The World That We Knew

In the fall of 1943, Julien has lived at the farm near Haute-Loire for about a year. He hasn’t seen Lea for nearly two years but still thinks about little else: “They had been cast into the far sides of a maze, blindfolded, with no walls or trees or bread crumbs to guide them” (226). One day when Marianne and Victor are both gone, Julien, returning to the farmhouse from his chores in the field, hears the ominous rumble of army trucks. He hides until he thinks it is safe. He returns to the farmhouse, his heart dark with the foreboding feeling of death. He finds the farmhouse ransacked and, worse, Marianne’s father hanging from a crossbeam. Julien knows he must run but first he wants to secure the identity papers he’s sure Marianne’s father hid on the farm. He deduces the perfect place: the farm’s beehives. Indeed, he finds the valuable papers. He leaves a note for Marianne, gifting her the papers, and runs. He heads toward Vienne. He runs by night and sleeps during the day. Alone and lost, he takes work wherever a farmer is hiring.

Meanwhile, Ettie has emerged as one of the most reliable and courageous Resistance fighters. She teams with Dr. Girard and become his de facto nurse, assisting him during dangerous runs to help wounded underground fighters. The work is risky and bloody. The two strike up a kind of friendship. The doctor, in mourning over his wife and dedicated to the cause, never crosses the line into inappropriate intimacy. They play chess in the off-hours. Dr. Girard tells Ettie about his wife’s difficult and doomed struggle against breast cancer and even offers Ettie any of her dresses and shoes she might like.

Julien makes his way at last to a chateau in Izieu in eastern France where dozens of Jewish children wait, they assume, to reunite with their parents who have, in fact, been sent to the death camps. The staff have agreed not to tell the children the truth about their parents. Thus, for the kids the chateau is like summer camp. They go to classes in the morning and play camping games in the afternoon, although the true intent of the camping games is to teach them critical survival skills should the Gestapo ever raid the orphanage. Julien agrees to teach the kids rudimentary math skills, but he feels lost, near despair: “Most mornings when he woke up, he had no idea where he was and he sprang from his bed confused” (257). In his free time, he sketches Lea from memory. One afternoon, as Julien is in his bed fighting off a fever from an ill-considered dive into a freezing river, the Gestapo raids the orphanage. Julien jumps from his bedroom window. When he returns, the grounds are dark and deserted. The Nazis have sent the children, teachers, and staff to Auschwitz, where all 51 will be gassed. Just a few days later, when Julien is on the run, the Gestapo arrest him while he sleeps. He joins a long string of Jewish detainees walking along the road toward a village where, Julien is certain, the Nazis will send them to the death camps. Julien, desperate, draws on his training in mathematics.

He reasons that this is a simple math problem and determines that the solution is escape. When the line of prisoners reaches the town, Julien drops white stones along the labyrinthine streets. He bolts and follows his own stones out of the town and into the freedom of the forests. His figure in flight now recalls the wolves running through the wintry woods of Russia: “Now, here he was alive as could be, his legs throbbing, pulling his filthy clothes back over his wet body, his posture bent as he shivered so violently he could hardly stand upright as he cut through the pitch dark of the woods” (282).

By April 1944, Ava is working in the kitchen of the refuge at La Chambon-sur-Lignon. Lea dutifully goes to classes and spends most nights hiding in the attic, fearing a Nazi raid. Ava scans the skies every morning for some sign of the heron, some message from Julien. Finally, after weeks, the heron arrives. The note attached to his leg is a map that Julien has drawn to direct Lea to Marianne’s farm, where he’s hiding. Ava hesitates. She understands that when Lea no longer needs her protection, she must destroy her. She decides not to give Lea the map.

The Resistance learns of the raid on the orphanage and the fate of the children and their teachers. They target the Gestapo captain responsible for ordering the deportations. Victor and Ettie agree to undertake the dangerous mission. They watch the captain for weeks to learn his routine. Daily, Nazi officers bring the captain Jewish girls, prisoners, for his sexual appetite. Ettie understands that the best way to get close to the captain is through his carnal lusts. She agrees to be the bait. Before she and Victor leave for the mission, however, she approaches Dr. Girard. She asks that he make love to her before she goes. She fears that things may go wrong, and she does not want to lose her virginity to a Nazi. The two make quiet and tender love: “[W]hat transpired between them was something they hadn’t expected, it was almost as if they had fallen in love in a world where anything could happen and nothing was impossible” (295).