The Paris Library(44)

He opened his arms, and I slid into his embrace.



* * *




A WEEK LATER, MISS Reeder approached, her brow creased with concern. “The American Hospital is overwhelmed,” she told me. “Why don’t you lend a hand for a few days? It’s a long shot, but you might encounter someone who knows your brother or his regiment.”

“What about the Library?”

“Books will outlast us all. Go find out what you can.”

Nurses rushed from one operating theater to another, starched caps askew, aprons drenched in blood. Soldiers in soiled bandages slumped on chairs in the corridors. Volunteers washed the men’s faces and feet. I filled a basin with warm water and knelt before a serviceman, and another, then another. Each time I cleaned the blood from the face of a dark-haired soldier, I hoped Rémy’s intelligent eyes would be revealed. Countless faces later, I rose to stretch, to see if I could be of assistance in the ward, where the wounded lay on narrow beds. I didn’t know whether to be relieved because Rémy wasn’t here among the injured or scared that he was out there fighting.

At dawn, I fell onto a cot in the staff room only to wake two hours later to serve breakfast. In their pajamas, French and English soldiers were stripped of uniforms, rank, and nationality. Social order was based on the severity of injuries. This was how I gauged the wounds: if a man flirted, he was feeling better; if he stayed silent, he was hurting.

On a gurney, straight out of surgery, one moaned. I moved closer, smoothing his creased brow with my handkerchief, which Maman had dipped in lavender water.

“You,” he said.

“Me,” I replied.

“You washed my face. Your touch was tender…” He dozed off, then startled awake. “I love you.”

“With everything they pumped into you,” I replied, “you’d love a goat.”

In the ward the next evening, I helped him write a letter home to America. He’d crossed into Canada and signed up with the Royal Air Force. “I was never one to sit on the bench,” he said. He gestured to my hands, raw from washing the wounded. “You aren’t, either.”

“I’m used to patching up books, not people.”

“Books?”

“I’m a librarian.”

“Do you shush people?”

I gave his arm a playful poke. “Only impertinent soldiers.”

“Wish we were in a library now.”

“What kind of reader are you?” It was the first time in weeks that I’d asked the question.

“The Bible. Where I’m from, they’re big on the Bible.”

“Do you want me to bring you one?”

“God, no! I mean, no thank you, I’ve already read it.”

“How about I bring you something to read tomorrow?”

“I’d like that.”

He yawned, and an instant later, he fell asleep. It was nearly 9:00 p.m., and I needed to get home before Maman picked apart her ferns in worry. As I walked toward the door, a private named Thomas reached out, his fingers grazing my bloodied dress. He was nineteen. A barber, before. Yesterday, when I’d brought him a copy of Life with Lana Turner on the cover, he refused to open the magazine. “No need to look further,” he insisted.

“Don’t leave, Mademoiselle Bookworm.” He clutched at my hem.

I brushed his hair—brown like Rémy’s—from his forehead.

“Don’t leave,” he whispered again.

Maman would have to wait. I tucked the blanket underneath his chin.

“Talk to me,” he said.

“About what?”

“Anything.”

“I wish you could meet my habitués at the Library. There’s an Englishman—imagine a crane wearing a paisley bow tie. And his French friend—a walrus with a bushy mustache. Each day, they light a stinky cheroot and debate. Today’s topic: Proust’s madeleine, should it have been a croissant? Yesterday’s: Who’s the greatest athlete with a J in his name? Johnny Weissmuller or Jesse Owens.”

I was rewarded with a small smile. “They’re both wrong—it’s the rower Jack Beresford. I want to hear more.”

“There’s Madame Simon, with hand-me-down dentures that don’t fit her big mouth. Oh là là, she loves to gossip.”

“Like the women at my church. More.”

“The latest chin-wag is about my favorite subscriber, a professor with a mysterious past. ‘She married a man half her age,’ Madame Simon began, but our cataloger, stern Mrs. Turnbull with crooked blue-gray bangs, interrupted, ‘No, he was twice her age.’ Well, they were both right—the professor’s first husband was twice her age, and the second half her age. Then they speculated about the third.”

“The third?” he said. “What a life.”

I glanced at the clock. Nearly eleven.

“Don’t go,” he said.

His voice had become hoarse, so I lifted his head and gave him a sip of water. “You’ll never be alone,” I promised. “Shall I tell you more? You’d recognize the professor from a distance because she always wears purple. She talks about books like they’re her best friends…”

“I want to meet her.”