of the vast tunnel behind me and the locomotive whisking away with swaying, stupefied bodies inside. A black van idled at a stoplight. It was the only car on the street, which struck me as uniquely sinister. We had heard that there were mobile vans in which deported Jews were poisoned, a story that we had dismissed at the time as too ghastly to be true. The black car sped forward, its tailpipe streaming fumes, and I had again the sense that I had ascended from the Métro into the wrong city and in a body that could not quite contain me.
At the hotel, the concierge told stories of girls who had once consorted with the enemy left with shaved heads and an O branded on their brows, a vengeance carried out unchecked because everyone was afraid of being called a collaborator, and, in those days, we heard that many such accused were shot. One late night, I thought I heardRose's name bounced over the concierge's counter (though I also heard it while listening to water drop from the faucet into the sink, in the jingle of money on the bus turnstile, in the straining of the violins in a Rossini broadcast), but when I asked the speaker to repeat himself, he eyed me strangely and said, “I'd stay away from politics if I were you, young man.”
AS IF I COULD NOT ACCEPT THE WORLD I HAD EMERGED in, during those first days in Paris, I awoke persistently expecting to find the dark rooms in which we had spent the war: those of Monsieur Bickart's farmhouse in Le Puy, and its odor of the chicken coop, the dray's stamp and whinny, the earthy smell of the green lentils, and the fond way our protector rubbed their stalks between his fingers. The relative simplicity of that time now seemed like a luxury. I worked in the fields alongside Monsieur Bickart. The soil was black and rich from the volcanoes that had spread themselves over Le Puy a millennium before. Above the distant town stood a bronze Virgin, who blazed when the morning sun found her hillside.
Monsieur Bickart called me Jacques, the name of his nephew who had worked a summer on his uncle's farm in 1931, after the Depression. Jacques's boots, which I wore, were a size too big, and I stuffed their toes with newspaper. If any of the citizens of Le Puy believed I was Jacques, they were either very young or so old they had become young again. My parents were required to remain hidden in the house and, often for long stretches, in the root cellar. We supposed Monsieur Bickart did not want to test his neighbors’ tolerance as, to begin with, he was a Protestant and so already under suspicion.
Bickart possessed an accordion, of which both he and my mother were jealously fond. Each waited impatiently for the other to finish playing. One day, in passing, a neighbor complimented Monsieur Bickart on his astounding progress on the instrument. That evening, the accordion broke, which was nearly a crisis in the household, as our host decided it was best not to fix it. Mother sulked until Monsieur Bickart gave her the lace-making kit that had once belonged to his grandmother. Following a manual printed in the 1860s, Mothertaught herself to make guipure, the kind of filet lace for which the Massif Central is known throughout the world.
We paid Monsieur Bickart for our protection and care, a single enormous sum, the total of which I never learned, that had been withdrawn from my father's safe before we left Paris. Withdrawn from the safe because, by the time we fled, access to our accounts at the Chase Bank was already compromised. It took my father and Auguste days to realize no bank teller would let them do anything other than make a deposit, and so they left empty-handed. Those accounts, though, in the weeks after our return to Paris, in the dingy hotel by the markets of Les Halles, were my one comfort. It was said that the presidents of the Banque de France, Crédit Agricole, and Crédit Lyonnais all kept their money and treasure at the Chase Bank. Surely, these would have been
At the hotel, the concierge told stories of girls who had once consorted with the enemy left with shaved heads and an O branded on their brows, a vengeance carried out unchecked because everyone was afraid of being called a collaborator, and, in those days, we heard that many such accused were shot. One late night, I thought I heardRose's name bounced over the concierge's counter (though I also heard it while listening to water drop from the faucet into the sink, in the jingle of money on the bus turnstile, in the straining of the violins in a Rossini broadcast), but when I asked the speaker to repeat himself, he eyed me strangely and said, “I'd stay away from politics if I were you, young man.”
AS IF I COULD NOT ACCEPT THE WORLD I HAD EMERGED in, during those first days in Paris, I awoke persistently expecting to find the dark rooms in which we had spent the war: those of Monsieur Bickart's farmhouse in Le Puy, and its odor of the chicken coop, the dray's stamp and whinny, the earthy smell of the green lentils, and the fond way our protector rubbed their stalks between his fingers. The relative simplicity of that time now seemed like a luxury. I worked in the fields alongside Monsieur Bickart. The soil was black and rich from the volcanoes that had spread themselves over Le Puy a millennium before. Above the distant town stood a bronze Virgin, who blazed when the morning sun found her hillside.
Monsieur Bickart called me Jacques, the name of his nephew who had worked a summer on his uncle's farm in 1931, after the Depression. Jacques's boots, which I wore, were a size too big, and I stuffed their toes with newspaper. If any of the citizens of Le Puy believed I was Jacques, they were either very young or so old they had become young again. My parents were required to remain hidden in the house and, often for long stretches, in the root cellar. We supposed Monsieur Bickart did not want to test his neighbors’ tolerance as, to begin with, he was a Protestant and so already under suspicion.
Bickart possessed an accordion, of which both he and my mother were jealously fond. Each waited impatiently for the other to finish playing. One day, in passing, a neighbor complimented Monsieur Bickart on his astounding progress on the instrument. That evening, the accordion broke, which was nearly a crisis in the household, as our host decided it was best not to fix it. Mother sulked until Monsieur Bickart gave her the lace-making kit that had once belonged to his grandmother. Following a manual printed in the 1860s, Mothertaught herself to make guipure, the kind of filet lace for which the Massif Central is known throughout the world.
We paid Monsieur Bickart for our protection and care, a single enormous sum, the total of which I never learned, that had been withdrawn from my father's safe before we left Paris. Withdrawn from the safe because, by the time we fled, access to our accounts at the Chase Bank was already compromised. It took my father and Auguste days to realize no bank teller would let them do anything other than make a deposit, and so they left empty-handed. Those accounts, though, in the weeks after our return to Paris, in the dingy hotel by the markets of Les Halles, were my one comfort. It was said that the presidents of the Banque de France, Crédit Agricole, and Crédit Lyonnais all kept their money and treasure at the Chase Bank. Surely, these would have been
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