Crossing the Borders of Time (78 page)

The next day I strolled with Mom and Roland on the rue du Sauvage, where as bashful teenagers they had so often hunted for each other in the evenings. We passed the birthplace of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, stopped into the pine-scented council chamber where Roland had married his first wife, and laughed beneath the
Klapperstein
with its bulging eyes and obscene protruding tongue. In respectful silence, we stood in the Catholic cemetery before the tombstone of one of Roland’s martyred friends, “
mort pour la France
” at only twenty-two in 1944, on his first day in action fighting for the Resistance. And finally, leaving town, we pulled off the road for a nostalgic glance at the green and swollen springtime river where Janine and Roland had first expressed their love in 1939 among the reeds and willows. Roland was at the wheel as we headed southwest toward Gray, the sky releasing a heavy downpour, and Mom pronounced Mulhouse as having been far more gemütlich or cozy in the year when she first met him there.

Roland: “Now I love you twice as much.”
(photo credit 27.2)

“Oh, my poor baby,” Roland crooned to her. “Don’t you know that everything in Europe was more gemütlich before the war?” With that, he reached to take and kiss her hand, adorned by a new silver ring with a blue stone twice as large as the one that he had given her before their separation in 1942. “Twice as large,” he’d told her when he placed it on her finger before our trip, “because now I love you twice as much.”

We drove on through rolling hills on roads bordered by mustard and wildflowers, through quiet, forgotten villages, and past wheat fields where the wind blew undulating ripples like waves across a golden ocean. In the backseat I listened as they reminisced. They told me again how they had found each other in Lyon after France was occupied, and then they talked about the grievous day they were torn from one another in Marseille. It was seven years later when he tried to see her in New York, Roland reminded me, and by then she was no longer free. He turned around to face me, and in a tone he may have thought would camouflage such resentment as he harbored, he told me this: “Basically, my dear,
you
were the culprit. The woman I adored, the most extraordinary woman I ever met, couldn’t be pursued because you were around. It’s the sad story of life—either one arrives too early or too late. Everything that happens in life, in love, or in war is a question of timing.”

True enough, I thought, as I contemplated how the timing of my father’s fatal illness, coinciding with my second trip to Freiburg, had spurred me to begin a search for Roland Arcieri that I could have undertaken years before. Now, however, instead of traveling with my parents, I was with my mother and her long-lost love. If casual observers assumed I was their daughter, for my part, I sometimes felt an interloper, intruding on their romance, and at other points a “scribe”—my father’s nickname for me. Everywhere we went, I was documenting stories that they shared, as in town after town we toured locations that were memorable to each of them. She showed him Gray, and he took us to Villefranche, where they bemoaned the war that had sent their families running from Mulhouse to seek refuge in different places. Now, so happy were they both just to be together, in the same place at the same time, that at every stop I had to push them to seek out specific sites and look up former friends.

In Lyon, eager to meet Roland, Lisette’s youngest daughter Isabelle joined us from Paris. She had been named in memory of her grandmother Marie’s beloved attendant, Isabelle Picard, and we stood rapt in silent prayer before the wooden door with its fruits and cherubs at the building where Cousin Mimi, her three children, and Bella were arrested. Mournful memories shrouded that afternoon as we toured the gare de Perrache and the Hôtel Terminus where Roland had worked as a translator, the Gestapo breathing down his neck. He stumbled and we grabbed him to break his fall at the very spot where he had witnessed Roger’s arrest—the last time he ever saw his friend before Roger was transported to Drancy and then to death at Auschwitz.

“Today, I could have warned him, but communication then was awful,” Roland despaired, still haunted after more than half a century by his inability to save his friend.

Past Lyon, the leafy plane and chestnut trees along the roadside gave way to slim columns of deep green cypress before we descended on Marseille, with its chalky limestone cliffs and orange rooftops, and with the Mediterranean a sober blue in front of us. It was Janine’s first return there since she’d fled, and she fell grim and silent. Gamely, Roland worked to stir a lighter mood. “Ya, ya, my darling”—he laughed and reached to squeeze her knee—“whatever you do here in Marseille, just don’t sail away from me again.”

We drove to the quai de la Joliette, the point from which her ship had steamed off toward Algiers en route to Casablanca, and squealing gulls dipped overhead as we walked out on the pier. Now Janine had come full circle and her eyes were wet with tears as she recalled the girl who had been pried from Roland’s arms and led along the gangway to find a distant world of strangers. Her parents too had not been old when they lost everything and on unfamiliar ground became reliant on their children.

Once again, she stood staring out to unknown shores with Europe at her back and her beloved Roland beside her. But for the greater tides of history, a different daughter might have stood with them. Still, by whatever hand of God or fate or simple circumstance the three of us had come into that moment, I rejoiced in having played a vital role in how their story ended. Somehow, it even seemed to validate my father, who had taught me to believe that anything was possible.

Near the close of day we found ourselves at the park behind the Palais du Pharo, perched above the sea on a lofty promontory. A great red sun was sinking toward the water, and the pale stone walls of the ancient forts guarding the harbor’s mouth blushed pink. Dogs ran free—a German shepherd and a dalmatian romped in the grass as their masters watched from benches—and far below, a few intrepid sails still bobbed along the waves. We sat there for a while before Mom and Roland told me they were tired and would walk back for a rest at our hotel. I watched them go off hand in hand, the sorrow of their next parting already sneaking up on them. Our journey was almost ended, and two days later Roland would have to leave Janine in New Jersey and return to Montreal. For two tall people, their steps were short and slow, as if by reining in their pace they might hold back the waning hours.

On a bench not far from mine, a young couple sat together kissing. They each wore jeans, T-shirts, and sandals, and the boy cradled the girl within his arms as she cuddled on his lap. He gazed into her eyes and lovingly stroked her hair, blond with dark brown roots. Soon, the evening growing cooler, they too got up to leave. The boy draped a lanky arm across her shoulders and she wound hers about his waist and tucked her fingers in his belt. Both couples were retreating toward the castle and the road beyond—the older pair in front, the younger following—and it was tempting to regard them as the same, just in different stages. Would that boy and girl, I wondered, still be walking in close embrace after half a century? Or did it take a world of turmoil, of loss and then recapture, to treasure properly the people we mean to hold most dear?

Above the city, as stars began to climb, the bells of Notre-Dame de la Garde rang the seven o’clock hour for all her sailors left at sea and for all of us on land to mark the passing of the day. The bells tolled along the coast of France, the shadowed waters ran toward Africa, and America lay waiting.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Long before I ever imagined trying to locate Roland Arcieri, I was entranced by my mother’s account of her life. Sleeping in my heart for decades was the desire to share her dramatic stories of love and war and escape, yet as a journalist I needed a great deal more information to ground her account in historical facts. The events she described occurred a long time ago, and while I trusted my source, I would rely on her recollections of violent political upheaval and persecution in Europe under the Nazis only as points of departure. To establish the context of all she had told me demanded extensive reporting and research. In terms of her personal memories also, I needed to be able to state with confidence, for myself as well my readers: this story is true; this is what happened.

Confronting Hitler’s dread transformation of Europe is no simple matter, and nowhere more complex, perhaps, than in France. Research sent me on five trips there, as well as to Germany, one to Canada, and another to Cuba. Besides Janine and Roland, who participated in innumerable hours of interviews, I am beholden to those who shared their experiences or studied the period. Over the years I spent delving into a time that must not be forgotten, my own scope enlarged to include those whose lives intersected my mother’s—too many of whom, like our cousins in Lyon, did not survive to tell their own tales to a new generation.

Indeed, compared to the hellish suffering inflicted on millions under the Nazis, the star-crossed love of two young people was something I wanted to keep in perspective. Or as Rick unforgettably insisted to Ilsa in the 1942 film
Casablanca
, in their own parting scene: “It doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.” Losing Roland felt like a death to Janine, but her escape onto a ship sailing from France at the eleventh hour placed her among the most fortunate few at that place and time. The fact that our family is here today is proof enough to require me to say so.

As a reporter I faced two professional issues. First, I opted after much debate to change the names of a limited number of individuals—among them the man I’ve called Roland Arcieri—to protect their privacy and that of their family members. On the other hand, there were two who requested anonymity and were unhappy to learn that I could not comply because their names were already a matter of public record. A second journalistic concern involved recounting conversations that took place in the distant past. In such instances, I have done my best to relate the dialogue as accurately as possible, based on interviews with those who were present to hear or speak the words once exchanged.

My mother has obviously been my most crucial source, and her recall, standing up to rigorous research, proved remarkable. Her capacity to give of herself has made her a truly exceptional mother, and I have been blessed by her friendship. I am profoundly aware of her courage and generosity in permitting me to explore her personal relationships so honestly, in all their manifold human reality. Indeed, though I have trespassed on the delicate terrain of my parents’ marriage, I hope the resulting portrait reflects my undying love for both my mother and father.

I am indebted, as well, to the true Roland for his assistance with this project, not a facile decision for him either. I was especially appreciative that he joined Mother and me on a research trip from Freiburg to Marseille, during which we toured each locale of their youthful years. Roland furnished pictures and details about his life and his feelings, and while not a man to seek center stage, he responded with candor and humor to all of my questions, however intrusive.

I thank Ronald Goldfarb for his immediate enthusiasm in encouraging me to write their story and for taking it to Judith Gurewich, the wise and extraordinary publisher of Other Press. Judith’s clear vision, dynamism, and dedication took this work to completion. As an editor, she fully endorsed of my aim to contextualize the love story of Janine and Roland within their turbulent times, which made Other Press an ideal home. I deeply appreciate the personal care Judith lavished on every detail. Senior editor Corinna Barsan and production editor Yvonne E. Cárdenas brought scrupulous nurturing to the manuscript and the creation of this volume, and it was a superbly rewarding collaborative experience to work with them both. Also at Other Press, I sincerely thank Paul Kozlowski, Sarah Reidy, Carol Lazare, Sulay Hernandez, and Marjorie DeWitt for all that they have brought to this book. I thank attorney Ellis B. Levine for his thoughtful comments, and the excellent mapmaker Valerie M. Sebestyen for her patience and artistry.