaration, registered at the Justice Ministry under No. 8677 X 36. Request for naturalization received 16 October, 1936. Request denied for both: lack of assimilation into French culture.

  She left the archives of the Prefecture and descended the sloping rue des Carmes. She arrived at the Maubert-Mutualité métro and caught up with the Seine via rue de Bièvre. Behind Notre-Dame, she took refuge in an empty garden. Sitting on the bench, eyes closed, she relieved her gaze from the columns and lists; then, house by house, she looked across at the old homes of quai d’Orléans on the other side of the Seine.

  She had the letters he’d written in Yiddish, Polish, and German translated into French, and like a good and diligent student, after each translation she placed the letter and its French version in clear plastic sleeves that started to accumulate on her desk.

  Translated from German

  Prague, September 30, 1928

  Dear Ricky,

  As you instructed, I went down to the offices of American Express, Dlouha 10. They told me they might have a need for me and that they would give me an answer soon. I’ve decided to keep renting the room in Dejvice after all. It’s not that expensive, and in case American Express works out, at least I will have the room to start off with. Thank you for your help and your letter of recommendation.

  All my friendship.

  Your devoted Ovadia.

  Translated from Yiddish

  Prague, October 5, 1928

  Darling Mindla,

  American Express is giving me work for at least a few months. The stipend is adequate, enough to save for Paris. On Sunday, we went with Roth to take a walk in the park that people here call Petřin. It’s Paris before there was Paris! There is a sort of miniature Eiffel Tower that overlooks the park, which overlooks the city and, in particular, the Petit Côté neighborhood, Malá Strana. The room I’ve rented is outside the center of the city but on a very quiet, wide, and pleasant street. I understand Czech completely, but I still make mistakes when I’m speaking and I often mix it up with Polish. Darling Mindla, I hope that your dear family is doing well. Your dear father, your dear mother. Prague is only for now. I look forward to finally being in Paris so I can prepare for your arrival.

  Your Ovadia.

  Translated from Yiddish

  Prague, November 2, 1928

  Darling Mindla,

  Don’t be unfair, sweetheart, I accepted the contract for a year because it seemed to me a better way to prepare for our move to Paris. No, staying in Prague without you is not what I want! It’s true, I feel comfortable here. In the old city, certain buildings have a double entrance, a passage leading from one to the other. Sometimes I walk all the way to the Charles Bridge without following a single street. I pass from building to building. It’s a whole science, the art of cities. But Mindla, I want to be with you. In Paris! And if you don’t believe me, I will write it to you thousands of times, I will write it to you without stopping, so much that your dear father will become dizzy from seeing the postman delivering all of the letters to you.

  My love.

  Your Ovadia.

  Translated from German

  Prague, December 10, 1928

  Dear Ricky,

  As you saw with your own eyes, the room is comfortable. No, I am truly not complaining about my living conditions. In fact, I find it miraculous that in a few months, in part thanks to you, I’ve been able to find work and a place to live in a city I didn’t know. Mindla is getting impatient. She would like to leave Poland, her family, and for us to finally be together in Paris, the way she has always wanted. I don’t really know what she’s hoping for with this “new life,” and sometimes, dear Ricky, I’m not sure I’m capable of giving her exactly what she may be expecting.

  Your devoted Ovadia.

  Translated from Yiddish

  Paris, July 18, 1929

  Darling Mindla,

  I will pick you up directly from the station, then. Don’t hesitate to send me a telegram once you are on your way to let me know you’ve left. The room is bright. It is not in Paris but just next to it, a small town called Choisy-le-Roi. It is quite pretty. The Seine is not far. I will be working on avenue de l’Opéra, that’s where the American Express offices are. Don’t hesitate to send the telegram. Either way, I’ll be at the station on the platform. You’ll recognize me, won’t you? Darling Mindla! Your loving Ovadia.

  Translated from Yiddish

  Paris, July 28, 1936

  Dear brother,

  Thank you for your letters. The little girl is doing well. She is out of danger. Perla, yes, like our mother, may her memory be blessed and sanctified … Dear brother, there is so much worry in your letters. Of course you should leave the country, send the little boy to me. I’ll do everything I can to take care of him. We have moved to Paris. The apartment is small, but we’ll always be able to make it work. I need to find out which papers need to be completed. I will send them to you, don�
��t worry.

  Your loving brother. Ovadia.

  Translated from Polish

  Paris, January 3, 1937

  Olek my friend,

  I went back to the Prefecture of Police to get a visa for my nephew Adam, Icek’s son. They are requesting a guarantor in Poland and, naturally, Icek’s guarantee is not enough. Would you be able to act as guarantor for Adam? He’s the only one I can bring over and Icek is getting more and more worried. He would like to get Adam out of the country. I hope to get your answer very soon, dear Olek.

  Your Ovadia.

  Translated from German

  Paris, December 5, 1937

  Dear Ricky,

  Everything is going well for us here. You ask me if we ever go out. Cinema, theater? Very little for us. No money, no time, Ricky! Paris, city of lights; that’s for the others, not for us. I am very preoccupied these days. From our country everyone is asking me for visas, passports. People are panicking, they want to leave. I do what I can, I send the money orders, I run around to the different offices, I get stamped what needs to get stamped but everything is still out of reach and I can’t manage to do anything for anyone. Not even for my nephew Adam, Icek’s son who you met in Lvov. I feel the fear rising, and I can’t stand being here with my family so well-protected while others in Poland and Germany would jump over the borders in bare feet if they could. I hear horrible stories about the current atmosphere in Poland. Hateful posters on the street, the numerus clausus, attacks in public. It’s a strange time, Ricky. The thirties in this century don’t look very good to me. I hope that Prague resists!