The Book of Lost Names

by Kristin Harmel

  She would bring one back to Monsieur Goujon, using it as her ticket into the prefecture. Tatuś had said that his old boss had promised to make false documents for her; she would need to persuade him to do the same for Mamusia. It was their only hope.

  Eva moved silently into her parents’ bedroom, where she pulled out three of her mother’s best dresses, several blouses and skirts, an extra pair of shoes, and a heavy coat, though the July day was sweltering. But who knew how long they’d be gone? She placed all the items carefully into the family’s beat-up leather suitcase.

  In her own bedroom, she added three dresses, a pair of trousers, a skirt, a few blouses, a coat, and a pair of boots to the suitcase, then picked up her carte d’identité, stamped with the word JUIVE in bold capital letters. Her mother’s card was even worse, for it immediately marked her as a foreign-born Jew, prohibited from travel.

  She zipped up the suitcase and moved back into the living room, where she folded one of the typewriters into the carrying case, her identity card and her mother’s tucked beneath it. Perhaps Monsieur Goujon would need them to help craft their false documents.

  As soon as she’d closed her apartment door behind her, leaving the filled suitcase behind for the time being, she took off briskly for the stairs, grasping the handle of the typewriter case with white knuckles and keeping her head down. Venturing out without her star was a risk, but she was banking on the fact that the police were too busy arresting other Jews to pay her much mind, especially if she looked confident about where she was going. After all, why would a Jew be fleeing straight into the heart of Paris with a typewriter and a smile?

  * * *

  It took Eva twenty minutes to walk as casually as she could to the soaring préfecture de police, the city’s police and administrative headquarters, situated just across the Seine on the Île de la Cité. It was where her father had worked before the first anti-Jewish statutes had come down, and it was surely where last night’s raids had been orchestrated. She was walking into the belly of the beast, but there was no other way.

  Holding her head high, she glanced back at the soaring twin towers of Notre-Dame, which loomed just behind her. As she opened the door to the prefecture confidently and strode inside, she wondered how the police commanders who worked here every day, the ones who were carting Jews off like yesterday’s trash, could do such evil things in the shadow of God’s house.

  “Mademoiselle?” A voice to her left startled her as the door slammed closed. She turned and swallowed hard when she realized it was a German soldier standing there, staring at her.

  “Oui, monsieur?” She was trembling, sweating.

  But he merely looked exhausted, not suspicious. “Where are you going?” he asked, his German accent thick. As she hesitated, he looked her up and down, his eyes lingering on the swell of her breasts beneath her dress. By the time his gaze returned to her face, she knew how to play this.

  With a deep breath, she flashed him her most flirtatious smile, batting her eyelashes. “I hadn’t realized how handsome those uniforms are up close, all those perfect creases.” His face turned red as she added quickly, “You see, I am delivering this typewriter on my father’s behalf. He repairs them, but he is ill, and I’m told it’s needed today.”

  She held her breath as the German, who couldn’t have been more than eighteen or nineteen, studied her. If he asked for her identity papers or searched the typewriter case, she was done for. “Who are you going to see?”

  “Monsieur Goujon, second floor.”

  “You know where his office is?”

  “Oh yes, I’ve been here many times before.” It was true. When she was a young teenager, long before the Germans had come, Eva had loved accompanying her father to work when classes were out. All the stamps and pens and machines fascinated her, and Monsieur Goujon had often given her a stack of paper and a pencil to occupy her while her father fiddled with the typewriters. She had loved sketching and had become good at it, good enough that Monsieur Goujon told her father that she should think of pursuing a career in art. But drawing was never her passion the way words were, and she told her father that just because one was good at something did not mean that one had to spend a lifetime doing it. Her father had chuckled and told her to count herself lucky that she had such a talent. One day, he said, you will appreciate God’s gifts.

  “Go ahead, then,” the young German said, his shoulders sagging again with fatigue.

  Eva was already moving toward the stairs. “Merci!” she called over her shoulder.

  Her heart was still thudding after she’d scaled the second flight and opened the door to Monsieur Goujon’s office without knocking. He was alone behind his desk and he looked up, his eyes round and surprised beneath bushy gray eyebrows, as she pulled the door quickly closed behind her.

  “Eva Traube?” he asked, blinking at her as if certain he was seeing things. His hair had grown much whiter since she’d last seen him, and he looked a decade older than her father did, though she knew they were roughly the same age. The circles under his eyes were pronounced, and his jowls sagged as if they hadn’t the energy to keep up with the rest of his face. “Why, I haven’t seen you in years.”

  “Monsieur Goujon, forgive the intrusion.”

  He stood and embraced her. “I heard about the roundups, and I thought perhaps—”

  “My father was arrested,” she said firmly, cutting him off. “My mother and I were on their list, too, but we were fortunate enough to be out of the apartment.”

  The color drained from Monsieur Goujon’s face and he took a step back. “Oh dear.”

  “We haven’t much time, monsieur. Please, I need your help. My father told me he had spoken with you, arranged things. He said you would make me false papers. My mother and I need to leave Paris as soon as possible.”

  Monsieur Goujon’s eyes went first to the typewriter case in Eva’s hands and then to the door behind her. Finally, his gaze settled back on her, his lips drawn tightly together. “But what can I do? I promised him only that I would help you, not your mother.”

  “I can’t leave her behind. I won’t.”

  “She has an accent, Eva, and frankly, she looks like a Jew. It would be too risky. She’ll surely be caught. And then if she reports me…”

  “Surely you’re not refusing to help us.” Eva’s panic began to harden into anger. “My father worked for you for many years, yes? He was reliable, kind.”

  Monsieur Goujon’s forehead creased, and for a second or two he looked as if he might cry. “Eva, I want to help you, but if I were to be caught forging documents, especially for a Polish-born Jew…”

  “You would be arrested, maybe executed. I know.” Eva took a step closer and lowered her voice. “Monsieur Goujon, I know what I am asking you. But the only chance we have is escaping to the free zone, and then I can figure out a way to come back for my father.”

  “I—I cannot do what you’re asking.” He looked away. “I have a wife and child to think about, and—”

  “My father trusted you. He paid you the last of what he had.”

  He took a deep breath, but he didn’t say anything.

  “Please, monsieur.” She waited until he looked at her again. “I’m begging you.”

  Finally, he sighed. “I will give you some blank identification cards, Eva, some blank travel permits. This is all I can do. You were always a good artist, I remember that.”

  “You—you want me to do the forgeries?” The spaces for personal details—name, place of birth, date of birth—would be easy enough to fill in, but how would she fake the rest? “But you promised my father, Monsieur Goujon!”

  He ignored her protests, continuing in a voice that was barely audible. “I will try to find you some art pens in the colors of the stamps. There should be some in our supply cupboard. But you can’t stay here. And if anyone finds out what you’ve done, I will deny any knowledge. I will say you stole the documents.”

  “But—” Eva began as he brush
ed past her, out the door of his office. She stood there, breathing hard, considering her options. Should she insist, beg for his help? She had never attempted anything like what he was suggesting.

  He reappeared after a few minutes and held up a small envelope. “Here. It should be all you need. Use your real documents as a guide, and see if you can cut up some old photographs to serve as pictures for your identity cards; your current ones are probably stamped indelibly in red. I also included a canceled travel permit so you can see how they’re meant to look. You and your mother will each need one to cross to the free zone. I added a blank naturalization certificate for your mother, too, to explain her accent, as well as a blank birth certificate for you. They should be easy enough to fill out.”

  “But I don’t know how—”

  “Tuck this underneath the typewriter,” he continued, rolling over her objections as he grabbed the typewriter case from her and opened it on his desk. He carefully lifted the machine from its case, slid the envelope in, added a stapler, and tucked the typewriter on top, closing the latch again. He handed it to her. “Walk out like you know what you’re doing. They won’t stop you, and if they do, simply act offended. Most of the soldiers here are young boys simply pretending to be tough.”

  She tightened her grip on the handle with her right hand. “Monsieur Goujon, I am not a forger! This is all impossible.”

  “It is all I can do. What is it your father used to tell you? That God gave you the gift of artistic skills? Well, now is your chance to use that gift.”

  Her head was spinning with a thousand questions, but the one that finally escaped her lips was, “But… where will we go?”

  He stared at her for what felt like a long time. “I have heard from my wife’s cousin of a town called Aurignon, some eighty kilometers south of Vichy.” His words fell swiftly. “I have heard that they are sheltering children there, helping them to get to Switzerland. Perhaps they would do the same for you and your mother.”

  “Aurignon?” She had never heard of it. “And it’s near Vichy?” The spa town had become synonymous with the puppet government of Prime Minister Philippe Pétain; surely it was crawling with Nazis.

  “Aurignon is a tiny town, tucked into the hills at the foot of some old volcanoes, nothing strategic about it. No reason the Germans would have any interest in it, which makes it a perfect place to hide. Now go, Eva, and don’t look back. Godspeed. I have done all I can do.” He turned around so quickly that she wondered if she had imagined the conversation.

  “Merci, Monsieur Goujon.” Ducking her head, she left his office and strode confidently down the stairs, every muscle in her body tense, a smile frozen on her face. The young German officer was still there at the bottom, and his eyes narrowed slightly as she passed.

  “I thought you were dropping that typewriter off,” he said, stepping in front of her.

  “This is a different one that needs repair,” she said without missing a beat. She batted her eyes again. “I really must go.”

  “Why are you in such a hurry?” His eyes were on her breasts again, shamelessly, like she was something he could have, something he had the right to possess.

  She forced herself to remain calm and to widen her smile. “Lots of work to do, you see. The prefecture is busy with all the arrests of last night, I imagine.”

  The German nodded, but he was still frowning. “They deserved it, you know.”

  She felt suddenly ill. “Pardon?”

  “The Jews. I know the arrests seemed cruel, but those people are a menace.”

  “Well,” Eva said, already walking away, “I, for one, am hopeful that all the vermin who pollute our grand city will get what they deserve one day soon.”

  The German nodded enthusiastically. “Exactly right, mademoiselle. Listen, if you’re ever interested, there’s a group of us who meet most days at five o’clock at a café in the Latin Quarter called Le Petit Pont. I could buy you a drink…”

  “What a grand invitation. Perhaps I’ll join you.”

  He beamed at her. “That would be terrific.”

  She waved goodbye, her smile genuine, for she knew that with any luck, she and her mother would already be on a train bound for the south by the time the German sat down for his first beer.

  Chapter Four

  Twenty minutes later, Eva let herself into her family’s apartment again. She would need to move quickly, before a neighbor came scavenging.

  On the dresser sat a framed formal photograph of her parents on their twenty-fifth anniversary three years earlier, one of her father holding two typewriter cases and beaming, and another of her mother in Cabourg on holiday in the late thirties. There was also one of Eva on the same Côte Fleurie vacation, and one taken after she graduated le lycée four years earlier. She grabbed them all and removed them from their frames.

  She found a pair of scissors in the parlor, beside one of the typewriters, and quickly carried it into the kitchen. Using the existing picture on her mother’s identity card to measure the correct size, she carefully cut her mother’s face and shoulders from the anniversary photograph, and then did the same with the images of herself, her mother, and her father from the other photographs, too.

  Eva stuffed the identity cards and the six makeshift identity photos into the typewriter case and closed it again.

  She took one last look at the wooden shelves that lined the walls, stacked from floor to ceiling with beautiful books, their pages full of knowledge she had eagerly absorbed over the years. Most of them had belonged to her father before her: texts on typewriter repair techniques, reference books about medicine, the solar system, chemistry, even a first edition of the English-language The Adventures of Tom Sawyer—one of the first novels written on a typewriter, and one of her father’s most prized possessions. She had devoured them all and saved up her own money to buy more. They had been her escape, her refuge, and now they would be all that was left of her in an apartment she might never return to. “Goodbye,” she whispered, wiping away a tear.

  Then, with a final glance back at the only home she’d ever known, she left, grabbing the packed suitcase and the typewriter in its case before locking the door behind her.

  When Eva knocked on the Fontains’ door seconds later, it was Colette who answered, her eyes wide. “Where is my maman?” she asked. “She hasn’t come back yet, and you said she would, Mademoiselle Traube.”

  “And she will, Colette,” Eva said firmly as she stepped past the child and closed the door behind them. “Don’t worry.” After all, Madame Fontain was as Christian as they came. If an officer tried to sweep her up with the Jews, no doubt she would pray so loudly and indignantly for his soul that he’d be convinced of her allegiance to Jesus even before she produced her papers.

  The problem was that Eva couldn’t in good conscience leave the girls alone. She and her mother would have to wait to flee until Madame Fontain returned.

  Mamusia was exactly where Eva had left her two hours earlier, curled up on the sofa, staring blankly into space. “Mamusia?” Eva said, crossing to her mother and placing a hand on her shoulder. She was trembling. “Are you all right?”

  “She still doesn’t want to play dress-up,” Colette reported when Mamusia didn’t answer.

  “You know, Colette, I think she might be feeling rather ill. Dear, would you and your sister put away your dress-up things before your mother returns? You wouldn’t want her getting upset.”

  “Yes, mademoiselle.” Colette scooped up the ribbons and dresses she had strewn about and beckoned to her sister. The two of them scampered away.

  Eva bent quickly beside her mother. “I have a plan, Mamusia, but you need to snap out of it. We need to get out of Paris as soon as possible. You must keep the girls occupied while I get to work. And if Madame Fontain returns, distract her while I finish.”

  Mamusia blinked at Eva a few times. “What is it you’re doing?”

  Eva leaned in. “I’m making us false papers.”

  “Forg
ery? You don’t know how to do such things!”

  Eva swallowed hard and tried to muster confidence she didn’t feel. “I will learn. But there’s not much time, so I need you to listen. You will be Sabine Fontain.”

  Mamusia gasped. “You are giving me Madame Fontain’s name?”

  Eva had been thinking about it since leaving Monsieur Goujon’s office. They would need names of real people, just in case they were detained and an official decided to check their identification cards against records. “I think it’s safer that way,” Eva said. “The name Sabine could be Russian, too, and I think that’s important. It would explain your accent. If anyone asks, you emigrated from Russia after the revolution in 1917. Of course, you married Madame Fontain’s real husband, Jean-Louis Fontain, a French patriot missing in action at the front.”

  Her mother blinked at her. “What about you?”

  “I’ll be Colette Fontain.”

  “But the real Colette is just a child.”

  “By the time anyone thinks to verify a birth year, we’ll be long gone.”

  “But how will you make these papers?” Mamusia persisted.

  Eva briefly explained her visit to Monsieur Goujon and the blank documents and supplies he had given her. “I’ll do the best I can,” she concluded.

  “There’s no way this will work,” Mamusia said.

  “It has to, Mamusia.”

  In the kitchen, Eva opened the typewriter case, lifted the machine, and pulled Monsieur Goujon’s envelope from beneaththe keys. Inside, there were three blank identity cards, three blank travel documents, a blank naturalization certificate and birth certificate, and four pens, in navy, bright blue, red, and black. The envelope gave up perhaps its greatest prize last: adhesive stamps with images of coins on them, the only part of the documents that would have been impossible to forge with limited supplies. There was no way she could have purchased stamps at a tabac today without arousing suspicion.