The Keeper of Happy Endings(29)

Life has been a blur since that terrible day. Curfews are in effect and strictly enforced. German street signs have replaced French ones, and clocks are now set to German time, a thumb in the eye of a city already demoralized. Not even our time is our own now.

French newspapers have been shut down, and all radios must be tuned to German propaganda stations. There are posters, too, tacked up all over, urging us to see our occupiers as friends. As if we can’t feel them steadily tightening their grip around our throats.

Ration cards have been issued for food and clothing, resulting in endless queues for the barest of necessities. Paris has become a city obsessed with food. Finding it, affording it, making it stretch. Women spend the better part of their days in search of an egg or a soupbone, while magazines teach us how to stretch butter with gelatin and make a cake without eggs. Maman’s careful hoarding means we suffer less than most, but our stores are thinning at an alarming rate.

Getting around is also difficult. There’s no petrol to be had, leaving only bicycles and the Métro. Or walking, which is what I usually do. Nazi soldiers are everywhere, in the cafés and the shops, drinking our wine and clearing our shelves, loitering on corners and chatting up our women, as if everything in France is theirs for the taking, which I suppose it is. But no one suffers more than the Jews.

In addition to having their property and possessions seized, the Statut des Juifs prohibits them from working in certain professions, going to the theater, shopping in most stores, and even owning radios. All Jews over the age of six must wear a yellow star printed with the word Juif over their heart, to more easily mark them for persecution. For this honor, they are made to use an entire month’s cloth ration. Some defy the new law, though they do so at great risk. Those caught or denounced by Nazi sympathizers are beaten or worse.

And the roundups have begun. Thousands of Jews, mostly women and children, detained for days, without food or water, shipped first to the holding camp at Drancy before eventually being stuffed into cattle cars and taken away. Operation Spring Breeze, one of the roundups was called, organized and carried out by the French police.

By our own police.

But it was only the beginning. Details of the death camps have begun to leak out. Whispers of gas chambers and ovens, shallow trenches filled with bodies. All over Europe, Jews are being erased. And the French government is helping to do it.

We get our news—the real news—the way most Parisians do, from banned BBC broadcasts on Radio Londres or from whatever underground paper is being quietly passed from hand to hand. Like everything else these days, being caught means severe punishment.

Maman has been taking the news especially hard, which surprises me a little. I’ve never known her to be weepy, but after two years of the boches, we are all worn to a raveling. Her illness has taken a firm hold now, her fits of coughing so severe she’s forced to submit to nightly sleeping draughts in order to rest. And there are the blood-flecked handkerchiefs I pretended not to know about until she could no longer hide them from me. Now, as another winter sets in with no fuel for warmth, her condition has become dire.

What little work there is has fallen to me now. It’s fittings mostly, but I’m grateful for anything that fills the days. And then in the evenings, when the blackout curtains are drawn and Maman is asleep, I continue to work on my dress, though I doubt she will live long enough to see it finished.

One night, she calls me to her room and tells me to pull up a chair. It’s painful to see the changes that have come over her. We’re all thinner these days, but Maman’s thinness is of a crueler variety, a slow ravaging that has left the skin stretched taut over the bones of her face. And yet, her eyes are bright and hectic as they move over me.

“Sit,” she says, swatting my hand when I reach out to touch her forehead. “I have something to tell you. Something I should have told you years ago.”

“You should be resting,” I reply, hoping to put her off. I don’t want to talk about death. Or Nazis. Or how hard things are going to get. We’ve spoken of little else lately. “We can talk later. After you’ve had some sleep.”

“What I have to say cannot wait until tomorrow.”

I nod, waiting.

“Go to my dresser. In the top drawer, near the back, you’ll find a box. Bring it to me.”

The box is where she said it would be, a jeweler’s case of dark-green velvet about the size of my palm. I carry it back to the bed and return to my chair, watching with a kind of fascination as she presses the case to her chest with inexplicable tenderness. When her gaze finally lifts to mine, it’s as if she’d forgotten I was there.

Her hands tremble as she fumbles with the lid. In the end, she gives up and hands it back to me. “Open it, please.”

I do as I’m told, not realizing I’m holding my breath until it escapes all at once. Inside is a pillow-shaped locket engraved with a pair of lilies. I find Maman’s eyes. She blinks slowly, offering the slightest of nods.

It takes a moment to locate the catch, but finally I’m staring at the face of a stranger. He’s handsome in a sharp, brooding way, with high cheekbones, deep-set eyes, and a head of thick, dark curls. His mouth is full, almost feminine, tilted up at the corners, as if trying to suppress a smile.

“His name was Erich Freede,” Maman says softly. “He was a student at the Conservatoire de Paris the summer before you were born.”