How Huge the Night Page 14

  He’d learned somewhere, and he didn’t know where, to love this. The curve of the hill that lay behind Grandpa’s farm—he loved it, and the low mountains in the distance, and the high wooded ridge that hid the road north and stood like a bluff above the Tanne. And the flash of the Tanne itself, down below, the river that had flowed there when his grandfather was a child. It would flow there still, singing the same liquid music to itself, when all of them were gone, and he was glad.

  They walked the north road beside the train tracks at the foot of the ridge; they walked east where the hills grew low and rolling. They followed trails into the woods and dirt roads between pastures fenced with black stone walls. They were hungry. Mama packed them potatoes with no butter, and they wolfed them down as if they had never tasted food before, and they were wonderful. But not enough. They walked, feeling the unfamiliar edge of hunger in their bellies.

  In the evening, it was still the same: the radio, the cluster of faces around it. In the daytime, there was peace somehow—in the green of the land, in the strength of his legs, in the mass and solidity of the hills they climbed. But in bed at night, Julien tried fumblingly to pray and found no words. What did God have to do with German tanks overrunning the earth, with bombers pounding Rotterdam to blood and fire? What did God have to do with the blitzkrieg?

  He didn’t know.

  He crept downstairs in the dark, wishing there was something, anything, he could eat. Wishing for warm milk to help him sleep; milk that he’d taken for granted in the old days, when there was enough.

  There was candlelight in the kitchen, and Mama, a cup in her hand and her back to the door. She turned.

  “Mama,” he whispered, “I can’t sleep.”

  She nodded.

  “Is there—anything I can have?”

  “Sit down,” she whispered. “I’ll make you chamomile.”

  He sat. Her Bible lay open on the table, in the wood-and-canvas cover he had made. The page it was open to was torn. He looked into the candle flame.

  “Mama?” he whispered finally. “What was it like? The … other war?”

  Mama looked at him, her face half in shadow. She put his cup of tea on the table and sat by him. “What do you want to know?”

  He took the cup, hot against his fingers. It would warm his stomach. Fool it awhile. “Were you … were you hungry?”

  She was looking straight ahead. She was looking at the candle as if it was the last light on earth. “Yes. Your grandmother. Your grandmother died of hunger.”

  He stared at her. She did not look at him.

  “They took our goats. We hid the best three, but they found them—they were hungry too—but they had guns. Julien.” He could feel her shaking. “Julien. I’m sorry. I can’t talk about this.” Her voice had lowered. “I pray you’ll never understand.”

  They sat for a long time, watching the candle quiver in the dark. Listening to her breathing grow slower. “I’ve never been back,” she murmured. “It was so quiet. Without Mamma singing.”

  She looked at him, and her mouth lifted in the ghost of a smile. “She sang off-key,” she said.

  They walked south. Benjamin suggested it. Benjamin, who never spoke.

  Benjamin wanted to make a map. They found a slate and some chalk and traced the roads they’d walked. Julien marked where they found nettles or blackberry brambles. Benjamin traced the south farm track and its lanes and the roads to Le Puy and the Rhône Valley, a full morning’s walk south. He marked the field near that same crossroads, where they found the bees.

  A whole field of white clover, buzzing, alive with them; and in the woods behind, a dead tree golden with promise. He could taste it already. That feeling of sweet fullness after a meal, of having eaten dessert—he’d almost forgotten what it was like.

  “Monday,” he said. Benjamin nodded and almost smiled.

  That night there was news, finally. The Germans had captured forty thousand French troops at Dunkerque, and they were on the move again. Headed south.

  Then the power went out.

  “Though an army lay siege to me, my heart will not fear,” read Pastor Alex. Everyone was listening. “Though war break out against me, I am still filled with confidence.” And if they’re bombing Paris right now? “How could David be confident?” asked Pastor Alex. He described David’s situation. He could have been describing theirs. Every eye in the room was on him. Julien saw Monsieur Bernard in the next pew, his face still as stone, tightening ever so slightly when Pastor Alex used the word defeat, the word refugee.

  “This man can speak to us,” Pastor Alex said. “Let us listen.”

  Julien listened. David wanted only one thing in his defeat, Pastor Alex said. Only one, but he had to have it. “He wanted God. ‘Do not abandon me, do not hide your face from me.’ In God, he says, he has a light, a stronghold, a shelter. If God is with him, he says, ‘I will not be afraid.’”

  Not afraid. Were Mama and Papa afraid, was Pastor Alex afraid? Was God with them?

  “Show me the road you want me to go,” read Pastor Alex. “Lead me along the straight path.” Then he leaned forward in his pulpit and paused. A hush fell over the crowd.

  “Friends,” he said, “we know what is happening. The time has come to say it. France is defeated.” The words fell slow and heavy. “The straight path is to walk, without closing our eyes, into this defeat. To know that the presence of God is not, for all this, taken away from us unless we choose to despair of him. To ask him to show us the road he wants us to go—now—” He said the next three words in a slow and level voice: “under German occupation.”

  Julien opened his mouth, and tears were in his eyes. His parents were holding each other. Benjamin had his head down. Julien put an arm over his friend’s shoulder and sat looking up at the pulpit, the tears running down his face, grieving for his country.

  Pastor Alex came that night to talk to them.

  “I wish I had spoken about this sooner. I’m sorry. I didn’t expect all this.” Really. “We all know the Germans will probably be here before the end of June. What—what do you know? About the Nazis? And … the Jews?”

  “I know there’s persecution,” said Papa. “I know there’s prejudice—maybe hatred.”

  “Hatred. Yes. Listen. I have relatives in Germany. I traveled there before the war, while Hitler’s power was rising. Martin, Maria, hatred is a mild way of putting it.” He looked down at his hands, which were clasping each other tightly. “I believe that if the Nazis could find a way to make people accept it, they would kill them all.” He swallowed. “I believe it is very dangerous now to be a Jew in Germany. And soon …” He looked at them.

  “Germany will come here,” Papa finished.

  “Yes. It would be best if very few people knew that Benjamin is a Jew.”

  “It’s a little late for that,” said Papa quietly.

  Julien and Benjamin carried coals in a pot, feeding them with twigs, a full half-day’s walk to where the bee tree was. They carried a hatchet and the two biggest buckets they could find.

  They lit a fire under the tree, a small one, the ground around it cleared. When it was big enough, they threw wet leaf mould onto it and blew the thick gray smoke into the tree. The many-voiced hum of the bees rose to a massed and angry buzz. Bees boiled out of the top of the tree; Julien grasped his hatchet in both hands and struck.

  Once. Twice. The third time, a great rotten piece of wood came away, and honeycomb came with it.

  The rest was mad and sticky and golden; there was honey on their gloves and honey on their shirts; and in the buckets, there was beautiful, beautiful honeycomb to the brim; and they were licking it off their dirty gloves and laughing as they ran. They got to the road and looked back, and Julien held his bucket up and whooped. Benjamin’s face was smudged with black, and there was a bee sting by his eye; there were two on Julien’s neck and one on his stomach, and the boys were grinning wildly at each other.

  The sun was setting by the time they ma
de it home, tired, dirty, and very happy. They were late for supper. They didn’t care.

  When they opened the door, they stopped. The power was on. No lights. But everyone huddled tightly around the radio.

  They set the buckets among the dirty dishes on the table. No one turned to greet them. They began to take in what the newsreader was saying.

  Thousands upon thousands of refugees choking the roads of France. The Germans were headed straight for Paris. Every soldier France still had was being rushed to stop them, but there was no hope. The government, from the prime minister on down, had fled south. Military sources said it was inevitable. Paris would fall.

  The buckets sat forgotten on the table. Papa’s Bible lay forgotten on his lap. No one moved or spoke. They sat in silence, while outside the open window, the evening sky darkened slowly into night.

  Chapter 22

  Gate

  Gustav stood by the convent wall, waiting for his sister. For Niko.

  He hated calling her Niko. Nina was his fierce-eyed sister, who had walked home one day on a shattered leg, her teeth gritted, not a single tear in her eyes. Who had said so fiercely, “We have to do everything he told us.” Who had made him cut her hair. But Niko—Niko was this strange, new, sad person. Niko was someone who lay on the floor with empty eyes, looking at something he could not see. Something that was eating her. Ever since the border. He knew. But he couldn’t make it stop.

  They never talked about that night. He hated it. Hated that there was nothing he could do.

  He’d tried so hard. He’d learned to split wood, milk goats; he’d learned rough Italian and the alleys of Trento to get food for her. He’d tried so hard to make her laugh. She’d laughed. Sometimes. And with the Gypsies, she’d been almost herself. But he’d never imagined this.

  “Gustav,” Sister Theresa had told him, “you have to get your brother out of here. I went to Mother Superior about it, I told her I don’t believe he’s crazy—just frightened—but she wouldn’t listen. She keeps saying she saw with her own eyes—Gustav, she’s written to the bishop about sending him to some kind of ‘home’—I don’t know …”

  He knew. He knew he had to get her out now.

  They were letting her out once a day for a couple of hours; Sister Theresa had gotten that much. Soon. If they let her out soon enough, her chance was sitting in the driveway.

  A delivery truck. Men unloading it, manhandling huge sacks of flour through the double kitchen doors. A truck that would be driving out the convent gate when it was done.

  The far door opened, her door. He heard the click of her crutches on the stones. He stood waiting as she walked toward him, and when she reached him, he looked her in the eye. “Niko,” he said quietly, “do you want to get out of here? Now?”

  She took a deep breath, standing a little taller. “Yes,” she said.

  Niko woke when the truck stopped, her cheek on a hard bag of flour, her mouth open. It was almost pitch dark.

  “Got your crutches?”

  “Ready.”

  He was peering out the tiny, side window. Beneath her, she felt the engine cut out.

  “Now,” said Gustav. She heard him slide to the back and open the door. In the red glow of the taillights, she slid forward between the flour bags, set her crutches on the ground and swung down. Cold air met her. “Behind that rubbish heap,” whispered Gustav, and she followed him, quietly—they heard voices ahead, people standing far off in the light of the headlights, a low square building with lit windows—she ducked behind the heap and breathed quietly in the dark.

  The sound of the engine again, the truck moving off toward the building. Then voices in Italian, the thump of the huge flour bags being unloaded. She looked around, but it was deep dark. Thick clouds hid the moon. Then the truck was coming back, and in the light of the headlights, she saw it and cried out. Gustav jumped to his feet as he saw it too: a tall gate swinging open, framed by high, chain-link fence topped with razor wire. In the red glow of the taillights they saw it swing shut; closed by two uniformed men.

  Gustav sank to his knees. “Oh, Niko,” he whispered.

  Niko said nothing. There was nothing to say.

  Chapter 23

  What They’re Like

  When Julien woke, he had a moment of peace, watching the sunlight sift through his white curtains, before he remembered Paris.

  He knelt by his bed and tried to pray, but he had no words. Only pictures, only memories and names: Vincent and his sisters, Uncle Giovanni and Aunt Nadine; the Kellers; his friends, Renaud and Mathieu and Gaëtan. He knelt and said nothing, thought nothing, felt nothing, only saw them. He hoped God understood.

  For breakfast, there was real bread with honey. He had never tasted anything so good in his life. They ate ravenously. The power was out again. None of them spoke.

  Benjamin went up to his room, and Julien walked alone. He walked between pastures, between brambles thick with hard green blackberries, not seeing the hills. Green as they were, and solid, they could not change news from the north.

  They were probably bombing right now.

  Papa had a new radio someone had given him. A shortwave. Benjamin and Julien helped him carry it into his study to hide it from Mama. He said he wanted the BBC.

  You boys know what really happened up on the Belgian coast?”

  He knew. He knew the boches had captured forty thousand French soldiers.

  “Three hundred forty thousand of our guys got away, that’s what.”

  Julien blinked. “To where?”

  “England. Don’t look at me like that. They’re still free. As long as England stands, there’s a chance for us.” He told them the story: the troops huddled on the beach like the Israelites by the Red Sea, the boats on the horizon. Every boat England had: yachts, fishing boats, rowboats. And the rear guard holding the Germans off—the rear guard, who would go down in history too. Papa swallowed. “Um. Benjamin. Something I’ve been meaning to tell you. No, stay, Julien.”

  Benjamin’s eyes were on the floor.

  “Benjamin. Look up. Benjamin, Maria and I want you to know that we consider you part of our family. We’re counting on your staying here for the summer and the next school year and as long as you need.”

  Benjamin swallowed, looked at the window, at Julien, at the history books on Papa’s shelf. He swallowed again. “But. But I can’t pay my room and board. There’s no word from my parents and I don’t know when they’ll be able to send money. I’ve been saving what’s left of my allowance but it’s not nearly—” Papa was shaking his head.

  “No, Benjamin. That’s what I mean when I say you are part of the family,” he said firmly. “We don’t ask Julien for room and board, and we will not ask you either.”

  “But … but it’s not fair to you. You’re hungry—”

  “Benjamin. Look at me, please.” Papa’s voice was commanding. “If we are hungry, we will be hungry together. But until your parents are able to take you back in peace and safety, you are staying. Please tell me you understand that.”

  Papa and Benjamin stared at each other, a very long moment.

  “Yes, sir,” said Benjamin, and lowered his eyes.

  Thursday the power came back on. They sat in the living room, around the radio that crackled with static; they looked at each other, and then away. The room grew quiet as the announcer began to speak.

  “Since Mussolini’s declaration of war on France two days ago, Italian troops are pushing west—”

  Mama was on her feet. “The thief!” she hissed. “The backstabber, the coward!” Her face was red. Everyone was staring. She sat down.

  Papa looked at her. “Saw his chance, I guess.”

  “He’s a shame to his nation,” Mama snapped. Then they heard the shift in the announcer’s voice and turned sharply to the radio.

  “German troops are approaching Paris at a rapid pace. As we speak, the vanguard is reported to be fifteen kilometers from Versailles. This will be our last broadcast for a
while.”

  They did not look at each other. The silence was total.

  “Today Paris has been declared an ‘open city.’ Our military will not defend it. This decision was made to avoid bombardment and the great destruction and loss of life that it entails …”

  Julien realized he had not been breathing. It was an amazing thing, breathing. Tears shone in Mama’s eyes.

  “They won’t bomb Paris,” said Papa quietly.

  “They won’t bomb Paris,” Mama whispered.

  Benjamin stood, his face very still. He walked slowly to the door and took the stairs.

  Julien waited, breathing, seeing Paris; seeing Vincent and his mother look up out of their second-floor window at a clear blue sky. He waited until the news ended, until they had read a psalm that said The Lord has delivered.

  Then he followed Benjamin.

  Benjamin’s door was closed. Julien hesitated, biting his lip, and went into his own room.

  He looked out the window in the fading light. They wouldn’t defend it. This was it, then. What Pastor Alex said was true. German tanks would roll down the Champs-Elysées for real in just a couple days. Then the boches would come here. And they would stay.

  He pulled Vincent’s last letter out from under his nightstand. I can’t believe you almost died, it said. That’s crazy. He got up, and went and knocked on Benjamin’s door.

  No answer.

  “Benjamin? You all right?”