The Book of Lost Names

by Kristin Harmel

  “Then help me to find a way to make sure it’s not,” she said, catching his gaze and holding it. “We owe it to them. We owe it to their parents. Please.”

  “Why does it matter so much to you?”

  Eva looked away and thought again of her mother’s despair. They are erasing us, and we are helping them. “Because someone should remember. How else will they find their way home?”

  Rémy opened his mouth and then closed it again. “I can’t promise anything. But I will think about it.”

  “Thank you.” She smiled at him. “And thank you for the food. Would you see to it that Père Clément receives the documents?” As she walked away, she could feel his eyes following her until she slipped into the quiet twilight.

  * * *

  “Where have you been?” Mamusia was pacing, her face flushed, when Eva let herself into the room. Her overcoat was on, and both suitcases were packed and lined up neatly by the door.

  “Mamusia, what is this?” Eva stopped in the doorway and stared.

  “I have decided we are going back to Paris,” Mamusia said firmly. “Though now we will have to wait until tomorrow, of course. We’ve already been delayed enough.”

  Eva looked from her mother to the bags and back, then she closed the door softly behind her. “Mamusia, we can’t go to Paris.”

  “Of course we can!” her mother huffed. “I’ve thought long and hard about it. We need to be there when your father comes back. How else will he find us? If we are in Switzerland, he won’t know. No, Paris is the only way.”

  “But, Mamusia,” Eva said gently. “Tatuś is not coming back.”

  “How dare you say such a thing?” Mamusia’s voice rose to a shriek. “Of course he is! His deportation was a mistake, and as soon as they realize the error—”

  “Mamusia,” Eva repeated, more firmly this time. “It wasn’t an error.”

  “Your father will find a way to—”

  “No.” Eva cut her off. “He won’t. He is gone.”

  “You’re not saying he’s dead?” her mother screeched.

  “No,” Eva said quickly, though in the depths of her heart, she knew it might well be true. The thought had been nibbling at the corners of her consciousness all day, a voice whispering in her ear as she diligently wrote names and birth dates that would perhaps save a few lives. “No, I’m not saying that, Mamusia. Just that he’s not coming back right now.”

  “You don’t know that! No, Eva, we are going to Paris, and that is final.”

  “Mamusia, Paris isn’t the city we left behind. We can’t even return to our own apartment.”

  “You’re not making sense. Whyever not? It’s ours!”

  Eva took a deep breath. She hadn’t told her about their old neighbors yet; she had hoped to spare her the pain. But it was too late for that now. “Because the Fontains have already moved in.”

  Mamusia looked at her blankly. “Eva, you’re speaking nonsense. The Fontains have their own apartment, just down the hall.”

  “Ours is bigger, nicer. Madame Fontain has no doubt had her eye on it since the start of the war. And what do you think would happen if we went back and tried to claim it? You don’t think she would call the police right away, have us arrested?”

  “She’s living in our apartment?” Something in Mamusia’s face changed. “So we should just let that horrid woman have it? Despite the fact that we worked hard and paid for it honestly for decades? We should just roll over like the dogs she believes we are?”

  “I don’t like it any more than you do, but we don’t have a choice.”

  Mamusia pressed her lips together, the skin around them going white with anger. “We always have a choice. And it seems to me that you’re choosing to forsake what is ours—and to abandon your father.”

  “Mamusia, we aren’t abandoning him. We’re trying to survive. It’s what he would want.”

  “How would you know?” Her mother choked out a sob. “We failed him, Eva! Can’t you see that? We let them take him! You let them take him! You knew they were coming and you just stood there and did nothing.”

  Eva hung her head, accepting the blame. She should have tried harder to persuade her father to flee. She would never escape the weight of that on her conscience.

  “And now what?” her mother demanded. She began pacing again, punctuating her words by jabbing the air. “Now you just want to start our lives over, pretend that Paris isn’t our home? You never even asked me if that’s what I wanted!” Her words dissolved into a sob.

  Eva blinked back tears. “Mamusia, our old life is gone.”

  Her mother frowned and studied her in silence. “Fine. So we will go to Switzerland, then. That’s what your father told you to do, yes? He will meet us there when he resolves his situation.”

  Eva averted her eyes so her mother couldn’t see the pain in them. Did Mamusia really think that Tatuś would somehow negotiate his way out of a German camp and find his way back across the continent? “Yes, we’ll go, Mamusia. But there are some things I need to do here first.”

  Her mother stared in disbelief. “Some things? Forgery, you mean, just like the lies that got us out of Paris without your father.”

  “Mamusia—”

  “Lies, Eva, they’re all lies!” Spittle sprayed Eva. “And you’re telling lies to yourself! How can you be so selfish? Why does it mean more to you to stay here and work with strangers instead of doing what’s right for your own father?”

  “Because I can still help them!” Eva shot back. “Because they are not a lost cause!”

  She regretted the words the moment they were out of her mouth, but it was already too late. Mamusia’s face was red, her eyes blazing, her lips set in a thin line. She barreled past Eva, knocking her aside on her way to the door.

  “Where are you going?” Eva demanded as her mother strode into the hallway. Mamusia didn’t answer; she just stormed away, nearly colliding with Madame Barbier, who had presumably come to see what all the yelling was about.

  “I’m very sorry,” Eva mumbled to Madame Barbier as she started after her mother.

  Madame Barbier stepped in front of her, blocking Eva’s path. “Let her go,” she said. “You, dear, are trying to find your way forward, but your mother, she can only look back right now. She’s in too much pain to see anything other than what she has lost.”

  “But—”

  “Give her time,” Madame Barbier said, her tone as soothing as a lullaby. “I will do what I can to help. In the meantime, you need to get some rest.”

  Finally, Eva nodded and turned back into the room. Her whole body ached, and her head throbbed from exhaustion, but she already knew she wouldn’t sleep until her mother returned.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Mamusia let herself into the room at just past four in the morning, sliding into bed, and Eva finally allowed herself to drift off, comforted by the warmth of her mother’s body.

  When Eva awoke a few hours later, the sun was reaching filament fingers into the room along the edges of the blackout curtains. Eva turned to look at her mother, sleeping peacefully beside her, and she felt a surge of sadness. The fight had gone out of Mamusia, and without it, she looked like a little girl. Then again, perhaps in a way she still was. Mamusia had been only eighteen when she married Tatuś. Without her husband beside her, she didn’t know who she was as an adult. Eva dressed in silence and left without waking her.

  “Will you look after her today?” she asked Madame Barbier as she passed the older woman in the hall on the way out.

  “That depends. Are you going to see Père Clément?”

  Eva hesitated and nodded.

  “Good. Then I will care for her,” she confirmed. “Wait here for a moment.” When she returned, she was carrying an apple and a wedge of cheese. Eva held up a hand to refuse, but her growling stomach gave her away, and Madame Barbier insisted with a smile. “I will save some for your mother, too. You will both need your strength.”

  The streets of Auri
gnon were quiet as Eva hurried toward the Église Saint-Alban a few moments later, clutching the food. But it wasn’t a peaceful silence; the clean air was still, as if the sky was holding its breath, and there was no birdsong. Behind the church, the squat mountains in the distance looked ominous today as they cast their scattered shadows over the town.

  Père Clément was sweeping the aisle, and he looked up when Eva entered. “Is your mother all right, Eva? I saw her in the town square last night. You should remind her that it’s dangerous to be out after sundown. It’s a small town, and in small towns, people talk.”

  “I’ll tell her. And I think she’s okay.” She hesitated and added, “Just broken, I suppose.”

  “We all are.” He smiled at her sadly. “Eva, Rémy brought me the documents last night. The work you did was incredible.”

  She ducked her head so he wouldn’t see her blush. “Thank you. Will it help?”

  “It already has. I’ve brought you more supplies. And as long as you’re willing to stay, well, we would be very grateful for your assistance.” He handed her a key. “Here. This will let you into the library. Aside from me, you and Rémy are the only ones who have these.”

  He walked away before she could reply. She allowed herself a small smile before heading to the tiny library.

  When she let herself in, she was surprised to find Rémy already sitting at the table, hunched over something. He looked up with a smile as she pulled the door closed behind her.

  “I brought an apple and some cheese if you’d like to share,” she said, pulling the food from the pocket of her skirt and holding it out, a peace offering.

  He eyed the small meal. “You don’t need to give me any.”

  “I know I don’t,” she said. But she handed him the cheese anyhow and waited until he’d taken a small bite.

  “Thank you.” He passed the cheese back and waved away the apple. “As it turns out, I have something for you, too.” He held up the book she’d grabbed in a panic the first night she met him, Epitres et Evangiles, the thick, faded guide to weekly masses from the 1700s.

  She frowned as she took the book from him. “Are you poking fun at me?”

  He laughed. “No, quite the opposite. Please, turn to page one.”

  She looked at him uncertainly. He laughed again and gestured to the book. “Go on.”

  Slowly she cracked it open and turned to the first page, which featured only the title of the book, a subtitle, the publisher name, and the year of publication. She gave him a look. “But what…”

  “No, no, keep going. Numerical page one.” The old paper crackled in protest as she leafed through the first eighty or so pages, marked with roman numerals, and found numerical page one. There was a tiny black star drawn over the e in Le, followed by a dot over the v in l’Avent on the same line.

  Eva looked up in confusion. “You’re defacing old books now?”

  Rémy laughed. “For a good cause, I think. Keep going. Page two.”

  On the second page was a dot over the a in car, and on the third, a dot over the t in perfécuteurs, but nothing had been added to page four. On page five, there was a dot over the r in alors, but on page six, there were no marks. “I don’t understand,” she said, setting the book down.

  “Have you ever heard of the Fibonacci sequence?” Rémy asked.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I’ve always loved math. You see, the Fibonacci sequence starts with the number one, then the number one again. Add those numbers together to get two. Then add one and two together to get three. Two and three make five. Three and five make eight. And the series continues like that, adding the two previous numbers to get the following number. Do you understand?”

  Eva squinted at him. “I understand the math. But I don’t understand what this has to do with an old book.”

  He grinned. “Stay with me, Eva. Now, continue the sequence, if you will.”

  “Rémy…”

  “Just trust me.”

  She sighed, feeling as if she were back in l’école primaire, being given a surprise quiz in mathematics. “Very well. One, one, two, three, five, eight, thirteen, twenty-one, thirty-four…” She trailed off.

  Rémy was jotting down the numbers as she said them, then he handed her the paper with the numbers he’d just written. “Now, go to each of those pages and find the dot. Write down on this sheet of paper the letter beneath it.”

  Eva frowned, but she did what he said. On page eight, there was a dot over the a in apôtre. On page thirteen, there was a dot over u in suite.

  It wasn’t until the dot over the b in considérable on page twenty-one that she realized what she was writing. “Is this my name?”

  “Very good. It’s a way to keep a record of who you are, so that you’re never erased.”

  She looked up at him in astonishment. “Rémy…”

  “It’s not foolproof, I suppose. But who will be looking in an old Catholic religious book to find the names of missing Jewish children? And who would think to decode the stars and dots this way? It should be easy enough. Each name will begin on a new page, and we’ll simply add that number to each number of the series. For example, the second name will begin on page two, and then on to page three instead of two, page four instead of three, page six instead of five, page nine instead of eight, and so on. If there’s already a dot on the page, well, simply proceed with a new dot, and it will just make the code that much more difficult to decipher if anyone ever tries.”

  Eva’s head spun. “But what about the false names we’re giving the children? How will we keep track of those without making the children discoverable?”

  “Simple. Just start at the back of each person’s sequence and encode the false names in reverse order. Let’s take you, for example. The book goes to numerical page six hundred eighty-eight, so the last number that would fit in the book from your sequence would be six hundred ten. We’ll start there with a triangle over the first e, then over the v on page three hundred seventy-seven, the a on two hundred thirty-three, and we’ll start your false surname, Moreau, on page one hundred forty-four. So on like that until we have the whole name down, in reverse, on the very same pages we put your real name. If we run out of room in either direction—if there are more letters than there are pages—it’s fine. The beginnings of names should be enough to jog our memories in those cases. You see, Eva? It’s nearly perfect.”

  He grinned at her and she felt breathless. She looked back at the book, and then at him. “You just came up with this?”

  “I was up all night. You were right, Eva. We can’t erase the children who might not be able to speak for themselves. We’ll keep a list of all of them.”

  “I—I don’t know what to say.”

  “You could say, ‘Rémy, you’re a genius.’ Or, ‘Rémy, you’re devastatingly handsome.’ ”

  Eva laughed, surprised to feel tears in her eyes. “Yes, both of those things. And also, Rémy, you’re a hero. This is remarkable. But what if Père Clément is right about the dangers of keeping the list?”

  Rémy shrugged. “He is. And that’s why this system will work. I’m sure of it. No one will discover the book, and if they do, the stars, dots, and triangles won’t mean a thing. Besides, we’ll keep it in plain sight on the shelves; who would think to look inside for anything suspicious anyhow?” He paused. “The pages will fill up fast, so we’ll start with black ink, and if we run out of room in the book, we’ll go back to the start and use blue.” He opened the book once again to the first page and pushed it gently toward Eva. “But we’ll never start another name on page one. That will only be for you.” When Eva looked up at him, his expression was somber.

  She met his gaze and then glanced down at the book, her cheeks warm. “I don’t know how to thank you for this, Rémy.”

  “Yes, well, you’ll owe me forever, of course.” His easy grin was back.

  Eva smiled and picked up the pen he’d left on the table. Wordlessly, she turned to page two and dr
ew a tiny star over the r in feront and a dot over the é in étoit. On page three, she etched a dot over the m in Romains and on page four, a dot over the y in il y a. When she looked up again, Rémy was staring at her.

  “You’re writing my name,” he said quietly.

  “Yes,” she replied. “Page two is only for you.”

  * * *

  It took three days to convince Père Clément that their system of recording names would work, and he only reluctantly agreed after Eva had threatened to stop producing documents and Rémy had challenged him to take the book and try to decipher the code. The priest spent a day and a half poring over Epitres et Evangiles, and when he finally handed it back, he’d still been hesitant.

  “You know, not all the children will arrive with names,” he warned.

  “Then we must do our best to discover who they really are before we erase their identities,” Rémy replied immediately. “It’s important.”

  Eva glanced at him in amazement, thankful that he was on her side.

  Père Clément’s brow creased. “You understand that God will always know who they are.”

  “Sure,” Rémy said with a shrug. “But God is busy with many matters right now. Is there any harm in giving him a bit of help?”

  “But if anyone gets a hold of the names…”

  “They will not,” Rémy said firmly. “Who would think to look in this boring, old religious text?”

  The corners of Père Clément’s mouth twitched. “You think this is boring?” He held up the book.

  “You don’t?” Rémy shot back with a grin.

  Père Clément laughed. “I don’t think I should answer that.”

  Rémy left a few minutes later, leaving Eva alone with Père Clément in the small, hidden library. “You know, Eva,” the priest said as he placed Epitres et Evangiles on the table between them, “I was never trying to erase the children. I only want to save them.”

  “I know,” she said softly. “I do, too. But someone has to prevent them from being lost.”

  He touched the spine of the book once more. “I’m glad you’ve joined us, Eva.”