The Book of Lost Names(20)
“What did he say?”
“He told me he could provide me with some help. I don’t know exactly what he meant.”
Her mother was staring at her with wide eyes. “Eva, he might be able to give you what you need to help locate your father and secure his release.”
“It might also be a trap.”
“Set by a priest?”
“There’s no rule that all priests must be decent human beings.”
“I don’t know much about Catholicism, but I’m fairly certain that’s part of the job description.”
Eva shrugged. Her mother was right about one thing, though. The priest could hold the key to getting her father out of detention. And the clock was surely ticking. As long as she moved her mother, perhaps it was worth the risk of heading to the church to see if the man’s offer had been genuine. “Very well,” she said at last. “I’ll go see him—but not until I take you somewhere safe.”
“Where will I go?”
“I don’t know, but you can’t stay here. Not until we figure out whether Madame Barbier is on our side or not.” Eva considered it for a moment, an idea forming. “I believe I’ll take you to a bookshop I know.” It was the only thing she could think of. The woman there had been kind, and Eva refused to believe that a person who had made a life from books could have evil in her heart.
* * *
After bringing her mother to the bookshop and telling the older woman there an unconvincing story about how Mamusia simply longed to spend some time browsing, Eva hurried toward the church, reassured that the woman had seemed to understand that Mamusia needed a place to lie low for a little while. You can thank me by staying safe, the woman had told her yesterday. Eva could only pray that those wishes of protection extended to her mother, too.
The town was coming alive in the midmorning warmth, though it was still the quietest place Eva had ever seen. She could count on her hands the number of people she passed as she hurried along: the butcher on the rue Pascal outside in his splattered apron, washing his front windows; a half-dozen women queued in front of the boulangerie on the rue de Levant, ration cards in hand, some gossiping with heads bent, others craning their necks to see what might still be available inside. Eva exchanged pleasant bonjours with a heavyset, middle-aged fleuriste arranging a small array of bright pink peonies in a bucket outside a corner shop as she passed, but otherwise, nervous and on guard, she kept to herself.
The église Saint-Alban was only two blocks up the hill from the bookstore, so Eva reached it before she could fully gather her thoughts—or talk herself out of what she was about to do. She hesitated in front of the main door, putting her palm on the iron handle, but she didn’t go in, not yet. Come, Eva, she told herself. You have to take a chance. You need something to convince the authorities to let Tatu? go.
Summoning her courage, she pulled open the door and entered. Inside, the church was dimly lit and small, with a dozen long, narrow wooden pews marching toward an altar. On the raised platform was a lectern; behind it sat a small golden urn. On the back wall hovered a golden statue of Jesus, his face twisted in agony and looking toward heaven, his body nailed to a wooden cross. Candles flickered atop small pillars on the altar. There was no sign of Père Clément.
Eva shivered and slid into one of the wooden benches. She had never been in a church before, so she wasn’t sure what to do. As the moments ticked by, and Père Clément still hadn’t appeared, she began to feel nervous about her mother. What if this had all been some sort of a trap? What if Père Clément had followed her to the bookstore and led the police there as soon as Eva had departed? Then again, why would he do such a thing when he could have brought the authorities to her door that morning?
The front door of the church cracked open, and Eva turned, expecting to see Père Clément limping toward her down the aisle. Instead, it was a young couple around her age, the man’s hat pulled low, and the woman, whose head was cloaked in a thin scarf, looking particularly skittish. Her eyes darted from side to side, and after glancing at Eva, she hurriedly crossed herself. The young man tugged her arm and led her toward a door in the back of the church marked with a small sign reading Confessionnal. They both disappeared inside.
Eva turned back around to look at the cross again, but something was bothering her. Didn’t Catholics usually enter a confessional booth alone? It had seemed that way in books. And there was another thing. She could have sworn that when the young woman made the sign of the cross, she’d done it incorrectly. She’d once seen Jean Gabin cross himself in one of his films—she couldn’t remember if it was La Grande Illusion, La Bête Humaine, or Le Quai des Brumes—and she was certain that he’d touched his head, his chest, his left shoulder, and then his right. However, the nervous-looking woman had started with her head before moving to her right shoulder, her chest, and then her left shoulder, a diamond rather than a cross.
Eva pretended to pray as she waited for the couple to emerge from the confessional. If the two of them weren’t Catholics, what exactly were they doing? As the seconds ticked by, Eva looked up at the statue of Jesus, which had been sculpted in painstaking detail. He looked like a real man, his expression full of compassion and pain, and she thought about the way he’d been persecuted. She hadn’t spent much time considering the life of Jesus, but even though she didn’t believe that he was the Messiah, she certainly believed he’d been a good person whose life had been taken unjustly. It seemed murdering people who differed from the masses was a tale as old as time.