The Book of Lost Names

by Kristin Harmel

  “He does, actually. Or so I like to believe.”

  Eva gasped and turned to her left, where Père Clément calmly sat two meters or so away from her on the bench.

  “Where did you come from?” Eva’s heart was racing furiously.

  “Oh, I joined you while you were watching my guests depart. You must always be aware of your surroundings. That will be one of our first lessons.”

  “Lessons?”

  “Though I suspect you’ll have some things to teach us, too,” he continued. “And in answer to your question, I do like to believe that the Lord is watching over us. It makes me feel a bit more secure in the midst of all this chaos and uncertainty. I hope you’ll find some comfort in that, too.” Without another word, he stood and began to walk away. Eva stared after him. Was he leaving? Was that it? But then he turned and smiled at her. “Well, my dear? Are you coming?”

  “Coming where?”

  “You’ll see.” He didn’t wait for an answer as he limped away. Eva hesitated for only a second before following. He unlocked a door to the right of the altar and entered without looking back. After giving the statue of Jesus one more nervous look, she went in after him.

  “Welcome to our library,” he said, closing the door behind her as she gaped at the space before her.

  The place was like something out of a dream, a room lined with books, a meter-high stained glass mural running the length of the back wall above the shelves, casting colorful rays of light on countless leather-bound volumes crowded together and stacked on every surface. A wooden table stood in the center of the room flanked by two wooden chairs.

  Enthralled, Eva reached for the shelf to her right, pulling a book out at random. It was bound in brown leather that had worn away at the corners, and the spine was etched with fading gold flowers and swirls along with the words Epitres et Evangiles. She ran her fingers over the cover with reverence. It had to be two hundred years old.

  “That one, I think, was published in 1732,” Père Clément said, reading her mind. She looked up, still holding the book, and he smiled at her and then gestured around the room. “Most of our volumes predate the French Revolution. This church has been here a very long time, and our library is one of our most treasured spaces. This is my favorite place in the world, in fact, a place I come to when I need to find solace. I thought you might enjoy it, too.”

  “It’s magnificent,” she murmured, forgetting for a moment that she was supposed to be wary. Books, wherever they were in the world, always felt like home to her. “You can come here anytime you like?” she asked. She set the book down on the table reluctantly, fingers itching to explore the other volumes on the shelves.

  Père Clément chuckled. “I suppose I can.”

  She looked at him, and he smiled. His expression was open, relaxed, and she wondered if he was as enraptured with this place as she was. “Why did you bring me here?”

  “I thought we might be able to help each other.”

  She could feel her guard going back up. “Help each other?”

  His smile was gone now, and though the kindness remained in his eyes, she could see uncertainty there, too. He seemed to be considering his words carefully. “Do you have your papers with you? I would like to see them.”

  “What for?” Eva took a step back toward the closed door. Could it be that this glorious library was some sort of trap after all? A brief glimpse of perfection before the snare closed forever?

  “Please, as I said before, mademoiselle, I mean you no harm.” He scratched the back of his neck and seemed to be searching for the words. “Very well, I’ll come right out and say it. We are in need of someone who is skilled at, er, artistic endeavors.”

  “Artistic endeavors?”

  “Artistic endeavors that would fool even the most vigilant officer of the law. Artistic endeavors that would allow people who have done nothing wrong to move toward a life of freedom.”

  “I’m not sure what you’re saying.”

  He looked uncomfortable. “Ah. Well, you see, my friends and I have amassed some supplies, but it seems the demand for our services has grown more quickly than our ability to adequately meet it. Madame Barbier is an associate of mine and suggested that your talents might be useful.”

  She took a deep breath. It felt as if she were about to jump off a cliff; there would be no going back. “Are you talking about forging documents?”

  He went still and held her gaze. “Yes. Yes, I am, mademoiselle. Please, I’ll ask again: May I take a look at your papers?”

  She hesitated before pulling them from her pocket and handing them over wordlessly. As the priest studied them, his forehead creasing, she wondered if she’d made a mistake in trusting him.

  Finally, he looked up. “These are quite good. Mademoiselle Fontain, is it?”

  “Well, of course. That’s what the identity card says.”

  “Indeed it does.” He smiled at her. “Well, Mademoiselle Fontain, I’m very impressed. And now, I must admit, I’m even more desperate to ask for your assistance.”

  What if she could help others escape the way she and her mother had? But she couldn’t even consider that yet, not with her father still in danger. She cleared her throat. “Well, you see, I would, but I’m otherwise occupied at the moment. My father has been falsely imprisoned.” She looked him in the eye. “In Paris. There was a raid a few days ago. They arrested many Jews.”

  “Yes, it’s an absolute tragedy. Somewhere around thirteen thousand.”

  So Joseph’s dire prediction hadn’t been so outlandish. “How do you know that?”

  “As I said, I have friends. Most of the arrested are being held now in Drancy, northeast of Paris, in a large prison camp. You say your father was among them? I’m very sorry to hear that.”

  “Yes.” Eva still wasn’t entirely sure whether to trust the priest. This was the first she’d heard of the prison camp. “I would like to clear up the error, but I don’t have the correct papers.”

  “Ah, I see. Well, Mademoiselle Fontain, I might be able to help you with that.”

  “Yes?” Eva held her breath.

  “Of course, if you went to Drancy with a letter from the Argentine consul explaining that your father is Argentine, the authorities would have to release him,” Père Clément said casually. “The Germans have an agreement with the Argentine government, you see. They avoid imprisoning their citizens, even the Jews.”

  Eva opened and closed her mouth. It had never even occurred to her that she’d need papers like that. But of course it wouldn’t be enough simply to show up at the gates of a prison and present identity documents, no matter how well forged they were. “And you have friends in the Argentine embassy?” she asked carefully.

  “No.” Père Clément held her gaze. “But I know what their documents look like. And I have many materials at my disposal. I would like to help you, mademoiselle. I’ll need your help in return, though. We have other papers that need to be worked on, too.”

  “I see.”

  “Why don’t you think it over?” He led her toward the door, and as he opened it, leading her back into the church, she felt adrift. For a moment, she could have imagined herself in the stacks of the library in Paris, with no greater worry than completing her English degree, but now the real world was intruding once more. “If you are interested, come to the church tonight after nightfall—but you must come alone. And I swear on my life, Mademoiselle Fontain, you and your mother can trust Madame Barbier.”

  “Even though she betrayed us to you?”

  Père Clément walked her toward the carved front entrance and reached for the wrought iron handle. “Was it a betrayal, though? Or was she trying to save you both?”

  With that question hanging in the air, he pushed the door open. The sunlight poured in, blinding Eva for a moment, and by the time she turned back around to bid the priest farewell, he had disappeared back into the depths of the church, leaving her alone with her racing thoughts.

  Chapte
r Eight

  May 2005

  Ben shows up at my door thirty-five minutes after I call with the news that I’ll be departing for Berlin in less than nine hours and would appreciate a ride to the airport.

  “Mom, are you insane?” he asks without preamble when I open the door to find him standing on my doorstep, sweat beading on his forehead in the Florida heat. “You’re just hopping on a plane to Germany and I’m supposed to act like that’s normal?”

  “I don’t care how you act,” I reply with a shrug. “I only care that you drive me to the airport. You’re quite early, though, dear.”

  “Mom, you’re being ridiculous.” He steps inside and I shut the door behind him, bracing for an argument. The older he gets—well, the older I get—the more he believes he knows what’s best for me. Our latest battle of wills, which is still ongoing, is the one in which he attempts to convince me to move into an assisted-living facility for my own good. But why should I? I’m in full control of my mental faculties; my vision and hearing are nearly as good as they were half a lifetime ago; I walk to work and am perfectly capable of driving myself to the store and to doctors’ appointments. Sure, I had to give up mowing the lawn three year ago when I suffered an embarrassing episode of heatstroke, but there’s a nice landscape man who takes care of things now and only charges me sixty dollars a month.

  “I don’t see what the problem is,” I tell him, turning my back as I head toward my bedroom, where my suitcase lies open on the bed. “I need to pack, dear.”

  My room is lined with books, most of them stacked in precarious piles on the bowing bookshelves Louis assembled years ago. They are filled with other people’s stories, and I’ve spent my life disappearing into them. Sometimes, when the nights are dark and silent and I’m alone, I wonder if I would have survived without the escape their pages offered me from reality. Then again, perhaps they just gave me an excuse to duck out of my own life.

  “Mom,” Ben says, following me into the bedroom. “Help me to understand what you’re doing. Why Germany? Why now? You’ve never mentioned Germany before!” He sounds frantic, but also annoyed with me, perturbed that I have disrupted his day.

  I pull a dove-gray wool cardigan from the bottom drawer of my bureau. Does it get chilly in Berlin this time of year? I fold it carefully and place it in my suitcase. “There are many things I’ve never mentioned about my past, Ben.”

  Ben, who’s fifty-two now, was born long after I packed away the remnants of the life I once knew. In the way that children often can’t conceive of their parents as independent beings with dreams and desires of their own, Ben has never really known me. He knew the pieces I chose to give to him, the body that nursed him, the voice that scolded him, the hands that soothed him. But there is so much more to me, pieces that had nothing to do with my role as his mother, pieces I never let him see.

  “Fine,” Ben says, raking his hand through his hair, which is still thick and dark, unlike his father’s. Louis was nearly bald by his midforties, though he tried valiantly to cover the majority of his head with a combed swirl from the back. I never had the heart to tell him how silly it looked. “So let’s do this, Mom: Why don’t you just wait a few weeks, and I’ll go with you, all right? I’ll have to move a few things around, and it will be difficult, but if it’s that crucial to you…”

  “I believe we’ve already established that you’re very busy and important,” I say mildly. In this, I know I have failed him. I love him more than anyone on earth, but time has shown me that I made a mistake in letting him learn his priorities from his father while I lost myself in books. Where was I when he needed to learn about courage and faith and bravery? He’s a good man—I know he is—but he cares too much about success and too little about the things we can find in our hearts, and that is never who I was.

  “Mom, not this again.” His tone is weary. “I know you think that caring about my job is a fault, but I happen to enjoy my work. That’s not a sin.”

  I ignore him as I fold a charcoal-gray dress into my suitcase, followed by a lilac one. They’re dresses that I bought years ago because they reminded me of the past, so it seems appropriate to bring them since that’s where I’m headed tonight. “Ben,” I say, “have I ever told you about my mother?”

  Now he’s raking both hands through his hair, and I’m reminded of a mad scientist. “What does that have to do with anything?” When I don’t answer, he sighs, dropping his hands in apparent defeat. “No, Mom. Not really. I mean, I know she was French…”

  “No, she was Polish. As was my father.”

  He looks confused for a second. “Right. Of course. But they moved to France when they were young, right?”

  I nod. “Yes, but that’s not what I mean. I’ve never really told you about her, have I? The way she used to dance in our kitchen when she thought no one was watching, the sound of her laugh? I haven’t told you about the color of her eyes—Ben, they were the deepest brown, like dark chocolate—or the way she always smelled like vanilla and roses.” I can feel him staring at me as I pause to draw a breath. “She used to fear being erased, like it was the worst fate in the world. And what have I done by not sharing her with you? I’ve been erasing her all these years, haven’t I? Do you even know her name?”

  “Mom.” Ben’s voice is flat. “You’re scaring me. What’s all this talk about your mother?”

  “It was Faiga. Her name was Faiga.” He clearly thinks I’m unraveling. I stare at him for a moment, and alongside the compassion and concern in his eyes, I also see distraction. He’s thinking about all the things he has to do, about what every minute here is costing him. And so I realize that the only choice is to be honest with him. Sort of. “Ben, dear, if it will make you feel better, I will change my trip.”

  “Yes, Mom, that would be great. We can talk about this tonight, okay? And you can tell me all about why you suddenly need to go to a country you have no connection to.” His patronizing tone is back, which alleviates some of my guilt.

  “Whatever you say, dear,” I say. I step closer and pull him in for a tight hug. He erases me, just like I erased my own mother, by giving himself permission to see me as something I’m not. He looks at me and sees someone incapable of taking care of herself. But that’s not who I am. “I love you, Ben,” I add as he heads for the door.

  “Love you, too, Mom.” He flashes me a smile. “Don’t do anything crazy while I’m gone, all right?”

  “Sure, dear,” I say. As soon as I close the door behind him, I reach for the phone and call the main number for Delta. Ten minutes later, I’m rebooked on the 3:11 flight today, leaving six hours earlier and arriving in Berlin at 10:50 tomorrow morning after a connection in New York. I didn’t exactly lie to Ben, I reassure myself. I am changing my flight, just like I said.

  And as I learned long ago, the truth is in the nuances. I call a taxi and throw some toiletries into my bag while I wait for my future to begin.

  Chapter Nine

  July 1942

  “You must do what this priest says,” Mamusia said after Eva had retrieved her from the bookstore and recapped the story of the church meeting in their shared room at the boardinghouse. “It’s for your father.” On the walk home, the midday sun had made the town shimmer, the barrel clay tile roofs glowing in the light like they were on fire.

  “This wouldn’t just be about Tatuś, I think. Père Clément will expect something in return.”

  “So you will help him forge a few other documents,” Mamusia said after a pause. “How long will that take? A day? Two? After that, we must go. We’ll all leave for Switzerland together.”

  Eva nodded, but she wasn’t sure it would be that easy.

  At just past seven, there was a knock on their door, and when Eva cautiously answered, she found Madame Barbier standing there.

  “I have dinner for you in the dining room,” the older woman announced.

  “You must know we don’t have ration cards,” Eva replied.

  “In Aurignon, we l
ook out for each other.”

  Eva took a deep breath. “Is that what you were doing when you told Père Clément about us?”

  Madame Barbier looked away. “I was saving your life, mademoiselle, and that of your mother. Your papers were good, but you hadn’t thought the whole thing through. You still haven’t.” She turned away before Eva could say another word.

  When Eva and her mother sat down alone in the dining room a few minutes later, there was a veritable feast waiting for them. In the middle of a table set for three sat a roasted chicken on a bed of spring onions, and beside it a bowl of shimmering, crisp roasted potatoes, a bottle of red wine, and a carafe of water. Eva and her mother exchanged uncertain looks. It seemed too good to be true; Eva hadn’t seen such a spread since before the war. Glancing around, Mamusia hastily whispered the Jewish blessing for bread, the hamotzi, followed by the blessing for wine, just as Madame Barbier strode into the room.

  “I hope you won’t mind if I join you,” Madame Barbier said, settling into a chair before waiting for a reply. “There’s a farmer on the edge of town whom I’ve done a favor for. In exchange, he provides me with some food on occasion. But I cannot eat all of this alone.”

  “Why are you helping us?” Eva asked as Madame Barbier sliced the chicken. Steam rose from the bird and Eva closed her eyes for a second, sighing in delight at the smell.

  “Because you have been through a great deal.” Madame Barbier placed a thick piece of chicken breast on Mamusia’s plate and a crisp leg on Eva’s. “And because I hope you will decide to stay in Aurignon for some time. The room here is yours as long as you want it. I’m told that Père Clément will be able to offer you a small salary, which will be more than enough to cover your lodging.”