Near Lyon
July 24, 1942
The wind blew in their faces as if announcing their impending arrival. Jacob and Moses knew Lyon was just a little over sixty miles from Valence and that the river that escorted them from afar, the Rhône, was the same river that refreshed the city where their parents were.
Jacob pointed out the current of the water to his brother through the little window of the car they had slipped into. He got lost in thought about how the water he had seen seconds before was moving faster than the old wooden train run by a steam engine that laboriously chugged them toward what they hoped would be the final layover of their journey.
At times, Jacob wondered how they had been able to come so far. Without the help of so many people risking their lives day after day to protect the persecuted—pariahs of the land so universally despised—they would never have made it that far. It had been a harrowing journey. Paris now felt like a distant memory, as if they had never even lived there. All Jacob and Moses had was the present—the past was a dense fog they could never return to, hardly even in their memory—and the future seemed so uncertain they dared not imagine their lives beyond this moment.
In one sense, childhood is an eternal present. The road traveled is just a few feet beyond the starting point, and the end goal seems so far away that it gives the false sense of eternity that the young always feel.
Moses looked out again at the ripe fields, the patches of forests, and the spread-out towns with white, peaceful-looking houses. He thought about how huge the world was. He tried to imagine what the ocean was like, how it would feel to climb the high Swiss mountains, or how the coasts of Africa appeared. In the past few days, his vision of the world had expanded so greatly that, on the one hand, he felt insignificant, and on the other, he felt the fascinating power of soaring in his imagination, regardless of what was happening all around them. His brother, however, seemed overwhelmed by worry and the certainty of constant danger, the anguish of what might happen to Moses, or the fear that their parents would no longer be at the only address they had for them.
“What will happen if we’re all alone in the world?” Moses asked, not looking at Jacob. He seemed lucidly aware that what they were going through was an agonizing flight from death, not an exciting adventure.
The question felt like an uppercut to Jacob’s jaw. He wanted his brother to remain unaware of the realities that were more and more unbearable for him. “We’re not alone in the world,” he said. “We’ll find Mother and Father.” His voice was firm as he tried to convince himself of his own words.
“Don’t lie to me,” Moses whispered. “We’re in a war. I know what that means. I also know our parents will have found out what happened to Aunt Judith, and maybe they went back home. So what will we do if we don’t find them?” His question throbbed with pain. His eyes watered, but Moses willed them not to spill over.
“We’ll keep looking. We’ll move heaven and earth to find them,” Jacob said, though he could see his answers no longer convinced his brother.
“For how long? What if we look for them forever and never see them again?” Moses finally began to cry.
“Well, I’ll always be here. You can’t get rid of me that easily,” Jacob joked.
“You’re an idiot,” Moses said, punching his shoulder.
“We’ll work, we’ll get out of France, far away from the Nazis, go somewhere safe . . .”
Moses looked up. “Is there somewhere safe for us?”
Again, the child’s question reverberated in his ears. Jacob wondered the same thing. Just over a year ago, anywhere their parents took them seemed like a safe place. But in that moment, everywhere on earth felt dangerous.
Their stomachs growled. They had not, after all, had any breakfast, and even though they had eaten a huge dinner the night before, they were very hungry. Jacob checked his backpack. They still had a few tins of food and some hard bread. They ate in silence but had hardly begun to digest the food when at the end of the aisle they saw a man dressed in black.
“The ticket inspector,” Moses whispered, pointing down the aisle. The boys gathered their things quickly and walked in the opposite direction. They went from car to car until they reached the last one.
“What do we do now?”
“I’m not sure how much time is left until Lyon,” Jacob said. Right then the train seemed to be going faster than it had the rest of the journey. They looked out at the ground whizzing by as they left the world they had known and catapulted toward an uncertain future.
“You aren’t thinking about jumping, Jacob.”
Jacob shrugged. “I can’t think of any other option.”
Moses saw a ladder that led to the roof, tapped Joseph on the shoulder, and pointed up. “I bet he won’t find us if we stay up there the rest of the journey.”
“But that’s even more dangerous than jumping off while in motion,” Jacob said. He was not a fan of heights.
“Come on, we don’t have much time.”
Jacob started up slowly, suddenly sweaty and feeling the racing beat of his heart. He looked to one side, saw the landscape rushing by, and felt like he was in a free fall. He took a deep breath and kept climbing.
Moses followed, pushing Jacob with his head to move him along. The inspector could look out at any moment. When they were on the roof of the car, they felt the full blast of the wind and the clickety-clack of the train. They threw themselves down, clinging to the top of the ladder, and waited.
The inspector came out onto the final platform, glanced around, then returned to the car, the door banging shut behind him.
“Let’s go back down,” Jacob pleaded. The terror on his face startled Moses.
“Let’s wait just a little longer,” Moses said. It was not smart to go down too quickly. The inspector could be anywhere.
“I’ve got to get down,” Jacob said, his face pale and his stomach turning over.
Jacob descended much faster than he had gone up the ladder and collapsed onto the floor of the platform. Eventually he noticed his brother descending with a smile. “So I found something I’m better at than you!” Moses joked.
They stayed there on the platform for another hour, waiting for the train to close in on Lyon. Despite the heat, the breeze was cool. As they approached the forested region, the heat was less unbearable than in the plains and marshy areas they had traversed in recent days.
A sign on a nearby roadway let them know they were not far from Lyon. The train slowed as they entered the city limits, and when the boys spotted the station ahead, they jumped.
The train was already moving at a slow pace, so the impact of the jump was minimal. Even so, Moses banged his legs on the track and sat for a while, rubbing the spot that hurt.
“Come on,” Jacob said. “We need to get away from the tracks.”
“Will we do this again to get to Valence?” Moses asked.
“Let’s sneak up to the station and check out the trains and schedules. We’ve got nothing to lose by trying it,” Jacob said, smiling. He felt very proud of having gotten so far along by themselves. No one had helped them on the last leg of their journey. Then he wondered what had happened to Marcel and Paul, though he shook the thought away. Surely, after a reprimand, they would be returned to their father. Jacob hoped that the uncle would protect his own flesh and blood, even if only to keep his name clear of scandal. He knew that a lot of people did the right thing out of fear of what would happen if they did not, instead of out of true love for others or due to some higher sense of justice. Jacob mused on all of this as the boys picked their way to the station.
They entered the great hall and went up to the board that displayed the train schedules. After a few minutes of studying, they deciphered the abbreviations and saw that a train to Valence would be leaving early the next morning.
“So what do we do until tomorrow morning?” Moses asked.
Jacob shrugged. “Look for somewhere to rest.”
They had never slept on the streets before. Even on the worst days during their search for their parents they had found some sort of food and some sort of roof over their heads. But in Lyon, they were completely on their own.
They knew that if they went to a park, someone might see them and report them. The police would waste no time in arresting them and asking what they were doing so far from home. Finally, they decided to try out what looked like an abandoned house near the train tracks.
Through the open door they saw no furniture inside, but most of the windows still had their glass. It seemed like a decent place to take shelter for the night. They fashioned a sleeping mat of sorts from the many old newspapers they found lying around the house.
“This place creeps me out,” Moses said.
“Don’t worry, I’ll stay up and keep watch. I can sleep on the train tomorrow,” Jacob said. He did not like the place either. He would rather stay up and make sure they did not miss the train instead of sleep in such a place.
The hours passed slowly. Jacob began to nod off, sleep finally overcoming him. He was resting peacefully when a noise startled him. He lifted his head and saw movement in the shadows. He shook Moses. Before they had laid down for the night, Jacob had checked to see if there was a back door, and he thought they should make a run for it now out the back. But before they could move, noises surrounded them.
Moses woke in fright and screamed. Still dazed, he thought the shadows all around him were ghosts, but one of them flicked open a cigarette lighter and lit up part of the room.
The dirty, angry face of a boy was inches from his face, and Moses screamed again. The boy clamped his hand over Moses’s mouth. “Shut up, you little rat! Do you want all the guards from the station to come running?” The boy had a strange accent, but his words were enough to quiet Moses.
“What do you want?” Jacob asked, trying to disguise his terror.
“First, every penny you’ve got. Then your shoes and that backpack. If you behave, I might let you go after that, but if you make me angry, I’ll slit your throats. Nobody’s going to care about two little vagabonds sleeping in an abandoned house.” His voice was hoarse, punctuated by dry, staccato laughter.
The three others with him also laughed. Moses was trembling beyond control and feared he would wet himself.
Jacob made every effort to master his fear. “We’ll give you the money, but we need our shoes and clothes, and a couple of papers that won’t do you any good.”
The youth grabbed Jacob by the collar and pulled him to his feet. “You trying to make a deal with me? You think you’ve got gumption? You’re a piece of trash to talk like that, but I’ll teach you a lesson.”
Seeing that all the attention was on Jacob, Moses kicked the thief hard in the groin. The boy went to his knees with a cry. In the second it took his cronies to react, Jacob and Moses dashed to the back door and disappeared into the darkness. They hid behind a cargo train and caught their breath, still not believing they had managed to get away alive.
“The backpack! I left the backpack!” Jacob moaned in a whisper.
“So what? They were going to kill us,” Moses said. He was still unable to control his trembling, but he was proud of his daring act.
“The letters are in there, Mother and Father’s letters. I’ve got the money with me, but the letters are the only thing we had left of them. I have to go back,” he said, trying to stand.
“But they’re going to kill you,” Moses warned. “Soon we’ll see Mother and Father face-to-face, so what do we need their letters for?” His brother was being irrational.
“Their address is in the letters,” Jacob said, his head hung low.
“Didn’t you memorize it?”
“I can’t remember it.”
“You read them a zillion times. When you’ve calmed down, I’m sure it’ll come back to you,” Moses said.
Jacob tried to be still and quiet and willed his mind recall the address. He could call up every word of the letters, seeing them on the page in his mind like a photograph. But the return address on the envelope was fuzzy.
They had come so close, yet hope had vanished again. He began to cry. Those white envelopes were the only thing that proved their parents were real, were alive, could be found in a real place—that they were not ghosts or figments of his childish imagination. His mother’s stylized script was what kept her alive in Jacob’s mind, the ink that ran a touch lazily at the end of her signature. His memory was so weak, so fragile, so capricious, always subject to the inexorable march of time.
“And her picture,” he mumbled between tears. But then he searched his pockets and found the picture was there.
At his brother’s words, Moses tried to call up his parents’ faces, and his breath caught when he could not. He could still recall his mother’s smell and his father’s voice, but their faces were just out of reach. They were like two voids, slowly being consumed by nothingness while forgetfulness gnawed away at the thin thread that tethered them to the world of the living.