Berlin ordered that identification cards of Jews in Belgium be specially marked, and ordered the immediate dismissal of Jews from government employment. Jews could no longer be teachers, lawyers, or journalists.
I was so grateful to see that yellow door.
As Hava and I stood before Marie’s house, she looked at me. I looked at her. I wanted to cry, but instead, I knocked on the door.
A voice from within the house called out. ‘Yes?’
‘Marie Armel?’
‘Yes? What do you want?’
‘It’s Simone Lyon. Your cousin Simone.’
The lock was released from the other side with a small metal click. Marie looked out through the partially opened the door. ‘Simone?’ She opened the door wider. ‘What are you doing here?’
I rubbed my arms as I stood at the door. ‘The Germans have bombed Brussels. We took a train.’ When I said ‘we’, Marie looked to my left and eyed Hava.
‘This is Hava, my friend. She escaped with me.’
Marie looked at me again, but didn’t smile. ‘Come in.’
Under my first step into the foyer, my heel clicked against the polished, marble floor. On the wall was a painting of sea lavender in blossom, with a calm ocean in the distance. A clock ticked. Marie led us into the parlour, a room with overstuffed velvet chairs and a grey couch that looked like an elephant resting on its side.
Marie was the daughter of my father’s eldest brother, a wine merchant. He and his wife had died in an accident when Marie was twenty-five and I was seven. Theirs was the first funeral that I had attended. I remembered the coffins being lifted onto the back of a black wagon pulled by two black horses.
‘How is your father?’ Marie asked.
‘I haven’t heard from him in a long time. When the German planes arrived overhead, I was in the park. I ran home, then Hava came to my house and we went out looking for her family. They said they’d be at the synagogue, but they weren’t there. No one was there, except the rabbi, who told us everyone had gone. We don’t know where they are. We never found them.’ I glanced at Hava, whose eyes were brimming with tears.
Marie stroked her powdered cheek with her left hand when I said the word ‘synagogue’.
‘The planes kept coming, shooting at us! Bombs were dropped. Buildings burned. We ran to the train station and took the first train that was leaving the city.’
Hava sat motionless beside me. She didn’t speak. Her knees were together, her hands folded on her lap.
‘The train couldn’t continue as the tracks had been damaged. Then the planes caught up with us and the bombing started again. The train caught fire, so we ran into the woods. The planes kept shooting at us, but we were protected by the trees. The conductor said that we weren’t far from Roeselare and I remembered that you lived here. A woodcutter let us spend the night in his home, then gave us directions here.’
There was an awkward silence. My cousin stood up from her chair. I heard the ticking from a large clock embedded in the belly of a bronze Greek warrior that sat triumphantly on the mantelpiece of the empty fireplace.
‘I have my profession to think of,’ Marie said as she looked at Hava. ‘I have a delicate position in my bank, Simone.’
Marie looked at me and then back at Hava.
‘Money is built on trust. The people in my community trust me to follow orders . . . The Germans will be here soon, and we’ve been instructed to comply with their instructions. I’m not in a position to disrupt the traditions of my bank or jeopardize my future.’ She stared at Hava, and then she turned to me.
‘I can give you some food and money, but I’m sorry, you can’t stay here. It’s business, Simone. I’m sure you understand. The bank . . . I . . . we have a reputation to maintain.’
I thought about the sea lavender at that moment, how pretty the flowers were in the painting and how smooth and beautiful the marble floors were in Marie’s house. ‘It’s alright,’ Hava said in a near-whisper as she stood up from the couch. ‘We won’t disturb you. Let’s go, Simone.’
I was not going to stand up and I was not going to say it was alright.
‘But Marie,’ I protested, ‘Hava is my friend.’ I felt like kicking the couch and chasing Marie across her marble floors and into the streets.
‘Misguided associations can jeopardize your future too, Simone.’
I stood up then and moved next to Hava. ‘We won’t disturb your delicate position, Marie. We’ll not stain your velvet chairs or scratch your polished floors. But have you really forgotten that the Germans, in the First War, invaded France and marched through Belgium first? And what did we do? We blew up the train tracks and delayed the German advance. Remember? The Germans were so angry that they slaughtered over 6,000 Belgian people who weren’t even soldiers! They murdered over 6,000 innocent people!’
‘Times have changed,’ Marie said. ‘There are other solutions these days.’ She looked at Hava again as she rubbed her powdered cheek.
‘Changed?’ I almost shouted. ‘Changed? The Nazis are invading Belgium! My father was nearly killed trying to protect the people of Belgium the last time, and it’s happening again! The Nazis are in Brussels. People are flying their flags, they’re shooting at us from aeroplanes, and you’re worried about the bank?’
‘The bank,’ Marie replied calmly, ‘is built on the trust of the people and I cannot be seen to have the wrong associations. As I said, there will be other solutions. My manager said the Germans will be here at any time, perhaps even today. There have been planes, yes. And there will be tanks. I cannot take the risk. She – you – must leave. I’m sorry.’
‘Come on, Simone,’ Hava urged. ‘We’ll make our way. Let’s go.’ She took my hand. I was numb. She tugged a bit. We walked past the elephant couch, past the velvet chairs, past my cousin, who stood in the centre of the room like a bronze statue in the park.
Marie walked to a chest of drawers, took out an envelope, counted out a number of bank notes and extended them towards me in her delicate hand. ‘This is all I can do.’
I refused the money.
As Hava and I walked back down Rue St Germaine, Hava said, ‘I’m sorry that I’m the cause of so much trouble.’
I looked at my friend and I said, ‘Hava, I’m sorry my cousin was so horrible in there. I can’t believe I’m related to her. But we don’t need her. We’ll put our feet together, lift our heels, and reach for the moon. No one can touch us if we reach the moon.’
‘I feel like a trespasser, Simone. Perhaps I belong on the moon.’
Hava and I walked aimlessly. The people in the streets shuffled in and out of the shops. The trams in the small city clicked along with the familiar sound of iron wheels on iron tracks. Smoke rose from every chimney on that cool May morning.
‘I don’t really know my cousin,’ I said after a while. ‘I thought because she was my family that she would help us.’
‘I think she only believes in the idea of family. My father says that we’re all one family, one soul.’ Hava squeezed my hand.
‘Marie is afraid for her job.’
‘Your cousin is afraid of me, Simone. She’s afraid of Jews. If you ask my father who he is, what does he say? Something like, he’s a soul that was chosen by God to be a Jew; to be one who prays and lives by the rules of an ancient book.
‘Your father is a great general. People know what a general is, and what a general does, but people don’t know the job of a prayerful man, or a Jew. People are afraid of what they don’t understand.’
Moments later we heard a train whistle. I didn’t know Roeselare had a train station, but I did know we had to leave. In the distance, we heard a low, thumping sound, the sound of a giant moving forward, stomping his heavy feet through the countryside, coming closer and closer. The German army was pushing west, pushing French soldiers and British soldiers west, squeezing them closer and closer to the English Channel.
A dog ran down the cobbled street, a black dog with short hair. Bombs dropped far in the distance and I recognized the muffled sound of man-made thunder.
A man approached us and said kindly, ‘It’s time to get off the streets. The Germans are coming. It’s on the wireless, they’re coming.’
There was another sequence of bombing in the distance, and then a black plane drifted overhead, banking to the left and right in what appeared to be a victory salute to the pilot’s success.
Hava looked at the man and said, ‘Would you like to go to Tahiti? The artist Gauguin lived in Tahiti.’ The man stared at us and said, ‘Are you girls mad? The Germans are here!’ Then hurried down the street.