The Book of Lost Names(17)
Chapter Six
In the full light of day, Aurignon looked even more glorious, the sun pouring honeyed rays over the narrow lanes and buildings, washing the stone in a warm glow. The flowers that had colored the window boxes the previous afternoon were brighter now in the morning light, painting the town in brilliant pinks, purples, and reds. The fresh air here, more than a hundred kilometers south of the occupied zone, tasted to Eva like freedom.
But she and her mother couldn’t leave France without Tatu?. He had wanted her to flee, but she couldn’t, not if she had the means to free him. And she did, she was sure of it. She still had the blank identity documents Monsieur Goujon had given her, as well as her father’s photographs, all sewn hastily this morning into the lining of the jacket she had packed in the suitcase. It was nearly everything she needed to craft a new identity for her father, too, to demonstrate to the authorities that his arrest had been an error. However, she had left the art pens behind in Paris—they would have been a sure sign to any inspector that she was carrying tools of forgery. She couldn’t risk bringing them onto the train.
The problem was that she couldn’t replicate the same sort of documents she had made for herself and her mother without the right kind of ink, and normal pens used for writing wouldn’t do. She needed art pens in red, blue, and black. But Madame Barbier was already suspicious of Eva and her mother; no amount of free strawberries could convince Eva otherwise. So it would be too risky to ask her for the location of a store that sold such things. Eva would have to find one on her own.
As she walked briskly up and down the narrow lanes leading away from the town’s main square like crooked spokes of a wheel, she peered into every window, hoping to find a shop that stocked art supplies. The town was so quiet that Eva could almost believe she had the streets all to herself, a feeling she could never imagine experiencing in bustling Paris. Away from the square, the town was even more beautiful, with some of the stone structures giving way to half-timbered buildings that reminded Eva of the pictures in fairy-tale books she’d read as a little girl. By the time she’d turned onto the fourth lane, she had begun to relax, lulled into a sense of peace by this idyllic town that didn’t seem to know it was in the midst of a war. In fact, she was feeling so at ease that she almost didn’t notice the tall, slender man at the end of the lane, dressed in a trench coat that was far too warm for the summer day, the lapels pulled up. He was walking with a slight limp, his right leg stiff.
She had seen him two streets ago, too, and now, as she turned another corner, she hurried into a doorway and held her breath, wondering if he’d follow. If he did, it was too much to be a coincidence, for what Aurignon resident would need to wind methodically up and down the spidery lanes in the same pattern as she? If he didn’t, she needed to rein in her runaway imagination.
The seconds ticked by. No trench-coat-wearing man. Stop making everyone out to be a German boogeyman, Eva, she chided herself. As she stepped out from the doorway, rolling her eyes at herself, she was just in time to collide with the man as he made a quick turn around the building. She gasped and stumbled backward.
“Oh, excuse me,” he said quickly, his voice deep and muffled as he ducked his face further into his lapels.
Eva’s heart raced. He didn’t sound German, at least. He was perhaps in his mid-forties, with sandy hair, a narrow, pointed nose, and thick eyebrows. Was he a French policeman, tailing her because Madame Barbier had raised the alarm? But if he was, wouldn’t he simply demand to see her papers? As her mind spun quickly through the possibilities, she decided that the best thing to do was confront him. Certainly his limp would slow him down if she needed to run. “Are you following me?” she demanded. She had hoped to sound tough, but she could hear the quiver in her voice.
“What?” the man took a step back, his lapels still covering the lower half of his face. “No, of course not. Excuse me, mademoiselle. Good day.” He hurried on, limping away from her, and she watched him, wondering if he would glance back. He didn’t, and when he vanished around a bend in the road, she let herself relax a bit. Perhaps she’d been wrong.
Still, the encounter had unsettled her, so she walked more quickly as she scanned the shop windows. The feeling of peace was gone, and now Aurignon seemed as sinister as anywhere else.
It took her another fifteen minutes before she found a small bookstore and papeterie that had a display case of ink pens near the window. She ducked in, hoping that they also stocked art pens. Inside, she closed her eyes for a second and breathed in deeply, the familiar scents of paper, leather, and binding glue transporting her back to her beloved Sorbonne library in Paris. Would she ever walk once more among its books, bask in its silence, revel in being surrounded by so many words and so much knowledge? Would Paris one day be hers again?
“Mademoiselle? May I help you?” The old woman behind the counter was peering at her with a blend of concern and suspicion when Eva opened her eyes.
“I’m sorry.” Eva could feel heat rising to her cheeks. “I—I was just thinking how much I love being surrounded by books.” The words had sounded strange, and Eva’s blush deepened.
But the woman didn’t look put off. In fact, she smiled, her doubt melting away. “Ah. I should have known. You’re one of us.”
“Pardon?”
“You’re someone who finds herself in the pages,” the woman clarified, gesturing to the shelves all around. They were stacked high and haphazardly, reminding Eva of the layout of the town itself, chaotic but beautiful yet the same. “Someone who sees her reflection in the words.”