The Book of Lost Names(101)

“Oh, s?oneczko, God has a plan for you. For all of us.” Tatu? wiped her tears away. “We must always keep moving forward.”



* * *



It took Eva a week to tell Tatu? what had happened to her mother, and when he cried and told her it was not her fault, she couldn’t bring herself to believe him, even when he insisted that Mamusia must have been so proud of her. “All she wanted for you was a happy life,” Tatu? said. “She would be so glad that you survived.”

“Tatu?, I brought her only disappointment.”

“That’s not true, Eva.”

“It is.”

He was quiet as she told him the story of Rémy, of how she had fallen in love with him despite her mother’s objections, how Mamusia had been furious about it and about so many of the other choices Eva had made. “I failed her, Tatu?,” she concluded miserably. “If I had listened, maybe she would still be alive.”

“If you had listened, s?oneczko, you’d be dead, too, for you would have followed her advice right into Joseph Pelletier’s arms.” His expression was grave. “Just because she was your mother didn’t mean she was right.”

“But if I had honored her…”

“You do honor her—and me—every day by being the kind of person we raised you to be.”

Eva covered her face with her hands, and Tatu? gently rubbed her back.

“This Rémy, do you still love him?” he asked after a moment.

“I’m certain he’s dead by now, Tatu?.”

“That’s what you thought about me, too, isn’t it? And here I am.” He paused. “You know, your mother’s parents did not want her to marry me.”

Eva looked up. “They didn’t?”

He smiled. “They thought I was too poor, that I could never give her a good life. They wanted her to marry a man named Szymon Lozinski, the son of a doctor. This Lozinski was a cruel man, though, and marrying him would have broken your mother’s heart. I like to think that for the years I had with her, I made her happy.”

“You did, Tatu?. You did.”

He smiled. “My point is that every parent wants what is best for his or her child. But we are all guilty of seeing things through the lens of our own lives. We forget sometimes that it is your life to live.”

“What about Rémy’s religion, though? Mamusia always said that to love him would be to betray the Jewish faith, especially at a time when we are being wiped from the earth.”

“You are betraying nothing if you follow your heart,” Tatu? said firmly. “Deep down, you know that, too.”

When she didn’t say anything, he leaned in and whispered in her ear, “Go, Eva. Go back to Aurignon and see if anyone there knows what became of him. It is the only way you’ll have peace—and we all deserve that.”

“Will you come with me, Tatu??”

“No, Eva, I cannot.” He shivered. “I can’t imagine being on another train. But you go. I will be here waiting for you when you return.”



* * *



When Eva got off the bus a week later in Aurignon, it looked just as it had that summer day in 1942 when she and her mother had first arrived. The flowers were in bloom, their perfume coloring the air, and the streets were alive with honeyed sunlight and the scent of pine. Eva closed her eyes for a minute and breathed in, trying to imagine Mamusia standing beside her, but it was no use. Her mother was dust in the wind, long gone.

The église Saint-Alban looked just as she remembered it, though it had gotten a fresh coat of paint since she had last been there, and the trees outside had grown, arching over the entrance like a canopy of welcome. The sun trickled in as Eva approached the front door.

Inside, the church was silent, but the familiar statue of Jesus on the cross was just where she remembered. “Hello there,” she whispered, and it felt like greeting an old friend. The pews had been restored, the church repainted and refurbished, as if all the things that had happened here had been merely a bad dream.

She checked the confessional in the back, and the office behind the altar, but she was alone. She took a deep breath and approached the door to the secret library. She still had her key, but when she inserted it into the lock, it didn’t open. She tried again, jiggling the key, but it didn’t work. Her heart sank.

“Eva?” The voice came from behind her and she whirled around, relief washing over her. It was Père Clément, and he was staring at her as if he was dreaming. “Is it really you?” he asked.

She felt as if she, too, was seeing a ghost. He was a shell of the man he’d once been, thirty pounds lighter, his sandy hair turned gray, his frock hanging loosely from a skeletal frame. But he was here and alive, and she had to stop herself from collapsing under the weight of her relief. “Père Clément,” she whispered.

“Eva, it is you.” He came forward and pulled her into a hug. “I was sure you were dead.”

“I feared the same of you.” She breathed in the familiar scent of him, frankincense and pine. There was something else now, too, an edge of smoke, of having come through a fire. “What happened to you?”

He pulled away and gave her a small smile. “I spent some time as a guest of Germany in Poland.”