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152 pages, Paperback
First published May 5, 2004
I survived, thanks to the care of doctors and the love of my mother. I would like to think my father loved me too - overcoming his disappointment and finding in care, worry and protectiveness enough to stoke his feelings. But his first look left its trace on me, and I regularly glimpsed that flash of bitterness in his eyes.
The incident left me with a patch above one eye that I wore around school with great pride. But the injury brought me much more than ephemeral glory - it was the sign for which Louise had been waiting.
Louise was always my favourite, even though she wasn't actually part of the family. Perhaps I felt a deeper complicity with her than with my blood relatives. Affectionate as they were, my uncles, aunts and grandparents seemed surrounded by an intangible barrier forbidding questions and warding off confidences. A secret club, bound together by an impossible grief.
The day after my fifteenth birthday, I finally learnt what I had always known.
There remained a gap in my story, a chapter whose contents were not known even to my parents. I knew a way to un-stick its pages: I had heard about a place in Paris where I could find the information I was missing.
Plus tard, ces mêmes images en noir et blanc projetteront aux yeux des incrédules les portes de wagons plombés, le brouillard de gares dont on ne revient pas.
Simon et Hannah, effacés à deux reprises : par la haine de leurs persécuteurs et par l'amour de leurs proches.