How Huge the Night Page 6

  Then he stopped. He stopped silent, somewhere down behind them, and spoke.

  “You little brat,” he said. “They’ll catch you, you know. Thought you could fool Herr, did you baby? But they’ll catch you. Maybe they’ll have a little fun with you, instead of me. Yeah. Yeah. A little fun.” Gustav gripped her hand so hard it hurt.

  Then soft footsteps. Going. Going back the way they’d come. Then silence.

  Silence. And silence. And waiting, holding Gustav’s hand, don’t move Gustav, he’s coming back down, he’s trying to lure us out, don’t move. It was dark. Fear was everywhere. Herr was everywhere, in the dark. She could still feel his hands. Hours. Years. Gustav stood. Branches rustling around him.

  Silence. All around them.

  Now for the fence. Hear, O Israel. Hear—oh hear—

  And they were off together, crashing through the trees, down the mountain, to the border—where they would catch them, they would catch them, because how could two teenagers get through a border alone? Guards in front of them and a criminal behind? Three holes, he’d said. Three holes on the Italian side.

  The chain-link loomed at them out of the dark. Tight-woven and intact. Niko turned left along it, away from the place Herr had checked; and they went along the fence in the dark as quietly as they could. Whole, and tight, and dully gleaming. Except there—there at the bottom—a scribble of darkness jutting up into the grid. A tree trying to grow up under it, buckling the chain-link slowly upward. A little space of darkness. She went down on her belly and slid. Her jacket caught, she heard a rip, she pushed at the earth with her good leg, and she was through. Gustav slid her crutches under, then the pack, then he was under and through and she had her crutches and they were gone. Gone down the mountain faster than she had ever gone before, breaking branches, pine needles whipping at her face, the night air burning in her lungs. Far up ahead through the trees was a light—a house, no border-guard post, but a farmhouse and the sharp scent of wood smoke from the chimney and a lighted window. She stopped. Her knees started to buckle. Gustav took her hand.

  They were through. She had done what her father had told her to do. She had gotten herself and her brother out of Austria.

  She knelt and vomited into the bushes.

  Chapter 9

  Where We Come From

  Julien groaned and rolled over. It was Thursday morning—his one day off from school besides Sunday. He wanted to go back to sleep. But …

  But at breakfast, Benjamin would tell Mama that he wanted to leave, and everything would blow sky-high, and Benjamin would have already written his parents to come get him, and …

  And they would. And no one would ever find out what he’d told Henri. And he’d go around telling the troisième class how glad he was that that rich Parisian snot was gone, and he’d play soccer and tell them his father was born here, and …

  The space inside his head was full of darkness, cold and heavy. He shoved his face into his pillow and slept.

  The kitchen was empty when he came down, two clean plates still on the table with the bread and jam. Who else had overslept? Mama? Even the milk was still out.

  He tore a piece off the baguette and laid his notebook on the table. He had an essay due tomorrow. A question from Les Misérables: Was Javert right about human nature, that people were either good or bad? He chewed his bread, thinking.

  Javert seemed to think people couldn’t change, and that didn’t sound right at all. It was called repenting, it was all over the Bible. But he wasn’t supposed to use the Bible in a public school essay, even if the principal was in his church, and none of his own arguments sounded any good. Can people really change? he wondered, scratching out his third sentence. Imagine Benjamin changing, or Henri.

  Or Julien.

  He felt light-headed. He left the essay on the table and walked out into the dark stairwell, hands in his pockets, and sat on the cold stone stairs. He could hear Monsieur Bouchard, Grandpa’s reclusive tenant he’d never seen, singing snatches of something off-key; and from the other apartment, Grandpa’s, the soft tap, tap of a hammer. He went on down.

  He slipped into the apartment and closed the door softly behind him, and Grandpa smiled at him without looking up from his work. Julien sat and watched his grandfather hammer the nails in with his broad, careful hands, and felt the silence, and the peace in Grandpa’s breathing, and listened to the rain.

  Finally Grandpa put down his hammer and smiled at him, and Julien opened his mouth and began to speak. And told him everything.

  Almost everything.

  “And Grandpa—last night he was packing. He says he’s leaving. He says if it’s gonna be like this he can’t stay. All they did was tease him!”

  Grandpa studied the shelf he had just nailed, tired lines in his forehead, a web of wrinkles around his eyes. “What did he think they were doing?”

  “He thought they were a pack of wolves about to have him for breakfast,” said Julien bitterly.

  “And what do you think they thought?”

  “They know he thinks they’re stupid hicks and he’s too good to talk to them.”

  “Do they treat you like they treat him, at all?”

  “Sort of. Not that stuff, but …” He looked away, at the blank white wall. “We’re in the same category.” The rich Parisian snots category.

  “Julien, is something bothering you? Do you feel like you should have done something yesterday?” Julien didn’t look at him. He didn’t dare. “Maybe you should. But it’s hard. It’s very hard in a situation like that to stand up to the crowd. Maybe you’ll learn. I hope so. But don’t beat yourself up.”

  Julien nodded, looking at his feet.

  “And listen. I didn’t know Benjamin said he was leaving, but I know that he and your mother had a talk last night. A good talk, apparently. Till fairly late. So please don’t worry.”

  He swallowed. “Well. That’s good.”

  “Will you do something for me, Julien? It’s a simple thing, but I’d appreciate it.”

  Julien looked up. “Bring Benjamin down? Papa asked me.”

  “No, although that would be wonderful. But there’s something else. I don’t know if you pray every day, but there’s something I’d like you to pray for me. Just this. Ask God to show you what he wants you to do. If you’ll do that for me—let’s make it a deal. You pray that; I pray that the boys at school see the light. How does that sound?”

  Julien swallowed again. “Pretty good,” he said.

  His name was Emmanuel, Grandpa said, but he was called Manu. He lived in the sixteenth century. He had no last name because he was a servant born in the service of a noble family near Le Puy. He was raised with Philippe, the lord’s younger son, raised to be his loyal servant for life.

  Julien and Magali and Benjamin sat around Grandpa’s table, warming their hands around mugs of mint or blackberry tea. Grandpa’s eyes had a quiet glow like the flickering light from his fireplace, like the candle in the center of the table.

  Manu and Philippe were the same age, he said. They swam in the creek together, tussled with each other, threw cherry pits at the girls. They learned to ride together and raced their horses; they went hunting together, Manu carrying Philippe’s spear. They even—though it was supposed to be forbidden—studied together.

  Philippe taught Manu to read, Grandpa said, and this, in the end, is why Manu would have died for him. For Philippe, books were interesting; for Manu, they were the world. Philippe learned more from Manu’s excited accounts of his textbooks than from reading them. It was only natural that, when Philippe was to be sent away to learn a profession as a younger son should, he asked for Manu to be sent with him. And—hesitating between his different options—asked Manu which he thought was best.

  “Medicine,” said Manu, his eyes big with delight.

  They went to Montpellier to study medicine.

  Montpellier was in ferment in those days, Grandpa said. Boiling with new ideas. Not only the latest theories in
natural philosophy and medicine, but the strange new ideas of the Reformation, which had seemed so distant back at their château—and here were discussed in the streets. Dangerous, enticing ideas, like reading the Bible for yourself in your own language. They met a man who could get them a copy. Manu couldn’t resist.

  They read medicine. They read the Bible. Philippe would come home and tell Manu everything he had heard in class, and Manu would tell him everything he had read. They stayed up, talking about the Bible all hours of the night; they talked about it with other students, with men at taverns, with anybody. The radical new ideas—that God forgave simply, by grace, that you could know God for yourself—were one by one confirmed by what they read. They became Protestant.

  Then they got the message from home. Sickness at the château. Come quickly.

  News traveled slowly in those days, Grandpa said. When that message reached Philippe, his father and brother were already dead. He reached home to find himself lord of all his family’s lands.

  Philippe was overwhelmed. Grieving, unprepared for the work of ruling, he leaned on Manu in those first days; but one thing gave him joy in his new life, one thing he was sure he wanted. As a lord, he could set up his own Protestant church. He did it right away.

  It was his undoing.

  Protestantism wasn’t illegal, exactly, Grandpa said. Protestants just didn’t legally exist. Church and state were the same thing; cardinals and bishops more powerful than lords. It was like renouncing your citizenship. The bishop seated at Le Puy summoned Philippe and told him he had the power to give all his lands to the neighboring duke if Philippe didn’t recant.

  Philippe went home in turmoil and talked to Manu. To Manu, raised on an ideal of boundless loyalty to his lord—a lord he knew and loved—there was no question. The God he had once feared was now just such a lord and friend as Philippe had always been, but a thousand times more. He would not have turned his back on Philippe to save his life. How could either of them turn their backs on Jesus?

  Philippe was stripped of his title and all his lands. He left his family’s château, and Manu left with him. They did not look back.

  They traveled and lived on what they had learned: going from town to town offering their medical skills to lord and commoner for a reasonable fee—or, if need be, for free. And for free, also, they would read their French Bible aloud to anyone who wanted to hear it and share their enthusiasm for knowing their Lord as a friend.

  One day, they saved the life of a lord’s only son, and in gratitude, he gave them land. Nothing much, a few hills up on a cold plateau by a small river. A river called the Tanne.

  Grandpa smiled at their look of enlightenment. They built two things there, he said. First a chapel. Their work of praise to God, built with their own hands out of the black stones to be found by the river. Then a school. Manu was the teacher; and as the place grew into a settlement, he welcomed the sons of lords and peasants alike to share his passion for learning. Soon they could worship in their chapel without fear; the Edict of Nantes had been signed, and their faith was finally legal. The edict came from a new king who had once been Protestant and had not forgotten: the former Henri of Navarre, now Henri Quatre, king of France.

  Henri Quatre. Julien shook his head.

  It was the beginning, Grandpa said, and it laid the foundation for what was to come. When one hundred years later the edict was revoked, Tanieux was a town where Protestants and Catholics lived together in mutual respect; where people learned, and thought for themselves, and weren’t swayed by every political wind from Paris. And the refugees came, fleeing from the persecution, and they were accepted here. “And that,” said Grandpa, “was when we came. The Losiers. We were refugees. Half the families in this town were refugees.”

  There was silence. The light from the fire and candle turned the white walls golden, turned the pine table a deeper gold still. Julien was thinking, We. Who were they, these medieval refugees? Benjamin was running a finger around the edge of his cup, slowly. Finally he opened his mouth. “But,” he said, looking away, “that was then.”

  Grandpa turned his quiet eyes on him. “Do you think,” he said, “that they have forgotten?”

  “Yes.” Benjamin dropped the word like a stone.

  The shadows deepened in Grandpa’s face. He spoke slowly. “I know. It looks like they never knew. But you have to understand what memory is, in these hills. We put our roots down deep here. And the earth sustains us, down deep in the dark. But the earth grows crusted and hard with the years and won’t let in the rain.” He fell silent, his hands on the table gnarled and still. The wind beat the rain against the window.

  He looked up, a light in his eyes.

  “But God is a good farmer,” he said. “Do you understand that, children?” His laugh rang out, sudden as thunder. “God is a good farmer, and he loves his land. And he plows it.” He lifted his eyes to the window, to the rain-curtained hills. “He is going to plow Tanieux. I think,” he added with a strange smile at Benjamin, “he’s begun already. They haven’t forgotten, you know. The memory is buried deep, down in the dark where the earth is rich—and God’s blade will turn it up.” His smile dug a hundred tiny furrows round his eyes. “Yes. You wait and see.”

  Julien followed Benjamin up the dark stairway in silence. They could hear the rain against the windows in the gusting wind. At the top of the stairs, Benjamin turned.

  “Julien,” he said.

  Julien stopped with one foot on the stair in front of him. He could hardly see Benjamin’s face.

  “Have I been”—Benjamin hesitated—“a jerk? Sometimes, I mean?”

  “Um.” Julien thought Benjamin couldn’t see his face either. He hoped not.

  “I mean I hated it here at first. I thought they … well. I never thought there was anything worth caring about here, and your grandfather … I don’t know, I just wish …” His voice trailed off. Julien had no idea what he was trying to say.

  “I wanted you to know, anyway,” said Benjamin, “I’m staying.”

  “Staying?” Julien repeated stupidly. But Henri. Henri hates you. “I … good. Um. I’m sorry. That I haven’t been much help.”

  Benjamin gave a quiet snort. “Well, I haven’t either, so I guess we’re even.” He stood there for a moment, a step above Julien, hunching his shoulders awkwardly, then stuck out his hand. They shook. The rain lashed against the window.

  “And—” Benjamin started. He paused a long moment, then said abruptly, “You should be grateful. For your family.”

  With that, he turned and disappeared into his room.

  “I’m going to report they stole the book,” said Benjamin. They were walking to school through the mud, their shoes squelching.

  “Are you sure you wanna do that?” Bad move.

  “I want it back, Julien.”

  “What if you waited a little. Just in case.”

  “In case what? In case they come to me and apologize? Why don’t I just apologize to them? I’m sorry I’m from Paris, I’m sorry I’m Jewish, I’m sorry I’m smart. Look, when I was a kid, one day at school they made fun of my yarmulke. And when I came home and told my father, he said it was time to stop wearing it. The next week, he quit wearing his. I’m not doing that anymore, Julien. I’m just not.”

  Julien looked at him. He wasn’t wearing the skullcap now. Benjamin looked him in the eye.

  “Okay,” said Julien, “I can see that. Listen, how about I talk to Papa? I can do it at lunch.”

  “Shoulda thought of that last night,” said Benjamin. “Sure. Fine.”

  They stood by the wall together that morning in the watery sunshine, saying nothing, their faces turned vaguely toward each other in silent companionship. It was the way Julien and Vincent had often stood together in their own schoolyard, at odd moments of recess with nothing to do. Just standing together.

  The bell rang. The class filed into the classroom. And there it was.

  On Benjamin’s side of the desk. Neatly pla
ced and gleaming in the pale light from the window sat a wide, blue and white book entitled Submarines. Not a scratch on its perfect cover. It sat by the inkwell innocently, as if it had been there from the beginning.

  Benjamin slid into his seat without taking his eyes off the book. He slipped it off the desk onto his lap. As Monsieur Matthias began to speak, Benjamin’s fingers were running gently over the pages, as if they might bruise; leafing quietly through the diagrams, the color plates; all clean, untouched. Inside the cover was a scrap of paper. Julien leaned over to look.

  Sorry, it said in messy block capitals. My friends don’t know when to stop. Good book. He glanced back. Roland glanced at him and then away. Julien grinned.

  Benjamin stared at the note for much longer than it took to read it. He pulled it out of the book, folded it neatly in fourths, and put it in his pocket.

  “I’ll collect your essays now,” said Monsieur Matthias.

  They went home for lunch together, walking in step in the sunshine, Benjamin telling Julien about the book. Diagrams of every sub, from the German U-boats to the latest American ones, every part labeled, and the combat strategy—torpedoes, depth charges, evasive maneuvers. Now that sounded cool. They spread it out on the table after lunch and read that chapter until the soccer game.

  The teams played a hard-fought game in bare feet, in a sea of mud. They played like they knew snow was coming and this game might be their last. They tied. Julien scored two goals. When they lined up at the pump to wash the mud off their feet, the rest of the boys coming in for class crowded around them, as excited as if they’d just run the annual footrace from Saint-Agrève to Lamastre, excited as if they’d all won. Julien laughed along with the others and tromped up the stairs in bare feet, carrying his shoes. Life was good.