The American.
“So you’re the American,” Mamé had stated all those years ago in this very room, looking me over with brooding, gray irises. L’Américaine. How American that had made me feel, with my layered locks, sneakers, and wholesome smile. And how quintessentially French this seventy-year-old woman was, with her straight back, patrician nose, impeccable coil of hair, and shrewd eyes. And yet, I liked Mamé from the start. Her startling, guttural laugh. Her dry sense of humor.
Even today, I had to admit I liked her more than Bertrand’s parents, who still made me feel like “the American,” although I had been living in Paris for twenty-five years, been married to their son for fifteen, and produced their first grandchild, Zoë.
On the way down, confronted once again with the unpleasant reflection in the elevator mirror, it suddenly occurred to me that I had put up with Bertrand’s jabs for too long, and always with a good-natured shrug.
And today, for some obscure reason, for the first time, I felt I had had enough.
THE GIRL KEPT CLOSE to her parents. They walked all the way down her street, the man in the beige raincoat telling them to hurry up. Where were they going? she wondered. Why did they have to rush so? They were told to go into a large garage. She recognized the road, which was not far from where she lived, from where her father worked.
In the garage, men were bent over engines, wearing blue overalls stained with oil. The men stared at them, silent. No one said anything. Then the girl saw a large group of people standing in the garage with bags and baskets at their feet. Mostly women and children, she noticed. Some of them she knew, a little. But no one dared wave or say hello to each other. After a while, two policemen appeared. They called out names. The girl’s father put up his hand when their family name was heard.
The girl looked around her. She saw a boy she knew from school, Léon. He looked tired and scared. She smiled at him, she wanted to tell him that everything was fine, that they could all go home soon. This wouldn’t last long, they would soon be sent back. But Léon stared at her like she was crazy. She glanced down at her feet, her cheeks crimson. Maybe she had got it all wrong. Her heart was pounding. Maybe things were not going to happen like she thought they would. She felt very naïve, silly, and young.
Her father bent down to her. His unshaven chin tickled her ear. He said her name. Where was her brother? She showed him the key. The little brother was safe in their secret cupboard, she whispered, proud of herself. He’d be safe there.
Her father’s eyes went wide and strange. He grasped her arm. But it’s all right, she said, he’s going to be all right. It’s a deep cupboard, there is enough air in there for him to breathe. And he has water and the flashlight. He’ll be fine, Papa. You don’t understand, said the father, you don’t understand. And to her dismay, she saw that tears filled his eyes.
She pulled his sleeve. She couldn’t bear to see her father cry.
“Papa,” she said, “we are going back home, aren’t we? We are going back after they’ve called out our names?”
Her father wiped his tears. He looked down at her. Awful, sad eyes she could not bear gazing back at.
“No,” he said, “we are not going back. They won’t let us go back.”
She felt something cold and horrible seep through her. Once again she remembered what she had overheard, her parents’ faces glimpsed from behind the door, their fear, their anguish in the middle of the night.
“What do you mean, Papa? Where are we going? Why aren’t we going back home? You tell me! Tell me!”
She nearly screamed the last words.
Her father looked down at her. He said her name again, very softly. His eyes were still wet, his eyelashes spiked with tears. He put his hand on the back of her neck.
“Be brave, my sweet love. Be brave, as brave as you can.”
She could not cry. Her fear was so great it seemed to engulf everything else, it seemed to suck up every single emotion within her, like a monstrous, powerful vacuum.
“But I promised him I’d come back, Papa. I promised him.”
The girl saw that he had started to cry again, that he wasn’t listening to her. He was wrapped up in his own grief, in his own fear.
They were all sent outside. The street was empty, save for buses lined up by the sidewalks. The kind of ordinary buses the girl used to take with her mother and her brother to get about town-ordinary, everyday green-and-white buses with platforms at the rear.
They were ordered to get on the buses and were pushed against each other. The girl looked again for green-gray uniforms, for the curt, guttural language she had grown to fear. But these were only policemen. French policemen.
Through the bus’s dusty pane, she recognized one of them, the young red-haired one who had often helped her cross the street on her way home from school. She tapped on the glass to attract his attention. When his eyes locked onto hers, he quickly looked away. He seemed embarrassed, almost annoyed. She wondered why. As they were all pushed into the buses, a man protested and was shoved, violently by police. A policeman yelled that he’d shoot if anybody tried to get away.
Listlessly, the girl watched the buildings, the trees drift by. She could only think of her brother in the cupboard, in the empty house, waiting for her. She could only think of him. They crossed a bridge, she saw the Seine sparkle. Where were they going? Papa didn’t know. Nobody knew. They were all afraid.
A loud clap of thunder startled everybody. The rain came pouring down so thickly the bus had to halt. The girl listened to the drops pounding on the bus’s roof. It did not last long. Soon the bus resumed its route, wheels hissing on glistening cobblestones. The sun came out.
The bus stopped and they all got off, laden with bundles, suitcases, crying children. The girl did not know this street. She had never been here. She saw the elevated métro on one end of the road.
They were led to a great pale building. There was something written on it in huge dark letters, but she couldn’t make it out. She saw that the entire street was full of families like hers, stepping out of buses, shouted at by the police. The French police, again.
Clutching her father’s hand, she was pushed and shoved into an enormous covered arena. Crowds of people were massed there in the middle of the arena, as well as on the hard, iron seats in the galleries. How many people? She didn’t know. Hundreds. And there were more pouring in. The girl looked up at the immense blue skylight, shaped like a dome. The merciless sun shone through.
Her father found a place for them to sit. The girl watched the steady trickle of people thicken the crowd. The noise grew louder and louder, a constant hum of thousands of voices, children whimpering, women moaning. The heat grew unbearable, more and more stifling as the sun rose higher in the sky. There was less and less room, they were all huddled against each other. She watched the men, the women, the children, their pinched faces, their frightened eyes.
“Papa,” she said, “how long are we going to stay here?”
“I don’t know, my sweet.”
“Why are we here?”
She put her hand on the yellow star sewn on the front of her blouse.
“It’s because of this, isn’t it?” she said. “Everybody here has one.”
Her father smiled, a sad, pathetic smile.
“Yes,” he said. “It’s because of that.”
The girl frowned.
“It’s not fair, Papa,” she hissed. “It’s not fair!”
He hugged her, said her name tenderly.
“Yes, my darling one, you’re right. It’s not fair.”
She sat against him, her cheek pressed against the star he wore on his jacket.
A month or so ago, her mother had sewn the stars on all her clothes. On all the family’s clothes, except the little brother’s. Before that their identity cards had been stamped with the words “Jew” or “Jewess.” And then, there had been all the things they were suddenly no longer allowed to do. Like playing in the park. Like riding a bicycle, going to the cinema, the theater, the restaurant, the swimming pool. Like no longer being allowed to borrow books from the library.