“Lucky boy. He’s really cute.” She gave Uzi a form and instructed him to have Daniel’s photo taken at the next tent.
Two dozen people were queued up at the makeshift passport office. When Uzi’s turn arrived, he stepped up to the desk of a bespectacled, cheerful man. Uzi withdrew the signed French letter along with the form he’d just filled out and pointed to the blank spaces. “I don’t have his date of birth or the names of his Jewish birth parents.”
The man consulted the letter. “The boy’s name is Benjamin-Pierre?”
Uzi was taken aback. He’d never tried to decipher the cursive letters beyond confirming that the drunkard had signed it. “He goes by the name Daniel.”
“Doesn’t matter. Anyway, you’re giving him a new last name.” The clerk peered over the desk at Daniel, then asked him something in French.
Daniel raised four fingers.
He asked another question in French and laughed at the boy’s answer. “He says that his birthday is Wednesday. In that case, let’s make today’s date, minus four years, his official birthday.” As he scribbled on the form Uzi had partially filled out, he mumbled, “Daniel Yarden, born October sixth, 1942.” Again he peered down at Daniel and said something in French.
Daniel grinned and turned to Uzi. “Abba,” he said. “Abba.”
The sudden uttering of the Hebrew word for “Dad” sent warmth through Uzi. “Does he know what it means?” he asked the clerk.
“I asked him if he was accepting you as his father, and this was his answer.”
“Abba, Abba.” Daniel laughed, repeating the word he must have learned in nursery school. Uzi lifted him in his arms and threw him up in the air.
“All set.” The clerk entered the information in his ledger. “His photo should be developed tonight. Come back tomorrow for his travel pass.”
“Is this travel pass a French passport?”
The man chuckled. With a wide sweep of his hand, he indicated the camp outside. “How many of these refugees do you think have the original documents needed for legal passports? And do you see here the consuls of Hungary or Poland to issue them? We make do with great artists.” He crooked his finger at the people standing behind Uzi. “Next.”
A couple in their late forties approached, holding hands. As Uzi walked away, he heard the woman say to the clerk, “We got married last night, and I need to change my last name.”
“Mazel tov,” Uzi called, and a chorus of others in the queue joined in. Within seconds, a small circle of people were dancing the hora, sweeping in the newlyweds and the clerks. “Mazel tov,” Daniel echoed, repeating the new words while his little feet followed Uzi’s in the dance.
Uzi stopped to root in his backpack. He pulled out a small shiny object and handed it to the woman. “This mezuzah was on the
threshold of a house right here in Marseille. The neighborhood is no more. May your marriage symbolize the continuity of our
people in Eretz Israel.”
Chapter Fifty
Sharon
Tel Aviv, Israel
September 1969
September is still hot, and the dreaded loss has happened. It’s been two weeks since Savta’s passing and a week since the end of the shivah—the seven days of mourning for a loved one. Sharon’s aunts empty cabinets and shelves, breaking up the only home she ever had. The six siblings will sell this large apartment and give Sharon one-seventh of the proceeds, her late father’s share. It won’t be enough for her to purchase even a tiny apartment of her own. She’ll have to move in with Uncle Pinchas and his wife.
From the dining room, Sharon hears the heated voices of her aunts challenging Dvora’s claim to the oil painting of red anemones. Sharon packed away two of Savta’s framed needlepoints before they became the family’s property. Nothing is hers in the only home she’s ever lived in.
She steps out to the veranda and closes the door, grateful for a passing motorbike’s accelerating vroom. This second-floor oasis filled with clusters of cacti and blooming plants was Savta’s perch. Her agile hands never stopped crocheting or knitting as she watched the street, ready to chat with passing neighbors.
The swallows are chirping on the ancient sycamore tree. Savta complained about the figs dropping from the tree onto her terrace. They rotted fast, staining the Moroccan tiles and drawing flies, thus requiring twice-daily sweeping. But Savta had basked in the shade of the saucer-size leaves. Now Sharon sits in Savta’s caned rocking chair, her feet on the ottoman, inhaling the figs’ familiar sweet, dusty smell.
Unlike Alon’s life, which was cut short, Savta’s had been long and rich, filled with joys and sorrows. Instead of fighting the cancer, she accepted her inevitable demise. “It’s all right to say goodbye,” she told Sharon toward the end. “That’s the natural cycle of life.” Her heart breaking, Sharon understood. Yet after months of grueling days of caring, the freedom from the responsibility is not a relief but a burden. Sharon has no more excuses; she must make a decision about her next steps and her long-term path. It’s called growing up.
On the street below, a bus pulls out of the station just as a soldier with a rifle strapped across his chest runs to catch it. The driver stops the bus, something he would never do for a civilian. He waits for the soldier and lets him in.
Sharon can’t allow such nonevents to constitute her days. She needs to set a goal for herself. She’s a capable woman. Her rising to the challenges in Cherbourg proved it. But what can she do? The Dakar has not been found. Three other submarines sank this past year under mysterious circumstances—one French, one Soviet, and one American. A widow of one of the Dakar sailors has already remarried. This past week, friends have invited Sharon to picnics, discos, and concerts. As if trying to swim up to the surface of a lake of sadness, Sharon joined them a few times in order to remind herself what normal life felt like. Last night, around a campfire on the beach, her friends talked about their university studies and promising new jobs.
She picks up today’s newspaper. She circled some help-wanted ads earlier but hasn’t made any calls. Should she try to get a one-year drafting certificate? Take an advanced math course? Why not study both at the same time?
How scared she had been a year ago to travel abroad, yet within twenty-four hours, she was hopping from one European capital to another. She did it because Danny trusted her abilities. She should trust them too. When she’s ready, that is.
Uncle Pinchas steps onto the terrace and places his hand on her shoulder. She doesn’t turn, but she raises her palm and rests it on his hand. “You’ll be okay, sweetheart,” he says. “Our home is your home. Forever.”
“Thank you.”
“I’ll send two guys from my factory to haul your stuff from here.”
“I need them to move Savta’s dinner set to the Golans’ basement,” she says. Savta willed her the entire twenty-person china set with Grandpa’s initials, but Aunt Dvora already commandeered the tea- and coffee-pots. “If it’s not stored, the cups and saucers will disappear too,” Sharon adds.
The two of them listen to the birds chirping and warbling, then he says, “I remember the night I drove my parents to pick you up. A temporary cease-fire had been negotiated, but no one trusted it. Snipers acted on their own. The road from Tel Aviv to Haifa was only two unmarked lanes then, and with my car’s headlights painted over, I might easily have veered into a ditch. On the way back, my parents sat with you in the back seat and cried. I asked to adopt you—Mina and I already had our three boys and we wanted a girl—but my parents wouldn’t hear of it.”
Aunt Mina is a talkative, birdlike woman, well intentioned but overbearing. Sharon is grateful to have had Savta as a mother. “Thank God Aunt Dvora didn’t claim me,” Sharon says, and they both laugh. In their family circle, Dvora, who studied law and became a judge, is the one who sows discord, as the raised voices in the living room testify.
Uncle Pinchas points to the newspaper with the circled help-wanted ads. “It would be a great help to me if you filled in for my secretary when she takes her six-month maternity leave.”
“Sorry. I’d like to help you, but I can’t commit for that long.” Sharon lets her hand drop. She hates the idea of doing payroll and bookkeeping in the low-ceilinged office over Uncle Pinchas’s machine factory. The screeching of the iron grinders in the tight space gives her a headache. Similar noises from machines in Félix Amiot’s hangar, a much larger, busier place—and immaculately clean—inspired awe.
Cherbourg. During her four months there, she was filled with a sense of purpose. She took part in a project of national importance. For all she knows, work on the boats has ceased and the hangar stands empty. Pompidou was elected president in June, and despite his promises during the campaign, he clamped down on the embargo in a televised anti-Semitic rant. He banned selling any military materials “to the Middle East,” a cynical act affecting only Israel because Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Egypt were being equipped by Russia. Since then, no new Saar has arrived in Israel.
She wrote to Danny. His response was warm, albeit brief; he told her about taking a fun trip to Vaudéville. Of course he couldn’t reveal any details about his work, but couldn’t he have written more than a few lines in response to her two-page letter?
