The Postcard

by Anne Berest

The idea that I had already lived half of my life also explains my utter determination to solve this mystery, which occupied my every thought, day and night, for months. I’d reached the age where something, some force, pushes you to look back, because the horizon of your past is now more vast, more mysterious, than the one that lies ahead.

His face was round and cheerful, the face of a man who enjoyed the good things in life.

I was Jewish but didn’t look it. Sarah looked Jewish but wasn’t, according to the texts. We’d laughed about it. It was all so silly. Ridiculous. And yet it affected both our lives deeply.

Even now, with Georges. My Jewishness always mattered in some way; it was never insignificant.

I felt a sense of wonder, a deep, warm happiness that came from somewhere far away. The ceremony transported me back in time. I could feel hands sliding into my own, inhabiting them. Nachman’s fingers, gnarled as the roots of an ancient oak tree. His face leaning toward me, over the candles, whispering, “We are all pearls in the same necklace.”

But we can’t let history repeat itself just so you can play vigilante!”

“Are you suddenly going to turn into one of the Righteous? Look at all the families living in the street, children dying of hunger on filthy mattresses. Doesn’t that remind you of anything? What if you had to be the generous ones? Would you take someone into your house and let them sleep on your sofa? How much would you risk? What if you weren’t the victims, for once, but the people who could actually help?”

at yourselves and ask the question: isn’t this feeling of being deeply anchored in France the same way French Jews felt in 1942? A lot of them had fought for this country in the first World War. And yet they were put on those trains.” “Exactly. It’s the same kind of denial. Thinking nothing bad could ever happen to you.”

I am Jewish, but I know nothing about Jewish culture. You have to understand that after the war, my grandmother Myriam joined the Communist Party, embracing the same revolutionary ideals her parents had when they lived in Russia. She believed that her children and grandchildren should be born into a new world, with no links to the old one. My grandmother, the sole survivor of her family by war’s end, never set foot in a synagogue again. For her, God had died in the death camps.

Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah airs on television for the first time, over four nights. I can tell, despite being only eight, that it is about a very important event. My parents decide to record the episodes on the VCR bought last summer for the World Cup.

“If we’d been born back then, we’d have been turned into buttons,” Lélia said abruptly.

Back at home that day, I feel sad. I feel like the only thing I truly belong to is my mother’s pain. That’s my community. A community made up of two living people and several million dead ones.

“It’s because I keep thinking about my family members who weren’t able to escape to the United States. I feel guilty for surviving. That’s why I feel so bad.” I’m struck by the fact that my mother talks to us about her “family” as if we, her own daughters, have suddenly become strangers. I’m also struck by what seems like an intrusion of the past into the present. There’s something very unsettling about it.

In a few minutes, I’ll go into Clara’s room to wake her up. And I’ll say, “Your breakfast is ready. Hurry up, sweetheart. I want to talk to you about something important.”

I was proud of my daughter. And proud of the other child’s reaction, so simple, so logical. I kissed Clara’s broad, intelligent forehead, blotting out the absurdity of the world for a moment. Everything was all right. Reassured, I took her to school.

“It wasn’t anti-Semitic talk. Just a stupid remark by a little boy who didn’t even understand what he was saying!” “But that’s just it. Someone needs to explain it to him. And that someone needs to be the secular, state-funded school he attends.”

always clean-shaven, with gorgeous skin. He speaks loudly and smells good, and he’s always cheerful, even when he doesn’t actually feel that way. He makes me think of a Roman who ended up in Paris somehow; he could definitely be Italian, with his custom-tailored suits, violet sweaters, and socks from Gammarelli, where the Vatican cardinals also shop.

“You’re never bored with Gérard” is the universal verdict of the few people lucky enough to spend time with him. And he agrees. “You know, I’m not such bad company, even for myself.”

little, I started to realize that at school, being called Gérard ‘Rambert’ was totally different than being called Gérard ‘Rosenberg.’ And you know what the difference was? I stopped hearing ‘dirty Jew’ every day in the schoolyard. I stopped hearing the other kids say things like, ‘It’s too bad Hitler missed your parents.’ And in my new school, with my new name, I realized that I really liked being left the hell alone.”

“The French government didn’t recognize the fact that they died at Auschwitz?” “No. They went from ‘not returned’ to ‘missing’ to ‘deceased on French soil.’

The official death dates were the days the deportation convoys left France.” “I can’t believe it.” “A letter from the National Office for Veterans and Victims of War to the trial court prosecutor even requested that the place of death be specified as Auschwitz. The court decided otherwise. But that’s not all. They also refused to say that the Jews had been deported because of race. They said it was for political reasons. It was only in 1996, after a lot of lobbying, that official recognition of ‘death by deportation’ was granted and the death certificates were corrected.”

After the war, women in orthodox Jewish families had made it their mission to have as many children as possible to replenish the population—and it seemed to me that the same was true for books. That subconscious drive to write as many books as possible, to fill those places left empty on the library shelves, not just by the books burned during the war, but by the ones whose authors had died before they could write them.

She’d written another phrase, too, one that had stayed with me always: “If your need is to refuse to abandon the past, you must recreate it.”

been the same for them as they were for me. I went upstairs to look out over the courtyard, and it seemed to me that the war was still here, everywhere, in the minds of the people who had lived through it and the ones who hadn’t, the children of those who had fought, the grandchildren of those who had stood by and done nothing, who could have done more. The war continued to influence our actions, our destinies, our friendships, our loves. All roads led us back to the war. Its deflagrations still resonated within us. It was here at Fénelon

Like a game of dominoes, in which each piece causes the next one to topple. That was how I’d been taught about the logical sequencing of events, as if there were no random phenomena. And yet our lives were composed of nothing but clashes and fractures. And, to borrow Némirovsky’s words, “we understand none of it.”

The white ivory and black ebony keys seemed to be in original—and splendid—condition. It seemed to me that I saw Emma’s ghost, seated on the piano bench with her back to us, turn around and whisper, “At last, you’ve come.”

Yes, it’s true that Lélia didn’t actually talk about all that stuff back then, but she communicated it in other ways. It was everywhere. In all the books in the study, in her pain, in the things she said and did that didn’t quite make sense, and in the “secret” photos that weren’t very well hidden at all. The Holocaust was like a treasure hunt in our house. You just followed the clues.

Myriam saves herself, and everyone in the story dies. She didn’t save any of them. But how could she have? I’ve asked you to save me. So many times. What a burden I’ve been on you.

Anne-Myriam, required to save Claire-Noémie again and again so that she doesn’t die. Just like you’re saving the Rabinovitches now, by following the trail of that postcard. What effects have these names had on our personalities and on the bond between us, on our sometimes fraught relationship?

think Myriam and Noémie never got the chance to begin to get to know each other. I think we’ve survived our arguments, our betrayals, and our inability to understand one another.

We survived. And Myriam couldn’t have saved her family. It wasn’t her fault. Noémie didn’t have the chance to write. You and I became writers. We’ve written books together, the pair of us. And it wasn’t easy. But it was beautiful and intense. I hope so much, Anne, that one day I can be your strength. Your shelter.

“A true friend isn’t the one who dries your tears. It’s the one who never causes them to be shed.”

She’s still wearing the same five pairs of underwear. Not taking care of herself is her way of stopping time.

Great artists, she has found, usually have egos to match.

people who simply agree to have secret documents left in their mailboxes.. They don’t know the contents of these papers—they merely accept them—but all the same, they are willingly putting their lives at risk, and they all deserve to be named and commended for their courage:

England. It is during this period that Jeanine recruits both her younger brother Vicente and her mother Gabriële, the latter joining the network at age sixty and taking the code name of “Madame Pic.”

Jeanine has now become one of the most wanted female fugitives in France. She has no choice but to leave the country. Now it’s her turn to travel in the trunk of a car,

She tells Vicente and Myriam that she is going to try to get to England by way of Spain—which means crossing the Pyrenees on foot.

Myriam and Vicente bid Jeanine farewell under cover of darkness, with no hugs, no reassurances. No coupo santo or promises to see one another again. No words of encouragement. No words at all, in fact. Just a handshake to ward off bad luck. And so they are left alone together. Myriam and Vicente. Both of them have now lost their sisters to the endless black night that is the war.

Ever since then, whenever I don’t know how to answer a question, or when I’ve forgotten something I should have remembered, I fall into a kind of black hole because of that old, old feeling of guilt about Myriam, and about you.

“Until I can find the two of you a mattress, you can make a bed out of Spanish broom. You know—the yellow flowers. Everyone does it around here,” the landlady tells them.

The situation suddenly feels completely unreal. This bedroom in the middle of nowhere, this husband she hardly knows. She finds some comfort in thinking that somewhere, far from here, Noémie is looking at the moon, too. The thought gives her strength.

A courageous woman with a big heart and a spine of steel, she does the work of three men while raising her only son. Everyone in the region respects her. She’s rich, certainly, but she is invariably generous to those in need. She never says “no” to anyone. Except the Germans.

She acquiesces because she has no choice. But never—not ever—does she invite them in for a drink.

Madame Chabaud has dealt with all sorts of people in her time. All she asks of her tenants is that they respect the villagers and their way of life and behave correctly. And that they not have the police after them, of course.

in a typical, everyday, married existence. Eating, washing, getting dressed, keeping warm, and going to bed. For the whole history of their relationship before now, they were living in a constant state of urgency and fear. Their entire love story had played out against a backdrop of danger. And Vicente liked it that way. Needed it, apparently. Myriam, on the other hand, is quite happy with their new, simple, peaceful way of life, just the two of them, in the middle of nowhere.

He seems never to become attached to anything, or anyone—and this is actually what has always made him so irresistible.

He can pour one hundred percent of his energy into a game of chess, or the cooking of a meal, or building a fire. But the past and the future don’t really exist for him. He has no memory and no sense of keeping his promises.

Myriam isn’t surprised. She’s been sensing that restless quality that Vicente always has just before he announces he’s going off somewhere.

But in spite of everything, despite his enigmatic nature and his lack of desire for her, Myriam wouldn’t trade Vicente for anyone else. He is hers, this sad, beautiful man. A husband who is childish at times, but always with that irresistible glint in his eye. And the fragile, tenuous intimacy that binds them, a cord no wider than a wedding band . . . it’s enough for her. Yes, he sometimes goes entire days without speaking to her, but so what? He’s made her a promise. ’Til death do us part. Nothing matters more than that. There’s a dignity between them, a solitude, that she finds beautiful. He may not share his thoughts with her, or the tiny details of his existence, but all he has to do is introduce her to someone as “my wife,” and all the rest falls away, her heart swelling with pride because this man in all his male beauty belongs to her. Vicente may not say much, but he is exquisite to look at, and that’s enough for her to build a life on.