The Book of Lost Names

by Kristin Harmel

He had taught her to love reading, one of the greatest gifts a parent could give a child, and in doing so, he had opened the world to her.

“Half of Paris feels the same,” her mother said wearily. “But if we shrink from them, if we lose our goodness, we let them erase us. We cannot do that, Eva. We cannot.”

“You’re someone who finds herself in the pages,” the woman clarified, gesturing to the shelves all around. They were stacked high and haphazardly, reminding Eva of the layout of the town itself, chaotic but beautiful yet the same. “Someone who sees her reflection in the words.”

“They are erasing us, and we are helping them.” Mamusia’s voice was still flat, too flat.

“What happens when they come for us, too? When they take us east? Who will remember us? Who will care? Thanks to you, not even our names will remain.”

“I don’t think he slept at all last night. He knew you were upset about your father, and he wanted to help you to feel more comfortable here. He thought it might help if you were able to use your real name.”

“Thank you. Thank you for being here. You will save lives.”

“I would know who they are,” she said softly. “Please. It—it’s very important to me that they are not forgotten.”

“I want to keep a list of the children we are falsifying documents for. They belong to someone, all of them.”

Eva looked away and thought again of her mother’s despair. They are erasing us, and we are helping them. “Because someone should remember. How else will they find their way home?”

Madame Barbier stepped in front of her, blocking Eva’s path. “Let her go,” she said. “You, dear, are trying to find your way forward, but your mother, she can only look back right now. She’s in too much pain to see anything other than what she has lost.”

“Thank you.” He passed the cheese back and waved away the apple. “As it turns out, I have something for you, too.” He held up the book she’d grabbed in a panic the first night she met him, Epitres et Evangiles, the thick, faded guide to weekly masses from the 1700s.

“Remember that God’s plan for you might be different than the plan you have for yourself.”

He seemed to be searching for the words. “I mean that I would rather die knowing I tried to do the right thing than live knowing I had turned my back. Do you understand?”

Life turns on the decisions we make, the single moments that transform everything.

Books change the world, I think.”

parents make all sorts of errors, because our ability to raise our children is always colored by the lives we’ve lived before they came along.

“I mean about the Book of Lost Names. About why we need to record who the children are before we change their identities.” He frowned and looked at the birth certificate she was holding. It was only then that she noticed she was trembling. “The Book of Lost Names?”

Was it possible to rebuild when you’d been left with nothing?

Eva didn’t say anything, because of course the girl was right. That’s what books were for, after all. They were passageways to other worlds, other realities, other lives one could imagine living.

“Mademoiselle Moreau,” Anne said again after Eva had been silent too long, “I know it’s sometimes hard to believe the best. Isn’t it better than believing the worst, though?”

But Geneviève was a new ally, too, and there was something to be said for finding people to trust in the dark.

Je reviendrai à toi. I will return to you.

And isn’t that the moral of the story anyhow? You can’t judge a person by their language or their place of origin—though it seems that each new generation insists upon learning that lesson for itself.

Once you’ve fallen in love with books, their presence can make you feel at home anywhere, even in places where you shouldn’t belong.

though as far as Eva knew, he hadn’t yet told her his real name. Still, a name was just words, something Eva had learned all too well.

It was Rémy, alive and healthy and here. And all at once, Eva believed in miracles once again.

“I used to think that memories were less painful when you held them close. I think perhaps that isn’t true, though. Now I think pain loses its power when we share it.”

After what had happened here, her mother would have to understand that in the face of such evil, the division between Christians and Jews meant nothing. All that mattered was that Rémy was a good person—and that time was too precious to waste.

There was nothing left for Eva to lose.

Hope was a dangerous thief, stealing her todays for a tomorrow that would never come.

He smiled. “My point is that every parent wants what is best for his or her child. But we are all guilty of seeing things through the lens of our own lives. We forget sometimes that it is your life to live.”

Still, hope was a dangerous thing. It grew like a field of wildflowers within Eva, blossoming in all the spaces that had been filled with darkness and despair,

You’re holding on to a ghost.

Some chapters must be finished, though, some books closed.

“Then isn’t it time you tell him? Maybe the first identity to recover should be your own.”