The World That We Knew(62)

Julien watched the car disappear down the mountain road.

I’m still here, he wished he could write to Lea. I don’t understand how or why anymore.

The air was cool and fresh, and there was the scent of lily of the valley. Time was moving so quickly, perhaps all he had to do was hold on and wait and this would all be over and he would have his life back, or whatever was left of it.

If I don’t see you again, I have faith that you knew me.

He thought he might be turned away from Izieu due to his age; he was now sixteen, the age when all Jews were sent on the trains, but the teachers were interested when they heard his father had been a professor of mathematics and that he was quite advanced in that field. They told him they were in need of teachers, and invited him to stay.

The forty-four children at Izieu, aged three to sixteen, boys and girls, came out on the terrace to greet him. Most of them had lived in several places in the past few months, and all had been moved to the free zone by the OSE. Their parents were in hiding or had been detained or were members of the Resistance. So far the government had allowed the children to have the dream that they were French; the OSE had an agreement with the French police to overlook the chateaus, and all of the children had paperwork that allowed them to be at Izieu.

Julien shook hands with as many as he could on his way inside the front hall. He was especially pleased to find there was a dog on the grounds, a friendly wolfish creature named Lex, who took an immediate liking to Julien. A young man named Max, who had been a medical student in Paris and now taught biology to the older children, showed Julien around. He would be a counselor, living in a dormitory room and overseeing some of the younger boys. He would be in charge of math lessons for the younger boys in the morning, and teach more advanced lessons in geometry, logic, and number theory to the older, more talented students in the afternoon. A few high-spirited ten-year-olds rushed past to get their mail as Julien was on his tour. The children wrote home faithfully, and mail call was the most exciting event of the day. Those who received packages shared with those whose parents were unable to send treats. There was no discussion about where missing parents might be, for there was a deep belief that they would return. No one wished to crush the idea of that possibility.



Exhausted from his travels, Julien lay down on his metal bed and slept through dinner right into the night. Lex had been tracking rabbits on the lawn, but he soon found Julien and woke him by licking his hand. The hour was late, and Julien sprang from his bed, confused as to where he was. He had been dreaming about the garden of his parents’ house. Lea was there, but she was disappearing in front of his eyes. Don’t let me go, she’d said to him, and he’d been panic-stricken, not knowing what to do.

Julien watched the huddled forms of the boys who had crept into their beds so as not to wake him and now slept soundly. Gazing at them, he felt old. Three years had passed since he’d been in school himself, and fought with his closest school friend, and realized the world had changed before they knew what was happening.

“We teach them to live in the woods,” Max told Julien the following day about the expeditions with the children. “It’s fun and games, but someday they may need to survive on their own.”

Julien was polite, but he kept to himself. At night he often sat on the large patio, thinking of his last days in Paris, doing his best to remember details of that time. Sitting in the kitchen watching Lea and Ava prepare Hardship Soup on the day they arrived, his mother in the garden watering the tomato plants, his father in his study, sure that there was logic to the universe, the night they’d buried the few treasures they had left and Lea had looked at him, knowing it took everything inside him not to embarrass himself and cry.

Max came out to find Julien alone, gazing at the dark mountains. When they began to speak of their former lives, it turned out they hadn’t lived far from one another in Paris. Both had gone to the same school. Max was the same age as Victor and knew him from their classes.

“Not that he was the best student.”

“When the school wouldn’t let us continue any longer Victor said that at least we had one thing to be thankful for. Freedom.”

They both laughed. School was once important to them, but now they saw Victor as wise beyond his years.

“Let’s drink to Victor,” Max suggested.

“How do we manage that?” Julien asked.

Max motioned to him, and together they headed to the rear of the property. There was a sweeping view of the lawn, and in the distance the inky outline of the mountains, formed by layers of volcanic rock. The roof and steps at the chateau were made of this same rough rock, and the top of the roof was fashioned from planks of stone, an old pagan tradition, set there for fertility and joy and happiness.

At the edge of the garden was a wooden shed where supplies were stored. It was here Max kept a hidden bottle of Cointreau. He grinned when he saw the surprise on Julien’s face. “You never know when you’ll need it for medicinal purposes,” he said. Julien took a swallow, then the two handed the bottle back and forth. Julien found himself speaking of his despair. He felt lost, he admitted. Most mornings when he woke, he had no idea where he was and he sprang from his bed confused. He didn’t mention the old man, or Lea, or his parents. “I wish I had lived in another time,” he said gloomily.

“We can only think about this day, and do the same tomorrow,” Max said. “It’s the only way to get through it.”