Chasing Sylvia Beach (28 page)

“You need to figure out what you’re going to do about Heinrich.”

Lily jumped up. “Don’t worry about that, Sylvia.”

“Get downstairs and close before rapscallions rob us blind.”

Lily hurried down the stairs. She had no idea what to do about Heinrich, but with the book she was one step closer to getting home. A note sat on the desk, on top of her writing. Louise wanted to meet her at a café in Montparnasse. She stuffed it in her bag and rushed through the closing tasks. She riffled through Sylvia’s sign box, looking for the placard that announced an unexpected closure. Hanging it in the window, she went once more to the back curtain. She heard nothing from Sylvia’s rooms. Locking the shop, she stepped into the quiet of the Paris late afternoon and headed across the street, clutching her purse.

At the Maison des Amis des Livres a small crowd filled the shop. Lily stopped on the doorstep. A man presided at the front of the room by Adrienne’s desk. A cluster of men and women listened to him as he read in French from a book. Lily hovered at the door. She thought she heard poetry, but she couldn’t make out the words. Adrienne leaned against the wall of books just inside the shop, engrossed in the reading, her chin propped in her hand, her other arm supporting the elbow. Her round face seemed soft, her attention focused on the reader. For a second Lily felt sympathy for her, for her life. She was another book woman, after all, like Sylvia, like herself. But if Sylvia could forgive Adrienne for her desertion, Lily couldn’t. Sylvia had built a life here in Paris, but a large part of that life had been designed around Adrienne.

WHEN LILY ARRIVED at the café, there was no sign of Louise. Lily took a seat in the back room and ordered a glass of wine. The note hadn’t specified a time, so Lily had no idea how long she’d be there. She pulled out her notebook and pen. Her wine arrived, but she kept writing. Now she needed to write daily, to clear her mind of all this drama, to bring herself back to herself.

“Look at the lovely scribbler,” a voice interrupted her writing. It was Louise, as always smartly attired, today in a belted navy dress and a wide-brimmed hat.

“Louise! Would you like to sit down?”

Louise surveyed the people near Lily’s table. “No. Let’s walk. How about a stroll in the gardens?”

Lily gathered her things and joined Louise on the sidewalk. Louise smiled, her lipstick a perfectly applied red. Leaving the café, Lily glanced down the street.

“Aren’t those Nazis going to be after us?”

“Don’t worry about them right now,” Louise asserted.

Right now? Lily thought. As if another time would be better to worry about being found and taken for questioning or worse? Lily hurried after Louise, crossing the boulevard, turning on rue Brea. From there they moved onto rue Vavin, passing shops. The women entered the green calm of the Luxembourg Garden and walked in silence until Lily couldn’t stand it.

“Are you going to tell me who you are?”

Louise slowed her steps, the gravel beneath her kicking up tiny dust clouds.

“Of course. In time. Where is the book?”

“I’m not telling anything until you give me information. Who are you and why did you bring me here?”

Louise nodded with surprised approval at Lily’s strategy. She took a deep breath.

“Come, sit,” she said, leading Lily to a bench under the trees. They sat and Louise fixed her gaze on Lily. With a start, Lily noticed that they had the same color blue eyes.

“What I tell you must go no further than this park. You can tell no one, or you won’t get any help from me. Understand?”

Lily nodded.

“Every day rare and precious literary works disappear. Books, manuscripts, ephemera, some dating back centuries. Influential works—some that could change the course of history—alter the way we think and act. For us, it’s inconceivable to bear the loss of these works. I’m a member of an organization that seeks to reclaim these items that might otherwise slip through the cracks.”

“Slip through the cracks?”

“During times of upheaval, art and books and cultural artifacts tend to disappear or are destroyed. We’re methodically going through history to retrieve them. And sometimes we intervene to keep powerful books out of the wrong hands.”

“Wait. You time travel all the time?”

“I do, and you can, too.”

“What do you mean? This isn’t a fluke?”

“Not a fluke. I brought you here with me.”

“I knew it! I knew it was you. But why me? And how?”

“Calm down. It was rather impulsive of me, but damn it, I’m desperate for impulsivity.”

“So you just messed with my trip, brought me back here, and then refused to help me? What kind of crazy scheme is this?” She jumped up.

Passersby turned at the sound of Lily’s raised voice. For once she didn’t care if she brought attention to herself. The news about the organization and their literary mission had created an odd echo in her mind, like the information had generated too much space around her brain and she couldn’t hold it all.

“Calm down. I’ll tell you everything.”

“That’s right you will!” Lily remained standing while Louise explained.

“We’re called the Athenaeum Neuf. We’re doing rescue work. So far we’ve saved some very precious items.”

“What precious items?”

Louise glanced around as if a concerned someone would overhear. But people passed by, engrossed in their own lives.

“Like Hemingway’s missing suitcase.”

“What!” Lily couldn’t believe it. She remembered the story from the lecture about Hemingway’s writing. He had asked his wife, Hadley, to bring some of his writing to him in Switzerland, so he could show an editor his work. Hadley dutifully packed all of his writing up, but when she got off the train briefly at the Gare du Nord, she left the suitcase on the rack. It was gone when she returned. No one knew its fate. Lily sat back down.

“Why haven’t I heard about this? Why isn’t this big news?”

“Why do you think? We’re not doing this for publicity.”

“What are you doing it for? Those manuscripts must be worth a fortune!”

Louise smiled, but there was no humor in her voice. “You needn’t worry about that.”

“Are you going to sell the contents of Hemingway’s suitcase?”

Louise shook her head and said she wasn’t allowed to reveal everything. Lily tried to imagine how the recovered Hemingway manuscripts would impact the literary world. People would fall over themselves trying to get those missing papers. The suitcase might even have contained a great novel. Lily briefly relished the thought of a new, undiscovered Hemingway book. But she couldn’t get distracted. She still didn’t trust Louise.

“I don’t know. I don’t like the idea of meddling.”

“So all your other stealing isn’t meddling? All that worthless stuff you take? You don’t think that affects things? We’re offering you a chance to finally do something worthy with your talent for spiriting things away.”

Lily squirmed. So they knew about her stealing, too. What else did they know? She picked at the green paint peeling off the bench. After her attempt to snatch the bike at Les Halles, she had vowed to steal no more. Now stealing was presented as a noble endeavor, serving a higher cause. She turned to Louise.

“How did you bring me? How the hell do you move people through time?”

“I can’t explain that. And I wasn’t supposed to bring you now. But we needed your help so I went ahead and did it.”

“My help?” Lily laughed. Louise seemed so sophisticated. Lily didn’t see how they thought she could contribute to their cause.

“We’ve been watching you. Ever since you came to Prince-ton, we’ve had our eye on you as a candidate. We needed you to get something for us. You were the perfect person for the job.”

“What job? You knew I was at Princeton? You were there?”

“You’ll understand in a minute. First let me explain.”

Louise went on to tell Lily that they were in Paris now to collect books that were at risk of being confiscated or burned by the Nazis.

“That item at Sylvia’s shop—you were the perfect person to retrieve it.”

“It wasn’t easy, you should know.” Lily scraped out a line in the gravelly path with her toe.

“We do know.” Sylvia smiled, and Lily remembered that they were watching her the whole time. Would they have interfered with Karl if Paul hadn’t been there? What about when she first arrived, totally clueless, and was molested by the Seine—had they just sat by and observed? Lily hadn’t noticed anyone else around. The thought that she hadn’t been helped in those moments enraged her.

“And we know that you got the book. And we want it. It’s just a matter of turning it in and then you can go home.” She paused. “Unless you’d like to stay with us.”

Lily stared at her in disbelief.

“Come, let’s keep moving.” She stood and drifted away. Lily followed.

“Wait! What do you mean ‘stay with you’?”

“You got the book for us. Since you’ve succeeded so well with this first mission, there could be others.”

Suddenly the scene in the park, the children playing, the old ladies chatting on benches seemed impossibly mundane to Lily.

“This is crazy! After all you’ve put me through, you expect me to join you willingly?”

“Aren’t you dying of boredom? Wouldn’t you love to have a purpose? Something other than chasing Sylvia Beach in your fantasies? With your inclination to theft, you’re perfect. Almost.”

Louise was trying to recruit her into something she had a hard time believing existed. But here she was, living proof, moving among people in the past. She shook her head.

“Almost?”

“You did very well in the incubation period, those first seven days. We were watching you to see how you’d acclimate. You did well, getting a place to stay, a job even. And friends.”

“What friends?”

“Paul. Sylvia. Heinrich, even.” With that, Louise shook her head in incredulity.

Lily shared her surprise that she’d done so well in such strange circumstances. Still, she knew it wasn’t true that Sylvia Beach was her friend. Lily was just another person passing through Sylvia’s world.

“In fact, you did so well that you failed. You connected too well. We have a few rules that, if broken, can compromise our work. One, don’t affect change outside your mission. Two, don’t connect. If you get close to people, it makes you vulnerable and weakens our link to you. You get attached and want to slip them information. We thought that with your lone wolf tendencies, your fantasies, that you’d be the perfect person. But you connected surprisingly well. You may be able to overcome that—that need to connect.”

“That’s nuts. We all need to connect. It’s a basic human instinct.”

Louise shook her head and glanced away. “Not all of us. Some of us prefer this lifestyle. It’s easier this way. Less complicated, fewer relationships to deal with.”

“That’s sad. I’m not alone because I want to be.”

“Oh, really?” She stared at Lily pointedly.

Lily’s shoulders rose up. Then she recalled the feeling she’d had when she first left Paul’s room. Her lightness, carrying nothing, expected by no one, open to anything. If they’d been watching her, she was never really alone. She loved books, and liked the idea of being able to recover old artifacts and artistic treasures. True, she liked her freedom in Denver, but it did get lonely. Sylvia’s courage and her unwavering commitment to her life in Paris nudged Lily. If Sylvia could endure her declining shop and debilitating migraines, Lily could handle this. And she needed Louise.

“Why did you need
me
to do this? Why not you?”

“You’re in with Sylvia. We were stunned at how well you integrated. First getting the job at the bookstore, then staying there. Well done, Lily. Clearly you have capabilities even we weren’t aware of. And we need a new member.”

Louise told Lily that her partner, Harold, was on the verge of defecting. No one left the group. But Harold wanted more adventure, the kind he thought he would find as a member of the Résistance.

“We work in teams. We need a new member. More precisely, I need a partner. And I choose you.”

Lily shrugged sullenly. “You choose me? Why?” Louise remained silent despite Lily’s demands for answers. Lily clenched her hands in frustration. Louise calmly laid her hand on Lily’s fist and spoke.

“You’ll need to trust me. But truly, I can assure you, I think you’ll want to join us.”

Lily pulled away. “If I join Athenaeum Neuf, what about my life in Denver? Would I be able to tell my friends and family about this?”

Louise shook her head. “This is the difficult part. Nobody would know. You can’t tell anyone about us. It’s a tight little group, as you can imagine, because we only have each other. But the compensation is quite compelling.”

They walked across the park, Lily trying to understand everything Louise had told her. A silence ensued while they strolled like all the other people taking the fresh air in the park. They passed the playground and the puppet theater and entered into the English garden. The circular grass beds and leafy tree clusters soothed Lily. Still, one thing nagged her. “How do you travel through time?”

Louise smiled wanly. “I can’t explain that to you. But this is what you need to know: we need nine people to hold the focus. When we’re on a mission, the others are holding a net of concentration, a sort of focus for us, so we can stay in time. Without the whole group, things can get slightly tricky. Now, with Harold’s imminent departure, we’re left with a gap. If you say no—and I honestly don’t know why you would—we will have to find a replacement tout de suite.”

Lily found the “net of concentration” explanation vague. But she couldn’t get caught up wondering about the time travel with this big decision in front of her. Louise’s argument was starting to make an impression on her, like a piece of ripening fruit being bruised with an insistent thumb.

“You’re asking me to abandon my family, my life? Even if I could do that, I can’t imagine the pain that would bring to my father. Just disappear?”

“Don’t tell me that’s not something you’ve considered. Who doesn’t dream of dropping everything and starting a new life?”

Lily thought about it. “At twenty-three, I feel like I
am
starting a new life.”

“Yes, a new life with us.” Louise’s voice was warm with invitation and Lily studied her, surprised at this new sincerity. Maybe they really did want her.

“Are you ever going to tell me how I was on a plane next to you one minute and the next in Sylvia’s shop?”

Louise sighed. “Trade secrets, my dear. I can’t tell you that, but I can fill you in a bit more.”

They strolled while Louise told her story. They passed by lovers, nannies with their children, men playing
péntanque
. Louise had been an Athenaeum Neuf member for twenty years, traveling back and forth in time, reclaiming books, notebooks, ephemera. Building their library. Lily listened and watched the people in the park, their lives tightly linked, needing each other, loving each other, fighting with each other. Her father and Monique, Valerie, even Daniel would miss her if she didn’t come back. But they’d get over it. Like she’d gotten over her mother leaving. She swallowed and kicked at the gravel while they walked past the apiary.