The World That We Knew(20)

“They can’t stay here,” Madame Lévi told her husband. “We’ll be the ones to pay if they’re caught.”

Foreign Jews had begun to be arrested, and now the cousins had come from Berlin, presumably with falsified identity papers. You could tell they were refugees with one look: the battered suitcase, the exhaustion in the girl’s eyes and her short, ragged haircut, the set of the young woman’s mouth, as if nothing they said or did could make her go. Madame Lévi had always managed the household despite the circumstance, but cousins appearing out of the blue, like beggars at their door, was too much. The young woman was especially strange. Although she spoke flawless French, she possessed a shifty look, taking in every detail with her pale gray eyes. She wore a plain dress and heavy boots fit more for a man than a woman, a style that was definitely not French. It was impossible to gauge what her emotions were, let alone her intent. The girl was well mannered, but something was off there, too. She first called herself Lea, then stammered and asked to be called Lillie, as if confused by her own name. Were they thieves or impostors? Was their plan to steal what little the Lévis had left? The professor’s wife resolved to have her husband’s help in the matter despite her vow never to interrupt him while he worked.

“When I asked them to leave they refused,” Claire complained. “They sat down in the hallway and there they are!”

“It’s all a mistake,” André assured her with a grimace. He had been measuring algebraic curves and barely knew what his wife was talking about. He had on a white shirt and black pants held up with suspenders. He wore his father’s gold watch, a family treasure, but in fact time meant little to him; in his opinion, it was an untrustworthy measure of the universe. All the same, the real world he had always avoided had slowly been creeping into his calm office for weeks. His sons had been dismissed from school, a senseless measure, for the family had supported their elite private school near the Place Voltaire for three generations. But perhaps in this new world it made sense. Jewish professors, himself included, had been asked to leave the university. Still, he remained convinced that life would eventually assume its natural course.

“Well, if it’s a mistake, go talk to them,” said his wife, still agitated.

He had no choice but to go. No matter what was happening in the country, between husband and wife, a truce must be achieved at all costs.



The visitors in the front hallway were amazed by their surroundings. Here, it was almost possible to forget the homeless men sleeping in tents along the river and in the Bois de Boulogne, refugees camped out beneath the bridges that crossed the Seine, soldiers collecting such people in mass arrests of undesirables. The entranceway floor of the Lévis’ house was patterned with black and white marble, and the walls were Italian plaster mixed with cinnabar-colored paint. There were pale pink peonies in a tall vase, the last from the garden, and stray petals had drifted over their shoes.

The Lévis’ younger son, Julien, came downstairs, surprised to see guests seated on the bench beneath the portrait of his grandfather, the war hero. He stopped dead in his tracks. If he wasn’t mistaken they were refugees, something his mother was particularly suspicious about, insisting that foreign Jews would only bring trouble upon them.

Julien was fourteen, tall, lanky, darkly handsome, and completely unaware of his good looks. Lately, he was in a constant state of fury. Apparently, no one cared what he thought or felt or wanted. It was expected he would become a mathematician, like his father, but he had other ideas. He had always wished to be a painter, but since the German occupation, all he could think of was joining the Resistance. His mother had thrown a fit at the very idea. He was too young, and, anyway, he was needed at home. To do what? he wondered resentfully. Chase the mice in the garden, collect plums from their fruit tree, study the universe from the confines of his grandfather’s library? He pretended to be who he wasn’t to appease his mother, as he had since he was a small child, for she took his good behavior for granted, not knowing his rebel soul resented every minute. His brother, Victor, called him a mama’s boy and an enfant gaté, a spoiled child.

“And you?” Julien had snapped at Victor, who was seventeen and did little but sit around the house in a state of gloomy rage, forced to hide in the attic whenever anyone came to the door, because his mother feared he would be taken to a forced labor camp. “What makes you more of a man?”

They’d almost come to blows then, but fortunately Victor, afraid he might hurt his brother if they had it out, stalked away. “She’ll always tell you what to do, until you refuse to listen. That’s when you’ll know you’re a man.”

Julien watched the visitors from the corridor, glad that Victor wasn’t here to take over, as he so often did. There was something about the girl that struck Julien immediately, her long legs, her short cropped hair, her luminous, intelligent face, the immense sadness in her eyes. He had no idea who she or her companion might be, but at least something interesting was happening. Something that might wake up this sleepwalking household in which they were not to discuss burning bridges, or the convoys of soldiers, or the signs on restaurants that declared No admittance to Jews.

Julien ducked into the kitchen, where he grabbed a handful of plums meant for that evening’s dessert. His mother was not yet aware that their housemaid, Marianne, had vacated her position that morning, leaving notes for Julien and Victor. She had been deeply attached to the household, and to the boys in particular, for she wasn’t much older than Victor, four or five years at most. Her destination was the Protestant village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, near the farm where her elderly father lived alone. Before going, she had scrubbed the stove in the kitchen and made up the beds with fresh linens. You should leave, she had written to both boys. It’s not safe here anymore.