The World That We Knew(67)

At last she noticed the message attached to his leg. He had carried it through the winter, to all of those faraway places. Lately, Ava had been trying to make time stop, but it was impossible to do, even for the angels. The border was a few days’ hike away, yet she had remained here, hidden in the attic. All because of time. When the locket had opened, she had seen the message; she knew what her fate was to be once she brought Lea to safety. And so she had stayed in this village, in this attic. She told herself it was because it was winter, it was because she was waiting for the heron, but now he was here, and she still wanted to stay. She had lived too long, and as golems were said to do, she had begun to make her own decisions. She wanted to change her fate.

She knew the message the heron carried was for Lea, but she took it anyway. It was slick with salt and sand, diverted by the heron’s migration. Ava unfolded the paper to find the hand-drawn blue map that led to Beehive House. She began to weep, and the heron held his wings around her. The map would lead her closer to the end of her existence. She was made to fulfill her obligation to Hanni, but how could she let go of this world?

She told the heron he must hide, so she alone could see him, then she folded the map into her pocket. She brought Julien’s message to the attic, but rather than deliver it to its rightful owner, she hid it in a bureau drawer.



Once the weather was fine, Weitz ventured into the fields on Sundays to paint out in the air. Lea often accompanied him, after promising Ava they would not go too far. On their painting days it felt to Lea that Julien was with them. She said his name sometimes as they walked along, just to hear the way it sounded in the deep forest. She and Weitz took their lunch at the edge of the woods, usually an apple or a slice of bread cut from the loaf Ava had sent along. Then Weitz painted, and Lea lay in the grass in the sun, one hand thrown over her eyes. Through the weeks the two had grown close. People said the war would soon be ending, that they would soon be safe, and that crossing the border was easier with fewer guards to protect the crossings. Lea often thought about what her mother had commanded her to do. All things must end.

“Would you kill someone if you had to?” she asked the old man one Sunday.

He glanced at her, before returning to his painting. It was the time of year when huge migrations of birds were crossing over the mountains from the south. “What wrong did this person I’m to murder do to me?” he asked. “Did they kill my son?”

Lea turned to him, propping herself up on one elbow to study the old man. She should probably not have asked his opinion. He was painting the clouds from the inside out.

“Did they kill my wife?” he asked.

“You don’t know the reason,” Lea admitted. “You are just to do as you’re told.”

“Then I’d be a fool or a lunatic,” Weitz said.

Or simply a girl honoring her mother.

“Would you do it if I asked you?” she wanted to know.

He glanced at her again. Talking about murder was a reasonable conversation in the world in which they lived.

“No,” he said.

Lea sat up. The sunlight was thin, perhaps that was why she shivered so. She wished she were far away from here, in some far-flung land, on some hot beach where the sand was like sugar. Ava said the heron went there when the weather changed; that he couldn’t last through winter. So far he hadn’t returned with a message from Julien, and she had no way to ask him the sorts of questions she now asked Weitz.

“What if your son asked you to do it?”

Weitz was finished for the day, out of precious homemade paint. He would mix more in the morning from the berries he’d had Lea gather earlier in the day. He began to pack up the brushes he had smuggled out of Belgium, his canvas seat, and what was left of their lunch. He couldn’t yet speak to answer Lea’s question. His son had been dragged off the street. He’d been a promising young artist who had joined the underground in 1941, when Flemish fascist collaborators burned down the house of the chief rabbi in Antwerp. Twenty-five thousand Belgian Jews were taken onto the trains the following year, Weitz’s son among them. There would be no one to remember him or his art once Weitz was gone.

They walked side by side through the dusk. They always waited for this hour to return to the house, the time when they could slip through shadows on the steep streets of the village. There was some talk of Ava being Lea’s cousin, but on one of their outings Lea had said she had no family left. Weitz felt his heart go out to her. If she asked this question she must have her reasons.

“Yes,” he admitted. “I would do it.”

Lea did her best not to cry, and Weitz did his best not to notice her distress.

“What color is the sky?” he asked her as they walked on, past the train station, past the town hall, past the shuttered shops. She had slowed her pace to suit his limp.

“Black,” she answered with certainty. “With stars.”

“So people say,” Weitz said sadly. Dozens of colors were there, a hundred perhaps for those who could see underneath the darkness. “You should look more carefully.” When they reached the house, Weitz stood outside for a while longer before he went in to paint the real colors of the night.





CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE


THE LABYRINTH




IZIEU, APRIL 1944

THE MILICE SEARCHED EVERY HOUSE in the villages near Izieu, rounding up Jews, refugees, and Resistance members. When they found Julien in a shed, he was deeply asleep, exhausted and freezing. He’d broken in and had been living on jars of fruit preserves that had long ago been stored on the shelves. A milicien kicked him in his injured leg, still badly bruised. Roughly awakened, he let out a shout as he rose up from a pile of hay where he’d fallen into a deep, dreamless sleep. He didn’t argue when he was told to follow the policeman, but instead merely held up his hands and did as he was told, his mind racing. He had not survived Izieu to be picked up and led away like a mule.