Page 39 of One of Them

Sophie stopped, pressing her palms together.

“I heard gunfire. I thought it was in the room, but no, it was coming from outside.

Two of the soldiers began running, stumbling over the broken door.

One of them tripped, and a third helped him up.

He barked something to the remaining soldier.

This time I could understand— Erschie?en sie jetzt.

Shoot them now. My parents spoke Yiddish.

Some of the words were the same. And in the next second, the remaining soldier raised his gun and shot Guillaume, three times, in the chest. The sound was so close, so loud, that I thought my eardrums would burst and my heart would burst right along with them.

“Guillaume collapsed on the floor, his eyes wide with disbelief. The soldiers hadn’t known he was working for their side too.

His blood was everywhere—his shirt, the floor, the wall behind him.

I looked at my hands, my arms—splattered with blood.

I was in shock. Seconds ago, Guillaume had been alive.

Guillaume, with his silly little goatee, that high, slightly nasal voice, and these surprisingly delicate hands.

He was someone I’d known, not well, and what I knew of him, it’s true, I hadn’t liked.

And he was betraying us. Yet to see his life end in such a violent and abrupt way was truly the most horrifying thing I’d ever witnessed. ”

Delia was still, trying to absorb this.

“I became aware of another sound nearby, a strangled, choking sound,” Sophie went on.

“It took me a few seconds to realize that it was coming from the German soldier—had he been shot too? But no. He wasn’t hurt, at least not physically.

Yet he was rocking and sobbing as if his heart was breaking.

He’d set his gun down beside him. Maybe I could have grabbed it.

I don’t know. But it didn’t occur to me then.

I was just staring at this boy. And he was a boy—I could see that now, no more than eighteen.

He was babbling. I could make out Werden sie mich toten, werden sie mich toten.

They’ll kill me. Of course. The three who’d run off—they would most certainly kill him if they saw that he’d broken down, that he was too overwrought to shoot me.

“I put my hand on his shoulder. It was a gesture of comfort, the way I would have comforted a child. Because that’s what he was—a child dressed up as a soldier, handed a gun, and pushed into the line of fire.

He flung himself at me. I was frozen for a second, and then, well.

.. then I put my arms around him and let him cry.

Over his head, I could see out the window.

The street was empty. Silent. The three soldiers had disappeared, gone off to shoot, maim, kill someone else.

The boy and I were still there. Still alive.

I began to speak to him, in Yiddish of all things, and he calmed down.

The sobbing slowed. Then he lifted his head, and Delia, if you can believe it, he kissed me.

Kissed me! Some instinct that I didn’t understand told me to obey him.

I let him keep kissing me and kissed him back while he started pulling at my clothes.

I led him away from that thing that had been Guillaume and was now just a bloodied corpse.

“He pulled me down to the rug and climbed on top of me. I was numb, though I was aware of the rhythm of his movement, what it meant, how it would end. It was all over very quickly, and when it was, he yanked me to my feet and told me to get out, to run quickly—‘ Mach schnell .’ So I did. I ran and ran until I couldn’t run anymore, and when I was some distance from the warehouse, I found my way to one of the safe houses I knew elsewhere in the arrondissement. ”

It took Delia a moment to absorb this. “You were raped,” she said finally.

“Yes,” Sophie said. “And being raped saved my life.”

If Delia had wanted her mother to have been punished, she had surely gotten her wish. She realized Sophie had started talking again.

“... Serge and I left Paris and made our way down to Marseille. At first I didn’t tell him about what had happened.

But I had to because... because I couldn’t bear for him to touch me, and I had to explain why.

He didn’t press me, he understood. I missed a period, and another.

The absence barely registered. That my body was off kilter didn’t seem strange.

Then I started feeling sick. I ignored it, and when I couldn’t do that anymore, I ascribed it to something, anything else, unwilling to face the truth.

Until finally I did. I was pregnant. Serge wanted me to have an abortion.

I told him it was already too late. I had felt the baby kicking inside me, flipping like a fish.

An abortion would have been dangerous. That was something Serge didn’t understand.

To him there was only one clear path, and I wasn’t taking it.

But Delia, I couldn’t. As strange and surreal as my life had become, I didn’t want it to end on some table, gouged and bleeding.

I still hoped to find you again. So Serge went to Spain.

I stayed in Marseille, where I had the baby.

And what a beautiful baby he was—such eyes, so big and so blue.

That German soldier, he’d had blue eyes.

And the golden hair—the baby had ringlets—that came from the German boy too. ”

“Your baby,” Delia said. “Where is he? What’s his name? Isn’t he my... brother?”

“Yes, he’s your brother. His name is Asher, and he lives here, that is, in the baby house. Maybe, that is I hope... you might want to meet him.” When Delia said nothing, Sophie went on.

“I know it’s a shock. It was a shock for me too—I thought that part of my life was finished.

I felt like I should have despised Asher, but I couldn’t.

No, I loved him, just as I had loved you.

But with you, I’d been selfish and distracted.

I hadn’t been a good mother. I started remembering things from the past, and they were a torment to me.

I even began to think there was some crazy logic in what had happened.

That I’d been given a second chance—to be better. ”

Delia had no reply. She remained quiet as Sophie continued her saga.

When the war ended, Sophie said, she went back to Paris.

She even tried to work again. But her ambition had deserted her.

The only thing she was able to complete were a few small pieces.

“Remember how I’d done them in the past? Little table-size ones?”

“Like that double portrait. I have it—I took it with me when we left.”

“You did?” Something like a smile passed over Sophie’s face. “You always liked it.”

“I thought it was a portrait of us.” Delia felt a bit shy; she’d never said this to her mother before.

“Really? I hadn’t thought about it like that, but it makes me very happy to think that you did.

In any case, I started working on that scale again, and it felt right to me.

These pieces felt alive to me. Like infants or children.

I could pick them up and hold them in my hands.

I sold a few of them at a gallery that was not far from the rue Vavin; I may have even been in it before the war.

The dealer knew and liked my work and she sold all of them—all except one.

It was a figure of a pregnant woman and made of carnelian, a stone I’d never worked with before.

Only after I’d finished it did I realize it was me—that I’d created a self-portrait.

Was the child that stone figure carried you?

I wasn’t sure. The dealer loved the piece and was eager to offer it for sale.

At first I said no. I let her take all the other pieces, but not that one. I wanted to keep it for myself.”

This was the statue Delia had, the one that led her here, to this place, to her mother. But she didn’t want to tell Sophie about that yet.

“After the war ended, Paris seemed worn down, wounded, even though it had seen almost no fighting until the Liberation,” Sophie said.

“I went back to Marseille, but it wasn’t any better there.

I needed to be somewhere else, somewhere not in France, not in Europe.

That’s when I started to hear about Palestine, to hear talk about a Jewish homeland.

You know we were never particularly involved in Jewish life, your father and I.

Not that we were ashamed or hid it. It just wasn’t at the forefront. ”

“I know,” said Delia. “But we were comfortable that way, weren’t we?”