“Sure. Right here on the shelf. I’ll drop it off at your liaison office in Haifa.”
“Thanks!” She hesitates. There’s no better time. “Mr. Yarden, may I ask you a personal question?”
“Uzi. Only my wife calls me Mr. Yarden, when she’s cross with me. What is it?”
“Since we’re in France, I’d like to help Danny trace his roots. Would you be able to give me any information? Where did you find him?”
Uzi coughs. “It was in a region with lots of castles.”
“The Dordogne? The Loire Valley? Provence?”
“Couldn’t tell you if you hung me upside down by my toes. I had a nice landlady by the name of Madame T-something.”
“Was it a city, town, an isolated farm?”
“A village, but even then I couldn’t pronounce its name. Sorry, it was a very intense time.” He pauses. “I have a letter in French that never served any purpose. Danny can have it.”
“Great. Thank you very much.” What possible explanation can she give Danny when he receives this old letter and learns of her request? Last time she badgered him, he came close to losing his cool. And she’d agreed to leave his life alone.
“How is his French now?” Uzi asks.
“Perfect. Most four-year-olds would have forgotten it.”
“My brother kept it up with him until he got killed in the Sinai campaign.”
Why would a kibbutz member of an Israel-born family be fluent in a language other than Hebrew and possibly Yiddish? “You had a brother who spoke French?” she asks.
“The one time I served as a Youth Aliyah agent, before they found more qualified candidates, I also brought back with me a teenage boy, Arthur. My parents adopted him. Every family in the area kibbutzim adopted at least one child. Danny was a gift to me and my wife. Arthur to my parents.”
“So sorry to hear that he was killed.” A teenager gets rescued from the Holocaust only to lose his life in one of Israel’s wars—like her own mother. “Was Arthur from the same village as Danny?”
“Yes, but he was under the care of some other Jewish organization, not the Youth Aliyah.”
“What was his full name?”
“Arthur Durand. It was changed to Arnon Yarden.”
“Thanks, Uzi.” She makes a quick calculation. In 1956, when the Sinai campaign took place, Danny was fourteen. “I’ll give Danny your regards. I’m sure that he’ll reschedule the call. Happy Hanukkah to your family.”
From the other end of the line comes a chorus of voices, as if rehearsed: “Happy Hanukkah!” It tells Sharon that a whole group of relatives is gathered around the phone for this eagerly anticipated conversation with their boy.
She glances at the wall clock. She’s used two more expensive minutes beyond the first three. “Shalom,” she says.
“Shalom upon all of Israel,” Uzi says and adds, “Good luck to you guys up there, whatever it is that you’re doing.”
After Sharon hangs up, her hand remains on the receiver. She and her grandparents created a tight unit within their large extended family. Although she had a horde of aunts and uncles and seventeen cousins, none of them ever gathered by the phone to hear her voice.
Perhaps this rich circle of love is the reason Danny doesn’t wish to shake its foundation. She has no business poking her
nose into his personal affairs.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Claudette
Loire Valley, France
Fall 1945–Spring 1946
She lived with Madame Couture. They hoped to get sewing work, but few could afford even the cost of repairing old clothes. Claudette was grateful when, in the fall, she found a job with a pleasant young cheese seller. Fernand had returned from the war early after losing an arm and an eye.
Today was market day in Buzançais, and Claudette accompanied him in his cart. He was dexterous with his left arm and his right-arm hook prosthesis. He needed her help slicing cheese and wrapping it for customers. His wife was still running a fever after the birth of their third child, and there was no doctor around to help.
He set up a chair for Claudette in his stall. Its selection of cheese was meager; few milk-producing sheep and cows had escaped the Boche’s looting. While he explained to Claudette his system of presenting, cutting, and weighing cheese, Claudette scanned the street and its customers. She cast her gaze low, searching for a three-year-old boy.
Would she recognize Benjamin? She’d seen him in her mind’s eye every minute since she’d left. At six weeks old, he was already focusing his gaze on her when she spoke to him, as if he were trying to imprint her face on his memory. He broke into a delightful giggle when she imitated his babbling. Benjamin had a joyful disposition. His eyes and mouth and smile were Raphaël’s. And that cute cleft chin? She had no idea if it vanished when a baby lost his facial fat.
Hours later, her nostrils stinging from the tangy cheese, Claudette had not seen a single one of the many passing children who could possibly be her son.
And then a woman stopped at the cheese counter. Her little boy tried to pull away from her grip. “Stay here. Don’t get lost,” she warned him. Carrying her basket in her other hand, she could only nod her chin toward the cheeses that she would like Claudette to slice. “One hundred and fifty grams of this, and two hundred grams of that.”
But Claudette was examining the boy. Were his brown-speckled green eyes similar to Raphaël’s?
“Does he have a tattoo at the bottom of his foot?” Claudette asked the woman.
“Excuse me?”
“Does your boy have a blue mark at the bottom of his foot?” she repeated.
“No, he doesn’t! I—”
