“Before she died, Tante Garance told me what she knew.” The approach of death had loosened the reticence of a lifetime, and while her lips moved in prayer, Madame Boniface’s mind wandered through the landscape of unsaid things. Une forteresse sûre est notre Dieu, and now that she is at the very gates of that mighty fortress, she can’t help recalling the day that poor girl, sick and frightened, was delivered to their doorstep like a parcel. When Martine and Arnaud called about the child, her husband had hesitated, told his brother it was too dangerous in these times to shelter a Jew, but she had insisted, had told her husband, we can’t turn her away, we Huguenots have too long a memory of persecution. Love ye therefore the stranger: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt. She has never regretted taking her in, especially after what happened to Martine and Arnaud, shot by the Boche for being résistants. She can still remember how the girl would cry out in her sleep, this poor scrap of a child that Martine had plucked off the street, with nothing on her but a shawl, where was the shawl now, oh yes, in the attic, Matthieu must fetch it down for Christine right away.
Christine had buried her face in the shawl and the scent in her nostrils released the génie bottled up inside and all the banished memories came rushing back from exile.
“Maman,” she shrieked, “Maaamaaaan.”
Christine’s husband had been so good with her, so patient as she grappled with these revelations. And she had taken out all her anger on him, poor Gérard. They had contacted the woman who brought her to the farm that July in 1942, but she could tell them nothing more than what Martine Boniface had told her, that the girl was found wandering alone outside Vel d’Hiv. They wrote to the Ministry in Paris for information, but nobody could match her up with her family or say where she came from. Then just a few days ago, she got a letter from Ari Wolkowsky, who remembered her name and the station where she got off, and had tracked her down. He had enclosed a photo, and circled the face of a child in the train window. If she was indeed Christine Boniface of Belleville, then she should disregard the letter. But if she was not, he had something to tell her, and he had enclosed his card.
She called him at once, then arranged a trip to Paris. Gérard was ready to accompany her, but she refused. She wanted to go back to the city as she had left it, alone. Rage was bursting out of her skin, the skin it had taken her so long to become comfortable in, but it wasn’t even her skin, like everything about her, it was counterfeit. How could this happen? she cried. How could people let it happen? Were they deaf, were they blind, were they insane?
“I understand why you’re angry.”
“No, you don’t,” she had screamed at Gérard. “You don’t even know who I am, I’m not Christine at all, I’m Lilou, je m’appelle Liliane.”
Hearing those words, Sylvie thinks that for so long Christine’s anger has lain within her like a tightly coiled spring. Perhaps it is what saved her; rage impels one forward, grief holds one back.
“What should I call you?”
“Oh, I’m Christine now, for good or ill, what’s the point of insisting on my old name, it won’t change anything.”
“So then you met Ari Wolkowsky?”
“Yes. He told me about you, about the photo in the magazine. So I came here. He said you might have some information. If you’ll tell me what you know, I can head back to my family tomorrow or the day after.”
“You can stay here, if you like.”
“No, I’ll find a hotel.”
“Come with me,” Sylvie says. “I know just the place.”
When they are out on the street, Christine seems overwhelmed by the noise, by the crowds. They cross the bridge in silence, and walk through the Marais. But when they turn into rue des Rosiers, her eyes widen, and she looks around wonderingly. “My school,” she says, clutching Sylvie’s arm. A little further, she points to the old confectioner’s shop, now a salon de thé. “Madame Cacher,” she says, her voice catching in her throat. As they enter rue Elzévir, she drops Sylvie’s arm and flies to the blue wooden door and pushes it open, rushes up the stairs, and knocks on the familiar door, and her great-aunts open it and look at her as if she is indeed a revenant, but one of flesh and blood, whom they hold as if they will never let her out of their sight again, and if Marie’s joy is mingled with bitterness at all the wasted years since ce jour-là, Mathilde’s happiness is unadulterated; for her that day was then, but here is Lilou, come out of hiding, and this moment, this wonderful moment, this is now.
Sylvie can hardly sleep that night, imagining the scenes and the conversations, the tears and embraces in that apartment with its false ceiling, whose sleeping ghosts she has disturbed. She paces her own apartment, then takes Coco down for a late-night walk, and finds herself passing the offices of the CDJC. She wonders if Ari Wolkowsky is still there, working late. She feels a strong impulse to talk to him again, but the Center is shut, and the guard outside says, “Madame, it’s almost midnight.”
She doesn’t expect Christine back till the afternoon, but barely has she put on the morning coffee when there’s a knock on the door. It’s evident that Christine has also passed a nuit blanche, her eyelids swollen, her voice hoarse. Sylvie leads her in, and looking at the painting, Christine once more bursts into tears.
Sylvie lets her weep. So many tears, so long held back. She pours them both some coffee, and when Christine is more composed, Sylvie says, “I have Clara’s things for you.”
Christine nods. “Tata Marie told me.”
Sylvie finds it moving to hear from this woman’s lips—a woman her own age—the childish tata instead of tante; that’s what Lilou would have called Marie, not Aunt but Auntie. She brings out the roll of canvases. “Here, take these, they belong to you.”
“I’ll look at them later, I can’t right now…I’m too overwhelmed.”
Sylvie nods. “Oh, and this one, on the mantelpiece, let me get it.”
Christine stops her. “Keep that, if you want.”
Sylvie is grateful for the offer. She would like to have the painting, for Julien’s sake.
“What was he like?”
Sylvie wonders what she can tell Christine about the uncle she had never met. That Julien was brilliant, he was generous, he was, quite simply, the finest man she had ever known. How would it comfort her to know all this now? Slowly she says, “Julien loved his sister and he never stopped looking for you.”
They are both silent, thinking Lilou’s return to Paris was a few months too late for Julien to know that, miraculous as it might seem, she had survived.
Then Sylvie says softly, “He has two children, Charles and Alexandra. I know they’ll want to meet you.”
A smile trembles on Christine’s lips. So she has real cousins now, not just counterfeit ones. But she shakes her head. “Not yet, it’s too soon.”
“I understand.”
“I’m leaving day after tomorrow and taking the aunts with me. I want them to meet my family, my adopted family, I mean.” The recent discovery doesn’t erase all the years the Bonifaces have made her feel one of them. Ari Wolkowsky had told her she could petition for her rescuers to be posthumously honored as Les Justes, but Christine knows Tante Garance would just have shrugged and said, No need for a medal, we did what anyone would, c’est normal.
“There’s something else…”
Christine looks at her expectantly.
Sylvie shakes her head. “Not yet. Not here.”
The next day Sylvie waits for Christine by Julien’s grave, and when she comes, Sylvie hands her the wooden box. Finally, she thinks, a legitimate claimant for Clara’s jewel case. Her fingers trembling, Christine opens the lid and looks at its meager contents: three pebbles, a lace bonnet, the letter sealed with a drop of wax. She slides her nail under the seal, smooths out the creases, and reads the first words out loud: My darling girls. Her voice falters and she tries again: My darling gir
ls. Tears blind her eyes, and she shakes her head and hands it to Sylvie. My darling girls, reads Sylvie. Her voice trembles as well, but she does not pause, carried along by the urgency of Clara’s words.
My darling girls,
How you press me for another story, and another, and another…the ones you like best are tales from my childhood, so distant from your lives that they seem like fairy tales, and I find comfort in those dear scenes as well. You are already asleep, and I look at you, your curls glinting in the candlelight, and long to fondle your hair like a miser gloating over his gold. But I am afraid to wake you, so I write to you instead by the sputtering light of the candle. They are rationed now, we can only buy one or two at a time, not a whole box. Everything is scarce this year, even more than last. Too little meat to fill out your cheeks, too little milk to strengthen your bones. Marie does her best with what she can find in the streets, and when I see you choke down sparrow meat and stale bread, I would give anything to serve you my mother’s kugelhopf.
I used to eat it fresh from the oven and always burned my tongue because I couldn’t wait for the raisins to cool. Those days in Alsace, we had enough bread and enough firewood for the cold nights when Papa would work on his furs, quickly marking them with a blue chalk, then cutting along the lines with his razor, he had a very sure hand, you can’t afford to make mistakes with fur. Even when times were hard, Papa always had work, the rich continued to order his coats.
Julien…
Sylvie stops abruptly. Seeing his name written on paper instead of carved in stone makes Julien seem suddenly alive. The lines blur before her eyes, and she blinks away her own tears to continue reading for Christine’s sake, whose face is bathed with tears as she listens hungrily to her mother speaking to her from beyond the grave.
Julien would read aloud to us, always in French, my father did not allow us to speak German at home even though we were taught German in school until the war ended, the earlier war, I mean, not this one. My father asked us who is the French hero you admire most, and wanting to be first with the answer, I shouted out, Napoleon, Papa, it’s Napoleon, but Julien thought for a while and then said Zola, and I could tell Papa was better pleased with my brother’s answer than mine.
I loved the summer evenings when women would gather by the fountain of St. Hune—the saint of washerwomen according to local lore—and we children would play in the endless twilight until it was time for bed. But what I miss most are the storks that came every year to Hunawihr. You point to the pigeons on the rooftops and say, we have birds here, maman. Such city girls! Used to manicured parks and signs that say keep off the grass. When I was a girl, I ran barefoot on the grass around our house, it was soft and wild and scented with chamomile.
I hated the thought of leaving home, but my mother had enrolled me at Madame Weil’s pensionnat for Jewish girls in Nancy, where cousin Rebekah had studied. She later married a classmate’s brother and my mother told me I must also marry a Jew, friends are all very well, but only Jews are family, no one else stands by you when trouble comes. I wish she had met Bernard, she would know that isn’t true.
But I can’t blame her for her distrust, not after what happened to Julien. Some boys from our village beat him so badly that he lost sight in one eye. And no one came to commiserate, not any of the women with whom my mother washed clothes in the fountain, not any of the men whom my father had helped when they needed an extra hand with the harvest. Only the schoolteacher stopped by to shake his head and say times were hard and trouble was spreading, we had better find somewhere safe. My father said, “We won’t let them drive us from here, we’ll fight back,” but my mother said, “I can’t sleep here another night, this isn’t the first time they’ve attacked us, why wait for the next time, it might be Clara.” I cried, “But why would they hurt me? I haven’t done anything!” My father looked at me, then rose to his feet and pulled an old valise from under the bed. “But why, Papa?” I persisted. He stroked my hair and said, “Sometimes people hate you not for what you do, but who you are.” “But Papa, who are we, that they should hate us?” “We are Israelites, chérie.” “But Papa, I thought we were French.” “Oh, yes,” he said, “we are as French as anyone can be.”
My father went into his workshop and rolled up the furs, packing them in the valise to give us a start in the big city. Strasbourg, I asked, because it was the biggest city I could imagine. No, they said, Paris. Paris! At first I was excited and then it struck me that Minou might not like it, but my mother said nonsense, we can’t possibly take the cat with us, and then I started thinking how Minou would have taken up with another family by the time we came back. I always thought that we would return, sometimes I think it still. The train ride made me sleepy, but when I put my head down on a bundle, the cat started meowing and my mother slapped me because I had smuggled Minou in place of the fur hat that would have kept me snug that winter.
How I wish I had it now, to bring you a little warmth. I dread the coming winter, there’s no wood, no coal, nothing, nothing, nothing, how will we manage?
But you have your own urgent questions: Why can’t we play in the park anymore? Why can’t we go to the library? Why do we wear yellow stars? Why must we always ride the last car in the metro? Your smooth foreheads are wrinkled with perplexity, and you are right to be puzzled. But even those questions have stopped since your father left and we hid up here. There is only one question which preoccupies you now: “Where is he,” you ask, “where is Papa?” I turn my face away, I cannot answer. “In London?” you ask. For you, everyone who is not here is across the Channel, fighting for France. And I say yes, and I would give anything to be by his side. But then I think of you, and I would willingly stay here for the rest of my life if only it would keep you safe.
Oh, my darlings! What good girls you are, uncomplaining even though there is so much for you to lament. You quietly play your childish games and I overhear you whispering to each other about pitchipoi, and I wonder what that is. And then one day I understand it’s a special playground where you run freely with the other children, where you find once more everything you have lost, your friends, your toys. Most of all your father, whom you greet with such joy. I feel my heart will burst when I think of Bernard, but I must be strong for your sake, you are all I have left now.
So I close my eyes and I dream of pitchipoi, too. I walk into our little house in Hunawihr, which is just as I remember. My brother is reading by the fireplace, his eyes unharmed. A kugelhopf is baking in the oven, Minou is asleep on the windowsill, and through the open window I can see the ruined fortresses of Ribeauvillé.
Ah, how suffocating this room is, no windows, no light. When will this darkness be over? But then I look at you and I think, for you I would bear much worse. On my knees I pray for God to send all the suffering upon me, but spare my girls.
The candle is almost burned down now, and before it goes out, I hold it up to gaze at you, to look at your precious faces, so beautiful, so innocent. Even when I close my eyes, that is what I see, that is what I will always see, the last thing before I sleep.
Sylvie puts her arms around Christine, who is sobbing uncontrollably. The shadows lengthen around them, alone now among the tombstones. The caretaker walks past, jingling his keys, it’s already past closing time, and they can come back another day, his charges aren’t going anywhere, not until the trumpets sound on Judgment Day. Christine wipes her eyes and replaces the objects in the box: the letter, the square of black lace, the three pebbles. Then she changes her mind, takes out the stones and arranges them on Julien’s grave.
Watching her, Sylvie thinks that one day Christine will know what Julien knew, that no one escapes unscathed, it is the lot of the survivor to bear scars both visible and invisible, but you honor the life you’ve been spared to live by admitting into it the possibility of happiness. And then she thinks about Isabelle, preoccupied with wills and be
quests, rushing to rue Elzévir in pursuit of a valuable painting, but it is Sylvie who has stumbled across the children’s true inheritance, the story of their father’s past. Julien’s silence was meant as a shelter, but might equally one day prove an affliction, just as it has for Lilou, hollowed out for so long by not knowing. They need to know, she thinks, they deserve to know. It is part of their story, part of who they are.
And as she looks around the graveyard, she feels the strangest sensation, her heart expanding within her, growing larger and larger and larger until it seems to contain all these stories that are not separate at all but connected in strange and marvelous ways, herself and Christine and Clara and Julien, and Charles and Alexandra, and Marie and Mathilde, and yes even Isabelle, and all the living and all the dead, and still it continues to expand until it is as vast as the sky and she feels that for this moment, at least, she is what Julien called her, Sylvie, coeur de lion.
I feel the sudden loud beat of my stopped heart, a great soaring of my spirit like the swell of the organ that echoed outside the walled church of Hunawihr as the schoolmaster played the music of Bach, giving thanks to a merciful God: Wir danken dir, Gott, wir danken dir.
One of Clara’s daughters is no longer “presumed dead”; she is, by some miracle, alive. And it is Sylvie who has found the missing child. For so long I had searched for her in a city which reveals its secrets to those who crisscross it with no fixed purpose; but I could not fool the darkness, I lacked the flâneur’s trademark, loitering without intent. My purpose was unmistakable, I was no stray beam but a searchlight from which the darkness receded, refusing to give up to me the runaway child who had hidden herself so cunningly somewhere in the city that it’s as if she never existed.
Haunting Paris Page 19