The Book of Lost Names

by Kristin Harmel

“Thank you,” Mamusia said, smoothing a napkin over her lap, “but we won’t be here for very long.”

  “I see.” Madame Barbier didn’t look at either of them as she heaped potatoes and greens onto their plates and her own. She poured a small glass of wine for each of them. “I was under the impression that your daughter had spoken with Père Clément.”

  Eva felt torn as Madame Barbier murmured a short prayer under her breath, crossed herself, and then cut into her own chicken leg. “We haven’t made any decisions yet.”

  Mamusia gave her a sharp look. “Certainly, we have. You’ll retrieve your father, and then we’ll depart.”

  Madame Barbier turned to Eva, her eyes bright. “You feel this way, too? You would abandon us so soon after we help you?”

  Eva’s appetite was suddenly gone. “I—I don’t know.”

  “But your father…” Mamusia said, her voice rising an octave.

  Across the table, Madame Barbier cleared her throat. “Père Clément is a good man, madame. You can trust him. He’s doing good work.”

  Mamusia glared at Madame Barbier. “I’m sure he is, but he has nothing to do with us.”

  “Au contraire. I believe he has everything to do with you if you hope to see your husband again,” Madame Barbier replied evenly.

  Mamusia snorted and pushed her chair back from the table. For a second, Eva was certain that her mother was about to storm off in righteous anger, but she seemed to reconsider, perhaps lured by the full plate of food in front of her. Instead, she scooted her chair back in, muttering angrily to herself, as Madame Barbier cut her own chicken, a pleasantly blank expression on her face.

  “So, er, you live here alone?” Eva asked when the silence had grown uncomfortable.

  “Yes, dear,” the older woman replied. “My husband and I managed the boardinghouse together during happier times. Aurignon used to be a somewhat popular holiday destination for people who lived in Lyon, Dijon, even Paris, people who wanted to escape to the countryside during the summer. Then my husband died in ’thirty-nine, and war came.”

  “I’m sorry to hear about your husband,” Mamusia said, finally looking up.

  “And I’m sorry to hear about yours, but at least you still have hope. And you still have your daughter.” Madame Barbier nodded at Eva. “My son went to fight for France just after his father passed. He did not return.”

  “I’m quite sorry to hear that, too,” Mamusia said, glancing at Eva, who added murmured condolences.

  Madame Barbier accepted the words with a brisk nod. “Well, as you can imagine, I don’t have much fondness for the Germans, even if Pétain wishes to lick their bootstraps, the old fool. My France is the one my husband fought for in the Great War, and the one my son gave his life for.” Suddenly, her eyes were on Eva, and they were on fire. “It is the France I hope you will choose to fight for, too, mademoiselle. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’m finished.” She stood abruptly, pushing her chair back from the table and whisking her plate away, but not before Eva saw a tear glide down her cheek.

  “We don’t owe them anything,” Mamusia muttered a moment later, breaking the silence Madame Barbier had left in her wake.

  Eva sighed. “Of course we do. I would never have thought to forge documents from the Argentine embassy. And even if the idea had somehow occurred to me, I never would have known how to do it.”

  “So the priest gave you a bit of information. And Madame Barbier prepared us some food. So what?”

  “It’s the best we’ve eaten in two years, Mamusia.”

  Mamusia looked away. “That still doesn’t mean you have to do anything you don’t want to do.”

  “What if I want to help?”

  “You don’t even know what the priest is involved in.”

  “I know he’s involved in helping people. Maybe that’s something I should be doing, too.”

  Mamusia’s jaw tightened. “What you should be doing, moje serduszko, my heart, is looking out for your family. Don’t forget, France has turned its back on us. On you.” She returned to her meal with a grunt, and as Eva watched her eat, her stomach swam with uncertainty.

  France may have turned her back. But did that mean that Eva could do the same when lives hung in the balance?

  * * *

  After helping her mother clear the table and scrub the dishes in an empty kitchen, Eva washed up and left in the fading twilight to meet Père Clément.

  The heavy front door to the church was unlocked, but inside, the cavernous space was dark and silent, lit by only a few candles burned down to nearly nothing. Above the altar, the statue of Jesus seemed to watch Eva, and she wasn’t sure whether to feel peaceful or nervous. What had she expected, that Père Clément would be waiting here cheerfully to roll out the red carpet? She hesitated only a moment before heading for the door to the right of the pulpit, the one that led to the small library. It was unlocked.

  Père Clément wasn’t there, either, but the empty room had seemingly been prepared for her. Curtains were drawn over the stained glass windows, making the space feel cavelike, and three lanterns burned around the room, one on the table in the center. Eva made her way carefully inside, pulling the door closed behind her, and her eyes widened when she realized what was sitting in the middle of the workspace. There was what appeared to be an official form from the Argentine consulate, and beside it, several pieces of thick blank paper, and art pens in red, blue, black, and violet. An old typewriter, the kind her father would have immediately bent to examine with glee, waited for her just to the left of the lamp. The leather-bound book, the one with the gold-etched spine that Père Clément had said was printed in 1732, sat on the corner of the table where she’d left it that morning.

  “Père Clément?” she called out cautiously, but only silence greeted her. After a few seconds, she sat down carefully in one of the two chairs facing the table and picked up the authentic letter from the Argentine consulate. The format was relatively basic, and the stamps looked easy enough to forge. She waited for another minute before grabbing one of the blank pieces of paper and feeding it into the typewriter. She would craft the letter first, modeling it on the real document, and then she’d worry about the letterhead and stamps.

  She hummed absently as she typed out the words to a formal letter announcing that Leo Traube of the rue Elzévir in Paris had in fact been born in Argentina and thus was exempt from German detention. He was, she wrote, to be released immediately. When she was finished typing, she duplicated the flourished signature of the real diplomat and then set to work with the black art pen, carefully copying the consulate’s letterhead.

  Next came the stamps, red and blue, and she slid the old leather-bound volume of epistles and gospels across the table to hold down the paper while she worked. As she rendered the false stamps, her mind drifted as it often did when she created. She could feel the rhythm of her breath with every pen stroke, and as the stamps slowly materialized on the page, hope floated up within her. She was doing good work, and she knew it.

  She was nearly done with the final stamp—a sun etched in blue—when the sound of a door opening snapped her out of her reverie. She jumped up with a gasp, clutching the false document. From the shadows between the shelves, a young man emerged, and Eva scrambled to grab the real Argentine letter, too. She stuffed it, as well as the false one, behind her into the stiff waistline of her skirt.

  The man stared at her without saying anything. His hair was black, and his eyes looked green, or perhaps hazel, in the flickering lantern light. He was tan, square-jawed, with broad shoulders and a narrow waist. His expression was impassive.

  “Good evening, monsieur.” Eva was attempting to sound casual, innocent, but her voice cracked.

  His face didn’t change as he crossed his arms, his eyes never leaving hers. “What are you doing here?”

  Eva flashed him a nervous, fake smile and groped around on the table. “Just a little reading,” she said, holding up the leather-bound book.

 
; “Epitres et Evangiles,” he said, tilting his head to read the spine. “Ah yes. Nothing like a two-hundred-year-old guide to the weekly mass to titillate the senses.”

  Now she could feel her cheeks flaming. “Well, I’m very religious, you see. Père Clément said it was fine for me to be here.”

  The man still hadn’t moved. “Yes, he’s very supportive of religious scholars like yourself.”

  “Very.”

  He stared at her for another long beat, and though Eva wanted to look away, she couldn’t. “I assume, then,” he said at last, “that you are the infamous Colette Fontain.”

  Her heart skipped. Had Père Clément betrayed her after all? Or had it been Madame Barbier?

  “You can stop looking like a rabbit in the headlights, mademoiselle,” the man said without waiting for an answer. “Père Clément told me all about you.”

  Eva blinked at him and then looked down. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  He took a step closer, and then another. He was so close now that she could feel the warmth of his breath on her forehead as she stared at her feet. “I think you do.” And then his arm was around her, almost an embrace, and she screamed. So this was it? He’d come to arrest her? Then he stepped back, and for a split second, she felt a surge of relief, but it was short-lived. Her whole body went cold as she realized he was holding the papers that she had attempted to stuff down her skirt.

  “I—I can explain those,” she said.

  “You really shouldn’t scream like that,” he said casually as he began to examine them. “People outside can hear you, you know. Do you really want to blow our cover?”

  “Our… what?”

  He looked up. “Our cover,” he repeated slowly, as if talking to a small child. “Surely you know that we need our privacy here. Père Clément said you seemed quite bright, but if you don’t understand that, he has oversold you.”

  Who was this man? Should she try to run? She began to inch quietly toward the door.

  “Where on earth are you going?” He looked puzzled.

  She swallowed hard and retreated to her original spot. “Nowhere.” There had to be a different way. “Look, I just came across those papers, you see. They were sitting here when I arrived to read the gospels.”

  “The epistles, you mean.”

  “Yes, yes, of course.”

  He looked back at the documents. “Well, you’ve missed an accent over the e in the consul’s signature. Otherwise, this is quite good. I’m impressed.” He looked up and handed the letters back to her as she gaped at him. “There’s just one problem. Your papers that say you’re Colette Fontain? I understand they’re quite good, and I commend you for that. But where did you get the name?”

  “It’s—it’s my name, of course, monsieur.”

  He waved her words away dismissively. “It’s late, mademoiselle. I’m clearly not here to harm you. I’m here to help. Identities pulled from the sky are perfectly fine in emergency situations that only involve travel. But if you plan to do anything more than boarding trains—such as, for instance, marching up to the gates of an internment camp and demanding the release of a prisoner—you’ll need papers that are more convincing.”

  “I don’t know what you—”

  “The authorities check identities against official records, you see,” he said, rolling right over her objections as if she hadn’t spoken. “Now, there are several ways to lift real identities. False demobilization papers are a favorite of mine because they’re so easy to forge, but that only works for military-aged men, and you’re a woman, of course. There’s not time to impose upon a real person to share her identity with you, and besides, this town is so small I’m not sure we’d find anyone who’s a good match anyhow. And personally, I find it distasteful to troll the graveyards in search of names and birthdates.” He seemed to be speaking almost to himself as she gaped at him. “But the Journal Officiel. Now, that’s the ticket, mademoiselle. It has saved us more than once.”

  “The Journal Officiel?” She felt dazed as she followed his rapid-fire chain of thought. Of course she knew the newspaper, often called the JO, which recorded all official laws, decrees, and official declarations for the whole country, but what did that have to do with her?

  “I bet you skip right over the sections for births, deaths, marriages, naturalizations, things of that nature. Am I right?” He didn’t wait for a reply. “Of course I am. Who has time for such dullness? Well, I’ll tell you, mademoiselle, I do. It’s a veritable treasure trove of identities just waiting to be borrowed.”

  She blinked a few times as she finally understood what he was getting at. “You borrow real names from the JO for false documents.”

  “You are bright.”

  She glared at him. “So you’re a forger, then.”

  He grinned. “Well, I prefer to think of myself as an artist—or sometimes simply a genius. But forger is fine if that’s easier to understand. Now, I’m told you’re good. Let’s see, shall we?” He turned to the shelf just to her left and removed several books. Behind the shelf, there was a false wall that concealed a compartment the size of a bread box. She stared as he removed a small handful of blank papers. He set them on the table in front of her before sliding the wooden panel closed again and moving the books back to cover it. “Blank documents,” he announced, nodding to the papers.

  She looked down. Indeed, there were several identity cards and some loose sheets of paper. “But what—?”

  He interrupted her again, his tone cheerful. “I’ve taken the liberty of choosing an identity for you. It can be tedious to go through the Journal Officiel, and, well, I hope it won’t offend you if I note that you look exhausted.”

  Slowly, she shook her head.

  “Marie Charpentier,” he said simply.

  “Pardon?”

  “Marie Charpentier. You really should be writing this down.” He waited patiently while, dazed, she picked up a pen and obediently jotted the name. “Middle name, Renée. Born the eleventh of February, 1921, in Paris. You’re a secretary. And you live in Paris, at number eighteen on the rue Visconti in the sixth arrondissement. Oh, and there’s a bus to Clermont-Ferrand that leaves the town square just past ten in the morning. Got it?”

  She looked up at him. “But…”

  “Good. You should be able to loosen the staples on your current photograph, and if you’re as good as Père Clément says, you should be able to work with the portion of the stamp that’s already printed there. Stamps are difficult, of course; there are so many in circulation, and I’ve only been able to engrave the most common ones, but I see you’ve made do. Impressive. In any case, we’ll get you some better documents when you return from Paris. And one more question, Mademoiselle Charpentier—I hope you don’t mind if I call you that. Have you much experience forging other documents?”

  “I’ve—I’ve never done any of this before.”

  He frowned. “Interesting. Well, do make sure to extinguish the lanterns on the way out, would you? You wouldn’t want to burn the church down.”

  “I—” she began, but he was already heading for the door.

  “Enjoy reading the epistles!” he said cheerfully, finally cracking a small smile.

  Before she could reply, he was gone, shutting the door silently, leaving her alone with her racing thoughts. She stared after him and then looked back at her forged letter. It was indeed missing an accent mark, just as he’d said.

  Chapter Ten

  Eva didn’t sleep at all after leaving the church with her newly forged identity card identifying her as Marie Charpentier. Before dawn, while her mother slept peacefully, she carefully forged travel permits for her father and herself, so they would be able to journey to Aurignon after she freed him from Drancy. Though her stomach swam with doubt, she left to track down Père Clément before her mother awoke. But the church was empty and silent, and he was nowhere to be found. Nor was Madame Barbier around to confront. Though the dark-haired man had mentione
d the ten o’clock bus, Eva had seen an eight o’clock route on the schedule posted in the town square, too. Eager to get to Paris as soon as possible, Eva left to catch it after awakening her mother and telling her what had happened in the church the night before.

  “It still does not mean that you owe these people anything,” her mother muttered.

  “Mamusia, if they help me save Tatuś, I owe them everything.”

  Mamusia sighed. “Just bring him back safely, moje serduszko. I’m counting on you.”

  Hours later in Clermont-Ferrand, her mother’s words were still running through her head as she presented her documents to a bored-looking French policeman and stepped aboard a train bound for Paris. Just bring him back safely… I’m counting on you. It felt as if the weight of the world was resting on her shoulders. As the train slowly chugged away, taking her north, deeper into a land saturated with Germans, Eva closed her eyes and placed her forehead against the cool window. “Please, God,” she murmured, “look after my mother.”

  The first leg of the journey was uneventful, and Eva might have dozed off if not for the adrenaline coursing through her veins. Vineyards, windmills, and tiny villages raced past outside the glass, and Eva did her best to ignore the other passengers and the German soldiers who walked periodically up and down the aisles of the train.

  They had just passed Saint-Germain-des-Fossés, north of Vichy, when a man cleared his throat loudly beside her seat. Eva ignored him, watching the winding water of a narrow stream as it ran past a small farm dotted with sheep, but when he said, “Fräulein? Your papers?” in an unmistakably German accent, she had no choice but to look up.

  She found a light-haired man—a boy, really—in a German uniform scowling at her. He looked younger than she by several years, but he was standing ramrod straight, as if drawing himself up to his full height would make him appear more threatening. She wanted to tell him that the Nazi insignia on his chest made him frightening enough without help from exaggerated posture. But instead, she fought to keep her expression neutral as she handed over her false identity card and the travel permit she had fabricated just this morning.