Haunting Paris

by Mamta Chaudhry

  Sylvie unrolls Clara’s paintings to study them again, lingering over each scene. She finally selects one and puts it aside. Would it have comforted Julien to look at the landscape he shared with his sister in happier times? Or would it add to his distress? Like so much else, she can no longer ask him, he will no longer answer.

  She stops at a frame shop on the way, then crosses once again toward the Marais, looking not for an unnumbered address at rue Elzévir this time, but for the Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation at rue Geoffroy-l’Asnier. She enters the courtyard dominated by a bronze cylinder evoking the chimneys of the death camps. Inside the building, a receptionist takes down her name and address, asks if Sylvie is here to be filmed. She shakes her head and says she has an appointment with Ari Wolkowsky.

  She is shown into an office that looks as if a cyclone has blown through it, files scattered everywhere, film reels piled on top of each other, and in one corner a single chair against a gray backdrop. A man with hair and clothes as disheveled as his surroundings is setting up a camera across from this makeshift set. Ari Wolkowsky looks up questioningly as Sylvie enters and she says she won’t detain him, she just wanted to tell him in person how deeply his story had moved her.

  He shrugs. “It’s only one of countless stories. For a long time, no one wanted to speak about what had happened. But then suddenly the floodgates opened. Maybe the recent trial of Klaus Barbie, the man they called the Butcher of Lyon, made people feel that even outside the witness stand, they had a moral obligation to testify. Or maybe it’s a growing sense of urgency that if they don’t speak now, no one will remember.”

  “They come to you?”

  “Or I go where they are.” He points to a map with dots marking his film sites in France, Poland, Israel, America. A thick cluster of dots in Miami.

  Sylvie is silent for a moment, trying to incorporate this into her vision of Florida, then she tells Ari how she almost went there last winter, but in the end she couldn’t do it, she felt she was leaving Julien behind, he would have called it illogique, but logical or not, that’s how she felt.

  “The heart has its reasons,” Ari says.

  She nods eagerly. That reason cannot know. “Exactly, that’s it exactly. And it’s just as illogical why I’ve come to see you. It’s about the photo.” She tells him the story of rue Elzévir, of Marie and Mathilde, of Clara and the girls. Julien had found proof that Clara died at Auschwitz and Gigi at Vel d’Hiv, but the death of Lilou was unrecorded. It remains a baffling sorrow to Sylvie that Julien never spoke of this to her, but ever since she heard the story from Marie, she has become fixated on the idea that Lilou is still alive, she imagines she sees her everywhere, even in the photo that accompanied Ari’s essay in La Vie Française.

  “The photo,” he says. “I know I have it here, somewhere. You know, the funny thing is, someone else called me about that photo, he wanted to talk to me about it. Last summer, I think. But I never heard from him again.”

  “Julien went into the hospital in August. He never came back home.”

  Ari Wolkowsky briefly clasps both her hands in his. “I’m sorry.”

  “In a sense, I’ve come here today in his place.”

  “Now, where did I put the photo?” He starts to root through his papers, but Sylvie stops him. She has brought a photocopy, which they study together in silence. Finally Ari says, “A journalist was there to see off his children, they were going to their grandparents’ for the summer. It was only when he developed the roll of film that he realized the significance of this photo. His newspaper printed it, and it became iconic proof that the Germans were indeed targeting children.”

  Sylvie points to a little girl with her face pressed against the window. “I had so recently seen the photographs of Clara’s girls at rue Elzévir. And the way this child is reflected in the glass, I was seized with the strange fancy that it was one of the twins. Do you have any idea who she might be?”

  He shakes his head.

  Sylvie sighs. “Well, it was a long shot.”

  “I don’t know her, but strangely enough I remember her, I even remember her name.” He can still recall the pugnacious way she announced it from the moment she boarded the train to everyone who looked at her, the conductor, the guards, the Germans: “Je m’appelle Christine Boniface de Belleville.” And as they pulled out of the station, he thought bitterly, Why did they take his brother off the train, they should have taken this girl instead, repeating her name so insistently that it was picked up by the rhythm of the train wheels, Christine Boniface de Belleville, Boniface de Belleville, de Belleville, de Belleville, de Belleville.

  Well, thinks Sylvie, that’s that, then. Ari Wolkowsky walks her out, but when she thanks him and shakes his hand, he keeps hold of it and leads her not to the gate but down to the crypt.

  “There’s something I think you should see. There’s no doubt in my mind that Julien saw it, too.”

  She looks at him in surprise as he gestures to the Tomb of the Unknown Jewish Martyr, a black marble star of David with the eternal flame burning above. “In 1957, the ashes of those who died in the ghettos and the death camps were buried here in soil brought from Israel. It’s inconceivable any Jew who was in Paris would have stayed away.” Tears start to Sylvie’s eyes as she realizes it was around this time that she had first started giving piano lessons at rue de Bièvre.

  On the far wall is a Hebrew quotation from the Bible, and Ari reads it aloud: “Look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow. Young and old, our sons and daughters were cut down by the sword.” He looks at her somberly. “Now do you understand why Julien chose to mourn in silence? How does one speak of the unspeakable?”

  In the days following her meeting with Ari, Sylvie jumps up every time the telephone rings. He has promised to call if he finds out anything more, but Sylvie does not hold out much hope. What she wants is to make meaning of the incomprehensible, and neither Ari nor anyone else can help with that.

  She stares at Clara’s framed painting leaning against the mantelpiece. Scenes of Julien’s childhood, which he recalled on his deathbed. Have they come yet, the storks? And then she realizes what he was trying to tell her so urgently. It wasn’t belle vie at all, he was struggling to say the word Belleville.

  The telephone rings, cutting into her thoughts. She rushes over to pick it up, her heart beating with anticipation. But it is Will, reminding her about their lunch date. “Don’t forget,” he says, “not a word to Alice.”

  Alice has already left for her final French class, to be followed by a graduation ceremony and the vin d’honneur without which no French cérémonie would be complete. Will plans to join her for the festivities, but he has also arranged a surprise celebration afterward with Sylvie and Ana Carvalho at the bistro.

  On his way down, he sees Ana Carvalho barring the entry to an apartment on the second floor, arguing with a belligerent couple trying to edge past her. The concierge notices Will and says he should carry on, she has a matter to take care of before lunch. Then she rounds fiercely on a locksmith kneeling by the door and tells him to take his toolbox and get out before she calls the police. He slinks off, but the couple continues to argue in increasingly threatening tones.

  “We will come back with a lawyer, Madame, if that’s what you prefer,” says the man.

  “You can come back with President Mitterrand, if you like,” retorts Ana Carvalho, “and I’ll give you the same answer. The young man is in the hospital for tests, but he will be back, he has not quit the premises. You cannot force the lock, you have to wait until his death. And I know you would hasten that, if you could.”

  The woman asks her to be reasonable, after all the apartment belonged to their father, they are his legal heirs, they are only claiming what is their own.

  “Raisonnable? And how raisonnable was it for you to come here and persecute your father when he was ill? Yo
u said it offended your morals that his companion had moved in, but it was the young man who nursed Monsieur Beaugrand day and night, you two were nowhere to be seen. The least Monsieur Beaugrand could do for him was ensure he had use of the apartment till his death. In any case, it won’t be long now, and then you can come back and feast on the carcass. Even vultures have the decency to wait till the body is cold.”

  The woman looks nonplussed, but Ana isn’t done with them yet. “You know what offends my morals? That you think because you are hétéro, you have a monopoly on affection, but I assure you that young man knows more about love than you ever will.” Without another glance in their direction, she sweeps past them on her way to the bistro.

  After her lunch with the Americans, Sylvie muses how their coming has transformed her life, not directly perhaps, but by setting in motion a chain of events that she couldn’t have imagined three months ago. The folder that fell from Julien’s desk, and all that has followed since. But for now her quest has ended, as it began, in silence.

  The phone rings, startling her out of her reverie. Ana Carvalho tells her there is someone in the courtyard asking for her, she says her name is Christine Boniface.

  Sylvie draws in her breath. Christine Boniface of Belleville. “Send her up.”

  But Ana Carvalho wouldn’t dream of letting the woman into Sylvie’s apartment on her own, she’s heard too many horror stories about swindlers preying on the old and the defenseless, not that Sylvie is old, and Coco’s there to defend her, but still, better to be safe than sorry. And this woman looks a little toc-toc, wouldn’t surprise her if she’s touched in the head.

  But when Sylvie opens the door, it is Christine Boniface who eyes her suspiciously.

  “I was told you’re looking for me,” she says.

  Sylvie nods to Ana Carvalho, still barring the doorway. “It’s all right, Ana.”

  Reluctantly, Ana moves aside for Christine Boniface to enter. “I’m out here changing the lightbulb, if you need me,” she says meaningfully.

  But the woman is oblivious of the concierge, her eyes fixed on a framed canvas leaning against the mantelpiece, a landscape of vineyards and hills with three ruined châteaux in the distance. She walks toward it like a frostbitten wanderer toward a fire, then sinks down on her knees and bursts into a howl of wordless desolation.

  What Christine remembers most clearly is a woman picking her up and carrying her kicking and screaming all the way to the Grenelle metro station. The woman had put her down on the platform, wiped her face, and said, “Doucement, ma petite,” wrapped the shawl tighter around her, and then boarded the next metro. To the child’s surprise they got on in front, not the last car meant for those with yellow stars. Once the doors shut, Lilou kept her eyes fixed on her reflection in the glass as the train left the stadium farther and farther behind.

  They got off in a part of the city the child had never visited before; the metro stop said Belleville, and the most beautiful thing about it was the calm after the bedlam of Vel d’Hiv. They entered a shabby building with a birdcage elevator that groaned all the way to the third floor. The woman knocked on a door and said, “C’est moi, Martine.” A man opened the door, a cigarette clamped between his teeth, and the front of his jacket covered with a smattering of ash. Martine ushered the child inside, saying “Another lost lamb, Arnaud.” He swore under his breath and went back to the papers on his desk. Martine lifted the child into an armchair and brought her some water. Gently she pried open Lilou’s fingers, still clutched around the roll, and threw away the mangled piece of bread. “Hungry?” she asked, and Lilou nodded. She brought an orange from the kitchen and peeled it for the child. As the tart juice burst against her tongue, Lilou thought she had never tasted anything so delicious in all her life. She chewed slowly, making each bite last as long as she could. But when she had eaten half, she closed her fingers around the rest to save it for Gigi. Martine and Arnaud were talking in low tones, and then Martine called someone on the phone.

  Lilou tried to listen, but Arnaud knelt down in front of her, a pair of scissors in his hand, not a lady’s dainty scissors, but big scissors, the kind Aunt Marie used to cut leather in the bindery. “What’s your name?” he said. “Liliane,” she said, “je m’appelle Liliane,” and brushed away the cigarette ash from her lap, wondering why Arnaud didn’t use the ashtray beside her. She shrank back as he brought the scissors up to her chest and with great dexterity snipped the yellow star off her blouse, muttering under his breath, “Damn them, damn the stinking bastards to hell.” He gave her the star, then lit a candle and held it out. “Here,” he said, “burn it.” She held the star to the flame, which leapt greedily toward the fabric, and Lilou watched it shrink and curl until it was too hot to hold, then she let it drop into the ashtray, where it continued to burn till it was a charred bit of nothing.

  Arnaud blew out the candle, scattering even more ash around the room. Then he told her that she was Christine now, Christine Boniface of Belleville.

  “Will I stay with you?”

  “No, it’s not safe in the city, you must go to the country, to my brother’s, if he’ll have you. Martine’s talking to him now. You’ll like it out there, on the farm. When I was a child, I was always happy there, bien dans ma peau.”

  Lilou tried to imagine this, feeling comfortable in her skin. “Can my sister go, too?”

  “Maybe someday.”

  “When will I come back?”

  “Soon, Christine, very soon.”

  They both called her Christine over and over, until she responded to the name without a moment’s hesitation. Arnaud busied himself with forging papers for her, and the next day a woman came to the apartment, everything about her starched, her collar, her expression, even the cloth cover on her Bible. She would take Christine to the farm and leave her there with her counterfeit papers. “Are you ready, Christine?” the woman asked.

  “Just a minute,” Lilou replied, and went to the bathroom, where she looked at herself in the mirror. Gigi’s face stared back at her. “Christine,” she said fiercely, “je m’appelle Christine Boniface.”

  On the way to the station the woman told her, “Don’t draw attention to yourself, just act like everyone else.”

  As they waited for the train to arrive, the starched woman clutched her Bible, flinching every time the Germans patrolled past them with their dogs. Christine and she boarded the train without incident, but when the whistle sounded, three German soldiers got on and dragged a stocky man and a young boy from the train. The businessman sitting across from them leaned over and whispered, “Must have been a passeur, that fellow they pulled off.” Christine was amused by the word passeur, what was he smuggling, a little boy? But the woman turned white, and before they came to the next station, she went into the corridor and pulled out a sheet of paper hidden in her Bible. The girl watched in amazement as she tore the list of names into thin strips, then chewed and swallowed each one, and it wasn’t until much later that Christine realized that the woman was also a passeuse, risking her life to smuggle children to safety.

  A city girl like Christine would have stuck out like a sore thumb on a rural farm, but the sheer number of Boniface children provided camouflage, eight already, and another on the way. She was absorbed into the flock, and Madame Boniface told Christine to call her Tante Garance. If anyone asked, she was to say she’d been sick and come to the countryside to convalesce. And as if to prove it true, Christine did fall ill, coughing and shivering, with her temperature spiking so high they didn’t know whether to send for a doctor or a priest. But she recovered, and the fever did what forgery could not, made her forget names and places, so when they asked her about the big city, she stared blankly and said, “London?” The younger children laughed and for a while it was a great joke with them to curtsy and call her milady.

  They were kind to her, her new “cousins.” But kindness was not the sa
me as love. Madame Boniface was a good woman, and she made sure that within their frugal means all the children had enough to eat and warm clothes to wear. She could not guess that what this child was starving for was kisses and words of endearment. When the newcomer wet her bed or awoke screaming from nightmares, Tante Garance silently changed the sheets, left a lamp burning by the bedside. The Bonifaces were a taciturn family, and Christine learned to act like everyone else, to say only what was necessary, the virtues of frugality extending even to words. “Bien dans ma peau,” Arnaud had said. It wasn’t his fault she did not feel comfortable in her skin anymore, because it wasn’t her real skin, after all, she had sloughed it off for a forged identity.

  “That’s all ancient history,” Christine shrugs, though it’s obvious her childhood emotions have come surging back with the shock of recent discoveries. Anyway, she’s married now, she tells Sylvie, has grown children of her own, she and her husband own a pharmacy in a neighboring town, none of the Boniface children had moved far from the farm which belonged to Matthieu since his father’s death. All of them gathered there for the holidays, but their reunion this Easter was filled with sadness, for Madame Boniface was ailing and unlikely to recover.