Read Online Sarah's Key by Tatiana De Rosnay - Free Book Online Page A

said he was just too rude, but I would have said it with a little girl voice, and a little girl pout. And we would have kissed, and he would have taken me back to our room and made love to me.
    But tonight I did not go to him. I slipped into bed and read some more about the Vel’ d’Hiv’ children.
    And the last thing I saw before I turned off the light was Guillaume’s face when he had told us about his grandmother.
     
     

 
     
    HOW LONG HAD THEY been here? The girl could not remember. She felt deadened, numbed. The days had mingled with the nights. At one point she had been sick, bringing up bile, moaning in pain. She had felt her father’s hand upon her, comforting her. The only thing she had in mind was her brother. She could not stop thinking about him. She would take the key from her pocket and kiss it feverishly, as if kissing his plump little cheeks, his curly hair.
    Some people had died here during the past days, and the girl had seen it all. She had seen women and men go mad in the stifling, stinking heat and be beaten down and tied to stretchers. She had seen heart attacks, and suicides, and high fever. The girl had watched the bodies being carried out. She had never seen such horror. Her mother had become a meek animal. She hardly spoke. She cried silently. She prayed.
    One morning, curt orders were shouted through loudspeakers. They were to take their belongings and gather near the entrance. In silence. She got up, groggy and faint. Her legs felt weak, they could hardly carry her. She helped her father haul her mother to her feet. They picked up their bags. The crowd shuffled slowly to the doors. The girl noticed how everybody moved slowly, painfully. Even the children hobbled like old people, backs bent, heads down. The girl wondered where they were going. She wanted to ask her father, but his closed thin face meant she was not going to get an answer now. Could they be going home at last? Was this the end? Was it over? Would she be able to go home and free her brother?
    They walked down the narrow street, the police ordering them on. The girl glanced at the strangers watching them from windows, balconies, doors, from the sidewalk. Most of them had empty, uncompassionate faces. They looked on, not saying a word. They don’t care, thought the girl. They don’t care what is being done to us, where we are being taken to. One man laughed, pointing at them. He was holding a child by the hand. The child was laughing, too. Why, thought the girl, why? Do we look funny, with our stinking, wretched clothes? Is that why they are laughing? What is so funny? How can they laugh, how can they be so cruel? She wanted to spit at them, to scream at them.
    A middle-aged woman crossed the street and quickly pressed something into her hand. It was a small roll of soft bread. The woman was shooed off by a policeman. The girl just had enough time to see her return to the other side of the street. The woman had said, “You poor little girl. May God have pity.” What was God doing, thought the girl, dully. Had God given up on them? Was he punishing them for something she did not know about? Her parents were not religious, although she knew they believed in God. They had not bought her up in the traditional religious fashion, like Armelle had been by her parents, respecting all the rites. The girl wondered whether this was not their punishment. Their punishment for not practicing their religion well enough.
    She handed the bread to her father. He told her to eat it. She wolfed it down, too fast. It nearly choked her.
    They were taken in the same town buses to a railway station overlooking the river. She didn’t know which station it was. She had never been there before. She had rarely left Paris in all her ten years. When she saw the train, she felt panic overcome her. No, she couldn’t leave, she had to stay, she had to stay because of her brother, she had promised to come back to save him. She tugged on her father’s