Tell No One Who You Are (18 page)

Fela introduced her and left her “in the good hands of
la directrice,”
but
la directrice
seemed more interested in Régine knowing the rules than in making her feel welcome, and she had an odd habit of ending every sentence with
“n’est-ce pas?”
as she gave them out. She also reminded Régine of Madame André in her inability to smile.

“You will sleep here,
n’est-ce pas?”
she said, as they entered an upstairs dormitory. It was crowded with bunkbeds placed so close together, there was barely room to move between them. Régine wondered where she would keep her clothes.

“Here,”
la directrice
said, “all possessions are shared, clothing, books, everything.” She pointed to a communal dresser: “Socks with socks, sweaters with sweaters, skirts with skirts. You will keep it organized,
n’est-ce pas?”
She motioned to Régine to unpack and left.

As Régine unpacked her duffel bag and put her clothes in the dresser, she felt resentment rising. She had few clothes, but they were hers. Why should she go through a pile each day to find something that fit? When she took out her copy of
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
with Fela’s note of
Je ne t’oublie pas
, she felt
outright revolt. The book and message had meant so much to her during the days when she felt completely alone and she was not about to give it up. She stuffed it back into her duffel bag along with the shoebox of precious photographs and her mother’s mortar and pestle, and pushed the bag under her bed.

Downstairs she learned more of the rules from
la directrice
. “You are only thirteen,
n’est-ce pas?
An older girl,
une grande
, will be assigned to look after you. You are allowed out twice a week: on Saturday afternoons and on Sundays if you have friends to visit. You must be back by eight o’clock,
n’est-ce pas?”

She was relieved later in the afternoon as the girls returned from school or work to find that
la grande
assigned to her was a good-natured girl named Edwige who was not interested in bossing her around.

About fifty girls lived in the hostel. A few of the older ones had come back from the concentration camps, but most, like Régine herself, had passed the war in hiding. Nearly all had been orphaned.

Rosa was an exception. Her father had come back from a death camp and he came to visit her at the hostel. The first time Régine saw him, he looked as haggard and miserable as the survivors she had met at Solidarité. But how lucky Rosa is to have him, Régine thought.

She still hung onto every possibility that her own father and brother would return — even though the concentration camps were empty and it was months since lists of survivors were broadcast. She heard there were still prisoners in Russia. Maybe that’s where they were and couldn’t let anybody know.

School, the other reason Régine had come back to Brussels, turned out to be a disappointment, too. When asked her favorite activities, she mentioned that she enjoyed creating
things with her hands. As a result she was put into an
école professionnelle
, a technical school where the emphasis was on cooking and sewing, not on academic studies. This was not what her father would have wanted for her, she was sure.

Even though she liked the girls and made friends, she noticed from the first day the same silence she had found outside concerning how each had passed the war. Beyond a few words, “She was in a camp” or “I hid out,” no experiences were shared and no questions were asked. No one asked Rosa what camp her father had been in and what it had been like. No one asked anyone about their families. The word “parents” was never used.

It was as if each had decided privately she must not talk about the past, as if that was the only way to survive it and not go mad with grief or anger. The girls even seemed to Régine to overdo the act of seeming carefree, laughing and singing too much. They kept it up very well, supporting each other with jokes and stories.

Only during the night did the bravura break down. Memories and terrors kept under control during the day could erupt, frighteningly, as nightmares. One girl woke up so hysterical she had to be taken away by ambulance.

Slowly during the months she was at the hostel, Régine faced the monstrous possibility that no one in her family might return. She had come to Brussels hoping to get news of their survival and to get the kind of education her father would have wanted for her. Neither was working out.

She also resented the silly regulations of
la directrice
who, Régine discovered, was secretly called
Mademoiselle N’est-ce pas
by the girls. She hated the curfews on Saturdays when she was supposed to be back earlier than Edwige when they went out
together. Each time she broke curfew she was called into the office of
la directrice
.

On Sundays she visited Fela and Edgar, the Saktregers, or Madame Sadowski, but it was not like living with a family. After a particularly nasty confrontation with
la directrice
, she made a decision and went to inform Fela.

“I want to go back to live with Pierre and Sylvie.”

They loved her and she needed that love. When her father or brother came back — she still refused to say “if” — Fela would know where to find her.

I
N THE LONG WINTER OF 1945-46
, everything at the farm was familiar yet different.

The war in Europe had been over for half a year and Régine no longer had to pretend to be someone else. This time she did not travel with a stranger but made her own way by train and bus as far as Limont where the Wathieus came to meet her, like proud parents meeting a returning daughter.

It was two years almost to the day since the first time she had been taken to the little hamlet of Lagrange. It was winter again in Liège and the dirt road that ran from the village to the farm was frozen and covered with icy patches, just as on that day in 1943. When the farm appeared in the distance, Régine felt she was traveling backward in time.

Pierre and Sylvie were exactly the same, too. Pierre wore a jacket over his shirt and trousers. Sylvie wore a dark skirt almost to the ground. On their feet were the same wooden clogs. In the kitchen the three sat down at the table to some freshly baked bread with jam. Bricks were warming in the oven, just as in the old days, and Tommy, the dog, was asleep on the floor. But other things had changed. Régine had become a young woman. Pierre and Sylvie noticed and remarked on it.

As Régine looked around the familiar room, she saw something new on the wall near the clock and crucifix. It was
a gold-framed certificate with fancy lettering. She went over for a closer look and read the names of Pierre and Sylvie Wathieu and the inscription:
pour leur service à la patrie en temps de guerre
— for their service to the country in time of war.

She turned, smiling, to the Wathieus. “Is this because of me?” she asked.

The couple smiled back. “We’re not heroes,” Pierre said, proud but embarrassed. “We only did what was right.”

“We are more honored to have you back in our home,” Sylvie added. “This means more to us than any award. You’re our daughter now.”

Régine did not answer. She did not know how to tell them she would never be a daughter to anyone, except to her own parents.

The subject of adoption was never discussed openly because in the minds of Pierre and Sylvie, there was nothing to discuss. Régine had returned to them. She would become their adoptive daughter. She would be baptized, sent to catechism lessons and confirmed as a Catholic. Then they would legally adopt her.

She lay awake that first night, thinking for hours about religion. How could anyone believe there was a god? If God existed, why did He allow the concentration camps to exist? Why did He permit so much horror? She had made a promise to herself that if her father came back, she would believe in God. But he hadn’t come back. No, she decided. She could not believe in God. Not my mother’s God, even less the God of Pierre and Sylvie.

How could she say this to the Wathieus? They were good people. They loved her. But they would never understand.

The following Sunday she went to church with them just as she had done when she was Augusta. But after that, she
made up excuses not to go. She pleaded menstruation pains when she could.

Other times, on a Saturday night she developed a painful headache. She would go downstairs into the kitchen on a Sunday morning and announce that she was too sick to have breakfast, and then go back upstairs to bed. When she heard the door close downstairs, she jumped out of bed and looked out the window to see Pierre and Sylvie walking alone along the dirt road toward the village church. Did they believe her?

Miraculously, her headaches disappeared by Sunday evening. That was when the village held a weekly dance. The hall was decorated with streamers, a band played accordion music, and all week Régine looked forward to being asked to dance.

She wore her best dress and went with Irene, who was now twenty years old and used to dancing. Pierre and Sylvie took turns serving as chaperons. They sat in chairs along the wall facing the dance floor, and kept watch on the boys who approached Régine. She preferred Pierre as chaperon because he let her stay later at the dances than did Sylvie.

At such times she did not mind Pierre and Sylvie thinking of her as their daughter. She liked being back with them and helping them in the farmwork, although she no longer had as much time for it. Fela had agreed to her going back to live with the Wathieus on condition she continue her education. The closest secondary school was a two-hour bus trip every day and there was homework to do.

If only she could go on living with them without being baptized or adopted, but they kept making references to the adoption. Four months had passed since she had returned to the farm and she did not think she could stall much longer.

On March 16, 1946, she had her fourteenth birthday. A few days later she was looking out the window and she saw Irene ride up on her bicycle. Irene came in out of breath,
almost too excited to speak. The Wathieus had no phone and had arranged for Irene’s parents to take urgent messages. Irene now had such a message. A woman had called from Brussels trying to reach Régine.

“She wants you to call her back as soon as possible,” Irene said. “It’s something about your family.”

Régine and Sylvie hurried to the house at the end of the village to make the return call. The phone rang twice, then three times. Finally Fela’s voice came crackling over the wire. At first Régine did not understand and Fela had to repeat the news:
Oncle Shlomo had been found
.

It was not clear who had found whom, but that hardly mattered. Just as Régine had given the International Red Cross her uncle’s name, he had done the same in England in the hope of locating members of his sister’s family.

R
ÉGINE SAT AT THE FRONT
of the airplane. She was nervous and unable to eat the food brought by the stewardess. She sat upright, unable to relax. It was her second trip over water, but her first time on an airplane.

She reached under the seat and pulled out her duffel bag. She had packed her most prized possessions: the mortar and pestle, her copy of
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
, the photographs. She looked through the photographs again. Would she ever know exactly what happened to Léon? To her mother? To her father? Slowly during the last months she had been at the Wathieus’ she had come to accept that none of them might return. Information of what went on in the German concentration camps was coming out, horrible and unbelievable, but forcing acknowledgment.

She was looking for something else, and now she found it — a small autograph book.

She put the duffel bag away and opened the book to the first page and read the entry:

Never forget

that life is a daily struggle
.

Never give in to despair
.

Disappointments that we may have

teach us better to deal with life
.

Faith in a better world

is a great force for Man and his endeavors
.

Don’t take to heart the momentary failures

As long as you are certain of reaching your goal
.

Fela

Edgar

Régine smiled, thinking how fat Fela had become, until Fela explained laughing that she and Edgar were going to have a baby.

The three of them had hugged and kissed on the tarmac and promised to keep in touch. Her last sight of them through the porthole had been comforting. They looked so happy together. They will always be my friends, she thought. They bring me closer to my father.

She had sobbed quietly to be leaving them as the plane moved off, taking her to an unknown country.

Pierre and Sylvie had also cried when she left them. Despite their differences, they too would remain friends for life. Régine promised to visit them every time she went back to Belgium. She would never forget all they had done for her.

When Fela’s phone call came, they knew immediately what it meant: this time they had really lost their little girl. They also understood it was right that Régine should leave, even though her father had not been found.

“You will be with your family,” Pierre said. “That’s where you belong.”

Although Régine was sad to be leaving Pierre and Sylvie, she was also enormously relieved not to have been baptized a Catholic. Her family had suffered and died because they were Jewish. She must not forsake their memory.

Régine stayed again at Les Hirondelles while she went about collecting all the necessary papers for her departure. The Joint Distribution Committee, an aid organization, gave
her money to buy a suitcase for her trip. She was relieved to find that
la directrice
had been replaced by someone else, who did not say
“n’est-ce pas?”
all the time. Rosa was still staying there, too, and she and Régine went to the photography studio together to have a souvenir picture taken of themselves.