The tiny, discreet maternity clinic on rue de Chabrol, on the corner of Cité d’Hauteville, had even suggested they might keep the children and place them with a trustworthy family. What is a trustworthy family? What family could be more trustworthy, Dinah had exclaimed, proudly hugging the twins to her breasts, than the one made up of their own father and mother? She who, despite the privations, despite Drancy, was producing milk enough for four, they said. She was brimming with milk, with love, with confidence. Would God have given life to these two cherubim if He had no intention of helping them to grow up?
And now, as the train juddered along, there she lay on the straw, cradling her two children, with no milk to feed them. Drancy had finally dried up her milk, her confidence, and her hope. Here, amid the milling crowds, the panic, amid the screams and the sobs, the father, the husband, the phony barber, the not-quite-doctor, the duly registered Jew, looked around for some place to shelter his family. As he looked around at his traveling companions, looked hard at them, he had a sudden realization. No, no, no, they were not being sent somewhere to work, those old men, that blind man, those children, his twins and the others. They were being sent far away, they were no longer wanted here, even marked, starred, registered, incarcerated, even stripped of their freedom, of everything, even then they were no longer wanted.
So they were being sent away. But where? Where in the world were Jews still wanted? What country would be prepared to welcome them? What country would have opened its arms to them in February 1943?
But this was not the problem. Dinah had no milk now, or very little. Drancy had dried up her breasts. The rumors, the departure of her parents, and later his father. They had left, and there had been no word from them since. She lay sprawled on the floor where, only recently, there had been cattle or horses destined for the slaughterhouse. She had spread out the woolen Pyrenean shawl she had been allowed to keep, the shawl in which she usually swaddled the twins. Everywhere was marked by cold, by war, by fear. When she lulled one twin, the other cried. When she rocked the other, the first one whimpered. They were two beautiful babies, a boy, a girl. “The King’s choice,” people said. “The most beautiful babies in the world.” “With those two, you have everything you could wish for.” “I had three girls before I had my son! You already have one of each!” Where are they now? Everyone had offered up something from their memories, their sorrows, their rage. Their exhaustion, their fury. A woman sang a Yiddish lullaby. Dinah understood Yiddish, but pretended not to recognize it.
What could he do? What can I do? wondered the former ersatz barber. Until now, he believed, he had faultlessly fulfilled his role as father in the face of adversity. In spite of the difficulties, he had managed to protect his twins. He had pestered the camp administration. “The twins! My twins!” They had become everyone’s twins, the twins who had to be saved, protected, and now this . . . and now this. He felt powerless, helpless; he no longer knew what to do. He could not simply stand by and do nothing, he had to reassume his role, he had to find a solution. Two days they had been traveling already. The smell, the unbearable stench. The bucket in the corner of the wagon and the shame, the collective shame, the shame that had been deliberately engineered by those sending them who knew where.
First, they would be reduced to nothing, then to less than nothing, until there was nothing human left in them, so be it. But he had a duty to his children, he thought as he watched them suckle at their mother’s dry breasts; he had to find a solution.
One of his fellow travelers asked whether he was Romanian. Yes, he was Romanian. The Romanian told him that he too used to be Romanian, but now he was a stateless former Romanian. In this wagon there were many stateless former Romanians. They had been picked up in Paris or elsewhere in France. Someone mentioned Iaşi.
“You know Iaşi?”
“Of course I know Iaşi.”
“There was a pogrom there.”
“A pogrom? The war is raging there, just as it is here, there’s no need for pogroms anymore.”
“No, no, a pogrom. They loaded thousands of Jews onto a train at Iaşi, they set it rolling, and rolling, and rolling, until one by one the Jews aboard the train died of heatstroke, of thirst, of hunger.
“At every station where it stopped, the corpses were unloaded and the train moved on with the survivors. Sometimes it went back the way it had come, moving in reverse. The train was not headed anywhere, this was the sole purpose of the journey: to stop at each station and unload . . .”
“The train we’re on is moving, it isn’t stopping. And besides, it’s cold here, not hot.”
“It’s just like Iaşi, I’m telling you. Just like Iaşi.”
Since then, every time the train stopped in a siding, he worried that it would go back the way it had come. That it would stop at a station and the dying, the children, and the old men would be tossed onto the platform. He raged at himself. What could he do? What could he do? Apologizing, he elbowed his way to the barred window. An old man was trying to catch his breath. Asthma, he said. Then he smiled at the father of the twins. He nodded slowly and looked at him with eyes that seemed to know everything, with eyes that, since birth, had foreseen everything. He did not seem surprised; he just needed a breath of air.
Outside, the train had been slowed by drifts of snow. It suddenly stopped for a moment, then once more juddered into life, as though it too were suddenly asthmatic. It was then that it dawned on him.
Elbowing his way back through the crowd, he made his way to the woolen Pyrenean shawl. The important thing was not to choose, the important thing was not to think, but to scoop one of them up, without choosing between boy and girl. He took the child nearest to him. From his pocket, he had already taken his prayer shawl. The child was dozing. Dinah looked at him for a moment, then she too closed her eyes and hugged the other twin to her.
As he made his way back to the window, he unfurled the shawl. The bars—the bars were spaced widely enough to squeeze an arm through. He could see the forest, the trees groaning beneath the weight of snow. He could see a figure who seemed to be running after the train, scurrying though the snow, and calling out.
He cradled the child, wrapped it in the tallith. The elderly asthmatic looked at him with eyes that seemed to say: “Don’t do it! Don’t do it! Don’t do what you are thinking of doing!” But he was determined. Not enough milk for two. Perhaps enough for one?
Feverishly, he lifted up the infant swaddled in the shawl. Would the head fit between the bars? In Yiddish, the asthmatic said: “Don’t do it!” But the father looked at him and pretended he did not know a word of Yiddish. The head passed through; the shoulders followed. Then he waved at the old woman, who stopped and fell to her knees in the snow as though giving thanks to heaven.
The train roared out of the forest.
3
This morning, as every morning, early, very early, in the wintry half-light, the poor woodcutter’s wife is trudging, breathless, through the snow so as not to miss her train as it passes. She hurries, hurries, here and there stopping to collect branches that the weight of the snow and of the night have snapped and tossed onto the ground. She runs, she runs, pulling up feet shod with fox cub pelts turned inside out and fashioned into boots by her poor woodcutter husband.