How Huge the Night Read online

  “And the moral of the story is”—Papa finished up with a twinkle in his eye—“don’t let anyone kid you about the ‘good old days.’”

  Even Benjamin laughed.

  Julien sat with Benjamin in every class. It was great: a prime, closeup view of exactly how much smarter than him Benjamin was. Benjamin would sit drinking in Ricot’s equations, while Julien struggled to keep his eyes open.

  “Pierre Rostin, stand up!” Julien jerked awake.

  Ricot, red faced, was pulling Pierre out of his seat by the ear. “What did I just ask you, young man?”

  Pierre stood, rubbed his ear, looked slowly around at the class. “Sorry, monsieur. Earwax.”

  Ricot’s mouth shut like a trap. “Who proved,” he said slowly and loudly, “that the earth rotates on its axis? And how?”

  “Um, Einstein maybe?” Pierre yawned. “Or, uh … Napoleon?”

  A snicker ran through the class. Ricot’s ruler hit the desk. He grabbed Pierre by the ear again and marched him down to the blackboard. “You can stay right there, Monsieur Rostin, until somebody smarter than you has answered my question.”

  Julien was wide awake.

  Philippe didn’t know; he had to stay standing behind his desk. So did Dominique, and Antoine, and Léon. Jean-Pierre. Gilles. Jérémie. Lucien. Half the class was on their feet. Roland.

  Roland would know. He paused, looking at Ricot.

  “I’m sorry, monsieur. I’m not prepared to answer your question.”

  Ricot sputtered. Julien began to chew his lip; three more guys and he was up. Um. Something about a pendulum …

  Benjamin raised his hand.

  “It was Foucault, n’est-ce pas? He hung a pendulum, sixty-seven meters long. He set it swinging, and its axis swiveled slowly over twenty-four hours. And then he proved that it was really swinging in the same plane all along, but the earth was rotating beneath it.”

  “Ah.” Ricot’s voice was actually warm. “Well done, young man.” He gestured at the class. “The rest of you morons can sit down now.”

  They sat. Benjamin was smiling. Pierre, Julien saw, was not.

  Julien caught up with Roland on the way out of school, crossing the bridge. “You live in town?”

  “No. Out that way.” Roland waved behind them at the dirt road that went south. “I’m buying bread.”

  “You lived here long?”

  Roland gave him a little smile. “Sure. About as long as that chapel there.” It stood on their left by the water, a humble little place; four black stone walls and an arched door, a roof of slates with their edges nicked and broken. It looked like it had grown there, out of the bones of the earth, and would still be there when the square concrete school had fallen to dust.

  “I didn’t know you were four hundred years old,” Julien said. Roland laughed.

  “Who told you how old it is?”

  “My grandfather.” Roland’s eyebrows lifted, and Julien named Grandpa by his local name. “Le père Julien.”

  “He’s your grandfather?” Roland gave his head a shake. “Did I know that?”

  “Don’t ask me!”

  After a moment’s pause, one corner of Roland’s mouth turned up. “You’re named after him.”

  “Mm-hm.”

  “You should tell people you’re from here. If they think you’re from Paris, they’ll ignore you. That’s what we do here. That’s what the estivants want.”

  “Yeah? They don’t want to play soccer?”

  Roland stuck his hands in his pockets and kicked at a pinecone on the sidewalk. “Hey listen,” he said suddenly, turning to Julien. “Are you good? What position d’you play?”

  “Center forward. Yeah,” he said simply, “I’m good.”

  “Just watch for when we’re missing a player and jump in, okay? Don’t ask. If you’re that good, Gilles won’t say anything. And Henri’s not gonna take his ball home or something in the middle of a game.”

  “Thanks,” Julien said, surprised.

  “No problem. We need you. We need something.”

  “Hey … did you really not know the answer to that question?”

  “Foucault?” Roland’s quirky smile came back. “Sure I knew. And Jean-Pierre knew. Pierre didn’t, that’s for sure.”

  “So why didn’t you answer?” said Julien. “Was it some kind of prank?”

  Roland gave him a sidelong look. “I don’t show up my friends for Cocorico, that’s why. So he can call them morons.” He snorted. “Nobody likes that. You should tell your friend.”

  “Hm,” Julien grunted. They were at the boulangerie; the door opened, and the warm smell of fresh bread wafted out. Roland stuck his hand out to shake goodbye. “Well,” said Julien as they shook, “thanks.”

  He walked on up the street behind Benjamin and his book. I’m supposed to tell him not to answer questions in class? He’d laugh. No. If Benjamin felt compelled to make sure nobody liked him, and clearly he did, it was his own problem. Julien couldn’t spend his time worrying about him.

  He had better things to do. And now he knew how to do them.

  Chapter 6

  Gone

  Nina had never been beautiful. A square, sturdy girl with long, frizzy, wavy hair down her back; the sort of girl who looked right in knee socks and a school skirt. Right; not beautiful. Even before what they all called the accident. Before the twisted leg.

  Now, looking in the mirror in the tiny train bathroom, she was glad of that.

  She made a believable boy, she thought. She ran her hands through her short, fuzzy cap of hair. With her chest bound, her square shoulders looked stocky, vaguely muscular. Like a sturdy boy who hadn’t lost all his puppy fat, an overgrown twelve-year-old. Gustav’s big younger brother. Great.

  “Say hi to Niko,” she whispered to the mirror. “Hi, Niko.”

  They were almost there. Villach, by the Italian border. She’d found a map, in the envelope with the tickets, showing the way to the synagogue. Not far from the station. The rabbi’s name. He’ll help you. I wrote him. He’s helped a lot of people across.

  They would have had to cross illegally, anyway. They had no visas. They had no right. Their papers wouldn’t have helped with the big letters JEW on them. You’ll be safer in Italy. But Nina, if you ever have the chance—if there’s a way—get to France.

  Niko heard the hiss of the brakes, felt the train begin to slow. She left the bathroom. Houses were going past the window, streets and alleys, people on bicycles, and behind them the mountains, huge and green. They would cross them. Somehow. The rabbi would know how.

  Italiener Strasse, the papers said. Father had marked it on the map.

  Italiener Strasse ran south from the station. The air was cold and bright. Father’s eiderdown swung behind her, a tight-wrapped bedroll hanging under her pack. South on Italiener Strasse, left at the traffic circle. Five doors down on the right, the synagogue would be painted white; there would be a sign. They should ask for Rabbi Hirsch and say they were youth volunteers to clean the synagogue. That was the password.

  The synagogue was not painted white. It was painted green. Big splashes of sickly colored paint thrown at the door. Windows boarded up, and on the boards things scrawled in black. Pigs. Bloodsuckers. You Have Your Reward.

  Niko and Gustav looked at each other. A strange feeling spread through Niko’s stomach.

  “We have to knock,” said Gustav. “Don’t we?”

  “Of course,” said Niko. “Looks like they need us. To clean.” Her mouth was completely dry. She was trying to hear the words in her head, the instructions. Come on, Father. If you can’t find the Rabbi—if you can’t find the Rabbi—

  He’d never said that. He had never said anything like that.

  She raised her hand and knocked. Silence. She knocked again. The silence grew longer, louder, huge; the silence was a pit, and she was looking down it. Father. Father …

  A man was passing by. She had to do it. “Excuse me,” she said in the deepest voice she coul
d. “Do you know where is Rabbi Hirsch?”

  The man gave her and Gustav a long look. “I do know. And you’d be well advised to stay away from him. Hirsch has been arrested. I presume you two don’t have any interest in his—activities.”

  Niko’s head was spinning. She opened her mouth. Gustav had come up behind her, and she heard his laugh, sudden; a nasty laugh like she’d never heard from him. “Nothing like that,” he said in a hard voice. “He owed our father money. Guess it’s too late now.”

  “Yes,” said the man. “I think it is.”

  “You were great, Gustav.”

  “Nina.” He didn’t sound great. “What are we gonna do?”

  “It’s Niko. Please, Gustav. You’ve got to call me Niko.”

  “What are we gonna do? Did he tell you anything to do? If—y’know?”

  No. This is it, Gustav. We’re on our own. She swallowed. “Yeah,” she said. “He told me some stuff.”

  “What’d he tell you?”

  “We’ve got to cross on our own.”

  “How d’we do it?”

  “He said there’s a fence.” He had said that. He’d said, Hirsch knows where the gaps are. “There’re gaps. Places you can get through. After that, you climb through the mountains. Hills. There’s another fence on the other side, and you have to find a way through again. There are lots of ways through. People do it all the time. That’s what he said.”

  “Okay. Okay.” His eyes were wide, his lips pressed together, considering. “Are there guards or anything?”

  “Yeah. Along the fences. We have to be really, really careful. We have to stay off the road and cross at night.”

  He nodded slowly. She could see just a spark of light returning to his eyes. “You think we can do it, Nina? Niko, I mean. Niko.” He was looking at her, waiting for the word.

  “Yes,” she said without looking at him. “Yes. We can.”

  Chapter 7

  A Thousand Wings

  War was not what Julien had expected it to be. That hot night in September when he’d prayed for God to give him something to do, he’d imagined Paris overrun, German soldiers in the streets, shrapnel bursting through windows …

  But nothing was happening.

  It wasn’t that he wanted it to happen. It just seemed so strange. He had felt so much older for a little while: part of a much larger story, a wartime story. But the troops were still sitting along the Maginot Line, and there was nothing he could do about it one way or the other. So he’d found himself back in his own world, his Julien world, where what mattered was school and soccer. Where the enemy was Henri Quatre, and Julien was waiting for his chance.

  He watched Monday’s game, poised and ready; nothing. On Tuesday, Lucien fell down and grabbed his ankle—and got up again. He was going to go crazy.

  On Wednesday, Antoine was absent. One of Gilles’s forwards.

  He let them start without him. Roland gave him a glance and a nod. He watched, every muscle tense, till Gilles’s team was down two to nothing and fallen back to defend their goal; then it came. Henri jogged off the field to take a leak.

  Julien had to get hold of the ball just seconds after he’d got on the field, give no one a chance to throw him out. With Henri gone, Gilles was making one hopeless push toward Henri’s goal; Philippe blocked it, and it bounced toward the boundary line.

  Now.

  Julien ran in and caught the brown ball on the side of his foot, controlled its motion and its spin. It was his. Philippe’s surprised face flashed by as Julien dribbled it across to the center—and through the one hole in Henri’s defense. “Hey!” someone yelled. He faked neatly around the last defender and fired the ball straight and hard into the lower corner of the goal as Gaston the goalie dived—too late.

  The ball shot through the goal and kept on rolling, but Gaston didn’t even turn to look. He was staring at Julien.

  “Where did you come from?”

  “He’s not on our team!”

  “Shut up, Dominique.” That was Gilles’s voice, deep with surprised pleasure. “Did you see that goal?”

  “It doesn’t count!” said Pierre, coming up behind them with a red face. “He wasn’t even in the game, the goal doesn’t count.”

  “Come on, man. We’ve got a right to a remplaçant. Antoine’s gone. Hey!” Gilles called down the field. “Who says it counts?”

  Cheers. Julien thought he saw Roland wink.

  “We can still beat you, anyway,” said Philippe.

  More cheers.

  Julien glanced at the trees, away to the left. Henri Quatre was coming back, a small figure moving toward them. In the trees’ leafy tops, an army of rooks was cawing and fighting, flying up and settling again in a dark cloud. Henri walked faster.

  But he was too late. The ball was back in play, and Dominique got it, and he passed it to Julien. Henri had nothing to say. He had to get in there and defend.

  Julien’s team won.

  Dear Vincent, he wrote. Guess what happened today.

  They played four more games after that, beautiful games. Henri Quatre won two, and Julien’s team won two more than they would have without him. He got out on that field and he played, and he scored, and Gilles and Roland slapped him on the back.

  Then the rain came again.

  It started during breakfast, softly, the first drops sliding down the kitchen window as Julien finished his hot chocolate. When he put his bowl in the sink, it was drumming on the roof, the air outside was filled with it, clouds of mist splashing up from the angled roofs down below. No soccer today. No soccer tomorrow. The rains were back for the long haul.

  They walked to school with their hoods up and hung their coats beside the others to drip on the floor. The classrooms that morning had a strange, echoing sound, the sound of an enclosed space; the squeak of wet shoes on the floor and the voices of boys rang through the school. It seemed as if they all felt like Julien—keyed up, on edge, not ready for rain and winter. Not ready to sit quietly at their desks, go home for lunch, and leave the woods and the empty soccer field to soften into deep mud.

  But they did. Julien and Benjamin walked up the hill as the water flowed down in muddy little runnels past their feet, and hung their sodden jackets at the top of the stairs, and opened the door.

  A huge packing crate sat blocking the entryway, with Paris written on it. Mama stood smiling over it. “From your parents, Benjamin,” she said. “Would you like to open it?”

  “Um,” said Benjamin. “Upstairs. I’d like to open it … upstairs, please.”

  Mama’s face fell a little. “Of course, Benjamin. Julien—could you help carry …?”

  When they went back to school for the afternoon, Benjamin wore a new wool jacket, gray and expensive-looking, and carried a large new book that he slipped into his coat before stepping out into the rain. Julien caught a glimpse of a submarine on the front.

  The new gray wool glowed beside the worn jackets on their pegs on the classroom wall; people were looking. Out of the corner of his eye, Julien saw Benjamin stroking it. Papa glanced at it when he came in halfway through class to call Ricot away for a minute. Ricot left them with instructions to do problems one and two on page seventy-four. They sighed and opened their textbooks.

  There were no problems on page seventy-four.

  Julien looked around. A buzz of whispers was rising up, a breath of freedom. Pierre was already making spit wads. Even Benjamin had his book open to a huge, color plate of a submarine surfacing. Jean-Pierre at the next desk craned his neck for a look.

  Julien was reading about subs in the Great War when it started. A rise in the tone of the whispers; the scraping of desks in the back by the woodstove. Julien turned.

  A group was gathering around the coat rack. Where the gray coat had been was an empty peg.

  His desk jerked as Benjamin stood.

  They were passing the coat from hand to hand back there, murmuring in low voices; admiring it. Jérémie passed it to Gilles, who felt the
soft wool, examined the blue and red threads woven through the pattern to give it color—it really was a good coat; it’d probably cost more than Mama ever spent on a piece of clothing in her life.

  “Give it back!” Benjamin’s face was white, and his eyes blazed. “That’s mine. Give it back!”

  The coat was passed to Pierre. Pierre grinned. Then he took the coat by the shoulders and stood, shook it twice like a bullfighter’s cloth.

  “Come and get it,” he said.

  Benjamin took three steps toward Pierre. The group parted to let him in, and closed around him. Pierre looked even bigger with Benjamin glaring up at him, white fists clenched.

  “What do you want from me?”

  “Just to see if you want your pretty coat back. Here …”

  Benjamin reached out for the coat, and Pierre snatched it back.

  “Come on,” he said in a kind voice. “Here …”

  Benjamin’s jaw clenched, but he did not move. Julien was biting his lip, all his muscles tense. The sound of footsteps came from the hallway.

  The reaction was instantaneous. Guys scrambled and dived for their seats. Henri Quatre snatched the jacket out of Pierre’s hands and hung it on its peg. Julien and Benjamin slid into their desk a split second before Ricot walked in.

  The class got lines to copy: I attend school to learn, not to play, one hundred times. Even Benjamin, who didn’t hear Ricot’s rant. He was too busy searching through his desk, through his cartable, through his desk again. He leaned over to Julien and whispered, “Have you seen my book?”