“I want to go home,” I said.
“Maybe you’re right. Maybe we should go.”
“Yes, maybe you should,” Odile said.
Odile.
We turned to face her. Her brows were raised, curled like question marks. What were we doing in her room? What were these bits of paper at our feet?
She was happy to see me. I could see it in the lift of her lips, in her gentle gaze.
Mary Louise and I were used to getting in trouble, though we’d never been caught red-handed. Part of me wanted to apologize to Odile for invading her privacy, but most of me wanted her to apologize for that nasty letter, for teaching me those horrible French words, for making me think she’d been in the Resistance when she was just a liar.
“Was it you who took my books from the shelves?” Her voice was serene.
Dropping the letters, Mary Louise pushed past me and ran off. But if Odile had taught me one thing, it was to stand my ground. I looked her straight in the eye. Straight into her soft brown eyes. “Who are you?”
CHAPTER 34
Odile
PARIS, JULY 19, 1943
BITSI DIDN’T BOTHER with bonjour. She barged into my bedroom, where I was writing to Rémy at my desk. Bedraggled and out of breath, she announced, “Boris was playing cards!”
“Cards?”
“And then he was shot!”
“Shot?” My hand flew to my heart. “Is he… is he alive?”
“They hauled him off to Pitié Hospital for interrogation.”
Under the control of the Gestapo, “Pity” Hospital was practically a death sentence. No, not Boris. I couldn’t bear to lose another friend.
“At home, I pace and fret,” Bitsi continued, “so I went to the Library to get some work done. The Countess had just come back from talking to Dr. Fuchs. She said that Boris’s wife rang her at midnight. In the morning, the Countess went straight to the Bibliotheksschutz. ‘Boris Netchaeff has been with the Library for nearly twenty years,’ she informed him. ‘He would never do anything to compromise it. You promised to help if there was a problem.’
“He asked her to prepare a written report. Ha! The Countess knows about the Nazis and their reports! She presented a full account of the incident, typed and signed by a witness. He phoned someone, who informed him that Boris was scheduled to be deported.”
“Deported!”
“But Dr. Fuchs promised to intervene.”
That was something. I knew he’d keep his word. The Bibliotheksschutz wasn’t as bad as the rest of them. “How can we help Boris?”
“By helping Anna.”
We bicycled to the Netchaeffs’ in the nearby suburb of Saint-Cloud. Is Anna in? We were whisked into the apartment, filled with friends and relatives talking in hushed tones. Yes, Hélène had been in the next room and heard everything. Poor little cabbage, she’s only six. What were the Nazis searching for? I hope they let Anna see Boris. Would you believe the Gestapo had the gall to come back, at three in the morning, no less? They wanted the cigarettes they’d seen on the table.
Late that evening, Anna returned, pale as the moon. The Gestapo had shoved her into a dank room in the basement and shown her photo after photo of men she didn’t know—the same ones they’d shown Boris—before allowing her to see him. Still in his blood-caked shirt, he hadn’t been examined by a doctor.
* * *
IN AUGUST, BORIS was transferred to the American Hospital, thanks to the intervention of Dr. Fuchs. Boris had been shot through the lung, and because the wound wasn’t treated for several days, a life-threatening infection had set in. After a month, doctors allowed him to have visitors other than his wife. In the hospital’s grand entrance hall, Anna told Bitsi and me, “He’s feeling better. Yesterday, he teased me about bringing him a pack of Gitanes.”
I smiled, not entirely sure he was joking.
“Hello there!” Margaret said, rushing toward us. “Sorry I’m late.”
I hadn’t seen her for weeks. Tanned and insouciant, she brimmed with happiness.
“Poor Boris!” Margaret said. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
“I rang,” I said tersely. “You never returned my calls.”
“I was at the seaside with—” She glanced at Bitsi and Anna. “I was at the seaside. I should have stayed in better touch.”
On the way to see Boris, one of the nurses greeted me warmly. It was touching to be remembered. She and I chatted in the hall while Anna made sure that he was awake.
Once in the room, I made a beeline for Boris. Fussing like Maman would, I tucked the blanket over his chest. His green eyes were soggy with painkillers, but the corner of his mouth lifted like it did when he was about to say something silly.
“Our country has truly become France Kafka.”
“It’s been a Metamorphosis.” I tried to keep my tone light.
“Sorry to leave you on your own at the circulation desk,” he said.
“I don’t mind—I’m glad to help readers. Of course, our habitués didn’t let the annual closure stop them from coming in every day! Now, promise you won’t overdo.”
“Overdue?” he quipped.
Too emotional to speak, Bitsi kissed his cheek, then moved to the corner of the room.
“Boris, one has to admire your timing,” Margaret said, “getting shot and recuperating during the annual closure.”
“It wasn’t the first time I’ve been shot,” he said drowsily, “but I hope it’s the last.”
“What?” she cried.
His eyelids fluttered shut.
“He tires easily,” Anna said as she accompanied us to the entrance, “but he insists he’ll be back to work in no time.”
“I believe him,” Bitsi said. “When can we visit again? Do you need us to watch Hélène?”
As the two of them spoke, Margaret pulled me aside. “I can’t introduce Felix to my daughter, she’s too little to keep a secret. But I need one person to know him, to see how kind he is. I’d like you to meet him.”
Did she truly expect me to take tea with her lover? “You shouldn’t be seeing him,” I snapped.
“He saved my life. He’s saving Rémy’s life.”
She was right. But she was wrong.
“I’m asking for an hour of your time,” she said.
Margaret often spoke without thinking, but to ask something so vile, she was not merely thoughtless, she was out of her mind.
“Even five minutes would be too much!”
“When you needed something of me, I didn’t say no!” She huffed off.
“Are you two fighting?” Bitsi asked.
“It’s nothing,” I said. “You know how prickly I can be sometimes.”
“Only sometimes?” She raised her brow.
KRIEGSGEFANGENENPOST
3 September 1943
Dearest Odile,
This may well be my last letter to you. I’ve been ill, and the fellows tell me I’ve been delirious. My wound never healed, and without medicine, the infection keeps getting worse.
Don’t let this war, or anything, separate you and Paul. Marry him, sleep in his arms every night. There’s no reason both of us should be miserable. If I were there, I’d be with Bitsi. I’d spend every minute with her.
Whatever happens, please don’t grieve. I believe in God. Try to have faith.
Love,
Your Rémy
I pictured him lying on cold wooden planks, far from anyone he’d ever loved. Oh, Rémy. Please come home. Please come home. My belly lurched, and I ran to the water closet, where I crouched as my stomach heaved. Please don’t die. Please don’t die. When there was nothing left inside me, I moved to the corridor and leaned against the wall. My whole body hurt, my belly my head my heart. I ran my hands over my face, through my hair, down my neck, trying to ease the ache. There had to be something we could do. I tore open the medicine cabinet and grabbed ointments, mustard plasters, a bottle of aspirin (there were three pills left), anything that might help. Arm
s full, I went to find a box in the kitchen.
“What’s all this?” Maman eyed the jumble on the table. “What happened to your hair? You look like a madwoman!”
I read her the letter.
“Oh, dearest…” She helped prepare the package, though we both knew we’d already exceeded the amount of what we were able to send that month. “The authorities may not accept it,” she said, “but we will try.”
How astonishing that she was the calm one. Until this letter, I’d been convinced that Rémy would come home. Maybe Maman, who’d been through the Great War, knew better, and that’s why she’d taken the news of his imprisonment so hard.
* * *
A WEEK LATER, upon returning home from work, I was surprised to find the apartment unlit, as if no one was there. I turned on the entryway light and peeked into the sitting room. Alone, Maman sat dressed in black. “Word came,” she said. Her cheeks and even her lips were a ghostly white. The emotion had drained from her face like blood.
A paper lay at her feet, and I knew that Rémy was dead.
Once, when he and I were ten, we tussled and I fell hard, so hard it knocked the breath out of me. On my back, unable to move, I couldn’t raise my head, couldn’t say, “It wasn’t your fault.” I’d thought I was paralyzed, that something was severed. I felt like that now, unable to take off my jacket, to blink, to go to Maman. I stood there, so much frozen inside me.
“For so long, I hoped he’d be released,” she said, “that he’d make his way back to us.”
“Me too, Maman.” My voice caught. “Me too.”
It had hurt to hope, but now I knew it was more painful to give up hope. I sank beside her. She gripped my hand. Her rosary beads dug into my palm.
“But then, even before his last letter,” she said, “I knew. Somehow, I knew.”
“Were you on your own when word came?” I asked.
“Eugénie was here, thank goodness.”
I turned on the lamp. “Where is she?”
“She wanted to put on mourning.”
“We should send for Papa.”
She turned off the lamp. “He doesn’t deserve to know.”
“Oh, Maman…”
“Rémy enlisted to prove to Papa that he was a man.”
Even if it was true, blame wouldn’t bring Rémy back. If she remained fixated on my father, Papa would be dead to her, as dead as Rémy. I had to move Maman away from her resentment.
“We need to tell Bitsi,” I said.
“Tomorrow is time enough. Let her have one last night before we break her heart.”
In silence, Maman and I steeped in the shock of grief. For how long, I didn’t know. “Of course he wasn’t dead. He could never be dead until she herself had finished feeling and thinking.” 813. Their Eyes Were Watching God. I just had to keep thinking of him. Rémy penning an article at his desk. Rémy sipping coffee at our favorite café, calico cat on his lap. Rémy laughing with Bitsi. Rémy. Oh, Rémy. The fellows tell me I’ve been delirious. Rémy was gone. But how could that be, when there was so much I wanted to tell him?
CHAPTER 35
Paul
AT HIS DESK in the commissariat, Paul had one thing on his mind: Odile. If he could focus on her, he could forget everything else. Odile when they’d first met—she was angry, and he didn’t know why. Odile when he gave her a nosegay and her gaze softened. Her mouth, sweet and tart like cherries. The sway of her hips. Odile in her black dress, Odile without it. Her breasts. He loved to caress them, to taste them.
His boss pounded on the desk. “Don’t you have work to do?”
Paul shifted in his chair. “Yes, sir. But why—”
“Yours isn’t to ask questions. Yours is to shut up and follow orders. Here’s the list.”
Paul didn’t understand it. When war had been declared, the police had arrested Communists, Kraut pacifists living in France, a bunch of English folks—even ladies, and then Jewish people. On the poster beside his desk, the regulation stated: “Jews of both sexes, French and foreign, are to be subjected to random checks. They may also be interned. Agents of the police force are charged with the execution of the present order.”
Some colleagues had relished kicking people out of their apartments. Others feigned sickness to get out of the unpleasant work, but that wasn’t Paul’s way. He’d briefly considered fleeing to the Free Zone, but he refused to abandon his responsibilities like his father had. Paul wanted to take up the fight in North Africa with the Free French, but couldn’t abandon Odile. He’d turned down the promotion her father had offered so she would know that she came first. He’d told her things he’d never confided to anyone. His choice: Odile or everything and everyone else. The decision was easy.
He set off toward the farthest address on the list. He didn’t want to think about his job. Only Odile could push it from his mind. Odile on the bed. Odile, naked in the kitchen, whisking chocolat chaud in a stranger’s copper pot. At first, the trysts had been exciting, but now Paul was tired of sneaking around. He wanted to marry Odile. What if Rémy never came back? No one dared bring up the possibility. What could Paul do? Get a special license, and the second she said yes… He arrived at the address. He didn’t want to think about what he was about to do. Odile saying je t’aime. Odile fawning over his sketches. Odile reading Éluard aloud to him. Odile. Odile. Odile.
Paul tramped up two flights and rang the bell. A white-haired lady appeared at the door, and he said, “Madame Irène Cohen? I’m supposed to escort you to the police station.”
“What have I done?”
“Probably nothing. I mean you’re—” He would have said old, but it wasn’t polite to remind a woman of her age. “It’s a random check.”
When she turned to take a book from the table, Paul noticed a peacock feather tucked in her bun. “You’re right to bring a book along,” he said. “Administration gets longer every day.”
“I know you. You’re Odile’s fiancé.” She thrust the slim volume at his chest. “Please give this to her, she’ll know what to do.”
Surprised, he fumbled, and the book fell. When its spine hit the floor, the pages fluttered, and Paul saw the American Library bookplate—Atrum post bellum, ex libris lux. Odile had told him it meant “After the darkness of war, the light of books.”
He picked up the book. “Madame, I’m a policeman, not an errand boy. You’ll be home by dinner and able to return it to her yourself.”
“You’re naive, young man.”
Paul drew himself up, ready to tell her off. Naive! He was a worldly fellow! Just because he wasn’t a soldier didn’t mean he hadn’t seen anything. Why, he’d traveled all over France. He was the breadwinner for himself and his mother. Who was she to judge, crazy lady with a feather in her hair? Feather in her hair. He remembered her now, well not her exactly. There were plenty of old folks at the Library, and he didn’t know them all by name. He recalled Odile’s awe as she spoke of her favorite subscriber, the professor with a peacock feather in her hair.
Professor Cohen put on her coat. When Paul saw the yellow star on her lapel, he started to sweat, and beads of shame dripped down his body. He’d wanted to tell Odile about the roundup, that terrible morning in July when he and others on the force, including her father, had arrested thousands of Jews, entire families, even children. But it wasn’t just his work, it was her father’s.
Paul contemplated the library book in his hands. Should he shield Odile, or confide in her? Should he do his duty and arrest Professor Cohen, or should he leave this apartment and never return?
CHAPTER 36
Odile
SINCE WORD HAD come, Maman hadn’t let me go anywhere. For ten days, she trailed me throughout the apartment. I yearned for Rémy and for the solitude to mourn him, yet Maman stood watch. On the divan, I opened The Silence of the Sea, 843, and held it up like a shield. I just needed a moment of quiet, or better yet, to throw myself back into work. The Library needed me, and I was stuck at home.
“That book better not upset you,” Maman said.
I put it down. “I missed Boris’s first day back. I’m sure he isn’t up to working.”
“Neither are you! We’ve had a terrible shock.”
The sole visitor Maman allowed was Eugénie. I watched them, both in black, as they coddled the carrots growing in the window boxes.
“Another day or two,” Maman said.
“They’ll be bigger then,” Eugénie agreed.
Onto the bathroom, where they prepared the laundry. The charwoman had fled Paris, and no one blamed her. But that did leave the wash. Maman and Eugénie donned old petticoats to do the dirty work. They poured boiling-hot water over the linens in the tub. Scrub, rinse, wring. The effort brought a sheen of satisfaction to their faces. The work gave Maman something to do, something better than crying.
I tried to help, but Eugénie brushed me aside.
“It’ll ruin your hands. You’ll have your whole life to do such tasks.”
They wrung, I felt useless.
“This war,” Maman said.
“This war,” Eugénie agreed.
This war had made strange bedfellows.
“Let me.” I wrestled with a wet towel, barely wringing any water out of it.
“She never would have made it on the farm,” Eugénie giggled.
“My daughter’s a city girl,” Maman said proudly. “More brains than brawn. When I was her age, I could snap a chicken’s neck without thinking about it.”
Just when I thought I’d go mad, missing Paul, missing the Library, Bitsi thrust open the front door and pushed past Maman. Like us, she wore mourning. “We need you.” She poked my chest in rebuke, as if she thought staying home had been my idea. “The Countess is frail. Boris shouldn’t be out of bed. We’ve all suffered.”
Eugénie’s gaze flitted toward Maman. “Odile needs her rest.”
“So do I,” Bitsi said. “So do you.”
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