Alba-la-Romaine
April 10, 1942
The violin was slung over Rachel’s back. The case was worn, and the black leather had begun to crack like her grandmother’s hands. The cracked hands were all that Rachel could recall of the grandmother she had not seen since she was three. The violin had traveled with Rachel’s father, Zelman, from Poland through Germany and to Belgium and later to Paris. By that time he had bequeathed it to his Belgian-born daughter. Their home in Charleroi seemed as far away to Rachel as the morning when the Belgian official rapped softly at the door and whispered to her father that they had best leave everything behind and get moving before the Jews were rounded up and deported to Germany. That very day Zelman; his ex-wife, Chaja; his new wife, Fani; and Rachel fled. They left almost everything behind, but Rachel clung to the violin and her raincoat as they huddled together on the last truck leaving for the French border. After a long and tortuous journey, their new home became Paris, a city whose hostile beauty assured newcomers of their insignificance.
Zelman rented an attic room and the odd family of four survived on his work as a barber until France surrendered to Germany. They joined the hundreds of thousands of Parisians escaping along the crowded streets that led south. Most of those refugees were headed to Bordeaux, but Rachel’s family veered toward Valence and from there to the small, provincial Alba-la-Romaine. Bearing evidence of the Roman roots of the village were the stone bridge and the ancient theater, one of the best preserved in France. Rachel loved the solitude of the Roman ruins on the outskirts of the city, especially the theater, which had been witness to so much joy and sadness over the centuries.
That morning the girl was particularly sad. Gendarmes had come at dawn for her father. Things had been taking a turn for the worse in recent months. First, the authorities forbade Zelman from serving non-Jewish clients. Zelman took to going door-to-door, offering his barber services. Then he was forbidden from leaving their neighborhood. The winter was nearly unbearable for the disparate family. With no money for firewood or coal, blankets were their only defense against the cold. Finally, that morning Zelman was taken from them and made to work for the Nazi war machine.
Her father’s face had been etched with desolation as he was led away: eyes sunken in fear, face covered with a black beard that, strand by strand, had been softening into gray, and wrinkles that now overextended his forehead and seemed to shrink his dark, expressive eyes. His last words resounded in Rachel’s ear. “Don’t lose the violin. Keep playing. Every time you play, you’ll know I’m close.”
Yet Rachel felt so alone. Her classmates had stopped talking to her, including Ana, her once soulmate who had shared Rachel’s dreams of becoming a famous concert violinist.
Rachel drew out the instrument. It was still a bit big for her, despite her eight years. She nestled it under her chin and took her place on the steps where, hundreds of years before, the sound of peaceful harps and booming drums had marked the pace of comedies and dramas. Rachel closed her eyes and let the music transport her to someplace far away, where no one could hurt her. The wind-tossed notes became a prayer, a plea for her father, for all the fathers who had to leave their families. It was a wish for them to come home soon.
The music stole the magic from the surrounding birdsong, and Rachel’s closed eyelids were an insufficient barrier for her tears. Her mother once said that those who sowed the world with tears would someday reap with joy and return with jubilant shouts, and that there was a grief that led to joy, that made people stronger and allowed them to put themselves in the place of those who suffered. But someday was a long way away, and Rachel felt only infinite sadness and fear.