Page 22

Eight

Christian had sent Kraus home, claiming that he meant to spend the evening at the library and that Ackermann had invited him out for dinner again with other officers. It wasn’t a lie, exactly. He did intend to spend the evening here, among the banned books, and Ackermann had issued the invitation.

He did not intend to meet his superior for another meal. Not yet. He couldn’t stomach another evening of the kind of talk those men preferred, of watching them ogle every woman who walked by, of listening to them muse as to what each one would look like without the dress or the blouse or the skirt.

Never in his life had he so missed the university world.

He missed conversations , the kind where the talk wasn’t just gossip about people or talk of the news, but about ideas .

The kind that he left thinking about things in a way he never had before, the kind that stretched his mind, stretched his soul.

Here, at least, surrounded by books written by so many friends or acquaintances or literary heroes even if he’d never met them, he felt a bit of home.

Once Kraus had finally been convinced to leave, he’d moved his things into the periodicals room, the one with the poster of the burning Reichstag.

He’d been staring at it for several long minutes already.

Remembering. Remembering the way his father’s lips had pressed together with each new report that came in, remembering the worry in his mother’s eyes.

He remembered the fear in his own gut when he heard that the Nazi Party had not only blamed the fire on their political opponents, but had used it as an excuse to arrest all those adversaries—anyone belonging to the old regime.

Anyone who claimed to be—or was suspected of being—communist. Anyone, anyone in the government that wasn’t part of the Nazi Party.

It had only been seven years ago—yet now people said “the Party” like it was the only one. Like any other political persuasion, any other beliefs were unthinkable.

They were, in a way. Because those other thoughts had been rooted out. Banned. Burned. When a people stopped entertaining opposing ideas, when they condemned the different as evil, then it was a short step from closed-minded to violently oppressive.

He shoved to his feet and strode out of the room, away from the poster of flames and accusations.

First he simply meandered among the unruly stacks, pulling a few favorites down long enough to flip through their familiar pages, soak in their familiar words.

To flip to the pocket glued to the back and see who else had read them.

The names of the regular patrons had grown familiar over the last two months.

In part, yes, because one of his jobs had been to visit each one, to confiscate any forbidden books from their private libraries or at least to stamp them with a red V , to warn any Jews or communists that they would have to register—all with Kraus looking on over his shoulder, watching.

But the familiarity was more from this .

From seeing their names not only in a record book or in the lobby of a building, but in the books they’d selected.

Had they enjoyed this book? That one? Had they peeled back the layers of this satire or that poem?

Had they gotten lost in the adventures of the novels?

Argued with the philosophy in the treatises?

He wished he could ask them, could risk letting them all know that he was more one of them than of his “own.” He wished he could knock on Abraham’s door not as an officer but as a friend and slip inside for one of the talks they’d had in years past. Wished he could find Earnst, wherever he was, and see how his latest manuscript was shaping up.

Wished that the next time he called at Josef’s flat to see if he were back, the door would swing wide and. ..

No. No, he didn’t want Josef to be in Paris. Couldn’t want it. That was too selfish, too reckless. He prayed instead that the man who’d always been like a second father to him had gone to England, America, somewhere else.

He’d wandered back to the circulation desk, his gaze latched unseeing before him. Only when he blinked did he realize he was staring at the three books Corinne Bastien had given him nearly two weeks ago—those three strange books.

He hadn’t opened them again, not with Kraus always present, always asking why he reacted to things as he did. Not knowing well that his aide, his supposed helper, gave reports of Christian’s every action, just as Ackermann did.

His old colleagues, that blessed circle of scholars, were as lost to him now, here, as they’d been the last seven years. The ones that had remained in Germany were still there, out of reach.

But the library’s neighbor had surely had time to finish reading that novel by now—and he had “threatened” to drop by again this week to see if any more books had turned up, to search somewhere other than the shelves.

Maybe she would talk to him, converse with him about something other than the news, the war, the work he was trying so hard to do as God would want him to do it instead of how Goebbels expected it to be done.

Before he could give it enough thought to talk himself out of it, he let himself out, the door still locked behind him, and swung through the gate, up the steps next to it, and into the lobby of her building. He’d left his jacket in the library, but it was too hot to care.

Only after he’d knocked on her door did he let the doubts creep in.

She likely wouldn’t open it. Or if she did, she’d either try to turn him away with an insistence that the rest of her mother’s books weren’t there, or she’d let him in with that guarded, resentful look in her eyes.

The look that had faded into something else last time, as they searched the shelves. As they’d spoken like two human beings instead of occupier and dissident—which she most decidedly was .

Of course she was. She should be. No French citizen should subscribe to Nazi philosophy.

He couldn’t tell her he approved, of course, but he could fail to question her about the oddities in the books she’d handed him.

He could resist pointing out that no book he’d pulled from the shelves next door had her name in them, despite all her talk of spending her evenings there with her mother.

With Abraham, who clearly knew her well. With...the others? Earnst? Josef?

Did she know them? Did she love them, like she did Abraham? Had they ever mentioned him to her?

Clearly not, or she wouldn’t have met him with such hostility—or at least not without challenging him on what would look like a betrayal. No, perhaps they’d mentioned the son of their good friend, perhaps they’d even referred to him as “little Chris” as they’d always done, but—

The door swung open. And while she did bar the opening, it was by leaning into the frame, arms crossed over her chest, and amusement—amusement!—on her face. “You are relentless, aren’t you?”

He held up a finger. “It occurred to me—if your mother really did consider taking the books with her, she could well have decided against it when she tried to lift the luggage. Could she not have put them away somewhere in her room, then? Have you checked her armoire? Bedside table? Under the bed?”

Corinne rolled her eyes, but she also stepped back and motioned him in. “ I think you’re just starved for intelligent conversation.”

“ Ciel , yes.” He chuckled with relief at her acknowledging it as he stepped inside. “If I thought I could get away with it, I’d enroll in a class at the Sorbonne just to hear talk of something other than this infernal war and the glorious rebirth of the master race. ”

Not exactly a sentiment a Nazi officer should have expressed. Aloud. To a supposed enemy. But it was no secret that he wasn’t a normal officer. “Or even better, I could offer to teach something.”

Perhaps her laughter was only a snort, but he’d heard a real one, last time. Still remembered the music of it. “And what would you teach, Professor? German history? Aryan mythology?”

He winced. “Have you read any of that nonsense? It’s as outlandish as the Greeks’ tales of golden fleeces and minotaurs, yet it’s being taught as fact.” Another thing he shouldn’t have said.

The lift of her mouth said she knew it. “Should I report you for speaking such blasphemy?”

“You could try, but given your affiliations...” He motioned in the general direction of the library. And grinned. “Did you finish Quinzinzinzili yet?”

They searched her mother’s room as they talked about the novel, and it wasn’t just the photograph on the bedside table of her parents in wedding attire with a young Corinne grinning happily up at the camera—all in styles straight from the era of the World War—that made him think she wasn’t, in fact, as young as he’d first assumed her to be.

It was the fact that she didn’t talk like an undergraduate.

She spoke like someone who had been studying, debating literature for far longer than a few years.

It was impolite, of course, to ask a woman her age. But he liked the thought that she wasn’t twenty. More than he should. Liked the thought that maybe they were more peers than he’d first thought.

Dangerous territory. Unfamiliar territory. He hadn’t longed for the company of a woman in years.

And he had no business doing so now, despite that she was the only one in Paris he felt like he could talk to right now.

He shouldn’t. Perhaps they had mutual friends, perhaps they shared interests, but she couldn’t know that—about the friends.

She couldn’t know the truth. It would put at risk everything that mattered most.