“No rare Haggadahs coming into the store this afternoon, then?” I teased.
He leaned closer to me. “What does it say for my future career that I couldn’t concentrate on work all day? All I could think about was seeing you.”
I felt my temperature warming at his words. “I think it means you might consider another career option,” I laughed.
“The shy girl who first came into this store holding her priceless books, has since become emboldened, I see.”
“Indeed.” My eyes flickered. “Shall we go near the Place des Vosges and have a coffee?”
He smiled. “There isn’t anything I’d like to do more.”
***
We left the store and his hand reached for my fingers, his own folding into mine. “Those children are Solomon’s,” he said as he turned back to look at the children still at play. “His wife has been crying all day. A gentile neighbor back in Germany wrote to him in some sort of code they devised, saying that police had rounded up his brother and sister, along with their families.”
He turned to me, his face illuminated by the winter light. “Papa thinks we may have to leave Paris sooner rather than later.”
My heart sank.
“But where would you go?”
“North America or South America, I suppose. Isn’t that where every European Jew wants to go right now?”
I bit my lip. I felt the desperation wash over me, fearing I was about to be abandoned by someone I had just come to love.
I didn’t know how to respond. The mere mention of the word “America” from his lips made it feel as though the floor had been dropped beneath me. Only seconds before, I had felt a light flood through me. Being in Alex’s presence, the proximity of his body near mine, filled me with a warmth that had penetrated my skin. But with the news that his family might be emigrating, I felt as though we were engulfed in a dark shadow. Instead of feeling the heat of young love, I felt terribly cold.
“But immigration is incredibly difficult. Do you have family there that can sponsor you?” I was trying to mask my despair by sounding practical. “Are passenger boats even leaving now?”
The papers had already reported about torpedoed ships. I worried it would not even be safe to travel at this point in the war.
“Yes, the waters are more dangerous than ever, but boats are still being chartered. My father has a second cousin in New York. Also abook dealer. We’ve written to him, asking if he will sponsor us. If we can’t get the entry visas, there’s always South America.”
I said nothing. All the excitement I had kept inside my heart for the past two days, and the happiness I thought I would feel when my eyes saw Alex again, had vanished.
“But who knows if he can even sponsor us? And the amount of paperwork needed before anything can actually happen is daunting, to say the least.” Alex sensed my nervousness.
“And I don’t want to leaveyou.”
My heart lifted at his words.
Before I had a chance to respond, his hand grasped my fingers, and the sensation that I had felt the first time his skin brushed against mine, again flooded through my body.
He did not speak. He did not even offer any expression on his face for me to interpret. He simply pulled me to his lips. His kiss telling me far more than words ever could.
***
Alex and I now began to see each other daily. We tried not to speak about the possibility that he might be leaving for the United States. Everyone knew how difficult it was to gain sponsorship and to get a visa, so part of me genuinely believed it was unlikely to happen soon, if ever. We spent the remainder of the month finding ways to see each other.
I would bring my journal and write at our favorite café on Place Saint Georges until he arrived. And it was in those stolen moments, when our knees touched beneath the table or his hand clasped my fingers, that I felt I understood the words of my grandmother, that the touch of one’s beloved could resurrect you.
In mid-March, however, Alex received a letter from the French army announcing his conscription.
It was another moment when words failed us.
The letter was very similar to the one Papa had received. It gave instructions for him to report for his physical, and provided the address where he needed to go register for his unit.
“I was surprised it took them this long to call for me,” he said, his voice clearly numb from the news.
