Saint-Malo, 1939

Rachel Hall

---

Sarah E Webb
Lament, 1999
Eggshells,
12 ft. wide x 8 ft. deep, detail

Lise refolds the newspaper on the train seat next to her. All week there has been bad news from the Line and nothing to do but wait for more. And then this morning the cable: “Come immediately. Esther dying.” It is a relief, oddly, to have this task, this errand Lise can accomplish. She has felt this at work too, engraving invitations. The rote gestures are soothing, the crisp letters satisfying. Even with the war upon them, people are having parties— weddings, anniversaries, Baptisms—and Lise is grateful for all these fetes, which seem to her neither foolish nor extravagant.

The train is slowing now and she reaches for the scuffed valise by her feet. It is nearly empty, just a blouse and fresh undergarments for the return trip and a bar of soap, which thuds inside her bag as the train lurches to a stop. She will fill the bag with the baby’s things—blankets, sweaters, smocks and bloomers—made by her sister-in-law. Lise has a memory of Esther sewing tiny, even stitches in the glow of a table lamp, her belly wide, her face flushed. Yves had looked on proudly from the settee, and Lise had tried hard not to feel her extraneousness then, her flat stomach, her empty, still hands. Silly to think of that now, she tells herself, rising. She hopes there are plenty of things for Eugenie because money is tight with her own husband at war. She doesn’t worry about how she will feed the baby, instead she imagines Eugenie’s floaty, dark curls, her solid warmth against her own chest.

This image pulls her through the crowd at the train station, through soldiers on the way to the front, locked in embraces with girlfriends or wives, children waving and crying, the vendors selling sandwiches and beer, entire families dressed in holiday clothes, striped parasols in their arms.
She has forgotten that Saint Malo is a holiday town, after all. She’d visited here as a school girl, walked the beach at low tide and then later watched the waves smacking the ramparts, completely covering where she had walked.

It is a perfect day for the beach, she sees, stepping outside. The sky is bright blue, streaked with wispy clouds. She finds a taxi easily, shows the driver the slip of paper with the address—72 rue Godard. She is unwilling to speak, to open herself to a conversation about the weather or the war, for that is all anybody seems to talk about any more. The cab bounces over narrow, cobblestone streets, past the reaching shadow of Cathedral St. Vincent, and halts before a stone apartment building.

“Merci,” Lise says, paying. She gathers her bag and steps out. She is thinking of another visit before Esther and Yves left Paris, and long before the men were called to fight. It seems like decades ago, but really it is only two years. When she had entered the apartment, she had found Yves filling a syringe, Esther waiting with her sleeve rolled up. She knew immediately what they were trying to do. Lise screamed and cried, begging them to stop. “Lise,” her brother had said, “surely you understand this is not a good time for a child.” But she had kept on until finally he flushed the fluid down the toilet. Esther had splashed water on her face, unrolled her sleeve. Perhaps she was relieved, too, but they never—any of them—spoke of that day again.

Today the curtains are drawn tight against the midday sun. Lise can’t decide if she should ring the buzzer and finally she raps on the heavy door. It opens and the nurse squints out at her.

“She’s resting now, Madame, but you can go in.”

“Thank you,” Lise says, setting down her bag with a clatter.

“Hush,” the nurse says. “The baby is sleeping and I can’t have you waking her—it’s impossible to get her down. She keeps calling for her mother.”

“Pardon me,” Lise says.

The nurse gestures towards the back of the apartment. “Go ahead,” she says, gathering her crocheting from her seat.

Esther is in a dark back bedroom. It smells like ammonia, Lise notes. The nurse has been efficient, if not gentle. The bookshelves by the bed are lined with vials, brown bottles stuffed with cotton and pills, tinctures and salves. There is a photograph of Yves in his uniform propped against the window. How will she recount all this for him? She must remember to tell him of the photograph, the nurse’s attention to cleanliness—should she say there were flowers in a vase? A salty breeze from the ocean?

Esther is very still, her body like a child’s, curled under a thin blanket. Her breathing is so shallow, that for a moment Lise thinks she is already gone. She settles on a chair and waits—for what? She wonders.
In the silence it is hard not to think of all she likes to forget. In particular, her own inability to become pregnant, though Jean is relentless. He doesn’t know about her past—the lover who left her, her clandestine abortion, or how she angered the doctor by saying “abortion” too loudly as she was wheeled away. “I could lose my position, you know,” he hissed and then she was out from the gas.

Esther’s shrieks don’t build in intensity; they simply begin loudly. Lise has goose bumps before she can get to her feet.

“I don’t want to die,” Esther screams. “I don’t want to die!”

Her grip on Lise’s arm is strong—too strong for a woman who is dying, Lise finds herself thinking. Up close she notices Esther’s clammy smell—yeasty, ripe, too sweet.

“It’s okay,” Lise says because she has to say something. “It’s okay.”

Esther’s eyes narrow. She seems to know exactly to whom she is speaking. “Fool,” she says. Her voice is muffled, as if she has eaten some cotton from the medicine jars. And then again more clearly: “Fool.” She rolls over so Lise can see only her matted dark hair, her shoulders under her thin gown. Before Lise has finished feeling the slap of these words, she knows she will never tell anyone about this. What Esther has said hurts because it is true; she is foolish. But she is going to live, and Esther—smart, competent, lovely Esther—is dying before her eyes. She will be dead before Lise can forgive her.

Esther calls out for her mother who is far away in Latvia, whom Esther hasn’t seen since she left at sixteen. Lise takes Esther’s hand, strokes her forehead. It’s Lise, she almost says, still stung, and then thinks better of it. “I’m here, my petite,” she says, “I am here with you.” We are children in the end, Lise thinks. Frightened, needy children.

When it is over, Lise calls in the nurse to record the time of death. As the nurse checks for a pulse, she clucks her tongue as if Esther hasn’t had the good sense to go on living. “The pauvre,” she says, and Lise wonders whom she means. Lise watches her move about the room, snapping open the shades and lifting windows. Lise takes Esther’s best dress from the armoire. Yves has instructed her to buy a good coffin. After the war, he plans to move Esther to the Jewish cemetery in Paris, but after the war, he will be dead too, the Jewish cemetery vandalized beyond repair. Lise lays the navy crepe out on the foot of the bed, fingers the lacy inset by the neck.

From the next room, Lise hears the baby’s lilting voice, her musical sounds which become words. “Maman, Maman, Maman,” Eugenie sings, her voice growing louder and more purposeful. Lise enters the room. “Maman,” Eugenie says and beams when she sees Lise, though Lise looks nothing like Esther. She is stout and fair and freckled, and will spend the rest of the war in Marseille, where everyone will think her a peasant from the North. “Maman,” Eugenie says again, reaching up to Lise with dimpled arms.

This, Lise will tell Yves and Eugenie, when she is old enough, and anyone else who asks. As she bends to pick up Eugenie, Lise is crying. She has always wanted this baby, always thought that she was hers, and now she is. How horrible she feels, how glad.

MYREL CHERNICK , Jenny, Lili and Untitled LED Display, 1992
Digital print, 13 in. x 19 in.

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Updated: January 22, 2007 6:05 AM