May 2015—May 2018
1
Once upon a time, in a great forest, there lived a poor woodcutter and the poor woodcutter’s wife.
No, no, no, fear not, this isn’t Hop o’ My Thumb. Far from it. Like you, I hate that mawkish fairy tale. Who ever heard of parents abandoning their children simply because they could no longer feed them? It’s absurd.
And in this great forest, there reigned a great hunger and a great cold. Especially in winter. In summer, a sweltering heat beat down on the forest and drove out the great cold. The hunger, on the other hand, was constant, especially during those days when, all around the forest, the World War raged.
Yes, yes, yes, the World War.
The poor woodcutter had been conscripted to carry out public works—to the sole benefit of the conquering army that occupied the towns, the villages, the fields, and the forests—and so it was that, from sunup to sundown, the poor woodcutter’s wife trudged through the woodland in the oft-disappointed hope of providing for her humble family.
Fortunately—for it is an ill wind that blows no one any good—the poor woodcutter and his wife had no children to feed.
Every day the woodcutter thanked heaven for this blessing. The woodcutter’s wife, for her part, lamented it in secret.
True, she had no child to feed, but neither had she a child to love.
And so she prayed to heaven, to the gods, the wind, the rain, the trees, to the sun itself when its rays pierced the dense foliage and flooded her little glade with a magical glow. She implored the powers of heaven and earth to finally grant her the blessing of a child.
Little by little, as the years passed, she realized that all the powers of heaven, of earth, and of magic were conspiring with her husband to deny her a child.
And so she prayed that there might at least be an end to the hunger and the cold that tormented her from sunup to sundown, by night as by day.
The poor woodcutter rose before the dawn so he could devote all his time and energy to the construction of military buildings for the public—and the private—good.
Come wind, come rain, come snow, and even in the stifling heat I mentioned earlier, the poor woodcutter’s wife roamed the forest, gathering every twig, every sliver of dead wood, stacking and hoarding it like some treasure once lost and now found again. She would also collect the few traps that her woodcutter husband set every morning on his way to work.
The poor woodcutter’s wife, as you can imagine, had little leisure time. She wandered the forest, hunger gnawing at her belly, her mind reeling with yearnings she could no longer find words to express. She merely beseeched heaven that, if only for a single day, she might eat her fill.
The woods, her woods, her forest, stretched into the distance, lush and leafy, indifferent to cold as to hunger. But at the outbreak of this World War, forced laborers with powerful machines had slashed her forest from end to end and, in the gaping wound, had laid railway tracks so that now, winter and summer, a train, a single train, came and went along this single track.
The poor woodcutter’s wife liked to watch it pass, this train, her train. She watched expectantly, imagining that she too might travel, might tear herself away from this hunger, this cold, this loneliness.
Little by little, she came to organize her life, her daily routine, around the passing of this train. It was not a train of pleasing aspect. Crude timber wagons, each fitted with a single, barred window. But since the poor woodcutter’s wife had never seen a train, this one suited her fine, particularly given that, in answer to her questions, her husband had scathingly dismissed it as a cargo train.
“Cargo”—the very word warmed the heart and sparked the imagination of the poor woodcutter’s wife.
Cargo! A cargo train. . . . She pictured wagons filled with food, with clothes, with fantastical objects, she imagined wandering through the train, helping herself, sating her hunger.
Little by little, excitement gave way to hope. One day, perhaps one day, tomorrow, the day after, it hardly mattered when, the train would take pity on her in her hunger and, as it passed, bless her with some of its precious cargo.
She soon grew bolder and would go as close to the train as she dared, calling out, flailing her arms, pleading at the top of her voice, or if she was too far away to reach it in time, she would simply wave.
From time to time a hand would appear at one of the windows and wave back. And from time to time one of those hands would throw something to her and she would rush to pick it up, giving thanks to the train and the hand.
Most of the time it was nothing more than a crumpled scrap of paper, which she would carefully, reverently, smooth out and then fold again and place next to her heart. Was it the sign of some gift to come?
Long after the train had passed, when night was gathering, when hunger was nagging, when cold was biting harder, she would feel a pang in her heart and would once more unfold the paper and, with pious reverence, gaze upon the illegible, indecipherable markings. She did not know how to read or write in any language. Her husband, for his part, knew a little, but she did not want to share with him or with anyone what the train had entrusted to her.
2
The moment he saw the cargo truck—a cattle wagon, to judge from the straw-covered floor—he realized their luck had run out. So far, as they were transported from Pithiviers to Drancy, they had been fortunate enough not to be separated. They had watched as others, those less fortunate, alas, departed, one after another, bound for who knew where, while they remained together. This period of grace, he believed, they owed to the existence of their beloved twins, Henri and Rose—Hershele and Rouhrele.
Truth be told, the twins had arrived at the worst possible moment, in the spring of ’42. Was this the time to bring a Jewish child into the world? Worse, two Jewish children? Was it right to allow them to be born under a baleful yellow star? And yet, he believed, it was thanks to the twins that they had been able to spend Christmas 1942 together, in the internment camp at Drancy.
Better yet, thanks to their lucky star and to the Jewish administration of the camp, he had found work. He had almost completed his medical studies, specializing in eye, ear, nose, and throat surgery, but in Drancy there were already many doctors, he was told, and many patients too—where there are Jews, there are many doctors and even more patients—but since two camp hairdressers had recently left . . . barber, perhaps? Very well, barber it would be.
It was pointless to split hairs, to try to understand, there was nothing left to understand.
So for as long as there were French gendarmes to guard them, he cut hair. He had so often watched his father wield his scissors, clicking at the air as though forewarning the hairs on the customer’s head, as though launching an offensive, staring at the nape of a neck, utterly focused, then swooping down on an unruly lock, a tuft to be shorn with a decisive snip. Even professionally trained barbers took him for one of their own.
But after the gendarmes were replaced by the verts-de-gris, the Krauts, only members of the administration and a few internees—a closely related and desperate clientele to whom he was forced to lie again and again—required his services. “Of course, of course, it will be all right, everything will be fine, everything will be fine. . . .”
In the spring of ’42, yes, he had thought of aborting the child, not knowing at the time that they were two. But his wife, after much thought, decided she wanted to keep them. In time, she was delivered of two tiny Jewish babies, already registered, already classified, already marked out, already hunted, a little girl and boy, wailing in chorus, as though they already knew, as though they already understood. “They have your father’s eyes,” his wife said. Yes, those first cries were heart-wrenching. Only their mother, overflowing with milk and with hope, could calm them. They soon ceased to wail in chorus and later, trusting, continued to suckle in their dreams.