The Book of Lost Names

by Kristin Harmel

  Hours later on a train bound for Paris, after she had said goodbye to Père Clément for the last time, she was leafing absently through the Twain book, Rémy’s last gift to her, when she stopped abruptly on a passage in chapter seventeen. There was a mark—a tiny dot—above the first letter of the first word, which is what had caught her eye, for it reminded her instantly of the markings they’d left in the Book of Lost Names.

  First one and then another pair of eyes followed the minister’s, and then almost with one impulse the congregation rose and stared while the three dead boys came marching up the aisle, Tom in the lead, Joe next, and Huck, a ruin of drooping rags, sneaking sheepishly in the rear! They had been hid in the unused gallery listening to their own funeral sermon!

  Eva stared at the page, her heart pounding. In the story, Tom and his friends fake their own deaths, a plotline Eva had forgotten about entirely, since it had been a decade and a half since she’d last read the book. Was it crazy to wonder whether Rémy had meant to leave her a message, a subtle sign that he planned to do the same if things went wrong? Was he trying to tell her that he might still be out there, that she shouldn’t give up on him?

  Then again, if he was alive, he would have come for her by now. He would have met her on the steps of the Mazarine Library, as he’d once promised to. At the very least, he would have returned to Aurignon to see Père Clément. No, it was impossible, wasn’t it? The speck of ink over the first word in the passage could just as easily have been an errant smudge of dirt or a meaningless mark from the pen of a stranger years before. Maybe it wasn’t a sign at all.

  Still, hope was a dangerous thing. It grew like a field of wildflowers within Eva, blossoming in all the spaces that had been filled with darkness and despair, until she began to believe with all her heart in the possibility that Rémy might have lived through the war after all. And so she returned to the Mazarine Library, where she waited each day in vain for her prince, reading and rereading the Twain passage and praying for a miracle.

  * * *

  It was a year later, in June 1946, that her father lay on his deathbed and begged her to stop dreaming of a reunion that would never come.

  “Please, Eva,” he said between gasps of air. He was dying a slow and terrible death, his lungs deteriorating from a cancer that had crept in to take what the Germans had left behind. “You must let go of your sadness, of your hope for your Rémy, or you will never have a life of your own.”

  “How can I give up on him?”

  “Oh, my dear Eva, he’s gone.” Tatuś coughed again, long and hard. “And that book he left for you is just a book. You’re holding on to a ghost. That isn’t what I want for you. It’s not what your mother would have wanted. And I never knew him, Eva, but Rémy wouldn’t have wanted that, either.”

  “But what if—?”

  “Eva, please. You must promise me that you will come back to life.”

  She held his hands in hers, and as he passed from this world to the next, she leaned down and kissed him on the forehead, her teardrops falling like rain. “I promise, Tatuś.”

  And then she was alone in the world, as alone as she’d ever been. She buried him, and with him the hope that impossible dreams can come true. She visited the Mazarine Library just once more, on a sunny afternoon that autumn, and when she stopped at Les Deux Magots on a whim for a coffee on the way home, she found herself in an animated conversation with a book-loving Jewish tourist from America who had come to Paris to follow in the footsteps of Ernest Hemingway.

  Before she could second-guess herself, Eva had offered to show the man—who introduced himself as Louis Abrams—around her city, and by the end of the second day with him, she realized she was enjoying herself. It was wonderful to practice her English, and being around someone else who respected the written word as much as she did was exhilarating.

  He kissed her for the first time between the shelves of the Sainte-Geneviève Library, where she had taken a job. On the fourth day, just before he was scheduled to leave, he dropped to one knee in the Jardin des Tuileries and asked her to come to the United States with him, to be his wife. “I know we don’t know each other very well, yet,” he said. “But I will try for the rest of my life to make you happy.”

  She saw in him a man who would be her friend, a companion with the same interests who could appreciate her love of books. And in his offer of marriage, she saw the chance for a fresh start. Tatuś was right, Rémy wasn’t coming back. Eva knew that she would never find peace here in France, where the shadows of all she had lost still loomed so large. And so she said yes, and a month later found herself on a ship to America bound for a new life.

  And as the years went by, she did grow to love Louis, though never the way she had once loved Rémy. Some chapters must be finished, though, some books closed. And when, years later, she had a son, she knew her transformation was complete. Her child saw her only as a ghost of the person she had once been. Her family had no idea she had been a fighter for France, a forger who had saved hundreds of lives, a woman who had once loved with her whole heart.

  It was better that way, she told herself. The past was in the past. But never once, in all those years, did she love Rémy any less than she had on the day she saw him last. Nor did she stop wondering about the fate of the Book of Lost Names—or whether Rémy had seen her message within its pages before he died.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  May 2005

  The German librarian, Otto Kühn, looks just as he did in the photograph that accompanied the New York Times article. I like him instantly; his eyes are kind, his English nearly perfect.

  “I’m so very sorry for the things the Germans did, the things we took,” he says once I have introduced myself and he’s leading me through the library toward his office. “And I wish to apologize profusely for the theft of this book that meant so much to you.”

  I want to race ahead of him, to grab the book, to open it to the page that has been mine since 1942, but I force myself to breathe, to slow down. I’ll have my answer soon enough, and it might just break my heart. “Sir,” I reply, “we are only responsible for the things we do—or fail to do—ourselves. You owe me no apology.”

  “Still,” he says, “it was all a tragedy. There are so many books, Mrs. Abrams, millions of them. I won’t live long enough to find their owners. And, of course, so many of the people whose books were taken have been dead for years. In so many cases, it’s too late.” He opens the door to his office, and suddenly my heart is racing, because there, on the center of his cluttered desk, is my book. I would know it anywhere. My heart is in my throat, making it hard to breathe, hard to speak.

  “It’s real,” I whisper. “It’s really here after all these years. The Book of Lost Names.”

  “Ah, yes, Nicola—our receptionist—mentioned that you had called it that.” He crosses behind his desk and picks up the book. “Why? And what is the meaning of the code inside? I’m very eager to know.”

  I gather myself. “And I will tell you. But please, Herr Kühn, may I look at the book first? I’ve waited a very long time for this.”

  “Of course, of course, ma’am. I’m so sorry.” He hands the book to me, and for a few seconds, the world seems to freeze, and I simply stare at it, feeling its warm, rich leather beneath my fingertips.

  I run my thumb down the familiar gilded spine and touch the worn spot in the bottom right corner of the cover, and suddenly, the memories rush back in. I can feel Rémy’s hand brushing mine over this very cover on the day I met him. I can hear his voice whispering in my ear, an echo from a long-vanished chapter. It’s been more than sixty years since I last saw this book—since I last saw Rémy—but the past feels like it is here again, here in this room with me, and I choke up. Without meaning to, I raise the book to my lips and kiss it. I look up and see Kühn watching me. “I’m sorry,” I say.

  “Please, don’t apologize. These are the moments I live for. Reuniting a book with its rightful owner can be magical.�
�

  I nod, and then slowly, carefully, my heart leaping with hope I thought I’d buried forever, I open the book and turn to the first page. My page. The one with the star over the e and the dot over the v, the star over the J and the dot over the e Eva Traube. I will return to you. I stare at the unadorned words, despair sweeping over me.

  There is no third star. No new message from Rémy.

  I flip to the second page, Rémy’s page, just in case, but it looks just as it did the last time I saw it. A star over the first r, a dot over the first é. And a star and a dot for the first two letters of Épouse-moi.

  Marry me. I love you, I wrote in code a lifetime ago, hoping that Rémy would read the message, but now I know he didn’t, and as I close the book and press it to my chest, I’m shaking. The love of my life went to his grave without knowing how I felt. It is something I can never fix, never repair, and it makes me feel suddenly as if all the things I’ve done in my life since then have been meaningless.

  “Mrs. Abrams?” Kühn’s voice breaks through my grief, and I look up to see him regarding me with concern. “Are you all right? Do you need some water, perhaps?”

  I wipe away my tears, tears I have no right to cry. “No, I’m sorry. I’m fine.” I shake my head, trying to rid myself of the ghosts that are suddenly here with me. It is 2005, not 1944, and I owe this kind man some answers. It’s the least I can do. “Now, about that code.”

  He leans forward eagerly. “Yes, but take your time, ma’am. Whenever you’re ready.”

  I draw a deep breath. “The stars and the dots are the lost names, the names of the children too young to remember, the names we had to erase so they could survive. I hoped that one day, when the war ended, I could help them to reclaim who they’d once been. But we aren’t defined by the names we carry or the religion we practice, or the nation whose flag flies over our heads. I know that now. We’re defined by who we are in our hearts, who we choose to be on this earth.”

  He listens in silence, his eyes wide, as I tell him about how I learned to be a forger, how I met Rémy and Père Clément, how we worked so hard to help people escape from the tightening clutches of the Nazis. I explain Rémy’s idea of using the Fibonacci sequence to encode names so we could make sure that the war’s youngest victims were never forgotten.

  I tell him that after the war, years after I’d moved to America, my husband told me one day about an organization called Yad Vashem that had been founded in Jerusalem, the first Israeli memorial to victims of the Holocaust. Its title, Hebrew for memorial and a name, made me think of the names I’d lost along with the book, and slowly over the next few months, while Louis slept soundly beside me, I lay awake at night and made a mental list of the ones I could remember. There were over a hundred. When I finally contacted the people at Yad Vashem in the spring of 1956 with the real and false names I had been able to pull from the depths of my memory, they promised me they would try to find the children who had made it to Switzerland, in hopes that some of them might rediscover where they’d come from.

  “And did they?” Kühn asks. “Did they find any of the children?”

  I sigh. “I don’t know. I refused to tell them my name or give them my contact information. They wanted to recognize me for what I had done, but I didn’t want that. I was never a hero. I was just a young woman trying to do the right thing. In the end, though, I got it all wrong.”

  Kühn studies me for a minute, and when he finally speaks, his tone is gentle. “Mrs. Abrams, a very wise woman once told me that we are only responsible for the things we do—or fail to do—ourselves.” That earns him a small smile, and he smiles back before going on. “And it seems to me that you spent the war trying to help innocent people.”

  “But I lost the people I loved most.” I hesitate and whisper, “I got my mother killed. And Rémy died, too, Herr Kühn. It doesn’t matter how many people I helped if I couldn’t do right by them.”

  “You’re not the one who wronged them, Mrs. Abrams.”

  I’m crying now, blubbering like an old fool, and then Kühn is comforting me by pulling me to his chest, and it feels just like being held—and forgiven—by Père Clément all those years ago. When I finally pull away and look up at him, he holds my gaze.

  “Do you know what else this very wise person told me?” he asks. “She said that we’re defined by who we are in our hearts, who we choose to be on this earth. And I believe, Mrs. Abrams, that you chose to be a hero, even if you don’t see it that way.” He holds out the book and says, “It’s yours if you want it, ma’am, after the requisite paperwork, of course, but if you don’t mind, I’d love to keep it for a few days to make a list of the names. Maybe I can help with the ones you couldn’t remember all those years ago. Wouldn’t that be a gift, to be able to reunite some lost children with their pasts? In fact, why don’t you stay and help me?”

  I look at the book and then back at Kühn. “My son is probably worrying about me. I—I left without telling him.”

  “So call him. Explain that you have some unfinished business to attend to.”

  “But… he knows nothing of the person I used to be.”

  “Then isn’t it time you tell him? Maybe the first identity to recover should be your own.”

  I stare at the book. It holds the most important message I ever sent, though I sent it too late. And isn’t that the story of my life when it comes to the people I love? I was too late when I tried to rescue my father from Drancy. Too late when I returned to Aurignon for my mother. I don’t want to be too late with my son, too.

  I look up at Kühn. “Might I borrow your phone?”

  He beams at me. “I thought you’d never ask, Mrs. Abrams. Just hit two for an outside line, then zero-zero-one to call America.”

  I pick up the receiver, punch in the numbers, and then dial my son’s cell phone number. I listen to it ring once, twice, and then he answers.

  “Ben?” I begin.

  “Mom? Where are you? I’ve been so worried.”

  “There’s no need to worry about me.” I exchange smiles with Kühn once more and then close my eyes, trying to see Rémy’s face in my mind. “Ben, sweetheart, it’s time I tell you who I really am.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Night has fallen by the time Kühn and I make it through the first six dozen coded names in the book. After getting off the phone with an incredulous Ben, I had offered to stay, for after all, I erased these names years ago; it’s only fair that I be the one to help restore them.

  “Do you have a place to stay, Mrs. Abrams?” Kühn asks, leaning back in his chair. “I think we should have a bit of a rest and start fresh tomorrow. There’s a hotel just down the street that sometimes hosts the library’s guests; I can make a call to arrange a room for you, if you’d like.”

  I want to keep going, but these names have already waited more than sixty years, and I suppose they can wait another day. Frankly, I’m exhausted. “That sounds lovely, Herr Kühn. Thank you.”

  As he picks up the phone to call the hotel, I flip to page 308, the last page on which I drew a star. This page belongs to the girl we called Jacqueline, the little one Rémy and I helped across the Swiss border on that cold winter night so long ago, the night we made love, the night he offered me forever, the night I said no. Her real name was Eliane Meisel. I wonder what happened to her, whether her parents lived, whether she found her way home.

  I’ve just closed my eyes, trying to see her sweet little face in my mind through the fog of time, when suddenly, Kühn and I are interrupted by a voice in the doorway. “Entschuldigung,” says a woman’s voice, and my eyes snap open. A middle-aged security guard hovers there uncertainly.

  “Guten Abend, Mila.” Kühn sets the phone down and turns to the guard. “Wie kann ich dir behilflich sein?”

  She glances at me and then rattles off a few sentences in rapid German to Kühn, nodding once to the Book of Lost Names. I try to decipher what she’s saying, but I can’t follow it. Kühn replies to her qui
ckly, then stands and turns to me as she leaves.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “That was our night security guard, Mila. She says that there’s a man outside the library saying the book is his, that he just flew in from the States and can’t wait another minute to see it.”

  “My book?” I pick it up and clutch it to my chest defensively. “Well, that’s impossible.”

  “We’ve had a few of these, I’m afraid,” Kühn says, shaking his head. “Collectors, trying to claim books for their collections. It figures that this one would come at night, when he thinks he can strong-arm us.”

  “Should we call the police?”

  Kühn smiles. “Mila is tougher than she looks, and so am I. For that matter, I suspect you are, too. I think we will be just fine. Let me go get rid of him. I’ll be back in a moment.”

  “I’ll come with you. If there’s someone trying to steal my book, I want to look him in the eye.”

  He hesitates, then nods. “Let’s lock the book away, shall we?”

  I wait while he secures it inside his desk drawer, and as I follow him out into the darkened main room of the library, I realize I already miss it, miss the warmth of it in my hands. It still feels like a part of me, even all these years later.

  Mila is standing by the front door. “He’s just out there,” she says as we walk up beside her. “Come on.”

  Kühn and I follow her outside, where a white-haired man in a light trench coat stands several steps away, his back to us as he looks out over the city.

  “Herr?” Mila asks, her tone firm and steely, and the man turns slowly, the hint of a polite smile on his face.

  But then his smile falls and his jaw goes slack as his eyes meet mine, and I’m as frozen as he is. I’m aware of Kühn saying something beside me, but his words sound very distant, because suddenly, the years are falling away, and I’m walking toward the man, my head spinning. I’m seeing a ghost, and though my brain tells me it’s impossible, my heart knows it isn’t.