The Book of Lost Names(100)

Eva stifled a scream as he fell to the floor, but in an instant, she understood what she had to do. Erich had created chaos that would allow her to escape. And so just before the Nazis entered the church, she dashed out of the secret library and dove beneath a pew, holding her breath as a dozen black boots stormed past her toward the bodies of Erich and Joseph. She waited until they were all inside the little room, exclaiming to each other in disbelief, before wriggling out and making her way quickly and silently toward the back door of the church. She glanced at Jesus on the altar once more and said a quick prayer for Erich’s soul before hurrying out into the icy night.

And then, just as Erich had urged her to do, she moved into the darkness, running for her life.





Chapter Thirty




Sixteen months later June 1945

The light on the Boulevard Raspail in Paris was fading on a warm June afternoon as Eva made her way for what felt like the hundredth time to the H?tel Lutetia, the soaring, snow-white art nouveau masterpiece in Saint-Germain-des-Prés that had once been a haven for writers and artists. The war had turned it into something different, a headquarters for the spies and torture specialists of the German Abwehr, but Paris had been freed ten months earlier, and in April, the grand hotel had taken on yet another new life as a repatriation center for refugees from the German concentration camps.

Eva had made it back to Paris from Switzerland in the fall of 1944, two months after the liberation of the city, and she had wandered the streets, hoping to meet someone she’d known in her previous life, someone who could tell her what had become of her father. But there was no one. Nothing. A family of French strangers was living in her old apartment, and none of her old neighbors had remained. She began going to the Mazarine Library each day to wait on its steps in hopes that Rémy would come for her, but as the days passed and the months grew colder, she began to admit to herself that he likely hadn’t survived the war. Almost no one had.

Monsieur Goujon, her father’s old boss, had helped her to find part-time work repairing typewriters, just as her father had once done, and that allowed her to pay the rent on a tiny studio apartment in the seventh arrondissement. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to return to Aurignon yet, though she knew she would someday, when she was stronger and train travel through the war-shredded country had been restored. She had to know if Père Clément had survived, whether Madame Noirot, Madame Travere, and Madame Trintignant had made it through the war. She knew in her heart that the answer was probably no, but she couldn’t bear to face the reality yet. As long as she waited in Paris, she could imagine them all alive and well. Besides, she had said she would meet Rémy here. Leaving, even for a few days, would be like admitting he was gone for good.

In the spring, tattered and emaciated Jews who had spent the war in the concentration camps to the east had begun to return. Those who had lost family members peered into the faces of these walking skeletons, struggling to find the people they were so sure they’d never see again. Sometimes, there were joyous reunions. Mostly, though, the survivors returned to find that everyone they loved had perished and that their reward for enduring hell was a renewed sense of loss and despair.

When the H?tel Lutetia began processing refugees, there was some hope. The Red Cross set up there, and they kept careful lists of the former prisoners and those who were seeking them. Everyone who survived was given food, a temporary place to stay, two thousand francs, and a coupon for a new suit. Eva had posted a precious photograph of her father, and each day, she turned up holding a sign with his name on it, hoping that someone would be able to give her an answer about his fate. She knew he was dead; she could feel it in her bones. But she needed someone to say the words so she could officially close that chapter of her life. Hope was a dangerous thief, stealing her todays for a tomorrow that would never come.

Hundreds of people streamed through the front doors of the hotel each day, and Eva peered into all their faces, grew numb to their chorus of tears and the scent of the blood dried into their prison-striped clothes. She couldn’t stop coming, though, not without an answer.

And then, on the fourth of June, she finally got one. She was wearily searching the eyes of the incoming refugees when someone said her name in a voice she recognized, but only barely. Her heart skipped, and when she turned, she was staring into the face of a man who couldn’t have weighed more than fifty kilos. His cheeks looked sunken and carved out of bone; his hair had gone gray, and his beard was patchy. But she recognized him instantly. “Tatu??” she whispered, too afraid to touch him for fear that he was an illusion, that he would dissipate before her eyes.

“Is it really you, s?oneczko?” he asked, his voice a raspy echo of what it had once been.

She could only nod, and when he pulled her into his arms, his body felt fragile and unfamiliar, but the strength of his love felt like coming home. She sobbed into his shoulder, and he into hers. When they finally pulled away, she found the father she had once known in his wise, brown eyes.

“And your mother?” he asked her. “Where is your mother?”

“Oh, Tatu?.” She began to cry again. “She died. In the early winter of 1944.”

His eyes filled. “I felt it, you know. I will mourn her, Eva, but I will forever thank God that you survived.”

“I’m—I’m so sorry, Tatu?. I wish she had been the one to live, not me.”