The World That We Knew(26)

Lea read novels, one after the other, and then science books, texts about the natural world, psychology, and the miracle of the human body. In the mornings, Julien took lessons with his father. He was already ahead of most students his age, at the university level due to his father’s tutoring and his own innate ability to problem-solve. But he had very little interest in mathematics, a fact he had yet to reveal to his father. He preferred a blank notebook so that he could sketch. He could mimic most things found in nature with ease: a rose, a bird, a single leaf. It might be their own garden that inspired him one day, then the plane trees in the Jardin des Tuileries, or the imaginary landscapes he conjured, islands that were made of rock, rivers that were green as glass. Lea was the first person to whom he showed his work, and her reaction was all he could have wished for. She sat for him so that he could sketch her portrait, and in those hours a door opened for both of them, insight into one another, a close bond.

When Lea looked at the finished product of Julien’s sketch, however, she laughed.

“I don’t look like that!” The girl in the drawing was beautiful, and she hadn’t been that girl since she’d chopped off her hair in Berlin. He had even made her chipped tooth look attractive, when she was well aware of how horrible it was.

As far as Julien was concerned, he’d captured her completely. “Of course you do,” he said.

He knew she was homesick. He’d stood outside her door at night and heard her crying. One night Ava came up behind him, surprising him. Julien felt a shiver go through him. She was so quiet, even wearing those heavy boots of hers. There was something vaguely off about her. She had stood there glowering at him, as if he were a criminal.

“I’m not doing anything wrong,” Julien told her. Then why did he feel caught?

“Why would you be?” Ava said, her silver eyes narrowed.

“I wouldn’t be.”

“If you ever do, you will regret it.” That she had no expression on her face made her threat all the more chilling.

“What do you consider wrong?” Julien asked.

Ava shrugged. “You’ll know when I consider it to be so. So be careful.”

“Your cousin is very protective,” he told Lea after his encounter with Ava. “She reminds me of a guard dog.”

Lea had often thought of the name one of the sisters had used for Ava on the train. A golem. One morning, she sneaked into the library before anyone was awake. There was a book she had spied days earlier, one she had been waiting to get her hands on. It was an ancient book of Jewish magic the second Monsieur Lévi had bought from a famed French kabbalist. She found the passage referring to a creature noted as a golem in Psalm 139, verses fifteen and sixteen, praising God. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.

She read on, shocked to discover that a golem came to life after an elaborate and secret ritual, wherein the maker must have a deep understanding of the spiritual and physical manifestations of the Hebrew alphabet. The creature was activated by magical incantations. It might look human, but it was a sort of changeling, stronger and more fearless and imbued with supernatural abilities, to speak with birds and angels, to see dreams and predict the future. More than anything, it was a warrior. Its goal was to protect the Jewish people, yet it was said not to have a soul, or even a heart.

Lea stored the book back in its proper place. She will follow you to the ends of the earth, her mother had told her. What you ask her to do, she will do without question, as I would if I could be there with you today and the next day and the day after that.



As it turned out, it wasn’t only Ava who disapproved of Lea and Julien’s friendship.

“Stay away from the girl,” Madame Claire told her son. The strangers had been with them for more than three months. Far too long, in Madame’s opinion, particularly when it came to the girl. She had seen her with Julien in the garden, speaking with their heads close together. Something Julien said had sent Lea into gales of laughter. That was when Claire knew. She’d seen it before. She herself had been a girl of twelve when she’d first become infatuated with a neighbor, and it had not turned out well. Young love could be harmful, and the best thing to do was nip it in the bud. “I don’t want you in the same room when no one else is there.”

“Why would you say that?” Julien asked his mother.

“I have your best interest at heart,” Madame Lévi told him. It was not a time to form attachments or venture into amour de jeunesse, foolish puppy love. “It doesn’t matter if you understand. Just do as I say.”

From then on, they were carefully watched. Still, they managed to leave notes for each other in the first Monsieur Lévi’s desk drawer in the library.

Hidden candies on the third shelf of the library. Not very good. Caramel.

Have you read Kafka? You should. You must. The Castle is on the fourth shelf. Don’t let my mother see you reading it. Of course, she disapproves of him.

Are you a hunter or a wolf?

Trick question?

Tricky question.

Wolf.

Agreed. Always.

I want to show you Paris.

I want to be shown.

We’ll be in trouble.

Good. Let’s.

Meet me at noon.



This past May, Jewish men, most of whom were foreign, between the ages of eighteen and forty had been called up to present themselves to the Paris police. All had received a green postcard, and so the wave of arrests of five thousand men that followed was called billet vert. Almost all had been Polish refugees. Even if French Jews had been included, Julien and Victor had been too young, and Professor Lévi, at forty-six, was too old. Still, Madame Lévi worried more than ever. She instructed both of her sons that they were not to leave the property. Both boys nodded and didn’t argue, but the boys knew they would disobey her. They could not sit still and let the world pass them by. Victor often went out his window at night, leaping down to the garden, to meet with his friends. Julien planned to show Lea Paris, no matter what he had promised his mother.