The Paris Library(77)
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IN THE CHILDREN’S room, Bitsi bit her lip when she read the letter. Rémy meant well, but how could we send food to a stranger when there wasn’t enough for family?
“Bonjour, les filles,” Margaret said as she entered. “Odile, why aren’t you at the reference desk? Subscribers are queuing.”
“We’ve had some news.” I translated the letter.
Her brow furrowed. “Each month, you’ll be able to send a proper package, I promise.”
The following day, she brought in a small crate of dry sausage, cigarettes, and chocolate. “How?” I asked in wonder.
“Don’t you worry about that.”
Remembering the gilded portraits on her wall, I imagined Margaret selling off ancestors one by one, in order to feed Rémy. She was the dearest of friends.
20 December 1942
Dear Rémy,
We hope the package we sent got through. Does the cardigan fit? Do you recognize the colors? The yarn is from sweaters Maman saved from when we were children. Sorry the sleeves weren’t the same length. In my case, practice doesn’t make perfect.
Last night, Paul and I went to the Countess’s production of Hamlet at the Odéon Theatre. It felt wonderful to do something ordinary like we did before the war. Bitsi and I are going to pick holly in the woods so we can decorate the bundles of books we deliver. Lately, there’ve been fewer requests, which is odd.
Bitsi misses you terribly. We all do. We want you home.
Love,
Odile
KRIEGSGEFANGENENPOST
1 February 1943
Dear Odile,
Thanks for the delicious food! Even more wonderful was seeing Marcel’s face when he received the package. Please don’t deprive yourselves for us. I never should have asked.
Everything’s fine here. Except that Marcel almost got killed. In the common room, a few prisoners were huddled around the radio, listening to the BBC, the sound no more than a sigh, when the guards charged in. The rest of us hightailed it out of there, but poor Marcel was so engrossed he didn’t notice. The guards shattered the radio and lined up all one hundred of us in the courtyard—no coats on, of course—promising to go easy if we confessed. None of us admitted anything. The Kommandant forced Marcel to his knees and held a pistol to his head. “Tell me who was with you, or I’ll kill you.” Do you know what that jackass replied? “Then I’ll die alone.”
Love,
Rémy
Paris
1 June 1943
Herr Kommandant:
I have written to the French police with no results. Now I turn to you.
The American Library has caricatures of Hitler in their collection, and anyone can see them. That’s not all. As I mentioned to the police, librarians smuggle books to Jewish subscribers, including banned books that no one should be reading.
Librarian Bitsi Joubert says vile things about German soldiers. She has one billeted in her apartment, and God only knows how she abuses him. Volunteer Margaret Saint James buys food from the black market. To look at her plump cheeks, you wouldn’t know many people are practically starving. Subscriber Geoffrey de Nerciat donates money to Résistants and lodges them in his grand apartment.
In the back room of the Library, subscriber Robert Pryce-Jones listens to the BBC, though it’s strictly forbidden. And that is not the only annoying noise one hears. The creaking of footsteps echoes from the attic—locked at all times—and I wonder what or who the librarians are hiding.
Pay a visit and see for yourself.
Signed,
One who knows
CHAPTER 30
Odile
WHEN THE POST arrived, I set the fashion magazines on the shelves. Mode du Jour reminded readers that “Intelligence and taste aren’t rationed,” and that while shoes get worn-out, hats never do. I missed Time and Life. I turned to commiserate with the man beside me, one I’d never seen before. Once I would have taken in his pinched lips and green tweed suit and assumed he was an uptight professor. Now, I’d say a mole. I swallowed. Paranoia. Nazi propaganda had got to me. Surely he was harmless, though he did tuck an old journal into his jacket.
I scowled. “Periodicals stay here.”
He put it back on the shelf and stalked out.
“Brava!” Boris applauded. “You’re as intimidating as Madame Mimoun at the National Library, a real dragon.”
I curtsied. “I try.”
When Bitsi arrived at work, she merely nodded in greeting. These days, she was so quiet that it frightened me. Wanting to keep an eye on her, I insisted that I needed help delivering books to Professor Cohen. We climbed the escargot stairs to the second floor, where the professor lifted the hefty biographies from our arms.
“I’ve finished my novel.” She gestured to the pile of paper on the table.
“Congratulations!” I said.
I was surprised to see that the jaunty spark in her eye was extinguished, and disappointment had taken up residence.
She sighed. “The editor won’t publish it.”
I was sure of the reason, and I knew she was, too. No French publisher could publish a work by a Jewish author.
“I’m sorry,” I said.