Nothing Is Forgotten_A Novel

by Peter Golden

  I pulled my sketch pad from my rucksack, wrote Eddie’s address and phone number on a page, tore it out, and gave it to Sister Bernadette. “If you or Monsieur Gak ever need anything, contact this man. He will help.”

  “Merci, Misha Merci bien. Now it is time to bring Gak home. And I will get you the name of the art dealer Emma wrote.”

  “And you will tell me about her daughters?”

  Nodding, Sister Bernadette stood by pressing her palms against the chair cushion for leverage and pushing herself up, then headed, with a cautious gait, to the rear of the apartment.

  Yuli inspected the paintings. Her back was to me, so I couldn’t see her reaction as she moved along, pausing to study a canvas of Emma tilting a watering can over a planter spilling flowers like scarves from a magician’s hat, the water missing its mark because Emma eyes the artist with a glimmer of amusement and suspicion.

  Turning, with an expression as if she had been looking in a mirror, Yuli said, “I wish I’d met Emma.”

  “Me too.”

  30

  Le Cimetière du Château was graced by grief sculpted in stone—great-winged angels, weeping mothers, children with bowed heads, Jesus trudging with the Cross to Golgotha. The Jewish cemetery next to it had no sculpture. We entered through a willow-green gate, the iron bars tipped with gold fleurs-de-lis, and passed a shed-sized peaked-roofed building. We followed Sister Bernadette past gravestones toward a rough-hewn log bench, where an old man with long white hair flowing out from under a black beret, a white Vandyke, and a black suit sat with his hands on the knobs of two ebony walking sticks.

  “Monsieur Gak,” she said as we came up behind him. He was staring down at a polished blue-pearl slab of granite with a raised Star of David and an inscription in silver:

  à la mémoire de nos filles

  alexandra gak

  darya gak

  née 12 avril 1935

  née 24 juin 1938

  assassinées par les nazis en 1943

  I was numb, and like a murky Polaroid sharpening into a distinct photograph, my mind filled with a memory of that wispy-haired old man saying Kaddish over the trench in Dachau. Had Emma’s daughters—my aunts—been shot in the neck like that man’s son while Emma watched? Or had they died in oxygen-starved agony in the same type of gas chamber I’d toured in the Dachau museum? I saw that old man crying for his son—tears like raindrops on his paste-white face—and Yuli walking around the bench. She needed no translation for the inscription, and she was already tearing up as she spoke in Russian to Gak: “I have my own sorrow from the same monsters who caused yours. It kills you inside to think about. And speaking of these things—that is even worse. But this man behind me is Emma’s grandson, and he has traveled from the United States to talk to you.”

  Gak turned. His face was ridged, tanned the color of a peanut shell, and he bore a strong resemblance to an impudent hawk—without the predatory gleam in his eyes. Looking into those eyes was like peeking into an empty room.

  Yuli tried again. “Pozhaluysta.”—Please.

  Gak glanced at her, at me, then began shuffling from the cemetery. I couldn’t see myself informing him about Emma, but I was desperate to speak with him, this man who had loved my grandmother, who had endeavored to bless her, through his art, with life everlasting, and I called out to him in Russian, “Picasso says he wants to argue with you again.” Gak pushed on, using the walking sticks like cross-country ski poles, and I shouted, “Who is Joost Ter Horst?” and Gak, with astonishing agility, spun around and glared at me.

  “Joost Ter Horst?” I repeated, and Gak flung a stick at me, which fell five or six feet short, and then he resumed his shuffle and went out the gate.

  I retrieved the stick and gave it to Sister Bernadette.

  “I am sorry for you, Misha. Forgive him. He is sick.”

  “I know. Did he and Emma ever mention Joost?”

  She said, “They spoke Russian together. I didn’t understand. But he became silent soon after the war when Emma returned to Nice. She had to tell him about their daughters then. The gravestone is done before Emma goes to America to be with her son.”

  I knew more about my grandmother than I had before I’d come to France, but my numbness hadn’t receded, and trying to organize my new facts into a coherent account felt like reading a story in which every fourth word was Sanskrit.

  Yuli asked Sister Bernadette, “Will you tell Gak about Emma?”

  “Non. And he will not ask. Time means nothing to him. He only waits to go into this dirt with his girls.”

  “Thank you for helping,” Yuli said.

  Sister Bernadette flicked her wrist at us. “De rien. I wish I can do more. I must go. Gak has no key. You both come when you like. À la prochaine.”

  After she was gone, I stood there, hypnotized by the sunlight striking the slab.

  “Misha?” Yuli said.

  It felt as though a long time had passed before I replied, “Aren’t you supposed to call me Michael?”

  Yuli finger-combed my hair off my forehead. “Between us, you can be Misha.”

  I stared at the pearly blue granite. “My aunt Alexandra and aunt Darya.”

  “Yes.”

  “They were eight and five.”

  Yuli dropped her hand to hold one of mine.

  “Did Joost Ter Horst kill them? Or have them killed?”

  “Maybe. Gak was very angry when you asked about him.”

  “Gak was here, Emma was in Russia. When she came back to Nice, she had to be the one to tell Gak about Joost. Did my grandmother see her daughters die?”

  Yuli didn’t answer. Perhaps my tone unnerved her. To me, it sounded as if my numbness had attacked my vocal cords.

  Yuli squeezed my fingers. I didn’t have the energy to squeeze back.

  “We should find Joost and ask him,” I said, as though this was easily done, a matter of consulting a phone book.

  “Let’s go to the hotel or to a café.”

  I wanted to stay. I wanted to meet my aunts.

  “Misha, come with me.”

  I picked up two pebbles from the ground and placed them on the slab, a Jewish custom to mark your visit with the dead.

  Holding hands, we went by the marble facade of the building inside the gate, and I noticed the words embedded above the door stating that the structure had been erected by the Jewish community of Nice as a memorial to the local Jews killed by the Nazis. On the left side of the door was a marble urn that, according to the inscription, contained the ashes of Jews gassed and cremated at Auschwitz. It was the other urn, the one on the right, that froze me in place as I read the inscription: CETTE URNE RENFERME DU SAVON À LA GRAISSE HUMAINE FABRIQUÉ PAR LES ALLEMANDS DU III REICH AVEC LES CORPS DE NOS FRÈRES DÉPORTÉS.

  When we were in seventh grade, Birdman Cohen told me that the Nazis made soap from the fat of dead Jews, but Birdman was gaga about science fiction, so I’d told him he was nuts. And now here was an urn that proved he was right.

  “What does it say, Misha?”

  Dizzy, I was barely able to reply, “Soap . . . Jewish corpses,” before letting go of her hand and sitting on the pebbly ground, waiting for my dizziness to pass and thinking about Emma losing Gak to his grief-stricken silence, Alexandra and Darya to genocide, and my father to the inopportune dovetailing of a marital squabble and an asthma attack. A soulmate, two daughters, and a son—all three of her children—enough to destroy anyone. Yet Emma survived. My head stopped spinning, but my numbness had been replaced by a searing pain behind my eyes, and I began to cry with a gasping rhythm and remembered how Emma relished handing out free candy to children and her chasing Miss Doyle from Sweets with a broom because she punched Rollie. All of that made sense now, but what eluded me was why my grandmother had borne her brokenhearted days and nights without mentioning her past. To protect me? Don’t ask, she used to say, but was she waiting for me to ask again? I loved her, so why didn’t I see her suffering? Because I was too interested in r
ock ’n’ roll and girls and buying a convertible and going down the Shore, and it was my guilt at failing Emma that was most responsible for my weeping on this sunny afternoon.

  As my sobs subsided, I became aware that Yuli had knelt down and put her arms around me. There was the violet-scent of the Hôtel Ruhl soap on her skin, and her breath was warm against my ear when she whispered in Russian, “Without sorrow, there is no joy,” and while I was wondering if the phrase was a proverb or another of Der Schmuggler’s maxims, she covered my face with feathery kisses, and I held on to her like a buoy while she worked around to my mouth. This kiss was different from the one on the shore of Lake Bereza, deeper, more forceful. Her fingers went past my sport jacket and under my polo to trace circles on my chest, and my hand crept under the rough cotton of her Breton-striped shirt to cup the heaviness of her breasts through her bra, and it was then that we reached a similar conclusion.

  Yuli laughed. “The French are romantics. But—”

  “It might annoy the mourners.”

  “There are no mourners at the hotel.”

  Inside our suite we didn’t make it to the bedroom, shedding our clothes as if they had caught fire and falling onto the couch. Her hair was pinned up, and I brushed away the fine wayward strands to kiss her neck. She touched me everywhere, murmuring words in Russian that I’d never heard before but suspected were unsuitable for polite conversation. There was a brief pause when Yuli whispered that her best girlfriends Sofia and Viktoriya supplied her with birth control pills from the hospital pharmacy, and I gasped as she scissored her limbs around me. Her strength was ferocious, and turning to get more comfortable, I tumbled off the couch, which drew a burst of laughter from both of us. Then, like a supplicant, I got on my knees before Yuli, and our laughter became an up-tempo riff of my breathing and her garbled cries of protest and pleasure. She clutched at me, but I dodged her hands, keeping at it until she grabbed two fistfuls of my hair, a persuasive invitation to join her on the couch, and then we were together, each of us with our own history—our own darkness that couldn’t be lit, our own fears that were never quiet—and so, for the moment, we lost these things in each other.

  31

  At dawn, I woke up in bed spooned around Yuli. She was looking away from me with her body against mine so that I could feel the rise and fall of her breathing. Careful not to wake her, I got up and went into the bathroom, then put on khakis and a sweatshirt and sat in an easy chair with my sketch pad. Ordinarily, my sketches were done in black, but I’d bought a box of color pencils in Munich, and I used them now to draw Yuli, the indigo light slanting in on her through the window, her hair a brown and gold cascade of satin across the white pillows, the enchanting bend of her spine and rounded globes of her bottom outlined under the plum-colored piqué quilt.

  Yesterday, when we had finished and were curled together on the couch, Yuli, with more indignation than curiosity in her voice, had asked, “Where did you learn this?”

  So she was jealous. Or wondering if her performance had measured up to my past. I understood it. I also had a fleeting bout of insecurity. Why not? At the party in the Malt Shop, Pyotr Ananko, displeased that Yuli had downgraded his romantic status, said that she had no shortage of “dance partners,” a claim confirmed by Yuli herself right there on the couch. All the same, I wouldn’t ask her for a comparative opinion: what would I do if I didn’t like her answer? And honestly, just then, it wasn’t the erotic that preoccupied me. I was busy noticing that the fear and sadness I hauled around like a pail of rocks were gone, and I was adjusting—warily and happily—to my new lightness. Since Yuli was responsible for this change, I wanted to tell her about it. But from her question, it was evident that her interest lay elsewhere, and because I had no sensible answer for her, I played for time. “This?”

  Yuli cast a momentary glance toward where I had knelt on the carpet. “That.”

  “This and that?”

  “Yes, where did you learn this, that, and some other things I don’t want to say. ”

  “In the circus,” a more politic response than the truth—a lonesome divorcée.

  “Liar,” Yuli said, and gave my arm a playful slap. “You make me feel shy.”

  “Just shy?”

  “No, not just shy.”

  “I won’t do it again.”

  “No, I want you to do it again.”

  And so I did, in the bedroom this time, and then we had fallen asleep without any further discussion of my romantic past.

  Now I looked up from my pad and saw that Yuli was awake, squinting against the blaze of morning light in the window and sitting with the quilt covering her lap.

  “I hope I’m prettier in your sketch than I am in this bed.”

  “That would be impossible,” I said.

  Her smile came and went like the sun playing peekaboo with the clouds. Then she disappeared into the bathroom. I heard water running, and she came out in one of the hotel’s baby-blue terry-cloth robes and sat on the arm of the chair, inspecting my drawing.

  “That’s good. Yesterday, when I saw Gak’s paintings, I was remembering you said that Emma used to like to watch you draw. Now I know why.”

  “I was thinking the same thing.” I closed my sketch pad. “I have to make a phone call. To Eddie in the States. The family friend I told you about.”

  Yuli kissed me, and I tasted the minty flavor of Pepsodent. “Call him. I’ll go shower.”

  Five minutes after I gave the hotel operator the number, the phone rang.

  “Boyo,” Eddie said. “Everything is good?”

  “Fine.”

  “I spoke to Taft night before last. He’s got nothing about Emma or that lousy business with you in Krautville, and me and the cops ain’t doing no better here. But Taft says you gone off with a girl. That’s progress. Where are you?”

  “South of France.”

  Eddie laughed. “Like Cary Grant and Grace Kelly in To Catch a Thief?”

  “Just like.”

  I told him about Gak and Emma and Sister Bernadette, and he said, “Jesus, your grandmother was a crafty dame. Bought an apartment house for him and paid his bills.”

  “And she never talked about her daughters with you?”

  Through a crackle of static I heard Eddie sigh. “Not a peep. But I got the impression Emma didn’t like being sad in public.”

  “I wrote down your number and address for Sister Bernadette and told her to be in touch if she or Gak need anything.”

  “Emma would’ve liked that. I’ll take care of it. Maybe Taft will give you the all clear to come home now. And you could bring the girl.”

  “I’m trying to track down another guy who knew Emma.” I figured it best to skip how Gak had reacted when I asked him about Joost Ter Horst. Eddie was a bigger worrier than my grandmother.

  “Just because Taft and me have crapped out so far don’t mean you gotta play Sherlock Holmes. And you’re running up the charges on your American Express.”

  “You said I had plenty of money.”

  “You do, but you ain’t Rockefeller.”

  My finances weren’t the problem—even with my paying Yuli’s end, I had more than enough. “Eddie, I’m being careful.”

  “Emma wouldn’t like it, boyo. I promised her I’d look after you.”

  “I got it under control. I’ll talk to you soon.”

  * * *

  The Cours Saleya was an outdoor mall flanked by cafés and shops, and in the center, under striped canopies, peddlers standing behind tables bright with bottles of olive oil, fruit, cheeses, vegetables, herbs, and flowers. Yuli and I hadn’t eaten in almost twenty-four hours, so our conversation was reduced to the bare minimum as we breakfasted on fried eggs, thick slices of ham, brioche with homemade strawberry jam, and, accompanying our second cups of café au lait, a specialty of Nice, a torte with a flaky crust stuffed with Swiss chard, raisins, and toasted pine nuts, and dusted with powdered sugar.

  “I need to have a walk,” Yuli said, licki
ng the last of the sugar from her spoon.

  We went out to the Promenade des Anglais and joined the crowd ambling along the sea.

  “Could Joost Ter Horst be German?” I asked.

  “Sounds more Dutch than German.”

  “Except Gak flipped out hearing his name, and if he was involved in murdering Darya and Alexandra, then I believe Joost has to be German. How do we find out?”

  Yuli took my hand. “If Horst was in charge of a camp or an officer in the Einsatzgruppen—you know Einsatzgruppen?”

  “SS death squads.”

  “Yes, then maybe Taft Mifflin. The Americans captured these shits and put some on trial. Taft might know who to ask.”

  “The Red Army also caught them. Could Der help?”

  “Papka is in Otvali until next week. I cannot ask him on the phone at home.”

  “I’ll call Taft.”

  We crossed the promenade to the Hôtel Ruhl. To the right of the entranceway, along a side street where taxis parked and the drivers gathered at a kiosk to talk and down shots of espresso, I spotted a baby-faced guy in a straw fedora and sunglasses standing by the kiosk and reading a newspaper. When he glanced up from the paper to stare at Yuli and me, I thought it was Pyotr Ananko. A wounded heart could lead an ex-flame to tail his former girlfriend to France, but that would be a mile past crazy, and Pyotr hadn’t seemed unbalanced at the party. Besides, how would he know where we were?

  “Something wrong?” Yuli asked.

  I looked at her, then at the kiosk, and the guy was gone. I didn’t want Yuli to think I was seeing her old boyfriends under the bed, so to speak, and I replied, “No, nothing.”

  * * *

  In the suite, a stocky gray-haired chambermaid was changing the sheets, so I used the phone next to the couch in the sitting room and placed a call to Four Freedoms in Munich. Taft wasn’t there. He was at the news bureau in Paris. I wrote down the number, then gave it to the operator and waited for her to connect me. Every day I left a tip for the maids on the desk, and the chambermaid came out of the bedroom and picked up the ten-franc note. Yuli, sitting at the other end of the couch reading A Moveable Feast, spoke to her in a language that sounded like Ukrainian, and with a slight bow, the chambermaid answered her and departed.