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blanket on top. He set the paints on the shelf under the night table and pinned the map of Europe up on the wall. When everything was unpacked in his bedroom, Gustave glanced around. It was starting to feel as if it belonged to him, but it still seemed empty. Then Gustave remembered Monkey, in his pocket. He pulled him out and sat him against the lamp on the night table. Now it looked more like home.
    Maman caught Gustave again as he was heading outside. “While you’re out, find the bakery and buy us two baguettes,” she said, handing him some money. “We can use those instead of challah, since there’s no time to make it this afternoon. Be back before sunset. Remember, it’s Shabbat tonight.”
    Gustave walked up the road to the end, turned left, and wandered along another road that wound between closely clustered white and gray houses. The afternoon sun was warm on his shoulders. He was sure that if he kept walking, he would find some other boys. But road after road was deserted. Each was lined with stone walls and heavy iron gates. Behind the walls, the quiet gray stone-and-stucco houses, their windows sealed off with white wooden shutters, seemed to turn their backs to him, closing him out.
    It was profoundly quiet. No traffic sounds, no voices. The cooing of doves, fluttering here and there around the roofs of the houses, resonated in the stillness. At the bottom of the hill, on the main street of the town, Gustave saw an old woman with a cane who was slowly starting up the hill and two younger women who stood talking to one another by the post office. But no kids. Was this a village with only grown-ups?
    Gustave turned off the main street and wandered up another hill. He walked until the houses stopped and the farm fields began. Still no children anywhere. Gustave was starting to wish that he had taken Monkey along in his pocket for company. He turned and began wandering back to the center of the village to buy the bread. The empty road stretched out ahead of him, etched with sun and shadow.
    What were Marcel and Jean-Paul doing now? Gustave felt a sharp twinge of loneliness. It was past four o’clock, so school was out. Maybe they were doing their homework together on Jean-Paul’s kitchen table. Or maybe they had finished, and now they were kicking a soccer ball around in the park. In the middle of the road was a large white stone. Gustave kicked at it aimlessly, and it skidded ahead of him. The game would be to kick the stone so that it skidded over the sunny areas and came to a stop only in the areas of shadow, he decided. He was doing well until the stone got stuck in a dent in full sunshine.
    “Interference,” Gustave said out loud. “That doesn’t count.”
    He picked up the stone and kicked it again, down the dusty road.
    The house on the right had a high, dark, bumpy wall. Gustave wondered if the white stone would write on it. He tried, and the stone scraped loudly, leaving a faint trace. Suddenly, a hand pushed open a high black metal gate on the other side of the road, and a small boy’s face peered out.
    “Hi!” Gustave called. He ran toward the boy, waving.
    “Come back here, Jean-Christophe!” a woman’s voice scolded. The boy darted inside, letting the gate slam shut behind him. The sound rang through the stillness.
    Gustave stared at the closed gate. Why wouldn’t that boy’s mother let him play? He was little, but at least he would have been someone to hang around with. Saint-Georges was so different from the cheerful, bustling streets of Paris. Didn’t anyone live here? If Gustave had walked around his neighborhood at home for half an hour, he would have run into ten or fifteen boys ready to play. He kicked the stone again, too hard, and it bounced with a clang off a rusty green metal gate. Something huge and hairy lunged at the gate from the other side, barking and snarling. His heart thudding, Gustave grabbed the stone and darted away. It was an enormous Alsatian dog, penned in