The World That We Knew(43)

The whole family. Bring your son.

Madame Lévi looked at her husband through tears.

“It will be fine,” he said, but the German professors and their families had already been led away. They had not been allowed to take their belongings or, in the case of the children, put on their shoes.

Julien was in the greenhouse when they called for him. He thought about scrambling over the garden wall. How this could be accomplished flashed through his mind—the lift into the air, the steep drop to the alley below. Victor had leapt from the roof of their house once, why couldn’t Julien do the same now from the top of the wall? But when he spied his parents at the door with the police, he couldn’t leave them. They didn’t even look like his parents, they had become two older, confused people. His father had put on his hat, as if he were going to a meeting and must look his best. Julien went to the door and did as the police asked. The family took nothing with them. Already, a soldier had taken the purse his mother carried, stealing the gold coins and her favorite earrings, scattering the baby teeth she had saved on the ground.

Julien saw the heron in the sky above them, but he threw his arms into the air and warned him away. The note Lea had written to him would never be received, and the one he had written was crumpled in the grass.

There are almost none of us left in the city. If not for Hardship Soup we would have starved.

I know I will see you.

Please stay alive.

“It will all be fine,” Julien heard his father tell his mother. Perhaps he was saying what they both most wished to believe. “We’ll be back soon enough.”

If it wasn’t the end, what was it? They stood in the garden with no weapons and no defense against evil. The heron still circled, but it was too late. They were forced along the path near the new rosebush, which had taken to the soil and bloomed as if it had always been there, with large crimson flowers that hosted a few lazy bees. The German captain had two Jewish men who had been doctors in Poland come in to tend to the roses and clear out the ruined plants. They, also, had been arrested, though they’d been down on their knees in the garden beds, their hands covered with soil. They were all too slow, they were all too trusting, there were rifles pointed at them in the place where the lime trees had been planted a hundred years ago. It was the last time Professor Lévi and his wife would see the garden, although in their final hours they dreamed of it, they held hands and whispered the names of the plants that had grown there, peony, coralbell, lavender, as if such things could remind them of the beauty of the world.



At a corner, before they were herded onto buses, Julien again thought of running. There was panic, and people were frantic, especially those who had been separated from family members. It was the end of something, that much he knew, so why not run? He had been the fastest boy in his school and excelled at sports. Perhaps he could find Lea in her convent, but just then his father stumbled on a loose cobblestone. Julien put out an arm to steady him. He helped his parents onto the bus, and later this caused him to be unable to sleep, the fact that he hadn’t insisted they flee, not that they could have outpaced the police with him, but perhaps they might have hidden in a doorway, shuddering, terrified, but invisible until nightfall. He made mistake after mistake, thinking of what to do, yet not acting quickly enough. He was in a dream, he was frozen, he was all his parents had left in the world, but now it was clearer. It was the end.

After a twenty-minute ride, the buses stopped, and those inside were herded into the street, then shepherded into the stadium, which was nearly full. Julien’s ears began to ring. He shook his head, but the warning was still there.

“We shouldn’t go in,” he told his father.

The police gestured for them to go forward. Several sounded whistles.

“They’ll let us go,” the professor decided, always preferring order and logic, and assuring his family that the situation was temporary. But when he tried to explain they were French citizens, no one listened.

There was no food or water available and the weather was hot. It was a time when people used to get ready for their August holidays, but now they were here. Children over the age of three had been separated from their parents, and many were crying, completely disoriented, lost in a sea of people. Luckily, there were women who took in these children right away, treating them as if they were their own.

The horror of this place must be a temporary situation, the professor insisted. He spoke in a low, measured voice. Keep calm. Don’t panic. This was Paris after all, and it was the police along with hired local people who guarded them, not German soldiers. “We’ll stay a day, maybe overnight, then they’ll let us out,” the professor assured his wife and son.

“Do you not understand what’s happening?” Julien had spied many people he knew from the neighborhood among the crowd. “We’re like lambs, doing as we’re told. Do you think they’ll give you back your beautiful house? You’ll never see it again. And all those treasures you buried? They’ll rot.”

By now guards had begun to collect wallets, jewelry, keys. Those who tried to keep such things were beaten, there in front of everyone. An old man was stomped upon when he refused to give up his wedding ring.

“Do you not see?” Julien pleaded.

At last, in that instant, as the old man begged for his ring, the professor understood everything that was happening and everything that was to come. He slipped the watch he always wore into his pocket. It was the one thing he had left that might be useful to them.