The Sweetness of Forgetting (74)

Filthy huddles of people being hosed down in piles while they screamed.

The terror on parents’ faces at the very moment they realized there was no going back.

Children in long lines being herded systematically to their deaths.

And always, in those images that played like an endless picture show across her mind, the people had the faces of her family, her friends, the people she loved.

And Jacob. Jacob, who had loved her. Jacob, who had saved her. Jacob, whom she’d foolishly, horribly sent back to die.

And now, in the dark netherworld of her coma, the images of those she’d loved were floating before her like a picture show. She had imagined so many times what might have happened to them that she could see it now just as if she had witnessed it with her own eyes.

As she drifted through this dark, underwater world between life and death, she could see Danielle and David being ripped from her mother, their little faces streaked with tears, their eyes wide with confusion, their screams vivid in her ears. She wondered how they had died. Right there in the Vel’ d’Hiv, just blocks from the Eiffel Tower, in whose shadow they had lived their whole short lives? Or later, in the crowded, airless train cars on the way to camps like Drancy or Beaune-la-Rolande or Pithiviers? Or did they make it all the way to Auschwitz, only to be led in a neat, orderly line into a gas chamber, where they surely would have gasped in terror for their final breaths? Did they cry out? Did they understand what was happening to them?

Maman and Papa. Had they been separated in the Vel’ d’Hiv, or not until they were taken away from France? How had Papa borne being ripped from the family he had always so fiercely protected? Had he fought back? Had he been struck by the guards, beaten for his obstinacy? Or had he gone willingly, already resigned to the futility of it all? Had Maman been left alone, with the children huddled around her, knowing the terrible truth that she could no longer protect them? How would it feel to realize you were no longer in control of your fate, no longer able to protect the children you would gladly die to save?

Helene. It broke Rose’s heart every time she thought of her older sister. What if she had tried harder to reason with her? Could she have saved her if only she’d managed to convince her that the world had lost all logic and had gone mad? Had Helene regretted, in her final moments, not believing Rose? Or had she held out hope until the end that perhaps they were only being sent away to work, and not to die? Somehow, Rose always imagined her slipping away in her sleep, peaceful, alone, although she knew from the ghosts that her end had likely been much different. Each time she thought of how Helene had reportedly been beaten to death, simply for being too ill to work, Rose had to run to the bathroom to throw up, and for days afterward, she couldn’t hold down a meal.

Claude. Just thirteen, he had tried so hard to be grown up, to pretend to understand the things that adults understood. But he was a child the last time Rose saw him. Had he become the adult he’d always wanted to be in the few days inside the Vel’ d’Hiv? Had he been forced to understand things he shouldn’t have known for years? Did he try to protect the younger ones, or his sister, or his mother? Or had he remained a child, terrified of what was happening? Had he made it onto a transport to Auschwitz? Had he survived there for a while, or had he been drawn out of line upon his arrival, judged to be too young or too small to work, and sent immediately to the gas chamber? What had he said with this last breath? What had been his last waking thought?

Alain. The one Rose loved the best. And the one who understood everything, although he was only eleven. Her heart ached most of all for him, because without the cloak of denial that the others had managed to wrap themselves in, there was no way to dull the pain. He would have felt every moment of it, because he understood it all, understood what was happening, believed Jacob’s urgent warnings. Had he been frightened? Or had he grown up in those moments and decided to meet his fate with brave resilience? He was tougher than Rose was, tougher than all of them. Had he used that bravery to rise above the terror? Rose felt sure that he hadn’t lived long; he was much smaller than Claude, very small for his age, and no guard in his right mind would have selected such a little boy for work duty. When Rose closed her eyes at night, she often saw Alain’s little face, his eyes somber, his rosy cheeks sallowed, his beautiful blond hair shaved, as he awaited the fate he knew was coming in the midst of a thousand other children in the cold darkness of a gas chamber somewhere in Poland.

And then there was Jacob. It had been nearly seventy years since she’d last seen him, and still, his face was as clear in Rose’s mind as if they’d parted just yesterday. She often imagined him as she’d seen him the first time she met him, in the Jardin du Luxembourg in the winter. His dancing green eyes, his thick brown hair, the way they had looked at each other and known in that very first instant what they’d found. She could imagine, in her darkest moments, his face, resolute and brave, as he endured the torture of the Vel’ d’Hiv, or as he was thrown aboard a transport to a transit camp, or as he entered Auschwitz. But unlike the others, she couldn’t visualize him dying. It was strange, she thought, and she wondered whether it was her mind’s way of protecting her, even though she did not want to be protected. She wanted to feel the pain of his death, because she deserved it.

But those weren’t the only moments of her life that Rose returned to as she drifted farther and farther away from the world. She thought also of the moments that had come since then, the few happy times over the years, when her heart had filled up with love and joy, the way it once had when she was a girl. And here in the depths of her coma as she floated through the darkness, she thought back to a cold morning in May 1975, one of her favorite memories.