The World That We Knew(22)

“I can as well as anyone else,” Ava responded.

Pleased by this news, the professor’s wife changed her mind. “They can have the maid’s room.” At least for now was not said aloud but her meaning was clear.

“But where will Marianne be?” the professor asked, confused.

“Marianne has deserted us,” Madame Lévi informed her husband. She turned to Ava. “So it’s up to you to keep us fed while you’re here.”



Ava learned new skills in the blink of an eye. She began to cut up cabbage for Bobeshi’s Hardship Soup, an easy recipe that took ingenuity and little else. Lea looked for spices in the cabinets, then chopped up celery discovered in the larder. She continued to dwell on what a strange companion she had. Her hatred had been replaced by curiosity and mistrust. “Do you really know how to cook?” she asked Ava.

“It’s simple enough.”

Still, Lea was wary as she thought of Ava sinking to her knees, kissing the hand of the girl she had called her maker. Why would her mother send her away with such a person? “Have you ever cooked before?” she asked.

“Having done something doesn’t mean you’re good at it.”

Lea touched the locket she wore. She suddenly felt as though she were a little girl, abandoned on a street corner or in a marketplace, straining to see through the crowds so she could find her mother. She heard her mother’s voice inside of her.

Heart of my heart, love of my life, the one loss I will never survive.

“You’ve stopped working,” Ava said, motioning to Lea. “Carrots are next.”

Lea rinsed a bunch of small carrots and began to chop. The red-haired girl on the train had told Ava to act like any other woman. Lea gazed at Ava now, who tasted a pinch of salt, her mouth puckering slightly, before she spat the salt into the sink. She did not seem like any other woman.



Julien was leaning in the doorway, his face thoughtful. How could he not take note of the girl? There was something beneath Lea’s reserved demeanor he thought he understood. He was that way himself, hiding his true nature, in his case with bravado and sarcasm. Ava caught him watching Lea. She didn’t like what she saw inside him, a wild, reckless heart that spelled trouble. “You can go,” she told him.

“This is his house, not ours. Of course he can stay, although I don’t know why he’d want to,” Lea said with feigned indifference. The truth was, she had noticed him as well.

Julien came to sprawl in a kitchen chair, his long legs extended so that Ava and Lea had to dodge around him. “I can’t cook a thing,” he confided to Lea.

“Why are you proud of that?” Ava said as she cast a wary eye on him. It was difficult to read this boy as she could most people; his thoughts were such a jumble, but his interest in Lea was evident.

“Oh, I’m not,” Julien said. “I just admire anyone who can.”

There was some flour in a canister, which Ava mixed with water, doing her best to make a crust without butter. Trying to charm her was pointless. He had better watch his step if he knew what was good for him. “You might as well be useful,” she told him, suggesting he cut the fruit in thin slices.

Julien seemed pleased to be asked. It was a good excuse to stand beside Lea at the counter. They looked at one another and laughed in a way Ava didn’t understand. Nothing was funny, but such was the behavior of mortals. Illogical, impractical, emotional.

That was how it began.





CHAPTER SEVEN


ARRIVAL




VIENNE, SPRING 1941

THE RABBI’S DAUGHTER FOUND HERSELF in the outskirts of the small city of Vienne in the Rh?ne-Alpes region, a little more than twenty kilometers from Lyon. This was the city where Hannibal had arrived and the Romans held chariot races around La Pyramide, an ancient obelisk, an artifact that some local people vowed contained the bones of Pontius Pilate. Ettie was someone else now. She had named herself Nicole Duval, with no proof but her word, for her smudged papers had been worthless, and she’d tossed them away.

She had been traveling from place to place, always going toward Vichy, though she had discovered the so-called free zone was in the hands of a government collaborating with the Germans. At first she had lived hand to mouth, searching for food in trash bins behind markets, sleeping in the woods. When she hitched a ride she always climbed into the truck bed, or, if she had no choice and had to sit beside the driver, she kept a hand on the door handle in case she was forced to jump out at a turn in the road. She had discovered that men often felt a young woman traveling alone was a target for unwanted advances. Whenever she came to a new town she searched for a bakery that was open, in the hope they would throw out baguettes no longer fit to be sold, whether they were moldy or stale made no difference to her. She slept in barns, and looked for chicken houses where she could steal eggs. On a few occasions she had given up a kiss or two in exchange for dinner, but not more than that. Her French was decent, although she was quiet and kept to herself. She had not left for America, as she had planned. She had other plans now.

For a while she had worked as a laundress in a small hotel, fleeing when her employer began to come at night to her door, which she kept bolted at all times. When he tried to attack her in a hallway, she immediately left and stumbled upon the café, where she worked in exchange for shelter and a meal taken at midday. She slept on a cot that had only a thin blanket, no sheets or pillow, but it didn’t matter. Only her body was curled up there; her spirit was elsewhere. As soon as she closed her eyes she was in the tall grass with her sister. After a while she didn’t even have to close her eyes. She could be in two places at once at all times, both inside and outside of her body. She was with her sister while she was waiting on customers or washing dishes, out in the field in a haze of pollen, but in her fantasies no shots rang out and they ducked into the woods together, through the dark pools of shadow. The past was simply where she lived now, crossing over from one world to the other with such ease it was becoming more difficult to remain in the here and now. Sometimes she felt the heat of her sister’s body next to hers. She felt her heart beating, her whispered voice. Once she thought a young woman who walked into the café was Marta, she had the same lively dark hair and slight figure. She’d grabbed the stranger’s hand, wildly, without thinking twice. The woman had pulled away from her, startled, and Ettie had stuttered an apology. There was no Marta, she knew that, and when her shift was over she went out behind the café and wept, then returned to splash water on her face and went back to work. She could not afford to let her emotions get the best of her.