“Aurignon!” the driver announced to the half-dozen people on the bus. “End of the line!”
Slowly, the passengers stood, gathering bags and shuffling toward the door. Eva and her mother exited last, and it wasn’t until the bus was pulling away that Eva finally relaxed enough to gaze around and take in their new surroundings. They’d really made it.
Aurignon looked nothing like Paris, or indeed like anyplace Eva had been. When she was small, her parents had taken her on a few trips north to the Breton coast, where sea air swept the faces of wooden buildings, turning them gray as the wings of a dove. They had even ventured a handful of times an hour or so beyond Paris, where small houses dotted endless pastures threaded with streams, and the towns themselves were small, quaint, and orderly.
This town was more condensed, structures with narrow windows crowded together in a way that looked almost haphazard, as if they had started in neat rows but the earth had shrugged them off as it rose toward the sky. Stone paths meandered up the hill, and some of the roads that led away from the town square looked too narrow for even a single car. At the crest of the incline sat a small stone church with stained glass windows and a simple wooden cross above the front entrance.
The thing that stood out most to Eva was how alive the town felt, though only a handful of people hurried through the square. In Paris, since the Germans had come, people walked around clad in gray and black, heads down, as if trying to blend in with the buildings around them. Colors had leached from the landscape; in many places, the plants and flowers that had once thrived and brought the city to life had wilted and disappeared.
But here, window boxes overflowed with peppermint, chervil, and geraniums of pink, lilac, and white, while ivy crept cheerfully up the walls of stone buildings that looked as if they’d been here since long before the French Revolution. Clothes dried on lines strung across wooden balconies, and even the church overlooking the small town seemed to glow, the lights inside illuminating the colorful windows. The town square was anchored by a stone fountain featuring a bearded man with a cross in one hand and a pitcher of water in the other. Water gurgled cheerfully around the statue’s feet. This was a town whose heart hadn’t yet been trampled, and for a few seconds, Eva didn’t know what to make of it.
“What is this place?” Mamusia whispered, and Eva exchanged tentative smiles with her mother for the first time since her father had been taken. She felt tears of gratitude prickling at the back of her eyes; for a few seconds, things felt almost normal.
Eva swallowed the lump in her throat. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
“It reminds me of the village where I grew up.” Mamusia breathed in deeply and closed her eyes. “The fresh air of the countryside. I had almost forgotten.”
Eva took a deep breath, too, the faintest scents of primrose, jasmine, and pine lingering just beyond reach. When she opened her eyes, there were two little girls staring at her, each of them clasping their mothers’ hands as they hurried by. She quickly gathered herself. They were out of Paris, but they weren’t out of the woods; they were traveling on false documents and needed to find a place to stay before they became even more conspicuous. “Come,” she said to her mother.
With Eva toting the suitcase and Mamusia hurrying along a step behind, they wove away from the square as if they knew where they were going. In truth, Eva felt more lost than ever, and while she forced herself to walk casually, she scanned the alleys for a sign for a boardinghouse. Surely there was something available close to the center of the small town.
But it took four more fruitless turns before, finally, a shingle hanging ahead announced the location of a pension de famille. Eva sighed in relief and surged forward, her mother following behind her.
The door was closed and locked, the curtains pulled tightly over the windows when they arrived in front of the narrow stone building a block and a half from the main square, but Eva knocked anyhow and then knocked again, more insistently, when no one came to the door. She pounded on the door a third time and was just about to give up when it swung open, revealing a short, portly woman in a dotted housedress, glaring at them. Her gray hair was spiky and wild, and her cheeks were as round and red as tomatoes.
“Well?” the woman demanded by way of greeting, her eyes blazing as she looked back and forth from Eva to Mamusia. “Which one of you was making such a racket?”
“Um, madame, hello,” Eva said uncertainly, forcing a smile as the woman turned on her, her nostrils flaring. In that instant, she looked just like a wild boar. “We—we were looking for a boardinghouse with a vacancy.”
Some of the indignance seemed to drain from the woman, but she didn’t budge. “And you think you can just show up here, demanding a room?”
Eva looked at the pension de famille sign and then back at the woman. “Well, this is a boardinghouse, so…”
The woman’s lips twitched slightly, and Eva wasn’t sure whether she was fighting back a laugh or a growl. “And at this hour? What kind of people arrive so late? It’s nearly nightfall!”
“We just stepped off a bus after a very long journey.”
“A journey? From where?”
“Paris.”
The woman’s eyes narrowed, and she crossed her arms. “And what is your business in Aurignon?”
“Um…” Eva trailed off, thrown by the rapid-fire questions. She hadn’t expected the inquisition.
“We are secretaries, here to visit my sister, who lives nearby,” Mamusia said calmly beside her. “But she has three children and lives in a very small apartment, so there’s no space for us.” Eva blinked at her and tried to cover her astonishment. It was exactly what Eva had insisted she memorize, but she would have sworn her mother wasn’t listening. “Now, if you don’t have a room available, we are happy to go elsewhere.”
The woman stared at Mamusia before her lips twitched into a small smile, but her gaze remained suspicious. “I hear an accent, madame. You are not French.”
Eva’s mother didn’t say anything for a few seconds, and in the silence, Eva prayed that her mother wouldn’t get this detail wrong; a slipup here might make the woman summon the authorities, and then the game would be up. “My mother is—” she began.
“Russian,” her mother said firmly, and Eva breathed a sigh of relief. “I left Russia in 1917 in the wake of the Russian Revolution and married here in France. My daughter, Ev—” She hesitated and corrected herself firmly. “—Colette was born here in France a few years later.”
“Russian,” the woman repeated.
“A white émigrée,” Mamusia clarified with confidence.
“You and your daughter Ev-Colette.” The woman smirked, but her eyes were no longer as angry.
“Just Colette,” Eva said nervously.
“I see,” the woman said. She stared at them, but still she didn’t move. “Prekrasnyy vecher, ne pravda li?” she said, smiling sweetly at Mamusia.
Eva froze. The woman spoke Russian? What were the odds?
But Mamusia didn’t waver. “Da,” she said confidently.
The woman’s eyes narrowed. “Vy priexali suda so svoyey docher’yu?”
Eva forced herself to smile politely as she glanced at her mother out of the corner of her eye.
“Da,” Mamusia answered a bit less certainly.
“Mmmm,” the woman said. “Vy na samom dele ne russkaya, ne tak li? Vy moshennitsa?”
This time, Mamusia looked completely lost. “Da?” she ventured.
Eva held her breath as the woman stared for a long time at Mamusia. “Very well, madame. You and your daughter, just Colette, should come inside before it’s dark. We may be in Free France, but it would be a mistake to believe we’re actually free.” With that, she whirled on her heel and stomped heavily into the boardinghouse.
“What did she ask you?” Eva whispered to her mother.
“I have no idea,” Mamusia replied softly. They exchanged wide-eyed glances and followed the woman inside, shutting the door beh
ind them.
In the parlor, the woman was rummaging around inside a small desk when they entered. She emerged with a thin ledger bound in burgundy leather. “Here it is. The guest book.” She opened it up and gestured to Eva with an upturned palm. “Come then, let me see your documents. I haven’t all day.”
Eva and her mother handed over identification cards and stayed silent as the woman examined them with narrowed eyes, nodded to herself, and filled in their details in her guest register. Eva didn’t allow herself to exhale until the woman handed the documents back.
“Very well,” the woman said, holding out her pen and turning the book around for them to sign. “Madame Fontain. Mademoiselle Fontain. I am Madame Barbier, the proprietress here. There are few frills, but it is a safe place to stay, as long as you can pay. Speaking of which, you have money?”
Eva nodded.
“Very well. You’ll be in room two, end of the hall, though there’s just one bed, I’m afraid. There is a key to the front door on your dresser. How long will you be with us?”
“We don’t know yet.” Eva hesitated. “Are there other tenants here, too?”
Madame Barbier raised both eyebrows. “You two are the only ones foolish enough to take a mountain holiday from Paris in the middle of a war.”
Eva forced a smile. “Very well. Thank you, Madame Barbier. Good night.”
“Good night.” Madame Barbier turned to Mamusia. “Spokoynoy nochi.”
“Spokoynoy nochi,” Mamusia replied politely, but she wasted no time in hurrying down the hall toward room two. Eva followed as Madame Barbier’s gaze burned into her back.
Once alone in their room, Eva changed her traveling clothes for a nightgown and slipped wearily into bed. Exhaustion soon overtook her, and she slept soundly that night, curled up against her mother.
* * *
“Do you think she believed us?” Mamusia asked as Eva awoke the next morning, blinking into a room filled with sunshine. The light seemed clearer here, brighter than it was in Paris.
“Madame Barbier?” Eva yawned and rolled away from her mother, finally releasing her hand. They hadn’t let go all night. “She must have. She took our details and let us stay.”
Mamusia nodded. “You told her we had money, Eva. What will we do when she realizes we don’t?”
Eva gave her a guilty shrug. “We do.”
“What?”
“I, er, liberated some francs from the kitchen drawer in Madame Fontain’s apartment.”
“You what?”
“I was looking for pens. There just happened to be some money there, too.”
“Eva Traube! I did not raise you to be a thief!”
Mamusia looked so indignant that Eva had to stifle a laugh. “I know, Mamusia, and I’ve never stolen a thing in my life. But we needed it, and let’s be honest, she would have sold us out to the authorities in an instant if she hadn’t been so busy worrying about her mother.”
Mamusia’s expression softened a bit. “Eva, if she calls the police because she realizes we stole from her…”
“Mamusia, we’re long gone. And what will the police do, add us to their list for a second time?”
When they emerged from their room thirty minutes later, Madame Barbier was waiting for them in the parlor, a bowl of plump red strawberries in front of her. She gestured to seats across from her, and after exchanging nervous glances, Eva and her mother sat down. My God, Eva hadn’t seen a strawberry since before the war.
“Eat,” she said simply, and Eva’s stomach growled so loudly that Madame Barbier raised an eyebrow.
“We couldn’t possibly,” Eva said. “We don’t have ration cards, and—”
“I grow these in my garden,” Madame Barbier interrupted. “And you both look—and sound—famished. So have some food. I won’t ask again.”
Eva hesitated before nodding and reaching for a berry. She bit into it and had to stop herself from moaning with pleasure as the sweet juice filled her mouth. “Thank you,” she said after she’d swallowed. She reached for another berry, already wondering what the price of these would be.
However, after Eva and her mother had polished off the bowl, Madame Barbier merely nodded. “Good,” she said, standing. “There will be potato soup for dinner at seven sharp.”
“But we can’t—” Eva began, but Madame Barbier held up a hand to stop her.
“We can’t have you going hungry. How would that look for my business?” And then she was gone, striding purposefully out of the room, the floorboards trembling beneath her.
“Well, that was kind,” Mamusia said after a long pause.
Eva nodded, but she was troubled. Madame Barbier had been looking at them like specimens in a jar while they ate, and she had the feeling that her mother’s attempt at Russian conversation last night had failed miserably. So what was their hostess up to? Still, they couldn’t afford to turn down free food. “I think you should stay in the room today, Mamusia,” she said softly. “Just let me go out for a bit on my own. I don’t have an accent, so I’ll attract fewer questions.”
“My accent isn’t that strong,” Mamusia said defensively.
“Mamusia, you sound like Władysław Sikorski.”
Mamusia made a face. “Gdy słoneczko wyżej, to Sikorski bliżej.”
Eva rolled her eyes at the popular saying exalting the Polish prime-minister-in-exile: When the sun is higher, Sikorski is near. “Just stay inside, Mamusia. And keep the window unlocked in case you need to flee quickly.”
“Now you want me to leap out the window?”
“I’m just being cautious, Mamusia. You must always be thinking two steps ahead.”
“You speak as if I’m another Mata Hari, but look what happened to her,” Mamusia muttered, though she stood and shuffled back toward their room anyhow. Eva waited until she heard the lock click before heading toward the front door of the boardinghouse.
Chapter Six
In the full light of day, Aurignon looked even more glorious, the sun pouring honeyed rays over the narrow lanes and buildings, washing the stone in a warm glow. The flowers that had colored the window boxes the previous afternoon were brighter now in the morning light, painting the town in brilliant pinks, purples, and reds. The fresh air here, more than a hundred kilometers south of the occupied zone, tasted to Eva like freedom.
But she and her mother couldn’t leave France without Tatuś. He had wanted her to flee, but she couldn’t, not if she had the means to free him. And she did, she was sure of it. She still had the blank identity documents Monsieur Goujon had given her, as well as her father’s photographs, all sewn hastily this morning into the lining of the jacket she had packed in the suitcase. It was nearly everything she needed to craft a new identity for her father, too, to demonstrate to the authorities that his arrest had been an error. However, she had left the art pens behind in Paris—they would have been a sure sign to any inspector that she was carrying tools of forgery. She couldn’t risk bringing them onto the train.
The problem was that she couldn’t replicate the same sort of documents she had made for herself and her mother without the right kind of ink, and normal pens used for writing wouldn’t do. She needed art pens in red, blue, and black. But Madame Barbier was already suspicious of Eva and her mother; no amount of free strawberries could convince Eva otherwise. So it would be too risky to ask her for the location of a store that sold such things. Eva would have to find one on her own.
As she walked briskly up and down the narrow lanes leading away from the town’s main square like crooked spokes of a wheel, she peered into every window, hoping to find a shop that stocked art supplies. The town was so quiet that Eva could almost believe she had the streets all to herself, a feeling she could never imagine experiencing in bustling Paris. Away from the square, the town was even more beautiful, with some of the stone structures giving way to half-timbered buildings that reminded Eva of the pictures in fairy-tale books she’d read as a little girl. By the time she’d turned onto t
he fourth lane, she had begun to relax, lulled into a sense of peace by this idyllic town that didn’t seem to know it was in the midst of a war. In fact, she was feeling so at ease that she almost didn’t notice the tall, slender man at the end of the lane, dressed in a trench coat that was far too warm for the summer day, the lapels pulled up. He was walking with a slight limp, his right leg stiff.
She had seen him two streets ago, too, and now, as she turned another corner, she hurried into a doorway and held her breath, wondering if he’d follow. If he did, it was too much to be a coincidence, for what Aurignon resident would need to wind methodically up and down the spidery lanes in the same pattern as she? If he didn’t, she needed to rein in her runaway imagination.
The seconds ticked by. No trench-coat-wearing man. Stop making everyone out to be a German boogeyman, Eva, she chided herself. As she stepped out from the doorway, rolling her eyes at herself, she was just in time to collide with the man as he made a quick turn around the building. She gasped and stumbled backward.
“Oh, excuse me,” he said quickly, his voice deep and muffled as he ducked his face further into his lapels.
Eva’s heart raced. He didn’t sound German, at least. He was perhaps in his mid-forties, with sandy hair, a narrow, pointed nose, and thick eyebrows. Was he a French policeman, tailing her because Madame Barbier had raised the alarm? But if he was, wouldn’t he simply demand to see her papers? As her mind spun quickly through the possibilities, she decided that the best thing to do was confront him. Certainly his limp would slow him down if she needed to run. “Are you following me?” she demanded. She had hoped to sound tough, but she could hear the quiver in her voice.
The Book of Lost Names Page 5