Page 36 of The World That We Knew

“Cash,” he said. When she looked at him blankly, he shrugged. “The bank has closed.”

“Has it?” Her mouth tightened. “Has it really?” Her grandfather had always told her to trust no one but herself. But the truth was, she had trusted the old man completely.

The baker was convinced that a woman like the sister had her head in the clouds and knew nothing, not even the price of wheat, so he charged her a bit more this time.

“What unusual roses,” he said as she looked through her drawer for francs. The flowers were silver, which made sense, why would she have plain pink blooms?

“Yes,” she said, barely listening. The financial situation was horrible. Perhaps she could go to the doctor who had helped her in the past.

“Would you mind if I cut some flowers to bring to my wife?” Favre asked. Why shouldn’t his wife have something so beautiful? “My wife cooks in the café and has no time for things that bring her pleasure.”

He was told there were shears in the garden and that he was free to cut flowers to take home to his wife, so he said goodbye, his money in his pocket. He went down the corridor paved with polished bluestone, then into the courtyard. The gate to the garden was wrought iron, and he pushed through into the sunlight. His shadow fell before him. Two girls sat on a bench near the silver roses, one blond and one dark and small with a foreigner’s features, both so intent in conversation they did not look up. Such strange flowers, these roses, looking as if they had dropped down from the moon, with their silver sheen and black, leathery leaves. Most of the other flowers were long past their bloom, and he thought these might be the sorts of roses that Jews grew; perhaps they were fed with the blood of children and that had caused their unusual color, for since medieval times Jews were thought to be magicians, suspected of sorcery. He had no idea that the flowers were a strain of roses created by a woman more than three hundred years earlier whose husband was so jealous of her beauty he wouldn’t allow her to leave their house. She could only go as far as her garden, and often she sneaked out while he was asleep so that she might work in the moonlight. She wanted a bloom the color of the moon, a hybrid between a white Bourbon and a black climbing rose. After years of cross-pollinating and covering the plants with white burlap bags so the bees would not play havoc with her plans, she at last completed her task. When her husband found her with her silver roses, he locked her in the house, commanding her maid to dig up the rosebushes. They were given the name la Lumière Volée, stolen light.

The maid couldn’t bring herself to do as she was told. She kept two specimens in her own garden, and when the husband died she returned them to their rightful place. From these plants six more grew, and then another six, and then six more, so that an entire section of the garden looked silver at certain times of day.

There was a pair of green-tinged iron shears left on a stone table. Monsieur Favre could hear the girls speaking now, and after a moment he realized the brunette with the hawk nose spoke German. The few words in French that she said were guttural, a crime against the language. The pretty blond one spoke German as well. They were both dressed in blue convent dresses, wearing black stockings and laced shoes. The blond was so pretty she caught Favre’s eye and his dark imagination. She was perhaps fourteen or fifteen, nearly a woman. He would never guess she was thinking about murder as she sat there in the lemony light. How to kill someone in the least painful way possible was on her mind. Would it be drowning or poison? The way to destroy Ava seemed painless enough according to her mother’s instructions. She was to remove the aleph in the word emet drawn on Ava’s arm, a single letter that turned emet into met, truth into death.

“What are you thinking about?” Rachel asked when she saw the faraway look in Lea’s eyes. They had become quite close, and although both were too wary to have a friend, they had formed a bond. She could tell when Lea was preoccupied.

“Would you kill someone if you were asked to?”

Rachel shrugged. “It would depend on who they were and what they’d done to deserve it.”

Rachel looked up to see the man observing them. She stopped talking and tugged on Lea’s dress. Perhaps she could guess what he assumed by the way he was staring at them, with a dark, wary expression.

He saw a Jew right here, right in front of his eyes, one who ate bread made with his flour at every meal. She had the nerve to raise her eyes, as if she were better than he.

The girls often broke away from the other students so they might converse in German, which made them feel as if they were back home. At first they had both wept at night, longing for their mothers, but they had become accustomed to their situation. Most hours were accounted for, and that gave them less time to mourn what they had lost.

“Act naturally,” Lea said in a hushed voice. She hoped they hadn’t given themselves away as refugees. “Can I help you?” she called to the fat man glaring at them.

“I’d like to ask your friend a question,” he said, gesturing to the brunette.

“I’m so sorry, but she has a sore throat and cannot speak.” Lea spoke brightly. Her French was excellent. By now there was not the slightest German inflection.

Monsieur Favre considered the blond girl. He felt sure that she was telling a blatant lie, but one so well spoken that for a moment he almost believed her. It was the look of terror on the other girl’s face that gave them away.

“You were speaking German.”

“We’re studying it in class so that we can read our texts in the language in which they were written.” He was still staring at her. “Perhaps I can help you?” the pretty liar said cheerfully.

“I’m here for the flowers,” Favre told her. He sounded unfriendly, even to himself, not that it mattered. He knew what was going on here. Just what the rumors implied.

The girls watched him cut far too many of the blooms, leaving a gash in the rosebush. They had grown to love this garden, and all of the girls without parents felt a special connection with the beauty of this place. Favre left the shears splayed open on the white gravel path. When he was gone, Lea and Rachel ran to the mother superior’s office and told her that they feared a man in the garden had overheard them speaking German. They wanted her to say it was nothing to fret about, very likely he hadn’t heard them at all, and what if he had? Everything would remain the same, as it always did in this convent.

When she heard about how Monsieur Favre had questioned them, the mother superior went to the window, frowning as she watched him walking to his old van. She thought of all the reasons her grandfather had told her not to be Jewish, but the truth was there was only one. The way people let themselves fill with hate. Some of the flowers he had taken were falling apart in his grasp, petals strewn on the walkway. He was careless and he didn’t mind leaving a path of ruined flowers. Still, the petals seemed to glow. He stopped and regarded the convent, and the mother superior knew that look, she had seen it on other men’s faces. It was greed.

The nun turned back to the girls. “Go upstairs and tell the others. You must leave today.”

As there was no time to bake bread and no one to make breakfast, the mother superior joined Ava in the kitchen while the other sisters were packing up the girls’ belongings, as well as their own. It was too dangerous for anyone to stay on.

The mother superior put up water for tea, then found a large pot in which to make porridge. Fortunately, Ava soon took over so the children would have a decent meal before leaving. They could always count on Ava. She was a wonder today as she was every day. Lea and Rachel were sitting together, knowing they would have to say goodbye. It had already been decided that Rachel would go with Sister Félicité. Lea would leave with Ava. The mother superior suggested they go to Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, a town on a high plateau in the Haute-Loire known for its tolerance and acceptance of refugees. There was a school of several stone buildings at the end of a road that was impassable in winter and difficult to find in all other seasons. When the time came to leave, Rachel embraced Lea. Just this once, she said, and they both laughed, although there were tears in their eyes.

The mother superior hoped decent people would prevail and the convent’s paintings, along with the silver and the rugs, would still be here when they returned. Still, she had faith that they would someday resume their work here even if all their worldly possessions disappeared. She sat in the rose garden and thought of the years when she was Madeleine de Masson. She had been left a great deal of money when her grandfather died, some of which her aunt had appropriated, the rest of which she had given to the church when she entered the convent. She did so to be true to her faith and give back to the world. She wondered now how she had been so sure of herself at such a young age.

Yitgadal v’yitkadash sh’mei raba b’alma di v’ra chirutei.

May His great name be exalted and sanctified in the world which He created according to His will.