Free Sarah's Key by Tatiana De Rosnay Page A

Sens.”
    I fleetingly remembered that day. There had not been a great deal exchanged between Sean and Heather Jarmond, and Edouard and Colette Tézac. It seemed like the entire French side of the family had forgotten their English. But I hadn’t cared. I was so happy. Brilliant sunshine. The quiet little country church. My simple ivory dress that my mother-in-law approved of. Bertrand, stunning in his gray morning coat. The dinner party at the Tézacs’, beautifully done. Champagne, candles, and rose petals. Charla delivering a very funny speech in her terrible French, and that only I had laughed at. Laure and Cécile, simpering. My mother and her pale magenta suit, and her little whisper in my ear, “I do hope you’ll be happy, angel pie.” My father waltzing with the stiff-backed Colette. It seemed so long ago.
    “Do you miss America?” Bamber asked.
    “No. I miss my sister. But not America.”
    A young waiter came to bring us our coffees. He took one look at Bamber’s flame-colored hair and smirked. Then he saw the impressive arrays of cameras and lenses.
    “You tourists?” he asked. “Taking nice photos of Paris?”
    “Not tourists. Just taking nice photos of what’s left of the Vel’ d’Hiv’,” said Bamber in French, with his slow British accent.
    The waiter seemed taken aback.
    “Nobody asks about the Vel’ d’Hiv’ much,” he said. “The Eiffel Tower, yes, but not the Vel’ d’Hiv’.”
    “We’re journalists,” I said. “We work for an American magazine.”
    “Sometimes there are Jewish families who come in here,” recalled the young man. “After one of the anniversary speeches at the memorial down by the river.”
    I had an idea.
    “You wouldn’t know of anybody, a neighbor on this street, who knows about the roundup, who could talk to us?” I asked. We had already spoken to several survivors; most of them had written books about their experience, but we were lacking witnesses. Parisians who had seen all this happen.
    Then I felt silly; after all, the young man was barely twenty. His own father probably wasn’t even born in ’42.
    “Yes, I do,” he answered, to my surprise. “If you walk back up the street, you’ll see a newspaper store on your left. The man in charge there, Xavier, he’ll tell you. His mother knows, she’s lived there all her life.”
    We left him a large tip.

 
     
    T
    HERE HAD BEEN AN endless, dusty walk from the little train station, through a small town, where more people had stared and pointed. Her feet ached. Where were they going now? What was going to happen to them? Were they far from Paris? The train ride had been fast, barely a couple of hours. As always, she thought of her brother. Her heart sank lower with each mile they covered. How was she ever going to get back home? How was she going to make it? It made her feel sick to think he probably thought she’d forgotten him. That’s what he believed, locked up in the dark cupboard. He thought she had abandoned him, that she didn’t care, that she didn’t love him. He had no water, no light, and he was afraid. She had let him down.
    Where were they? She hadn’t had time to look at the name of the station as they had pulled in. But she had noticed the first things a city child pays attention to: the lush countryside, the flat green meadows, the golden fields. The intoxicating smell of fresh air and summer. The hum of a bumble bee. Birds in the sky. Fluffy white clouds. After the stink and heat of the past few days, this was glorious, she felt. Maybe it wasn’t going to be that bad, after all.
    She followed her parents through barbed-wire gates, with stern looking guards on each side holding guns. And then she saw the rows of long dark barracks, the grimness of the place, and her spirits sank. She cowered against her mother. Policemen started to shout orders. The women and children were told to go to the sheds on the right, the men on the left. Helpless, holding on to her mother, she watched