“Yes, Papa, the fourteenth suitor you brought home was the charm.”
“Soon you’ll have more time together,” he replied. “With this talk of war, your colleagues will leave Paris, and the Library will close.”
“Miss Reeder says we’ll stay open,” I said. “No one’s going anywhere.”
“You’ll be able to rest.” With a teasing wink, he added, “Maybe you’ll even be on time for dinner.”
When Papa spoke of his job, he spoke of duty. He couldn’t understand that I loved the Library. The extra hours spent with Helen-in-reference to learn how to find answers for subscribers wasn’t a chore, it was a treasure hunt. “It’s important to remember how hard it is to ask for help,” she reminded me. “Never be impatient; all questions have value.” She and I dug through specialized bibliographies and encyclopedias to find everything from the population of Cuba to the estimated value of a Chinese vase. Every day brought questions that wanted answers. After writing dozens of academic papers, Professor Cohen decided to try her hand at a novel and was researching sixteenth-century Italy. “What did Venetians wear? What did they drink? What did they put in their pockets?” she asked.
“Are you sure they had pockets?” Helen asked.
“Not at all!” the professor replied, and we three set sail for Venice, navigating through the stacks.
I was needed at the Library. I was happy there.
“I can’t rest,” I told my father. “Miss Reeder says books promote understanding, which is important now more than ever.”
When he opened his mouth to argue, Maman ushered him from the room, closing the door behind them.
I moved closer to Paul. “He’s impossible!”
“He worries about you.”
“I suppose.…”
Paul kissed my hands, my cheeks, my lips. I wanted more. His skin on mine, our bodies entwined. Kissing was the prologue of a marvelous book, one I wanted to read until the end.
The doorknob rattled; we leapt apart. Maman rushed to the planters, where she watered her ferns.
When I was little, I’d loved to read in bed. Every evening, after Maman said, “Lights out,” I begged to finish the chapter, but it was no use. Maman, now as then, decided when it was time to stop.
* * *
AS I SET out the afternoon editions of the newspapers, I saw Miss Reeder—white as Gaylo glue—stumble into the reading room. Immediately, we all knew something was wrong. Mr. Pryce-Jones and M. de Nerciat stopped arguing. Professor Cohen looked up from her book. Standing in front of the shrouded windows, the Directress said, “The embassy called.” Her voice trembled. “England and France have declared war on Germany.”
When Papa spoke of his years in the trenches, I could only imagine the fighting as faded photos taken from a distance. Now, the pictures of tanks and wounded soldiers were in Technicolor. Was Rémy in combat? Was he injured?
“Did they say where the fighting is?” Bitsi asked before I could.
“I wish I knew more,” Miss Reeder said. “Ambassador Bullitt will keep us informed.”
After reassuring subscribers, she gathered staff in her office. “You should leave—back home, or to the countryside, where you’ll be safe,” she told us, her tone so authoritative that in my mind, I threw my yellow dress and blue scarf into a suitcase.
“What will you do?” stern Mrs. Turnbull demanded.
“I’ll remain,” Miss Reeder responded without hesitation.
“I’ll man the circulation desk,” Bitsi said.
“I want to stay,” our bookkeeper Miss Wedd said.
“Me too.” I mentally put my clothes back in the armoire. My place was here. I wanted to do everything I could to make sure that our Library would remain open.
“I can’t return to Rhode Island so soon,” Helen-in-reference said.
Peter-the-shelver gazed at her. “I don’t want to leave.”
Miss Reeder regarded us gratefully. “Nonetheless, we must do what we can to keep subscribers safe.”
Peter-the-shelver lugged pails of sand to the top floor in case air raids caused fires. Miss Wedd pasted directions to the closest shelter—the metro station—on the wall. During the safety drill, Miss Reeder cleared the reading room, tucking her arms around scared students. I herded my habitués from the periodical room. Snatching Good Morning, Midnight from the shelf as if she were saving her best friend from a burning building, Professor Cohen proclaimed, “I’ll not leave Jean Rhys.” Helen-in-reference carried bottles of drinking water; the caretaker cut the electricity. At the door, Bitsi waved the lantern. And a cortege of dazed book lovers trudged two blocks to the safety of the station. In the dim metro tunnel, we wondered what would happen, and when.
CHAPTER 14
Odile
BORIS STROLLED INTO the reading room as if he’d gone for a long lunch, not six days with the army. Subscribers swarmed, vying to welcome him back. Monsieur de Nerciat and Mr. Pryce-Jones were the first to pump Boris’s hand in vigorous handshakes. Professor Cohen was next. “We’re glad you’re home safe. Your wife and daughter must be relieved.” I tried to reach him, but a scrum of bookworms surrounded him. I withdrew to the caddy and grabbed a book to reshelf. The call number on the spine was 223. Was that religion or philosophy? The things I knew for sure grew muddled. Since Rémy had left, I often found myself in the middle of a room, unable to figure out where I belonged.
Boris found me deep in 200. “How are you?” he asked.
“Scared for Rémy.”
He tucked my book onto the shelf. “I know the feeling. My brother Oleg enlisted in the Foreign Legion.”
“I hope he’ll be safe. At least you were able to return.”
“Thanks to Miss Reeder, who wrote to the army. Apparently, I’m indispensable.”
“Indispensable. That has a nice ring to it.”
She’d also managed to keep the caretaker. Thankfully, Papa received permission to keep his police officers in Paris. He wanted to shield his men, even if he wasn’t able to protect his own son. I was worried sick about Rémy, but grateful, so grateful that I wouldn’t lose Paul.
Boris tucked another book into place. “I’d have done my duty in the French army. After all, I’ve already fought one war.”
“You have?”
“I was in cadet training when the Russian Revolution broke out. Some of us were barely fifteen years old, but we sneaked away to join the army.”
“Fifteen…”
He explained that he and his comrades thought that shooting a strawberry to smithereens at ten paces made them men, and that when he and his best friend planned to steal away, their biggest concern was which uniform would make them appear more dashing. “We wondered if we should go on foot or take a horse. Go hungry, or raid the pantry and risk waking the surly cook. It was easy to enlist,” he concluded. “Like most children, we could envision no more than a week ahead.”
That was the way Rémy had left home, eager for an adventure, anxious to prove to Papa that he was a man.
“My captain wasn’t much older than me. He ordered us to shoot to kill, but it’s hard to kill your fellow countrymen.” Boris swallowed. “Hard to kill anyone.”
The stacks were tall, as hallowed as a confessional. He stared at the row of books lined up like soldiers. “Across the river from us, there was a lookout, one of theirs,” he continued. “A fellow Russian, the enemy. I pulled the trigger and grazed his earlobe.”
“His earlobe?”
Boris shrugged. “I was a decent shot. I didn’t want to kill the chap. Merely warn him away.”
“You did the right thing.”
He took another book and ran his hand over the cover somberly. “Later, my regiment came face-to-face with his, and that soldier killed my best friend.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I was shot twice.” His finger followed a scar along his cheek. The mark was so faint that I’d thought it a laugh line. “But typhus almost did me in. The infirmary was worse than the front.
I grew up in a boisterous family and went from military school to the army. I’d never had a second of solitude, never had to face my own thoughts. Being alone in the hospital was the lowest point in my life. One thing got me through—thoughts of my sisters together.”
He gestured to the children’s room, where Bitsi paced.
“She and I are not sisters,” I said.
He regarded me with such sorrow. “Back to the circ desk,” he said in a resigned tone, and left me alone with my regret and resentment.
CHAPTER 15
Odile
THREE DAYS AFTER war was declared, Miss Reeder created the Soldiers’ Service. Wanting to comfort French and British troops, to offer escape, and to let them know that their friends at the Library cared, we prepared collections of books for canteens and field hospitals. Paul and I delivered the crates to La Poste. Paris was strangely calm, like a grand hotel with very few guests, yet the Library bustled with subscribers who took it for granted that we would remain open. They continued to scour the paper for news and to check out books.
“People read,” the Directress said. “War or no war.”
She launched an appeal for donations, penning letters to loyal patrons like the Countess Clara de Chambrun. Calling me into her office, Miss Reeder explained that she’d invited journalists to the Library and wanted me to inform them about the program. They were waiting in the reading room.
“Me?” I said. “Newspapermen are… unruly.” When I’d delivered first my ALP News column to the Herald, one of them noticed a typo—“pubic” relations instead of public relations. Each time I dropped off a new column, one of them asked about my “special” relations.
“They can be rash,” Miss Reeder admitted. “They’re rushing all over France to describe war efforts. But if one is rude, whack him over the head.”
Remembering the interview where I’d threatened to do exactly that, I felt my face flush. “Oh, no, I…”
“I know. You’re not that girl any longer. You’ve grown up and are doing a marvelous job. Everyone loves your column in the Herald, and your newsletter is delightful, especially your ‘What kind of reader are you?’ interviews. It’s wonderful to get to know someone by the books they love.”
On my way to the reading room, I allowed myself to bask in Miss Reeder’s praise. At the hearth, I rubbed one foot over the other, working up the courage to talk to the blasé newspapermen in rumpled trench coats. But before I could address them, they addressed me.
“Are the French so interested in American books?” a journalist with thinning gray hair demanded. His mien was tired, no, jaded. “And do soldiers have time to read?”
“One general sent trucks from the Maginot Line to collect reading material,” I said briskly. “The soldiers do have time, and our aim is to support those who are ill, wounded, or lonely. We must serve in the field of morale.”
“Morale? Then why books? Why not wine?” a redhead quipped. “That’s what I’d want.”
“Who says it’s either-or?” I asked.
They laughed.
“But seriously, why books. Because no other thing possesses that mystical faculty to make people see with other people’s eyes. The Library is a bridge of books between cultures.”
One by one, they shrugged out of their coats and settled into their chairs as I explained how people could get their donations to us. Some journalists jotted down information, others seemed to reminisce about books they’d read. The jaded one contemplated the stacks, perhaps remembering a novel that had brought solace after a difficult day.
“We all have a book that’s changed us forever,” I said. “One that let us know that we’re not alone. What’s yours?”
“All Quiet on the Western Front,” he said.
833. “Help spread the word. Help get the books that you’ve loved to our soldiers.”
* * *
AS INFORMATION GOT out, donations poured in. Staff assembled libraries of fifty magazines and one hundred books for each regiment. At 9:00 p.m., Margaret, Miss Reeder, and I finished up for the day. The Directress wrote out address labels, Margaret typed up the catalogs of each collection, and I placed books in the crates.
Bitsi burst into the room, waving a letter. “It was there when I got home.”
Rémy wrote to her first?
“Oh, how wonderful to hear from him,” Margaret said.
“And wasn’t it kind of Bitsi to come back to share the news?” Miss Reeder gave me a pointed look.
She was right. It wasn’t a competition to see who got a letter first. And yet…
“He’s stationed near Lille,” Bitsi said. “He’s far from the danger.”
“For now,” I said sharply.
“He wanted to enlist.”
“You encouraged him.”
“To follow his beliefs.”
“What if they get him killed?” I heaved hefty unabridged Victor Hugo into a crate, where he landed with an indignant thump.
“Please.” Her alabaster hands, so delicate, grasped mine, smudged with blue ink. “I need to be with someone else who loves him.”
“I should tell my parents.” I untangled my fingers from hers. “They’ll be relieved.”
“Odile, dear…” Miss Reeder’s head tilted in sympathy.
Kindness would only make me cry, so I gasped a quick “See you tomorrow” and hurtled down the stairs. When I told my parents about the letter, there must have been a bitter twinge in my tone because Maman said it wasn’t Bitsi’s fault that he’d enlisted. With all the political tracts he’d written, his choice should have been no surprise. Papa said I’d better be nice to Bitsi, for Rémy’s sake.
Two days later, a letter arrived. My regiment is stationed on a farm. A barn cat tags along with us like a dog, even during field exercises. We haven’t seen fighting of any kind, except over which of us is going to do the washing up.
Breathing was easier.
* * *
REQUESTS POURED IN from all over France, as well as Algeria, Syria, and British headquarters in London. Staff and volunteers from the Red Cross, YMCA, and Quakers crammed into our back room to help get books to soldiers. Carefully noting book preferences (nonfiction or fiction, mysteries or memoirs) and languages (English, French, or both), we made sure each serviceman who’d requested one received a care package twice a month.
Miss Reeder snapped photos of volunteers packaging books, Bitsi wrote notes of encouragement to soldiers, and Margaret and I opened requests. I read out one from a professor of English, now a French corporal, who wanted textbooks in order to teach his regiment.
“Which shall we send?” Bitsi asked me.
I pretended not to hear.
Eyeing Bitsi and me nervously, Margaret read aloud, “ ‘I am in the east of France and there are ones of us who read English, may we have some books and magazines, also some girls (not too old) who would agree to correspond with us?’ ”
Completely charmed by the requests we received, I read out another. “ ‘We are some comrades and me, in the French countryside, between Saar and Moselle. And as you might think, our pleasures are limited. If possible, will you send us any old copies of the National Geographic? This magazine shall make our pleasure, because we appreciate this beautiful review.’ ”
“It must be hard for the soldiers to be far from home,” Margaret said. “What a relief to be able to do something for them.”
“Thank you for your dedication,” Miss Reeder said, her voice as comforting as a cup of cocoa. “We’re fortunate to have you.”
“What would I do without all of you?” Margaret teared up. “Oh, dear, the leaky teapot is back.”
“We’ve all been emotional lately,” Miss Reeder responded, eyes on me.
* * *
FEW SHOTS WERE fired in France, though the situation remained tense along the Maginot Line, where generals were certain the enemy would attack. We’d dispatched hundreds of books to the soldiers there. Several wrote back, kindly sending tokens of ap
preciation: a watercolor of a kitchen on the line, sketches of an enemy plane they’d shot down, a packet of cigarettes. Margaret and I read a letter from a British captain.
It was so kind of you letting me have that wonderful packet of books. I do so appreciate what you are doing for us and consider it most important to give the men all the recreation possible.
We want to express to you all our gratitude for the beautiful work you’re doing among us soldiers. For what you did in the last war and for what you are doing now, we’re most thankful.
Our Soldiers’ Service operation had grown so large—thousands of donated books, dozens of volunteers—that businessmen in the neighboring building lent us an entire floor. Piles of novels and magazines reached to the ceiling, a literary tower of Pisa. Miss Wedd baked us scones and recorded statistics about the books we sent. That autumn, we shipped twenty thousand tomes to French, British, and Czechoslovakian troops as well as to the Foreign Legion. Like Miss Reeder, I felt especially proud of our service to individual soldiers. I felt less proud of the fact that I’d barely spoken to Bitsi.
Maman grumbled that I was never home anymore, and Paul joked that he had to volunteer if he wanted to spend time with me, but I found that like Rémy, I “needed to do something.” As bereft as I felt without him, I knew it had to be worse for the soldiers who were far from home. I tucked cards of encouragement into their books.
Feeling uncertain about the future, I often checked the last page of a novel, hoping for a happy ending. In Villette, 823. “Here pause: pause at once. There is enough said. Trouble no quiet, kind heart; leave sunny imaginations hope. Let it be theirs to conceive the delight of joy born again fresh out of great terror, the rapture of rescue from peril, the wondrous reprieve from dread, the fruition of return.” I wished I could tear ahead in the story of my own life to reassure myself. The war would end. Rémy would come home. Paul and I would marry.
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