Lilac Girls

“Of course,” I said. “Tea?”

  “No thank you. I still can’t keep much down. I told Paul he should come over soon and visit. Explain it all…”

  I tried to sip my tea but could not see the cup because my head throbbed so, my vision blurred.

  “I am afraid Paul is not happy to see me,” she said.

  Somewhere out on the street children laughed, their voices echoing off the buildings as they splashed in the rain.

  “You probably wish I were dead after all,” Rena said. “Believe me, I wished that myself so often. I would have sent word if I could have. It was just luck that kept me alive.”

  “I understand.”

  “No, I don’t think you do. How could you? It was just luck they broke with the usual procedure. They had taken our shoes, so we knew.”

  “Rena, you don’t have to—”

  “We were on the train from Majdanek, to a subcamp, we thought. The train slowed somewhere in Poland, and they made us get out.”

  Rena paused and looked out the window.

  “I was sick. Typhus, I think. So I barely made it when they marched us through the woods. Paper money lay scattered on the ground along the path. People before us had thrown it away. Lest the Germans got it, I suppose. Someone whispered we were going to work, but I knew. We came to a shed, and they told us to strip.”

  “Please, Rena. You don’t have to tell me—”

  “I am sorry. Is all of this too hard for you to listen to?”

  I shook my head no.

  “It happened so quickly. They lined us up along the edge of a great pit…”

  Rena lost her thread and drifted away somewhere. After a moment, she began again.

  “When the girl beside me saw what was below, she cried out. Her mother took her in her arms, and they shot them first. The blasts threw them against me, and all three of us slid down the dirt sides…”

  Rena paused, and I barely blinked, afraid to interrupt.

  “I lay still as more bodies fell atop me. Soon the shots stopped, and I could tell it was close to night, since the light through the spaces around the bodies above me grew dim. I crawled out of the pit in the dark and rooted around in the shed for some clothes.”

  She looked at the ceiling. “You should have seen the stars that night, thrown across the sky in great bunches. It was as if they were watching, looking down on all that, sad they could do nothing. I walked through the woods to a house, and a farmer and his wife took me in. A German couple. Their son had been killed at the Russian front. At first, the wife was afraid I would steal her wristwatch, a nice one, a gift from her son, for the wristwatch is valuable currency. But the couple ended up being very kind. They put me in their boy’s old bed and nursed me through my sickness as if I were their own. Fed me warm bread with strawberry jam. I returned their hospitality by passing on my disease.”

  I handed Rena a napkin, and she held it to one eye for a moment, then the other.

  “The old man died first. When the Russians came, I told them we all had typhus, but they laid a rug over my face and raped me anyway. Then they raped the farmer’s wife and took her wristwatch. She died sometime that night. I don’t remember much else, just bits and pieces, until the hospital here. So, you see, I would have come home earlier, but it was—”

  “I’m sorry that happened to you, Rena. Why are you telling me all this?”

  “I know what Paul means to you—”

  “He told you?”

  “When he first returned from New York. I didn’t care at the time, but things are different now.”

  Of course things were different. In ways none of us could undo.

  “I wish I could make you happy, Caroline. But I can’t give Paul up. Maybe once, but not now.”

  Rena held the edge of the table. She needed to rest.

  “I think you should go home to him, Rena.”

  “Yes, but I need to tell you something.”

  There was more? “I don’t think—”

  “I haven’t told Paul yet.” She drew herself up with a deep breath.

  “Rena, it’s not really—”

  “They took Paul before any of us. I was very sick, could eat nothing. Thought it was the flu, but then I found…I was, well…waiting for a child.”

  The world stopped for a moment, suspended in air. Waiting for a child? That lovely French phrase.

  “Pregnant?”

  Rena held my gaze and barely nodded.

  “Was it—” I began before I could stop myself.

  “His?” Rena looked at her hands for a long time. “War does funny things to people, I am afraid. In our case, it drew us closer. The child must have known what was happening. She arrived the day the Gestapo came for me. Easter morning.”

  She? Paul had a daughter. I pressed cold fingers to my lips.

  “We were tipped off that a raid was coming. My father took the child, said he would go to a convent he knew. He took her in a shoe box, she was so small.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know. They came for me that night. My father had not returned.”

  “I’m terribly sorry for your loss, but I—”

  “The convent was abandoned during the war, so I am writing to orphanages, but Paul told me—”

  “I’m really not in a position to help if that’s what you’re asking.”

  I stood and carried my teacup to the sink.

  “I understand your reluctance, Caroline. I wouldn’t want to be involved if I myself were in your place. But if you reconsider—”

  “I’m leaving for New York soon,” I said, one hand on the cool porcelain of the sink.

  Rena stood. “Of course. Thank you for your time, Caroline.”

  I saw Rena to the door and watched from our front window as she walked to the end of the block, holding her purse over her head to deflect the rain.

  The thought of contacting orphan asylums in search of Paul and Rena’s child sent me back to bed. Despite the fact that he had once claimed otherwise, it seemed there was room in Paul’s life for a child after all. Why should I put myself out to find her? Paul hadn’t exactly considered my feelings through all of this. I may have been taken in once, but I’d learned my lesson. There were plenty of private detectives making a living searching for lost loved ones. Many who’d do a better job than I.

  By the time evening fell in the apartment, I’d decided. Paul and Rena were on their own.

  1945

  The next morning I woke up hungry, my belly only full of regret. It was shocking how easily my life had become derailed. The French word dépaysement ran through my head—the sense of disorientation one feels upon having an immense change forced upon oneself. Mother had done a yeoman’s job of dusting, but all at once, the apartment looked especially unkempt, the windows in need of washing, the telephone cord impossibly tangled. Mother’s solution to my situation was to force-feed me eggs as if I were a foie gras goose. Midway through her oeufs pochés, I shared my situation.

  “Did you hear my little chat with Rena?”

  “Only bits. She seems like a dear thing.”

  “I suppose. But she’s not giving Paul up.”

  “That’s a pickle.”

  “Not really. Isn’t it obvious? He still loves her.”

  Mother cracked another egg into the boiling water. “How would you know? You don’t answer the phone. Paul leaned on the doorbell for an hour last night, poor thing.”

  “Five minutes, Mother. Don’t exaggerate.”

  “It’s too bad, really. Under different circumstances, you and Rena could have been good pals.”

  “I have enough friends, Mother, thank you.”

  “Well, you can’t just turn your back on the whole thing, dear.”

  “I’ll never have a child of my own.”

  “But that doesn’t mean it’s right to abandon theirs. Before you know it, you’ll be wondering—”

  “Summarize, Mother. You think I should find that child.”

  She slippe
d another egg into my bowl. “Well, it’s the Christian thing to do.”

  “I’m not feeling very Christian this morning, I’m afraid.”

  “Well, splash some cold water on your face. That will help.”

  Why was Mother’s solution to every problem a splash of cold water? Already a day with her in the apartment felt like an eternity. How would I last the week? Soon her Paris friends would be stopping by. Would I have to suffer their pitying looks?

  —

  EVENTUALLY I CAME TO MY SENSES and set about finding the child if for no other reason than to put it all behind me. And to escape the apartment, for Mother was staging a tribute to T. S. Eliot—The Paris Years—and the guests had been instructed to come in costume. Among the visitants would be some of Mother’s men friends, no doubt. Though I’d not been able to keep even one male admirer, within weeks of coming to Paris, Mother had attracted a bevy of male devotees, mostly bereted older Frenchmen and American expats. They sat in our living room sipping tea, watching Mother be Mother, and were happy to be in her orbit.

  Finding an unnamed child in postwar France was not an easy process, and I arrived, at the end of my rope, after many stops, at Orphelinat Saint-Philippe in Meudon. It was one of the orphanages I’d sent comfort packages to from the consulate and now one of many clearinghouses for the war’s displaced children, collected from safe houses, boarding schools, and crumbling châteaux all over France, mostly in the south. It stood southwest of Paris in an imposing old stone mansion, complete with its own Romanesque church. The location rivaled Mount Olympus, set high on a hill, head in the clouds that day.

  I darted through the warm rain, having forgone an umbrella, and navigated the mossy steps. I tried not to think about what would happen if I found the child. It would be the official end of our relationship, despite everything Paul and I once had. Apparently he was in love with Rena after all. At least enough to father her child.

  The orphanage’s front office was packed with people on missions similar to mine. Those wise enough to bring umbrellas held them at their sides like wet bats, for there was no stand at the door. A phone rang unanswered, and cardboard boxes were piled up in the corners. Stacks of white diapers sat on the desk, like layered mille-feuille pastries, diaper pins scattered about.

  The crowd parted and a man pushed his way in carrying a wailing infant wrapped in linen. He made it to the desk and held out the infant as if it were a live bomb.

  “An old granny just handed me this.”

  The proprietress behind the desk took the child. She was a hawklike woman dressed in black, her only embellishment an exquisite collar that looked like Queen Anne’s lace. She placed the bundle on the desk and unwrapped layers of linen. She looked up, a mauve crescent beneath each eye.

  “This is a boy. We take only girls.”

  The man was already on his way out the door.

  “Guillaume!” she called as she reswaddled the baby, quicker than a deli man wraps a sandwich, and a man came at a trot, took the child, and spirited it away.

  A young woman approached the desk. “Madame—”

  Madame raised one finger without even looking up from her paperwork. “Wait your turn. The children are at lunch. No one sees them until three.”

  Drips of water from the leaky ceiling fell on the desk blotter, leaving darker green amoebas growing there.

  “Pardon me, Madame,” I said. “I am looking for a child.”

  She scanned the list on her clipboard. “Fill out the form,” she said.

  I edged closer. “I have a special case.”

  “You are the fifth special case today.”

  “My name is Caroline Ferriday. I worked with Mme Bertillion. Sent comfort boxes for the children. From the French Consulate in New York.”

  The woman looked up, tipped her head to one side. “You sent the boxes? The children cherish the clothing. Exquisitely done.”

  “In fact, I sent that Ovaltine over there as well.” I indicated an empty cardboard box.

  “Thank you, Mademoiselle, but we sold that for next to nothing. The children complained it tasted like bird’s nest and wouldn’t drink it, I’m afraid. We need money, Miss Ferriday, not Ovaltine.”

  I took from the desk a tin can containing withered tulips, tossed the flowers into the wastebasket, and placed the can on the blotter to contain the drip.

  “I know you are terribly busy, Madame, but I am looking for a child.”

  Madame eyed me. “Your child?”

  “No, the parents were deported and are just now getting on their feet.”

  “I am sorry, but I can only deliver a child to the parent or blood relative. Two forms of identification required.”

  “I am just trying to locate the child. Her parents will collect her.”

  “Come with me,” Madame said.

  She grabbed her clipboard and a towering pile of nested tin bowls, and I followed her up wide stone steps. As we walked, Madame placed a tin bowl here and there as she found more drips.

  “Any chance I can meet Mme Bertillion?” I asked.

  “I am Mme Bertillion.”

  How was that possible?

  “You wrote such lovely letters,” I said.

  “Some people are better on paper,” Madame said with a tired shrug. Had she slept at all the night before? “What is the child’s name?”

  “I’m not sure, Madame. It was all done in a hurry. The mother was deported on the birthday.”

  “Which was?”

  “April 1, 1941. Easter Sunday.”

  “Nazis deported people on Easter? Shocking those good men were not in church.”

  “Could you check your records?”

  “You are looking at my records, Mademoiselle.” She held up the clipboard, a sheaf of paper thick as a telephone book clamped there, ragged and marked with cross-outs and burgundy Olympic rings of wine stains. “We are a collection point for children from all over Europe. This will be a difficult search.”

  We walked into a high-ceilinged room filled with cots, each with a pillow and folded blanket at the foot.

  “How do you identify the children?” I asked.

  “Each is assigned a number. This number is printed on a small disk pinned to the chest. Some children came with names. Many did not.” Madame placed her bowls on a chair. “During the war, some mothers wrote their child’s name on a paper note and pinned it to the child before they dropped them here, but most notes fell off or were blurred in the rain. Some sewed trinkets to their children’s clothes so they could identify them later, but many children changed clothes and swapped names with others. We still get several anonymous drop-offs daily.”

  “Surely some children remember their own names.”

  “The older ones, perhaps, but many arrive here mute from their terrible experiences, and a baby doesn’t remember its name, does it? So we assigned them. We named them after their birth month if they knew it…You will find many Mais and Juins here. We named some after the patron saint of their birth month or after our friends and relatives…even pets.”

  “Can you at least check which children came in on that day?” I asked.

  “It is not consistently noted. These children are coming from all over. Safe houses. Boarding schools. From farmers who’ve found them sleeping in haystacks. Some brought here by the only parents they’ve ever known find out for the first time they are not who they think they are.”

  “You must be overrun with parents searching.”

  “Some, but most of the children here will not be placed. Their parents are long gone. Or don’t want them.”

  “No one would not want their own child.”

  “Really, Mademoiselle? You are an expert on this? Over one quarter of the children here are mixed. German father, French mother. Kraut kids, they call them. No one will be picking those children up. Others were born in Lebensborn production homes, Hitler’s baby factories where racially good mothers anonymously gave birth to illegitimate children of SS men.”
r />   “But those homes were only in Germany—”

  “No, Mademoiselle. There was quite an active one here in France. We’ve heard of them in Denmark, Belgium, and Holland as well. Several in Norway. Those babies are now pariahs. And who knows how many of these little blond ones were kidnapped from their mothers’ arms—hundreds of thousands from Poland alone, meant to be raised as German. There is no record of their parents.”

  “I will check the list myself, Madame, if it would spare you the trouble.”

  Mme Bertillion stopped short and turned to me.

  “You are used to getting your way, I can see.” She picked up the tin bowls and thrust them into my hands, the pile tall and cold against my chest, reaching almost to my chin.

  “If you distribute these, only one to a child—and they will try to get two out of you—I will look through my list, Mademoiselle. I will fetch you if I find a match. I am not doing this to help you because you came from the consulate, but because I have been on my feet since five this morning.”

  “Thank you, Madame. Where do I distribute the bowls?”

  “Out there, of course,” she said, holding an open palm toward a pair of doors.

  “What do I do with the extra bowls?” Surely there were too many.

  “There will be no extras,” Madame said and bent her head to the list.

  I pushed through the doors to a vast hall wainscoted in oak, probably once used for dancing and parties. The ceiling rose up one hundred feet, trompe l’oeil painted to give the impression of radiant summer sky, a nice substitute for the actual heavens that day. There must have been fifty refectory tables there, at which girls sat grouped by age from toddlers to teens. They sat still on their benches, hands in their laps, each quiet as a picture. Behind them, six white-frocked women stood beside steaming vats of soup, ready to serve once my bowls were distributed.

  As I approached, all eyes were on my bowls and me. I stood for a moment, overwhelmed, and then recovered. These children were hungry.

  I placed a bowl before the first child at the table.

  “Merci, Madame,” a child said.

  I placed a bowl before the next child.

  “Merci, Madame.”

  I checked the faces for any trace of Rena or Paul, but my task was soon overwhelming. Who knew if the child favored her parents? Was she even still alive?