Then she received a letter from Rachelle, who gushed about her wedding plans; she and Ehud would be married in his moshav in the Negev as soon as her parents finalized their early retirement and immigrated to Israel. She added that Danny and Dominique had broken up when she’d pressed him for a marriage commitment but said she wasn’t about to make Israel her home.
As much as Sharon liked Dominique, she felt a twinge of triumph at the news. Danny has begun to fill her romantic fantasies, and she often has to remind herself that she is not in his league. He’s probably already found another sophisticated girlfriend like Dominique.
In his next brief letter, he made no mention of his personal life or whom he had taken to the concert he’d attended at the Paris Opera, but after describing it, he added, I wish you could hear the amazing voices and see the exquisite set.
He didn’t write I wish you were there with me, she thought. He signed it With friendship, but there was nothing personal in their uneven correspondence. Danny liked her as his former efficient employee; she shouldn’t presume there was more to it than that. She should stop deluding herself. She did not write back.
When the apartment finally empties of visitors, Sharon walks through the bare rooms where she no longer belongs. She’ll take the bus to visit the Golans. She wants to suggest a ceremony by the beach to help them reenter the world, even if they’re merely going through the motions. The images of Alon suffocating will forever play in all their heads. For Sharon, the pain of his loss hasn’t subsided as much as expanded to all parts of her body, its load redistributed to make it bearable.
Indeed, in feigning normalcy, since her return from Cherbourg, she has spent an occasional night with Tomer, either in his room or hers. This past Shabbat afternoon, they sat at a café by the seashore over lemonade and cake and watched the luminous sunset. It should have felt romantic. As they held hands over the table, Sharon wondered why she even bothered.
In her room, a box of books sits on the floor. She spots the math textbook on top and plucks it out. If she puts her mind to it, could she reach the stellar grade needed to go to the Technion?
Holding the tattered textbook, she recalls asking Uzi Yarden for it.
And then it hits her. A loose end that was too far-fetched to follow. Yet—
She places a call to Ayelet HaShachar and asks the secretary to leave a message for Uzi Yarden to call her.
A few hours later, he does. She recognizes his smoke-cured voice. “Uzi Yarden here. Someone left a message for me?”
“Thanks, it’s Sharon Bloomenthal. We spoke last year when I worked with Danny in France. Thank you for sending the math book and the letter.”
“Did it help?”
“I left before I had a chance to follow up on the letter. Something else came up, though. I think you might have some information for me.”
“What is it?”
“Danny told me that you were a Youth Aliyah agent in 1946. I know that there were dozens of clandestine voyages with hundreds of passengers each,” she says, her tone apologetic. “But just in case—” She pauses, feeling silly. “Would you happen to recall whether you met a young woman—a seventeen-year-old, really—by the name of Judith Katz?”
“Of course! I remember her well.”
Sharon gasps. “You do? She was my mother!”
“You were the baby she left? So sorry. Such a tragedy. Your father too.” Sharon hears the catch in his voice. “We lost so many comrades in the battles around here.”
She slides along the wall to the floor and twists the phone cord around her finger. Incredulity spreads through her. The first and only person she’s ever found who knew her mother turns out to be Danny’s adoptive father. “What do you remember about her? What kind of person was she?”
“Sweet. Resilient. Bright. Musical. Beautiful. Courageous. Hugely talented. Great with people. Spoke many languages.”
Sharon smiles into the phone. Music and languages, just as she had guessed. “My savta said she was good with children.”
“Amazingly so. So loving. So mature for her age. She kept the children engaged and organized in the DP camp and then on the ship. The kids had experienced horrific traumas. She mothered them all. Danny, too, adored her.”
The cold tile beneath Sharon chills the heat that floods her. All her yenta nosing had one purpose: to lead to this very moment. For twenty-one years, she’s been trying to find the elusive trail to her mother—she even took the job in France to discover details about her Youth Aliyah experience—and suddenly it’s here. Now. At the end of the phone line.
“I should travel tomorrow to visit you in Ayelet HaShachar to hear more,” Sharon says, “but I can’t wait. Tell me everything now.”
“Of course. Since her kibbutz was nearby, we kept in touch after she settled there. We all worked very hard but did Friday-night hora dances together.” He pauses. “Amiram adored her. They were very happy about the pregnancy and were so looking forward to your birth. She was very strong and worked till the end.”
“Did you meet her in the DP camp?”
“Oh, no.” Uzi tells her how Judith approached him at the train station. “For two years she rode trains, hoping to bump into members of her family. There was hardly any other way for European survivors to find one another.”
“Oh God.” Sharon can’t help the moan that escapes her. The misery of loss she has known was so much greater for Judith. “Where in France did she grow up?”
“I sincerely don’t recall,” he says. “To her, bumping into my group as it was heading to Eretz Israel was God’s sign for her to pursue her parents’ dream.”
“Was she religious?”
“A believer. She kept kosher.” He pauses. “The Holocaust caused many adults to turn atheist. For children, during the worst times, God was the only one from whom they could draw protection and guidance.”
“I can’t imagine how scared the children were,” Sharon says. “Do you know where she passed the war years?”
“The family’s housekeeper kept her in her village and told everyone she was her niece so she could attend school.”
“She wasn’t in a concentration camp?” Sharon asks, relieved that her mother had been spared that Nazi torture at least.
“No. Judith even studied Latin with some priest. It must have helped her with languages. At the village, she learned to care for farm animals. She loved the idea of living the agricultural life in Israel but was too musical to pass up a scholarship at a conservatory. Before the War of Independence, while pregnant, she traveled to Haifa for weekly lessons.”
“What instrument did she play?”
“Sometimes piano, but mostly the flute. It was far easier to carry around.”
The flute! The hairs on Sharon’s arms stand up. Of all the instruments in the world, they both favored the same one.
Uzi goes on, and Sharon hears the affection in his voice and can tell that he’s smiling. “Life had a lot to offer her—in addition to finding a great love and having you.”
