‘I was just about to tell her,’ said Nathan. ‘I promised her some tea – you tell her, Maman. She wants to know why we closed the shop. I’ll be back in an instant.’
He left through the same door his mother had entered by; Juliette could see a corridor leading into the back of the building. All these timber-framed buildings in the centre of town had a similar layout: a staircase leading to the upper storeys, corridors leading to the back of the house and further rooms. Presumably, he had gone to the kitchen to make her tea. She should have insisted that she didn’t want tea. She just needed to know.
She turned to Madame Levi-Blum. ‘What has happened, Madame? Why have you closed the shop? I just returned to Colmar today and I saw the sign.’
Madame Levi-Blum shook her head sadly and laid a hand over Juliette’s.
‘Then you will not have heard… It is so awful. We have had this shop for generations. We have lived here all our lives, above the pharmacy. We mind our own business. We attend the synagogue and obey the tenets of our religion. We do no harm. We are friendly to all and polite. But now these – these Nazi salauds have said we must leave. They are sending us away, Juliette! We are not allowed to do business here. They have forced us to close down the shop, as you can see. And now we all must leave. Leave Colmar.’
‘But-but-where to? Where will you go?’
‘All Jews are being sent to Vichy France. That is what they tell us, the Boche. They are in charge now and they want to make Alsace, Colmar, free of Jews. Judenrein. We hope it is true that they are sending us to France and they are not in truth sending us in the opposite direction, into Germany. But we have no choice in the matter. No choice at all. Because if we do not go – well, I did not call them salauds by accident. We all know what they are capable of, if you have heard the stories coming out of Germany. We tried to delay it. We hoped it would not come to this. But the signs were there from the start, weren’t they. This is not a good time for Alsatian Jews. For any European Jews.’
Juliette had, indeed, followed the news; her brother Jacques had kept her up to date. A year ago, before the war, there had been about 20,000 Jews living in Alsace and Lorraine. At the declaration of war in September, the French government started a precautionary evacuation of all Jews, and had managed to relocate about 14,000 of them to Périgueux and Limoges in south-west France, far from the German border. About 5,000 more Jews fled to southern France after the German invasion of France the following May. It had been a slow, stealthy culling of the Colmar Jewish population; one by one the families had left, her friends had left, sometimes coming over to say goodbye, sometimes just disappearing into the night. The Levi-Blums had held out till the last.
Madame Levi-Blum sighed. ‘And so now, we too must leave. We have delayed it long enough. We always had hope, such hope – that the war would be over in a few months, that we could stay, keep our home, our livelihood, our lives. We held out as long as we safely could.’
‘But now the Nazis have come to Colmar and it is not safe,’ said Nathan, re-entering the salon. He placed a steaming teapot and two cups on the table, served the two women their tea, sat down opposite Juliette. She tried not to look directly at him because the anguish in his eyes was so very palpable. Never had she seen eyes as eloquent, eyes that spoke so loudly, as Nathan’s; they flummoxed her. What exactly were they saying? Was she misinterpreting something? They were so candid – but she feared what she saw, drew away, and at the same time was drawn back again and again. Now, Nathan turned to his mother and said:
‘Maman – where is Papa? Is he still in bed? You must get him up. It’s not good, this broodiness of his. It’s not healthy. You must get him up and he must face reality, help you to pack.’
Madame Levi-Blum shook her head as if in resignation. ‘Yes – he is hiding away in the darkness of the bedroom. He finds it hard to accept the truth and leave it all behind. But you are right. I must.’
She sipped at her tea, replaced the cup.
‘It is too hot. I will go and fetch Papa, and by the time I am back it will have cooled down. I will drink it cold if need be. Excusez-moi, Juliette – it was a delight seeing you and I hope that once this is over we will all see each other again and celebrate France’s victory over Germany.’
She stood up, and so did Juliette. The older woman clasped both her arms and drew her close, kissed her on both cheeks. Whispered in her ear. ‘I was so very fond of your mother, chérie. Such a tragedy. But I am glad you came, glad that I was able to meet you. Take care, little one, and do not be bowed by what is happening here. We will survive, we will win in the end.’
Tears swelled in Juliette’s eyes as she whispered her goodbye, touched at the woman’s poignant words. Such a pity that this first meeting with her might very well be the last – she was another link to her mother, and Juliette never tired of such links. She might never have known her mother, but the stories she heard of her brought her close, so close, brought her alive. Madame Levi-Blum turned and walked away, back through the door she had entered by. Juliette was alone with Nathan. And now it was not possible to avoid those eyes.
‘Juliette. I— sorry. I’m so glad you came. I was thinking of you…’
‘Of me? Really? I didn’t know… think – but why?’
‘…of you, and your brother Jacques. I need to see Jacques, urgently. Where is he?’
‘I didn’t know you knew Jacques!’
‘We were classmates in secondary school. Friends, even. You didn’t know? I lost touch when I went to university and he stayed to help run the vineyard. But we were friends, and, well, I need to see him, now, today! Where is he?’
‘I don’t know, exactly. He’s in Strasbourg, but I don’t have his address.’
‘Can you get a message to him?’
She shook her head, ‘No, not really. He left a telephone number, but Papa doesn’t have a telephone. Though I could ask Tante Margaux to help. But he said we should only call if it’s an emergency. Why do you want to see him? Sorry. I suppose it’s none of my business, but—’
‘This is an emergency,’ interrupted Nathan. And then he paused, as if deliberating what and how much to say next. Their eyes locked; in his were a thousand questions, a thousand doubts and fears, all hovering there, unformulated, reaching out to her; and more than that, something else, something intimate, personal, a question meant only for her.
‘Juliette – I’m sorry. I’m being so rude. But when I saw you, standing at the door, it was like a miracle that you had come – because, like I said, I’d been thinking of you. It is like an answer to a prayer.’
‘Because you need to find Jacques?’
‘No… yes – no. I wanted to see you, too, but you have been gone for so long. I had no hope – and yet I hoped. And then you came. And there you were! On my doorstep!’
‘But—’
‘I know it’s not the time or the place but I need to tell you, now, before it is too late, now that you are here and nobody knows the future and – well, here you are and before you go again, I need to say it – that I think of you all the time, Juliette. I do. Every day, every minute. I don’t know how it came about. I just do. And now, now it is too late. I wish I had said something, earlier, when you used to come every week—’