The Book of Lost Names(10)

Chapter Four




Twenty minutes later, Eva let herself into her family’s apartment again. She would need to move quickly, before a neighbor came scavenging.

On the dresser sat a framed formal photograph of her parents on their twenty-fifth anniversary three years earlier, one of her father holding two typewriter cases and beaming, and another of her mother in Cabourg on holiday in the late thirties. There was also one of Eva on the same C?te Fleurie vacation, and one taken after she graduated le lycée four years earlier. She grabbed them all and removed them from their frames.

She found a pair of scissors in the parlor, beside one of the typewriters, and quickly carried it into the kitchen. Using the existing picture on her mother’s identity card to measure the correct size, she carefully cut her mother’s face and shoulders from the anniversary photograph, and then did the same with the images of herself, her mother, and her father from the other photographs, too.

Eva stuffed the identity cards and the six makeshift identity photos into the typewriter case and closed it again.

She took one last look at the wooden shelves that lined the walls, stacked from floor to ceiling with beautiful books, their pages full of knowledge she had eagerly absorbed over the years. Most of them had belonged to her father before her: texts on typewriter repair techniques, reference books about medicine, the solar system, chemistry, even a first edition of the English-language The Adventures of Tom Sawyer—one of the first novels written on a typewriter, and one of her father’s most prized possessions. She had devoured them all and saved up her own money to buy more. They had been her escape, her refuge, and now they would be all that was left of her in an apartment she might never return to. “Goodbye,” she whispered, wiping away a tear.

Then, with a final glance back at the only home she’d ever known, she left, grabbing the packed suitcase and the typewriter in its case before locking the door behind her.

When Eva knocked on the Fontains’ door seconds later, it was Colette who answered, her eyes wide. “Where is my maman?” she asked. “She hasn’t come back yet, and you said she would, Mademoiselle Traube.”

“And she will, Colette,” Eva said firmly as she stepped past the child and closed the door behind them. “Don’t worry.” After all, Madame Fontain was as Christian as they came. If an officer tried to sweep her up with the Jews, no doubt she would pray so loudly and indignantly for his soul that he’d be convinced of her allegiance to Jesus even before she produced her papers.

The problem was that Eva couldn’t in good conscience leave the girls alone. She and her mother would have to wait to flee until Madame Fontain returned.

Mamusia was exactly where Eva had left her two hours earlier, curled up on the sofa, staring blankly into space. “Mamusia?” Eva said, crossing to her mother and placing a hand on her shoulder. She was trembling. “Are you all right?”

“She still doesn’t want to play dress-up,” Colette reported when Mamusia didn’t answer.

“You know, Colette, I think she might be feeling rather ill. Dear, would you and your sister put away your dress-up things before your mother returns? You wouldn’t want her getting upset.”

“Yes, mademoiselle.” Colette scooped up the ribbons and dresses she had strewn about and beckoned to her sister. The two of them scampered away.

Eva bent quickly beside her mother. “I have a plan, Mamusia, but you need to snap out of it. We need to get out of Paris as soon as possible. You must keep the girls occupied while I get to work. And if Madame Fontain returns, distract her while I finish.”

Mamusia blinked at Eva a few times. “What is it you’re doing?”

Eva leaned in. “I’m making us false papers.”

“Forgery? You don’t know how to do such things!”

Eva swallowed hard and tried to muster confidence she didn’t feel. “I will learn. But there’s not much time, so I need you to listen. You will be Sabine Fontain.”

Mamusia gasped. “You are giving me Madame Fontain’s name?”

Eva had been thinking about it since leaving Monsieur Goujon’s office. They would need names of real people, just in case they were detained and an official decided to check their identification cards against records. “I think it’s safer that way,” Eva said. “The name Sabine could be Russian, too, and I think that’s important. It would explain your accent. If anyone asks, you emigrated from Russia after the revolution in 1917. Of course, you married Madame Fontain’s real husband, Jean-Louis Fontain, a French patriot missing in action at the front.”

Her mother blinked at her. “What about you?”

“I’ll be Colette Fontain.”

“But the real Colette is just a child.”

“By the time anyone thinks to verify a birth year, we’ll be long gone.”

“But how will you make these papers?” Mamusia persisted.

Eva briefly explained her visit to Monsieur Goujon and the blank documents and supplies he had given her. “I’ll do the best I can,” she concluded.

“There’s no way this will work,” Mamusia said.

“It has to, Mamusia.”

In the kitchen, Eva opened the typewriter case, lifted the machine, and pulled Monsieur Goujon’s envelope from beneaththe keys. Inside, there were three blank identity cards, three blank travel documents, a blank naturalization certificate and birth certificate, and four pens, in navy, bright blue, red, and black. The envelope gave up perhaps its greatest prize last: adhesive stamps with images of coins on them, the only part of the documents that would have been impossible to forge with limited supplies. There was no way she could have purchased stamps at a tabac today without arousing suspicion.