Defy the Night Page 3

  “So you see,” said Paquerette.

  Madame Sabatier nodded. Her kind, seamed face had set, her mouth turned into a thin line. “And you say this child was in the infirmary?”

  Paquerette nodded. “Because the mother is sick.”

  “And you say there are … others like this.”

  “If my coworker can obtain releases for them. Both my coworkers … at the other camp it is almost as bad … Madame, there are so many. Far too many for you and your daughter to take in alone. You’ll simply need to tell us your maximum.”

  “Maximum?” said Madame Sabatier. “You just keep bringing them. We’ll find a way.”

  THE BABY’S name was Grigory. They let me feed him formula. He sucked weakly on the bottle. We built the fire up and kept him by it, naked except for a loose diaper, to air out his rash and give Madame Sabatier’s salve time to work. Madeleine showed me how to pin the diaper, but she wouldn’t let me practice because he went to sleep. Paquerette went upstairs, to a room that the Sabatiers had prepared for her to stay in whenever she wanted, and took a nap.

  I went home at six thirty, for supper. It was only when I was halfway there that I remembered I was supposed to help cook. Because Nina was coming over.

  I got to the bottom of my stairwell so out of breath I had to walk up it for once. Slowly. I guess that’s why they didn’t hear me.

  “It is only that when I am with her I feel strange.” The voice came through the wall from the kitchen. “It is not her fault.” A serious, girl’s voice, with a German-ish accent. Nina. I froze. Not whose fault?

  “What do you mean by strange, exactly?” That was Mama. I heard the clang of her opening the stove door, checking the coals. I’d done this with her a hundred times.

  “That I am a strange person. That I am not normal.”

  Silence.

  “With the sixième class it is not so bad, it is only that they are children. But when I am with her class with Monsieur Weiss … they are almost as old as me. But there is nothing, we have nothing to talk about. Do you see? I cannot become again … normal.”

  Yeah. It was me she was talking about.

  “Nina, you are normal. Look at me.” My mother’s voice was warm. “Nina, it’s normal, when you’ve known such things, to find it harder to talk to those who haven’t. Magali hasn’t, nor most of the other girls. It isn’t your fault either.”

  More silence.

  There was the sound of feet, in the hallway below. I hung up my coat and took off my boots, noisily. There were no more voices. I opened the door.

  “Hi Mama,” I called. “Sorry I’m late.”

  Mama came to the kitchen door. “Nina’s helping me, so it’s all right.” She wasn’t smiling. “This time.”

  I saw the baby she brought back, Mama … its stomach was big—they said that’s malnutrition … they let me feed it …

  Never mind.

  I DID tell them, at supper. I just couldn’t not tell them. I told them about the baby. I told them what the Rivesaltes camp people had said to the CIMADE. I told them about how they had no water for washing, and had fleas. Nina and Mama looked at each other. Papa said it wasn’t a fit subject for the table, but he was pleased I had helped, only was I finished with my homework for Monday? Tomorrow was Sunday, remember?

  I helped Mama with the dishes, after Nina went home. Had to do my part and all. I opened my mouth to say something about the baby and she informed me that Monsieur Weiss had told Papa he didn’t think I was grasping the material in chemistry.

  Our school’s “progressive.” They don’t give grades. I thought that was going to be great, but when the teachers see your father everyday, I don’t see how it helps.

  “I just want to know if you’re really trying, Magali. I’m sure it’s a difficult subject to understand, but …”

  “Yeah. It is.” But see, what happened was, I didn’t take notes because I was thinking about Madame Minkowski … and then I, well, I got the notes from Jean-Luc Rivas. Because it was a good excuse to talk to him. Because he’s cute. I know. I know. And I think he wrote down the formula for hydrogen sulfide wrong, because I did memorize it, but when Monsieur Weiss had me write it on the board in the afternoon … “I am trying, Mama.”

  “You know how much we’re spending to get you a good education, Magali.”

  I snapped my mouth shut and turned away from her. She just had to bring that up. I was raised to respect my elders. I only wish my elders had the first notion of all the things I’ve managed not to say to them.

  Did I ask for your education?

  “I want you to have the chances I didn’t have.”

  I dried a glass, and didn’t look at her. That’s right: my mother did not have chances. My mother was a farm girl in northern Italy during the Great War and almost her whole family died, and other bad things happened which we do not talk about—in my case because I have no idea what they were—and she didn’t get to finish school. That last part is the part she talks about the most. For some reason.

  “What am I going to do with chemistry?” I said, trying to keep my voice even.

  “Pass your exams,” said Mama instantly. “And get into lycée.”

  I kept drying.

  “It just seems sometimes as if you don’t care, Magali.”

  Brilliant, Mama. Got it in one.

  “There’s a war on,” I said in a low voice. “It seems like there are more important things—”

  “You’re young, Magali. You’re at a crucial point in your life. If you don’t prepare yourself for something different now …” She lifted a soapy hand with a plate in it. “You’ll come to my age and this is all you’ll know how to do.”

  I looked at her thin, blue-veined hand. It’s not all you know how to do, Mama. You can sing.

  Mama, I met this woman. She hasn’t given up. She’s saving kids’ lives. She looked Monsieur Bernard in the eye and he backed down. What do I study to be like that?

  You tell me that. And then I’ll try.

  “Were you going to say something, Magali?”

  I bent my head. “I’ll study harder, Mama.”

  I TOLD Lucy all about it in church in between listening to Pastor Alex talk about Jeremiah. Julien gave me his big-brother frown for talking during the sermon. No matter that I was talking about saving babies’ lives.

  I took Lucy down to l’Espoir in the afternoon. Lucy didn’t turn a hair when Mademoiselle Paquerette said to call her tu. They call everyone tu where she’s from.

  “Where’s your other friend, Magali? The one I met at the train?”

  “Um, the path to her house isn’t cleared yet.” Strictly this was true, even if it was a really short path. Plus Rosa’s Catholic, so she wasn’t there for me to whisper to in church. Lucy looked away. Her theory is that my problems with Rosa are one hundred percent my fault, even though Rosa and I were fine before she came along. “Anyway she hates snow. She’s from Spain, her family’s only lived here a couple of years.”

  “Refugees?”

  “Yeah.” I tend to forget that. “But they run the café now. And they speak French and stuff.”

  “But she does speak Spanish?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you have anyone who speaks German?”

  “Lots,” said Lucy quickly. “There’s Benjamin, he lives at Magali’s house—”

  “He hates speaking German though. But he speaks Yiddish.”

  “—and Samuel Rozengard who’s in our class, and Nina and Gustav except they’re still working on their French, and Mademoiselle Pinatel who owns the bookstore speaks German—”

  Mademoiselle Paquerette was shaking her head. “It gets better and better.”

  “Paquerette?” Lucy said, and it jolted me. “Is that your real name?”

  Paquerette gave her a keen look, and I wished I had asked her that. “No.”

  “I didn’t think it was a French name,” said Lucy.

  “It’s not,” I blurted. Because it wasn’t, ok
ay? In France you name kids after saints, not daisies, and there was definitely no Sainte Paquerette. “Except for cows and stuff.” As soon as it was out of my mouth I felt my face turn hot.

  Paquerette’s eyebrows went way up. “Well,” she said. “I like a woman with discretion.”

  I never blush. I swear. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to call you a cow.” I could’ve slapped myself.

  “It’s all right. I like cows. I named myself after one, as a matter of fact.”

  “You did?”

  “Yes.” But the amused look on her face was gone. Just vanished. Like when you’re standing on the bridge and a cloud blows over the river. One moment you’re watching the sunlight flash on the ripples, and the next you’re looking into dark, deep water. She didn’t say anything more, and we didn’t ask her about the cow.

  WHEN SCHOOL let out on Monday I ran straight to l’Espoir. They told me I had missed Paquerette by about a minute, but I knew the way to the train. She turned and smiled when I caught up to her. She didn’t have the exhausted lines around her eyes anymore. She told me she was glad she’d gotten snowed in—God had known how much she needed a rest.

  I didn’t know what to say to her as we approached the station. I didn’t know how to say all the feelings that were banging around inside my body. I love you. I want to be like you. Take me with you, Mademoiselle. I stopped before we turned the corner, knowing what the station was like—the bustle and the loudness—knowing there’d be no talking there. She stopped too.

  “Ma—” I looked at her, at those light gray eyes, and I made myself say it. “Paquerette.” She was Joan of Arc, and all I wanted to do was go down on one knee and give her my sword and swear allegiance. But that means obeying. “Paquerette—what can I do? Is there anything I can do, to help you?”

  Paquerette’s smile broke out like the sun. “Of course, Magali.” Her bright eyes looked right into mine, and I stood up straight. “Listen. I am going to take Madame Sabatier up on her offer. I am going to do it because I know that here in Tanieux she will have the support she needs when she needs it, which includes fine young women like you, and both your friends. You help her with all those babies, Magali, and you get your friends to come, too. It will help me tremendously.”

  “Yes Ma— Yes, Paquerette. I will. I promise.”

  “Thank you, Magali.” She bent to give me the bise. This was goodbye. I kissed her, and as I did, the long, high whistle of the train sounded in the distance.

  And Paquerette turned, and set her face toward it, and walked away.

  Chapter 3

  Do Something

  “NO, MAGALI. You hold him like this. Upright.”

  “I am holding him upright.”

  Rosa frowned at me and took Grigory out of my arms. She put him against her shoulder and exactly one second later he quit crying and let out a tiny little burp. She rubbed his back and smiled.

  “Only if it’s anything like yesterday you’re going to have to do that five more times,” I warned her. Sure enough, he’d already started squirming again.

  Rosa rubbed Grigory’s back some more. “Yeah, Tomás did this too when he was a baby. It takes them a while to learn how to burp correctly.”

  “Isn’t life complicated enough, without being born not knowing how to burp?”

  Rosa laughed. Grigory burped again. His rash was gone, and his arms were starting to have those little baby dimples in them again. It’s amazing the difference a week of good feeding can make.

  We were coming over to l’Espoir almost every night. It was our job to do the evening feeding, change him, and put him to bed. It was lucky I managed to convince Rosa’s mother to let her come, because I wouldn’t even have known where to start. I got all pitiful about how I didn’t even know how to change a diaper, which was one hundred percent true, and she smiled at Rosa and told me some story about how Rosa had saved her little brother’s life one time when he started choking. She said she’d tell her husband that after supper was no time for a young girl to be working in a café anyway.

  I met the train twice a day. Paquerette had said she was going back to Gurs for another group, and that most trips took five days to a week; four if she was lucky. I took that for my instructions and met the noon train with Rosa every day, starting on the fourth day, and then the five-thirty train with Lucy—or alone—because Rosa was working in the café. Lucy wouldn’t even come see Grigory. She said she was terrible with babies.

  It was a full week before Paquerette finally came in, on the five-thirty on Monday, with four kids and a baby. Two skinny brown-haired girls maybe eleven or twelve and a girl and boy two or three years younger. They were clean, so I guess she’d found a place along the way where they could bathe. They were all Jews from Germany, and their mother had died of pneumonia in the camp. They’d been released because they were orphans now. They looked absolutely shell-shocked.

  Paquerette looked just about on her last legs too. The kids were headed for the new Swiss Aid home, les Chênes, down south of town. I told her I knew the way—my scout troop helped clean it up before it opened—and offered to walk them there. She hesitated for a moment then gave me a look of such relief I felt warm all through. She rummaged in her bag and pressed their papers into my hand. “Don’t lose them. Give them all to Monsieur Thiély personally. All right?”

  “Yes, Paquerette. I’ll make sure.”

  “Hanne, Lise, this is Magali Losier. You can trust her. She’ll show you the way to the home.”

  It’s a good half-hour’s walk down to les Chênes. You cross the bridge and go past the boys’ school and on down the south road through the hills. I carried the little ones, each in turn, and Hanne and Lise walked quietly beside me, pale and exhausted. Finally Hanne asked what kind of food they had at les Chênes.

  “Oh … potatoes, cheese, carrots, beans.” Grandpa had just sold them potatoes. “Stuff like that.”

  All of them perked up. “Really?” said Lise.

  “Definitely. Uh …” Sooo … what’s the food like in that internment camp? “It’s a good place,” I said. “Monsieur Thiély’s really nice. He’s Swiss.”

  “Are there any Nazis here?” asked Lise suddenly.

  “No!” I stared at her. “No, none at all.”

  “See?” said Hanne. “I told you.”

  “There aren’t any in this part of France. This is the unoccupied zone.”

  Lise shook her head. “We saw some one time, at the camp,” she said in a low voice.

  “Oh.” And Gurs was in the unoccupied zone too. I didn’t like the sound of that. “Well, they’ve never been here. We’re not important enough for them to take over, my father says, even if they came south.”

  “That’s good,” said Hanne, with a firm nod.

  I left them with one of the counselors, in the kitchen, fixing them a snack. I looked back at les Chênes for a moment, from the road: the broad stone house and the two ancient oak trees in front of it, one on each side, their bare branches muscular and beautiful. I’m glad they get to live here, I thought, and then, I should work here, instead of with the babies.

  But I had promised. I had promised Paquerette.

  I WENT to see her at l’Espoir the next day. Mama made me wait until afternoon so she could get her rest. She sent along a packet of tilleul flower tea that she’d dried herself, as a present for Paquerette and the Sabatiers. We sat and drank it by the fire. The babies were napping, both of them: Grigory, and Hanne’s baby sister Lilli. Paquerette sat with her eyes half-closed in pleasure, her hands around her warm cup, then opened them and asked me what I had learned about babies. That I’m not too crazy about them. “Well, they spit up a lot.” I’d just plain gotten used to walking around with a white blotch on the shoulder of my sweater.

  Madeleine Sabatier laughed. Paquerette smiled. I set my teeth. “And they’re very sensitive,” I added with dignity. “When I get frustrated with Grigory, like if he’s not drinking fast enough, he stops drinking completely.”
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br />   Paquerette’s eyebrows rose. “That is true. You’re observant, Magali.”

  I sat up a little straighter.

  Paquerette nodded. “Yes, it’s true. You know, this new baby, Lilli … We had a contrôle on the train between Toulouse and Narbonne. Of course everything was in order, but those children … I think they must have been through a great deal. As the police got nearer to us down the line of the train, I could feel Lise shaking. And Lilli, I had just fed her and she’d been sleepy and calm—she started screaming.” She looked into the fire, biting her lip, and then glanced at Madame Sabatier. “Thank you,” she said quietly. “Knowing I can bring these children to you takes a weight off my heart.”

  PAQUERETTE LEFT again. I waited. I went to l’Espoir and fed Lilli, while Rosa fed Grigory. When the time came I started meeting the train again. I tried to get Murielle and Sylvie, my friends from my scout troop, to meet it with me, but they were busy after school. I was alone again when Paquerette came in with two young boys and a toddler. She looked like she’d had the worst trip ever, again. They were meant to go to Madame Alexandre to be placed with a family. I offered to take them again. She hesitated.

  “They don’t speak any French. They’re from Poland.” She rubbed a hand across her face. “Of course I haven’t been able to communicate with them either …”

  She let me take them. I had the toddler up on my shoulders and the smaller boy by the hand and I was walking across the place du centre when it happened. The older boy—six years old—started to scream. A real scream—pure fear.

  The kid on my shoulders started screaming too. The older boy was shouting something in some foreign language—people were starting to turn and stare. The kid I had by the hand seemed ready to bolt. I hung on like death, looking round frantically for someone who spoke … spoke …

  Nina swung out the door of the café on her crutches, and headed for me. Someone must have gone into the kitchen to get her. She came right up to us before saying anything. She spoke a few words in a low, urgent voice. In Yiddish, I guess. The boy shut up and looked at her. She asked him a question. There were tears on his face. He pointed at the mairie and said something. Nina spoke to him some more. He nodded. The one I had by the hand nodded too. I finally let out my breath.