How Huge the Night (20 page)

He broke free of the houses; the Tanne gleamed in front of him under the splintered moon, cut by the dark curve of the bridge. He froze. He ducked into the shadows and breathed.

There on the bridge was a slender figure leaning on the parapet, looking down at the dark water.

Oh God. Oh Jesus. Now what?

Benjamin turned and took a long, last look at Tanieux. Then he adjusted his backpack, picked up his suitcase, and walked away.

Julien slipped out of the shadows and up to the bridge, his heart beating
help me Jesus help me,
his mind searching for words.
Come home.
And if he said no? Drag him?
Help me Jesus
. He was across the bridge, ten paces behind Benjamin; he broke into a silent run on the grassy verge of the road. He caught up to him. Laid a hand on his arm.

“Benjamin.”

Benjamin whirled, eyes wild in the moonlight. They stared at each other. “Why,” said Julien. “Tell me why.” His voice was angrier than he meant it to be.

“Let me go.”

“No.” He tightened his grip on Benjamin’s arm.

Benjamin tried to pull away. “Julien, let me go. You have no idea. You have no idea what they’re like.”

“The
boches?
” This time his voice came out small.

“The
Nazis
, Julien. Ever heard of them? Yeah, you heard they don’t like Jews—I don’t think
any
of you people understand.” The sweep of his arm took in the school and the sleeping town. “Your parents are great, Julien—offering shelter and all—they really are. But they don’t know.
Yet
.”

But they do. They know.
“Know
what
? What’ll they—do?”

“I’m not waiting around to find out.” His face was white and deadly serious. “Trust me on this, Julien. They are coming here and when they do, it’s better for you if I’m long gone.”
I believe it is very dangerous to be a Jew in Germany. And soon—

Julien stood silent. The night wind touched his face; the hills were shadows on the horizon where they blotted out the stars. Suddenly he felt how large the world was, how huge the night, how small they stood on the road in the light of the waning moon. Ahead, the road bent into the pine woods, and in his mind, Julien saw Benjamin walking away, a small form carrying a suitcase into the darkness under the trees. His fingers bit into Benjamin’s arm.

“I don’t care,” he said savagely. “Where would you
go?
”

Benjamin said nothing; the moonlight quivered in his eyes as they filled with tears. He turned his head away. “I don’t know.” His voice shook.

Julien caught him by the shoulders, gripped him hard. “Well I do,” he said fiercely. “You’re coming home.” He was shaking too.

“No. No.” Benjamin was breathing strangely, too fast. “No.”

“Come on.” He picked up the suitcase. He took Benjamin by the hand. “I know a place we can sit for a minute. No one’ll see. Come on.”

Benjamin came. Slowly at first, but he came. They crossed the bridge, the water murmuring under Benjamin’s ragged breathing, and made for the little chapel. Manu’s chapel, whose door was never locked.

The heavy door closed behind them. It was so dark they might have been blind. Julien felt his way to a stone bench, and they sat. Benjamin’s breathing was slowing. The darkness closed round them, deep and quiet. Safe.

“How on earth did you find me?”

“I woke up,” he said, surprised at the memory.

“I should’ve been quieter.”

“It wasn’t you. It was a nightmare. About Paris.”

Silence.

“I’m glad it didn’t get bombed, Julien.”

Julien sat looking into the dark. “Me too,” he whispered.

Another silence.

“Benjamin. You’ve got to stay. They do know—Pastor Alex came to talk to us—I mean none of us knows the future but they know it’s a risk. They’re—okay with that.”

Benjamin was silent. Julien sat in the dark of Manu’s chapel, the stone bench cold beneath him, groping for what Grandpa would say. “Anyway,” he said slowly, “maybe it was God.”

“That
woke
you?”

“Yeah that
woke
me,” Julien flared. “You think that’s stupid? Going off God knows where in the middle of the night with a
suitcase
is what’s
stupid
. You wanna laugh at me talking about God, go ahead, but
God
put you here because
God
knew what would happen to Paris and it’s
God’s
business whether it’s safe for us or not. You hear me?”

“Your parents think that?”

“They do. I don’t care what you think; I
know
they do. And so does Grandfather, and Pastor and Madame Alexandre, and—they’re not the only ones. And anyway it’s true.”

Silence.

And in it, he felt something move in the darkness around him, felt something open, though he did not know what it was. He only knew that Benjamin’s shoulder slowly began to lean on his, slowly, until finally Julien leaned his weary head against Benjamin’s and closed his eyes. He heard Benjamin’s tiny, quiet whisper in the darkness:
Ribbono Shel Olom.
He took the words in. He did not ask what they meant.

They sat a long time in the ancient chapel, leaning on each other in the dark.

The night was pale above the eastern hills when they left the chapel and walked up through silent streets toward home. The air was cool. Julien felt the knocking emptiness in his head that came from a sleepless night: wide awake and utterly drained.

They crept inside, held the big front door back so that it latched with barely a click. They slipped up the stairs in silence. Nothing stirred. Julien pulled off his pants and crawled into bed,
shivering
. He wanted to sleep till noon. But his parents … Benjamin wouldn’t want him to tell. Maybe he should go get the note. That was his last thought before he slipped into sleep.

Mama’s eyes were red around the edges. She was still holding the note in her hand.

“Because it isn’t safe for
us?
” she said. “He said that?”

Julien nodded. Mama’s eyes welled with tears.

“He’s fifteen,” she whispered. “He’s only fifteen.”

Yeah. Me too.

Papa looked at him across the desk. They were in Papa’s study, in the straight-backed chairs. Papa looked at him without smiling, but Julien felt warmed by the look.

“Papa,” said Julien. “Is he right? That it wouldn’t be safe for
us
?”

Papa looked down at his hand clasping Mama’s hand. He looked up into Julien’s eyes. “Maybe.”

“But”—his eyes swept them both—“that doesn’t make a
difference
, right? He has to stay here, right? That’s what I told him—that you thought that.”

Papa didn’t speak. He was looking at Mama. As if she knew
something 
he didn’t know. Mama looked Julien in the eye and said
nothing
. Just looked.

“Julien,” she said finally, “what do you think?”

He frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Is this a risk we should take?”

He stared at her. “You’re asking me?”

Papa was nodding. Both of them—what were they
saying
—“It’s your risk too, Julien. It’s your life. We can’t decide it for you.”

“We— Wait. What’s the question?” He looked from Papa to Mama and back. “We can’t send him away—after I brought him back—” His eyes were hurt and blazing. “That’s not what you mean! We can’t!”

She put her hand on his shoulder and looked into his eyes. Her eyes were warm. “So,” she said, “you’re willing?”

He looked at her, and he saw his life. He saw hard-eyed men with guns; he saw the other end of those guns, the small dark eye of the barrel. They would come, and they would stay. Fear lay like a lump of iron in his belly, unchanged by the pride in Papa’s eyes, by the warmth and lightness of the morning air; but through the open window he felt joy enter the room like a shout.

He looked back at them, his eyes clear. “Yes.” 

It was their second night in the army camp when Private Lorenzo picked them up.

It had rained all day. Gustav was soaked to the skin; Niko was shivering uncontrollably. The rubbish heap gave no shelter. Gustav crawled out into the dark, looking for something—a tarp, some boards, anything—to cover them with. It was so cold. He was
crawling
on his hands and knees when the flashlight beam found him.

He was marched to the guardhouse, throat tight and heart
hammering
, by a shadow whose face he couldn’t see; only that
blinding
beam of light in his face, the pistol shoved in his back. In the guardhouse, he was shoved up against a wall, looking down the dark barrel of that pistol; he saw the man’s black eyes look him over and hesitate. Saw the pistol lower just a little.

Then Gustav’s stomach growled so loudly that both of them jumped.

Gustav saw the pistol jerk back up, saw the soldier realize what the noise had been, saw the smile that began to fight for possession of his face. And relaxed. He clapped his hands to his belly and said in a stern voice, “Shh!”

And Private Lorenzo of the 19th Infantry Brigade began to grin.

When they went to get Niko, her face was white as snow where Lorenzo’s flashlight shone on it, and gleamed with tears. Gustav told her it was all right—he had a feeling about this guy—but she looked at him with wide and wounded eyes and did not answer.

In the guardhouse, Lorenzo sat them down by the oil stove and began pushing and pulling boxes on the concrete floor, making a row of them under a cluttered table against the wall. Testing the width of the space behind, studying it from all angles. Finally he smiled.

“You’ll sleep there,” he said.

And that was how it started.

They slept under the table during the day, in a nest of blankets Lorenzo brought them. At nightfall, Lorenzo came.

They’d stuck him on night guard duty alone for a month, he said. They’d caught him selling the regiment’s coffee in town, and man, the sarge knew how to stick it to him. Nothing he hated worse than being alone.

But it meant he could hide them.

He came each night with a pot of soup. Apparently the cook owed him one. It was Gustav’s and Niko’s breakfast, lunch, and dinner; they ate and ate. He sat watching them, grinning, reaching over to ruffle Niko’s nonexistent hair. She cringed, and his face fell. After the first couple of nights, he quit touching her entirely.

She ate the soup he gave her and said,
Grazie
. She warmed herself by the oil stove. Then she crawled back under the table.

Gustav sat with Lorenzo and played cards—pinochle and
a la copa,
and poker with candy for counters. They played for hours. Lorenzo told him about pranks or deals he’d pulled, ways he’d fooled the
officers
. Gustav told the story of their journey. Lorenzo’s eyes grew wide, listening. He clapped Gustav on the shoulder. “You’ve seen a bit of life, kid. You’re a man.” Gustav looked down, feeling warm inside.

Lorenzo taught him things. How to slip a bag over a hen’s head so you could steal her quietly. How to get into places you weren’t allowed to be just by acting like you belonged there. How to make sure there were enough guys who owed you one, and you’d be safe anywhere. “I want you two to be safe, kid. I want you to be okay. My month’s gonna be up, and I won’t have anyplace to hide you. I gotta figure some way to get you out without my CO knowing—I’d get the court martial if they knew. But I’ll figure it. When you get out there, you remember what I’ve taught you, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Yeah. You can do it, kid, if anybody can.”

“See, it’s like this, Gustav. We’re movin’ out, the whole brigade. West.”

“To France?”

“Y’see why I couldn’t let ya go? Yeah, to France. Too sharp for your own good.”

“Can we come, Lorenzo?”

“Kid, this is an invasion. You can’t just—”

“But Lorenzo, France is where we are going. Our father said we should—”

“Even if it’s under attack? No, listen, kid. It might work out okay for you—it’s like this. You can’t come with us—they might not even fight, with all the trouble they got up north, but they might and it’s not safe for you—but you just follow us. We drop you at the border, and you come along after us. With your Italian, you could do okay for yourself. Messenger boy at least, maybe even run a little business with the troops just like I do here. They’ll love ya. Heck, maybe we’ll meet up again.” Lorenzo’s grin was a little shaky. He swallowed. “That’d be great. Wouldn’t it?”

“Yeah,” said Gustav, looking up at him. “Yeah. It would.”

Julien and Benjamin stood on the hillcrest under the morning sun, looking north. The mountains were hazy in the distance. The ridge cast a deep, black shadow over the north road, the road to
Saint-Etienne
; it passed out of the shadow and far away, winding between hills in the haze.

“That’s the road they’ll come down,” said Julien.

Benjamin nodded.

That day, there was no news. When they switched on the radio, it played music; the same music over and over.

Mama worked. She washed the baseboards, she scrubbed behind the stove, she weeded the garden; now and then she stopped, looking at nothing with wide eyes. Papa walked around like a man in a dream, pale, spending hours in his study. Julien and Benjamin walked all day down paths they hardly saw, through woods that were a blur of green, saying nothing.

Saturday. Potatoes for breakfast, eaten silently—the only sound the squeaking of Magali’s chair on the floor. Benjamin went upstairs and shut his door. Julien went down into town.