Children of the Stars Read online

  The gendarme nodded. “We saw a backpack on one of the beds. It had some food and a few maps. It seems suspicious.”

  “Well, all I know is that the day of the raid, everyone had to get out fast. I imagine one of those boys left it, didn’t have time to grab it.”

  The officer frowned. Perhaps the old woman was telling the truth, but the number of coincidences was mounting. “Would you mind if we came in? I’m rather thirsty,” he said as an excuse.

  “Of course you can come in,” Margot answered loudly.

  Jacob, Moses, and Joseph hid in the bathroom before the men entered the living room.

  “Do you live alone?” the gendarme asked, seeing the three glasses of milk and crumbs on the table.

  “Oh, no, I have my cats. Don’t you see the mess they’ve made?” she chuckled, tidying up the table.

  “And you serve them milk in glasses?” It was more a statement than a question.

  “They’re my babies. An old woman like me needs something to dote on.” She buried her nose into the neck of a tabby to hide her nerves. The gendarme grunted, and Margot looked up. “What can I bring you to drink?”

  “No need, we should be getting along,” the younger gendarme insisted.

  Margot followed them to the door with her short, arthritic steps.

  “If you hear anything about the tenants upstairs, please call for us immediately,” the older officer said at the threshold.

  “Anything for France, officer.” Margot nodded.

  When the door finally clicked closed, Margot let out a long breath. Her body was sticky with sweat, and her head spun. She was sure her blood pressure was through the roof, but she was proud to have helped the poor young boys. She would not be one of the French who licked the boots of their occupiers, such as Jacques Doriot or Marcel Déat—one-time leftists who supported Marshal Wilhelm Keitel and General Charles Huntziger, the actual rulers of France, though Huntziger had not lasted long.

  She called the boys to come out of the bathroom. Their faces were white as a sheet. “Did they suspect anything?” Jacob asked.

  “They suspect something, but they won’t come back unless someone calls them. They’re tired, and they’ll be busy hunting down thousands of people who’ve gone into hiding.” Margot’s voice was weaker and more serious now. She went to the window. Through the lace curtain she could see the gendarmes stopping at the doorwoman’s lookout to talk for a moment. They looked back up at Margot’s apartment, but she was out of their range of vision. “They’ve said something to the doorwoman,” she continued. “You boys can’t stay here much longer, but you shouldn’t start out at night either. Sleep here, then head out first thing in the morning.”

  The three boys went back to the couch. Each boy’s stomach was a ball of nerves, but they managed to eat the crackers she brought them.

  “Where is my aunt?” Moses asked. His sad face belied his desperate need to see an adult he could trust.

  Margot dropped into her chair. She was worn out. The circles around her eyes were darker than before the police officers’ visit, and her wavy gray hair was tousled. She had run her hands through it a number of times in an effort to calm down.

  “She came back around noon. Apparently the family she worked for had been taken away. Since she herself wasn’t registered on any list, she had managed to escape, but . . .”

  “Please, just tell us what happened,” Moses pleaded, his voice tremulous.

  “Good old Judith, such a generous soul. This is destroying the best of us,” Margot said, her head bowed.

  “What happened?” Jacob demanded.

  Margot looked up with her bright eyes. She took a deep breath and sipped her cold tea. “She came back at noon. She looked for you all over the house, called for you, wept out loud. I went up to see her, but she wouldn’t let me in. I begged her to calm down, told her things would work out, that they weren’t going to hurt innocent children. She told me I had no idea what the Nazis were capable of. I reminded her we are in France, the gendarmes would take care of them . . . but she was desperate and was shouting . . .”

  Moses started to cry. Jacob thought his brother should not hear any more. This terrible war would destroy all the good that was left in the world.

  “That witch of a doorwoman called the gendarmes. Half a dozen of them came barreling up the stairs. I hid because I was a coward . . .” Margot trailed off into tears.

  “There was nothing you could’ve done,” Jacob said, soothingly.

  “She started screaming from the other side of the door, and I just hid down here in my apartment. I heard them banging at the door, heard Judith’s steps, heard the gendarmes ordering her to open up. Finally the gendarmes broke her door open, and I heard Judith running fast. More steps, and then in the courtyard . . .” Margot could barely continue. “There was a loud noise, like a sack of flour had dropped from the ceiling. I looked out the window, the same window I was just looking out. Your aunt was there, facedown, her foot still twitching when I saw her. The gendarmes ran down and called for a doctor, but she was already dead. The next day, the doorwoman cleaned up the blood, but you can still see the stain . . . as if some part of her isn’t ready to leave this place.”

  Tears streamed down Moses’s face. He did not really understand what death was, but he knew it meant a separation that lasted forever. Judith had been a second mother to them. She may not have been overly tender or affectionate, but she looked after them, stayed up all night with them when they were sick, and gave them everything she had.

  Jacob swiped at the tears that dripped down his nose. This loss made him more determined than ever to set off in search of their parents. Joseph stayed silent, wondering how his family was, hoping they were alive and well.

  “Do you understand?” Margot asked. “A woman like her, dead, murdered by this despicable Vichy regime, murdered by all those who have surrendered their souls and looked the other way. The worst friend of the truth is silence. The worst lie in the world is that ordinary people are powerless against tyranny.”

  Jacob stood and looked out the window. From that height, the dark stain could still be seen, proof of the power a person’s actions have over life. The stain was all they had left of their aunt.

  “We’re heading south. There’s a city we’ve got to get to. I don’t want to tell you where, but it’s south of Lyon,” Jacob said calmly.

  “But Lyon is so far. You’ll never make it. The Nazis are controlling all movement . . . the train stations, the roads, everything. And there’s a border between occupied and unoccupied France.”

  “It doesn’t matter. We have to find our parents.”

  The old woman was quiet, thoughtful. Then she reached out for Jacob and said, “In Versailles, I have an old friend who restores art. He has a safe-conduct permit that lets him travel around France freely. I’ll ask him to at least get you out of Paris. He might be able to get you as far as the border with unoccupied France, near Bourges. There’s a famous cathedral there, the perfect excuse to justify a visit to the city during the holiday.”

  “But first, tomorrow, we have to take Joseph to the camp at Drancy. We think his family is there,” Jacob said.

  “If you go there, the Nazis will take you prisoner,” the old woman said, turning to him.

  “I don’t care, ma’am. I just want to be with my family.”

  “Judith told me what the Germans did in Dachau. Her father was taken there in 1937. I think that’s why she threw herself out the window. She knew what they would do to her.” Margot winced as she spoke but prayed her words would get through to the child.

  But Joseph’s look was determined. He knew that life would be pointless without his family. What would he do all alone in the world? “I’d rather go through whatever they’re going through with them. I know you can’t understand, but it’s what I’ve decided. Most people value freedom and life, but for me, it’s all worthless without my family. Existing without them would be a kind of slavery. Suffering wi
th them, I’ll be with them forever.”

  The boy’s words touched them all deeply. Margot was surprised at how grown-up he sounded. Yet she knew that war changed people. It made the things that actually mattered shine like gold nuggets amid the dust of daily life.

  Margot nodded to Jacob. “I’ll get your backpack. I doubt the police will be back up here. You boys will sleep, and I’ll keep watch tonight. First thing in the morning, I’ll telephone my friend, and he’ll be waiting for you.”

  “Can we trust him?” Jacob asked. He was not convinced about the plan. Getting out of the occupied zone would increase their chances for survival, but anyone and everyone might be a collaborator.

  “There are so few people in the world one can trust fully. But one of them is this friend. I’ll write a note for you to give him.” Margot walked slowly from the living room to the landing outside the door and up the stairs to get the backpack. For a few moments, the three boys were alone.

  “Can we trust her?” Joseph asked.

  Jacob shrugged. “She’s always been nice to us. Plus, she just put her neck on the line for us.”

  “Margot is a good woman,” Moses said. “She always gives me candy.”

  The two older boys snickered. Moses held limited criteria for evaluating people, but in this case they were all in agreement. Margot seemed trustworthy.

  The old woman returned a few minutes later, carrying the backpack in one hand as if it were weighed down with bricks. She hoisted it onto the dining room table and, smiling for the first time, said, “Tomorrow will be a long day. We’d best have a light supper and get to bed.”

  The meal was brief. They spoke little as they shared a loaf of rye bread and a can of sardines. Margot prepared the bedroom for them, and the boys laid down fully dressed. A clean bed, no matter how narrow it was for three boys crammed together, was a delicious luxury. Their eyes were closing before the light went out. But then Moses whispered to Jacob, “Do you think we’ll see Mother and Father again?”

  Jacob looked at him through the darkness. Moses’s eyes were shining bright like a cat’s. He did not want to lie to his brother or give him false hope, but Jacob really believed their family would be reunited. Stroking the boy’s hair, he answered, “Nothing’s going to stop us from seeing them. I swear to you, we’ll cross heaven and earth to get to them. Father always told me that nothing was impossible—that if we had faith and worked hard, we could achieve anything we put our minds to.”

  “It didn’t work out that way for Aunt Judith. She preferred to end her life . . .” Moses felt the tears pricking at his eyes again.

  “But we’re going to make it. Margot is helping us, her friend is going to get us to the unoccupied zone . . . It’s like an angel is watching over us,” Jacob said, still stroking his brother’s head.

  “I trust you, Jacob. I’m never going to leave your side. Thank you for not leaving me in the velodrome.”

  The two boys hugged until sleep overcame them. Nightmarish monsters tried to trap them that restless night, but their innocent minds escaped and flew off to the world of dreams, where everything is possible and nothing lasts forever.

  Chapter 9

  Paris

  July 19, 1942

  To get to the street, they had to pass by the doorwoman’s lookout again. Usually there was no one around that early in the morning. Jacob was the first one to scout things out. Stealing a glance through the window of her lookout, he could see no sign of her. He was just about to wave Moses and Joseph through when a hand grabbed his shirt.

  “You piece of trash! I knew you’d come back. The police didn’t find you, but I did. It’s too bad you didn’t all jump out the window like your two-faced aunt.” The woman’s mouth was twisted into a gleeful snarl.

  Jacob tried to twist free, but the doorwoman tightened her grip. “Why do you hate us?” he cried. “We haven’t done anything to you!”

  “You’re filthy little foreign rats. Your family showed up acting all hoity-toity, looking down on the rest of us. Jews always think they’re better than everybody else. Well, now you’re getting what was coming to you,” she said. Jacob was distracted by the saliva bubbles at the corners of her mouth.

  “But my aunt helped you with your son. She—”

  “I don’t need your pity,” the woman cut in. “The gendarmes will take care of you.” With her free hand she opened the window of her lookout and reached for the telephone. Joseph ran up at full speed and pushed the woman with all his might. The door she leaned against gave way and she lost her balance, stumbling down the stairs that led to her basement apartment. Jacob peered in and saw the doorwoman’s face covered with blood, but she was moving.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” Joseph said, shaking Jacob to snap him out of his stupor.

  “But we’ve got to call a doctor,” Jacob said, confused.

  “There’s no time. They’ll come help her. We’ve got to go before anyone sees us.”

  The three boys ran toward the gate and walked down the street as nonchalantly as they could manage, not looking back. Without fully realizing it, they had started on their journey and had no idea where it would take them.

  They headed for the train. At that hour, the cars were packed, and three boys could slip in and out without being noticed. They stuffed themselves into the car near the door. The trip would only last about twenty minutes, even with all the stops for people to get on and off.

  Joseph studied the manual laborers and office workers. Their faces were set and cold. Life went on despite Nazi occupation and mass arrests. All those “good citizens” looked the other way when a neighbor or a childhood friend disappeared without a trace. They were powerless to stop it, and the powerlessness led to an entrenched indifference. They were better off not getting involved and just praying to heaven that they were not next. Joseph barely contained his impulse to scream at the top of his lungs, to wake them all up from their self-absorption, but he knew it would do no good. Just trying to get by, that amorphous mass of people followed the song of the sirens that lured them to the rocks.

  They got off the train near the Drancy camp. Margot had told them the Jews were in an officially protected housing complex. If he could not find his parents there, Joseph would have to search the Hotel Cahen d’Anvers, the Austerlitz train station, the Levitan furniture warehouse, the wharf in Bercy, and the Rue de Faubourg. The French authorities had turned all of those locations into improvised internment camps to house the imprisoned Jews.

  They walked for several minutes before coming to an area with few buildings except for an enormous U-shaped structure. From a distance, it looked like a big apartment building, but the barbed-wire fence and wooden lookout towers indicated otherwise.

  Joseph was ready to walk right up, but Jacob stuck his hand out and caught him. “Are you sure you want to do this? Once you go up to that fence, it’s over. You’ll never come out.”

  “My family’s in there. What would you do if you were in my place?” Joseph asked, squinting with sadness.

  “I don’t know. I get it that you want to be with them, but they might not even be in there. They may have been sent to Germany already.”

  “It’s a risk I have to take. Thank you for helping me the past few days. Thank you so much. You’ve made me feel that at least I mattered to someone.”

  The three boys embraced. Jacob and Moses watched as their friend walked slowly up to the watchtower. Joseph felt like his feet were made of lead. He knew he was somehow turning his back on life, but he had chosen to be with his people. Humans are nothing more than the sum of their affections and the connections they make in life. When those ties break, loneliness destroys what little is left in an uninhabited heart.

  Joseph went up to the gendarme. After they exchanged words, the policeman opened the gate and the boy walked forward. Jacob and Moses heard a commotion of voices, and a man and a woman ran toward Joseph. The three embraced like shipwreck victims clinging to fate’s driftwood. Jacob a
nd Moses glimpsed Joseph’s eyes from above his father’s shoulder, full of gratitude. He was where he needed to be, nestled into the hearts of those who loved him.

  Jacob and Moses turned and walked back to the train station. They would head back downtown and transfer at the Gare de Lyon station to a train that would take them to Versailles. Their heads still hung low by the time they got to the stop near Drancy. In a way, they envied Joseph. They did not really need freedom; all they wanted was to find their family. Boarding the train, Jacob was lost in thought. At the age when concepts like the origin of the world, religion, and fatherland were nothing more than empty words, when the only country that matters to you is your mother’s welcoming lap, your father’s face lighting up when he sees you, or your arm slung over your brother’s shoulder, home is wherever your family is.

  They arrived at Gare de Lyon and headed for the next train platform, but there were German soldiers everywhere. At the head of each platform the soldiers stopped people at random and demanded to see their papers. Though not every traveler was being stopped, Jacob and Moses could not run the risk of being discovered.

  “What do we do?” Moses cried, his voice lilting up in worry.

  Jacob looked at the doors. Gendarmes and soldiers were stationed at every entry and exit for the trains. Then he looked at the platform again and shrugged. “We’ll just have to risk it,” he said, and headed for their train.

  Moses followed, nervous. They walked slowly, their gaze glued in front. People all around were passing briskly or pushing to try to make the train on time. When they got to the checkpoint, the brothers took a deep breath, as if preparing to dive into the ocean. They held their breath and walked forward.