Broken for You (44 page)

The next day, Sylvie met them at the entrance. She held a small notebook. "They went to Drancy," she said, handing the notebook over. "Look."

"#29
3
:
July
17
,1942,"
Margaret read to herself.
"Madame Irma Mariska Sendler; born
4
April 1912 (Rovno, Poland); current resident Marais district, Paris; Twenty-two thousand francs (22,000); 40pounds sterling; 1 platinum and diamond ring; 1 gold wedding ring; 1 gold watch.
" Margaret handed the notebook back to Sylvie. She felt nauseous.

"She must have been evacuated with her daughter," Sylvie said. "Listen. The next entry reads: '#294; July 17, 1942; Lucille Sendler; born
10
December 1937. Marais district, Paris. Costume jewelry only. Nothing of value."

"What do we do now?" Gus asked. "She was four," Margaret muttered.
Only four.
"Convoy lists. I think we should look at those next. If we find them on one of the convoys, then we can know which camp they went to. That will help narrow the search."

Susan insisted on joining them. "Please let me help. I've seen enough sights. And," she added in the voice she always used when she was in her professional mode, her
Cherry Ames, War Nurse
voice, "I don't like the way you're pushing yourself, Margaret."

They spent their remaining days in Paris examining lists of names. They were beautiful names, Margaret thought, all of
them: Azaria, Berman, Vogel, Stein . . .
She could not bring herself to scan the names with the speed and efficacy that Sylvie and the others mastered; she felt compelled instead to read the names slowly, trying to picture the people to whom the names belonged.
Abovitz, Weisman, Friedman, Morgensztern . . .
She moved the muscles of her tongue and mouth in a conscious and attentive way, as if the names were poems. Meditations. As if she had known them all. Made them all. As if she were God, numbering the hairs on their heads.
Pick
o
v
a
, Cohen . . .

Her mother and Daniel drifted in and settled on either side of her, silent at first. Watching.

Dreyfuss, Blumenthal, Torsch, Mik
o
va.

After a while Margaret began to whisper the names, and then half-speak them, so that over time the process began to feel as it should: at first like an act of prayer, and then finally like an act of contrition. Daniel and her mother began speaking the names with her.

Rabinek, Gettelman, Singer, Schwartz, Bronickj, Eszenyi, Fischl, Fabry . . .
The names went in and out of focus; she read more and more slowly.

Synk
o
v
a
.
She could feel the names permeating her skin, sinking deep into her cells.
Mif.
Each one added its light to The Star, enhancing its density, its brightness.

The rare, fragile things the Nazis had stolen—things that had survived well into this century, intact—had been packed more carefully than the people who belonged to these names.
Koleba. Klein.
Seventy-five to a
hundred people per railroad car, Sylvie told them, and two buckets: foul water in one, urine and feces and blood in the other. No sleep for how many days? Nauseous with hunger and thirst; pain and then numbness.

Salomonovitz, Laznowskj, Lazar, Paltiel. . .

Bodies had been shattered and things had not.

Katz, Levi, Persitz, Frank-

At one time in her life, she had pronounced names like Sevres, Meissen, and Capodimonte with more reverence than the names on these pages. Obscene. Unholy. What kind of God was she anyway?

She felt ashamed. She felt ill. The sound of the trains. The smells inside. All of it was constant now. Just as it should be.

They found nothing of the Sendler child.

"She very well might have died at Drancy," Sylvie said. "The conditions there were terrible, and thousands died on French soil, you know, not in Germany or Poland. Many of the survivors who lost loved ones there instead of in the camps say that, later, they were relieved."

"How can you do this?" Margaret asked. "How can you work here, day after day?"

Sylvie paused. She shrugged slightly. "I grew up with this," she said. "My family lost people in the war, and these stories ... I have heard them my whole life. One does have to . . . detach, a bit, in order to be useful."

Finally the name "Sendler" showed up on a convoy list.

"I found her," Margaret said, flatly. "She went to Auschwitz." She fell silent and massaged her temples. The cattle cars were rumbling through her head.
Clickety-clack, clickety-clack . . .

"What now?" Gus asked.

"The next step is more difficult, I'm afraid," Sylvie began. "There is of course a good chance she died in the camp. Or she may have been put on a work detail, or evacuated in one of the forced death marches, or even sent to another camp. What I mean to say is, there may or may not be any further record of her."
Clickety-
clack
, clickety-
clack
. . .
"If she did survive, then we might be able to find something on the other side of the war—hospital discharge papers, emigration papers, something like that." Sylvie stopped speaking; Margaret was dimly aware that
the young woman was staring at her. "The good news is, you have a name, and it is not a terribly common one. Only twenty-five hundred French returned, so there are not so many names to look at."

Cl
ick
ity-Pickova, clickety-Klein
. . .
"So many lists," Margaret mumbled. She tried to move her arm, her hand, to rub the sides of her head, but . . . Where was her head? Had she misplaced it? Had it floated away?

"Are you all right, madame?"

"Margaret?"

"Margaret?"

Margaret?

Mom?

The whistle blew. The train arrived at the station. The door slid open. She was blinded by the light, overcome by the stench of burning flesh.

She woke up in the camp infirmary.
Oh, no!
she thought, terrified. She tried to sit up.
But I can work!
she wanted to cry.
I
can still work!

She heard a familiar voice—Cherry Ames, War Nurse, was it?— speaking nearby. "The day after tomorrow, if we can," Margaret heard her say. "It's very bad."

There was something wrong with her vision. She saw everything as blurry and undulating, as if it were being reflected in a fun house mirror. Her mother was there, as lithe and stringy as saltwater taffy. She was wearing a ballet tutu, riding boots, and a nurse's cap. She was practicing tricks with a bullwhip. Daniel was nearby too, wearing Babar's becoming green suit and derby hat. He was examining Margaret with a toy stethoscope.

Hi, Mom,
he said.
You're sick-But I can work. Doctor! I can still be useful!

Hello, Margaret,
her mother said. She sidearmed her whip and
came c
loser.

Are you going to gas me? Am I going to the crematorium?

No, Margaret. We're going to take you home.
She placed a cool, gentle land—a mother's hand, Margaret realized—on Margaret's forehead, t felt very nice.

Sylvie came to say good-bye. "I am so sorry, madame," she said
, "that y
ou could not leave with the answers you came for."

"Thank you." There was something different about Sylvie's face. At first Margaret couldn't make out what it was. Then she realized that Sylvie was not wearing her eyeglasses. Her eyes were huge and round and hazelnut brown. Most surprising of all, she was weeping.

When Margaret got back from Paris, the CT showed an increase in the size of the mass. Dr. Leising babbled on about herniation, brain stem c
om
promise, neurologic dysfunction. He recommended radiation therapy.

"It could shrink the tumor," he said. "Lessen your symptoms, at least temporarily. Prolong your life."

"For what?" Margaret said.

"Dammit, Margaret!" Dr. Leising snapped. "You're signing your own death warrant."

But she would not be dissuaded. The disappointment she felt—after coming so close—left her with nothing to stand on but shame and failure. She had tried, she had failed, she could do no more.

She put her affairs in order, made adjustments to her will. She named Gus as proxy and gave him durable power of attorney. She dictated commands related to her medical care and end-stage treatment, including a "Do not resuscitate" order.

Members of the household took turns in an effort to rally her. Bruce tried enticing her with her favorite foods; she wasn't hungry. Troy brought in blueprints and outlined a planned offensive on the kitchen; she deferred to his judgment. Gus and the Crooning Clansmen gave a bedside concert. They even wore their kilts. This she liked a good deal, but she refused to let on.

Wanda's tactics were the most unvarnished. "I'm going to be so pissed at you if you die."

"Break a plate," Margaret suggested. "You'll feel better."

One day, Susan came in and roused her.

"Margaret. Wake up." Her Cherry Ames voice had lost any hint of sweetness.
Whatever happened to bedside manners?
Margaret wondered, sluggishly.
Whatever happened to letting people die when they want to?
"It's Sylvie on the phone. She has news." Susan propped Margaret into a sitting position and handed her the receiver.

"Alio?
Madame Hughes?"

"Alio,
Sylvie."

"Listen: It's about Madame Sendler. I found her, through the armed services records." Sylvie was making an effort to speak very slowly. This, in combination with her beautiful French accent and cadence, made Margaret feel as though she were being read a bedtime story. "After the war, she married an American GI."

Margaret tried to put a face to Sylvie's voice, but all she could picture was a pair of thick-framed eyeglasses, moving stealthily through the night sky like some strangely designed surveillance craft.

"I was also able to locate her emigration papers. She came to the United States in 1947. I have put all the particulars in a letter which is on its way to you now."

"I see." On board the eyeglass spacecraft now, Margaret balanced expertly on one of the earpieces. She was wearing a white lab coat and holding a clipboard, writing long, precise columns of numbers in a coded language that only she could decipher—a scientist, drifting through space, recording the fluctuating energies of stars.

"I have sent out letters to several Holocaust research centers in America. It may well be that one of them may know of Mrs. Sendler's whereabouts."

"All right then," Margaret said distractedly. "Good-bye."

"But Madame Hughes," Sylvie said, and there was an urgency in her tone that made Margaret shake off her drowsiness. "You don't seem to understand. It is so very important. Are you still there?"

"Yes. I'm listening."

"This means that she is a survivor. Her life did not end in the concentration camp. She had another life. A third life. Madame Hughes, there is a very good chance that she—or her family—are living still."

In Margaret's mind, a clear image of Sylvie's face finally materialized behind the eyeglasses. Such a pretty thing, but so serious. Did she never smile?

"That's wonderful news."

Sylvie continued. "You know what they say, that every survivor's story is a history of miracles?
Petits et grands."

"Out?"

"Mrs. Sendler's name. The name of her second husband. It is
un petit miracle,
I think, that it should be such an uncommon name."

"What is it?" Margaret asked.

Sylvie started to laugh. "Kosminsky!" she said. It sounded as though she were singing. "Can you imagine? Irma Manska Kosminsky.
Cest

incro
y
able, n'est-ce pas?

“Oui,"
Margaret agreed.
"Cest
in
croyable! Mer
ci
,
Sylvie.
Mer
ci
bien
,
"Well?" Susan sai
d after Margaret hung up. "What i
s it? What did
she have to
say?

Margaret wiped her eyes and started fumbling with the buttons of