All the Light There Was (18 page)

Missak moved back into the apartment, and despite his long hours of work at the printer, we saw more of him now that he and Jacqueline were keeping company. My parents couldn’t have been more pleased—they thought of Jacqueline as a second daughter. As for me, my pangs of jealousy were less frequent and less sharp.

“You don’t mind?” Jacqueline asked me one night when she and I were washing dishes after dinner.

“Now that I’m used to the idea, I think it’s a good arrangement. You’ve always been a part of the family. Lately I get to see you more often. Do you think you’re going to marry him?”

Jacqueline smiled ruefully. “He hasn’t asked me yet.”

“Don’t worry, he will. My mother is pestering him about it. She’s even talking about grandchildren. If he doesn’t ask you soon, my mother will do it on his behalf.”

Jacqueline laughed. “Oh, I should be able to wrangle it out of him before she has to do that.”

We started another winter season with fuel rationed and harder still to come by. I stuffed the cracks around the windows with rags and pulled out the woolens so my mother and I could wash the smell of naphthalene out of them. The rituals reminded me of Auntie Shakeh.

Havabour started to lose her feathers, and this time I knew that the bird was molting and would lay eggs again if we gave her the chance. But I didn’t argue against my father’s suggestion of a nice chicken stew. When the war was over—and that day was on the near horizon—there would be other eggs and other chickens. I was also hoping for chocolate, meat, and cheese in large quantities. I longed for abundant hot water, scented soap, silk stockings, and reams of fine paper. But it seemed frivolous to covet luxuries while there were still tens of thousands of prisoners of war in Germany and hundreds of thousands of soldiers battling across the continent.

When we gathered at the table on Sunday afternoon, the steaming chicken soup in our chipped white bowls, I couldn’t help but think of the people we had lost to the war. Auntie Shakeh was in Père-Lachaise. And what of our neighbors the Lipskis, and Denise and Henri Rozenbaum? Who knew where they were? Zaven and Barkev were still in a German camp somewhere, and no one had heard a word from them. Sometimes missing Zavig would hit me like an illness for which there was no medicine.

After the meal, as I carried the dinner plates into the kitchen, my mother said, “You’re thinking about Zaven, aren’t you?”

I asked, “How can you tell?”

“You get this pitiful look on your face.”

“I’ve seen that same expression on yours.”

“So many lost, so many not yet returned. When he comes back, my girl, he may be changed. What you see in a war marks you forever.”

I said, “Sometimes I worry that he’s not coming back. I doubt they feed them much and I’m sure the work is hard. He was so thin the last time I saw him. And now with all the fighting and the bombing over Germany . . .”

“We’ll go to church next week and light a candle for Auntie Shakeh, God rest her soul, and we’ll light two more for Zaven’s and Barkev’s safe return.”

The next Sunday when my mother and I arrived at the church, the
badarak
had already started. At the back of the sanctuary we lit three candles and then crossed ourselves and slid into an empty pew. The priest and deacon led a procession around the altar and down into the nave. Smoky incense clouded the air as the gold thurible was swung from side to side. The deacons chanted the divine liturgy.

As the service continued, I glanced around the nave at the other churchgoers, most of them old widows with black lace covering their heads, and some families with school-age children. In the opposite row, there was a young man who looked familiar, but I couldn’t remember where I had seen him before. He must have felt my gaze because he turned and stared straight at me, his eyes sharp with recognition. When he smiled and nodded, I remembered a German uniform. What was his name? Andon. Andon Shirvanian. Jacqueline and I had met him the night of the folkloric dance concert.

At the end of the service he approached us.

“Oryort Pegorian?” he asked. “Pardon my boldness. Do you remember me?”

“Of course,” I answered. “Mairig, this is Andon Shirvanian.”

“I am happy to make your acquaintance, Digin Pegorian.” He bowed his head. “I had the pleasure of meeting your daughter at a cultural evening about a year ago. I am surprised that she remembered my name.”

“You are from the Soviet Armenia?” my mother asked.

He replied, “Born in Leninakan. But my family is originally from Moush.”

“My husband’s family is from there,” my mother said as we made our way to the exit.

Out in the churchyard, people she hadn’t seen since Auntie Shakeh’s funeral quickly surrounded my mother. I stood nearby with Andon. Snowflakes were slowly filtering down.

“You cut your hair,” he said. “It is very becoming.”

“Thank you.”

“I am flattered that you remembered my name,” he said.

“You remembered my name as well.”

“But that is different. I was a stranger, wearing a German uniform, and you were kind.”

“I wasn’t that friendly,” I said, remembering how I had deflected his offer to meet again. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to light a candle for my mother,” he said.

“Is she ill?”

“She died some months after I left for the war. This is the third anniversary.”

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

“In a time of war, no one is without losses. But you and I managed to survive this one, did we not?”

“It seems that way,” I answered. “But I really meant what are you doing here in Paris?”

“That is too long a story to tell while standing in this cold churchyard. Will you be friendlier to me now than you were before? Will you agree to see me another time?”

“It seems possible now that you aren’t dressed in a German uniform.”

“Will you invite me to pay a call at your home?” he asked with a wry smile. “Or perhaps we could meet for a coffee? It is less formal.”

When he smiled at me like that, I felt a feather of excitement brush behind my ribs. Then I was immediately ashamed. I stared sternly down at my hands. I had just lit a candle for Zaven’s safe return, and here I was entertaining an invitation from another man. I looked up at Andon’s face; now it was sincere and a little wistful, as though he could sense how close I was to saying no.

We made a plan to meet later in the week at a café not far from the Sorbonne, after I finished my afternoon shift at the library.

On the way home on the Métro, my mother observed, “That Andon’s a nice-looking boy. His Armenian is beautiful, and he has good manners.”

“And clean fingernails, if you had a chance to inspect them,” I said. “But he’s not Zaven.”

My mother grew serious. “No, he’s not.”

I approached the café near the Panthéon and saw Andon seated at a table by the window. When he spied me he broke into a full smile and waved. He rose as I came over and pulled out the chair for me.

“I’m so glad to see you, Oryort Pegorian,” he said. “I wasn’t sure that you would come.”

“You don’t know me well,” I answered.

“This is true. We do not know each other well. But I would like to know you better.”

His smile made me feel as though my foot had slipped on a tread in the stairwell. I had to catch the handrail to keep myself from falling.

I blurted out, “Listen, Andon, you should know that my boyfriend was deported. And when he comes back, we’ll be getting married.”

“Are you engaged?” he asked.

“Nothing formal, but a promise,” I said.

“He was deported for what reason?” he asked.

“He was caught distributing Resistance tracts.”

“Have you heard from him?”

I shook my head. “No one has.”

“And how long has he been gone?”

“Since May.” I didn’t mention that it had been a full year since I had last seen Zaven.

He nodded slowly. “I see.”

“You and I can be friends,” I said.

“I would very much like to be your friend, Oryort Pegorian.”

“Please call me Maral.”

“Maral.”

“You promised to tell me what you are doing now,” I said, anxious to change the subject.

“I am working for my father’s cousin. He has a rug shop not far from here. The carpet trade is one my family knows, among others. I learned as a boy how to repair them and now I am learning to appraise them as well.”

“How long have you been in Paris?”

“Since late September.”

“And what were you doing before that?”

“It is a rather long story . . .”

I glanced at the clock over the bar. “I have at least an hour.”

“That’s more than enough time to recount the tale. Soon after I met you, they sent us to the Atlantic coast to work on the construction of the barriers. But, of course, the Allies invaded in a different location, and the walls we made served no purpose. Then they ordered us onto trains heading to Germany. We were told we would be working in an armaments factory. That job would have made us a prime target for Allied bombers. But we never got there.

“As our train crossed the Belgian border, the Americans dropped a bomb that hit the front of the train and tore up the tracks. My friends and I jumped out of the back of the train and took to the woods. We wandered around for some days until we found a Resistance unit and asked if we could join them. They put us under arrest while they contacted their leaders for instructions. Word came back that the Allies had made a deal with Stalin. So they were sorry, but we couldn’t join the Resistance. All Soviet prisoners of war were to be held for eventual repatriation to the Soviet Union.”

“Then what happened?” I asked.

“It was a choice of waiting as a prisoner of war knowing that I would eventually be sent back to the Soviet Union or escaping and finding a way to stay in France. My presence here tells you what I decided. I left on my own. I imagine that my friends will be on trains heading east as soon as the war is over.”

“You didn’t want to go home? What about your family?”

“I am disappointed that I may not see my family for a long time, but let me put it this way: We soldiers were expected to die on the battlefield defending the motherland, and doing anything less than that, such as being taken prisoner, will not be looked on with much lenience. Then there is the issue of the German uniform.”

“Why did you join the German army?”

“General Dro came to the POW camp . . . Do you know who he is?”

I shook my head.

“He was a hero of the Russian Caucasus Army during the First World War, and he saved many Armenian lives during the Deportations. He was the first defense minister of the Armenian Republic, and a leader in the Dashnak Party. When he came to the POW camp, he said, ‘Men, we do not know how this war will end, but when it does, Hayastan will need you, so put on this German uniform.’ The Germans had promised an independent Armenia if the Soviets were defeated. A few of the Dashnak leaders, including General Dro, thought this was their best hope. It is now evident that they wagered wrongly.

“In that camp, they had us on a diet that didn’t kill you right away. I calculated a man could last perhaps two years on the rations they provided, if he found a way to avoid hard labor and managed to steer clear of the illnesses that felled the weaker ones in droves. I had already been in the camp for sixteen months, so I put on the German uniform. But this is a kind of reasoning for which I assume Stalin has no patience.”

“My father says that Stalin is an assassin.”

“Yes, well, I don’t want to speak more about Stalin, but I should like to meet your father sometime. What is his profession?”

“He was trained as a shoemaker in the orphanage workshops in Lebanon, and now he has his own cobbling shop.”

“Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

“One older brother. Missak. He works for a printer. He forged documents for the Resistance.”

“I should also like to meet this brother,” Andon said. “Your mother is an admirable woman. And you . . .” He stopped.

“Yes.”

“I’m not sure whether it is the proper way to address a friend,” he said.

I knew I shouldn’t, but I wanted him to say it. “I’ll be the judge of that.”

“Nothing original. It is an old Armenian expression. Perhaps you have heard it before: You are so beautiful that you shed light on dark walls.”

“No, I don’t believe that’s proper to tell a friend, even though it might be the most poetic thing anyone has ever said to me.”

“Will you forgive me?” he asked with a smile.

I
CONVINCED MYSELF THAT
as long as I didn’t plan to meet Andon, there could be nothing wrong with our chance encounters. My decision to go to the cathedral each Sunday, I reasoned, had nothing to do with him. Nor did the time I spent in front of the mirror on Sunday morning arranging my hair six different ways before finding the one that suited.

My father asked, “How did an atheist like me end up with a child who goes to church every week? Is she turning into a religious fanatic?”

“Don’t call yourself an atheist,” my mother admonished.

“What do you think I am?” my father asked.

“I don’t know what you are, but don’t call yourself that. It can’t bring anything good,” my mother replied. “And she’s not a religious fanatic. She used to go to church with Shakeh all the time when she was a little girl, and Shakeh wasn’t a fanatic.”

Missak asked, “Did you fix your hair like that to impress the priest?”

I said, “I’m leaving now. Feel free to continue this discussion without me.”

“Will you be back for lunch?” my mother asked. “The Kacherians are coming, and Auntie Shushan is bringing
kadayif.
”

I entered the cathedral and anxiously scanned the parishioners. I saw the back of Andon’s head halfway down the nave, recognizing him by his black Sunday suit, his crisp white collar, and the straight hair that dipped a bit at the center of his neck. I reached the pew directly across from him and settled into the aisle seat. He turned to smile at me and then turned back, and for the rest of the service we both faced forward, though each of us occasionally stole a glance at the other.