“Who are you? Why did you come?”
Sylvie pulls the note from her purse and holds it out. Marie squints at it, then her face sags. “Julien,” she says.
One word, that is all. Sylvie feels the blood pounding in her ears. A large wave crests in the distance, racing toward shore. “Do you know he is…?”
“Yes, Isabelle told me.”
Isabelle. The wave breaks over Sylvie and she discovers how powerfully the past can engulf the present. Once again she is a child hiding behind the door while her mother serves Madame Wanda’s guests, the men with ribbons pinned to their chest, the women sparkling with diamonds, and now, as then, she feels herself an outsider.
Sylvie sits there overwhelmed at where her quest has led her, to these elderly twins, one sister eaten up with suspicion to safeguard against the dangerous innocence of the other. With an effort she struggles to her feet, but Mathilde rushes out from the kitchen to stop her once again. She pulls Sylvie to a table, unknots a burlap parcel, and the rolled-up canvases within spring open after their long confinement.
Sylvie looks through a series of landscapes, of vineyards, hills, and ruins. There are also familiar city views, the rooftops of Paris, a courtyard full of pigeons, a street crisscrossed with tricolored flags. Yet the technique is the same, the brushstrokes skillfully blurred to give the impression of things seen long ago and far away; only the window framing each scene has the hard edges of contemporary life. Sylvie cannot explain why these romantic landscapes should seem so menacing. She examines each painting more attentively and realizes the focus is not the prospect at all, but the window, its insistent lines placing the artist inside and the world outside: landscapes meant not for living, but for reliving.
Abruptly Sylvie pushes away the paintings and makes for the door. Mathilde tries to detain her, but Marie says, “Let her go.”
“She must take her things,” Mathilde protests. “The jewel box.” She darts to the window and tugs a cord hidden behind the curtains. A trapdoor yawns open and hangs down from the ceiling to reveal the space which has cunningly robbed the room of its harmonious proportions. Sylvie’s breath sticks in her throat as she sees a windowless room within a room, just high enough for a small child or a crouched adult. Her eyes turn instinctively to the photographs of Clara and her girls. “Is that where…” she whispers, and Marie nods grimly.
“That’s where they found them, ce jour-là.”
That day. To Marie it can mean only one day, although close to half a century has elapsed since then. Her heart had jumped into her mouth every time she heard a sound. She realized she was still waiting for Bernard, though there had been no sign of him for several days. There was a soft tapping at the door, and she and Clara both jumped up to answer it. Marie shook her head and waited till Clara and the girls were safely hidden. No point taking chances. Opening the door a crack, she was surprised to see Madame Grzybyk, the fat little confectioner from around the corner, with her heavily accented French and her pastries certified cacher by the rabbi’s seal. Whenever they passed her shop, Mathilde would run in for some bonbons from “Madame Cacher.”
Marie had not seen her since the day her shop was vandalized, like so many others now forced to display the yellow sign: entreprise juive. The windows were smashed, glass crystals frosted the pastries, and a group of men stood at the street corner, smoking nonchalantly. Members of the Croix de Feu, no doubt, stirring up trouble as usual. A few passersby cast sympathetic glances at the shopkeeper sweeping up the broken glass, but did not stop. Marie, too, lowered her head and hurried past, until Mathilde put her to shame by stopping to hug Madame Cacher.
Why had she showed up at their door? Eyeing her suspiciously, Marie saw that the woman was laden down with various odd-shaped bundles, and, of all things, her samovar. Mathilde beckoned Mrs. Grzybyk in, but Marie refused to open the door any wider.
The woman whispered, “Cacher.”
Whatever did she mean, Marie wondered, and in case anyone was listening, she said loudly that Clara and her children had left for the Free Zone, no point looking for them here. Mrs. Grzybyk continued to repeat the word, “cacher, cacher,” and when Marie tried to shut the door in her face, she pleaded urgently, “Les juifs…il faut s’cacher.”
Marie realized she had been misled by the woman’s accent, she was talking about concealment, not confectionery. Abruptly she pulled Mrs. Grzybyk into the apartment. How much did she know? Who had told her? The carpenter? The concierge? That was the trouble these days, you couldn’t trust anyone.
Mrs. Grzybyk said a friend had telephoned from the prefecture of police, warning her to hide. “Il faut s’cacher,” he said, but where could she go that night?
“Here,” said Mathilde, pointing under her bed.
“Bless you, my dear, I could no more crawl under there than I could fly,” said Mrs. Grzybyk.
“If you could fly,” said Mathilde, “there’s room up there.” She pointed to the ceiling and hurried behind the curtain to pull the cord. “Voilà!” she said with a self-important air as the trapdoor swung open.
Mrs. Grzybyk stared in wonder at Clara looking down at her. “Can you squeeze in one more, my dear?”
“Of course,” said Clara, “of course.” But after all it was the rope ladder that decided the issue. No matter how much they tried, they could not hoist her up. She would have to look elsewhere, said Mrs. Grzybyk, she hoped it was not too late.
Too late? It was still light outside, Marie thought, but then remembered the curfew began several hours earlier for Jews. Anyway, the woman couldn’t go around encumbered like that, she had best leave some things behind. Clara and the girls came down and repacked her parcels, while Marie boiled water for coffee, if you could call it that, nothing but a teaspoon of burnt barley.
Mrs. Grzybyk reluctantly left behind a painting, a gift from an artist whom she had fed when he hadn’t money enough to buy a crust of bread. Clara said the lighting was exquisite, like a Rembrandt, but Marie stared at the hideous canvas, two plucked chickens on a plate, and wondered how it could even be called art.
The confectioner’s visit had shaken Marie, and the words “too late” sounded like a knell in her ears, but she wasn’t thinking of Mrs. Grzybyk, she was thinking of Bernard, how fiercely they had argued the last time she saw him.
“They’ll never hand over women and children,” she had insisted, “it’s unthinkable.”
“Unthinkable! And Jews wearing badges, did you think that would ever happen?”
Since the decree, his wife and daughters couldn’t leave the house without the yellow star of David sewn to their clothes, and Bernard had wasted their precious textile coupons to buy one for himself, had insisted on fastening it to his coat.
Marie argued that it was foolhardy, the authorities didn’t look kindly on amis des juifs, either, best to be prudent.
Her nephew said sharply, “Can’t you see that’s what they count on, our being prudent?”
Someone pushed open the bindery door, and hearing the jingle of the bell, they fell silent. A young man placed a tattered book on the counter, and Bernard murmured, “Morocco leather and fine Florentine endpapers, of course.” He opened a drawer and pulled out the last scrap of gilded paper, the likes of which Marie did not know if she would ever see again. Along with the receipt, Bernard slipped a handwritten list to the customer, who pocketed it without a word as Bernard said the book would be ready next week.
Marie pressed her lips together. Next week it would be someone else who came with the receipt to pick up the book and drop off another list. Dangerous business, but he would not listen to her, he despised her prudence, when all she was trying to do was get through the war, what use were futile gestures of resistance?
How often since that day she had regretted every contentious word that passed between them, she would recall each one if she could. But it was too late.
She had come into the bindery late the next morning, it was Bernard’s day for opening up. But Bernard was gone, the shop in a state of chaos, with drawers pulled out and rummaged through, papers scattered everywhere, books flung to the floor with their spines broken beyond repair. She had felt something sticky underfoot and looked down in horror, but it was only glue from the upturned bottle. Next to the cash drawer, an awl glinted in the light. She picked it up and saw the congealed red liquid on the blade. Ink, she told herself, as she backed away. She looked at the book press, but her mind refused to register what she saw. How proud Bernard had been when they bought the book press, capable of exerting a thousand kilograms of pressure on a book so that it would lie neat and flat. Despite herself, she looked again at the press, screwed down firmly, but with no paper on the wooden stand, only a fragment of fingernail surrounded by jagged flesh.
She had staggered out and vomited in the gutter. The greengrocer across the street brought her water and whispered they had taken Bernard away. “Tell me who,” she begged, “tell me where,” but he looked fearfully over his shoulder and hurried back to his heads of lettuce, his basket of crimson radishes.
Had they taken him to rue de Saussaies? Where the neighbors complained they could not sleep at night because of the screams. Where they had a bathtub in which they drowned prisoners, resuscitated them, drowned them over and over again. Where bodies were recovered with fingers mutilated from scraping the limestone walls of the interrogation room.
Ten hours, Bernard had said, twelve at the most, before the prisoner sang. Just time enough for the cell to disband and go into hiding, his own refuge in the ceiling ready for that eventuality. But Bernard was the one picked up first. Had he made it that long under interrogation? There was no one she could ask. No one would come to the bindery anymore.
Distraught, Marie had run everywhere she could think of, the commissariat, the préfecture, the mairie, and had spent the day being handed off from one official to another. Although they dutifully noted the information, she could see from their shrugs that one missing person in these times was not a pressing matter. Marie forced herself to go back into the bindery, to put away the familiar tools she handled at work every day, pick up the books from the floor and glue and stitch their broken spines as best she could, her fingers working mechanically while her mind raced.
By the end of the day, she could finally see her way clear. Returning to the apartment, she smelled the lingering odor of turpentine in the stairwell. Clara at her painting again, now that she wasn’t allowed to work anymore, all Jews shut out of their professions, even teaching art considered subversive these days. Marie climbed the staircase slowly and paused at the door, trying to compose herself before she had to face Clara.
Inside, everything was as it had been when she left, the children busy with their coloring books, Mathilde singing lullabies to her doll. All of a sudden the day’s events assumed the unreal dimensions of a nightmare. Marie had the strangest feeling that if she turned around and went back to the bindery right now, she would find it as it had always been, Bernard bent over an old book, looking up as the bell jingled. But she shook her head, she could not afford these foolish fancies, not now. She took Clara aside and whispered that Bernard had gone underground, it would be best if she and the children were also to “disappear.”
Wordlessly Clara turned to open a window. She gripped the railing to steady herself and took several deep breaths. Marie was overcome with pity. How much had been taken from this young woman already, little daily diminishments, her livelihood gone, her bicycle confiscated, and in any case where was there to go, public places like museums and cinemas out of bounds, though Clara would hardly want to see filth like The Jewish Menace, or enter cafés with signs that said NO DOGS AND JEWS.
Clara turned back to face Marie, her features pale and set. She knew that this, too, was being taken away from her, the open window, but it seemed a small thing she could do to help Bernard in his work. It was clear from the way Clara said “work” that she imagined him hiding in subterranean tunnels, dodging the Gestapo, sabotaging their plans. And Marie was satisfied that her deliberate use of “underground” had led Clara to think that. But everything now depended on Marie, Mathilde no more help than the children. Less, in fact.
The next morning, Marie took Mathilde to a convent on the other side of town, wondering how her sister would fare without her. But it would certainly make things easier at home; she could use Mathilde’s ration card as well as her own, no one could tell them apart, but she would shop in a different neighborhood just to be sure. Of course, they could no longer use Clara’s card, but that didn’t get them much anyway, Jews were only allowed to line up at the food shops late in the afternoon when the shelves were already empty.
Left by herself with the nuns, Mathilde wailed for her sister, for Clara, for the twins. “Gigi,” she kept calling, “Lilou, where are you?” The mother superior would willingly have taken Clara’s girls as well, she had hidden many Jewish children in the past, but the Germans were searching even the Catholic schools now. She wished the Holy Father would openly denounce the persecution of the Israelites, instead of talking vaguely of charity and justice. But if she had to choose between being a good Catholic and being a good Christian, well, for her, the choice was clear. She was bound by conscience to follow the words of Christ rather than the silence of his church.
Within a day Mathilde ran away from the convent and inexplicably found her way home, beaming at her own cleverness. Marie wondered where to take her next, but Clara begged her to let Mathilde stay, to teach her how to open the trapdoor in case of emergency. What if Marie was out and there was a fire, how would Clara and the girls escape? But when Marie tried to explain the situation, Mathilde laughed and said “cache-cache,” as if it was a game of hide-and-seek.
“It’s not a game,” said Clara, taking Mathilde in her arms, “Listen to me carefully, you’re a big girl now and you have an important job, you have to pull the cord if you hear someone knock like this: Tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap. It means Open up, Mathilde. Do you understand?”
Mathilde nodded. Yes, she understood, per-fect-ly.
But Marie continued to worry. Mathilde did not realize how dangerous the situation was, look how she had revealed the hiding place to Madame Grzybyk. After the confectioner had left that night, Marie remained keyed up and anxious. Even when the lights had been turned off in all the neighboring windows, she sat up in the kitchen, looking out at the street. She thought she heard a cock crowing in the distance and wondered if she was dreaming, surely there was not a single rooster left uneaten in the city. Marie rose and checked on her sister, sleeping soundly, and couldn’t recall the last time she herself had drawn such carefree breaths. In the next room, she heard Gigi coughing and went in to find Clara worn out with worry, listening for the telltale whoop of pertussis. Marie told her to sleep, she would keep watch. She sat in a chair by the window, her eyes burning in the dark.
She must have dozed off, dreaming of Bernard as a little boy. They were all in her brother’s kitchen, with le petit Bernard hiding under the table. Suddenly he started kicking the table legs, and all the adults peered under the cloth to see what Bernard was up to. He was hammering nails into the floor, and Marie said, “Attention, you’ll hurt yourself,” but she was too late, he had already smashed his finger. Marie woke up shuddering, her face cold with perspiration despite the oppressive heat. She heard the hammering start up again, but now she knew it wasn’t a dream, someone was pounding at the door downstairs. At first she thought Mrs. Grzybyk had returned, but realized at once it was not the knock of a fugitive, it was too loud, too peremptory, too official.
“Ouvrez, police!”
Silently Marie shook Clara’s shoulder. Gigi started to cough again, and Clara pressed a handkerchief to her mouth, as she and the girls, still half asleep, disappeared into the ceiling.
Marie heard the concierge’s shrill voice in the stairwell and fear clutched at her heart. Would she betray them? But Madame Fichot’s son had been sent to join the labor force in Germany and she was busy airing her own grievances. Why didn’t they go and fight the Boche, she berated the police, instead of terrorizing innocent women and children asleep in their beds like god-fearing Christians. Her tactics delayed the men only for an instant. Marie heard their footsteps climbing the stairs and looked at the ceiling to make sure the trapdoor was shut.
“Ouvrez, police!”
She slowly drew a shawl around her shoulders and waited. They knocked again and she threw open the door to confront the policemen, French, after all, not German, but doing their dirty work for them in any case. She glared at the two men, one in uniform, the other in civilian clothes. “Listen, messieurs, if you’re here for my nephew, I don’t know what he was mixed up in and I don’t want to know. He’s gone, and so have his wife and kids, and good riddance to them all.”
The uniformed man muttered, “Flown the coop.”
His older colleague, fiddling with his pipe, asked if they could take a look around.
“Well, be quick about it. And whatever you do, don’t wake my sister,” she answered irascibly.
He poked his head into the bedroom where Mathilde was sleeping. Then he looked into the other room, the unmade bed. “Forgive us for disturbing you,” he said. As he was leaving, he stooped to pick up a doll from the floor. “Whose?”
“My sister’s. Mathilde is…” Marie tapped her forehead softly.
Sleeping through all the commotion, Mathilde was woken by the sound of her own name. She came into the living room, rubbing her eyes. Her sister looked at her warningly. Mathilde nodded, she understood. Per-fect-ly. Then she saw the policemen and scolded them, “Haven’t you found Bernard yet?” That’s what the police were supposed to do, find people who were lost, things that were missing.
Haunting Paris Page 12