The World That We Knew(39)
Pauline, also from Berlin, was to bring Lea to their room. She was eager to show off her French.
“The sisters practiced with me until I lost my accent. It’s best to do as they say.”
Remember your own room, the blue rug on the floor, the way the light came in through the curtains in the morning, the sound of my voice as I called to you in the park, my darling, my girl, light of my life, come here and give me a hug, eat this apple, sit on this bench, watch the birds above us, and the sky that’s so bright, take the love that I have for you that will never end.
Lea quickly dressed in her new uniform. She did her best not to think, she pushed away dark thoughts until they were folded into a tiny corner of her mind, behind a locked door. At night the heron came to Lea’s window and stood on the ledge, so close she could feel his heart beating. She knew that Ava had told him to watch over her. She is nothing to me, Lea told herself. She is not my mother, she is not my cousin, she may not even be a woman. She is here because she has to be, because she was made to be, because she cannot make her own decisions or cast her own fate.
Lea found her way along the confusing corridors of the convent, but her stomach twisted with nerves. She had already decided; Julien would be her only friend. She needed no others. Tu me connais, she would have told him if she could. You alone know me.
At lunch, Lea was so famished she could barely restrain herself from reaching for the hard heels of bread until all of the prayers were recited. Then the other girls chattered away about the baker who had left; there’d been nothing to eat but old bread all week, although they knew they should be grateful. After lunch had been served Sister Marie stood to announce there was a new student. Lea had no choice but to stand as well and be introduced as Lillie Perrin. Everyone greeted her in unison, in perfect French, except for a petite, dark girl called Renée, a recent arrival from Berlin who refused to speak anything but German. She had been rescued, fortunate to have been among a group who had managed to escape when being moved from one camp to another. She had a tattooed number on her arm that she rubbed at when she thought no one was looking and she never undressed in front of the others. The OSE brought her to France, and to this convent. Her name had been Rachel. Her mother, father, uncles, aunts, grandparents, sisters, and brothers had all been on the trains. She was older than Lea, perhaps already fifteen. In the attic, her bed was next to Lea’s. That evening as they prepared for bed, Renée glared at Lea. She looked fragile, but there was a core of fire inside her. “Rühr mich nicht an,” Renée said. Never touch me. “Und schau nie unter mein Bett.” And never look under my bed.
It was difficult to follow the rules, much less understand them, and now, after Lea’s encounter with Renée, she felt even more unsure of herself. No one dared to break the silence before going to chapel in the morning or at breakfast. There were scores of prayers to recite, many more than her mother had taught her. The sisters looked sterner than Sister Marie in their stiff black habits. She thought of biting the soldier in the alleyway, of the wolves in the snow, of the blood on their shoes, of how fast she had run. After a while she wasn’t afraid, but she kept her eyes lowered when she greeted the sisters, and she stayed as far away from Renée as possible.
In class, she did her best to follow along as they studied the stories of the martyrs, including the Carmelite nuns of Compiègne, who went to the guillotine. She was imagining the death of the first and youngest sister to die, Sister Constance, who was said to face her fate with the grace of a queen, when in the midst of the lesson, she heard the heron on the roof call out with joy. Lea gazed out the window, and there was Ava, coming into the courtyard.
Lea raised her hand even though she was meant to be silent in class. When the sister approached, she asked to leave the room, claiming to have an upset stomach. She quickly took the stairs, making her way past several stained-glass panels representing scenes from the Bible in which angels climbed into a cobalt blue sky. She wanted to witness how Ava managed to get herself into the convent.
The young nun at the door was thanking Ava for her gift of wild berries. “I don’t know if we need anyone in the kitchen,” the nun said.
“We do,” Lea said from her hiding place on the stair. “The baker has gone.”
Ava and the nun both turned to her. “Aren’t you supposed to be in class?” the sister asked.
“Yes, of course.” Lea raced up the stairs to the classroom and went back to her seat, surprised to find herself comforted by Ava’s presence.
She will follow you to the ends of the earth. When she looks at you I will see you, when she embraces you I will feel your heart beat. You can love her if you want to. It will not be a betrayal, because when you do, I will be there with you.
“Please take Ava in,” Lea said softly as she faced a painting of Jesus, who was said to watch over them all. “Please save her.”
Renée was sitting next to her, and now clucked her tongue. She understood French, but simply refused to speak it. “Niemand kann uns retten,” she said in a whisper when she overheard Lea’s pleas. No one can rescue us.
Ava asked for no payment, other than food and shelter, and it was true the baker had run off, taking a pair of silver candlesticks with her. Ava was taken on as the baker’s replacement, who, as it turned out, had disappeared with the cook. Ava would take on both positions. She was brought to the huge stone kitchen, where there was an enormous woodstove and the stone sinks were large enough to bathe in. There she was given a cot in the scullery, along with two black dresses and a white apron. She was taller than any of the nuns, and because there were no shoes to fit her, she kept the rabbi’s boots. She was comfortable in them by now, and they fitted her perfectly. Ava said she was an excellent cook and she wasn’t in the least bit daunted by the baking. She came upon a pile of cookbooks in the pantry in which some of the recipes were three hundred years old and no longer practical. Blackbird pie, trout stuffed with pine and minced dove, hearts of ducks sautéed in brown butter and spice. She kept to simple fare for the nuns and their students, potato soup with leeks and what little butter they had, cheese pie, chicken stew that could feed fifty, with a gravy that tasted of chestnuts, rice fragrant with wild mint and fennel, apple tarte made with fruit she had collected in the woods, the crust formed from day-old bread.