“The first thing we have to do is to find out who you are, so that this baby knows where it’s coming from. The name Valjean is too melodramatic,” she told him.
Year after year, Jean Valjean had been postponing the decision to discover his identity, but Anat set to work at once, with the same tenacity that had enabled her to uncover for Mossad the hiding places of those Nazi criminals who had escaped the Nuremberg trials. She started at Auschwitz, Samuel’s last destination before the armistice, and followed the thread of the story step by step. With her pregnant belly swaying to and fro, she traveled to France to speak to one of the few members of the Jewish resistance still in the country. He helped her locate the fighters who had rescued the pilot from the British plane, although this wasn’t easy because after the war it seemed as though every Frenchman was a resistance hero. Anat ended up in London searching through the RAF archives, where she found several photographs of young men who looked like her lover. There was nothing else she could cling to. She called him on the phone and read out the five names.
“Do any of them sound familiar?” she asked him.
“Mendel! I’m sure of it! My surname is Mendel,” he replied, scarcely able to contain the sob choking him.
“My son is four now, and he’s called Baruj, like our father, Baruj Mendel,” Samuel told Alma, who was sitting beside him on the backseat of the car.
“Did you marry Anat?”
“No. We’re trying to live together, but it’s not easy.”
“You’ve known about me for four years. Why did you only come and find me now?” Alma asked reproachfully.
“Why would I have? The brother you knew died in that plane. There’s nothing left of the boy who enlisted as a pilot in England. I know the story because Anat insists on repeating it, but I don’t feel it’s mine. It’s empty, it has no meaning. The truth is, I don’t remember you, but I’m sure you are my sister, because Anat doesn’t make mistakes about that kind of thing.”
“Well, I remember having a brother who had fun with me and played the piano, but you’re nothing like him.”
“We haven’t seen each other in years, and as I said, I’m not the same.”
“Why did you decide to come now?”
“I’m not here because of you. I’m on a mission, but I can’t tell you anything about that. I made the most of my journey by coming to see you in Boston, because Anat thinks Baruj needs an aunt. Anat’s father died a couple of months ago. There’s no one left in her family or mine apart from you. I’m not trying to force anything on you, Alma. I just want you to know I’m alive and that you have a nephew. Anat sent you this,” he said.
He gave her a color photo of the boy and his parents. Anat was sitting down with her son on her lap. She was a very slender, pale-looking woman wearing round glasses. Samuel was sitting next to them, arms folded across his chest. The boy had strong features and his father’s dark, curly hair. On the back of the photo, Samuel had written a Tel Aviv address.
“Come and visit us, Alma. That way you’ll get to know Baruj,” he said as he waved good-bye, after recovering her dress from the laundry and accompanying her back to her dorm.
THE SWORD OF THE FUKUDAS