Anne Frank and Me (13 page)

“Water for the children! Water for the children!”

From the corner of her eye, Nicole saw Bubbe Einhorn urge Claire forward as the police retreated. Mme. Einhorn raised her voice. “Jewish sisters!” she cried, pointing beyond the gate to a building across the street. “There is a grocery. Let us get water for the children!”

“Halt!” the police yelled, but the women moved as one, pushing into them. In the confusion, Nicole saw Claire's red hair flash by. Then Claire was out the gate.

More cops charged over. They swung truncheons at the crowd. Then a volley of gunfire rang out. Their guns were pointed in the air, but still, the frightening reverberations, and the knowledge that the next volley might be aimed lower, was enough to convince the women that their quest was futile.

The demonstration broke up as quickly as it had begun. Yet Nicole felt strangely happy. No matter what happened now, Claire had escaped. One redheaded Jewish girl had beaten them. As she went back to the stands, Nicole looked for the girl with the golden hair. She wanted to thank her for helping Claire. But she didn't see her anywhere.

sixteen

“Nicole!” Mme. Einhorn was shaking her. Nicole looked up from her journal. “Your name was just announced.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, they said—wait, it's coming on again.”

“Attention, attention,” a tinny voice announced on the public address system. “Mlle. Nicole Bernhardt is to report to the control area at section one hundred at once. Mlle. Nicole Bernhardt to section one hundred at once.”

“My father!” Nicole's heart swelled with hope, her fatigue instantly vanished. Mme. Einhorn tried to smile. Nicole embraced her, then hesitated. Claire's mother had been wonderful to her. “I can't just leave you and Bubbe Einhorn here. She is so sick.”

“Nicole, you must go,” Mme. Einhorn insisted.

“But—”

“Go.”

Nicole kissed Bubbe Einhorn's wrinkled cheek. “I'll tell them to come help. If it's my father, we'll be back. I promise.” She grabbed her book bag and her journal, took one last look at Mme. and Bubbe Einhorn, then dodged through the crowd toward section 100.

There, like some dream, stood her father. He looked strong and clean, but his face was a mask of sorrow. He held out his arms to her. She hesitated. “I'm so disgusting, Papa,” she whispered.

He enveloped her in his arms. “Oh, my beautiful child,” he crooned. “You could never be disgusting. I'm so sorry. I couldn't get in sooner. They wouldn't let anyone in.” Nicole realized he was weeping.

“It's all right, Papa. It's not your fault.”

A French cop approached them. “Daughter of Dr. Jean Bernhardt, may I see your identity card, please?” Nicole handed it to him. “I apologize, mademoiselle, for your inconvenience. We are only detaining foreigners who do not belong in France and undermine our nation.” He bowed slightly to her father. “Docteur Bernhardt, I apologize again. Of course, you are both free to leave.”

Nicole turned to her father. “Papa, Bubbe Einhorn is very sick. I promised that you'd help her.”

“Of course. They have finally let in a few doctors, but not nearly enough. We must stay and help.”

“Not too long, Papa. Please, it's so disgusting here. I can't stand it.”

Her father took her by the shoulders. “Yes, you can.”

She said nothing. But all through the night, she helped her father tend to the sick, beginning with the Einhorns. Dr. Bernhardt gave Bubbe Einhorn medicine to stop her cramps. “I will do everything in my power to get you both released,” he promised.

“There is nothing you can do,” Mme. Einhorn replied. “There is nothing anyone can do.”

“If anyone can help, it is my father.” Nicole hugged Claire's mother. “Do not lose hope. Please.”

From the Einhorns they moved on to a woman in labor. On the floor of the Vel, surrounded by a cordon of women, Nicole helped her father deliver the baby—a perfect little girl who gave a lusty cry. Even in that horrid place, it was an awesome moment.

But Nicole had no time to think about the baby, because the next patient was in the midst of a terrible asthma attack. As hard as Dr. Bernhardt tried, he could not save the man, who choked to death in his arms. Her father quickly said Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead. Nicole wept softly. They moved on to treat more of the living.

It felt to Nicole as if a lifetime had passed when she and her father finally stepped out onto the rue Nelaton. It was just before dawn. 17 July 1942. A new day.

Amazing. The streets were peaceful, empty. How could it be? People must have heard the news, or seen the buses heading to the Vel. In the past, Nicole knew, Parisians had risen up in armed fury over much less than this atrocity. But the city slept, as if the 8,000 Jews in the Vel did not exist.

In silence, they walked home, crossing the Seine, climbing the stone staircase that Nicole had descended twenty-four hours earlier. She felt like an animal who had shed one skin and donned another, tougher one. All doubt was gone. The man holding her hand was her father and had always been her father. She was and always had been Nicole Bernhardt, born in 1927, who lived in Paris, France. A Jew.

Once, she had imagined that she lived in the future, in America. But like a wisp of smoke that rises from dying embers and disappears on a spring wind, it was gone forever.

seventeen

eighteen

Nicole huddled in her winter coat on the living room window seat, looking down on the rainy, blustery November morning. A few miserable-looking pedestrians fought the elements. Still, her parents allowed her to go outside so infrequently that Nicole would have given anything to feel the rain pelting her.

She checked her watch as the familiar anxious feeling in the pit of her stomach grew. Jacques had promised to come by before he went to school. He was already ten minutes late. A few more minutes and it meant he wouldn't come at all. Though he swore he loved her as much as ever, Nicole was feeling increasingly insecure about their relationship—the less freedom she had, the more insecure she became.

The latest blow was that her father had announced that she and Liz-Bette could no longer go to school because of the danger of a tuberculosis outbreak. It was infuriating. She loved walking to and from school with Jacques, their arms linked. She even loved how some people would stare at them—the handsome blond boy and the Jewish girl with the yellow star. School had been one of the few places the Nazis still allowed Jews to go. Now, her parents—not the Germans—had taken that away from her. How could they?

As she stared down at the street, Liz-Bette began to play the violin in her bedroom, the Hatikva theme from Smetana's “The Moldau.” Nicole winced at the usual assortment of incorrect notes. “Can you please for once play another song?” Nicole called.

Liz-Bette came into the living room, violin under her arm. “It's the only piece I know by heart. My teacher won't teach me anymore because I'm Jewish. Do you find that fair? Because I don't.”

Nicole didn't answer. She looked down the street for Jacques again. It was empty.

“Nicole?”

“What?”

“Do you ever ... do you ever wish you weren't Jewish?”

Nicole finally turned to regard her sister, sitting on the couch. She looked tiny, in two oversized sweaters. “Why are you asking?”

“It would be very terrible, I know it would.” Liz-Bette bit nervously at her lower lip. “I am a terrible person.”

Nicole went to sit beside her. “Did something happen?”

“Do you remember Liliane Stryker? She moved here from Belgium. She was the prettiest girl in my form. I was jealous because I thought I was only second prettiest. I thought maybe we were both safe because we have blue eyes and blond hair. But the police came right into our class at school and took her away on a big bus, and we're never going to see her again. Ever since then, I have been wishing I was a Catholic girl so that no one will take me away on a big bus.”

“No one is going to take you away, Liz-Bette.”

“How do you know?”

“Well, for one thing, we are French and they are deporting very few French Jews. You remember what happened with me at the Vel. And for another, Papa has an Ausweis.”

Liz-Bette looked thoughtful. “That's true. I like being Jewish, Nicole. I just don't like being scared. You won't tell Papa?”

“I won‘t,” Nicole promised.

The front door opened, and Dr. Bernhardt stepped into the apartment. He had been upstairs writing in his study. “Two tragic faces,” he commented. “Liz-Bette, don't you have schoolwork to do?”

“Yes, Papa,” Liz-Bette said obediently. “Maman is a much harder teacher at home than any of my real teachers were at school.” She trudged off to her room. Nicole went back to the window.

No sign of Jacques. It meant she wouldn't see him until after school at the earliest. Idly, she swiped her index finger along the window glass, writing his name in the condensation that had begun to form.

“You were expecting Jacques, little one?” Dr. Bernhardt asked.

Nicole was afraid that if she answered, she would cry. And she didn't want to cry. So she changed the subject. “Please say you'll let us go back to school soon, Papa.”

“Perhaps you see the humor in that remark. You were never too keen on going to school before.”

Nicole sighed and turned back to the window. It was raining harder than ever.

“Nicole?”

“Yes, Papa?”

“I understand how difficult this is for you.”

Did he really? How could he? No one had taken away every bit of his freedom when he was young.

“Yes, Papa.”

He considered her for a moment. “I am on my way to visit patients at one of the UGIF old age homes. Would you like to come with me?”

“I don't understand. If you won't allow me to go to school because you are concerned about a tuberculosis epidemic—”

“That is only a partial truth,” her father admitted. He came to her. “Ever since the Vel d‘Hiv roundup, your mother has been terrified of letting you and Liz-Bette out of her sight. I persuaded her to let you girls return to school this fall. But the incident with the Stryker girl was too much even for me. We feel safer with you here. I am sure that your mother will feel relatively safe to have you out with your papa. Will you come with me?”

Nicole readily agreed. She'd go anywhere if it meant getting out of the apartment. She hurried to get her identity card before her father could change his mind.