“How long have you been here?” she asked the woman beside her.
“Days,” the woman said, opening another box. “My children weren’t hungry last night for the first time in months.”
“What are we doing?”
The woman shrugged. “I’ve heard them saying something about Operation Spring Wind.”
“What does it mean?”
“I don’t want to know.”
Isabelle flipped through the cards in the box. One near the end stopped her.
LÉVY, PAUL
61 rue Blandine, Apt. C
7th arrondissement
Professor of literature
She got to her feet so fast she bumped into the woman beside her, who cursed at the interruption. The cards on her desk slid to the floor in a cascade. Isabelle immediately knelt down and gathered them up, daring to stick Monsieur Lévy’s card up her sleeve.
The moment she stood, someone grabbed her by the arm and dragged her down the narrow aisle. She bumped into women all down the row.
In the empty space by the wall, she was twisted around and shoved back so hard she slammed into the wall.
“What is the meaning of this?” snarled the French policeman, his grip on her arm tight enough to leave a bruise.
Could he feel the index card beneath her sleeve?
“I’m sorry. So sorry. I need to work, but I’m sick, you see. The flu.” She coughed as loudly as she could.
Isabelle walked past him and left the building. Outside, she kept coughing until she got to the corner. There, she started to run.
* * *
“What could it mean?”
Isabelle peered past the blackout shade in the apartment, staring down at the avenue. Papa sat at the dining room table, nervously drumming his ink-stained fingers on the wood. It felt good to be here again—with him—after months away, but she was too agitated to relax and enjoy the homey feel of the place.
“You must be mistaken, Isabelle,” Papa said, on his second brandy since her return. “You said there had to be tens of thousands of cards. That would be all the Jewish people in Paris. Surely—”
“Question what it means, Papa, but not the facts,” she answered. “The Germans are collecting the names and addresses of every foreign-born Jewish person in Paris. Men, women, and children.”
“But why? Paul Lévy is of Polish descent, it’s true, but he has lived here for decades. He fought for France in the Great War—his brother died for France. The Vichy government has assured us that veterans are protected from the Nazis.”
“Vianne was asked for a list of names,” Isabelle said. “She was asked to write down every Jewish, communist, and Freemason teacher at her school. Afterward they were all fired.”
“They can hardly fire them twice.” He finished his drink and poured another. “And it is the French police gathering names. If it were the Germans, it would be different.”
Isabelle had no answer to that. They had been having this same conversation for at least three hours.
Now it was edging past two in the morning, and neither of them could come up with a credible reason why the Vichy government and the French police were collecting the names and addresses of every foreign-born Jewish person living in Paris.
She saw a flash of silver outside. Lifting the shade a little higher, she stared down at the dark street.
A row of buses rolled down the avenue, their painted headlamps off, looking like a slow-moving centipede that stretched for blocks.