“Barely.”
“Come in,” he says, stepping aside. “My friend Simon is here. He knew our family before the war. And my friend Henri. He is a survivor too. They want to meet you.”
My heart is in my throat as I follow Alain into his apartment. In the sitting room, two men are sipping tiny cups of espresso by the window, while sunlight streams in, lighting their matching snow-white heads of hair. Both stand and smile at me as I enter, and I note that they look even older than Alain and are both significantly stooped.
The one closest to me speaks first. His green eyes are watery. “Alain is right. You look just like Rose,” he whispers.
“Simon,” Alain says, stepping into the room behind me. “This is my niece. Hope McKenna-Smith. Hope, this is my friend Simon Ramo. He knew your grandmother.”
“You look just like her,” he says. He takes a few steps forward to meet me in the middle of the room. As he leans forward to kiss me on both cheeks, I notice two things: that he is trembling, and that he has a number tattooed on the inside of his left forearm.
He sees me staring at it. “Auschwitz,” he says simply. I nod and look quickly away, embarrassed.
“For me, the same,” says the other man. He holds up his left arm, and I see a similar tattoo, the letter B followed by five digits. He steps forward to kiss me on both cheeks too and backs away smiling. “I never knew your grandmother,” he says. “But she must have been very beautiful, for you are very beautiful, young lady.”
I smile weakly. “Thank you.”
“I am Henri Levy.”
My heart skips, and I look at Alain. “Levy?”
“A common last name,” Alain explains quickly. “He is no relation to Jacob.”
“Oh,” I say, feeling oddly deflated.
“Shall we sit down?” Henri motions to the chairs. “Your uncle forgets I am ninety-two. He is, how do you say in English? A spring chicken?”
I laugh, and Alain smiles. “Yes, a spring chicken,” Alain says. “I am sure that is just what young Hope sees when she looks at me.”
“Hope, do not listen to these old men,” Simon says. He totters back to his chair. “We are only as old as we feel. And today, I feel like I am thirty-five.”
I smile, and after a moment, Alain offers me a cup of espresso, which I gladly accept. The four of us settle into seats in the living room, and Simon leans forward.
“I know I have said this,” he begins. “But you bring me back in time. Your grandmother was—is—a wonderful woman.”
“He always had a crush on her,” Alain interjects with a grin. “But he was eleven, like me. She was his babysitter.”
Simon shakes his head and shoots Alain a look. “Oh, she had a crush on me too,” he says. “She just did not know it yet.”
Alain laughs. “You are forgetting Jacob Levy.”
Simon rolls his eyes. “My great foe for Rose’s affection.”
Alain looks at me. “Jacob was only Simon’s foe in Simon’s own mind,” he says. “To everyone else, Jacob was Prince Charming, and Simon was a miniature toad with sticks for legs.”
“Hey!” Simon exclaims. “My legs developed very nicely, thank you.” He points to his legs and winks at me.
I laugh again.
“Now,” Henri says after a moment, “perhaps Hope can tell us a little about herself. Not that we are not very interested in the legs of Simon.”
The three men look at me expectantly, and I clear my throat, suddenly nervous to be put on the spot.
“Um, what would you like to know?”
“Alain says you have a daughter?” Henri asks.
I nod. “Yes. Annie. She’s twelve years old.”
Simon smiles at me. “So what else, Hope?” he asks. “What do you do for work?”
“I have a bakery.” I shoot a look at Alain. “My grandmother started it in 1952. It’s all her family recipes, from back here in Paris.”
Alain shakes his head and turns to his friends. “Incredible, isn’t it? That she has kept our family’s tradition alive all these years?”
“It would be more incredible,” says Henri, “if she had brought us some pastries this morning. Since you, Alain, did not bother to get any.”
Alain holds up his hands in mock defeat and Simon tilts his head to the side. “Perhaps Hope can tell us about some of her pastries,” he says. “So that we can imagine eating them.”
I laugh and begin to describe some of my favorites. I tell them about the strudels we make, and the cheesecakes. I tell them about Mamie’s Star Pies, and how they’re virtually identical to the slices of pie I found at the ashkénaze bakery the day before. The men are smiling and nodding enthusiastically, but something changes when I begin listing some of our other specialties: the orange flower-tinged crescent moons, the savory anise and fennel cookies, the sweet pistachio cakes drenched in honey.