Free Sarah's Key by Tatiana De Rosnay Page B

her father be pushed along with a group of men. She felt afraid without him by her side. But there was nothing she could do. The guns terrified her. Her mother did not move. Her eyes were dulled. Dead. Her face was white and sickly.
    The girl took her mother’s hand as they were shoved toward the barracks. The inside was bare and grimy. Planks and straw. Stench and dirt. The latrines were outside, planks of wood astride holes. They were ordered to sit there, in groups, to piss and defecate in view of all, like animals. It revolted her. She felt she could not go. She could not do this. She looked on as her mother straddled one of the holes. She bowed her head in shame. But she finally did what she was told, cringing, hoping no one was looking at her.
    Just above the barbed wire, the girl could glimpse the village. The black spire of a church. A water tower. Roofs and chimneys. Trees. Over there, she thought, in those nearby houses, people had beds, sheets, blankets, food, and water. They were clean. They had clean clothes. Nobody screamed at them. Nobody treated them like cattle. And they were just there, just on the other side of the fence. In the clean little village where she could hear the church bell chime.
    There were children on vacation over there, she thought. Children going on picnics, children playing hide-and-seek. Happy children, even if there was a war, and less to eat than usual, and maybe their Papa had gone away to fight. Happy, loved, cherished, children. She couldn’t imagine why there was such a difference between those children and her. She couldn’t imagine why she and all these people here with her had to be treated this way. Who had decided this, and what for?
    They were given tepid cabbage soup. It was thin and sandy. Nothing else. Then she watched as rows of women stripped naked and fought to wash their dirty bodies under a trickle of water over rusty, iron washbasins. She found them ugly, grotesque. She hated the flabby ones, the skinny ones, the old ones, the young ones; she hated to have to see their nudity. She did not want to look at them. She hated having to see them.
    She huddled against her mother’s warmth and tried not to think of her brother. Her skin felt itchy, her scalp too. She wanted a bath, her bed, her brother. Dinner. She wondered if anything could be worse than what had been happening to her over the past few days. She thought of her friends, of the other little girls in her school who also wore stars. Dominique, Sophie, Agnès. What had happened to them? Had some been able to escape? Were some safe, hiding somewhere? Was Armelle hiding with her family? Would she ever see her again, see her other friends again? Would she go back to school in September?
    That night, she couldn’t sleep; she needed her father’s reassuring touch. Her stomach hurt her, she felt it contract with pain. She knew they were not allowed to leave the barracks during the night. She clenched her teeth, wrapping her arms around her belly. But the pain grew worse. Slowly she got up, tiptoed through the rows of sleeping women and children, to the latrines outside the door.
    Glaring spot lights swept the camp as she huddled over the planks. The girl peered in and saw thick pale worms writhing in the dark mass of shit. She was afraid a policeman up there in the watchtowers would see her bottom, and she pulled her skirt down over her loins. She quickly made her way back to the barrack.
    Inside, the air was stuffy and foul. Some children whimpered in their sleep. She could hear a woman sobbing. She turned to her mother, gazing at the sunken, white face.
    Gone was the happy, loving woman. Gone was the mother who used to sweep her into her arms and whisper love words, Yiddish nicknames. The woman with the glossy honey locks and the voluptuous figure, the one all the neighbors, all the shopkeepers would greet by her first name. The one who smelled a warm, comforting, motherly smell: delicious cooking, fresh soap,