Page 55 of The World That We Knew

After Julien slept for a while in the parlor, she asked him to tell her everything, and he told her all that he knew. Victor had been on the last train to Auschwitz, where everyone had been gassed to destroy the evidence that they had ever existed. But here were two people who knew Victor had existed. They lit a candle and Julien recited what he could remember of the Kaddish, the prayer for the dead. Blessed and praised, glorified and exalted, extolled and honored, adored and lauded be the name of the Holy One, blessed be He, beyond all the blessings and hymns, praises and consolations that are ever spoken in the world.

After supper, during which they said very little, Julien went out to hike along the hillside, mostly to give Marianne some time alone. He went up to the place where he’d been when Monsieur Félix was murdered, a beautiful spot where he could see for miles. Though it was nearly nine, the sky was still light. There were clouds above the mountains, but here it was clear, and Julien threw himself on his back in the tall grass. He was so tall and strong that his body often seemed to belong to a stranger. He closed one eye and squinted at the fading sun. If Lea was beside him in the grass she would surely know what he felt, a longing for something he could never have again. A normal life, a family. He spied a cloud coming close and then closer. It was the heron. Julien stood up to greet the bird, and as he did he realized he was crying, and that he couldn’t stop, and that anything which gave him hope of any sort was overwhelming.

He slipped the message out of the tube, hands shaking, but before he could read the note or respond, the heron departed. The bird had an awkward gait at first, but when he leapt into the sky he was a marvel. Julien called for him to wait. He shook his arms at the sky. How would he ever write back to Lea? He turned to the message, but when he unfolded the paper, he saw it had not been written in Lea’s familiar script.

She’s waiting for you here.

There was a small intricate map, as if seen from a bird’s-eye view.

Ava, he thought.

He went back to the house and waited for Marianne to come down from her room, anxious, tapping his long fingers on the tabletop. He wished he had a cigarette, a habit he knew he would have to quit.

When Marianne finally came downstairs she said she had been sleeping, but her eyes were red and her face puffy. Her hair had come undone, and for the first time Julien saw that she was, indeed, beautiful, just as his brother had always vowed.

Marianne offered to help him cross the border, but he told her there was somewhere he must go. He placed the map on the table. “Here.”

“It’s the doctor’s house,” Marianne said after a quick glance. “A day’s walk. An hour or two if Monsieur Cazales next door will take you in his truck.”

She sent Julien with two golden jars of honey to bring to Cazales in return for the favor of a ride. He wouldn’t need the map. Everyone knew where the doctor lived.

“You’ll be all right here?” Julien asked. She certainly didn’t look all right, but she nodded, and he remembered what his brother had told him. Marianne was strong.

She went outside to see him off. She hugged him and told him she would say a prayer for him at her church. They would likely never see one another again, but they had both loved Victor and they always would. Julien had no belongings, but Marianne packed a bag of Victor’s clothes that had been left behind. It made sense for someone to get some use out of them.

“What will you remember most?” Julien asked Marianne.

Everything, she thought, but she couldn’t bring herself to say it aloud.

“Remember when he jumped off the roof?” Julien said.

They remembered the house in Paris, and the laundry being hung in the yard on Tuesdays. Long before Victor had become a fighter, or planted bombs, or taken Marianne to bed, he used to run through the fresh white linens, insisting he was a ghost. Marianne embraced Julien for a long time. He was so tall she had to stand on tiptoes to kiss his cheek. They wished each other good luck, for they both believed in luck now, good and bad, a fate cast for no reason, where some would live and others would die. Julien headed to the neighboring farm, just over the hillside, setting off on the path Marianne had always taken when she brought their cows home from the pasture in the dark.

Remember when I was his favorite brother, when he sulked whenever he didn’t get his way, how bad his temper was, how deeply he could love someone, how fast he drove, how bees didn’t frighten him in the least, how he was always convinced he was the best at whatever he tried, from explosives to kissing, how he filled up a room, how he would never follow his mother’s rules, how convinced he was that a plain woman was beautiful, how he always saw her that way, how he had promised he would never leave again.

When Julien reached the farmhouse he introduced himself to the neighbors and presented the gift of honey from Marianne, then asked for a ride over the mountains to the doctor’s house.

Monsieur and Madame Cazales muttered between themselves, wondering if this was the young man who drove too fast.

“No,” Julien said, having overheard them. “That’s not me. That was my brother.”

Monsieur Cazales recognized the look on Julien’s face. There was no need to say more. The people in this village knew sorrow when they saw it. Cazales got the keys to his truck and told his wife he’d be back late, for these were roads that were difficult to navigate even for the best drivers, those who had lived here all their lives and would continue to do so no matter the circumstances.

Marianne’s stomach was churning, and once Julien was gone, she knelt to be sick in the low bushes on the path where she used to walk at night to find the cows. The cows were white and their flanks had gleamed in the dark; when she had sounded a low whistle they would always follow her back to the barn. She could not go inside the house. It would be much too empty. That night she slept out near the hedges where there were migrating birds, little flickering golden things that darted through the dark.

In the morning, she decided she would make a wreath for Victor to lay beside the one she’d woven for her father. As she walked through the fields of Queen Anne’s lace, she was deeply aware of Victor’s absence. How selfish he could be sometimes, how sure of himself, how easy to love. She imagined him everywhere. She sat in the grass, barefoot, gathering the flowers she would use to festoon his wreath, with tiny white roses and wild poppies to decorate the Queen Anne’s lace. Once, in Paris, not long before she’d left, he had come up to her in the corridor and put his hands on her waist. She had firmly said no. She had said it was impossible, but he’d said nothing was impossible and she should know that by now. She was glad Julien hadn’t told her any more than he had. Not the details. That would have been too much. He’s alive to us. That was all she’d wanted to hear.

She went beyond the field early the next morning, out to where the wildflowers were blooming in a riot of color. The bees had all left, in search of empty logs and old trees to begin new hives. It was quiet and she felt her aloneness here now, just as she had felt alone while she was growing up. It was likely the reason she had left for Paris in the first place. It hurt to be so alone. She could move into the village, or go to a city and find work, not Paris, she couldn’t go there, but perhaps Lyon, someplace where she would see people whenever she walked out her door, where the wind would not remind her she was alone. And yet her father had lived here all his life, and had been completely by himself during the years Marianne was gone. He said there was not a more glorious place on earth. In that, she believed he was right. He said that a person could get used to being alone, and perhaps she would discover he was right about that, too.

She sat on the porch all that afternoon, the wildflowers collected in her skirt, and by the time the wreath was done, she had decided to stay. She would eventually get some cows and more goats. She would go to a neighbor on the other side of the village who had many beehives and ask for his help restarting one in the field. Monsieur Cazales would likely be willing to help her in the fields until she could pay someone to work for her. It would be a beginning. She would walk the old paths and look at stars. She hadn’t lost the ability to find her way in the dark. She would be here alone, and as time passed, she would find that she enjoyed it, just as her father had. She would soon bring out a rocking chair so she could sit outside on clear nights. There was little need to go any farther than the village, or the neighbor’s. The world was right here. She had brought more than sixty children to freedom; she’d held down fences, her coat covering the barbed wire, and she would always have small gashes in the palms of her hands to remind her of this. She’d had her heart broken, she’d been in love, she had lived her life, she’d done something worthwhile, and wasn’t that what she had wished for most of all when she left the farm and continued walking, when she went to Paris and was so happy that she had no regrets about what she had done? She was especially glad that she had slept with Victor the last time, when the bee flew in his mouth, when she feared she would lose him and they spent all night together in her bed.

It would be May of the following year when the baby arrived, that green time of the year when the bees are working so hard in the fields. By then, the war in France would be over. She would name the baby after Victor, and when the pastor came to call he would understand why she would not wish to have the child baptized in a church, since he was his father’s son. Instead, they would bring the baby to a stream beyond the field on his naming day and Marianne would hold him in her arms while the pastor recited Jacob’s blessing.

May the angel who delivered me from all harm bless this boy.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

THE WEIGHT OF A SOUL