The World That We Knew

by Alice Hoffman

  Monsieur and Madame Cazales muttered between themselves, wondering if this was the young man who drove too fast.

  “No,” Julien said, having overheard them. “That’s not me. That was my brother.”

  Monsieur Cazales recognized the look on Julien’s face. There was no need to say more. The people in this village knew sorrow when they saw it. Cazales got the keys to his truck and told his wife he’d be back late, for these were roads that were difficult to navigate even for the best drivers, those who had lived here all their lives and would continue to do so no matter the circumstances.

  Marianne’s stomach was churning, and once Julien was gone, she knelt to be sick in the low bushes on the path where she used to walk at night to find the cows. The cows were white and their flanks had gleamed in the dark; when she had sounded a low whistle they would always follow her back to the barn. She could not go inside the house. It would be much too empty. That night she slept out near the hedges where there were migrating birds, little flickering golden things that darted through the dark.

  In the morning, she decided she would make a wreath for Victor to lay beside the one she’d woven for her father. As she walked through the fields of Queen Anne’s lace, she was deeply aware of Victor’s absence. How selfish he could be sometimes, how sure of himself, how easy to love. She imagined him everywhere. She sat in the grass, barefoot, gathering the flowers she would use to festoon his wreath, with tiny white roses and wild poppies to decorate the Queen Anne’s lace. Once, in Paris, not long before she’d left, he had come up to her in the corridor and put his hands on her waist. She had firmly said no. She had said it was impossible, but he’d said nothing was impossible and she should know that by now. She was glad Julien hadn’t told her any more than he had. Not the details. That would have been too much. He’s alive to us. That was all she’d wanted to hear.

  She went beyond the field early the next morning, out to where the wildflowers were blooming in a riot of color. The bees had all left, in search of empty logs and old trees to begin new hives. It was quiet and she felt her aloneness here now, just as she had felt alone while she was growing up. It was likely the reason she had left for Paris in the first place. It hurt to be so alone. She could move into the village, or go to a city and find work, not Paris, she couldn’t go there, but perhaps Lyon, someplace where she would see people whenever she walked out her door, where the wind would not remind her she was alone. And yet her father had lived here all his life, and had been completely by himself during the years Marianne was gone. He said there was not a more glorious place on earth. In that, she believed he was right. He said that a person could get used to being alone, and perhaps she would discover he was right about that, too.

  She sat on the porch all that afternoon, the wildflowers collected in her skirt, and by the time the wreath was done, she had decided to stay. She would eventually get some cows and more goats. She would go to a neighbor on the other side of the village who had many beehives and ask for his help restarting one in the field. Monsieur Cazales would likely be willing to help her in the fields until she could pay someone to work for her. It would be a beginning. She would walk the old paths and look at stars. She hadn’t lost the ability to find her way in the dark. She would be here alone, and as time passed, she would find that she enjoyed it, just as her father had. She would soon bring out a rocking chair so she could sit outside on clear nights. There was little need to go any farther than the village, or the neighbor’s. The world was right here. She had brought more than sixty children to freedom; she’d held down fences, her coat covering the barbed wire, and she would always have small gashes in the palms of her hands to remind her of this. She’d had her heart broken, she’d been in love, she had lived her life, she’d done something worthwhile, and wasn’t that what she had wished for most of all when she left the farm and continued walking, when she went to Paris and was so happy that she had no regrets about what she had done? She was especially glad that she had slept with Victor the last time, when the bee flew in his mouth, when she feared she would lose him and they spent all night together in her bed.

  It would be May of the following year when the baby arrived, that green time of the year when the bees are working so hard in the fields. By then, the war in France would be over. She would name the baby after Victor, and when the pastor came to call he would understand why she would not wish to have the child baptized in a church, since he was his father’s son. Instead, they would bring the baby to a stream beyond the field on his naming day and Marianne would hold him in her arms while the pastor recited Jacob’s blessing.

  May the angel who delivered me from all harm bless this boy.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  THE WEIGHT OF A SOUL

  ARDÈCHE, AUGUST 1944

  AVA FOUND THE BONES IN the field. The captain’s car had been towed away, but the burned-out skeleton of Victor’s car was left, blackened and smoldering. It was a hot day and the sun struck her skin as she made her way through the grass. She first came upon the shoes, then the bits of charred, blackened bone. She carried what was left of her maker into the woods. The place she chose was deeply green and silent. She dug the grave with her hands. Her fingernails broke, but they would grow back. The scent of earth stung the back of her throat. If she cried there was no one there to witness her tears, other than the birds that came to watch, in silence.

  She was without a maker. She was herself. She walked back to the doctor’s house, though it was a long way. When he saw her with the red shoes he came out to meet her, and they mourned together in the orchard. She had a solemn expression as she asked if, in his opinion as a doctor, he had come to the conclusion that all living things had souls. Creation began when God commanded, Let the earth bring forth living souls according to their kinds, domestic animals and creeping animals and wild animals. Ruach applied to spirit, the invisible force of a spark that animated all living creatures. If a soul was formed by meaning and purpose, did not every blade of grass have a soul, for each had a purpose. If this was true, Ava believed she might have one as well, just as her maker did.

  It was an unexpected question.

  “Perhaps,” he answered.

  Ava was clearly unsatisfied with his remark. “A dove feels sorrow when she loses her fledgling, does she not?”

  “I believe so,” he agreed, both to please her and because he had seen animals mourn one another.

  “And a cow separated from its mother, does it not cry and wail?”

  “Yes. True. The difficulty is, we can’t know if such responses are merely nature, ingrained to continue the species.”

  “So you’re saying no. That beasts are sparked with life, but not a soul.”

  Girard rubbed his eyes and thought this over. That conclusion didn’t seem right. He thought back to the dog he’d had when he was a boy, a long-legged hound. Once he’d been lost and the dog had tracked him for over ten hours. His parents had sobbed, assuming they would soon be planning a funeral, but the dog did not give up. When at last he tracked Henri into the woods and they saw each other, it was difficult to know who was more overjoyed. So now he asked himself, was the dog merely a beast trained to search for a missing child, or was he doing so out of his own desire, because his soul would not let him rest until he found his beloved master? It was a complicated matter, one he did not feel qualified to answer.

  “I’m a doctor,” he said. “I deal with flesh, not spirit.”

  “But you do deal with spirit. You speak to the dying. You’re with those who are being born. This is an honor not many humans have.” Ava was very serious. “Have you seen the World to Come?”

  He supposed she meant heaven. “Why do you ask?” Perhaps she was more religious than she appeared to be; all of this talk of spirit seemed to point to it.

  She wanted to know what she herself was, but she merely shrugged and said, “Isn’t it natural to wish to know such things?”

  “Actually, in my experience, it seems most p
eople try their best not to think of such things. They avoid doing so at all costs.”

  “But you do.” She seemed very sure of this. “You think about these matters every day.”

  In order to continue his work in the best way possible, he did not dwell on such matters. And yet, he had an inkling of what she was speaking about. There was often an illumination around the dead, and those being born seemed touched by a similar light. Sometimes it lasted for no longer than the time it took to blink, but there were other times when the light continued to hover, so that a room might be filled with sparks for an hour or more after someone had passed away. He’d never spoken of this to anyone, it seemed pompous, perhaps mad to suggest that he was in some way doing God’s work. Yet there were times when the doorway into the next world seemed to have been flung open and all he could do was get down on his knees and look with awe upon the gift of life. It was the same with death, how strong an adversary death was, how all encompassing, how its arrival could be a gift or a tragedy.

  When he thought about the matter of the spirit, Girard was forced to think of his wife as she truly was, not as sitting in the kitchen or parlor waiting for him, as he liked to imagine, but as mere bones, cold and in her grave. Now he must think of Ettie in the same way, when only days before she had been so alive, filled with spirit. He wondered what he might have done to change the fate of the two women he had loved in this world.

  He had lost his faith on a night when Sarah asked him to lie beside her. He took off his shoes and did so. She was so thin in his embrace, it broke his heart. He knew the way the ending of a life occurred, and was well acquainted with the simple facts of death—how the kidneys stopped functioning, how the breathing became labored and the body could no longer maintain heat and was cool to the touch. Girard knew it was impossible to stop what was happening, yet begged her to stay. She stroked his hair and Henri sobbed, as if he were the one who was dying. Sarah had already given up on the world they were in, the beautiful blue world where it was possible to fall in love at first sight. “I’ve done everything I wanted to,” she told him. They had never been able to have children, and instead of that lack being a burden, it had served to make them closer. It was fate, she always said, insisting she wasn’t disappointed. There was no one else to love, only one another.

  He kissed her, as if his breath could bring her back. He was not like other people, he was a doctor, and because of this he could see the Angel of Death. He knew him well. Look for the shadow, his father had told him when he was a boy and they visited the homes of the dying. And do what you can to defeat him. When he finished his medical studies his father reminded him to keep watch for the last angel. He’d thought the old man was joking with this Angel of Death nonsense, but his father’s expression was serious. He will surprise you and you’ll think you’re going mad sometimes, seeing all manner of things. But he’ll be there at the moment life ends. He’s always there.

  Since that time Girard had spied the angel as he threw open a window and stepped inside a house. He had seen him in the fields, moving through the sunflowers, and in hospital surgery wards. Now he had appeared in their bedroom. Henri was not about to give in to him. He had planned for this moment, and quickly shifted Sarah to his side of the bed, then positioned himself in her place.

  “Are you expecting me to take you instead?” the angel asked.

  Henri had been awake for three nights in a row and he knew he might be imagining the angel, but he remembered what his father had said. It will be him, there in the room.

  Azriel listed the names of everyone who would not be rescued by the doctor if he should die on this night. Since that time, Henri had kept a small leather notebook in which he later wrote down the names, at least the ones he could remember, and every time he met one of the people he crossed their name off the list, even though he had not been the one to decide to save them, so he took no credit. He wanted his wife, and no one else, but it was not his will to decide such things.

  He could not claim to know what a soul was, or who possessed it. But he knew that a dove mourned its young, and a dog yearned for its master, and a man who lost his wife never truly recovered, and love that was given was never thrown away. He went to the closet in his bedroom and carefully stored the red shoes. Then he went to the guest bedroom, where he found Ava sitting in the chair. He put a hand on her shoulder, and when she looked up at him there were tears in her eyes.

  When the moon was high, Ava went out onto the lawn, where the heron was waiting. She had danced with him a hundred times before, and they danced again on this night. Girard could see them from the window. He’d heard a call that he’d thought was a person wailing, but when he looked outside he saw the bird. He realized how little he knew of this world, but he knew this: If you could love someone, you possessed a soul.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  WEST OF THE MOON

  THE WOLF’S PLAIN, AUGUST 20, 1944

  HE STOOD IN THE ORCHARD. She knew him even though everything had changed. He was a young man with long dark hair, handsome, six feet tall, well muscled but too thin, a troubled look on his face. There was a halo of darkness around him that hadn’t been there before, yet when he saw her, his eyes filled with light. She came through the back door without bothering to pull on shoes, in a hurry, her hair much paler than he remembered, ash white, shimmering, but it was her, the reason he’d stayed alive.

  “You,” she called out, her hands on her hips. “Julien Lévi from Paris.”

  She knew him still, despite everything that had changed. He came to her slowly. He didn’t wish to rush, even though it had been such a long time. He wanted to see her standing there by the door and remember everything about it, the dress she wore, her pale bare feet, the flame of sunlight across her face, a stray curl of her hair that she brushed away.

  “What are you waiting for?” she cried.

  They weren’t children now, and maybe they hadn’t been then. Nearly four years had passed. She was sixteen, and he would soon be eighteen.

  “Are you certain I’m who you think I am?” he said, grinning.

  She didn’t bother to answer, or to wait any longer, but instead came to throw her arms around him. He had kept his promise. They broke away from each other and sank to the grass, near enough for their hips and shoulders to touch.

  They took in each other’s differences, and liked what they saw. Neither wished to be anywhere other than where they were, in the doctor’s orchard at this exact moment in time. They could have told each other everything, but they wanted to go forward, not backward, and so after years of wanting nothing more than to talk, they sat in silence, their fingers laced.

  This is how it ends, Julien thought.

  This is how it begins, Lea knew.

  Ava watched from the window, then pulled down the shade.

  This is how it was always meant to be.

  She baked her last loaves of rosemary bread for supper, somber. This was what Hanni had wished for, this was their covenant, this was all the time she was allowed.

  The doctor came to stand in the doorway. He had been introduced to the young man who’d come for Lea. He was a well-mannered fellow who shook the doctor’s hand, thanking him for his hospitality. The haunted look in his eyes left only when he gazed at Lea. The doctor recognized him; he resembled his brother, the same handsome dark features, but with more reserve, intelligent, but wary.

  “I knew Victor,” Girard said. “I knew him very well.”

  “Did you?” There was that haunted look.

  “And the girl he worked with. I knew her.” He had gone to the spot of the accident with a handful of white phlox to leave in Ettie’s memory. “They were extremely brave.”

  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.”