Sarah's Key by Tatiana De Rosnay Page B

Was everybody dead?
    I wandered through the empty apartment. In one room, the wall was being torn down. Lost in the rubble, I noticed a long deep opening, cleverly hidden behind a panel. It was now partly revealed. It would have made a good hiding place. If these walls could talk. … But I didn’t need them to talk. I knew what had happened here. I could see it. The survivors had told me about the hot, still night, the bangs on the doors, the brisk orders, the bus ride through Paris. They had told me about the stinking hell of Vel’ d’Hiv’. The ones who told me were the ones who lived. The ones who got away. The ones who tore off their stars and escaped.
    I wondered suddenly if I could cope with this knowledge, if I could live here knowing that in my apartment a family had been arrested and sent on to their probable deaths. How had the Tézacs lived with that? I wondered.
    I pulled out my cell phone and called Bertrand. When he saw my number show up, he mumbled, “Meeting.” That was our code for “I’m busy.”
    “It’s urgent,” I said.
    I heard him murmur something, then his voice came across clearly.
    “What’s up,
amour
?” he said. “Make it quick, I’ve got someone waiting.”
    I took a deep breath.
    “Bertrand,” I said, “do you know how your grandparents got the rue de Saintonge apartment?”
    “No,” he said. “Why?”
    “I’ve just been to see Mamé. She told me they moved in during July of ’42. She said the place had been emptied because of a Jewish family arrested during the Vel’ d’Hiv’ roundup.”
    Silence.
    “So?” asked Bertrand, finally.
    I felt my face go hot. My voice echoed out through the empty apartment.
    “But doesn’t it bother you that your family moved in, knowing the Jewish people had been arrested? Did they ever tell you about it?”
    I could almost hear him shrug in that typical French fashion, the downturn of the mouth, the arched eyebrows.
    “No, it doesn’t bother me. I didn’t know, they never told me, but it still doesn’t bother me. I’m sure a lot of Parisians moved into empty apartments in July of ’42, after the roundup. Surely that doesn’t make my family collaborationists, does it?”
    His laugh hurt my ears.
    “I never said that, Bertrand.”
    “You’re getting too heated up about all this, Julia,” he said with a gentler tone. “This happened sixty years ago, you know. There was a world war going on, remember. Tough times for everybody.”
    I sighed.
    “I just want to know how it happened. I just don’t understand.”
    “It’s simple,
mon ange
. My grandparents had a hard time during the war. The antique shop wasn’t doing well. They were probably relieved to move into a bigger, better place. After all, they had a child. They were young. They were glad to find a roof over their heads. They probably didn’t think twice about the Jewish family.”
    “Oh, Bertrand,” I whispered. “How could they
not
think about that family? How could they not?”
    He blew kisses down the phone.
    “They didn’t know, I guess. I’ve got to go,
amour
. See you tonight.”
    And he hung up.
    I stayed in the apartment for a while, walking down the long corridor, standing in the empty living room, running my palm along the smooth marble mantelpiece, trying to understand, trying not to let my emotions overwhelm me.
     
     

     
     
    WITH RACHEL, SHE HAD made up her mind. They were going to escape. They were going to leave this place. It was that, or die. She knew it. She knew that if she stayed here with the other children, it would be the end. Many of the children were ill. Half a dozen had already died. Once, she had seen a nurse, like the one in the stadium, a woman with a blue veil. One nurse, for so many sick, starving children.
    Escaping was their secret. They had not told any of the other children. No one was to guess anything. They were going to escape in broad daylight. They had noticed that during the day, at most times, the policemen