The Book of Lost Names(60)

“With courage, Eva.” Père Clément’s reply was instant. “And a bit of faith.”





Chapter Nineteen




By the time 1943 arrived, it was hard to remember what warmer weather had felt like. Winter had settled its icy claws into Aurignon and was holding on tight, dumping sleet and snow, freezing the streets, sending icy gusts of biting wind racing down the alleys.

The only good thing about the weather was that it had scared the Germans inside. Instead of manning their posts on corners, they were ensconced in the town’s only café beside a roaring fire, sipping coffee they’d brought from Germany. Sometimes, the scent of hot chocolate wafted out onto the streets, triggering in Eva a surge of anger so sharp that she was caught off guard. Who were they to enjoy all the comforts of a French winter while the children hidden in houses all around them were hungry and cold? Though the people of Aurignon were no strangers to preparing each year for a long, hard winter, the population of the town had swelled with refugees in the past year, and there simply wasn’t enough food to go around.

Despite the muttered objections of Madame Travere, Eva had begun visiting the children once a week, taking great care to slip into the house only when she was entirely alone on the street, with no one to see where she was vanishing to. Aurignon was a small place, with no more than a thousand residents, and that meant that everyone had at least a vague sense of everyone else’s business. The less people saw of her aside from Sunday mass, the better—especially since she could sometimes feel the stares of some of the gendarmes burning into her back as she knelt to pray. Letting them—or anyone else—see her as she approached Madame Travere’s home each week could be dangerous.

There had been no new refugees arriving in the freezing cold, so the children Eva had met just after Hanukkah were still here and had mostly acclimated to their new home. They had classes each morning with Madame Travere, and the rest of the time, they entertained themselves in her parlor.

“Do you suppose my parents are still alive?” Anne asked Eva abruptly one day in February. They were sitting side by side on the sofa, Anne with a tattered copy of Les Enfants du capitaine Grant open in her lap. In front of them, the two older boys and the teenage girl were huddled around a record player Rémy had managed to procure, listening to a jazz album on low volume, whispering to each other. Madame Travere had pronounced the very existence of a record player in her house scandalous, but Père Clément had convinced her that it would help raise the morale of the children. Very well, she had grumbled. But absolutely no dancing.

“I think there’s every reason to hope they are,” Eva replied carefully after a long pause. She knew very little about Anne’s life before coming to Aurignon, because the children were forbidden from talking about their pasts, but she understood from Père Clément that Anne had come from a town outside Paris and that her parents had been taken in late October.

“You know,” Anne said after a moment, “when Dorothée is in Oz, she has no idea whether her home in Kansas has been destroyed by a tornado. She is working so hard to get back to her aunt and uncle, but she has no way of knowing if they’re there.”

“Yes,” Eva said carefully. Anne had finished the book just after the New Year, and she’d been talking about it ever since, pinning her hope to the fictional magic that had shown a little girl from a place called Kansas the way back to life.

“But they were there, Mademoiselle Moreau. They were there all along, worrying about her. And when Dorothée got home, they were a family again.”

“Yes,” Eva agreed again. She took a deep breath. “But, Anne, my dear girl, this is not Oz.”

“I know that, Mademoiselle Moreau,” Anne said instantly. “We can imagine, though, can’t we?”

Eva didn’t say anything, because of course the girl was right. That’s what books were for, after all. They were passageways to other worlds, other realities, other lives one could imagine living. But in times like these, was it dangerous to dream unrealistic dreams?

“Mademoiselle Moreau,” Anne said again after Eva had been silent too long, “I know it’s sometimes hard to believe the best. Isn’t it better than believing the worst, though?”

Eva blinked at her. The little girl was merely six; how could she have a thought like that? “You’re absolutely right, Anne.”

“I prefer to have hope anyhow,” the girl concluded, patting Eva on the hand the way an adult might do to a child. “I think you should, too. Otherwise, things become too frightening, and it’s hard to go on. Now, have you read this book yet? Les Enfants du capitaine Grant?”

Eva smiled. “By Jules Verne? Yes, I read it when I was about your age.”

“Good. Then you must know that even when things seem darkest, there is hope.”

Eva vaguely remembered that the titular children of the story are eventually reunited with their father after a harrowing journey around the world. “I suppose there is, Anne. I suppose there is.”



* * *



That afternoon, Eva was working alone in the church library by the light of a single candle when Père Clément arrived, his expression grave. “There’s a batch of papers needed urgently,” he said, handing Eva a list. “By tomorrow morning, if you can.”