The Postcard

This is an epistolary chapter where Anne writes an email to Claire, her sister, about the hunt for the postcard’s author. Anne says that their middle names, Myriam and Noémie, are hidden first names that make them, in a way, the Rabinovitch sisters, again: “Those Hebrew-sounding names are like a skin beneath the skin,” she writes (322). Anne lists the many ways she is like Myriam. She says that Claire is like Noémie, too.

Claire recalls a night when she said, at six, that she was the reincarnation of Noémie: She searched for her deceased ancestor in herself. They both worked in medicine, though Noémie was forced. They have the same cheekbones, eyes, and hairstyle. At twenty, she went to the Holocaust Museum in New York and saw a photo of Myriam, fainting at the sight. She laments their relationship dynamic, in that Anne must always save her, just as Myriam was looking out for Noémie, though she couldn’t save her. The sisters repair some broken aspects of their relationship, finding peace in their own dynamic, separate from the legacy of Myriam and Noémie.