Lace (36 page)

When Charles returned after dinner one night, looking grim but smug, they had a fierce fight that ended roughly and happily in bed. The matter was never referred to again.

Charles had made his point and knew when to let well enough alone.

A
S SOON AS
Elizabeth saw the dim lights in the valley below, in the safety of Austria, she felt lonely and anxious. She
almost didn’t want to reach those lights. Out of breath, the small, tired child paused to rub her chilled hands and then trudged on through the Austrian snow down a twisting path that led to
Eisenstadt.

An hour later, she staggered up the steps of the first house she reached and wearily jumped to bang the door knocker. There was a sudden glare of light, a big man’s silhouette, then she
heard someone say, “More soup, Helga, here’s another one.” Dazed and silent, the child was only vaguely aware of a steamy kitchen and strange adults in nightclothes fussing around
her. Then she went to sleep, wrapped in a blanket and huddled in an armchair.

The following day she was taken to the Eisenstadt refugee camp, a collection of bleak old army huts with a constant stream of people plodding from one to the other—some of the hundred and
fifty thousand Hungarian refugees who surged over the border in 1956. Hastily recruited voluntary workers moved from hut to hut taking particulars of the forlorn, silent groups who wore overcoats
with turned-up collars and clutched knobbly shopping bags, potato sacks or small attaché cases that held their only possessions.

An impatient, harassed, whey-faced woman who carried a clipboard asked Elizabeth her name. She spoke at first in broken German and the bewildered child didn’t understand what she was
saying until she switched to French. “Speak up, child! There’s a string around your neck but no name tag on it. Was it torn off? I must have your name before your medical
inspection.”

Eventually the child croaked, “Lili.”

“Lili what?”

“Quoi, s’il vous plaît, madame?”

“Your family, what’s the name of your family?”

“Da . . . da . . .” No, she was no longer called Dassin. . . . Lili sobbed “Ko . . . Ko . . .
vago
.” The woman wrote
“Lily Vago (French-speaking) born
1949”
at the head of the sheet of paper and so, at the age of seven, Lili acquired her fourth surname—the name on her birth certificate, then Dassin, then Kovago, and now Vago. She
was then handed a piece of soap and a piece of black bread and stood in a line of sad-eyed adults for her medical inspection. Lili felt a singing in her ears and, from far away, a chill stethoscope
on her chest. “It sounds like pneumonia. Shock and exposure. Take her over to the hospital hut. Next one, please.”

As soon as the child was well enough to travel, a refugee committee worker told her that she was being sent to a family in Paris. “You’re a very lucky little girl,
Lili. We haven’t been able to find homes for half the people in this camp.”

During the long, uncomfortable train journey, the child hardly said a word to the group of other anxious and exhausted refugees. When they arrived at the acrid smelling station they were met by
another refugee committee worker, carrying the inevitable clipboard. She ticked them off her list, then took them to the waiting room where they sagged on hard benches until their lives were
reassembled.

“Lili . . . Lili Vago, there she is, over there, Madame Sardeau. Stand up and say hello, Lili. You’re going to stay with Madame Sardeau, who has generously offered you a
home.”

The couple who stood in front of Lili did not look generous. They were bundled up against the cold, sharp noses and pinched mouths showing from behind dark scarves.

Oddly formal, this middle-aged couple shook hands with the child. Then the woman said sharply, “But we were expecting a much older girl. We asked for a girl of twelve to
fourteen!”

Equally sharply the refugee committee worker said, “Madame, in this situation, while we appreciate your hospitality and concern, one cannot order children as if the refugee camps were a
department store.”

“No luggage? No passport?” the man asked.

“No papers tonight,” said the refugee committee worker in a tired voice. “If you would just sign here, and here, and there, we’ll expect you at the office
tomorrow—anytime—to fill in the forms and complete the other formalities.”

The child walked out of the station to her new home and life with the Sardeaus. She sensed that something was wrong, that she disappointed and vexed them. In silence they caught the metro to
Sablon, then hurried through darkened streets to an old-fashioned apartment building. The huge arched entrance to the inner courtyard was covered by a pair of black doors, big enough to let a
wagonload of hay pass through. Lili followed her new parents, too tired to notice anything but the ache in her calves, the ache in her chest and the fog inside her head. They paused outside a door,
then, as Monsieur Sardeau fished for his keys outside the apartment door, the child slid to the floor.

“Henri, you don’t think they’ve given us one that has something wrong with her?” Madame Sardeau asked anxiously. “We didn’t agree to an invalid; we
don’t want doctor’s bills; we want a strong girl who can do the housework.”

“Nevertheless, we’d better call a doctor tonight.” Monsieur Sardeau picked up the fragile little body. “You put her to bed and I’ll get Dutheil.”

Doctor Dutheil was sympathetic. “There seems to be nothing basically wrong with her. Children are remarkably resilient. She’s suffering from exhaustion, and from what she says, it
sounds as if she’s recently had pneumonia and hasn’t fully recovered. She’s also had a bad emotional shock and won’t discuss it; that’s also normal and understandable.
She’s not strong enough at this stage to relive the experience by talking about it, so please don’t press her to say anything. Just leave her quietly in bed, give her good food, plenty
of hot milk and keep her very quiet.”

He looked uncertainly at Madame Sardeau, but could not imagine her in the role of comforter. He took off his spectacles, wiped them with his handkerchief, paused and shrewdly said, “You
are a heroine, madame! You are a saint to have rescued this poor child! I will come and see her again tomorrow and until she has recovered, and there will be no charge for my visits. Pray allow me
to make this contribution to your noble action.”

The following morning, Madame Sardeau buttoned herself into her black overcoat, wound a thick, rust scarf around her neck, stabbed her hat into place with two pins and set off for the refugee
committee central office. She gave her name to the receptionist and waited in the small, crowded office. People hurried in and out; some were officials but some were obviously voluntary workers.
After an interminable wait, she was shown into a cold little cubicle piled high with files of documents.

“You’re not the one I saw at the station last night,” Madame Sardeau said to the small, harassed woman who faced her.

“No, Yvonne speaks Hungarian so she had to go to the station to meet a new batch that we weren’t expecting. I’m sorry, madame, it is not our aim in life to inconvenience you,
but everyone here suddenly has far more problems than usual. Now where is the child?”

“Ill in bed. Being attended daily by a doctor who says she must stay in bed for at least two weeks! Imagine the expense! What a way to start!”

“Oh, dear, we’re supposed to get the details directly, because we must try to trace the child’s parents. We’ll do the best we can for the time being, but when she’s
recovered, you
must
bring her in to answer for herself. Now let’s try to get these forms filled in.”

And thus the forms were filled in, stamped and returned to the file, which was then placed in the V drawer of the filing cabinet.

When Lili was well enough, she sat up in bed with a coarse shawl wrapped around her chest and pinned at her back. Anxiously she asked what had happened to Angelina and Felix
and her foster brother Roger.

“The refugee committee is trying to locate them. When you’re well enough we’ll go to their office and they’ll tell you what they can.”

“And does
vraie maman
know where I am?”

“Aren’t Monsieur and Madame Vago your real parents?”

“No, Angelina is looking after me until I can join my real mother in another land and Felix is looking after her and also Roger, although Felix isn’t Roger’s
vrai
papa
of course. And Felix is called Kovago and I am really called Elizabeth, except I prefer Lili because that’s what Felix calls me. Everyone calls me Lili in Hungary, it’s only in
Château d’Oex that they call me Elizabeth. I like Lili best and I like Hungary better than Switzerland, I think, only I wish I could speak Hungarian properly. I only know a few
words.”

Was the child still delirious? Madame Sardeau wondered. Best to wait until tomorrow, until after the doctor’s visit and then ask again.

The next day Madame Sardeau took the kitchen notebook and a pencil into Lili’s bedroom and sorted out her story. “So you were the foster child of Madame Kovago and lived in
Switzerland and were on a visit to Hungary when the revolution broke out? And you do not know any details of your real mother?”

“Yes, yes, yes, no. Can I go back to sleep now?”

Over their evening meal, Madame Sardeau discussed the matter with her husband.

“It’s not our responsibility to trace her family; it’s up to the refugee committee,” she said. “I’m not sure I believe such a muddled tale anyway. Doctor
Dutheil said this afternoon that it’s possible she’s living in an imaginary world, in order to avoid the real one. He says it might be the only way she can face the sudden loss of her
family.”

“In the meantime, my dear,” said Monsieur Sardeau, slicing into the crisp onion tart, “perhaps I should write to the mayor of Château d’Oex to inquire whether there
is—as the child says—a family living there called Vago or Kovago. After all, if they escaped, then they would obviously return to their home and if they have, then we can return the
child and ask them for the financial compensation that is our moral right. On the other hand, if they haven’t escaped, or if they’ve been killed, then the child might stand to inherit
some property—the house perhaps. So I shall dictate a letter tomorrow morning.”

The winter of 1956–57 was bitterly cold in Paris. Doctor Dutheil would not allow Lili to leave the stuffy, overheated apartment until mid-February, when Madame Sardeau
returned for the second time to the refugee committee office, this time accompanied by Lili. Again, they had a long wait in the small, freezing waiting room, although this time it was not crowded.
Eventually, Madame Sardeau and Lili were interviewed by a voluntary worker whom she had not seen on her previous visit.

“Your name, darling?”

“Lili Kovago.”

Half an hour’s harassed search followed, thirty minutes spent burrowing under beige piles of paper that covered the desk and the tops of the filing cabinets, until Madame Sardeau thought
to say, “Perhaps the file is under V for Vago; there was an initial mistake. Not my fault you understand.”

Indeed, the file was found under V. The interviewer then lost her spectacles and Madame Sardeau lost her temper. “It is intolerable that I should be kept waiting, that the documents should
twice have been lost.”

The interviewer looked more harassed. “We have received no inquiries for a child of that name.”

“Idiot!” snapped Madame Sardeau. “Inquiries would have been for a child called Kovago or Dassin, which was the mother’s previous name, and they would be filed under K or
D.”

So the interviewer again burrowed into the filing cabinet, looking under K and under D, but there were no files labeled Kovago or Dassin.

“You waste my time in this chaos,” Madame Sardeau snapped. “You waste your
own
time in this chaos. It is obviously a waste of time to sit here like an imbecile.”
And she swept out, towing Lili in her wake.

The exhausted voluntary worker put Lili’s file—still labeled Vago—back into the V cabinet. Nobody searching for Lili would be likely to look under V because there was no reason
to do so. Lili was now literally lost in a sea of misplaced paper.

The next morning, after hearing an indignant account of his wife’s visit to the refugee centre, Monsieur Sardeau dictated another letter, complaining to the president of
the refugee committee. He received an apologetic, but otherwise uninformative, letter.

Six weeks after that, Monsieur Sardeau received a brief letter from the office of the mayor of Château d’Oex to say that, so far as he knew, there was no family called Vago in the
town, but a Hungarian waiter called Kovago had lived in a rented chalet on the outskirts of the area. Unfortunately, he and his family had been on a visit to Hungary when the revolution broke out
and the whole family had apparently been killed while attempting to escape.

The town archives held no further details.

“Don’t think we’re rich.” Madame Sardeau gave a dainty snort as she carried her shopping bags through the big doors and into the courtyard beyond.
“This apartment is rent-controlled; we were lucky, after the war.”

“Don’t think we’re rich”, was a favourite Sardeau phrase. If Lili took an extra bit of bread or forgot to switch off the light in the old-fashioned, windowless toilet or
asked for anything at all, this phrase came automatically to their lips.

The Sardeaus were childless. No tyrannical baby had ever shattered their sleep or their ornaments. They had never had so much as a cat to care for and clean up after, and they soon discovered
that they didn’t care for the responsibility of looking after a little girl. Their reason for offering to adopt an orphan had been practical—they had no one to care for them in their
old age, to push a possible wheelchair, to attend a bedside or collect a pension. They had never been able to afford a servant, Madame was now getting on in years and needed help in the home, and,
yes, perhaps they could use some company, for Monsieur worked in a government statistics office and after twenty-seven shared years they had exhausted their conversation.