The Book of Lost Names

by Kristin Harmel

  Madame Travere looked away, but Père Clément nodded. “Yes. From the north.”

  “And what will happen to them when they get to Switzerland?”

  “They’re adopted,” Madame Travere said, her tone clipped. “Temporarily. Until they can be reunited with their parents.”

  Eva thought of her own father and blinked back tears. “And if a reunion never comes?”

  “There are provisions for that, too,” Père Clément said. “Some will come back to France, some will stay with their new families. We will make sure all of them are cared for, though. It is the most important thing we do.” He paused and added, “And you, my dear, are a big part of that.”

  “Now,” Madame Travere said, clapping her hands once, “you’ve seen what there is to see. Shall we go?”

  She began to walk away, but the little girl with the pigtails had looked up and locked eyes with Eva, and Eva felt herself drawn to the child. She moved across the room, ignoring Madame Travere, who was muttering something about interaction with the children being highly unusual.

  “What’s your name, dear?” Eva asked, bending beside the girl who still held the book open in her lap.

  The little girl blinked at her. “Anne.” From the way she said it, her eyes sliding away, Eva knew it was not the name she’d been born with, but rather a new identity someone had given her to get her here safely.

  “It’s nice to meet you, Anne. My name is Mademoiselle Moreau.”

  Anne studied her. “That is not your real name, though, is it, mademoiselle?”

  Eva shook her head, feeling a surge of guilt. How could she lie to a child? But it was more dangerous to tell the truth. “No. It’s not.”

  One day, when Eva had to produce false papers for the girl, she would learn who she really was. She wondered where she had come from, where she would go from here. She seemed so young to have her whole life ripped from her. “How old are you, Anne?” she asked.

  “Six and a half. Nearly seven.”

  “And what are you reading?”

  The girl glanced down at the book in her hands. “Le Magicien d’Oz. Do you know it? It’s about a girl named Dorothée, who is carried into a strange land called Oz, where she meets a scarecrow, a tin woodman, and a cowardly lion.”

  Eva smiled. “I’ve read it. But isn’t it quite a difficult book for someone so young?”

  The little girl shrugged. “I know most of the words, and Madame Travere has given me a dictionary for the ones I do not. Besides, I think it doesn’t matter, as long as you can understand the characters.”

  “It is rather fun to read about such fantastical creatures.”

  “I suppose, but that’s not what I meant. I meant that in a way, I’m like Dorothée, aren’t I? I’m on a great adventure, and one day, I’ll find my way home.”

  Eva had to swallow the lump in her throat before replying. “I think that’s a very good point.”

  The little girl searched Eva’s eyes. “Do you know how it ends? Dorothée does get to go home, doesn’t she?”

  “Yes. Yes, she does.”

  “And her family is there waiting for her?”

  Eva could only manage to nod.

  “Good,” Anne said. “One day, the yellow brick road will lead me home, too. I know it.”

  Père Clément appeared at Eva’s side then, and he put an arm around her. “Eva, we really must be going. But I see you’ve met our resident book lover.”

  Anne smiled up at the priest. “Mademoiselle Moreau has read Le Magicien d’Oz, too, Père Clément!”

  “Well, Anne, would you believe that Mademoiselle Moreau once worked in a very large library full of books? I believe she loves reading just as much as you do.”

  Anne looked back at Eva, her eyes wide. “One day, I hope to work in a library, too. Do you think it’s possible?”

  “Of course,” Eva replied, her voice choked. “Libraries are very magical places.”

  Anne nodded solemnly and then returned her attention to the pages, already lost in the land of Oz once again. Eva watched her for a few seconds before Père Clément led her gently away.

  Night had already begun to fall by the time Madame Travere shut the door firmly behind them and Eva and Père Clément began to walk away from the children’s home, back toward the church. Snowflakes drifted down in silence, clinging to the eaves.

  “Thank you, Père Clément,” Eva said softly as they turned a corner.

  “There are another sixteen houses in town, and seven farmhouses in the countryside, that are hiding children similarly. Madame Travere has been providing shelter longer than anyone else in town. She was the first to step up when children began arriving from Paris.”

  The four children Eva had seen today were only a minuscule fraction of the orphans whose parents had been stolen. What would become of them? Would their lives ever be normal again? Was it possible to rebuild when you’d been left with nothing? “How will we save them all?” she finally asked in a whisper.

  “With courage, Eva.” Père Clément’s reply was instant. “And a bit of faith.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  By the time 1943 arrived, it was hard to remember what warmer weather had felt like. Winter had settled its icy claws into Aurignon and was holding on tight, dumping sleet and snow, freezing the streets, sending icy gusts of biting wind racing down the alleys.

  The only good thing about the weather was that it had scared the Germans inside. Instead of manning their posts on corners, they were ensconced in the town’s only café beside a roaring fire, sipping coffee they’d brought from Germany. Sometimes, the scent of hot chocolate wafted out onto the streets, triggering in Eva a surge of anger so sharp that she was caught off guard. Who were they to enjoy all the comforts of a French winter while the children hidden in houses all around them were hungry and cold? Though the people of Aurignon were no strangers to preparing each year for a long, hard winter, the population of the town had swelled with refugees in the past year, and there simply wasn’t enough food to go around.

  Despite the muttered objections of Madame Travere, Eva had begun visiting the children once a week, taking great care to slip into the house only when she was entirely alone on the street, with no one to see where she was vanishing to. Aurignon was a small place, with no more than a thousand residents, and that meant that everyone had at least a vague sense of everyone else’s business. The less people saw of her aside from Sunday mass, the better—especially since she could sometimes feel the stares of some of the gendarmes burning into her back as she knelt to pray. Letting them—or anyone else—see her as she approached Madame Travere’s home each week could be dangerous.

  There had been no new refugees arriving in the freezing cold, so the children Eva had met just after Hanukkah were still here and had mostly acclimated to their new home. They had classes each morning with Madame Travere, and the rest of the time, they entertained themselves in her parlor.

  “Do you suppose my parents are still alive?” Anne asked Eva abruptly one day in February. They were sitting side by side on the sofa, Anne with a tattered copy of Les Enfants du capitaine Grant open in her lap. In front of them, the two older boys and the teenage girl were huddled around a record player Rémy had managed to procure, listening to a jazz album on low volume, whispering to each other. Madame Travere had pronounced the very existence of a record player in her house scandalous, but Père Clément had convinced her that it would help raise the morale of the children. Very well, she had grumbled. But absolutely no dancing.

  “I think there’s every reason to hope they are,” Eva replied carefully after a long pause. She knew very little about Anne’s life before coming to Aurignon, because the children were forbidden from talking about their pasts, but she understood from Père Clément that Anne had come from a town outside Paris and that her parents had been taken in late October.

  “You know,” Anne said after a moment, “when Dorothée is in Oz, she has no idea whether her home in Kansas has
been destroyed by a tornado. She is working so hard to get back to her aunt and uncle, but she has no way of knowing if they’re there.”

  “Yes,” Eva said carefully. Anne had finished the book just after the New Year, and she’d been talking about it ever since, pinning her hope to the fictional magic that had shown a little girl from a place called Kansas the way back to life.

  “But they were there, Mademoiselle Moreau. They were there all along, worrying about her. And when Dorothée got home, they were a family again.”

  “Yes,” Eva agreed again. She took a deep breath. “But, Anne, my dear girl, this is not Oz.”

  “I know that, Mademoiselle Moreau,” Anne said instantly. “We can imagine, though, can’t we?”

  Eva didn’t say anything, because of course the girl was right. That’s what books were for, after all. They were passageways to other worlds, other realities, other lives one could imagine living. But in times like these, was it dangerous to dream unrealistic dreams?

  “Mademoiselle Moreau,” Anne said again after Eva had been silent too long, “I know it’s sometimes hard to believe the best. Isn’t it better than believing the worst, though?”

  Eva blinked at her. The little girl was merely six; how could she have a thought like that? “You’re absolutely right, Anne.”

  “I prefer to have hope anyhow,” the girl concluded, patting Eva on the hand the way an adult might do to a child. “I think you should, too. Otherwise, things become too frightening, and it’s hard to go on. Now, have you read this book yet? Les Enfants du capitaine Grant?”

  Eva smiled. “By Jules Verne? Yes, I read it when I was about your age.”

  “Good. Then you must know that even when things seem darkest, there is hope.”

  Eva vaguely remembered that the titular children of the story are eventually reunited with their father after a harrowing journey around the world. “I suppose there is, Anne. I suppose there is.”

  * * *

  That afternoon, Eva was working alone in the church library by the light of a single candle when Père Clément arrived, his expression grave. “There’s a batch of papers needed urgently,” he said, handing Eva a list. “By tomorrow morning, if you can.”

  Eva looked down. There were four names, all of which had become familiar to her in the past few months. She stopped, trembling, when she reached the last: little Anne. “I thought the couriers were planning to wait for warmer weather,” she said softly, looking up.

  “We’ve received word that the Germans are about to raid Madame Travere’s home, possibly as soon as tomorrow. They suspect there are Jewish children being hidden there.”

  Eva felt as if her blood had turned to ice. “But how? Who could have told them?”

  Père Clément’s mouth was a thin line. “It could have been anyone: a jealous neighbor, a nosy passerby, a policeman looking to curry favor. Though most of the townspeople here hate the Occupation, there are a handful who look at it as an opportunity to profit.”

  “How could they betray children, though?” Eva could feel her temper rising. “And what do the Germans want with them anyhow? What harm could they do?”

  Père Clément sighed. “It seems that’s not the point.”

  “Can I at least go say goodbye?”

  “I’m afraid not. If the Germans are watching the house, we can’t afford to have you associated with it right now. Besides, I think you will have much to do tonight if the papers need to be ready before dawn. Would you like me to tell your mother not to expect you home this evening?”

  Eva nodded slowly and ran her finger over Anne’s familiar assumed name, along with a false birthdate that made her five and a half instead of six. “Who is she really?”

  Père Clément dug into his pocket and emerged with a second list, which he handed to her. This had become their norm; she would record the names of the children, their real names, and then burn the slips of paper. The real names were kept separate from the false ones, just in case anyone discovered the papers before they could be destroyed. “She is the first one.”

  Eva looked down. “Frania Kor,” she read aloud. She looked up at Père Clément, her vision blurred by tears. “Her name is Polish. Do you know what it means?”

  “No.”

  “Frania means from France, or free.” Eva swallowed the lump in her throat. “She was probably born in France, like I was, and her parents thought that alone would keep her safe, give her a better life.”

  “But we can do it, Eva,” Père Clément said. “We can do it for them, keep her safe, make sure there’s a future for her after all.” He hesitated. “I shouldn’t have let you get so attached to her.”

  Eva wiped away a tear. “No, I’m glad you did. It has helped to remind me who I’m doing this work for.” Besides, there was nothing Père Clément could have done to stop it. From the moment Eva first laid eyes on the little girl, she had recognized a kindred spirit, another dreamer who lost and found herself in books.

  “But no good comes of giving away pieces of our heart in the midst of a war.” Père Clément waited until she looked up and met his eye. “It’s dangerous, Eva.”

  Eva knew then that he wasn’t just talking about the children. She thought of Rémy, whom she’d been seeing less of lately as he became more involved in running errands for the underground. “It’s more dangerous not to, I think.” With a sigh, she turned to the bookshelf behind her to reach for the Book of Lost Names.

  “I’ll summon Rémy,” Père Clément said. “You’ll need his help to get through all the documents in time.”

  “Thank you,” Eva said, and as Père Clément left, locking the door behind him, she turned to the book and opened it to page 147. On the second line, she drew a tiny black star over the F in Fils, a dot over the r in parconséquent. Here, at least, a little girl named Frania Kor would still exist, even though the world would try to erase her. If she made it to Oz, she would one day need to find her way home.

  * * *

  Eva had already made it through the first two sets of documents by the time Rémy swept in an hour later, his black overcoat still dusted with snow, a bag slung over his shoulder. He set the bag down in the corner and removed his cap, kneading it nervously. “How are the papers coming?”

  Eva sighed. “It’s going to be a long night.”

  “Right. Well, how can I help?”

  Eva pointed to the name of the boy she’d watched play checkers a dozen times, a ten-year-old whom she’d heard called Octave. His name, she knew now, was really Johann, which made her think his parents had come from Germany or Austria, but it was impossible to know. He was one of the older ones, someone who had a chance of carrying the secrets of his past with him, but Eva added him to the book anyhow, as she did with all the children. If he was captured or killed in the process of fleeing, at least there would be a record of his name. If a family member came looking for him one day, she’d be able to tell them at least part of what had happened, that for a time he had been embraced by a small town in the mountains.

  “You’ve been gone a lot lately,” Eva said mildly as Rémy began carefully filling in the false details on one of the certificates Joseph had delivered in November. The blanks were nearly gone now, and Eva knew she would need to seek him out soon to ask for more.

  He looked away. “There are men assembling in the woods,” he said slowly. “Training. Preparing.”

  “For what?”

  “For the fight we know is coming.”

  “But I thought you were just working as a courier.”

  He turned to look at her, and in his eyes there was pain, but also steely determination. “I know Père Clément believes the only way to win this war is through peaceful resistance. I’m afraid I no longer agree.”

  “What are you saying?” Eva already knew the answer, though, and instantly, she was battling tears she knew she would cry later, alone.

  “That someone has to take the fight to the Germans, Eva. No one is coming to save us. The British
are helping, sure, but they’re not here, are they? Nor are the Americans. We’re on our own, and the Germans are only growing in power while we sit by and sneak around under their noses with our false papers. We have to stop them before it’s too late, or we’ll have no one but ourselves to blame for losing France.”

  “Rémy, I—”

  He looked at her, but she didn’t know what else to say. How could she beg him to stop when deep down, she agreed with him? And how could she explain that sparring with him as they worked side by side for seven months had made her fiercely protective of him? She’d learned his humor, the skills about which he was so confident—but also the insecurities that his occasional brashness struggled to mask. But it wasn’t her right to feel that way, was it? They had made no promises, sworn no vows. And so she said nothing, and neither did he for a few minutes. “Eva, I’ll be okay,” he said at last. “I always have been. I always find a way to pull through, remember?”

  “Rémy, I’m very frightened that might not matter at all in the end.”

  He didn’t reply, and they worked in silence for the next several hours, Eva carefully etching the necessary stamps on the roller and Rémy dutifully filling in blanks with a clerk’s practiced scrawl. She saved little Anne—Frania Kor—for last, and as she took the girl’s documents from Rémy’s hands and asked if she could be the one to fill in the blanks for her, she could feel a tear slipping down her left cheek. She looked away, but it was too late. Rémy had seen it, and slowly, with a gentleness that surprised her, he reached out and tenderly wiped it away with his thumb.

  He paused, his index finger just beneath her chin, and when she looked up at him, his face was just inches away. The first rays of dawn were piercing the darkness outside the windows, and soon, Père Clément would be back for the papers and the children would be on their way east. But for now, time was as frozen as the icicles dangling from the eaves outside, and when Rémy leaned in to kiss her, it felt like coming home.