The boy thought about this for a long time before replying. “I think God must speak all the languages.” His tone was confident. “I think he can hear all of us.”
“Do you think we are all praying to the same God?” Rose asked after a moment. “Muslims and Jews and Christians and all the people who believe in other things?”
Nabi appeared to be considering this question quite seriously too. “Yes,” he finally told Rose. “Yes. There is one God, and he lives in the sky, and he hears all of us. It is just that here on earth, we are confused about how to believe in him. But what does it matter, as long as we trust he is there?”
Rose smiled at that. “I think perhaps you are right, Nabi,” she said. She thought of the words Jean Michel had spoken to her the last time she saw Jacob. “For now,” she said softly to the young boy, reaching out to ruffle his hair, “all we can do is pray and hope that God can hear us.”
Chapter Seventeen
After persuading the gate agent to take us after the required check-in time, rushing through security, and running to our gate, Alain and I make it onto our flight five minutes before they close the cabin doors.
I’d used Alain’s cell phone to call Annie from the taxi, but she didn’t answer. Nor did Gavin or Rob, both of whom I tried. Mamie’s home had no new information about her condition, and the nurse I reached at the hospital said that my grandmother was stable, but that it was impossible to tell how long she’d stay that way.
As we taxi down the runway and take off over Paris, I watch the Seine disappear beneath us, a ribbon cutting through the land, and I imagine Mamie hiding on a barge at the age of seventeen, slowly snaking down the same topaz river to the unoccupied zone. Is that how she’d gotten out of Paris? I wonder whether we’ll ever really know.
“What do you think happened to the baby she was carrying?” Alain asks me softly as we climb higher into the sky. We’re above the clouds now, with sunlight filtering down all around us, and I can’t help but wonder whether this is a bit like what heaven looks like.
I shake my head. “I don’t know.”
“I should have guessed that she was with child,” Alain says. “It explains why she left us. That never made sense to me. It would not have been in her nature to run and leave us behind. She would have stayed to try to persuade us, to try to protect us, even if it meant risking her own life.”
“But she believed it was more important to protect the baby,” I murmur.
Alain nods. “And it was. She was right. That is what it means to be a parent, is it not? I think it was the same with my parents. They truly thought that following the rules would protect us all. Who could have known that their best intention would lead where it did?”
I shake my head, too sad to speak. I can’t imagine the feeling of horror my great-grandmother must have felt when Danielle and David were torn from her. Had she been able to stay with the oldest, Helene, after they separated the men and the women? Had she lived long enough to suffer the anguish of realizing that all her children had been lost? Had my great-grandfather regretted not listening to his daughter’s words of warning? What would it feel like as a parent to realize too late that you’d made a terrible, irreversible mistake and that your children were going to die for it?
I stare out the window for a long moment and turn back to Alain. “Maybe my grandmother couldn’t care for the baby. Maybe the baby was born and she put it up for adoption.” I don’t really believe the words, but it feels better to say them.
“Impossible, I think,” Alain says. He frowns. “If the baby was a piece of her and Jacob, I cannot imagine there is any way she would have parted with the child.” He looks at me sideways and adds, “You are absolutely certain there is no chance the baby was your mother?” he asks.
I shake my head. “When my mother died a couple of years ago, I had to get her estate in order,” I say. “I remember looking at her birth certificate. It clearly said 1944. Plus, she looked a lot like my grandfather.”
Alain sighs. “The baby must have died, then.”
I look away. I can’t imagine anything sadder. “But to think she would get pregnant again so soon after . . .” I add, my voice trailing off. I can’t understand that piece of the puzzle.
“That is not as unusual as it sounds,” Alain says softly. He sighs again and turns to look out the window. “After the war, many Shoah survivors married and tried to have babies right away, even the ones who were malnourished and had no money.”