The technical school was a grim, modern building with an old water tower looming over it. It was difficult to imagine the camp had been here, under thick cement and parking lots. Students were standing around the entrance, smoking. It was their lunch break. On an unkempt square of grass in front of the school, we noticed strange, curving sculptures with figures carved into them. On one of them, we read, “They must act with and for each other, in a spirit of fraternity.” Nothing more. Bamber and I looked at each other, puzzled.
I asked one of the students if the sculptures had anything to do with the camp. He asked, “What camp?” A fellow student tittered. I explained the nature of the camp. It seemed to sober him up a little. Then the other student, a girl, said there was some sort of plaque, just a little farther down the road, heading back to the village. We hadn’t noticed it on our drive up. I asked the girl if it was a memorial. She said she thought so.
The monument was in black marble with faded gold lettering. It had been erected in 1965 by the mayor of Beaune-la-Rolande. A gold star of David was etched out on its summit. And there were names. Endless names. I picked out two names that had become painfully, achingly familiar: “Starzynski, Wladyslaw. Starzynski, Rywka.”
On the bottom of the marble post, I noticed a small, square urn. “Here are deposited the ashes of our martyrs from Auschwitz-Birkenau.” A little farther up, beneath the list of names, I read another sentence: “To the 3,500 Jewish children torn from their parents, interned at Beaune-la-Rolande and Pithiviers, deported and exterminated at Auschwitz.” Then Bamber read out loud, with his polished British accent: “Victims of the Nazis, buried at the graveyard of Beaune-la-Rolande.” Below, we discovered the same names engraved on the tomb in the cemetery. The Vel’ d’Hiv’ children who had died in the camp.
“ ‘Victims of the Nazis’ again,” muttered Bamber. “Looks like a good case of amnesia to me.”
He and I stood and looked on, in silence. Bamber had taken a few photographs, but now his camera was back in its case. On the black marble, there was no mention that the French police alone had been responsible for running the camp, and for what had happened behind the barbed wire.
I looked back toward the village, the sinister dark spire of the church on my left.
Sarah Starzynski had toiled up that very road. She had walked past where I was standing now, and she had turned left, into the camp. Several days later, her parents had come out again, to be taken to the station, on to their deaths. The children had been left alone for weeks, then sent to Drancy. And then to their solitary deaths, after the long trip to Poland.
What had happened to Sarah? Had she died here? There had been no sign of her name in the graveyard, on the memorial. Had she escaped? I looked beyond the water tower, standing at the edge of the village, heading north. Was she still alive?
My cell phone rang, making us both jump. It was my sister, Charla.
“Are you OK?” she asked, her voice surprisingly clear. It sounded like she was standing right next to me, and not thousands of miles away across the Atlantic. “I had a feeling I should call you.”
My thoughts dragged away from Sarah Starzynski to the baby I was carrying. To what Bertrand had said last night: “The end of us.”
Once again, I felt the sheer heaviness of the world around me.
THE TRAIN STATION AT Orléans was a busy, noisy place, an anthill swarming with gray uniforms. Sarah pressed against the old couple. She did not want to show her fear. If she had made it all the way here, that meant there was hope left for her. Hope back in Paris. She had to be brave, she had to be strong.
“If anybody asks,” whispered Jules, as they waited in the line to buy the tickets to Paris, “you are our granddaughter Stéphanie Dufaure. Your hair is shaved off because you caught lice at school.”
Geneviève straightened Sarah’s collar.
“There,” she said, smiling. “You do look nice and clean. And pretty. Just like our granddaughter!”
“Do you really have a granddaughter?” asked Sarah. “Are these her clothes?”
Geneviève laughed.
“We have nothing but turbulent grandsons, Gaspard and Nicolas. And a son, Alain. He’s in his forties. He lives in Orléans with Henriette, his wife. Those are Nicolas’s clothes, he’s a little older than you. Quite a handful, he is!”
Sarah admired the way the old couple pretended to be at ease, smiling at her, acting like this was a perfectly normal morning, a perfectly normal trip to Paris. But she noticed the quick way their eyes darted around constantly, always on the watch, always on the move. Her nervousness increased when she saw soldiers checking on all passengers boarding the trains. She craned her neck to observe them. German? No, French. French soldiers. She had no identification on her. Nothing. Nothing except the key and the money. Silently, discreetly, she handed the thick wad of bills to Jules. He looked down at her, surprised. She pointed with her chin toward the soldiers barring the access to the trains.
“What do you want me to do with this, Sarah?” he whispered, puzzled.
“They are going to ask you for my identity card. I don’t have one. This might help.”
Jules observed the line of men standing in front of the train. He grew flustered. Geneviève gave him a dig with her elbow.
“Jules!” she hissed. “It could work. We must try. We don’t have any other choice.”
The old man drew himself up. He nodded to his wife. He seemed to have regained his composure. The tickets were bought, then they headed toward the train.
The platform was packed. Passengers pressed against them from all sides, women with squealing babies, stern-faced old men, impatient businessmen wearing suits. Sarah knew what she had to do. She remembered the boy who got away at the indoor stadium, the one who had slipped through the confusion. That was what she had to do now. Make the most of the pushing and squabbling, of the soldiers shouting orders, of the bustling crowd.
She let go of Jules’s hand and ducked. It was like going under water, she thought. A tight, compact mass of skirts and trousers, shoes and ankles. She clambered past, pushing herself on with her fists, and then the train appeared, right in front of her.
As she climbed on, a hand grabbed her by the shoulder. She composed her face instantly, molding her mouth into an easy smile. The smile of a normal little girl. A normal little girl taking the train to Paris. A normal little girl like the one in the lilac dress, the one she had seen on the platform, when they had been taken to the camp, on that day that seemed so long ago.
“I’m with my granny,” she said, flashing the innocent smile, pointing to the inside of the carriage. With a nod, the soldier let her go. Breathless, she squirmed her way onto the train, peering out of the window. Her heart was pounding. There were Jules and Geneviève emerging from the throng, looking up at her with amazement. She waved at them triumphantly. She felt proud of herself. She had gotten on the train all by herself, and the soldiers hadn’t even stopped her.
Her smile vanished when she saw the number of German officers boarding the train. Their voices were loud and brutal as they made their way through the crowded corridor. People averted their faces, looked down, made themselves as small as possible.
Sarah stood in a corner of the carriage, half hidden by Jules and Geneviève. The only part that was visible was her face, peeping out between the old couple’s shoulders. She watched the Germans draw nearer, gazed at them, fascinated. She couldn’t keep her eyes off them. Jules whispered at her to look away. But she couldn’t.
There was one man in particular that repelled her, tall, thin, his face white and angular. His eyes were such a pale shade of blue they seemed transparent under thick pink lids. As the group of officers passed them by, the tall thin man reached out with an endless, gray-swathed arm, and tweaked Sarah’s ear. She shivered with shock.