Page 24

Nine

Corinne should have left five minutes ago, but how could she when she didn’t know when she’d get to keep such company again?

Not only had Abraham’s wife, Mathilda, answered the door when she knocked this time and greeted her with a robust hug and assurance that her husband was home, but Alfred Kantorowicz was there too—Corinne hadn’t even realized the director was back in Paris.

What she’d meant to be a half-hour visit to get Abraham’s story of his interview—“It was just that, ma petite , I assure you! The sonderführer was not only polite, he was quick to dismiss me”—had stretched to an hour-long visit with two of the men who had encouraged her in her education and her dreams.

“I walked by the place this morning,” Kantorowicz admitted on a sigh, eyes latched on to one of the books Corinne had brought for Abraham—from her own collection and approved by any Nazi censors who stopped by for an inspection.

“Even from the street, I could see the disarray we left it all in. I wonder...I wonder if it could have been different. If, as we so blithely proclaimed at the start, we could have taken the library back to Germany, had we done things differently.”

“Alfred,” Abraham chided, low and long. “It was bigger than our choices. Bigger than our wants.”

“But if I hadn’t gone off to join the war in Spain—if we’d written more about books in our newsletter and less about politics...perhaps, if we’d been more like the other libraries and not just a place for shouting out our anti-Nazi ideals...”

Corinne shifted on her chair and glanced at her watch.

If she didn’t leave in the next five minutes, she’d be late for class.

But the nostalgia in the man’s voice had pulled her in.

Made her remember those early years of the Deutsche Freiheitsbibliothek, when the shelves had been well-ordered, when the staff were all knowledgeable and eager to gather research sources for inquiring minds, when there was never any confusion about who had checked out what.

Maybe he was right. Maybe, if they’d kept on that way, it would have been too much of a neighborhood institution to be handed over so blithely to the Nazis.

But it had been an institution only for this limited circle—the German exiles still writing and publishing. Over the years, the public stopped coming to their grand events to celebrate the release of new books. Patrons had withdrawn their support. News coverage had entirely ceased.

And then the directors themselves got distracted, especially by the Spanish Civil War.

The newsletter had stopped. Staff had been dismissed.

Chaos had crept in, slowly and steadily, and no matter how Corinne and Maman tried to mitigate it, the point always remained that it wasn’t theirs .

They were just neighbors. New friends. They didn’t belong, not like these men.

And the proof of it ticked its reminder against her wrist. She still had a job to get to. Work to be done. She stood, knowing her smile was small and sad. “I’d better hurry. Do you know if anyone else is back in Paris?”

Mathilda shot her a warning glance as she stood from her armchair to bid her farewell. “You need to stay away from all of us, ma petite . If the Nazis catch you fraternizing with a bunch of stodgy old dissidents...”

She gave the two men her cheekiest, most innocent grin.

“They’re dissidents ? Why, I had no idea!

I thought those nice old men were just writers.

Of course, I couldn’t read a word they wrote, it was all in German.

..but they kept chocolates on hand for me.

” She widened her eyes, made her full lips pout. “I haven’t had chocolate in ages .”

Beside the door, Abraham laughed. “You’ll have the gray-shirts shoving their rations at you if you give that performance.”

She sent him a wink, hugged Mathilda tight, and then kissed each of the men on the cheek.

They hadn’t answered her question about their friends—but that was all right.

She’d just keep checking each of their flats, one a day, like she’d been doing all of July.

This was the first she’d actually caught Abraham and his wife at home, but it hadn’t been for lack of trying.

Luckily, she timed the Métro just right, and then it was only a matter of darting across campus toward the linguistics building. She spotted Liana and a few of her friends in front of the library and waved a hello. No doubt her all-but-run cautioned them against hailing her.

The cool of the building welcomed her out of the August heat, and she smiled to hear the chatter of students in the corridors—a sure sign that she wasn’t late quite yet. She wove her way through a few knots of them, glancing down at her watch as she turned toward her door.

She plowed straight into something. No, some one , which she realized only when hands gripped her elbows. “Pardonnez-moi!” she screeched even as she reeled back a step.

Because it was gray wool before her eyes. Too familiar these days. Too dreaded. Not just the shirt of the soldaten who guarded the constantly moving checkpoints, but the tailored jacket of an officer.

Her stomach knotted as she followed the tie before her eyes up to a chin—an unfamiliar chin, topped by smiling blue eyes in a face that couldn’t be a day over twenty-five. “Careful,” the man said in German.

Given the sign on the door proclaiming this a class in Deutsch literature, he no doubt expected her to understand.

So she forced a smile and backed up a step.

The knot eased just a bit when she realized it wasn’t Christian Bauer—the officer she saw most often.

She didn’t care to examine whether the ease was from relief or regret.

“I apologize,” she returned in the German that, according to the men she’d just left, held a flawless upper-class-Berlin accent.

“I should know better than to barrel blindly through a door.”

He released her elbows and stepped to the side, sweeping out a hand to welcome her in, as if this were his classroom.

The knot cinched newly tight in her stomach. Was it? Had the Nazis taken over this class? Was there a note waiting in her box informing her of it?

“No harm done,” the man said. He was still smiling as he held out a hand. “Karl Gustaf—newly minted officer in the Ministry of Education.” He looked proud as he showed off his insignia. “Just arrived in Paris yesterday.”

Paris was full of newly arrived soldiers.

Apparently Hitler had promised a Parisian holiday to all his soldiers at some point during their enlistment, and the carousel of them had already begun.

She smiled, as if it weren’t exhausting to be constantly stopped by smooth-cheeked boys in uniform asking for directions to the Eiffel Tower or Notre Dame. “I hope you’re enjoying our fair city.”

“It’s beautiful! I think I spent most of the day yesterday walking around with my jaw hanging open as I tried to take it in.

” His chuckle didn’t seem to hold any guile.

“But to business today, of course. The Ministry has me sitting in on classes here and there, to observe what’s being taught. Obviously this one is top of the list.”

Sitting in on—not taking over. Good. Good. And honestly, she’d been expecting someone to observe them eventually. Especially, as he said, the German-language courses. They would want to be sure the untrustworthy Parisians were accurately portraying the Master Race and its tongue, after all.

From outside, the bell in the tower tolled the hour. Students pushed their way inside the classroom, sending Corinne back another step. She offered a polite smile to their guest. “Well, I hope you enjoy the lesson.”

His smile went a bit tighter. “We’ll see. I have always doubted that any non-German could adequately teach our language or literature.”

Of all the insufferable...

Then the grin again. “You didn’t tell me your name.”

He’d learn it soon enough. She gave him a too-innocent smile and gripped her bag. “Doctor Corinne Bastien—your professor for the day, it seems.” Not giving him the chance to recover from his gape, she strode for her desk at the front of the room.

And nearly groaned when another new male face took a seat in the front row, eyes latched on to her in a way she knew too well. “Good morning,” he said. “Graduate assistant? I thought the full professor taught this class. Is he sick?” A smirk. “Lucky us.”

She cleared her throat and moved her gaze to one of the only other men in the class. “Mr. Boucher?”

Boucher was trying not to laugh. “Dr. Bastien has two doctorates, in linguistics and philosophy. She has been on staff at the Sorbonne for five years, since she defended her second thesis and graduated magna cum laude. And she is at least ten years older than you, Didier, so don’t get any ideas.”

“I don’t really care for the emphasis on that at least ,” she said with an amused smile, “but danke , monsieur . Now. For those of you just joining us, we have been discussing Goethe’s Faust: Part One .

I believe we left off yesterday arguing whether a translation of his verse ought to attempt to rhyme in French as it does in German, thereby preserving the art and cadence, or if accuracy of translation is the better choice.

Mademoiselle Grandier, I believe you’d been about to weigh in yesterday? ”

As the class progressed—eventually moving to actual translations and thereby giving her ample opportunity to provide lessons on the finer points of German thought and idiomatic usage—she made it a point not to glance at the Nazi who had taken a seat in the uppermost row, despite scads of empty desks on lower levels.