The World That We Knew(86)

It was hard to talk after that, no one wanted details, how tall the grass was in the place where Victor was arrested, how there in the field the doctor had found a perfect white tooth.

When she saw how Julien brooded when his brother was mentioned, Lea took his hand and challenged him to a chess game, which lightened his mood. Each insisted they would easily win. Ava and the doctor could hear them laughing and teasing one another in the parlor.

“Will you leave tonight?” Dr. Girard asked.

“Yes. I’ll see them to the border.”

Girard had given the boy a compass, in honor of his brother and Ettie. Now he poured himself a drink, and offered Ava one as well, but she declined. He had two women to mourn now, and perhaps he drank a little more than he should in the evenings.

“You could stay here,” he said casually.

Ava gave him a hard look. “If you’re searching for a housekeeper you should look elsewhere.”

“That’s not what I want, Ava. You’re a healer. I saw it myself. I could use your help. When the war is over, there will be so many wounded from the prison alone, we won’t have enough hands.”

“I have no training.”

“I’ll train you, or more likely you’ll train me.”

But Ava knew what would happen when they came near the border. Lea would honor her mother, and Ava would allow her to do what was meant to be.

“If life was different.” She shrugged.

The doctor remembered how she had dared to shake her fist at the angel at the window; he’d been stunned that she had such nerve, but by the next day the angel was gone.

“I know you’ve seen the man in the black coat. I have as well, outside of sickrooms, in hospitals, in my own home. There aren’t many of us who have encountered him and are still here to talk about it, you know. You sent him away.”

“But how do I defeat him so that he won’t return?” She wished to be ready should he come again.

“There’s only one way. You have to trick him. And you must be willing to change places with the person he’s come for.”

“You’ve done so?”

“I tried. And failed. The other person has to agree to let you take her place.” He leaned forward, the memory burning hot inside of him. “My wife would not agree.”

He was fairly certain Ettie would not have agreed either. This is what happened with stubborn, principled people and so it was impossible to claim death’s attention. “To do so you have to accept a sacrifice.”

Ava understood completely. To make such a trade you had to be willing to forsake your life.



It was dusk when they left and the air was eggshell thin. The world was so green it swallowed every shadow. Before long a cold moon would rise into the sky. Julien walked ahead of them, his eyes on the compass the doctor had given him. There was enough starlight pricking through the sky so they would be able to see. Ava and Lea had Julien lead the way, even though Ava saw the world as a map. It was the last time she and Lea would be together and so they walked side by side, as they always had, their strides evenly matched.

Julien turned and waved at Lea, a grin on his face. Lea waved back. Inside of him was the boy she had known, but she was the only one who could see him.

“What will happen to him?” she asked Ava. She had worried about him for so long it was difficult to stop. No person should know what fortune would bring, but the nuns at the convent had gossiped, insisting that Ava could read the future, and all Lea wanted to know was whether Julien would continue to keep his promise to her.

Lea and Ava both gazed at the young man ahead of them, the one who had given them plums on their first day in Paris, who had listened outside Lea’s door when she wept for her mother and grandmother, who had lost every member of his family.

“He’ll be the man you trust.”

That was all Ava would say, no matter how Lea begged for more, but in the end, it was enough.



They planned to cross near midnight, when it was most difficult to see shapes moving through the woods, when invisibility was a virtue and a gift. Once they went across they would be arrested, then officially questioned by the Swiss guards before being turned over to the Red Cross. There was only one answer to any of the guards’ questions: I fled because I feared for my life.

Lea wore the blue dress her mother had sewn. She felt naked without the locket she had lost before she reached the doctor’s house. She had nothing to take across with her except for Ahron Weitz’s painting of the sky. She had shown it to Julien. By then, he had realized he would not be a painter; he was a mathematician and had always been so. At night, when he regarded the stars, he often felt his father beside him. He viewed the world in shapes, for indeed, the universe was made up of pieces of a puzzle. He remembered his lessons in the library. His father had said there was a logic to the natural world and to life itself, it was simply that the plan hadn’t yet been understood.

He and Lea had decided they would go to New York, where anything was possible. They wanted a new world, one where the future could be made by anyone who wished to do so, a country made by immigrants.

“What if they separate us?” Lea asked.

“That won’t happen. We go together.”

They would cross the border at the Wolf’s Plain. They knew who they had been, but not who they would become. They would find that out as they lived the rest of their lives. The sky was black, but Lea could see what was inside of it now, and she wished she could tell Ahron Weitz that she finally understood how much more complicated things were than she’d ever imagined. Julien pointed out the constellations his father had named when they stood in their garden, and Lea leaned back to see the thousands of stars in the sky. When they crossed over they would carry everyone they had ever known or loved with them. They would close their eyes and still see it all.