The Sweetness of Forgetting (43)

I can’t seem to muster words. I just stare at him.

“The sixteenth of July, 1942,” he continues. His voice has softened now. “The first day of the Vel’ d’Hiv roundup.”

My throat is dry. It’s the massive arrest of thirteen thousand Parisians that I’d read about online.

“I was there too,” he adds softly. “My family was taken that day.”

I stare. “I’m so sorry.”

He shakes his head. “It was the end of the life I once knew,” he says softly. “The beginning of the life I now live.”

Silence descends. “What happened?” I ask finally.

He looks into the distance. “They came for us before dawn. I did not know to expect them. I did not know it could happen. As I look back, I realize I should have. We all should have. But sometimes in life, it is easier to believe things will be all right. We were blind to the truth.”

“But how could you have known?” I ask.

He nods. “It is easy to look back and question, but you are correct; it would have been impossible to know what was coming. For us, for my wife and my son, just three years old, we were taken with many others to the Vélodrome d’Hiver in the quinzième, just near the Eiffel Tower and very near the Seine. There were maybe seven thousand, maybe eight thousand people there. It was hard to count them all. It was a sea of people. There was no food. Hardly any water. We were packed together like fish in a can. Some people killed themselves. I saw a mother smother her baby, and I thought she was crazy, but by the end of the third day, I understood that she was merciful. Later, as she wailed, I watched a guard shoot her. I remember thinking quite clearly, She is lucky.”

His voice is flat, but his eyes are watery as he goes on. “We stayed there for five days before they moved us. On the fourth day, my son, my Nicolas, he died in my arms. And before we were taken away to Drancy, and then to Auschwitz, my wife and I were separated, but I could see in her eyes that she was already gone. Losing Nicolas had taken her will to live. I was told later that she did not pass the initial selection at Auschwitz when she arrived, and that she did not cry, not once, as they led her away.”

“I’m so sorry,” I murmur, but he waves dismissively.

“It was long ago,” he says. I watch as he turns back to his book, studying the page that he said contained the records I was looking for.

“Alors,” he says. He blinks a few times. “Your family. The Picards of rue du Général Camou. The youngest two, David and Danielle, they died at Auschwitz. Upon arrival. David was eight years of age. Danielle was five.”

“God,” I breathe. “They were just babies.”

Monsieur Berr nods. “Most of the young ones never returned. They were taken to the gas chamber immediately because the Germans considered them useless.” He swallows and continues reading. “Helene, age eighteen, and Claude, age sixteen, died at Auschwitz, in 1942. So too did the mother, Cecile. The father, Albert, died in Auschwitz at the end of 1943.” He pauses and adds softly, “It says here that he worked in the crematorium, until he became ill in the winter. That must have been terrible. He knew his own fate.”

I feel tears in my eyes, and this time, it’s too late to blink them back. Monsieur Berr is silent as the rivers run down my cheeks. It takes a few moments for his words to fully settle into my soul. “All of them died there?” I whisper. “At Auschwitz?” He meets my eye and nods slowly, a look of pity on his face. “What about Alain? How did he die?”

For the first time today, Monsieur Berr looks surprised. “Die? But he is the one who gave me this information.”

I stare at him. “I don’t understand.”

He squints at the page again. “Yes, this interview is dated the sixth of June, 2005. I remember him. A very nice man. Kind eyes. You can always know a person by his eyes. He was playing chess with another survivor, a man I knew. That is how I came upon him.”

“Wait,” I say. My heart is thudding as I struggle to understand what he’s saying. “You’re telling me that Alain Picard, my grandmother’s brother, is still alive? And that you talked to him?”

Monsieur Berr looks concerned. “Bien sur, he was alive in 2005. I do not know what became of him after that. He was never deported, but he suffered during the war. Everyone did. He told me that he went into hiding, and for nearly three years, he had very little food. A man, his old piano teacher, gave him a place to sleep on the coldest winter nights, but the man was afraid of putting his own family in danger. So Alain, he slept on the streets, and sometimes, the nuns at the church would give him meals. He would be eighty now, if he is still alive. Then again, I am ninety-three, my dear. And I am not giving up anytime soon.”

He smiles at this. I’m too stunned to reply.

“My grandmother’s brother,” I murmur. “Do you know where he is?”

Monsieur Berr reaches for a pad of paper. “Do you have a pen?” he asks. I nod and fumble in my purse. He jots something down on a piece of paper, rips it off, and hands it to me. “This is the address he gave me in 2005. It is in the Marais, the Jewish quarter, near the Place des Vosges. That is where I found him playing chess.”

“That’s near my hotel,” I tell him. I look at the address he’s handed me: 27, rue du Foin, no. 2B. I feel a chill run down my spine.