enough, as Victor ignored them. He had been in a foul mood ever since Marianne left, and had never had an interest in reading, even though the selection of books was quite incredible. The first Monsieur Lévi had been a collector of Greek and Hebrew texts, and the second Monsieur Lévi had followed suit, although he favored mythology, folktales, and novels. Lea and Julien read for hours, stretched out on the floor, each extremely aware of the other’s presence, though they both pretended not to be. What they held in common was their aloneness, and in time, thrown together, with no world other than their own, they grew close. Often they could finish each other’s sentences, and then they would laugh, embarrassed, lying on the floor, side by side, feeling the heat of one another’s body.
Lea read novels, one after the other, and then science books, texts about the natural world, psychology, and the miracle of the human body. In the mornings, Julien took lessons with his father. He was already ahead of most students his age, at the university level due to his father’s tutoring and his own innate ability to problem-solve. But he had very little interest in mathematics, a fact he had yet to reveal to his father. He preferred a blank notebook so that he could sketch. He could mimic most things found in nature with ease: a rose, a bird, a single leaf. It might be their own garden that inspired him one day, then the plane trees in the Jardin des Tuileries, or the imaginary landscapes he conjured, islands that were made of rock, rivers that were green as glass. Lea was the first person to whom he showed his work, and her reaction was all he could have wished for. She sat for him so that he could sketch her portrait, and in those hours a door opened for both of them, insight into one another, a close bond.
When Lea looked at the finished product of Julien’s sketch, however, she laughed.
“I don’t look like that!” The girl in the drawing was beautiful, and she hadn’t been that girl since she’d chopped off her hair in Berlin. He had even made her chipped tooth look attractive, when she was well aware of how horrible it was.
As far as Julien was concerned, he’d captured her completely. “Of course you do,” he said.
He knew she was homesick. He’d stood outside her door at night and heard her crying. One night Ava came up behind him, surprising him. Julien felt a shiver go through him. She was so quiet, even wearing those heavy boots of hers. There was something vaguely off about her. She had stood there glowering at him, as if he were a criminal.
“I’m not doing anything wrong,” Julien told her. Then why did he feel caught?
“Why would you be?” Ava said, her silver eyes narrowed.
“I wouldn’t be.”
“If you ever do, you will regret it.” That she had no expression on her face made her threat all the more chilling.
“What do you consider wrong?” Julien asked.
Ava shrugged. “You’ll know when I consider it to be so. So be careful.”
“Your cousin is very protective,” he told Lea after his encounter with Ava. “She reminds me of a guard dog.”
Lea had often thought of the name one of the sisters had used for Ava on the train. A golem. One morning, she sneaked into the library before anyone was awake. There was a book she had spied days earlier, one she had been waiting to get her hands on. It was an ancient book of Jewish magic the second Monsieur Lévi had bought from a famed French kabbalist. She found the passage referring to a creature noted as a golem in Psalm 139, verses fifteen and sixteen, praising God. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.
She read on, shocked to discover that a golem came to life after an elaborate and secret ritual, wherein the maker must have a deep understanding of the spiritual and physical manifestations of the Hebrew alphabet. The creature was activated by magical incantations. It might look human, but it was a sort of changeling, stronger and more fearless and imbued with supernatural abilities, to speak with birds and angels, to see dreams and predict the future. More than anything, it was a warrior. Its goal was to protect the Jewish people, yet