In 1944, fourteen months after Lucien’s arrest, some Germans abandon one of their dogs at the side of the road. It’s a bitch, a large, scrawny fawn-and-black creature.
The dog remains rooted to the spot, by the village’s exit road, for a long time, like a statue staring out to the horizon.
One evening, the hound follows Hélène right up to old Louis’s bistro. She lets it come inside, and it lies down in the sawdust. She gives it some soup to lap up. And then she names it Louve.
To celebrate the Liberation, Hélène offers free drinks to everyone in Milly. Even the women are there. Even those who give her dirty looks because she’s possibly too beautiful for a bar owner. Louve, the sole surviving German for hundreds of kilometers around, watches them drink and clink glasses until late into the night.
Hélène also drinks that day. She drinks to waiting for Lucien. She drinks to being shocked every day by the silence of his absence. To the doors she hears slamming, but which don’t slam anymore. To the pillowcase that remains immaculate, and that she punches every morning before making the bed. To the dark hairs she no longer finds on the white sheets. To the pages of books that she turns alone, to the meals she eats from a corner of the table, standing, turning her back on the empty chairs.
She drinks to the hope of seeing him return, wounded perhaps, but alive. She knows he’s not dead, she senses that his heart’s still beating, but doesn’t know where and how. And anyhow, the seagull hasn’t returned. She drinks, wondering if the person who denounced them is among this crowd toasting and merrily dancing on the wooden floor of her bistro. But she doesn’t want to hate. She wants only to hope. Just as she’d hoped to learn to read.
Since that day celebrating the end of the war, she has seen men returning to her bistro. The village gets them back, gradually. Not all of them, but some of them. Those who fought in the 1914–18 war talk to those returning from the 1939–45 war. As for the farm workers who have done both wars, they don’t seem to believe in their own survival anymore as they knock it back and gaze at the photo of Janet Gaynor.
Every day, the newspaper brings news of the war. As if the bullets shot years before were only reaching their targets now. The death toll is published. As are the photos of mass executions and concentration camps. And some personal accounts that Hélène can’t read. No news reaches her in Braille. She asks Claude, a boy she hired to work at old Louis’s café, to read them to her secretly in the evening, so no one knows she can’t read. Though, in fact, everyone knows.
Claude was born with his left leg shorter than his right, and his limp prevented him from going off to do obligatory labor. And while men were becoming slaves, Claude had learned to read and write. That’s why Hélène chose him, from among other far more experienced waiters.
Every evening, Hélène, with her fingers buried in Louve’s coat, listens religiously as Claude reads various articles describing the war. Sometimes, when the words are too tough to hear, she says to Claude:
“Wait.”
She breathes deeply. Then, with a nod of her head, asks him to continue from where he left off.
Sometimes—and she’ll only find out about this much later—Claude avoids reading certain unbearable passages, describing prisoners’ living conditions in the camps. He changes the words and makes up that some prisoners were better treated than others, eating their fill and sleeping in clean beds.
At night, when Claude has left for home, Hélène opens the bedroom wardrobe and looks at Lucien’s clothes on their hangers. He left with nothing. Not even an “I love you” from her. Thank goodness the seagull followed him. She hopes he’ll understand this proof of love.
Since his departure, she’s made other garments: trousers, jackets, shirts. She hangs the new items beside the old. When he’s back, he’ll choose what he wants to keep. Over the years, fashion has changed. The Americans have brought over new fabrics. Will this look appeal to Lucien?
In 1946, Hélène receives a letter in Braille. A letter from Étienne, Lucien’s father, mailed from Lille. The French government has informed him that his son, Lucien Perrin, born November 25, 1911, was deported to Buchenwald and died in the concentration camp. In the public records, Lucien Perrin is now included on the register of prisoners of war “who died for France.”
Buchenwald. She passes her finger over this word several times.
Claude shows her Buchenwald on a map of the world. With the help of a ruler, he calculates that it’s 905 kilometers from Milly. Hélène looks at the tiny mark, close to Weimar. Barely bigger than the eye of a needle. A tiny stitch on the heart of Germany. Refusing to believe in his death, she stares hard at the map of the world as if it has been drawn to show her where Lucien is, and searches for a sign, a light, a bird.
As if hope were contagious, Claude embarks on some research. He writes to all the hospitals that have taken in prisoners of war, to the Red Cross, to all the associations and organizations in charge of registering the deported.
Inside each letter that Claude sends, Hélène slips a portrait of Lucien drawn in charcoal, because she doesn’t have any photos of him that aren’t out of focus or taken from a distance.
Under each portrait, she asks Claude to write:
Lucien PERRIN
Do you recognize this man? I am searching for any information that might help me to find him.
Write to Hélène Hel, old Louis’s café, Place de l’Église, Milly.