Alex's Wake (33 page)

A few days later, the life of Camp Agde was brightened briefly by a combined Christmas/Hannukah concert, for which a small group of local choristers entered the gates and sang carols and traditional songs. The menu of thin potato soup was supplemented by a portion of locally caught fish. For this one day, men and women were allowed to mingle, husbands and wives were reunited; for one precious day, the joy of the season was shared by the inmates of Agde.

As the year came to a close, Captain Tassard, Camp Agde's commandant, issued a status report. In a document dated 31 December 1940, the captain reported to the authorities in Vichy that the camp had 2,335 male internees, 1,520 women, 867 children, and 245 infants under three years old, for a grand total of 4,967 souls. Within a fortnight, that figure would be drastically reduced. Alex and Helmut and many hundreds of their fellow prisoners were once again loaded onto cattle cars and shipped to their next destination: a vast plain at the foot of the Pyrenees mountains and a camp called Rivesaltes.

S
ATURDAY
, M
AY
28, 2011. The morning air is fresh and sweet, with a playful breeze off the cobalt-blue billows of the Mediterranean gently tickling the red carnations on our balcony, perhaps wafting all the way from the legendary Happy Isles of Greek mythology. I awaken early and take a walk along the shell-strewn beach, trying to imagine the more than two millennia of human history these rocks and waves have witnessed. In this frame of mind, I am startled but not completely thunderstruck to behold Poseidon emerging from beneath the sea, his trident brandished aloft. It turns out to be only a local fisherman wearing a shiny black wetsuit, his spear gun clutched in one hand, a metal mesh basket full of his wriggling catch in the other.

Later, after a breakfast of croissants, jam, honey, and tea, we drive back to Agde and find the office of the municipal archives, where we have an appointment with Madame Irene Dauphin. She kindly provides us with some old photographs of the camp, a few documents—including
the memo regarding Alex from the
sous-préfet
—and her genuine sympathy for my story. She also points the way to the site of Camp Agde, less than a mile away. We set off on foot.

In the small space created by the diverging Rue Paul Balmigère and the Avenue Jean Moulin, we discover a memorial to those interned at Agde. The circular floor of the memorial is paved with bricks. At the eastern side of the circle is a curved stone structure with six spaced tablets, all at roughly chest level. In the middle of the curve rises a chimney-shaped tower about fifteen feet tall, or about as high as the walls that enclosed Alex, Helmut, and the thousands of their fellow prisoners at Camp Agde.

The six tablets honor each group of people interned at the camp between 1939 and 1943: the Spanish, the Czechs, the Belgians, foreigners in general, the Jews in particular, and the first refugees from Indochina. Though I have heard stories of rampant anti-Semitism in contemporary France, we are surprised and saddened to see that, of the six tablets, only the one naming the Jews has been defaced by graffiti. But a greater shock awaits us when we translate the words on the tower. “Here stood Camp Agde,” they proclaim to all who pass by. “Tens of thousands of men stayed here in their march toward freedom.”

This
is the legacy of Camp Agde in the minds of the local citizenry? A way station on the path to
freedom?!
Have these people not heard of the Final Solution, of the Six Million, of the goddamn Holocaust itself? I am beside myself with anger and sorrow.

We walk on slowly in the gathering heat, under a blazing sun. A street called Rue du Camp d'Agde, prettily landscaped with crimson bougainvillea, leads us to the campus of René Cassin College. René Cassin was a French jurist and human rights activist who, along with Eleanor Roosevelt, wrote the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations in 1948. His namesake college now stands on the land once occupied by Camp Agde, one of the world's many travesties of justice that necessitated M. Cassin's declaration.

In a small clearing between a parking lot and an outdoor basketball court, we come upon two more memorials, each in the shape of a stone marker about six feet high. On one are the words, “In memory of
41 Jews deported from Camp Agde, transferred to Drancy in August, 1942, and then deported to Auschwitz on Convoy 25, August 28, 1942.” “Ah, so the news did filter down here after all,” I mutter to Amy.

The memorial to Camp Agde. “Tens of thousands of men stayed here in their march toward freedom.”

The adjacent marker is headlined “The Just of Agde.” It mentions the names of four local families who hid Jews during the early 1940s: M. Achille Bautes, M. et Mme. Joseph Joly, M. et Mme. Paul Carrausse, and M. Jean Pallares. Below these names are the familiar words of the Talmud: “Who Saves One Life Saves the Entire Universe.”

I am sure that these were indeed good people. But somehow today it is not enough to mollify or impress me. “So they came up with four righteous families in Agde,” I say to Amy. “Bully for them!”

We return to our car, drive into old Agde, find a café on the edge of the canal, and order a savory lunch of quiche and mineral water. The sky remains deep blue, the breeze caresses our hair, the sun sparkles on the surface of the water, the food is excellent, and we are alive and well. Yet I find that all I can think about are the desolate images of Camp Agde from Mme. Dauphin's photo collection and the insultingly obtuse words on the memorial tower.

Again I am beset by doubts concerning the journey that has brought us to this flavorful meal on this picturesque spot. Once more, I wonder whether my desire to follow in the footsteps of Alex and Helmut is not the tribute to them that I intended, but in fact a grotesque mime of a tribute, a six-week self-indulgent European tour, complete with fine food, lovely countryside, and now an extravagant sojourn by the sparkling Mediterranean. I am deeply unhappy, shaken by the day's discoveries and mourning my lost family more than ever.

We finish our meal in silence, and I add to my litany of sorrows a fear that Amy may be tiring of my doleful company. We return to our hotel, where Amy announces her desire to swim in the sea. I remain on our balcony, gazing at the scalloped waves, simultaneously enjoying the view and feeling guilty for my enjoyment. The sun slowly sets, Amy returns all aglow from her evening swim, and another soft Mediterranean night descends upon us. In my unhappy frame of mind, I go to bed and experience a memorable dream.

I am watching a play. There are actors on a stage, and I am seated in the audience. In other words, I am an observer, outside, rather than part of, the “action.” The play involves an African-American family, and there is a decided civil rights component to the play's theme. The family's spiritual and moral center is embodied by the strong matriarch, a character reminiscent of Lena Younger in Lorraine Hansberry's outstanding play
A Raisin in the Sun
. But this is not
Raisin
or any play that I know.

I have been watching the play for some time and feel invested in the action and in the characters. I am anxious, in other words, to see what happens next. As I lean forward in my seat, the Lena Younger character clearly says to another character on stage, “Your grandfather would be proud of you.” As she says these words, she reaches above her head and rests her hand on a rough piece of wood that in the play seems to be a judicial ruling spot of some kind. In other words, it was the place where judges rule, which in common parlance is a bench.

In my dream, a moment or two or five or ten pass slowly before I realize the significance of those words and that gesture for me. In the context of the dream, it was “just” a line in the play's script. But almost immediately after that line was spoken, I wake up and understand that
the hard wooden bench suggests the benches that Alex and Helmut were forced to use as beds at Camp Agde, and that the words uttered by that woman have been meant for me.

I have no idea why those reassuring words in the play were delivered by a black woman and not spoken directly to me by Amy or a friend or even my father or brother. But I do know that those words, which I can still hear in the ringing cadences of that kind matriarchal figure, have made me feel a good deal better. I slip quietly out of bed so as not to disturb my loving wife and pad out onto the balcony, there to bask in the cold bright light of the stars and to revel in the sound of the timeless sea breaking on the ancient rocky shore.

I am sure that the blues will find me again soon enough, but for now I am deeply comforted by the thought that Alex would be proud of me for undertaking this journey. This is surely an example of the subconscious mind working in mysterious ways, but as I listen again to my black female inner voice I decide that my quest is not a sham, not a mere excuse for a grand European adventure, but indeed the result of my need to know, to witness, to reveal, and, if not to save my grandfather and uncle, perhaps to save myself.

With a last look at the stars that have witnessed centuries of human drama on this weathered coastline, I return to bed. I lightly kiss Amy's right ear, and she purrs in her sleep.

In the months since Agde, I have thought often of the dream and its many potential meanings. I consider the possibility that somehow the Greek spirit of
Agathe Tyche
, Good Fortune, has lingered in that corner of its long-departed empire. Perhaps I was not in a modern theater with a proscenium and a thrust stage, but rather seated in the sloping curves of an amphitheater attending a play by one of the original fathers of drama. In
Agamemnon
, the playwright Aeschylus assures his audience, “In our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”

As I slowly return to sleep on the shores of the wine-dark sea, I do not feel the gift of wisdom. But I am aware of a certain grace, and my heart floods with gratitude.

10

Rivesaltes

S
UNDAY
, M
AY
29, 2011. In the morning after my transfiguring dream, on this day of rest, I perceive, for the first time on our journey, a profound desire to slow down, to pause, to delay any further discoveries of pain or sorrow or even the slightest inconvenience suffered by my uncle and grandfather on theirs. We enjoy breakfast at our ease, lingering at our table to consume with unhurried delectation the last crisp croissants accompanied by fine local honey that we spread with a leisurely knife. Checkout time at Le Bellevue is noon, and we dawdle at packing until the morning hours have all but slipped by. Even then, our bags secured in our sturdy little Meriva, we postpone our departure for still another hour, taking advantage of the hotel manager's indulgence to occupy a chaise on the rooftop deck while we indolently gaze at the wrinkled blue sea. This is not mere Sunday loafing, I tell myself, it is anxious reluctance. I am deeply aware that our next destination remains a place of infamy within the annals of French and Holocaust history, and, like Jaques' schoolboy, I find myself “creeping like snail unwillingly” toward tomorrow's appointment.

At length, we can procrastinate no longer and drive off to the west and south. Returning to the autoroute, we retrace our path to Friday's intersection with the road to Carcassonne but then continue south on the expressway toward Perpignan and Barcelona, my spirits sent soaring once more by those lyrical names on the green overhead signs. We're
aware that we don't have far to travel today, so by mid-afternoon we leave the expressway for a smaller highway that hugs the Mediterranean coast and takes us through a settlement called Port Barcarès. It is just a dot on our Michelin map and we imagine a picturesque fishing village inhabited by a colorful array of grizzled watermen and their saucy voluptuous women pulling an honest yet humble existence from beneath the waves. Instead, we find an ersatz town of condos, restaurants, and docks for the outsized compensatory yachts that belong to the Beautiful People who congregate along this portion of the Côte d'Azure. Just outside the port, we come upon a “naturist” community made up of little colonies that sport such names as Eden and Aphrodite, Apollo and Odysseus. We consider taking a prurient detour to try to catch a glimpse of the inhabitants but find that our way is barred by an unsmiling, fully clothed sentry. We retreat, slightly abashed, and spend the next several miles giggling to ourselves at the unlikely prospect that we would ever want to live in such a community. It's not for us, we conclude, but
vive la différence
.