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Back The World That We Knew Save as PDF
Chapters (42)
  1. Cover
  2. Epigraph
  3. PART ONE
  4. CHAPTER ONE
  5. CHAPTER TWO
  6. CHAPTER THREE
  7. CHAPTER FOUR
  8. CHAPTER FIVE
  9. CHAPTER SIX
  10. CHAPTER SEVEN
  11. CHAPTER EIGHT
  12. CHAPTER NINE
  13. CHAPTER TEN
  14. CHAPTER ELEVEN
  15. CHAPTER TWELVE
  16. CHAPTER THIRTEEN
  17. CHAPTER FOURTEEN
  18. CHAPTER FIFTEEN
  19. CHAPTER SIXTEEN
  20. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
  21. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
  22. CHAPTER NINETEEN
  23. PART TWO
  24. CHAPTER TWENTY
  25. CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
  26. CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
  27. CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
  28. CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
  29. CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
  30. CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
  31. CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
  32. CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
  33. CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
  34. CHAPTER THIRTY
  35. CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
  36. CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
  37. CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
  38. CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
  39. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  40. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  41. FURTHER READING
  42. Copyright

Julien nodded and watched the smoke rise into the night sky. Lea would be furious if she knew he was smoking. She’d told him her father had been a doctor, and said smoking was bad for the lungs.

“My brother has a farm,” the old man said. “It’s a little more than three kilometers outside town. Maybe he can use the help.”

They went there together, Monsieur driving, Julien in the space between the front and backseats, beneath a blanket. It was a small farm, and Monsieur Bisset’s brother was a brusque widower who had fields but no one to work them. Julien would stay in a borrowed canvas tent in the woods beyond the pasture until the snows came, and be given two meals each day, as long as he worked without complaint, for the hours were long, and the labor backbreaking. Julien shook hands with the first Monsieur Bisset and they wished each other luck. The food was not as good here, it was simple fare, mostly bread and eggs and cheese, but it was filling, and Julien didn’t mind living outside.

This is what it feels like to be alone, he would have written to Lea if he could. You hear more and see more. You’re a part of the world around you. Ants under the leaves, the clouds moving by. He had begun to divide the world into sections, as his father had taught him to do; everything was a piece of the whole, he understood that now. He had no difficulty finding his way to his campsite in the dark; he did so by touching the trees as though they were a map through a forest maze. The weather grew colder and he could feel how close winter was. At night he looked into the sky and remembered the names of the constellations. There was Orion, the hunter who appears in the winter sky with his bow and his dogs, so that he could be remembered by those who loved him during his time on earth. Julien imagined that his father lay on the ground beside him, looking upward. Dear father, he said aloud.

The nesting birds scattered at the sound of his voice. The vines had grown over his tent so quickly he sometimes thought he would disappear. Snow would fall, ice would cover the canvas, and one day Monsieur Bisset’s brother would come looking for him and be unable to find him in the woods.

Find me, he would have written to Lea if he could.

Find me before I disappear.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

THE DOCTOR’S HOUSE

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ARDèCHE, WINTER 1943