The Book of Lost Names(7)

Colette searched Eva’s eyes for a minute, and then her face relaxed. “Shall I get her something to help her to feel better?”

“I think that’s a wonderful idea, Colette. Why don’t you take Simone with you?”

Colette nodded solemnly before grabbing her sister’s hand and leading her toward their shared bedroom.

Eva turned to her mother as soon as the girls had disappeared. “You need to pull yourself together.”

“But your father…”

“Is gone,” Eva said firmly, though she couldn’t keep the tremor out of her voice. Fear always found its way in through the cracks. “We will come up with a plan to secure his release. I promise. We can’t do anything if we’re arrested, too, though.”

“But—”

“Please. I just need to figure out how—”

“Madame Traube?” Colette’s voice interrupted their hushed conversation, and they turned to see the four-year-old standing in the doorway, wearing a paper crown and clutching a little metal tiara in her hand. She held the tiara up. “When I’m feeling blue, sometimes I like to play dress-up. If you want, you can be the princess and I can be the queen.”

“Dress-up?” Mamusia looked dazed.

“It’s a game where you pretend to be someone you’re not.” Colette frowned. “Don’t you know what dress-up is, Madame Traube?”

Mamusia didn’t answer, but Eva felt as if a lightbulb had gone on in her head. “Yes, of course,” she murmured, her heartbeat suddenly accelerating. She thought of her father’s words about Monsieur Goujon. If her father’s boss had been paid to help her, surely he could do something for Mamusia, too. She and Mamusia would just have to become different people, on paper at least—a dress-up game with the highest stakes.

“Mademoiselle Traube? Do you want to play, too?”

Eva knelt beside the little girl. “No, Colette, but you’ve just given me a wonderful idea. Look out for Madame Traube, will you?” She turned her attention to her mother and added, “If Madame Fontain returns, Mamusia, you stay right here in her apartment, no matter what she says. I’ll come back as soon as I can.”

“But where are you going?”

“To see someone who will help us.”



* * *



In her own apartment, Eva groped her way through the darkness, thankful for the bit of daylight filtering in through the shades, enough that she could see the outlines of their furniture. She knew the rooms well enough that she could probably find her way in pitch blackness under normal circumstances, but her head was spinning, and she didn’t trust herself. Nor did she trust that her neighbors wouldn’t betray her if they heard her moving around inside rooms that were meant to be empty.

Had one of them reported on her family? It made some sense that the names of her parents, both of whom had emigrated from Poland in their early twenties, would be among those to be taken away to labor camps; Joseph’s dire warning had been about foreign-born Jews. But who had added her name to the list? Someone who wanted her gone, too, so her family’s apartment would become available? The Traubes had lived here for more than twenty years, and there was no denying that theirs was one of the nicest units in the building, twice the size of most of the other apartments. Could jealousy and greed have turned a neighbor into a traitor?

Eva pushed the dark thought away. There wasn’t time to be consumed by anger. No, her only job now was to get her mother safely out of Paris. After the roundups, they couldn’t walk around with the yellow stars on their chests, of course, but simply discarding them would be even more dangerous. The second they ventured out, they would be at risk of encountering a French policeman or a German soldier, and if asked for their papers, they would be immediately arrested for the crime of leaving their stars at home. No, they had to become other people entirely, and the key to that lay in the typewriters that sat, silent and hulking, in their living room.

She would bring one back to Monsieur Goujon, using it as her ticket into the prefecture. Tatu? had said that his old boss had promised to make false documents for her; she would need to persuade him to do the same for Mamusia. It was their only hope.

Eva moved silently into her parents’ bedroom, where she pulled out three of her mother’s best dresses, several blouses and skirts, an extra pair of shoes, and a heavy coat, though the July day was sweltering. But who knew how long they’d be gone? She placed all the items carefully into the family’s beat-up leather suitcase.

In her own bedroom, she added three dresses, a pair of trousers, a skirt, a few blouses, a coat, and a pair of boots to the suitcase, then picked up her carte d’identité, stamped with the word JUIVE in bold capital letters. Her mother’s card was even worse, for it immediately marked her as a foreign-born Jew, prohibited from travel.

She zipped up the suitcase and moved back into the living room, where she folded one of the typewriters into the carrying case, her identity card and her mother’s tucked beneath it. Perhaps Monsieur Goujon would need them to help craft their false documents.

As soon as she’d closed her apartment door behind her, leaving the filled suitcase behind for the time being, she took off briskly for the stairs, grasping the handle of the typewriter case with white knuckles and keeping her head down. Venturing out without her star was a risk, but she was banking on the fact that the police were too busy arresting other Jews to pay her much mind, especially if she looked confident about where she was going. After all, why would a Jew be fleeing straight into the heart of Paris with a typewriter and a smile?