The Most Precious of Cargoes Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  May 2015—May 2018

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Epilogue

  Appendix for Lovers of True Stories

  A Note from the Translator

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  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 professionall
y 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.

  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.

  She runs, lifting the fox cub boots from the snow. She runs, she runs, and when, finally, she arrives, breathless, at the clearing next to the railway track, she hears her train puffing, just as she is, panting, groaning, slowing, just as she is, hindered by the thick layer of snow that is slowing them both.

  She waves her arms, shouting: Wait for me! Wait for me!

  The train pants and inches forward.

  But this time, as it passes, it answers her. The cargo train—Convoy 49—answers.

  And not with a sign, but with a gesture. And not one of those gestures that accompany the miserable scraps of crumpled paper hastily scrawled on by some clumsy hand, no, a gesture, a real gesture. First, a flag appears at the narrow window, brandished by a hand, whether human or divine, that suddenly lets it fall, and the flag drops its cargo onto the snow, some twenty paces from our poor woodcutter’s wife, who falls to her knees, hands clasped to her breast, not knowing how to thank heaven. At last, at last, after all her unanswered prayers! But the hand at the window now reaches out toward her and with an imperious, peremptory finger, signals for her to pick up the package. This package is for her. For her alone. It is meant for her.

  The poor woodcutter’s wife shrugs off her meager bundle of winter twigs, rushes over, and lifts the small package from the snow. Then eagerly, feverishly, she unties the knots as one might unwrap a mysterious gift.

  And there appears, oh miracle, the thing, the very thing for which she has longed and prayed for countless days, the thing she has dreamed of. But no sooner has it been unwrapped than the baby, rather than smile and reach out its arms as babies do in sacred images, struggles, screams, balls its fists, and, racked with hunger, thrashes and flails in its desperate desire to live. The package protests and goes on protesting.