herded into the street, then shepherded into the stadium, which was nearly full. Julien’s ears began to ring. He shook his head, but the warning was still there.
“We shouldn’t go in,” he told his father.
The police gestured for them to go forward. Several sounded whistles.
“They’ll let us go,” the professor decided, always preferring order and logic, and assuring his family that the situation was temporary. But when he tried to explain they were French citizens, no one listened.
There was no food or water available and the weather was hot. It was a time when people used to get ready for their August holidays, but now they were here. Children over the age of three had been separated from their parents, and many were crying, completely disoriented, lost in a sea of people. Luckily, there were women who took in these children right away, treating them as if they were their own.
The horror of this place must be a temporary situation, the professor insisted. He spoke in a low, measured voice. Keep calm. Don’t panic. This was Paris after all, and it was the police along with hired local people who guarded them, not German soldiers. “We’ll stay a day, maybe overnight, then they’ll let us out,” the professor assured his wife and son.
“Do you not understand what’s happening?” Julien had spied many people he knew from the neighborhood among the crowd. “We’re like lambs, doing as we’re told. Do you think they’ll give you back your beautiful house? You’ll never see it again. And all those treasures you buried? They’ll rot.”
By now guards had begun to collect wallets, jewelry, keys. Those who tried to keep such things were beaten, there in front of everyone. An old man was stomped upon when he refused to give up his wedding ring.
“Do you not see?” Julien pleaded.
At last, in that instant, as the old man begged for his ring, the professor understood everything that was happening and everything that was to come. He slipped the watch he always wore into his pocket. It was the one thing he had left that might be useful to them.
“Look,” Madame Lévi said, grabbing her husband’s arm. “Isn’t that Edgar?”
It was indeed their gardener, only now he’d been hired as a guard at the stadium, steering people through the crowded entryway gate. The Lévis went to him, navigating through the crush of people. After all, Edgar had worked for them for more than ten years and had always been so punctual and polite before they could no longer afford him. The professor’s wife had already lost her scarf in the chaos and she was light-headed, for she hadn’t had a sip of water since early morning. There were older people doing their best to sit in the shade, yet some of them were seriously ill. People were evacuating right out in the open, for there were no toilets, and already there was a terrible stink. Madame Lévi lowered her gaze, feeling a chill. She had been right to panic this morning.
When they reached the gardener, the professor tapped his shoulder, so surprising Edgar that he turned to his employer with his stick in hand as if to strike him.
“Oh, Monsieur,” he said when he recognized the professor. “I didn’t know it was you.”
The professor leaned toward the younger man. He sounded desperate, even to himself. “We’re here by mistake.” Soon enough there would be mass arrests of French Jews but for now the professor still had hope. “Can you let us out?”
Edgar looked around. He took in the sheer number of the police, let alone men such as himself who had been brought here as forced labor on a daily basis to contain the crowds. He shook his head. “Three people? It would be too noticeable. They’d have my head. I have to do what I’m hired to do, you understand.”
“Then my son,” the professor urged. “Just him.”
Claire linked her arm through her husband’s. “Yes. Take Julien.”
Edgar felt uncomfortable just talking to these people. They looked different to him, almost unrecognizable.
“He’s no problem,” the professor went on. “No one will notice one boy. And he’s a fast runner. Look at the guards. They’re not paying attention.”
The gardener glimpsed a group of men who had been picked up by the German army to work here in the stifling heat. They were lounging by the gate, chatting with each other as the crowds of those arrested poured through.
Professor Lévi reached for his watch from his pocket, the gold one