Sarah's Key (38 page)

JANUARY 2005 ALSO BROUGHT me back, again and again, to Sarah, to William. The importance of the sixtieth commemoration of Auschwitz’s liberation made every headline around the world. It seemed that never before had the word “Shoah” been pronounced so often.

And every time I heard it, my thoughts leaped painfully to him, to her. And I wondered, as I watched the Auschwitz memorial ceremony on TV, if William ever thought of me when he, too, heard the word, when he, too, saw the monstrous black-and-white images of the past flicker across the screen, the lifeless skeletal bodies piled high, the crematoriums, the ashes, the horror of it all.

His family had died in that hideous place. His mother’s parents. How could he not think of it, I mused. On the screen, with Zoë and Charla at my side, I watched the snowflakes fall on the camp, the barbed wire, the squat watchtower. The crowd, the speeches, the prayers, the candles. The Russian soldiers and their particular dancing gait.

And the final, unforgettable vision of nightfall, and the railway tracks aflame, glowing through the darkness with a poignant, sharp mixture of grief and remembrance.

THE CALL CAME ONE May afternoon, when I was least expecting it. I was at my desk, struggling with a new computer’s whims. I picked up the phone, my “yes” sounding curt even to me.

“Hi. This is William Rainsferd.”

I sat up straight, heart aflutter, trying to remain calm.

William Rainsferd
.

I said nothing, dumbstruck, clutching the receiver to my ear.

“You there, Julia?”

I swallowed.

“Yes, just having some computer problems. How are you, William?”

“Fine,” he said.

A little silence. But it did not feel tense, or strived.

“It’s been a while,” I said lamely.

“Yes, it has,” he said.

Another silence.

“I see you’re a New Yorker now,” he said, at last. “Looked you up.”

So Zoë had been right, after all.

“Well, how about getting together?” he asked.

“Today?” I said.

“If you can make it.”

I thought of the sleeping child in the next room. She had been to day care this morning, but I could take her along. She wasn’t going to like having her nap interrupted, though.

“I can make it,” I said.

“Great. I’ll ride up to your part of town. Got any ideas where we could meet?”

“Do you know Café Mozart? On West 70th Street and Broadway?”

“I know it, fine. See you there in half an hour?”

I hung up. My heart was beating so fast I could hardly breathe. I went to wake the baby, ignored her protests, bundled her up, unfolded the stroller, and took off.

HE WAS ALREADY THERE when we arrived. I saw his back first, the powerful shoulders, and his hair, silver and thick, no longer bearing any trace of blond. He was reading a newspaper, but he swivelled around as I approached, as if he could feel my eyes upon him. Then he was up on his feet, and there was an awkward, amusing moment when we didn’t know whether to shake hands or kiss. He laughed, I did, too, and he finally hugged me, a great big bear hug, slamming my chin against his collarbone and patting the small of my back, and then he bent down to admire my daughter.

“What a beautiful little girl,” he crooned.

She solemnly handed him her favorite rubber giraffe.

“And what’s your name, then?” he asked.

“Lucy,” she lisped.

“That’s the giraffe’s name—,” I began, but William had already started to press the toy and loud squeaks drowned out my voice, making the baby shriek with glee.

We found a table and sat down, keeping the child in her stroller. He glanced at the menu.

“Ever had the Amadeus cheesecake?” he asked, raising one eyebrow.

“Yes,” I said, “it’s positively diabolical.”

He grinned.

“Hey, you look fabulous, Julia. New York certainly suits you.”

I blushed like a teenager, imagining Zoë looking on and rolling her eyes.

Then his mobile rang. He answered it. I could tell by his expression it was a woman. I wondered who. His wife? One of his daughters? The conversation went on. He seemed flustered. I bent over the child, playing with the giraffe.

“Sorry,” he said, tucking the phone away. “That was my girlfriend.”

“Oh.”

I must have sounded confused because he snorted with laughter.

“I’m divorced now, Julia.”

He looked straight at me. His face sobered.

“You know, after you told me, everything changed.”

At last. At last he was telling me what I needed to know. The aftermath. The consequences.

I did not quite know what to say. I was afraid that if I uttered one word, he’d stop. I kept busy with my daughter, handing her her bottle of water, making sure she didn’t spill it all over herself, fumbling with a paper napkin.

The waitress came to take our orders. Two Amadeus cheesecakes, two coffees, and a pancake for the child.

William said, “Everything went to pieces. It was hell. A terrible year.”

We said nothing for a couple of minutes, looking around us at the busy tables. The café was a noisy, bright place, with classical music emanating from hidden speakers. The child cooed to herself, smiling up at me and at William, brandishing her toy. The waitress brought us our food.

“Are you OK now?” I asked tentatively.

“Yes,” he said, swiftly. “Yes I am. It took me a while to get used to this new part of me. To understand and accept my mother’s history. To deal with the pain of it. Sometimes I still can’t. But I work at it, hard. I did a couple of very necessary things.”

“Like what?” I asked, feeding sticky bits of crumbled pancake to my daughter.

“I realized I could no longer bear all this alone. I felt isolated, broken. My wife could not understand what I was going through. And I just could not explain, the communication between us was nonexistent. I took my daughters to Auschwitz with me, last year, before the sixtieth anniversary celebration. I needed to tell them what had happened to their great grandparents, it wasn’t easy and that was the only way I could do it. Showing them. It was a moving, tearful trip, but I felt at peace, at last, and I felt my daughters understood.”

His face was sad, thoughtful. I did not speak, I let him do the talking. I wiped the baby’s face and gave her more water.

“I did one last thing, in January. I went back to Paris. There’s a new Holocaust memorial in the Marais, maybe you know that.” I nodded. I had heard of it and planned to go there on my next trip. “Chirac inaugurated it at the end of January. There’s a wall of names, just by the entrance. A huge, gray stone wall, engraved with 76,000 names. The names of every single Jew deported from France.”

I watched his fingers play with the rim of his coffee cup. I felt it hard to look him fully in the face.

“I went there to find their names. And there they were. Wladyslaw and Rywka Starzynksi. My grandparents. I felt the same peace I had found at Auschwitz. The same pain. I felt grateful that they were remembered, that the French remembered them and honored them this way. There were people crying in front of that wall, Julia. Old people, young people, people of my age, touching the wall with their hands, and crying.”

He paused, breathed carefully through his mouth. I kept my eyes on the cup, on his fingers. The baby’s giraffe squeaked but we hardly heard it.

“Chirac gave a speech. I did not understand it, of course. I looked it up later on the Internet and read the translation. A good speech. Urging people to remember France’s responsibility during the Vel’ d’Hiv’ roundup and what followed. Chirac pronounced the same words my mother had written at the end of her letter.
Zakhor, Al Tichkah
. Remember. Never forget. In Hebrew.”

He bent down and retrieved a large manila envelope from the backpack at his feet. He handed it to me.

“These are my photos of her, I wanted to show them to you. I suddenly realized I didn’t know who my mother was, Julia. I mean, I knew what she looked like, I knew her face, her smile, but nothing about her inner life.”

I wiped the maple syrup off my fingers in order to be able to handle them. Sarah, on her wedding day. Tall, slender, her small smile, her secret eyes. Sarah, cradling William as a baby. Sarah with William as a toddler, holding him by the hand. Sarah, in her thirties, wearing an emerald ball dress. And Sarah, just before her death, a large color close-up. Her hair was gray, I noticed. Prematurely gray and oddly becoming. Like his, now.

“I remember her as being tall, and slim, and silent,” said William as I looked at each photo with growing emotion. “She didn’t laugh much, but she was an intense person, and a loving mother. But no one ever mentioned suicide after her death. Ever. Not even Dad. I guess Dad never read the notebook. No one did. Maybe he found it a long time after her death. We all thought it was an accident. No one knew who my mother was, Julia. Not even me. And that’s what I still find so hard to live with. What brought her to her death, on that cold snowy day. How she made that decision. Why we never knew anything about her past. Why she chose not to tell my father. Why she kept all her suffering, all her pain, to herself.”

“These are beautiful pictures,” I said at last. “Thank you for bringing them.”

I paused.

“There’s something I must ask you,” I said, putting the photos away, gathering courage and looking at him at last.

“Go ahead.”

“No harsh feelings against me?” I asked with a weak smile. “I’ve been feeling like I destroyed your life.”

He grinned.

“No harsh feelings, Julia. I just needed to think. To understand. To put all the pieces back together. It took a while. That’s why you never heard from me during all that time.”

I felt relief sweep over me.

“But I knew where you were all along.” He smiled. “Spent quite some time keeping track of you.”
Mom, he knows you live here now. He’s looked you up as well. He knows what you do here, he knows where you live
. “When did you move to New York exactly?” he asked.

“A little while after the baby was born. Spring 2003.”

“Why did you leave Paris? If you don’t mind telling me …”

I gave a rueful half smile.

“My marriage had fallen apart. I’d just had this baby. I couldn’t bring myself to live in the rue de Saintonge apartment after everything that had happened there. And I felt like moving back to the States.”

“So how did you actually do it?”

“We stayed with my sister for a while, on the Upper East Side, then she found me a place to sublet from one of her friends. And my ex-boss found me a great job. What about you?”

“Same story. Life in Lucca just didn’t seem possible. And my wife and I. …” His voice trailed off. He made a little gesture with his fingers as if to say farewell, bye-bye. “I lived here as a boy, before Roxbury. And the idea had been passing through my head, for a while. So I finally got ’round to it. I stayed at first with one of my oldest friends, in Brooklyn, then I found a place in the Village. I do the same job here. Food critic.”

William’s phone rang. The girlfriend, again. I turned away, trying to give him the privacy he needed. He finally put the phone down.

“She’s a little possessive,” he said, sheepishly. “I think I’ll turn it off for a while.”

He fumbled with the phone.

“How long have you been together?”

“A couple of months.” He looked at me. “What about you? Are you seeing someone?”

“Yes, I am.” I thought of Neil’s courteous, bland smile. His careful gestures. The routine sex. I nearly added it was not important, that it was just for the company, because I could not stand being alone, because every night I thought of him, William, and of his mother, every single night, for the past two-and-a-half years, but I kept my mouth shut. I just said, “He’s a nice person. Divorced. A lawyer.”

William ordered fresh coffee. As he poured out mine, I noticed, once again, the beauty of his hands, his long, tapered fingers.

“About six months after our last meeting,” he said, “I went back to the rue de Saintonge. I had to see you. To talk to you. I didn’t know where to reach you, I had no number for you and couldn’t remember your husband’s name, so I couldn’t even look you up in the phone book. I thought you’d still be living there. I had no idea you’d moved.”