Sarah's Key by Tatiana De Rosnay

Author:Tatiana De Rosnay [Rosnay, Tatiana de]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Family secrets, Jews, World War; 1939-1945, France, Women authors, Americans, Large type books, Paris (France)
ISBN: 9781410421722
Publisher: Thorndike Press
Published: 2009-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

SARAH SLEPT BADLY THAT night. She kept hearing Rachel scream, over and over again. Where was Rachel now? Was she all right? Was somebody looking after her, helping her get well again? Where had all those Jewish families been taken? And her mother, and her father? And the children back in the camp at Beaune-la-Rolande?

Sarah lay on her back in the bed and listened to the silence of the old house. So many questions. And no answers. Her father used to answer all her queries. Why the sky was blue, and what were clouds made of, and how babies came into the world. Why the sea had tides, and how flowers grew, and why people fell in love. He had always taken time to answer her, patiently, calmly, with clear, easy words and gestures. He had never told her he was too busy. He loved her incessant questions. He used to say she was such a bright little girl.

But recently, her father had not answered her questions the way he used to, she recalled. Her questions about the yellow star, about not being able to go the cinema, the public swimming pool. About the curfew. About that man, in Germany, who hated Jews, and whose very name made her shiver. No, he had not answered her questions properly. He had remained vague, silent. And when she had asked him, again, for the second or the third time, just before the men had come to get them on that black Thursday, what was it exactly about being a Jew that made others hate them—surely it couldn’t be that they were afraid of Jews because Jews were “different”—he had looked away, as if he hadn’t heard. But she knew that he had.

She didn’t want to think about her father. It hurt too much. She couldn’t even remember the last time she saw him. At the camp … but when exactly? She didn’t know. With her mother, there had been that last time she had seen her mother’s face turn to her, as she had walked away with the other sobbing women, up that long dusty road to the station. She had a clear image pasted in her mind, like a photograph. Her mother’s pale face, the startling blue of her eyes. The ghost of a smile.

But there had been no last time with her father. No last image she could cling to, she could conjure. So she tried to remember him, to bring back his thin, dark face, his haunted eyes. The white teeth in the dark face. She had always heard she looked like her mother, and so did Michel. They had her fair, Slavic looks, the high, broad cheekbones, the slanted eyes. Her father used to complain that none of his children resembled him. She mentally pushed her father’s smile away. It was too painful. Too deep.

Tomorrow she had to get to Paris. She had to get home. She had to find out what had happened to Michel. Maybe he was safe, too, like she was now.

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