How Huge the Night Page 13

  They’d stopped talking about it, at the table or any time. They talked about other things in brittle voices, and no one was fooled. One morning Julien came down the stairs and froze in front of the stairwell door, hearing his mother’s voice on the other side, high and brittle and scared. “And they were shooting—they were shooting— there was blood in the water—there were children—”

  “Sh, Maria. Sh. It was a dream.”

  “Thirty thousand people, Martin—thirty thousand—”

  He slipped back up the stairs.

  That night, Papa beckoned Magali and Julien into his study while Mama cleared the table, and asked them quietly not to discuss the war in front of her or turn on the radio when she was there. They nodded. “I don’t know what’s going to happen. But …” Papa looked down, shaking his head. After a moment he looked up at Julien. “I’ve got to be strong now for your mother. And you, I think, for Benjamin.” Magali was looking down at her knees. Julien looked up and nodded, trying to see his father through the pictures in his head: tanks on the Champs-Elysées. Tanks in the Rue Bernier, under Vincent’s window.

  “Has Benjamin talked to you—” Papa started, and Julien said, “No.” Are you kidding? As soon as Papa switched off the radio, Benjamin always went up to his room and shut the door.

  “Do what you can for him, Julien. I don’t know what we can do …” He shook his head. “It must be awful.” His voice cracked. “His parents, Giovanni …”

  An image hung in Julien’s mind, the same image that had appeared to him so vividly the night the war had begun: a kitchen sink full of dirty dishes, strewn with shattered glass and shrapnel. The scrape of glass shards against sink enamel; he could feel it in the back of his neck.

  There was a long silence.

  “Papa,” said Magali in a small voice, “have we lost?”

  “No, Lili,” Papa whispered without looking up. “But we will.”

  Julien and his classmates stood in the schoolyard, a crowd of boys with whispers moving through it like wind in the woods. Monsieur Astier raised his megaphone. Silence fell.

  “You don’t need me to tell you,” the principal’s deep voice began, “what is going on in the north. I think it safe to say that for all of us now, facing this emergency is our priority. That is why,” he said, “we are closing school early this year.”

  Astier raised a hand for silence. School would end on Saturday, he said. They were to try to concentrate until then; to learn was to believe in the future. Were there any questions? A hand shot up in the front, and Henri’s firm voice asked whether school would open again in the fall.

  Si Dieu le veut. God willing.

  Julien felt strange—strangely empty, strangely free, like a boat cut loose and floating. They all felt it; it was in the air, in the eyes all around him. Fear, exhilaration, the ground fallen out from under their feet. They’d sat in classrooms listening; they’d eaten and slept and played soccer; and all this time the world had been changing under them. Even as they made their maps, tried to make sense of things as best they could, the walls of the world they knew had crumbled around them. Now anything could happen.

  He sat—they all sat—in classroom after classroom for the rest of that day and heard not a word the teachers said.

  Benjamin sat through supper, looking at his plate. Not even pretending to eat. When Mama stood to clear the table, he looked up and spoke.

  “I can’t wait till Saturday. I’m leaving for Paris tomorrow. Can I leave my books and winter clothes here?”

  For a moment no one moved. Then Mama put down her plate and said flatly, “No. You cannot go to Paris. The Germans could be there before you.”

  “I know,” said Benjamin in a low voice, “but I’ve got to try.”

  “I guess you’ve been thinking about this for a while,” said Papa carefully. “Tell me how you’re going to do this.”

  “Catch the morning train to Saint-Etienne. Find out what’s running north.”

  “How do you know there’s anything running north?” Papa asked.

  “They haven’t shut down all the trains!”

  “You don’t know that any more than I do.” Papa’s voice was firmer now. “There may be a few running—troop transports. You might get as far as Lyon. Maybe even Dijon. After that …”

  “I’ve got to try,” said Benjamin, looking at the wall behind Papa.

  “And when the trains won’t take you any farther, then walk? The Germans are bound to beat you there at that rate. And when you get there?”

  Julien held his breath. Papa was looking Benjamin straight in the eye.

  Finally Benjamin dropped his head. “I don’t know, sir. But I’ve got to try. Don’t I have to try?” He looked up, as if pleading for Papa to agree.

  “What would your parents tell you to do?” Papa asked.

  “Stay.” Benjamin’s voice was a hoarse whisper.

  “Then stay,” said Papa. “Try to think. What happens if they’ve already left Paris? What happens when they send word for you to join them somewhere else, and I have to say, ‘He left for Paris’? How could I face your father if I let that happen?”

  Benjamin stared at his plate. Picked up his fork, put it down again. He looked up at Mama. “May I be excused? I’m sorry—it’s good—I’m just not hungry.”

  “Of course,” said Mama, giving Benjamin a long look.

  “Wait.” Papa laid his hand on Benjamin’s arm. “I want to hear you say you’re not leaving tomorrow.”

  “I’m not leaving tomorrow,” Benjamin said in a low voice.

  Julien saw Papa’s hand tighten on Benjamin’s arm. “Believe me. It’s the best thing you could do for them.”

  “Right,” said Benjamin, and got to his feet.

  When he was gone, Papa sat back, shaking his head, and murmured, “Lord preserve us.” His hands on the table in front of him were clenched, one inside the other. “Did you—have any idea about this, Julien?”

  “He hasn’t said two words to me all week,” Julien said, suddenly beginning to breathe again.

  “Look out for him, Julien. Please. If you can.” Papa pressed his hands against his eyes. Julien shivered, although it was not cold.

  In the morning when Mama sent Julien down for the bread, the door of the little boulangerie was locked. A handwritten sign on the door said, No Flour, and underneath that, Shipment Delayed, and underneath that, each word underlined by a forceful hand, That’s All We Know. Julien couldn’t help but smile.

  But when he looked again, the smile dropped. Through the window, he could see the bread racks, tall metal baskets with open fronts that covered the whole back wall of the boulangerie. Every morning, those racks were filled with loaves, bushels of tall brown and golden loaves stacked upright and leaning, a whole golden wall of bread. But not today.

  Today that wall was completely bare. The racks hung like empty cages, and the chipped white paint behind showed through. He had never seen them empty. They looked so strange.

  Chapter 20

  Wrong

  Gustav looked around the convent courtyard. Chimney smoke rose in the morning air; sheets billowed on the clotheslines in the warm spring wind, shining pure white against the sky. Workmen repairing the courtyard wall joked with the nuns as they passed by.

  Maybe his luck was changing.

  He had been scared, these last two weeks. Turned away from one farm, then another. After a day without food, he’d stolen three eggs from a henhouse and almost been caught by the most savage farm dog he’d ever seen. Then it started raining. He’d found Niko a goat shed outside Menaggio; but he could find no work.

  He’d been begging in front of the church when the nun had found him. Sister Theresa. She’d promised a hot meal at the least for him and his brother, and maybe she could talk to the Mother Superior and see about more.

  A convent. Niko was smiling. It was beautiful to see.

  Sister Theresa vanished into the broad stone building. Another nun lugged a bucket of wate
r across the yard; a second brought out a chair and beckoned Gustav to sit down.

  “I cut your hair,” she told him. “Mother Superior doesn’t want pidocchi.” She scratched her head, and he laughed.

  “But signorina, I will miss them. The pidocchi and I, we have been friends for so long!”

  She laughed, throwing her head back. She pulled off his shirt and began to cut; the scissors were cold against his head. Niko sat on the bench, gazing at the blossoming trees. Gustav’s bare head was wiped with a rag that smelled of turpentine, and stung. This Mother Superior knew what she didn’t want, all right.

  The other nun took Gustav’s hand and led him to a shed with a tub of water in it, soap, and clean folded clothes. He went in and shut the door and began to undress.

  He was just putting his foot in the water when he heard the scream.

  He lunged for the door, fell back, and jerked his pants on, grabbed the handle, and bashed his head against the door. He turned the handle one way, the other way, jerking the door back and forward— it was locked. Locked! He pounded on it, yelling, but there were so many voices crying outside—a flurry of shouts, Nina’s voice rising in shrill, panicked Yiddish—“Get your hands off me, get your hands off me, no!” Oh no, Nina.

  They took off her shirt.

  He was screaming, pounding on the door, but no one heard him. I didn’t think—why didn’t I think—they took off her shirt, in front of the men—he could hear through his cries a loud voice shouting orders, and Nina’s high-pitched sobs. He pounded till the door shook on its hinges. But no one came.

  Outside, the shouting died into silence.

  Niko lay in the dark, weeping.

  She had thrown herself at the door and shaken it, but it hadn’t budged. She had beaten on the shutters, run her fingers over the walls for a light switch, but there was none; she had found the bowl of soup on the desk and thrown it against the wall. She had slumped on the floor, wanting to scream, wanting to rip her fingernails into that woman’s face. They had tied her up, tied her to a chair and shaved her head, they had locked her in the dark, and all without a word to her, like an animal, like a—she knew, she knew what they thought—

  Crazy.

  Crazy, said Uncle Yakov. Nina, your father has never been the most sensible of men, and I think you know that; but now he is very, very sick. He’s not thinking right.

  She screamed.

  Long and loud. The shrieks of the insane cripple, echoing through the convent halls. What would they do with her? What had they done with Gustav? He was gone—gone—she was alone in the dark and everyone was gone. Father had run on ahead of her in the dark woods and would not turn back for her no matter how she called—Oh, Father, Father, come back!

  A harsh sob tore from her throat, then another, and another; her whole body shook; her fingers clawed at the stone floor; she convulsed. I did everything—everything—I kept my promise, Father, I did everything you said and WHERE ARE YOU? The white heat of anger shook her, and she screamed at him, her father whom she’d loved, who had shrunk down to nothing in his bed and died, and left her; and left her nothing but orders. How dare you, Father, how dare you leave me alone!

  She hit the stone wall with her closed fist and hit it again and again till her knuckles began to bleed. But he did not come.

  She had lain in the dark for hours, her fingers feeling her bare scalp, her mind wandering a dark maze. Father. Uncle Yakov. Herr. Alone in the dark on the border, under pine trees tall and black as fear. Uncle Yakov’s voice saying madness, Nina, madness. She hissed aloud, It’s Niko, then fell, her face against the ground, dry sobs shaking her chest, because she knew he was right. He was right and she was wrong, Father was wrong: there was no escape—the world would eat her and all the innocent, the trusting, the fools—and everywhere there were evil men. She should have listened to Uncle Yakov.

  She had never tasted any thought so bitter.

  I listened to my father. That’s why I’m here.

  The door scraped as it opened. Bright light hurt her eyes. A figure stood dark against it, holding a bowl in a hand that shook, and set it on the desk. The door shut, the key turned in the lock. Niko lay on her bare mattress, looking up at it; a hot bowl of soup, white steam rising into the thin lines of light the shutters let in. She did not move. After three days, you didn’t feel it anymore, the hunger. She hadn’t been even one day in the dark yet, but already she knew.

  After three days in the dark, she wouldn’t feel anything anymore. She would be gone. Like him. Like her mother. Gone.

  A dark silhouette stood against the light in the doorway: a nun. She stood; not shaking, not turning to leave. Looking at Niko. Sister Theresa from the marketplace, who had promised them soup and a bed.

  Slowly Niko stood, and looked back into Theresa’s steady eyes. She felt something give in her chest; her mouth opened. You do not think I am an animal. Sister. Do you?

  Non sono … she didn’t know the word for crazy. The word for sane. She didn’t know.

  She stood a long moment; then with her hand, she touched the bowl on the desk. Zuppa, she said. Soup. She pointed to the mattress and said letto. She touched the door, said porta. Then she looked Theresa in the eye and said luce. Light. “Per favore. Luce.”

  “Non sei pazza,” said Theresa. “Vado a chidere.” Ask, that meant. I will ask. “Vado a chidere luce.”

  And Theresa set the bowl on the desk, looked at Niko and stepped out the door. It swung shut behind her, and Niko heard the key turn in the lock.

  She waited for hours. But no light came.

  Chapter 21

  The Straight Path

  The teachers didn’t even try to teach the last three days. Nobody would have listened.

  The boches were sitting on the Somme River; the troops in Belgium were trying to evacuate to England. That was all they knew. Julien’s class stood under the tree, looking at their little map in the dirt, and said nothing. On Saturday Henri knelt and erased it, carefully.

  They walked out the gate, all of them quiet, all of them glancing back. Their school looked strange and empty and small as they crossed the bridge; the world around them was widening. The sky hung huge above the hills as they stepped out into their new life.

  He didn’t know what to do. He tried going into town, to see if any of the guys were around. He met Gilles and Lucien on a street corner, but the second time Lucien said, “We’ll drive those boches out yet,” in a tone of brittle insistence, Julien lost it. “You know my father?” he said, leaning in. “The history prof? You know what he says? ‘We haven’t lost yet, but we will.’”

  That was the end of that.

  At home, Mama was weeding the kitchen garden in the yard where he used to kick his soccer ball. “Want help, Mama?”

  “This is my work. Find your own.”

  He tried. He pulled Benjamin off the radio and went down to the farm, but Grandpa didn’t want them. They stood in the garden, a vast spread of dark tilled earth and green shoots, and Grandpa took off his hat and wiped his forehead and said he couldn’t train them. This growing season was too important, what with the prices and the war. “Sylvain and Jean-Luc have worked for me for years; they know exactly what they’re doing”—the two men moved down the rows using short-handled hoes as if they were their own hands—“and they’re what I need for now. Come back in a month when we start picking. For now—” He glanced up at the hills. “Go walking. Get to know the hills. Could come in handy.”

  Benjamin looked up for the first time.

  That evening, Grandpa walked with them and showed them how to find food. Dandelion leaves for salad and roots for coffee; wild thyme and mint and marjoram; nettles—stinging nettles—for soup. One of the most nourishing plants there was, he said, smiling at the looks on their faces. They weren’t going to waste any of what God had put out there for them. Not this year.

  There was no bread. Breakfast was potatoes. Lunch was potatoes and cheese. There was no sugar. There’d been meat
only on Sundays for months, and this week it was a beef bone in the leek soup. “I’m sorry—” Mama started. Papa cut in, “You will absolutely not apologize for this soup, Maria. Nor for the prices, nor for the war.”

  Julien and Benjamin walked. Belgium had surrendered unconditionally. The boches were coming. They didn’t talk about it. They knelt in pastures between genêts in golden bloom and grubbed up dandelions, and Julien watched Benjamin get dirt under his fingernails and on his shiny leather shoes. He watched Benjamin pull on gloves and step carefully into a ditch, and grasp his first nettle, and pull till it came up by the roots. He stuffed it whole into his bag.

  “Um,” said Julien, “we’re supposed to get just the young leaves?”

  “We’re not wasting anything,” said Benjamin.

  Julien stood at the crest of the hill, the genêts blazing yellow around him, and wondered when a letter would reach Paris if he sent it now. Whether it ever would. The white clouds raced through the blue, and the hills sang with bloom, and he thought of the Rue Bernier, and the park, and Vincent; the way he’d look now, sixteen years old and thinner, a fire in his dark eyes. We’ll drive those boches out yet.

  Julien stuck his hands deep in his pockets and watched the cloud shadows flow over his hills.

  He didn’t know what had happened to him. The chestnuts were in bloom, their long feathery flowers spreading like a pale yellow dust over the distant treetops; his eyes traced the thousand greens of those woods, the dark chestnut leaves and the deep green of scrub pines, the vivid leaves of the oaks and the light, living green of pasture. And everywhere the genêts, the dark, dull, tough genêts covered in gold.