How Huge the Night Read online

  Julien shook his head.

  “They stole it!”

  “Don’t let them see they got to you,” murmured Julien. “Wait.”

  He dropped his pen behind his chair and reached down for it, glancing casually back. Pierre still wore that grin. Most of the others were smiling too. At him and Benjamin. Roland was the only one who had the decency to look embarrassed.

  He sat up, checked his pen nib for damage, dipped it in the inkwell, and went on copying from the board. Benjamin sat staring straight ahead.

  Julien looked out the window. The rain had stopped. Sunlight was pouring down through a break in the clouds, and the peak of Lizieux in the distance glowed.

  At the bell, Benjamin was out the gate like a shot, home to his shut door and his books and his crate. Julien took his time. Walking slowly downstairs behind a clamoring group with Henri Quatre in its midst, wondering if Benjamin would still have his book if he hadn’t acted like an arrogant you-know-what …

  Henri was filling in Luc from quatrième. “You should have seen his face. It’s the first time he’s looked at one of us in two months! Man, I’ve just had it up to here with these stuck-up Parisian snots—”

  Julien hung back, trying to look oblivious. Henri gave a disgusted snort and turned back toward him; his heart sank.

  “You tell your friend from me: if he doesn’t like it here, he’s free to go. And you are too.”

  Julien looked into the icy, arrogant eyes and something snapped. “What do mean, my friend?”

  Henri, Luc, Gaston, and Pierre stopped at the foot of the stairs, looking at him.

  “Maybe the guy you come to school with every day?” said Pierre.

  “You mean the guy whose parents pay for him to live in my house?”

  Henri’s eyebrows rose. “Oh, is that how it is?”

  “You have no idea.” Deep relief flooded through Julien as he said the words. “Have you ever lived with a guy who thinks he’s too good to talk to you?”

  Henri Quatre raised one eyebrow this time. He had very sharp eyebrows.

  “Don’t you people have eyes?” said Julien. “Did I come strutting in here with a jacket worth three hundred francs?”

  “You think you’re a tanieusard because you don’t have a fancy jacket?”

  “You know le père Julien? He’s my grandfather.” Henri gave a hint of a shrug that made Julien want to grab him by the collar and shake him. “My father and my grandfather were born here,” he ground out between his teeth, “and you can’t even tell the difference between me and someone who was born in Germany!”

  There was a moment of pure silence. Henri’s mouth was open, his face very still. “He’s German?” he whispered. Julien’s heart was beginning to beat faster. Oh. Oh crap.

  “Well, his parents are,” he said hurriedly. “They moved, uh, when he was a kid I think—”

  “Oh yeah, that’s what we need in Tanieux, some rich little German Jew looking down his nose at us,” said Gaston.

  “Don’t you mean up his nose at us?” said Pierre, grinning.

  “People should stay where they belong,” said Henri Quatre softly, his eyes lit. “Especially Germans.”

  Julien’s stomach was tight. He looked around, half hoping his father would appear, get him out of there. Nothing. “Well. I … gotta go.”

  He tried not to think about it as he walked up the hill; he looked up at the sky where the sun washed through the breaking clouds and tried to think of nothing at all.

  Mama had made yogurt for goûter; it was cooling on the kitchen windowsill. No one else was there. Julien sat down and laid his head down on the table in his arms. He heard the comforting clink of Mama’s serving spoon against the yogurt bowl, the warm sound of her humming under her breath. He heard her push a bowl across the table at him.

  “So, Julien. Something happen at school today?”

  He looked up slowly. “How do you know?”

  “Benjamin looked a bit upset.”

  “Yeah.” He took a deep breath and continued, looking at his bowl. “Some guys at school took his new coat. I mean—they gave it back, they were just looking at it, but … Pierre …”

  “Pierre Rostin? Ginette Rostin’s son?”

  “I guess. I mean I don’t know his mom, but that’s his name. So … he was kind of teasing him with it. Trying to make him go for it.”

  “Where was this?”

  “In the science room. When, uh, when Monsieur Ricot was gone.”

  “In front of everybody?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “What was in front of everybody?” Papa’s head poked in the door. This was the problem with being a teacher’s son.

  “Um—”

  “You surely don’t imagine I haven’t heard …”

  “Ricot gave us an assignment that didn’t exist!”

  “So I hear. I also hear you all got lines to copy. So you can tell me everything.”

  He told him almost everything.

  For a few moments no one spoke. The chop of Mama’s knife slicing potatoes was loud in the silence.

  “Poor Benjamin,” Mama said at last. “I think if those boys had seen him when that crate arrived, they wouldn’t have treated him like that.”

  “From what I’ve seen,” Papa said, “Pierre would need to be hit with a hammer before he’d understand that kind of thing.”

  “Poor Pierre too,” Mama added suddenly.

  “Pierre?” said Julien. “You feel sorry for him?”

  “Would you want to be him?” put in Papa.

  “Well, no …”

  “But mostly as a matter of principle, or virtue on your part …” Papa began drily.

  “Martin,” Mama said gently, “I’m trying to tell Julien why I feel sorry for Pierre.”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  Mama stopped working and looked Julien in the eye. “I’ve been getting to know Ginette Rostin. You know Pierre has a brother in the army, I suppose? André?”

  Julien nodded.

  “Ginette talks about nothing else. André this, André that, André and his tank on the Maginot Line. The few times she’s mentioned Pierre she’s called him that boy.”

  Well, poor Pierre then. He looked out the window. The sun was very bright.

  Papa picked up a strip of potato peel and twirled it in his fingers, frowning. “I’m sorry my hometown isn’t treating you boys too kindly. I wish …” He sighed. “Will you do something for me? Your grandfather’s about done with that bookshelf for Benjamin. Would you take him down there to look at it, sometime in the next couple days?”

  Grandpa was down in his workshop on the ground floor; the little apartment he moved into in the winter. Where he’d promised to sit by the fire and tell Julien stories while the burle blew outside. Julien looked out at the wet world and sighed, and added Benjamin to the picture.

  “Sure, Papa,” he said.

  Julien did the dishes after supper because Mama asked him to; when he finally pulled the plug in the sink, he felt so drained he could hardly stand up. He headed for the stairs. “Julien?” said Mama. “Would you tell Benjamin I’d like to ask him something before he goes to bed?”

  “Sure, Mama.”

  He knocked twice on Benjamin’s door before he heard a muffled, “Come in.” Benjamin was on his knees on the wood floor with his back to Julien, stacking books in the crate.

  “Uh—y’know Grandpa’s making you a bookshelf for those,” Julien offered.

  “Maybe you can use it.” Benjamin’s voice was flat. He put another book in the crate and didn’t turn around.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m leaving.”

  Julien stared at him.

  “I’m not staying here. Not if it’s going to be like this.” His voice cracked wildly on this.

  “Um,” said Julien.

  Benjamin swallowed. After a moment, he got out: “D’you need something?”

  “Mama wanted to ask you something. Downstairs.” He hesitat
ed. “Should I tell her you’re—busy?”

  Benjamin glanced at the open door, and Julien saw on his face what he had been afraid of: the bright tracks of tears down his cheeks. “Tell her I’ll be down in a minute,” he said tightly.

  “Sure.” He turned to go. “Uh—Benjamin?” he said, searching for the right words.

  “Mm.”

  “They want me to leave too. I don’t think we should give them that satisfaction.”

  Benjamin shrugged one shoulder. He picked up another book and put it carefully in the crate. “Good night.”

  “Good night.”

  Rooks roosted in the trees by the soccer field, a black army of rooks. Every branch laden with them. Julien was running with Benjamin, passing the soccer ball. Benjamin passed it to the rook-tree. “No!” cried Julien. The cloud of rooks rose, the flap of a thousand wings making a huge, alien whisper. They rose, and fell together toward one place on the ground.

  A rookery is a society, said a voice. It sounded like Papa. They punish their criminals. The whole flock pecks the offender. Sometimes to death.

  The birds boiled upward and fell, again and again, a cloud turning in on itself in violence, a seething of black wings.

  Julien began to run.

  He ran toward them, shouting, waving his arms. They flew up, their beaks stone gray, their little black eyes glittering. In the middle lay something flat and brown.

  It was the soccer ball, its leather hide pierced by a thousand holes, lying limp on the withered grass. It was bleeding.

  Julien screamed. “Benjamin!” Behind him the soccer field was empty to the horizon; the lines and goalposts gone, the school gone. Benjamin was not there. The river ran on in front of the hill. But there was no bridge.

  The rooks set up a great cawing behind him. He whirled and went for them, arms flailing, and they flew up away from him in a hiss of wings.

  Benjamin lay in the grass, white-faced, bleeding from a thousand small wounds.

  Julien shrieked.

  “They’ve killed Benjamin. Help! Help!”

  A shadow of great wings flying low. “You killed Benjamin?” And Grandpa landed and folded his wings about him; they hung to his feet, black and shimmering.

  “No! It wasn’t me! I wasn’t there! I didn’t even see—”

  Grandpa looked down at him from his great height, the eyes of a dark eagle. “They were pecking you too.”

  Julien looked at his hands. There were feathers on them. “Grandpa, no. Don’t make me a rook. Bring the bridge back. Please. I have to carry him across—”

  The world jerked and tilted. Darkness. A hand was shaking him by the shoulder.

  “Julien? Julien? Are you all right?”

  He sat bolt upright. It was dark. In the faint moonlight from the window, he could just barely see Magali by his bed.

  “Fine. I’m fine.”

  “You sounded awful! I could hear you from my room.”

  “Did I say anything? Did you hear me say anything, Magali?”

  “You just yelled a couple times. Was it a nightmare?”

  “Yeah.” He sank back into his bed. “Yeah. Um. Thanks for waking me.”

  “You sure you’re okay?”

  “Yeah. Good night.”

  She left. He lay facedown on his pillow, shaking his head and swallowing. What was wrong with him? He hadn’t had a nightmare since he was ten.

  He got up and opened the shutters. The clouds were over Tanieux again, and everything was misty down below; he breathed the cold, moist air deep into his lungs, and his head cleared. He looked up, but there were no stars.

  “God,” he whispered. “What was that?”

  There was silence, and a cold wind.

  He shut the window and turned away. He felt dizzy. He crawled back into bed and slept.

  Chapter 8

  Night

  He could move through the woods without sound. He was the only one who could help them.

  They had to trust him because they had no choice. They had a hundred schillings but he said fifty would be enough.

  He wanted to help them.

  He was from Gailitz, three kilometers north of the border, and he had done this many times. He was tall, with a short brown beard like Father’s. When he’d seen them on the road, he said, he’d known they were in need. They should hide the bedroll in one of their packs. Anyone could tell at a glance what they were trying to do. They were lucky it had been him.

  He knew where the gaps were.

  He moved quietly through the woods, and they followed, Niko’s crutches rustling in the leaves. “Maybe I’ll have to carry you, kid,” said Herr. They called him Herr: Mister. Names weren’t safe in this business, he said.

  “I’m not tired, Herr,” said Niko in her gruff boy’s voice.

  He gave her a little smile. “You’re doing great, herzerl.”

  The sky above the mountains flamed scarlet and rose with the evening; the peaks were black against it, the mountains huge and dark on either side as they walked west. Herr stopped, and they turned south off the path. Their way was up the mountain.

  They walked. The pines were tall and dark. High above, the fiery sky was fading. Herr moved in front of them without sound, then Niko setting her crutches carefully among the pine needles, and Gustav behind her. Her good leg and her arms ached. They had walked for hours. “Wait for me here,” Herr whispered, and was gone in the trees ahead. They must be near the gap. Only one on this side, he said; on the Italian side there were three. The sun had set, and the shadows around them were full of tiny sounds: chirrings and rustlings, small things hiding, hoping to live till morning. She shivered.

  “Clear,” said a quiet voice by her ear. She gasped. “Shhh,” said Herr. “We’ll need to be very quiet now. That’s hard with crutches. I’m going to have to carry you.”

  He lifted her onto his back, her hands gripping his shoulders, his hands under her knees. Gustav took her crutches. They moved between tall, black shadows. It was full dark. She huddled against Herr’s back, trying not to shake. The dull, barely visible gleam of a chain-link fence came at her out of the dark; a swath of blackness running up and down it, a rip. Herr crouched, not letting go of her; cold edges of broken chain-link scraped her arm, and she bit her lip. Then nothing, open air. They were through.

  They walked on through the woods, up the mountain, in the night.

  No one spoke; no one stopped moving. The night sounds of the forest were around them, a vast world full of tiny, frightened life. The call of an owl overhead. Herr walked, his footsteps firm and quiet, his hands under her knees.

  It came on her slowly as they walked through the dark.

  It was just a feeling. Just a strange, strange feeling. The way his hands held her under her knees, moving a little. Just a feeling. That something was wrong.

  But he didn’t know she was a girl. So how—that couldn’t be what she was feeling … He was helping them. He was—and he didn’t know—

  He’d called her herzerl. She hadn’t even noticed. Why hadn’t she noticed? Because she was a girl. You didn’t call boys that. Not boys her age. And she hadn’t said anything, she hadn’t—

  So did he know? Had that been a test? But if she was wrong—to think such a thing, when he was helping them—he’d be so angry; she’d be so ashamed … But her gut twisted inside of her, shouted down her mind. Something is wrong. Something is wrong.

  Something was wrong.

  Her bound chest was against his back. Could he feel it? Feel the difference? She leaned back from him, just a little, in the dark. It strained her back, but she stayed that way. She didn’t know how long they’d been walking, how long they would go on. Hours, in the night. Her back hurt. But if she rested herself against him—no. No, he was helping them. Wasn’t he? His hands, the way they felt. Strange. Wrong. As if they weren’t there just to hold her up. As if they were there to feel.

  And they were alone with him. In the woods. In no-man’s-land.

  She
felt sick.

  They walked through the dark, and she began to cry, soundlessly, knowing. Every step; every minute; a year of fear and sickness, at him, at her own stupidity, her helplessness, the dark. Yes we can, she’d said. Oh Father, no. No. They were going downward. How long had they been going down? What was going to happen? Father.

  Herr stopped. The hands lowered her to the ground. She stood, shaking. They were in an open place. There was faint moonlight. Gustav handed her the crutches.

  “We’re near the second fence,” Herr murmured. “The hole in this one is smaller. I’ll go check if it’s clear, and then I’ll take you through one at a time. The other must stay quiet and not follow. This crossing is very dangerous.” In the faint light, he gave her a little smile that chilled her.

  And then quietly, in the dark, he was gone. He was gone, and she knew what he meant to do. They had no time to lose.

  “Gustav,” she whispered. “We have to get away from him. Now.”

  “What?”

  “Gustav. He knows. He’s … he’s going to hurt me.” Gustav was staring at her, the moonlight glinting in his eyes. He didn’t move. “We have to hide.”

  “Niko, did he … do anything?”

  “Not— Gustav, you have to trust me, Gustav, I know it!”

  “Nina—” Herr might be here, he might be right behind them, silent in the dark. He might have heard that. Nina. Silence and darkness, all around. Tiny rustlings underfoot, and overhead the owl’s quiet wings. She set her crutches down to take a step. The rustle was loud and clear.

  She ran.

  Swung her crutches out and ran, crashing through the bushes, branches slashing her face, running, running because she wasn’t going to just stand there and let him catch her, she wasn’t, she’d rather die—footsteps behind her, oh tell me it’s Gustav, Gustav—something caught her crutch and she went down, her arm hitting a heavy branch, her cheek scraping bark, painfully—and she was on the ground, in the deep dark under a pine, and Gustav threw himself down beside her. They froze.

  Silence. Darkness. He was coming for them, so quietly they could not hear him. He was coming for them with a knife. Then they did hear him, quiet footfalls, branches rustling and cracking where he put out his hands. Groping in the dark. He stepped right past them. He couldn’t see them. They didn’t breathe. He moved in the dark, searching, for hours. Years.