Another helpless wail clawed at my throat. I forced myself to swallow it. There was no escape, not unless I jumped before the horses and let them stomp over me—an idea that appealed, if only for the attention it would attract. But continuing to resist would just make Rosine more miserable and it would never dissuade Julie. She had made her decision. She hadn’t even come outside with us to bid me goodbye.
“I’ll visit as often as I can,” Rosine went on, sensing my capitulation. “And on holidays, you can come visit us. You’ll like your new school. You’ll like it very much. It’s a very fine establishment. Your mother has chosen the best for you.”
“I doubt it,” I retorted, boarding the carriage and sitting on the upholstered leather seat facing backward, scowling as my aunt arranged herself opposite me, my valise at her feet. The carriage lurched forward at a crack of the driver’s whip.
As we entered the thoroughfare that would take me to my uncertain future, I stared out the window at the receding flat, up to the salon window with its lace curtains, where, it seemed a lifetime ago, I’d tried to throw myself out.
I thought I glimpsed a shadow there—the figure of my mother watching me depart.
Then I blinked and she was gone.
* * *
—
During the two-hour-long carriage ride, Rosine tried to reassure me again. “The Sacré Cœur at Grandchamp is one of the most esteemed boarding institutions for young ladies in France. It’s in Versailles, not far from Paris. You’ll be so happy there, taking your lessons with other privileged girls.”
She kept repeating this refrain as the city melted away behind us, the vista opening onto fields of wheat and chestnut forests. I sat without speaking, my fists clenched in my lap. I imagined pulling open the door and leaping out. I’d run away and disappear, find refuge in a hamlet and beg in the streets until a kindly couple without children took me in. I’d grow up and herd goats; I’d get fat and rosy so no one would recognize me. Julie would search and search, overcome by guilt, Rosine would waste away in sorrow, but they’d never find me. I would become somebody else. Not the unwanted child anymore.
“We’re here,” said my aunt, surprising me as the carriage came to a stop. I’d expected a much longer journey, and as I stepped warily onto the unpaved country road, I saw nothing but high stone walls, lichen-stained, broken by a single, stout wooden gate.
My knees started to buckle. Though the day was warm, I felt cold as a tomb.
Rosine took my hand. “There’s nothing to fear. You’ll be safe here, Sarah. This is a convent of the highest order. And very expensive,” she added, as if that made everything better. “Your mother has gone to considerable effort to secure you a place here.”
I doubted this, too. I recalled the sour gentleman with the drooping mustachios, the Duc de Morny, whose hand I’d slapped. This was his fault. He must have suggested this prison for me. Hadn’t Julie assured him that something would be done?
I stood clutching my suitcase as Rosine rang the bell rope by the gate. Only then did I whisper, “Please. I’ll be good. I’ll attend Maman’s suitors in the salon. I’ll learn to sing and recite poetry. To amuse them like she does. You can teach me how.”
My aunt let out a sigh. “My child, you don’t understand. That is not what Julie wants for you. She has struggled so much, sacrificed so many things to achieve what she has. She doesn’t want you in her salon, enticing her suitors to kiss you. You may think her heartless, but she cares for you in her own way. She wants you to have a better life than she has.”
I did not understand. All I saw was a flat in Paris on a fashionable boulevard, a well-appointed home; my mother in silk, glamorous and sought after, with suitors at her beck and call. What could possibly be wrong with her life? Why must her sacrifice require forsaking me? Then I remembered the bulge of her stomach, her shadowy figure at the window as she watched me leave, and whatever pleas I had left went unspoken.
Rosine rang the bell again. Moments later, bolts unlatched and the gate swung open. My heart lodged in my throat.
The figure before me was tall and plump, dressed entirely in black, a wimple framing her cherubic features. It took me by surprise, that childlike face with its keen brown eyes and warm smile, so at odds with her apparel, like an angel in a widow’s garb.
“Welcome to Grandchamp. I am Mère Sophie, Reverend Mother of this blessed house of the Sisters of Zion.” She lowered her gaze. “You must be little Sarah Bernhardt.”
It was too much for me. With a desperate sob, I threw myself into the Reverend Mother’s startled embrace, burying my face against her lilac-scented robes.
Although I did not know it yet, I had found my refuge.
III
The convent had a lovely garden with white-pebble pathways, lime trees, and birdbaths—a paradise of tranquility in a serene, efficient place. I was prepared to hate it, thinking it could never be like Paris, which I had come to love, with its deafening clatter of landaus, hansoms, and rickety omnibuses running up to the hill of Montmartre, its winding alleyways and bold new boulevards, its raucous brasseries, smoky cafés, and sumptuous emporiums. Rosine had claimed Paris was the most exciting place in the world, and, to accustom me to the city, had taken me to all the wonderful sites and shops where everything anyone could possibly want was available. I’d grown to see the city as my home, and now it had all been taken from me, just like my home in Brittany.
Nevertheless, after a few awkward months of adjustment, I began to realize that at Grandchamp, at last I could be myself. Or as much of myself as a convent would allow.
The unvaried routine proved oddly comforting: prayers in the chapel four times daily (my declaration that I was Jewish, made to evade the prayers, did not impress the nuns); lessons in arithmetic, grammar, history, and geography, followed by diction and deportment; and in the afternoons, sedate exercise. I wasn’t an exemplary student, as I had no mind for facts or numbers. My sole interests were reading and the convent’s old hound, César, who followed me everywhere, and creatures I collected in the garden from under rocks—lizards, spiders, and frogs that I kept in a perforated tin box and fed with flies.
And art. I soon proved to be the best artist in my class, perhaps in the entire school, able to assimilate the shape of almost anything I saw and reproduce it with charcoal on paper. I drew César many times, asleep at my feet. I drew lizards and flowers, the sparrows dipping in the birdbath. My drawings were so exceptional, the nuns pinned them on the board for others to emulate.
Mère Sophie was aware that I’d never been baptized. While Nana had raised me Catholic, the sum total of my religious education had entailed mass on Sunday and saying my prayers before bedtime, so my declaration of my Jewish blood exerted the opposite effect of what I’d intended. Rather than avoid extra lessons, I was obliged to study catechism in the hope that one day I might be deemed ready to receive Holy Communion. I thought I’d be bored. Instead, I found myself fascinated by the evil pharaoh and burning bush sent by God, by the ark filled with pairs of animals and the terrifying flood. I learned that the Jewish people had once been enslaved, important participants in this ageless tale of miracles and martyrs. It didn’t feel like I was studying religion at all, but rather immersed in a fantastic, never-ending fable.