Sarah's Key (27 page)

I kicked off my sandals and lay down on the soft, beige sofa. The fullness of the day weighed upon me like lead. I shut my eyes and was immediately startled back to reality by the phone. It was my sister, calling from her office overlooking Central Park. I imagined her behind her vast desk, her reading glasses perched on the end of her nose.

Briefly, I told her I had not gone through with the abortion.

“Oh, my God,” breathed Charla. “You didn’t do it.”

“I couldn’t,” I said. “It was impossible.”

I could hear her smiling down the phone, that wide, irresistible, smile.

“You brave, wonderful girl,” she said. “I’m proud of you, honey.”

“Bertrand still doesn’t know,” I said. “He won’t be back till later on this evening. He probably thinks I’ve done it.”

A transatlantic pause.

“You will tell him, won’t you?”

“Of course. I’ll have to, at some point.”

After my conversation with my sister, I lay on the sofa for a long time, my hand folded over my stomach like a protective shield. Little by little, I felt vitality pumping back into me.

As ever, I thought of Sarah Starzynski, and of what I now knew. I had not needed to tape Gaspard Dufaure. Nor jot anything down. It was all written inside me.

A

SMALL, NEAT HOUSE ON the outskirts of Orléans. Prim flower beds. An old, placid dog with failing eyesight. A little old lady cutting up vegetables at the sink, and who nodded at me as I came in.

Gaspard Dufaure’s gruff voice. His blue-veined hand patting the dog’s wizened head. And what he had said.

“My brother and I knew there had been trouble during the war. But we were small then, and we didn’t remember what the trouble was. It was only after my grandparents died that I found out from my father that Sarah Dufaure was in fact called Starzynski, and that she was Jewish. My grandparents had hidden her for all those years. There was something sad about Sarah, she was not a joyful, outgoing person. She was hard to get through to. We had been told she had been adopted by my grandparents because her parents had died during the war. That’s all we knew. But we could tell she was different. When she came to church with us, her lips never moved during the ‘Our Father.’ She never prayed. She never received communion. She would stare in front of her with a frozen expression that frightened me. My grandparents would smile at us firmly and tell us to leave her alone. My parents did the same. Little by little, Sarah became part of our lives, the older sister we never had. And she grew into a lovely, melancholy young girl. She was very serious, mature for her years. Sometimes, after the war, we would go to Paris, with my parents, but Sarah never wanted to come. She said she hated Paris. She said she never wanted to go back there again.”

“Did she ever talk about her brother? Her parents?” I asked.

Gaspard shook his head.

“Never. I only heard about her brother, and what happened, from my father, forty years ago. When I was living with her, I never knew.”

Nathalie Dufaure’s voice piped up.

“What happened to her brother?” she asked.

Gaspard Dufaure glanced at his fascinated granddaughter, hanging on to every word. Then he looked at his wife, who had not spoken during the entire conversation, but who looked on benignly.

“I will tell you about it another time, Natou. It’s a very sad story.”

There was a long pause.

“Monsieur Dufaure,” I said, “I need to know where Sarah Starzynski is now. This is why I have come to see you. Can you help me?”

Gaspard Dufaure scratched his head and shot me a quizzical look.

“What
I
really need to know, Mademoiselle Jarmond,” he grinned, “is why this is so important to you.”

T

HE PHONE RANG AGAIN. It was Zoë from Long Island. She was having a great time, the weather was fine, she had a tan, a new bicycle, her cousin Cooper was “neat,” but she missed me. I told her I missed her, too, that I’d be with her in less than ten days. Then she lowered her voice and asked if I had made any progress in locating Sarah Starzynski. I had to smile at the seriousness of her tone. I said that as a matter of fact, I had made progress, and I was going to tell her about it very quickly.

“Oh, Mom, what progress?” she panted. “I have to know! Now!”

“All right,” I said, giving in to her enthusiasm. “Today I met a man who knew her well as a young girl. He told me that Sarah left France in 1952 for New York City, to become a nanny for an American family.”

Zoë whooped.

“You mean she’s in the States?”

“I guess so,” I said.

A little silence.

“How are you going to find her in the States, Mom?” she asked, her voice clearly less cheerful. “The States are so much bigger than France.”

“God knows, honey,” I sighed. I kissed her fervently through the phone, sent all my love, and hung up.

“What
I
really need to know, Mademoiselle Jarmond, is why this is so important to you.” I had decided, on the spur of the moment, to tell Gaspard Dufaure the truth. How Sarah Starzynski had come into my life. How I had discovered her terrible secret. And how she was linked to my in-laws. How, now that I knew about the events of the summer of 1942 (both the public events—the Vel’ d’Hiv’, Beaune-la-Rolande—and the private ones—little Michel Starzynski’s death in the Tézac apartment), finding Sarah had become a major goal, something I strove for with all my might.

Gaspard Dufaure had been surprised at my doggedness. Why find her, what for? he had asked, shaking his grizzled head. I had replied, to tell her we care, to tell her we have not forgotten. “We,” he had smiled, who was the “we”—my family-in-law, the French people? And then I had retorted, slightly irritated by his grin: no, me, just me, I wanted to say sorry, I wanted to tell her I could not forget the roundup, the camp, Michel’s death, and the direct train to Auschwitz that had taken her parents away forever. Sorry for what? he had retaliated, why should I, an American, feel sorry, hadn’t my fellow countrymen freed France in June 1944? I had nothing to be sorry for, he laughed.

I had looked at him straight in the eyes.

“Sorry for not knowing. Sorry for being forty-five years old and not knowing.”

S

ARAH HAD LEFT FRANCE in late 1952. She had gone to America.

“Why the States?” I asked.

“She told us she had to get away, to a place that had not been touched directly by the Holocaust, in the way France was. We were all upset. Especially my grandparents. They loved her like the daughter they never had. But she would not be swayed. She left. And she never came back. At least, not that I know of.”

“Then what happened to her?” I asked, sounding like Nathalie, using the same fervor, the same earnestness.

Gaspard Dufaure shrugged, sighed deeply. He had gotten up, followed by the blind, old dog. His wife had made me another cup of powerful, harsh coffee. Their granddaughter had remained silent, curled up in the armchair, her eyes going from him to me in a silent, endearing manner. She would remember this, I thought. She would remember it all.

Her grandfather came to sit down again with a grunt, handing me the coffee. He had looked around the small room, the faded photographs on the wall, the tired furniture. He had scratched his head and sighed. I waited, and Nathalie waited. Then he spoke at last.

They had never heard from Sarah after 1955.

“She wrote a couple of letters to my grandparents. And a year later, she sent a card to say she was getting married. I remember my father telling us Sarah was marrying a Yankee.” Gaspard smiled. “We were delighted for her. But then, there were no more calls, no more letters. Ever again. My grandparents tried to trace her. They did all they could to find her, called New York, wrote letters, sent telegrams. They tried to locate her husband. Nothing. Sarah had disappeared. It was dreadful for them. They waited, and waited, year after year, for a sign, a call, a card. Nothing came. Then my grandfather passed away in the early sixties, followed by my grandmother, a few years later. I think their hearts were broken.”

“You know your grandparents could be declared ‘Righteous among the Nations,’ ” I said.

“What does that mean?” he asked, puzzled.

“The Yad Vashem Institute in Jerusalem gives medals to those, non-Jewish, who saved Jews during the war. It can also be obtained posthumously.”

He cleared his throat, looking away from me.

“Just find her. Please find her, Mademoiselle Jarmond. Tell her I miss her. My brother Nicolas, too. Tell her we send all our love.”

Before I left, he handed me a letter.

“My grandmother wrote this to my father, after the war. Maybe you’d like to look at it. You can give it back to Nathalie, when you’ve read it.”

L

ATER ON, AT HOME, alone, I deciphered the old-fashioned handwriting. As I read, I cried. I managed to calm down, wiped away my tears, blew my nose.

Then I called Edouard and read it out loud to him on the phone. He sounded like he was crying, but he appeared to be doing everything he could to make me think he wasn’t. He thanked me with a strangled voice and hung up.

September 8, 1946

Alain, my dear son,

When Sarah came back last week from spending the summer with you and Henriette, she had pink cheeks . . . and a smile. Jules and I were amazed, and thrilled. She will be writing to you herself to thank you, but I wanted to tell you how grateful I am for your help and hospitality. These have been four grim years, as you know. Four years of captivity, of fear, of deprivation. For all of us, for our country. Four years that have taken their toll, on Jules and me, but especially on Sarah. I do not think she has ever gotten over what happened in the summer of 1942, when we took her back to her family’s apartment in the Marais. That day, something broke within her. Something collapsed.

None of this has been easy, and your support has been invaluable. Hiding Sarah from the enemy, keeping her safe from that long ago summer all the way to the Armistice, has been horrendous. But Sarah now has a family. We are her family. Your sons, Gaspard and Nicolas, are her brothers. She is a Dufaure. She bears our name.