The Book of Lost Names

by Kristin Harmel

  “But what if someone is following him? What if he leads them right to them?”

  “It’s a chance we have to take, I think.”

  “Don’t you ever wonder if this is all for nothing? What if all we’re doing is prolonging the inevitable? What if we’re playing right into their hands?”

  “None of it is in vain as long as one life is saved, and you’ve already saved hundreds.” He smiled gently. “As for the rest, Eva, you have to trust in God and wait for him to send you a sign. I have often found that in my darkest hour, he is there.”

  But as Père Clément turned to go, Eva didn’t feel much better. In fact, she felt like the net around Aurignon was being cinched tighter by the day. If the Germans had an idea where the maquisards were hiding in the forest, and if they’d been tipped off more than once about the refugee children, who was to say they didn’t know about her, too? She shivered as she sat back down to work.

  “Is there something between you and Gérard?” Geneviève asked a few seconds later. In her troubled train of thought, Eva had almost forgotten the other woman was there. Now, as she looked up, it took her a second to remind herself that Gérard was the given name Joseph was using. No one around town referred to him as anything but Faucon.

  “No, of course not,” Eva said. From the stricken look on Geneviève’s face, and the heat still evident on her cheeks, Eva suddenly realized what was happening. “Geneviève, is there something between you and Gérard?”

  Geneviève looked down, and after a few seconds, she nodded. “Yes, but I think he has feelings for you. He speaks to you with a special kind of warmth,” Geneviève mumbled. “And when we’re alone, he talks of you often.”

  “Geneviève, I’ve known him for a long time. We’re old friends, nothing more.”

  “He seems so concerned about you…”

  “Geneviève, there’s nothing there. I promise. You and Gérard are involved?”

  The other woman’s blush deepened to scarlet. “We’ve had a few dates.”

  “Dates?” It wasn’t that Eva was envious. It was just that she couldn’t imagine when the other woman—or Joseph—found the time. “When?”

  “We—we meet late at night sometimes. There’s a loft in the barn on the property where he stays. It’s very private; the family uses it only for storage. I know it doesn’t seem like much, but it’s actually quite romantic.”

  Eva just shook her head. She supposed she should be glad that one of them was finding happiness in the midst of the darkness, but somehow it just drove home the fact that Rémy was so far away.

  “You’re not upset with me, are you?” Geneviève asked when Eva didn’t say anything. “I—I wanted to tell you, but Gérard asked me to keep it a secret.”

  “No, it’s fine. I’m glad for you.” Eva forced a smile.

  “Good.” Geneviève didn’t look convinced. “It’s nice to have someone to rely on in times like these.”

  “Well, it’s good you have each other.”

  “No, Eva, I meant you.” Geneviève waited for her to look up. “I meant it is nice to have you to rely on.”

  This time, Eva’s smile was real. “I feel the same way, Geneviève. I’m very glad you’re here.”

  They worked in silence for hours, and later that afternoon, when Geneviève asked if she could take a break, Eva nodded. “Are you going to see Faucon?”

  She blushed and looked away. “I want to be at the place where we rendezvous, just in case. I don’t know how long it will take him to get to the forest and back, but if he is able to return home, he might need comfort.”

  “He’s lucky to have you, Geneviève. Please, be safe.”

  With a murmured merci, Geneviève left, and Eva turned back to her stack of ration cards with a sigh.

  * * *

  By the end of the week, Joseph had returned with good news: he had reached the maquisards in time, and though the leader still didn’t seem to entirely trust him, he had accepted the documents with gratitude and agreed to move.

  But Rémy hadn’t been there, Joseph told Eva, and he didn’t know where he’d gone. It had been nearly four months since Eva had seen him last, and she wondered if he was still thinking of her, or if he had settled in another town somewhere, perhaps even found another woman to help fight the Germans, a Catholic woman, one who wouldn’t push him away because of religion and family loyalty. If she had lost him, she had only herself to blame.

  You have to trust in God and wait for him to send you a sign. Père Clément’s words had continued to ring in her ears, but she had begun to wonder whether God would even have the time to give someone like her a second thought. There were much more important things to be worrying about than a woman who had realized too late that she loved a man who might never know how she felt, might never come back.

  Five weeks later, Eva was alone in the secret room finishing up the identity papers of eight children due to be moved across the Swiss border the next day. As she flipped to page 233 in the book to start a record for the 231st child they’d helped, her heart skipped. There was a dot on the page—over an à halfway down—that she was sure she hadn’t put there herself. And she knew the page was part of her own sequence—one, one, two, three, five, eight, thirteen, twenty-one, thirty-four, fifty-five, eighty-nine, one hundred forty-four, two hundred thirty-three—numbers so familiar she could recite them in her sleep.

  She stared, her hand frozen on the page. The dots that spelled Traube had ended on page thirty-four, and though there were dots that made up letters of a few children’s names, and a triangle from her own backward sequence, those marks ended in the first paragraph. Who would have added an additional dot on this page? Was it an error? A drip of ink she hadn’t noticed? Or had Rémy left her another message in the book without her realizing? Hands shaking, she flipped back to the first page and found a second star that was brand-new. The first one—over the e in Le—and the dot over the v in l’Avent were familiar, but the star over the J in Jean several lines down was not, nor was the dot just beside it over the e in the same word.

  Quickly, her pulse racing, she flipped to page two and found a new dot over the r in car, and another new dot over the e in de on the second line of the next page. She turned to the pages in the sequence she now knew by heart, all the way to page 610, and by the time she had jotted down the letter under each new dot, the message was clear.

  Je reviendrai à toi. I will return to you.

  She stared at it through eyes blurred with tears. Rémy had left word for her after all, a promise, a vow to come back.

  It was just the kind of sign Père Clément had urged her to look for. And now, as it sat in front of her in crisp black and white, she believed. She looked heavenward, closed her eyes, and murmured, “Thank you, God. Thank you for the sign. And please, please bring him back to me.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  May 2005

  My flight lands in Berlin just past eleven in the morning. I should be exhausted—it’s only five in the morning back home in Florida, and I slept fitfully on the plane—but being in Europe for the first time in decades does something strange to me. I feel young again, and as I stare out the window at airport vehicles that are boxier and stouter than the ones in the States, I can’t help murmuring a line from a movie I haven’t thought of in years: “I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”

  The words remind me of a little girl who was six the last time I saw her, the child whose real name—Frania Kor—I recorded on page 147 in the Book of Lost Names. I wonder if she ever made it back to France, if her parents made it home, if she ever got to see the film based on the book she loved so much. Not knowing which of the children survived, or found their families again, has been a source of heartbreak for sixty years, and now my tears spill over. I retrieve a handkerchief from my bag to wipe my wet cheeks.

  The woman in the seat beside me, who didn’t speak at all during the flight despite my attempt to exchange pleasantries, gives me a strange look
and inches away, as if my grief might be contagious.

  As we exit the plane into Berlin’s bustling airport, I’m swept along by a crowd. All around me, people speak to each other in German, and I have to remind myself that Hitler is long dead. Evil doesn’t live here anymore; this is just a place, and the people around me are just people. And isn’t that the moral of the story anyhow? You can’t judge a person by their language or their place of origin—though it seems that each new generation insists upon learning that lesson for itself. I think fleetingly of Erich, whose face I’ve tried desperately to both forget and remember over the years, and my eyes cloud with unexpected tears. I stumble, and the man who catches me is young and blond with piercing blue eyes.

  He says something in German, and despite myself, despite the fact that the war has been over for sixty years, I flinch, my heart hammering. He looks startled and moves away as soon as I’m steady on my feet.

  “Danke!” I call after him, but it’s too late; he’s already gone.

  After a blissfully short stop at passport control, and another at a currency exchange window, I queue in the taxi line and step into a waiting cab a few moments later. The driver asks something in German, and again, I have to swallow a thick feeling of unease.

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t speak German,” I tell him as I pull the door closed behind me.

  “Ah, English.”

  “Yes.”

  “I was asking where your luggage is.” His accent is thick, but I’m relieved that we can communicate. He’s perhaps a decade younger than I am, and he has a comb-over that reminds me of my late husband, Louis.

  “I brought only this overnight bag.” I gesture to the tote on the seat beside me. “I’m not staying long.”

  “Am I taking you to your hotel, then?”

  “Actually, I’m going to a library, the Zentral- und Landesbibliothek.” I pull a scrap of paper from my purse and read the address aloud.

  He nods and glances at me in the rearview mirror after he has pulled away from the curb. “And what brings you to Berlin?”

  I consider the question. “I suppose you could say it is to see an old friend.”

  * * *

  Berlin is modern and bustling, more beautiful than I had imagined it to be. I know it was shattered in the waning days of the war, just as France was, and I marvel at the rejuvenation around me. One would never know that six decades ago, the city was rubble. I wonder how Aurignon looks now, whether it, too, was rebuilt, whether any of the old scars remain. And what of Père Clément’s church? Does it still stand?

  By the time the cab pulls up in front of the library thirty minutes later, I’m emotionally spent. But the siren song of the Book of Lost Names is getting stronger, and I’m powerless to stop the memories from rolling in like waves.

  “Enjoy your visit with your friend,” the driver says cheerfully after I’ve handed him a few crisp bills and he has helped me out of the back seat. As the cab pulls away, I finally turn to face the library, my heart thudding.

  It’s enormous and lined with hundreds of identical windows, and even though this building is modern, angular, there’s something about it that reminds me of the Mazarine Library in Paris. I try to push from my mind the number of times I stood waiting on those steps, waiting for a future that never came. But of course forgetting is impossible. The memories are all around me. Slowly, I ascend to the front door and pull it open.

  Inside, I breathe deeply as my eyes adjust to the dim lighting. It’s incredible how familiar the place feels, though I’ve never been here. Once you’ve fallen in love with books, their presence can make you feel at home anywhere, even in places where you shouldn’t belong. I walk up to the desk at the end of the long entry hall, and the young woman seated there looks up with a smile.

  “Guten Tag, gnädige Frau,” she says. “Kann ich Ihnen helfen?”

  I shake my head. “I’m sorry, but do you speak English?”

  Her forehead creases. “My English, it is not so good.”

  “Français?” I ask, though it’s been ages since I spoke my native tongue. “Um, französisch?”

  Her face lights up. “Oui,” she says. “Je parle un peu français. Puis-je vous aider?”

  How strange, I think, to be speaking French in Germany, a country that not so long ago tried to wipe my people from the map. I tell her in French that I’m here to see Otto Kühn, and I’m surprised to hear the tremor in my own voice.

  “Certainement.” She reaches for her phone and asks me if she can tell him who is here to see him.

  I take a deep breath. It feels suddenly as if everything has been leading to this moment. “Je suis…” I hesitate, because it doesn’t matter who I am. It matters what I am here to do. So instead I tell her simply that I’m here for the book.

  She tilts her head to the side. “Le livre, madame?”

  “Oui.” The world seems to stop spinning. “I’m here,” I tell her in French, “for the Book of Lost Names.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  January 1944

  By January 1944, darkness had fallen on Aurignon, and Rémy still hadn’t returned. The winter was cold, one of the coldest Eva could remember, and rations were in short supply. Germany was suffering losses now, with the Allies heavily bombing Berlin and the Red Army entering Poland, pushing the Germans back from the east. The worse the situation became for them, the more they seemed to take their anger out on the French. Here, in the mountains of southeast central France, there was never enough fuel, never enough heat, never enough food. Even the farmer who had supplied Madame Barbier had vanished, meaning that the days of occasional roast chicken feasts at the boardinghouse were long gone, too. Most of the people Eva knew in the underground gave up a portion of their rations each month to keep the residents of the children’s homes nourished for the eventual journey they would take across the mountains, and that meant that they all seemed to be withering to skin and bones. Eva looked in the mirror sometimes and hardly recognized the sharp lines of her own narrowing face.

  In early December, just before Hanukkah had begun, the French police had arrested Joseph with a pocketful of forged ration cards and turned him over to the Germans, but somehow—perhaps because Père Clément had gone to Vichy to plead with the German high command—he had been released. The Germans, Joseph said when he returned to Aurignon sporting a broken arm set in plaster, hadn’t realized he was involved with the Resistance; he’d been arrested because they thought he was selling false ration cards on the black market. He had managed to play into their mistake, which had earned him a two-week jail sentence and an admonition that should he be caught again, the punishment would be much more severe. “Imagine what would have happened if they’d realized I was a Jew,” he said one night over dinner with Eva and Mamusia, his smile not reaching his eyes.

  But there was joy in the darkness, too. Geneviève and Joseph had gotten more serious after his close call with the Germans—though as far as Eva knew, he hadn’t yet told her his real name. Still, a name was just words, something Eva had learned all too well. They seemed genuinely to love each other, and on the nights Joseph was in Aurignon, Geneviève always left the secret library early with stars in her eyes to spend the night with him in the loft of the old barn, under piles of woolen blankets.

  “Do you think he’ll ask me to marry him someday?” she asked Eva shyly one day. “I dream sometimes of walking toward him down a path that’s white with blossoming cherry trees, carrying a bouquet of lilies. The dream always ends before I reach him, but I wake up feeling that it’s possible. Maybe when the war ends, he will propose.”

  “Maybe,” Eva agreed with a smile, but she wondered if Geneviève was deceiving herself. It felt as if the war would never be over, but what if the tide was turning? Germany had seemingly lost the Battle of the Atlantic, and was being beaten back from both east and west, according to the forbidden BBC radio broadcasts she, Mamusia, and Madame Barbier sometimes listened to at the boardinghouse. Was it possible th
at France could be saved after all? That Rémy might come back to her? Eva allowed herself to dream sometimes of a future that had him in it—and of a future in which her father returned from Auschwitz, too. But she knew that she was deluding herself imagining that Tatuś had survived this long—and she wondered if her thoughts of a life with Rémy were equally unrealistic.

  On the last Saturday of the month, Eva and Geneviève were working in the afternoon on a batch of papers for the Maquis group in the forests near Aurignon, who were growing in strength and number faster than their little forgery bureau could keep up with. There were more children than ever before, too, nearly forty of them concealed in different homes around town, most hailing from Paris, all of them stuck here until the weather warmed up enough to make an Alps crossing. Eva hadn’t yet started on their papers because there was plenty of time before they’d need to leave.

  “Do you ever think of the life you had before the war?” Geneviève asked quietly, breaking the silence between them. She was working on an identity card for a young, dark-haired man, and when she looked up at Eva, she looked haunted.

  “Sometimes,” Eva said after a pause. “It’s painful, though, isn’t it? To think of what we once had.”

  “And what could have been.” Geneviève touched the man’s picture gently. “This one looks so much like my brother.”

  “I didn’t know you had a brother.”

  “A twin.” Her smile was soft and sad. “Jean-Luc. We drove each other crazy, but he was my best friend, too. He was called up to the army and died in May 1940 at the front. He never had a chance.”

  “I’m so sorry, Geneviève.”

  “Everything crumbled after that. My mother was inconsolable. My father began to drink. We all drifted further and further apart, though we lived under the same roof. We were barely speaking by the time I came home one day and found my mother dead on the kitchen floor. Stress, the doctor said, or maybe a broken heart. My father was gone a month after that, a stroke.”