22. Helaine
22
Helaine
Paris, 1944
The dormitory lights went on brightly. “Raus!”
Out. For a moment, Helaine hoped that the day for which they had waited so long had finally arrived and that they were being liberated. But the men waking them wore German uniforms.
“They’re closing the shop,” Miriam whispered. “Taking everyone.” Their worst nightmare had come true. They had tried to escape. But they had failed. Now their chance to leave had evaporated. It was too late.
Helaine jumped up, and as she did, something fell to the ground. Her necklace. She remembered looking at it the previous night, thinking of Gabriel. She must have fallen asleep holding it. She picked it up and hurriedly shoved it in her pocket.
As the prisoners were herded toward the door, Helaine turned back and looked once more at the attic where they had been imprisoned for so many months. They had known deprivation, pain and hunger. Yet it had been their shelter from greater unknown horrors beyond the walls of the department store. He laine would not miss the department store, but she was terrified of what worse horrors might lie ahead.
“My journal!” Helaine realized aloud. She looked back across the room to its hiding place in the wall, desperate to get it.
But there was no time. “Come,” Miriam whispered, tugging at Helaine’s arm as the rest of the group started to leave. Helaine was forced to leave the journal behind.
They were hustled downstairs and onto two small buses, packed tightly to fit them all. “Where are we going?” someone asked aloud. There was no response.
The buses rolled silently through the nighttime Paris streets. It was a warm summer evening, and through the poorly blacked-out bus window, Helaine could make out a canopy of stars above the Seine. Would she ever be free to view the stars again? Miriam sat beside her, hands clutched tightly in her lap. Helaine had never seen Miriam look scared before, but she could see the fear in her eyes, her face pale and drawn. Helaine put her arm around her friend.
In the distance, Helaine heard what sounded like machine gunfire, sharp and rattling. It was followed by a louder boom. The prisoners from the department store were being evacuated just steps ahead of liberation. The Germans did not want to leave anyone behind. As Miriam had said months earlier, they wanted to ensure that there were no witnesses to what they had done.
She and the other prisoners could not allow themselves to be taken from Paris, Helaine realized then. Escape was impossible, but at the same time, it was their only hope for survival.
Helaine looked around the bus desperately, trying to figure out what to do. She had no idea where they were being taken or how much time they had before they got there. But if they reached their destination, they would certainly never return. The bus slowed in traffic, the road ahead clogged with people trying to flee by car and on foot. This was their chance. Once the bus really started moving again, they might not stop. The bus they were riding on was once a regular passenger bus. The bell cord, which one would pull to signal their stop, was intact.
Helaine nudged Miriam and their eyes met. Helaine tried to signal to her friend what she intended to do. Miriam’s eyes widened with recognition. Did she dare try to pull the cord and see if it still worked? Surely it would do no good. But Miriam, seeming to recognize the futility of their situation and the lack of other options, acknowledged Helaine with a slight nod.
Taking a deep breath, Helaine reached out and tugged the cord. The bell rang, cutting through the bus and startling the other prisoners. There was a moment’s hesitation and then the driver screeched to a halt. People froze uncertainly, so used to staying in place until told to do otherwise. “Go!” Helaine cried urgently. They were farther from the front than she had realized and there were too many other prisoners blocking the way. They could not get past unless the others got off the bus first. Then someone close to the front pushed the door open and they surged forward, a pressure valve released.
As Helaine neared the door to the bus, someone grabbed her arm. It was a guard, trying to stop them from escaping. Even now, when the Germans were about to lose everything, his concern was making sure no Jew went free. Desperately, Helaine brought up her knee, striking the guard in the groin. He reared back, howling. But he did not let go of Helaine.
Miriam lunged forward and gave the man a mighty shove, and Helaine was able to break free. Helaine fell backward into the street, hit the ground. She leaped to her feet and ran several meters from the bus. Then she turned back, looking for Miriam. Her friend was trapped. The guard had caught several prisoners and secured them inside the bus once more. Helaine started back toward the bus, trying to signal to her friend. Their eyes met. Miriam had not abandoned her the night they tried to flee the shop—how could Helaine leave her now?
Miriam shook her head, waving Helaine away. “Go!” Miriam screamed imploringly. How could Helaine abandon her now, when Miriam had risked so much for her. There was nothing she could do, though, and if she tried, Helaine would surely be rearrested. The whole escape attempt would have been for nothing. No, she owed it to Gabriel, to her mother, to Miriam herself to keep going and do everything she could to survive. She looked back once more gratefully at her friend. She turned and ran into the night.
* * *
Six days.
That was how long Helaine hid on the streets of Paris, crouching in deserted alleyways and sleeping in garbage dumpsters and eating the scraps she found in them, as the last bits of the war played out around her. She did not dare go to her childhood home or the apartment she had shared with Gabriel, and she didn’t know if it was possible to leave the city. So she stayed out of sight while the gunfire rattled and the Germans fled, until at last the streets were silent.
Only when she heard the cheers did Helaine unfold herself stiffly from her hiding place and walk into the light. The tanks that lined the Champs-élysées were American now, festooned with red, white and blue flags and flowers, and surrounded by Parisians who wanted to see, touch and kiss their liberators.
Weak with hunger and from hiding, Helaine found a man with a red cross on his armband and asked for help. He directed Helaine to a makeshift facility in a school gymnasium where those who needed it were being given food, shelter and medicine. A short while later, the Joint Distribution Committee offered Helaine space in a displaced persons camp in Hénonville, northwest of the city. She did not have to go, the woman representing the organization said. She was free now and going was an offer of aid, a choice. But it was recommended until everyone could be checked for disease and fed.
Helaine didn’t want to accept. “Camp” was the very thing she had dreaded and avoided while at the department store. Technically they were French citizens, not displaced from their own country. But in Paris, she had nothing, no family or home. There was no one to send for her from abroad, other than her father, who likely did not know that she was even alive. The liberators tried to give people some dignity in choosing their own path, but in the end there really was nowhere else to go, no choice to make at all.
The displaced persons camp offered shelter and good food. But it was not a permanent home. It was a respite while Helaine figured out where she might go next. Already others were emigrating to America and other countries, leaving the past behind. Helaine questioned if she could, or should, do the same.
The first thing Helaine did when she reached the displaced persons camp was to go to the special office set up for survivors trying to find their loved ones. It was her only hope of finding Gabriel and her mother. She waited in a queue of camp residents making inquiries. Behind her in line was a woman a few years older than herself. Her face was drawn, her eyes sunken. She looked grief-stricken.
“Did you lose someone?” she asked the woman. The question was a foolish one, Helaine realized as she asked it; everyone had lost someone.
“I was separated from my twins when we were arrested in Lyon.” The woman’s voice, barely a whisper, was numb with disbelief. She seemed to relive the horror of the memory as she spoke. “I was freed from an internment camp in the north of France. When the camp was liberated, they tried to put me in a DP camp there, but I insisted on leaving and coming here because this is the closest camp to where they were taken from me.” Her eyes were near frantic.
“How old are your twins?”
“Four.” The woman’s face crumpled with pain. “My babies are four. They were two when they were taken from me.”
“No…” Helaine was struck. She could not imagine the horror of having been separated from one’s children—nor how children so young might have survived without their mother. “I’m so sorry,” Helaine said helplessly. There were no words she could offer that would adequately reflect the woman’s suffering. “You should go in front of me,” she said, stepping aside.
“Thank you. I’m called Dania,” the woman managed feebly, as though ordinary conversation was an effort.
“Helaine.” The line moved forward. Helaine held her breath while Dania asked about her children at the desk.
The woman behind the desk shook her head. “I’m sorry, but we have no lists of children here. They were all sent east.”
A small cry escaped Dania’s lips and she swayed backward. Helaine leaped to support her so she did not fall.
“I’m trying to find news of my husband, Gabriel Lemarque,” Helaine said, still holding on to Dania.
“Was he a prisoner at Drancy or one of the other camps?” the woman asked.
“Neither. He was in a POW camp.”
“We don’t have access to those kinds of records here, but if you give me his name, I will make inquiries for you.”
Helaine scribbled down Gabriel’s name and date of birth, as well as the camp he had mentioned the day he visited her in the department store. “I do have another missing person,” Helaine said. “Annette Weil.” Her mother’s name sounded almost foreign. “She was imprisoned at Drancy.” The woman paged through the records. Her eyes scanned lists and lists of people. At first, Helaine hoped that her mother’s name might be on the list. But then she realized those were the names of those who had died. Helaine held her breath, praying that her mother would not be among them. The woman stopped reading and her ex pression grew somber. Wordlessly, she pushed the paper across the desk, allowing Helaine to see the news herself.
“No…” Maman was gone. Helaine’s eyes filled with tears, blurring her vision as she stared at the page with disbelief. Some of the names had a cause of death beside them. But typed beside Maman was simply the word Undetermined . Dania put an arm around Helaine and the two women supported one another in their pain as they walked away.
Miriam was gone, too, Helaine later learned from another resident in the displaced persons camp. The prisoners who had not escaped the bus had been shot immediately in reprisal for the escape attempt. Helaine bowed her head and gave silent thanks to her friend. Without her help and sacrifice, she would not still be alive.
But there was no information whatsoever about Gabriel. There was no record of him, because he had not been imprisoned as a Jew at one of the concentration camps. The lack of news or any way to learn more was excruciating. It was as if he had simply fallen off the face of the earth. It seemed to Helaine that she might spend the rest of her life not knowing what had become of him.
Dania came to her after breakfast one morning, her expression grave. “What is it?” Dania had spoken little since learning the likely fate of her twins.
Dania carried a newspaper and showed her an article about a fire at Wann, the POW camp where Gabriel had been imprisoned, caused by an Allied bomb that hit the barracks. All of the remaining prisoners there were gone. “I’m so sorry. But I thought you would want to know.”
“No…” Helaine buried her head in her hands. Even after hearing of his arrest and leaving the department store, she had held out so much hope that he would live, and they would find one another again and reconcile. Now that dream was gone like everything else. This last piece of news, on top of everything else, was almost too much to bear.
For days, Helaine scarcely got out of bed. Dania and a few others, understanding her need to mourn, brought her food.
People left the camp daily, those who had someone to claim them in America or elsewhere. The number of camp inhabitants dwindled. But Helaine remained. She had nowhere to go. Helaine knew that she had to decide her next step, not just wait for a sign. She put her name on the lists to emigrate to the United States and Canada, but without papers or relatives to claim her, it was impossible. There were courses in the DP camp, designed to help prepare the people for the next chapter of their lives. Helaine decided to learn to type and take dictation, practical skills that she never would have learned in her previous life but that might come in handy now.
A few weeks after she began the course, as she left the makeshift classroom where she learned to type one afternoon, Helaine spied a small pile of writing tablets. “May I have one of those?” she asked the instructor, who nodded. Helaine took the notebook back to her room and began to write. The stories about Anna that she had written before the war came back to her anew. She reconstructed them, wishing she had the journal she left behind in the department store. There were new stories, too, and she began to see that the things she had once only dreamed about doing through her fiction, travels and adventures, might be possible once the war was over. Only without Gabriel, starting over seemed pointless.
The next morning, Helaine was scanning the board where people posted messages looking for loved ones. There was a postcard from her father searching for her mother, though not for her. Helaine felt the pain of rejection all over again. She should contact him and let him know that she was alive. But she was too afraid. What if he didn’t want her? He might still be angry about her marriage to Gabriel. Helaine’s father had rejected her once; she could not bear it again. Whatever future she made, she would start over on her own.
She took the postcard and shoved it in her bag.
As the days passed, Helaine found that she was beginning to feel unlike herself. She was exhausted, even more so than usual. She could not eat. Though she welcomed the wholesome Red Cross meals after so much hunger, the sight of food turned her stomach. Helaine assumed it was an aftereffect of the starvation she’d endured. But other former prisoners ate ravenously, whereas Helaine could not hold down so much as a morsel. Something was wrong. Helaine panicked. She could barely summon the strength to go on as it was.
“You should go to the infirmary,” Dania suggested. Dania had stayed after learning the news about her children. She was trying to gather the strength and money to travel east and start her search for her children anew. Helaine started to protest. When they were at Lévitan, serious illness was a death sentence and telling those in charge would result in being sent to Drancy and deportation east. “It’s safe to get help now,” Dania added, reading her thoughts.
Helaine allowed Dania to take her to the infirmary, a small but clean building. In the crowded waiting room, she feared she might become sick with something even worse than what she had.
Finally, she was escorted in to see a doctor, a young Dutch man with tortoiseshell glasses and a serious but friendly expression. He examined her and drew blood. “When was your last period?” he asked.
Helaine blushed at the question. “I can’t remember. Few of the women still menstruated because of starvation.”
“I think you are just fine and that your condition will improve in a few months.” He smiled.
“I don’t understand.”
“You aren’t sick. You’re pregnant.”
Helaine was stunned. “That isn’t possible.”
“Not just possible, but true. You didn’t notice?” He pointed to her stomach. Helaine had thought it was distended. However, it was, in fact, a baby.
Still, Helaine could not believe it. “But I’m not able to have children. I had a serious illness as a child and a high fever. The doctor said…” Helaine began, then stopped. The doctor had not told Helaine she was infertile. Her mother had. Was it a lie? Had her mother been trying to keep her from wanting—or attempting to have—more than she could handle? Even if that were true, Helaine understood that her mother had been trying to protect her, and despite all of her anger, Helaine could not help but love her still.
The time to stop talking about what she could not do had ended, Helaine realized. It was time to start focusing on what she could.
A child of her own. A new beginning. Helaine was filled with joy and yet sadness. Gabriel would never know his child.
Faced with the news of her pregnancy, Helaine’s mission to find a new place to live took on increased urgency. She did not want her child to be born in the displaced persons camp, but a real home. She decided to pen a letter to her father after all. Family, no matter how estranged, was a precious and scarce commodity now that so many had been lost. She hated asking for his help, but she had no choice.
Papa,
I am sure by now you have heard the news of Maman. I am in the displaced persons camp and I would be very grateful if you would send for me so that I can leave.
Your daughter, Helaine
She paused after writing the note, added the return address for the camp. She considered making mention of her preg nancy. The prospect of a grandchild might soften her father’s heart. But knowing that it was Gabriel’s might make him even more remote.
Helaine was pulled from her thoughts by music being played nearby. The arts flourished in the camp and there were concerts and plays, musicians returning to their passion and finding new life in it. Helaine never went to them because they reminded her too much of Gabriel. Now she heard the unmistakable strains of a cello and a wave of sadness washed over Helaine as she thought of Gabriel and the music he would never play for her again.
Something about the music became familiar, the notes of an original piece she had heard only once. It could not be. Surely there were dozens of musicians in the camps. Gabriel was gone. But only one knew the melody he had crafted just for her long ago. Only one could play For Helaine .
Helaine walked toward the building, scarcely daring to hope. Through the door, she could only see his fingers, but even then she knew.
She was home.