eBook
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
As a Russian Jewish émigré to France, Vera's wealth cannot protect her or her four-year-old-daughter, Lucie, once the Nazis occupy the country. After receiving notice that all foreigners must report to an internment camp, Vera has just a few hours to make an impossible choice: Does she subject Lucie to the horrid conditions of the camp, or does she put her into hiding with her beloved and trusted governess, safe until Vera can retrieve her? Believing the war will end soon, Vera chooses to leave Lucie in safety. She cannot know that she and her husband will have an opportunity to escape, to flee to America. She cannot know that Lucie's governess will have fled with Lucie to family in rural France, too far to reach in time.
And so begins a heartbreaking journey and separation, a war and a continent apart. Vera's marriage will falter under the surreal sun of California. Her ability to write--once her passion--will disappear. But Vera's love for Lucie, her faith that her daughter lives, will only grow. As Vera's determination to return to France and find Lucie crystalizes, she meets Sasha, a man on his own search for meaning. She is stronger with Sasha than she is alone. Together they will journey to Lucie. They will find her fate.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780593190548 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Penguin Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 02/23/2021 |
| Sold by: | Penguin Group |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 432 |
| Sales rank: | 242,229 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Chapter 1
Vera
February 1945, Malibu, California
She cupped the lukewarm water and splashed it over her face again and again. The obsessive remembering ceased. A boon, if even for one breath, not to think. She reached for a nearby towel, but sensed someone standing behind her. Her eyes fluttered open. Eyelashes wet, chin dripping, she adjusted to the white sunlit bathroom. In the mirror above the sink, a young woman calmly watched her from the doorway. Helix of dark hair curled over one shoulder, brown liquid eyes, yellow silk blouse, gold chain around her neck with the heart dangling from it. Her daughter, but her daughter at eighteen, all grown.
Not the four-year-old daughter Vera had left behind in France.
When she spun around, the girl was gone.
Vera stared into the vacant doorway and steadied herself against the sink basin, the cool ceramic pressing into the small of her back.
"Lucie?" she whispered into the still air. "Lucie?"
She never stopped thinking of the day they left Lucie, as if reliving it would crystallize or explain something that she had overlooked. But no matter how many times Vera circled back, that day remained implacable; it cared nothing for how swiftly a life could darken.
They had gone on holiday early, leaving Paris in the beginning of May 1940, in anticipation of the occupation, decamping to the southern seaside town Sanary-sur-Mer, where they kept a summerhouse. The Werfels, the Freudenbergers, and Hugo Lafont and his wife, Ines, were already there, and Max and Vera felt safe in the south, among friends, discussing the war in lowered tones as they sipped chilled champagne in Elsa Freudenberger's garden among the lemon trees, the scent of lime blossom infiltrating their fear, lessening it.
And the heady scent of fig trees, azure waters lapping against a long sandy coastline, a forest full of pines Vera loved to stroll through, notebook in hand, preparing for an image or a phrase that might present itself, made it seem as though their circumstances had not been greatly altered. She had just finished her third novel, about an old French farming family from Vosges. The family's attachment to the land and its customs stretches back generations, until the Great War upends their lives, taking away their sons. The novel is from the mother's point of view, and the loss of her sons causes delirious grief. After the war, one son returns, only to relay that the other one died on the Eastern Front. The son who survived has changed, no longer caring for the farm, the family, or the land he's inherited. He only cares for freedom. His own personal freedom. And so the mother learns another kind of grief.
Some afternoons, Vera spread a cardigan over the coniferous earth and lay down, contemplating the thrushes rustling overhead, replaying bits and pieces of dialogue the mother has said, or might say, to her estranged son, and, cupping a fuzzy peach in the palm of her hand, she felt lucky.
But one early evening in the beginning of June, the setting sun filtering through the linen curtains, Vera listened to the news in the little room on the ground floor where she kept the radio. The terse male voice on the wireless reported that the situation did not look positive, neither in Belgium nor in the Netherlands.
Lying on the small worn sofa, she closed her eyes, palms resting on her abdomen, calmed by how naturally, without any effort, her breath rose and fell, wondering what Sabine, the cook, had prepared for dinner, deciphering various smells emanating from the kitchen on the far side of the house: Salmon with fennel and raisins? Then she heard: "All foreign nationals residing in the precincts of Paris, and all persons between the ages of seventeen and fifty-five who do not possess French citizenship, must report for internment." She sat up, light-headed, a metallic secretion flooding her mouth.
Blinking into the falling dark, she switched on the lamp.
"Max," she called, standing up.
Walking out of the room, trying not to break into a run, she yelled, "Max," with a startling roughness.
She burst into the dining room, finding the table set, the silver gleaming, the wineglasses waiting to be filled with their preferred dry white, from the Marsanne grape.
Max smoked his pipe in front of the open French doors, surveying the olive trees, their delicate branches cut out against the silvery night. Lucie was sprawled across the sheepskin rug, colored pencils strewn around her. She had drawn a picture of their cat, Mourka, with his dangling pink tongue and elongated whiskers.
"What's all the racket?" Max asked, resting his pipe on the windowsill.
Lucie glanced up from her drawing.
Vera stared around the room, as if some irrevocable change should be evident.
"I heard on the wireless, about the internment."
"Oh, that," Max said in his usual nonchalant manner. "The precincts of Paris. Remember now, that's all they said."
He strode over to her, pushing up the sleeves of his crisp white shirt.
Lucie watched them closely.
He cupped Vera's shoulder, his warm hand lingering there. "From a military point of view, there's no conceivable reason for interning us here in the south."
"What about Paul?" Vera asked, searching Max's face at the mention of his younger brother, who had stayed in Paris. Max had urged Paul to join them, but he brushed off the occupation as if it were a trifle-he couldn't be bothered to worry. She missed him, thinking about how he always arrived late to dinner parties, but was charming, regardless. Lucie adored him, treasuring the miniature green alligator purse he had given her for her last birthday, an extravagant and unnecessary gift, but that was Paul.
Worry bloomed across Max's face. "He said we're all overreacting, like a bunch of lemmings jumping off a cliff."
But she could see that he feared for Paul and his parents, as well as for the rest of his extended family, whereas Vera had so few relatives, comparatively. Her father had died of heart failure just before Lucie was born. And she'd fallen out with her mother, who, after her father's death, took up with a South American polo player. The last time they spoke, her mother flaunted having paid for forged papers and suggested that Vera not call on her again, as such contact would compromise her new identity.
Agnes came through the double doors that led into the opposite hallway. "Is everything all right?"
Normally, she would have knocked, waiting timidly for permission to enter. She had the night off, and Vera had expected that she would take one of her beloved long walks and return after dinner with bits and pieces of gossip she had picked up in town.
Vera said that of course everything was all right, casting a look at Lucie, but there was a sharp knock at the front door just as Agnes started explaining something she'd heard from the neighbors.
A gust of wind caused the open windows to swing shut. For a moment everyone froze, and Vera thought: Now they have come for us. They are going to throw us into a camp. I'll be separated from Lucie.
She began to sweat, and tried to walk, as naturally as possible, to Lucie. Kneeling down next to her on the rug, Vera felt her breath shorten, her pulse accelerating.
Sabine appeared from the kitchen. "Shall I get the door?"
It was only the Freudenbergers, thank God. Just seeing Elsa in her silk kimono decorated with golden koi, her hair pulled back into a severe bun, and Leon in his pin-striped suit and straw fedora washed Vera with relief when she ushered them inside.
They looked the same.
Perhaps things weren't so bad.
But then Leon asked, somewhat shakily, clutching his hat in his hands, "Have you heard?"
Max sauntered out of the living room and retorted, "Oh, yes. We've heard. Come on, let's have a drink."
Over a bottle of whiskey, they obsessively discussed the situation. The later it grew, the blurrier all the reasons appeared for why the internment had been put into effect, and whether it would apply to Vera and Max. Both were from St. Petersburg; their families had immigrated to Paris during the revolution, over twenty years ago. "Since then, we've lived happily and quietly in France. It's our home," Max reflected, stroking his silvery beard.
Vera paced the length of the Oriental rug, rubbing her palms against her pleated skirt. "But we're foreign nationals. We don't have French citizenship, and the radio said all foreign nationals must report-"
"Yes, but you see," Elsa interrupted, perched on the edge of the cushioned settee, "the French government has more reason to intern us because we're German, and this is a time of war, whereas you are merely Russians, having resided in France for much longer than we have."
"We're Jewish arrivistes," Leon remarked sardonically from the corner.
Max said, "The Germans have persecuted you, not just for being Jewish, but Leon, you publicly denounced Hitler in your many articles and books. You're the 'enemy of the state number one.' Where was that printed again?" He poured more whiskey into Leon's glass. "Well, the point is, the French government will directly realize that you are an enemy of Germany and a lover of France. They won't intern you."
"Or," Leon offered, shifting in the deep leather chair, "the French government will proceed against us only to give the public the impression that France is actually doing something to repel the Germans."
Vera noticed the sweat sprinkling the back of Leon's pale blue dress shirt, despite his cool demeanor.
"Even if that were the case," Max interjected, pouring himself another thimble of whiskey, "there's one thing we can be sure of." He paused for dramatic effect, relishing how they waited for him to inject some reason into this tangled night. "As we have all experienced countless times, the utterly ineffective workings of the French bureaucracy will ensure that it will take ages for the paperwork to arrive here in Sanary to intern us. By then, we'll be gone."
Elsa and Leon heartily agreed, placated by Max's logic; they could remain in this summery cocoon a little longer. And Max, smoothing down the front of his shirt with panther-like calm, was satisfied with himself for saving the evening, as he would later say in bed, expecting praise from Vera when all she felt was cold dread.
After the initial shock of the news that night, the tone turned less manic, and during the momentary lulls when the conversation drifted elsewhere, the evening nearly recaptured the languor they had enjoyed on other summer nights. But even as they entertained the possibilities, and examined the various angles of their predicament, Vera felt her fixed place in the world beginning to unhinge and loosen. Every noise grated; every gesture appeared imbued with portentous meaning. The occasional birdcall trilling in the night made her jump, and the clatter of dishes cleared from the table in the next room sounded hostile. Lucie's barreling run down the hallway, attempting to escape the bath, sent a sharp pang through Vera, as though all had turned irretrievably dark, even as Elsa's heady perfume, with its hints of benzoin, reminded her of other times when they would sit idly after dinner, smoking and drinking and lamenting some insignificant, comical aspect of their lives.
The following morning, while Vera sat at the breakfast table, nursing a coffee, her head pounding from too much whiskey, the cook, Sabine, appeared before her with a stricken face. She announced, with an air of self-importance, that she had read a notice posted in the town hall: all persons of foreign birth living in the Var department in the Provence-Alpes-C™te d'Azur region who had not yet reached the age of fifty-six must report to the Gurs internment camp in southwestern France, effective immediately.
Max, listening from the doorway, barefoot in silk pajamas, asked casually, as if to reassure Sabine that this was all an overreaction, "Surely there's been some mistake? Two days ago, the wireless specified that only those living in Paris must report for internment."
Lucie barged into the living room, demanding something. Vera wished now that she could recall what: A glass of milk, a jam sandwich? Vera sharply replied that she must request it politely. Lucie pouted and then bolted into the sunlit garden. Watching her daughter's birdlike shoulder blades protrude from beneath the cotton straps of her sundress, her smooth skin browned from the sun, Vera understood, in a chilling flash, that she and Max were not French. It didn't matter that they were here now, in the South of France. As a foreigner, she could not shield Lucie, and pictured them at Gurs camp, lying on the filthy hay-covered ground where animals had been corralled, lice roving through the hay. Taking a sip of coffee, she could already taste the camp's metallic water, and the watery broth they would call soup.
Lucie yanked off a few lemons from the tree and lobbed them over the low stone wall.
Agnes's voice twitched with irritation: "Lucie, please stop. You're ruining the lemon trees."
Vera blinked into the white sunlight, watching Lucie disobey. Pressing the heel of her palm into her forehead, she was thinking: How are we going to get out of this?
Sabine muttered in the background, wondering if they would leave Sanary, and then who would look after the house?
Max rejoined, "But Lucie is French! Born in Paris. She has citizenship. Let's not panic."
This should have temporarily relieved Vera, but the words "stateless" and "foreigner" looped through her mind. Words people had often used to describe her family when they had immigrated to Paris in 1917, when all she wanted was to be the daughter of a baker or a shopkeeper, living near Javel station with a name like Charlotte Moreau or Cecile Laurent . . . a common, ordinary name, a name that would never disturb or give pause, instead of Vera Dunayevskaya. When she married Max, she took his name, Volosenkova, equally unpronounceable, inducing the same silent derision to pass over people's faces, as clouds can momentarily block the sun.
When Vera enrolled Lucie in the lycŽe, the same questioning looks crossed the teachers' faces, and she knew that Lucie would also be marked as not quite French enough for the French.
And yet, despite always being described as "exotic" and "foreign," in a tone coated with false admiration, France ran through her blood: columnar cypresses lining dusty roads, cool stone churches offering shade and respite, the language she knew before any other. Soft and bending, sharp and brooding, it captured all she'd ever felt, harkening back to Agnes, who was once her own governess, singing her to sleep: "You may have taken Alsace and Lorraine, but in spite of you, we will always be French!" The language of dreams, streaming through her fingertips, into the pen, onto the page. A phrase, a certain word, provided the incendiary for all else. Without this language, this soil, what was she but a nebulous entity drifting through time and space?
