My heart was beating fast, almost painfully. The anchorman was back on the screen, presenting another topic. It was too early to call Nathalie Dufaure now. I’d have to wait a couple of hours. My feet danced with anticipation in their paper slippers. “… tell me all about Sarah Dufaure.” What did Gaspard Dufaure have to say? What would I learn?
A knock on the door startled me. The nurse’s garish smile jolted me back to reality.
“Time to go, Madame,” she said briskly, showing teeth and gums.
I heard the stretcher’s rubbery wheels squeak outside the door.
All of a sudden, everything was perfectly clear. It had never been so clear, so easy.
I got up, faced her.
“I’m sorry,” I said quietly. “I’ve changed my mind.”
I pulled the paper bonnet off. She stared at me, unblinking.
“But Madame-,” she began.
I tore the paper dress open. The nurse averted shocked eyes from my sudden nudity.
“The doctors are waiting,” she said.
“I don’t care,” I said, firmly. “I’m not going to do this. I want to keep this baby.”
Her mouth quivered with indignation.
“I will send the doctor to see you immediately.”
She turned and walked away. I heard the click of her sandals along the linoleum, sharp with disapproval. I slipped a denim dress over my head, stepped into my shoes, seized my bag and left the room. As I scrambled down the stairs, past startled nurses carrying breakfast trays, I realized I’d left my toothbrush, towels, shampoo, soap, deodorant, makeup kit and face cream in the bathroom. So what, I thought, rushing through the prim, tidy entrance, so what! So what!
The street was empty with that fresh, gleaming look Parisian sidewalks boast early in the morning. I hailed a taxi and rode home.
July 16, 2002.
My baby. My baby was safe within me. I wanted to laugh and cry. I did. The taxi driver eyed me several times in the rearview mirror, but I didn’t care. I was going to have this baby.
I MADE A ROUGH ESTIMATE, counting over two thousand people grouped by the Seine, along the Bir-Hakeim bridge. The survivors. The families. Children, grandchildren. Rabbis. The mayor of the city. The prime minister. The minister of defense. Numerous politicians. Journalists. Photographers. Franck Lévy. Thousands of flowers, a soaring marquee, a white platform. An impressive gathering. Guillaume stood by my side, his face solemn, his eyes downcast.
Fleetingly, I recalled the old lady from the rue Nélaton. What was it she had said? “Nobody remembers. Why should they? Those were the darkest days of our country.”
I suddenly wished she could be here now, gazing at the hundreds of silent, emotional faces around me. From the stand, a beautiful middle-aged woman with thick auburn hair sang. Her clear voice rose above the roar of the nearby traffic. Then the prime minister began his speech.
“Sixty years ago, right here, in Paris, but also throughout France, the appalling tragedy began to take place. The march toward horror was speeding up. Already, the Shoah’s shadow darkened the innocent people herded into the Vélodrome d’Hiver. This year, like every year, we are gathered together in this place to remember. So as to forget nothing of the persecutions, the hunting down, and shattered destiny of so many French Jews.”
An old man on my left took a handkerchief from his pocket and wept noiselessly. My heart went out to him. Who was he crying for? I wondered. Who had he lost? As the prime minister went on, my eyes moved over the crowd. Was there anyone here who knew and remembered Sarah Starzynski? Was she here herself? Right now, at this very moment? Was she here with a husband, a child, a grandchild? Behind me, in front of me? I carefully picked out women in their seventies, scanning wrinkled, solemn faces for the slanted green eyes. But I did not feel comfortable ogling these grieving strangers. I lowered my gaze. The prime minister’s voice seemed to gain in strength and clarity, booming out over us.
“Yes, Vel’ d’Hiv’, Drancy, and all the transit camps, those antechambers of death, were organized, run, and guarded by Frenchmen. Yes, the first act of the Shoah took place right here, with the complicity of the French State.”
The many faces around me appeared to be serene, listening to the prime minister. I watched them as he continued with the same powerful voice. But every one of those faces contained sorrow. Sorrow that could never be erased. The prime minister’s speech was applauded for a long time. I noticed people crying, hugging each other.
Still with Guillaume, I went to speak to Franck Lévy, who was carrying a copy of Seine Scenes under his arm. He greeted me warmly, introduced us to a couple of journalists. A few moments later, we left. I told Guillaume I had found out who lived in the Tézac apartment, that somehow this had brought me closer to my father-in-law, who had kept a dark secret for over sixty years. And that I was trying to trace Sarah, the little girl who had escaped from Beaune-la-Rolande.
In half an hour, I was meeting Nathalie Dufaure in front of the Pasteur métro station. She was going to drive me to Orléans, to her grandfather. Guillaume kissed me warmly and hugged me. He said he wished me luck.
As I crossed the busy avenue, my palm caressed my stomach. If I had not left the clinic this morning, I would have been regaining consciousness by now in my cozy apricot room, watched over by the beaming nurse. A dainty breakfast-croissant, jam, and café au lait-and I would have left the place alone in the afternoon, a little unsteadily, a sanitary pad between my legs, a dull pain in my lower abdomen. A void in my mind and in my heart.
I had not heard a word from Bertrand. Had the clinic telephoned him to inform him I’d left before the abortion? I did not know. He was still in Brussels, due back tonight.
I wondered how I’d tell him. How he would take it.
As I walked down the avenue Émile Zola, anxious not to be late for Nathalie Dufaure, I wondered if I still cared about what Bertrand thought, about what Bertrand felt? The unsettling thought frightened me.
WHEN I GOT BACK from Orléans in the early evening, the apartment felt hot and stuffy. I went to open a window, leaned out to the noisy boulevard du Montparnasse. It was strange to imagine that we’d soon be leaving for the quiet rue de Saintonge. We had spent twelve years here. Zoë had never lived anywhere else. It would be our last summer here, I thought fleetingly. I had grown fond of this apartment, the sunlight coming in every afternoon into the large white living room, the Luxembourg Garden just down the rue Vavin, the easiness of being situated in one of Paris’s most active arrondissements, one of the places you could actually feel the city’s heartbeat, its rapid, exciting pulse.
I kicked off my sandals and lay down on the soft, beige sofa. The fullness of the day weighed upon me like lead. I shut my eyes and was immediately startled back to reality by the phone. It was my sister, calling from her office overlooking Central Park. I imagined her behind her vast desk, her reading glasses perched on the end of her nose.
Briefly, I told her I had not gone through with the abortion.
“Oh, my God,” breathed Charla. “You didn’t do it.”
“I couldn’t,” I said. “It was impossible.”
I could hear her smiling down the phone, that wide, irresistible, smile.
“You brave, wonderful girl,” she said. “I’m proud of you, honey.”
“Bertrand still doesn’t know,” I said. “He won’t be back till later on this evening. He probably thinks I’ve done it.”