How Huge the Night (15 page)

And the fire burned, and the dark hung over him in the rafters just out of reach, like someone looking at him from the shadows, where he could not see. Gentle as a mother, more commanding than a father, wild as the storm, and wise as Grandpa’s eyes. Warm eyes deep with years, the strength of ancient days. God. Could God be like Grandpa? Someone he could come to—before it came to this—someone to whom he could say,
I need help,
and sit down and tell the truth about himself and—and learn to carve?

Oh God. Will you teach me?

Because he wouldn’t do it right, not next time either. Because the weapons of love were too big for him. “That’s a pretty advanced project,
mon grand
,” he whispered into the silence. The log popped in the fire, and its two halves fell apart from each other, each one dancing, flaming with life against the dark.

Pierre came at dawn with the doctor and Grandpa and a sled. Papa came after to haul him up the hill toward home.

Monsieur and Madame Rostin stood at the door of their little house, its walls muffled deep in snow, so bright in the sun he could barely look. “It’s nothing,” Monsieur Rostin was saying to Papa, who was shaking his hand again and again, not letting go.

Julien lay wrapped in so many blankets he could hardly stir, watching the snow-powdered branches move past against the deep blue sky. He could hear the heavy breathing of Benjamin and Papa pulling, and Pierre pushing from behind. The branches ended; the sky broke free into endless blue; they were almost home. Julien leaned back till he could see Pierre’s cloudy breath and whispered hoarsely through the pain in his throat. “Hey, Pierre. I always
wondered
.” He couldn’t see his face. “What’s it like being a hero?”

He heard an odd noise behind him. “Not too bad,” said Pierre.

From over Mama’s wild crushing hug at the door, Julien caught a glimpse of Pierre before he turned away. He was grinning from ear to ear.

The younger of the dark women was Marita. Strong cheekbones and flashing black eyes. Then there was the old one, whom everyone called Grandmother, and obeyed. Gustav was in awe of her. When they’d first come to get Niko, Grandmother had slung her over her shoulder—“like a sack of potatoes, Nina!”—and carried her to the camp.

It was Grandmother who brought her the dress.

She laid it on the foot of the bed and stood there, fixing Niko with a sharp look from her good eye, and said something extremely commanding in Romany. Then in Italian, which didn’t help. Still, the voice and the dress said it:
You’re all better. Get dressed. Now.

“Gustav,” Niko whispered. “What’s Italian for
pants
?”

“Bit late to fool ’em now.”

“Gustav, I mean it. I’m not wearing that thing.”

Gustav cleared his throat, said something halting in Italian. The old woman snapped out something in Italian or Romany or both about how she’d have no girl wearing pants in her wagon or some such thing and dropped a commanding finger at the dress, and Niko folded her arms and the old woman started shouting. Niko sat up in bed and shouted back in Yiddish. “My father is dead! You hear? He’s dead, and he told me to cut my hair and burn my papers and call myself Niko, and you people may have saved my life, but you’re not my father and you’re not my mother either! I’ve done what my father told me since the day I left home, and
that
saved my life too, so I don’t want to hear what a nice girl does or doesn’t wear,
I want my pants!
” The old woman was looking at her with hard, shocked, angry eyes, and Niko’s eyes blazed back at her. Gustav was staring at Niko, his mouth open, something oddly like joy in his face. The children were staring too. Marita stood in the doorway, her dark eyes bright. Then she was gone.

Marita came back with Niko’s old pants, clean, off the line. Grandmother turned and left. Gustav left too. Marita gave Niko a long look, opened a drawer, and pulled out the long band of cloth Niko had used to wrap around her chest. Clean and folded. Her mouth fell open at the sight.

Marita smiled.

She was well. She was Niko. She walked on her crutches beside the wagons with Gustav, hearing the horses’ harnesses jangle,
breathing
the cold clean air. She sat inside the wagons, rocking with their movement, playing with the children. “What’s this?” she would ask in Italian. “
Cos’ è?
” And Drina and little Mari would laugh and tell her, and she would repeat it and they would laugh again. She shared their mattress at night; Marita was their mother; Marita, with her deep black eyes and her loud laugh, who had showed her how to tie the cloth round her chest twice as tight as before. Marita who had saved her life.

When the wagons stopped, Marita would clap her hands and marshal her children: Gustav and the boys to go fetch firewood, Niko and the girls to chop potatoes, vegetables, anything—meat if they were lucky—into the big soup pot over the fire. And it was by Marita’s campfire they sat when they were done, and warmed their feet and ate their fill. And people came and went around them, dozens of people old and young, sitting on folding chairs and logs and the ground, laughing and talking in Italian and Romany and both, interrupting each other, slapping each other on the back, their laughing faces lit by the fire. And then maybe someone would start singing. And the women would jump up and dance, fast and faster, graceful and wild. Sometimes they almost made Niko want to be a girl.

Julien spent his first week in bed, burning and freezing, his throat raw as meat and almost as bloody. He’d never felt so awful in his life. He tossed and rolled through fever-dreams of white, crawling through snow toward lantern light that receded into the night. Then he was in his room again, Mama bending over him, saying,
Drink this
. Then he was gone again.

Then he was back. He woke, and blinked, and outside his
window
were huge clouds lit brilliant white against the blue of the sky, and he stared and stared at them. He was alive.

He spent his second week in bed getting very bored.

Mama said she was glad his fever had broken but he wasn’t healed yet, and he was going to
stay put
. Benjamin brought him the homework from school and sat on his bed and helped with his math. Grandpa brought up a knife and some wood and started him carving a cat rolled into a ball. He carved, he did homework, he wrote to Vincent. He prayed.

Will you teach me?
he’d said. As if he believed for a moment that God would talk to him, that praying wasn’t like sending a letter at all. Maybe God had been talking to him, in the snow, in the fire, in Pierre’s face; maybe the storm was God’s terrible speech, the warmth of the fire his love. But what was he saying now, in the blue bedspread, the white walls, day after day?

Still, there was something there. He wasn’t eyeing God across the room anymore, like him and Benjamin the day he’d arrived, wondering what they could possibly have to say to each other. Now there was something to talk about.

He read the gospel of Matthew, then Mark. By the time he’d finished, he knew one thing: Jesus was cool. Wore himself out
healing
people and walked on water and wasn’t afraid to say anything to anyone. All that yelling and flipping tables in the temple, and the next week they killed him—was that what they killed him for? Was that loving your enemies? Confronting them and not caring what they did to you? He’d imagined something … nicer. Not that Jesus couldn’t do nice with sick little girls and all. He wondered if just anybody could do the yelling part, or if you had to be the Son of God.

He prayed,
Teach me
, still, like a letter, like renewing his
application
. He prayed for Pierre, that this time they’d actually end up friends, and for Henri, that … that anything. Whatever God had in mind. He didn’t know.

By the third week in bed, Julien had run out of things to talk to God about. He’d finished his cat carving, he’d finished the Gospels, and he wanted out of this stupid bed. He told Mama this. She smiled. “Sounds like you’re going to live.”

Downstairs, Magali and Benjamin had their homework spread out by the fire. “Hello, long-lost brother!” said Magali. “What news?”

“What
news
? My walls are white, and there are four of them.”

“How’s the leg?”

He pulled up his pant cuff and showed the ankle. The network of angry, reddish-purple bruises had died down to faint dark-brown and yellow, fading away under the skin.

“Ew,” said Magali.

“How ’bout you?”

Magali vented a long sigh. “Rosa’s not talking to me. ’Cause according to her I like Lucy better. She could try letting
me
say who I like. You know what she said to me yesterday?”

“I thought she wasn’t talking to you.”

“Hush. She said, ‘Go to—’”

“She
didn’t!
”

“‘
Go to Ireland!
’”

Julien and Benjamin burst out laughing. “It’s not
funny
,” said Magali. “I don’t know what to
do!
”

“Can’t you invite her to hang out with you and Lucy? Can’t you all be friends?”

Magali shot him a look. “Oh, I forgot how much you know. Mister ‘girls are
different
and that’s why you have to help them.’”

“Oh,” he said, his face warm, “shut up.”

Roland came by and stood in the doorway, wiping his boots and looking awkward till Julien offered him a drink of Grandpa’s strawberry
sirop
. They sat at the kitchen table, watching the
reddish
swirls of concentrate dissolve in their glasses, and began to talk. Julien told his story from start to finish; the story of how he’d learned that he could die. Roland was nodding soberly. “Heard your fight’s off.”

“Yeah.”

“Speaking of … all that. I wanted to tell you.” Roland looked out the window. “I feel stupid. About, you know, not hanging out with you in homeroom. It was … stupid.”

Was
stupid. Julien’s heart lifted, just a little.

“Hey,” he said. “Don’t worry about it. Please.”

And Roland smiled his shy, quirky smile.

On the night of the church Easter pageant, Julien stepped out of the house for the first time since his accident and breathed the fresh air deep into his lungs. It had that lightness, that tiny touch of warmth, and flocks of swallows flew round and round overhead, crying, black against the sunset. Spring had come when he wasn’t looking.

“Julien Losier! Julien’s back!” Gilles shook his hand and clapped him on the shoulder, Léon and Antoine wanted to see his leg, and then suddenly Pierre was there, grinning broadly, his eyes alight, shaking his hand with such a powerful grip it was all Julien could do to match it. “Hey, man. Long time. How
are
you?”

Julien laughed. “Fine. It’s so good to be
outside
.”

Inside the church, he sat for once not with his parents but with his—friends. Yes, friends. Roland and his family showed up as they were sitting down—his mother short and plump, his father thin and weathered with Roland’s exact same crooked smile. And Louis, grinning. And they were together again—Roland and Louis and Julien and Benjamin. And Gilles. And Pierre. They sat together and watched the passion play, and Mama came on and sang “
A Toi la Gloire
,” her voice rising pure and lovely as when she’d sung it the night the war began. Benjamin had come just to hear it, and who wouldn’t? Maybe the Thibauds had too. “She’s
good
,” Gilles
whispered
. Pierre nodded. Julien grinned.

They made their way round the refreshments tables; Julien shook hands with half the church and told them he felt better and lifted his pant cuff to show his leg. Monsieur Thibaud shook Benjamin’s hand and said he’d like to have them over for supper sometime, and Benjamin gave him his rare smile. Then the smile dropped as Monsieur Bernard’s low voice cut through a lull in the
conversation
, speaking to Monsieur Moriot: “God loves Germans, God loves Poles, and a good
tanieusard
does too and invites them all to the big Tanieux party. Why keep anyone out? God even loves Hitler!” Henri beside him was nodding, a wry look on his face. Benjamin was looking fixedly at the back of Monsieur Bernard’s collar. Julien grabbed his shoulder and steered him firmly the other way. “D’you see they’ve got real hot chocolate over there?”

“Don’t listen to that guy,” Julien whispered to Benjamin as they got out of earshot. “Like father, like son. They wouldn’t know God if he smacked them in the face.” Benjamin’s scowl split into a
sudden
, helpless grin. “You’re crazy,” he said.

The sun was shining the morning Julien went back to school. The sky was a pale, luminous blue, and the frozen earth in the
schoolyard
was mud again. On the tree were tiny buds, the merest dabs of yellow-green. The muddy yard was full and loud with boys. It was spring.

Julien walked in the gate and hesitated.

“Hey look, guys!” cried Gilles. “Julien Losier’s back!”

The in-group of his class stood under their tree, its budding branches trembling a little in the breeze. He was being beckoned over. Roland was grinning, and Pierre. “Hey! How are ya!” He walked slowly toward them. Benjamin followed.

They greeted him warmly, shook his hand and Benjamin’s; they wanted to know how he was, how was the leg. He showed it to them, the faintest traces of dark yellow under the skin. “Used to be this sort of glowing red and purple. There, and there. When it
happened
, I thought I’d broken it, I swear. It hurt that much. I thought there were bones sticking through the skin.” He laughed. They were all looking at him.