Shhh by Raymond Federman Page A

in our apartment had been stolen. Everything. Probably by the neighbors, though they claimed that it was the Germans who took everything. I never believed that.
    What was curious is that in Leon and Marie’s apartment everything remained just like before. I mean, before they left for the free zone, a few days before the big round-up of the Jews. Every piece of furniture was in place.
    I learned later it was Marius, from the corner café, who warned Leon that all the Jews in Paris and in the suburbs were going to be arrested. Marius’ brother-in-law was a gendarme, and he is the one who told him when La Grande Rafle would take place.
    The Jews who had money were able to escape to the free zone by paying the passeurs, as they were known. These were people who made deals with the Germans so they could sneak Jews across the line of demarcation. They would split the money they got with the Germans. Sometimes, they would get more than money. They would force the frightened Jews to give them the jewelry they had taken with them.
    That’s where all my mother’s brothers and sisters went. To the free zone. They all had money, and that’s why they all survived.
    It has not been said enough that mostly the poor Jews were deported and died in the camps. Those who could not afford a train ticket to get away. Those who were abandoned by their families, as my parents were.
    A few days before the great round-up, aunt Marie came up to our apartment, and said to my mother, Take the children and come with us, and leave him behind, your lazy good-for-nothing husband.
    My father was not home that day, when aunt Marie said that to my mother. But my sisters and I heard what she said, Prends les gosses et viens avec nous, et laisse-le lui. And we saw how my mother spat in her sister’s face as she burst into tears.
    Lui, him, that was my father, whom everybody in the family hated.
    I witnessed that scene. It has remained inscribed in me.
    Well, enough of that. I’ve already told that ugly scene in Aunt Rachel’s Fur. What I wanted to say, is that in Leon and Marie’s apartment everything was there when they returned at the end of the war. They payed someone to watch over their possessions. Probably Marius and his brother-in-law.
    Marius and Leon were always making deals. Marius would buy food from the black market for my uncle, and Leon would make pants for him for free. Marius was known in the neighborhood as the king of the black market. He could get anything that was rationed. Anything. Eggs, meat, soap, sugar, chocolate, perfume, silk stockings, anything that could no longer be found in grocery stores or the department stores during the German occupation.
    I suppose that’s why nothing was stolen from Leon and Marie’s apartment. But in our place everything had been pillaged.
    The lock on the door of our apartment was broken, and inside it was completely empty, except for a broken chair shoved into a corner of the room next to the old musty mattress of my parents’ bed. Everything else had disappeared. The buffet, my father’s phonograph, his armchair, the stove, my sister’s folding bed. Everything. Even the chamber pot and the hygienic pail. Even my sisters’ dolls and my tin soldiers. And my stamp collection too. And all my Jules Verne.
    I remember how I stood in the middle of this emptiness, trying to imagine how it was when we were still living there, even though it was small, it was our home. The floor creaked as I walked to the kitchen. My steps left marks in the dust on the floor. I looked in the kitchen. It was completely empty. I looked into the small closet. On the floor there was a pile of rags. Torn old clothes that were probably found useless by those who came to take away our possessions. But in the small bedroom closet I found a cardboard box full of old torn and yellowed letters and papers, and a few photos. Family photos.
    These old rags, these documents and these