The Sweetness of Forgetting (26 page)

We ask the young woman behind the counter whether we can speak with the owner, and a moment later, a tall, middle-aged man with caramel skin and jet-black hair graying at the temples emerges from a back room. He’s wearing a stark white baker’s apron over perfectly pressed khaki slacks and a pale blue button-down shirt.

“Ah yes, Sahib telephoned from the mosque and told me you would be coming,” the man says after greeting the four of us. “I am Hassan Romyo, and you are most welcome here. But I am afraid I may not be able to help you.”

My heart sinks. “Sir, do you know where the recipe for the pies with the star lattice crust comes from?” I ask in a small voice, pointing to the pies in the display case.

He shakes his head. “I have owned this bakery for twenty years now,” he tells me, “and the recipe has been here as long as I can remember. My mother before me made it too, but she died long ago. I thought always that it was a family recipe.”

“It’s a Jewish recipe,” Alain interjects softly. Monsieur Romyo looks at him with raised eyebrows. “It comes from my grandmother’s mother, in Poland, many years ago.”

“Jewish?” Monsieur Romyo asks. “And Polish? Are you quite certain?”

Alain nods. “It is the exact same recipe my grandparents made in their bakery, before World War Two. We believe there is a chance my sister may have taught your family how to make this pie, during the war.”

Monsieur Romyo looks at Alain for a long time and then nods. “
Alors.
My parents have both died, but they were young in the war. Just children. They would not remember. But my mother’s uncle, he may know.”

“Is he here?” I ask.

Monsieur Romyo laughs. “No, madame. He is very old. He is seventy-nine.”

“Seventy-nine is not old,” Henri mutters under his breath behind me, but Monsieur Romyo doesn’t seem to hear him.

“I will telephone him now,” he says. “But he is nearly deaf, you understand? It is difficult to talk with him.”

“Please try,” I say in a small voice.

He nods. “Now I admit I am curious too.”

He crosses behind the counter, picks up a cell phone, and scrolls through the phone’s address book. He pushes Send a moment later and lifts the phone to his ear.

It’s not until I hear him say
“Hallo? Oncle Nabi?”
that I realize I’ve been holding my breath. I exhale slowly.

I listen without understanding as he speaks loudly into the phone in French, repeating himself several times. Finally, he puts his hand over the mouthpiece and addresses me. “This tart of stars,” he says, “my uncle Nabi says his family learned it from a young woman.”

Alain and I exchange glances. “When?” I ask urgently.

Monsieur Romyo says something else into the phone, then he repeats himself more loudly. He puts his hand over the receiver once more. “During
l’année mille neuf cents quarante-deux,
” he says. “Nineteen forty-two.”

I gasp. “Is it possible . . . ?” I ask Alain, my voice trailing off. I turn to Monsieur Romyo. “Does your uncle remember anything about this woman?”

I watch as he repeats my question, in French, over the phone. A moment later, he looks up at us again. “Rose,” he says.
“Elle s’est appelée Rose.”

“What?” I ask Alain in a panic.

Alain turns to me with a smile. “He says that the woman’s name was Rose.”

“That’s my grandmother,” I murmur, looking at Monsieur Romyo.

He nods, then he says something else into the phone and listens for a moment. He hangs up and scratches his head. “This is all very unusual,” he says. He glances at Alain and then back at me. “All of these years, I had no idea . . .” His voice trails off and
he clears his throat. “My uncle, Nabi Haddam, would like you to visit him right away.
D’accord?
”

“Merci. D’accord,”
Alain agrees instantly. He glances at me. “Okay,” he translates. “We will go now.”

Five minutes later, Simon, Henri, Alain, and I are in a cab heading south, toward an address on the rue des Lyonnais, which Monsieur Romyo assured us was close by. I check my watch again. It’s 8:25. We’ll barely make our flight, but right now, this feels like something we have to do.

I’m shaking by the time we pull up to Nabi Haddam’s apartment building. He’s already waiting outside for us. I know from what Mr. Romyo told us that he’s just a year younger than Alain, but he looks like he’s from a different generation entirely. His hair is jet-black and his face isn’t nearly as lined as my uncle’s. He’s dressed in a gray suit, and his hands are clasped together. As we step out of the car, he stares at me.

“You are her granddaughter,” he says haltingly, before we’ve had a chance to introduce ourselves. “You are the granddaughter of Rose.”

I take a deep breath. “Yes.”

He smiles and strides quickly over. He kisses me on both cheeks. “You are a mirror image,” he says. There are tears in his eyes as he pulls away.

Alain introduces himself as Rose’s brother, and Henri and Simon say hello too. I tell Monsieur Haddam that my name is Hope.

“It is right, this name,” he murmurs. “For your grandmother, she survived because of hope.” He blinks a few times and smiles. “Please, come in.”

He gestures to the door of the building, punches in a code, and leads us into a dark hallway. A door to the left is ajar, and he pushes it open farther for us. “My home,” he says, gesturing around. “You are welcome here.”

Once we’re seated, in a dimly lit room lined with books and photographs of who I’m guessing are Monsieur Haddam’s family members, Alain leans forward. “How did you know my sister? Rose?”

“Pardon?” he says. He blinks a few times and says, “I am nearly
sourd
. Deaf. I am sorry.”

Alain repeats the question loudly, and this time, Monsieur Haddam nods.

He smiles and leans back in his chair. He looks at Alain for a long time before answering. “You are her younger brother? You had eleven years in 1942?”

“Oui,”
Alain says.

“She talked of you often,” he says simply.

“She did?” Alain asks in a whisper.

Monsieur Haddam nods. “I think it is one reason why she was so kind to me. I had just ten years old that year, you see. She told me often that I made her think of you.”

Alain looks down, and I know he’s struggling not to cry in front of the other men.

“She thought you were all lost,” Monsieur Haddam says after a moment. “I think her heart, it was broken, because of this. She often cried herself to sleep, and she said your names as she wept.”

When Alain looks up again, there’s a single tear rolling down his right cheek. He brushes it away. “I thought she was lost too,” he says. “All these years.”

Monsieur Haddam turns to me. “You are her granddaughter,” he says. “And so, she lived?”

“She lived,” I say softly.

“Still, she is alive?”

I pause. “Yes.” I’m about to tell him that she’s had a stroke, but I swallow the words. I’m not sure whether it’s because I’m not ready to acknowledge the fact or because I don’t want to ruin Monsieur Haddam’s happy ending. “How . . . What happened?” I finally ask.

Monsieur Haddam smiles. “Can I get any of you a cup of tea?” he asks.

We all shake our heads. The men are as eager as I am to hear the story.

“Very well,” Monsieur Haddam says. “I will tell you.” He takes a deep breath. “She came to us in July of 1942. The night those terrible roundups began.”

“The Vel’ d’Hiv,” I say.

Monsieur Haddam nods. “Yes. Before that, I think many people were blind to what was happening. Even after that, many people remained blind. But Rose, she knew it was coming. And she came to us for sanctuary.

“My family, we took her in. She told the officials at the mosque that her mother’s family were bakers. So they asked us if we could provide her refuge for a time. That was a time in the world when a shared profession meant more than different religions.

“I looked up to Rose, in a way that concerned my father at first, because she was different, and I was not supposed to have such admiration for a young woman from a different world,” he continues. “But she was kind and gentle and taught me many things. And in time, I think my parents understood that she was not so different from us after all.”

He pauses for a moment, his head bent. Finally, he sighs and continues. “She lived with us, as a Muslim, for two months. Every morning and every night, she said our prayers with us, which made my parents happy. But she still prayed to her God too; I heard her every night, long into the night, asking for the protection of the people she loved. It seems that in you, God answered her prayers.” He smiles at Alain, who covers his face with his hands and looks away.

“We taught her many things, about Islam and about baking,” Monsieur Haddam continues. “And in turn, she taught us many things. She worked in our bakery. She and my mother spent
many hours in the kitchen, whispering to each other. I do not know what about; my mother would always say it was woman talk. But Rose, she taught us the
tarte des étoiles,
the star pie that brought you here to me today. It was her favorite, and it was my favorite too, because Rose told me the story.”

“What story?” I ask.

Monsieur Haddam looks surprised. “The story of why she made the crust of stars.”

Alain and I exchange looks. “Why?” I ask. “What’s the story?”

“You do not know?” Monsieur Haddam asks. When Alain and I shake our heads, he continues. “It was because it made her think of her true love’s promise to love her as long as there were stars in the sky.”

I look at Alain. “Jacob,” I whisper. He nods. All these years that I’ve been making Star Pies, I realize, I’ve been baking a tribute to a man I never knew existed. A small noise rises from the back of my throat as I choke back a sob that seems to come from nowhere.

“There were many nights when it was not safe to be outside, or when the clouds covered the city, or when smoke hung thick in the air,” Monsieur Haddam continues. “On those nights that Rose could not see the stars, she said she needed comfort in something. And so she began putting the stars in her tarts. Years later, when I was a young man, my mother used to bake me these same pies and remind me that true love is worth everything. It was not a common concept in those days; there were many arranged marriages. But she was right. And I waited. I married the love of my life. And so for the rest of my days, I have made the
tartes des étoiles
in honor of Rose. And I taught my children, and my cousins, and the next generation, to do the same, to remember to wait for love, like Rose did. Like I did.

“So then, did Rose reunite with the man she loved?” Monsieur Haddam asks after a moment. “After the war?”

Alain and I exchange looks. “No,” I say, feeling the weight
of the loss pressing against my chest. Monsieur Haddam looks down and shakes his head sadly.

Beside me, Henri clears his throat. I’d become so enraptured by Monsieur Haddam’s story that I’d almost forgotten that he and Simon were still here. “So how did she get out of Paris?” he asks.

Monsieur Haddam shakes his head. “It is impossible to know for sure. Part of the reason that the mosque was able to save many people was that everything was shrouded in secrecy. The Koran teaches us to give to those in need and to do it quietly, for God will know your deeds. For that reason, and because of the danger involved, no one talked of these things, even then. Certainly not to a ten-year-old boy. But from what I have learned since that time, I believe many of the Jews we sheltered were brought through the catacombs to the river Seine. Perhaps she was smuggled onto a barge that took her down the river to Dijon. Or taken with false papers across the line of demarcation.”

“Was that not expensive?” Henri asks. “Getting false papers? Getting across the line?” He turns to me and adds, “My family could not get out, because of the expense.”

“Yes,” Monsieur Haddam replies. “But the mosque helped with papers. That much I know. And the man she loved, Jacob? He left her with money. She sewed it into the lining of one of her dresses. My mother helped her.

“Once she was in the unoccupied zone, it would have been easier for her to get out of the country,” Monsieur Haddam continues. “Here in Paris, she lived as a Muslim with false papers. But in Dijon, or wherever she went, she likely filled out a census form with the
gendarmerie.
Because she was French, she was likely able to pay a small bribe and obtain papers listing her as Catholic. From there, she could have made it to Spain.”

“She met my grandfather in Spain,” I say.

“Your grandfather is not Jacob?” Monsieur Haddam asks
with a frown. “It seems impossible that she loved another so soon.”

“No,” I say softly. “My grandfather’s name was Ted.”

He bows his head. “So she married another.” He pauses. “I always assumed Rose perished,” he says. “So many did in those days. I always believed she would have made contact after the war, if she had lived. But perhaps she wanted only to forget this life.”

I think of what Gavin said about some Holocaust survivors wanting to start over when they believed they’d lost everything.