The Sweetness of Forgetting (39)

She nods solemnly. “Of the seventy-six thousand taken in France, only two thousand survived. It is very likely that they perished, madame. I am sorry.”

I nod, and it’s not until I draw in a deep breath that I realize I’m trembling.

“Did you find the name you were looking for?” she asks after a moment.

I shake my head. “Only on the census form. There’s no record of an Alain Picard being arrested or deported.”

She chews her lip for a moment. “Alors. There is another person who may be able to help you. She is a researcher here, and she speaks some English. Let me see if she is available.”

After a few brief phone calls in French, she tells me that Carole, from the research library, will help me in thirty minutes. She suggests waiting in the museum itself, where I’m welcome to browse the permanent exhibition.

I walk down the stairs into the nearly deserted exhibit hall and am immediately struck by the number of photographs and documents lining the long, narrow room. In the middle of the room, a big screen plays a film in French, and as I listen to a man’s voice talking about what I assume is the Holocaust, I drift to the first wall on the left and am heartened to realize that all the exhibits are captioned in English as well as French. At the end of the room, an eerie image of train tracks to nowhere is projected on a big, blank wall, and I’m reminded of the dream I had just after Mamie gave me the list.

For a half hour, I’m lost in my own thoughts as I read testimony after testimony of the beginning of the war, the loss of Jewish rights in France and across Europe, and about the first deportations out of the country.

Not only did these things happen in my grandmother’s lifetime, but they may very well have happened to the people she loved most in the world. I close my eyes and realize I’m breathing hard. My heart is still thudding double time in my chest when I hear a woman’s voice in front of me.

“Madame McKenna-Smith?”

I snap my eyes open. The woman standing there is about my age, with brown hair pulled into a bun, and blue eyes rimmed with expression lines. She’s wearing dark jeans and a white blouse.

“Yes, that’s me,” I say. I hastily add, “Sorry, I mean, Oui, madame.”

She smiles. “It is all right. I speak some English. I am Carole Didot. Would you like to come with me?”

I nod and follow her through the rest of the exhibit, where we walk briskly past another series of videos, and more walls full of documents and information. She leads me out through a hall filled with photos of children; they go on as far as the eye can see. I stop and lean forward to read one of the captions at eye level.

Rachel Fournier, 1937–1942, it reads. In the photograph, a dark-haired little girl grins into the camera, her hair done up in pigtails tied with ribbons. She’s clutching a big rubber ball and smiling directly at the camera.

“These are the French children whose lives were lost,” Carole says softly.

“My God,” I murmur. This hall hits me even harder than the chilling photographs of death I’d seen in the other room. As I gaze dazedly at the photos, I can’t help but think of my own daughter. Had fate placed us in a different country, in a different time, she could have been one of these little girls on the wall.

“Nearly eleven thousand children from France died in the Shoah,” Carole said, reading my expression. “This hall always reminds me of all that could have been and never was.”

Her words ring in my ears as I follow her to an elevator, where she pushes the button for the fourth floor. We ride up in silence as I think about Mamie’s family and all that was lost.

Carole leads me into a modern office with two chairs facing a desk piled high in books and papers. Out the window, I can see a church tower over a series of apartments, and on the wall are pictures drawn by children that say Mama. Carole gestures to one of the chairs and takes a seat behind her computer.

“So what makes you come all the way to Paris?” she asks as she jiggles her mouse and hits a few keys on her keyboard.

I briefly tell her Mamie’s story and that I think the names she’s given me were family members who’d been lost in the Holocaust. I explain that I’ve found all but Alain, for whom no records seem to exist. I also explain that I can’t figure out what happened to my grandmother; there’s no record of a Rose Picard in the deportation documents either.

“But your grandmother, you say she escaped Paris before arrest, no?” Carole asks.

I nod. “Yes. I mean, I think so. She’s never explained. And now she has Alzheimer’s.”

Carole shakes her head. “So the past, it is nearly lost for her.”

I nod. “I just want to know what happened. She wanted me to find out what became of her family. If I go home without an answer about Alain, I’m afraid it will break her heart.”

“I am sorry we cannot be more help, but if he is not in the records, he is not in the records.”

My heart sinks. “So that’s it?” I ask in a small voice. “I may never find out what happened to him?”

Carole hesitates. “There is one more chance,” she says.

“There is?”

“There is a man,” she says, but her voice trails off and she doesn’t finish her thought. Instead, she flips through an old-fashioned Rolodex, pauses, and picks up her handset to dial a number. After a moment, she says something in rapid French, glances at me, says something else, and then hangs up.