He mounted his bike and pedaled away, nagged by another thought: he’d had an opportunity to lead Ruth Morgenstern to the drunkard’s house and show her Daniel’s tattoo. This boy had been born to Jewish parents, clearly, not to the people in whose house he now lived. With the adoptive or foster mother dead, let OSE launch the bureaucratic investigation so this beautiful, sunny boy would be adopted by a family who deserved him.
Why hadn’t he? Because, Uzi answered himself, he didn’t want the boy removed before he presented him with that wood-carved
train and sang him the rake’vet song. Because lingering for months before being adopted by a family in England or the United States wasn’t what he wanted
for Daniel.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Uzi Yarden
Loire Valley, France
September 1946
Uzi finished bathing Daniel in Madame Therrien’s tub and dressed him in the last of his clean clothes. He crouched, and Daniel jumped on his back for a ride to his house. Laughing, Daniel kicked at Uzi’s sides with his bare feet, calling out, “Au galop! Au galop!” Uzi broke into a short run.
The drunkard was in the kitchen, noisily rooting through the cabinets. When Uzi entered and slid Daniel off his back, the man looked surprised. Either he didn’t recognize Uzi or he hadn’t noticed that the boy was missing.
“I’ll tuck you into bed,” Uzi told Daniel. Ignoring the man, he walked upstairs. In the trunk he found a clean sheet and replaced the soiled one. He collected all of Daniel’s dirty clothes and placed them in an equally filthy pillowcase. Daniel climbed into bed. Uzi regretted that today hadn’t been a market day. In his travels through the countryside—a fruitless chase after children whose tracks had evaporated—he had found no toy maker.
Suddenly, Daniel jumped up from under the cover and hugged Uzi’s neck. Uzi held him, feeling the warmth of the thin body, smelling the fresh scent of Madame Therrien’s industrial soap powder. The prospect of never seeing the boy again saddened him, as did his grave concern about this child’s well-being.
At the sound of heavy footsteps coming up, Uzi laid the boy back down and jiggled the coins in his pocket.
From his cot, Daniel cried, “Je veux Maman!”
“Maman est morte.” The man’s tone was gruff. Daniel began to bawl.
Uzi’s heart contracted. “Bon enfant,” he said to the man and handed him some coins. The man mumbled something and walked out. Uzi was certain that he was heading to the tavern around the corner.
The cry that tore out of Daniel took over the whole of his little being, the loss greater than his body could contain. “Maman, Maman!”
Uzi dropped onto the bare wood-plank floor and took him in his arms. Holding him tight, he rocked him and sang a Hebrew lullaby, then another, until the crying turned into hiccups. Exhausted, Daniel finally fell asleep.
Uzi lowered him into his cot, then kissed the crown of his head, the light brown hair now clean and dry. “Shalom,” he whispered, his heart filled with regret.
He returned to Madame Therrien’s and handed her Daniel’s soiled clothes along with a ten-franc note. He took out his ration card with another bill. “Daniel. Manger.” She smiled her understanding. Why hadn’t this kind, childless widow taken the boy in? Uzi turned up his palms in a gesture of inquiring. “Daniel. Maman?”
“Amour. Nazi.” Madame Therrien grabbed her own neck and pulled up as if hanging.
She had to repeat the mime before Uzi comprehended. Daniel’s adoptive mother had had an affair with a German and was hanged for it. By whom? Did the stigma of her liaison taint the little boy too? Or was Daniel shunned because of his Jewish star?
Uzi was in his room, studying his growing stack of French flash cards in the wan light of a bare bulb, when Madame Therrien knocked on his door. She signaled for him to come downstairs.
There, in the parlor, stood Arthur. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, then an arm jerked. “You didn’t come as you said you would.” The boy’s tone was belligerent, probably to cover his disappointment.
“So sorry. I thought it was settled with the lady from OSE,” Uzi replied. “Hasn’t she been taking care of you? Is she the one who found you your job?”
Arthur shrugged as if the answers were irrelevant.
“How old are you?”
“I’ll be fifteen in December.”
Fourteen, then, the age of Uzi’s youngest brother. “Why aren’t you in school?”
“I didn’t like it.”
“What exactly didn’t you like?”
Arthur didn’t reply. His body didn’t stop twitching.
“You’re here to talk to me,” Uzi said in a soft tone. “Please tell me what happened there.”
“I don’t have a head for books,” Arthur mumbled. “I like doing things with my hands. They were always after me to sit on my ass and study—math, reading, history, geography, prayers.”
“Okay. I get it. Would you care for some tea?”
Arthur nodded.
After Madame Therrien brought two chamomile teas, Uzi said to Arthur, “If you’d like, I can tell you more about Eretz Israel, but please understand that I can’t take you with me. OSE will make the arrangements for your emigration.”
“In Eretz Israel, will I learn to fight with a gun?”
“Why do you want a gun?”
“To kill Nazis.”
What rage roiled in his rib cage to create these nervous tics? Uzi rested his arm on Arthur’s, guessing that the boy craved human touch. “Fortunately, there are no Nazis in Eretz Israel. We have other enemies. However, our aim is not to fight them but to find ways to live peacefully with them.”
