Page 49 of The World That We Knew

If you think it’s beautiful, it is, he had told her.

She smiled to think the same was true of her. She was both plain and beautiful, a simple woman with a complicated heart. Marianne went into the barn to leave her boots. They were caked with mud and she never wore them inside the house. Victor was already at the farm and he’d caught sight of her through the window. He came out to the barn, shouting her name, delighted to see her.

He had been to Lyon and gathered the material he needed, all in a rucksack kept in the storm cellar a few yards from the house, a safe place where Marianne stored preserves and canned goods. He’d been at the farm for two days, and had seen to all her chores. He was no longer the boy from Paris, but was instead a bearded man dressed in the rough clothing of a farmer who liked to get his hands dirty and forget about the war for a few days.

Once they were in the barn together, Victor pulled the old door shut. He took her in his arms and loved her fiercely. He was so young, and he wanted her so. They realized Bluebell was watching their lovemaking and they laughed as Victor chased the goat away. When they were through, and had pulled on the clothes they’d cast into the straw, Victor went off through the field to see to the beehives. He did so in honor of Monsieur Félix, who would not have wanted the bees to go uncared for. It was a perfect evening, and Marianne stood in the doorway of the barn, picking bits of straw from her hair. Go forward, she told herself. Let yourself love him completely no matter where it leads.

Victor was beside the beehive when he noticed the lupines blooming. Marianne’s favorite flower. He picked a handful, and yellow pollen dusted his hands. He turned to wave the bunch of flowers in the air. When he called to Marianne a bee flew into his mouth. A single sting inside a person’s throat could kill him in an instant. Victor seemed to be choking, his arms waving above his head. Marianne ran to him, terrified. She pounded him on the back, and thankfully the bee flew out. They watched it rise into the sky, relieved and somewhat mystified. Was this what fate was? An instant in which you could lose everything or walk away unscathed? Victor let out a joyful shout, as if he was indestructible, but Marianne ran to the house to cry. People were so breakable and so easy to lose, especially now.

Victor came to her and kissed her, asking if his kisses tasted sweeter now that he’d had a honeybee in his mouth. He made a joke of it, but death had been close, an instant away. She wished he weren’t so young, maybe then it could last. They rarely discussed what would happen after the war, although Victor had spoken about plans to live on a kibbutz in Eretz Israel with his friends. He was excited about a new country and a new homeland. Imagine me with a camel, he’d said in a fit of laughter. He had asked her to go with him, but she had told him no, she could never leave this place. Now, in bed, he told her he had changed his mind about Israel. Instead, he would live with her here when the war was over, and help her with the farm. It was a dream, she knew, and she kissed him, again and again, not wanting to hear any more of what might or might not be. She knew what was between them was different for her than it was for him. He was in love with her, but she loved him, and that was more. Love was the thing that lasted, no matter where fate would take them.

In the morning, before he set off, he showed her how to shoot her father’s rifle. It came as no surprise to him that she was an excellent shot.

“A natural,” he declared. “You’re good at everything.” He kissed her for a long time. “Especially this.”

When it came time for their goodbyes, Marianne had a sinking feeling. She didn’t want to let him go, and that wasn’t like her. She had never wanted to hold him back, but now here she was, with her arms around him, reluctant to let him leave. He promised he would take on this one last mission and then he would be done. Why was she so worried? The war would be over before they knew it. Had she no faith in him? He reminded her, laughing, that he was the best driver in all of France. He’d be gone only a few weeks. Afterward he would come back to take care of her. Then, he swore, he would never leave again.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

THE MAP

LE CHAMBON-SUR-LIGNON, JULY 1944

AT SCHOOL LEA KEPT TO herself. The girls were friendly enough; still she was an outsider, the tall fair-haired girl in the gray dress. When she stood outside her gaze followed the birds swooping through the sky as though she was trying to summon one, but she always walked away disappointed, brooding. The message she was waiting for had yet to come.

By now she was sixteen. She didn’t want to grow any older. The farther she was from the age she had been when she left Berlin, the more she feared she would forget her past. Who had taught her how to read, who had sewn her clothes, who had told her stories about the wolves she sometimes heard up in the craggy mountains. People said none were left, that they had been hunted to extinction, but some had survived, up where the altitude was so great and the air so thin not even the birds could fly. Who would know you when you were the last one left of your kind? If she could no longer remember her mother and grandmother, would she forget that she had once been loved?

But time was moving forward, and everything changed. Even in this tiny, isolated village, people had heard about the attack on German forces in Normandy. News was carried by members of the Resistance, and there was a wild conviction that the war had turned. Anything might be possible now, and it seemed that fate might not be set out before them in a straight, unwavering path, but might instead be a curving line marked by chance and choice, infinite in its possible destinations.

Lea decided she would write a note, to be ready when the heron returned. He was late this year. She imagined Julien waiting to hear from her, one hand thrown up to block the bright light as he scanned the sky, just as she did. One afternoon, as Weitz was out smoking one of his precious cigarettes, which he cut in half, so they would last longer, and Ava was in the yard hanging the laundry, Lea opened the bureau drawer in search of a pad of paper and a pen. She did not expect what she found, and her chest immediately felt hollow. There was a note, folded over itself, tucked away. She steadied herself and took it in her hands. She recognized his handwriting right away.

Come here as soon as you can.

She turned over the paper, her heart pounding.

There was the map. He’d sketched Beehive House, and the winding rutted road, and the pastures filled with flowering genêts. In her hands was the barn and the stone house with its tilted chimney and white shutters, the goat named Bluebell, and the beehives in the field. It had been here in this drawer for months.

Lea waited until after dinner, when Weitz went outside to paint in the yard in the last of the day’s light. Then she put the map on the table.

“When did this arrive?”

Ava glanced at the map. She felt a wave of shame and confusion, emotions she was not supposed to have.

“You decided to hide it from me?” Lea said.

“The heron came back just after winter, but the time wasn’t right.” The lie burned her tongue and she flushed, something she had never done before.

“The heron has been back all this time!” Lea’s mouth tightened. “It’s not winter now, and still you kept a message that was meant for me. You stole it!”

Ava had often regretted asking the heron to carry Lea’s and Julien’s messages. She’d thought there would be no harm in it, but she was wrong. “You may not understand everything I do.”

“I understand perfectly. You want to keep me away from Julien, because I’ll leave with him, and you don’t want me to cross the border.”

“But I do,” Ava insisted. “I promised your mother I would get you to safety.”

“And yet we’re still here.” Lea held Ava in her gaze. “You and I know why. You don’t want to do what you promised my mother because you know what happens once I’m safe.” Every word Lea spoke was brittle, a sharp broken hook. “You’ve known all along. You know what she wants me to do.”

“I want the best for you.” Ava felt something sharp inside of her. By now she knew that people always lost what they loved most.