How Huge the Night (29 page)

Julien picked up his pace, but Roland pulled at the back of his shirt. “Don’t listen to him.”

“Yeah,” said Gilles. “He’s just a sore loser. Always was.”

Henri talking about
everything that’s happening
. Henri talking like he’d outgrown soccer when the truth was the guys had outgrown
him
. Broken free of him. He thought of saying these things to his face; words that had no answer, fighting words. But he wasn’t going to fight Henri. He could see his father’s face.

Yet for some reason he thought of it again that night, as he walked down the lonely north road with Gustav; Gustav, who could only go to see his sister after dark.

It would have been such a good life for Gustav if only Nina were better. If she could have lived with him in that lovely green valley and woken to see what he saw. He looked through his window at the dew on the long grass in the rising sun, and joy sprang up in him like a flame.

The Rostins fed him all he could eat and wouldn’t let him lift a finger. He tried to tell them, in his broken French and Italian and German, that he
wanted
to work, that if he couldn’t go see Nina today, he had to muck out the goat barn or go crazy. They let him peel chestnuts, do dishes, but if he tried to go outside, Madame Rostin stood at the door, shaking her head determinedly, as if wolves were out there waiting for him.

The third night, Julien took him to see Nina.

She was in a white, clean bed in a tiny room with a book-strewn desk, her crutches propped in a corner. She smiled at the sound of his voice but did not raise her head. He sat and held her hand and told her about Madame Rostin and her frown, and the way she heaped his plate high and said, “Good? Good?” And how Monsieur Rostin had clapped him on the shoulder, his craggy face
beaming
, and shouted “
Tu vas voir Nina
” as if he were deaf. Nina smiled weakly at him, but did not speak.

“It’s normal,” Fräulein Pinatel told him. “She’s come somewhere safe, and her body has let down its defenses. She will seem even sicker to you now, but she needs this time to heal.”

He wasn’t sure.

Three nights later, Julien brought him up again. She was worse. The doctor had come. She had diarrhea, and they were afraid she was losing too much of what she ate. There was medicine—Gustav swallowed hard at the thought of the price—and Fräulein told him fiercely that
he
certainly wasn’t going to pay for it. Nina was delirious, sweating and breathing quickly. She didn’t seem to recognize him.

“I wish you could have seen her yesterday,” said Fräulein Pinatel. “She was lucid. She kept asking for you. I wish you could come more often.”

He suffered through an endless four days before Julien came again. He
made
them let him work; he hit the table and shouted, “
Je veux travail!
”

Monsieur Rostin gave him a shrug and a wry half smile, and said, “
Bon, si tu veux alors
.”

He filled his days as full as he could, picking apples, mucking out the goats, digging parsnips. If he tired himself out, he couldn’t lie awake at night, wondering.

She was better. She knew him, and sat up in bed and asked why he didn’t come more often. He didn’t know what to say. He told her to eat, and take her medicine, and that when she got better she could come live on the farm with him. She promised. “I won’t be much use on a farm though, Gustav,” she said.

“Yes, you will. You can weed. And cook.”

“You know I can’t cook!” She laughed. She actually laughed!

Fräulein Pinatel said she was glad he’d seen her on a good day.

The next three days he worked with a will—even scrubbed Madame Rostin’s kitchen while she was away at market. Soon, his mind sang, soon; soon she would get up and walk, and he’d work so well Monsieur Rostin would be able to plant more next year, and he’d earn their keep for both of them. They’d live here in the valley, and learn French, and …

Saturday night, he was walking light when he started down the starlit road with Julien. Tonight he would bring Julien up to see her too.

“
Viens, viens
, Julien,” said Gustav. “
Bitte
.”

Julien hesitated. He always stayed down in the bookstore doing homework. He’d figured she wanted to see her brother, not him. But there was no mistaking
viens
, or Gustav’s eager beckoning. He followed him up the narrow stairs.

Mademoiselle Pinatel, her face strained, said low words to Gustav, and Gustav answered. To Julien she said, “I just want you to know that she’s not like this every day.”

He was led into a little narrow room with a bed, and there lay Nina, the girl he had brought to safety and help; motionless, her eyes closed, one stick-thin arm on the cover. Short dark hair hung shiny with sweat around her sunken face. Gustav went to his knees.

“Nina,” he said. “Nina.”

For a moment, there was no response. Then the eyes opened, slowly, and looked into nothing. Julien had never seen such tired eyes, not even the first time he’d seen her: flat, lightless, shallow pools that no wind stirred. Gustav was speaking urgent Yiddish. Julien heard his name. Nina’s eyes settled for a moment on her brother’s face, then fell back again into their weariness.

Gustav half turned for a moment, then jerked back; but Julien had seen the tears that trembled in his eyes.

He backed out of the room and shut the door.

In the morning, Julien prayed for Nina, as desperately, as urgently as he had prayed only once. The night before Paris fell. He could not think what it would be like to watch your sister die.

He got up. He had to get away. Somewhere where no one could see him. It was dawn. He’d be back by church time. He slipped downstairs.

He took the road up the hill out of town, but as he got near the hill’s crest he stopped, shaking his head. The sight he knew he would see—the green lovely sweep of the hills, and in the
foreground
an apple orchard laden with fruit and an old stone
farmhouse
, in which lived a man who had tried to send a young girl to her death. He turned left abruptly, off the road.

The river was calling to him, the clearness of its flowing water, as if it could wash clean the matted tangle of his mind. He ran down the closest alley and out from between the houses; he stumbled and slid down the steep slope and was suddenly alone, shielded from eyes. He could breathe.

The Tanne flowed past him. The hills were green in the sun. Down on his left around the broad bend of the river, he could see his school, its low black wall, the flash of its flag in the wind. He had stood by that wall only a year ago and raged against life because he couldn’t get in on the soccer games. And his country had been at war then, but he’d never believed it. Play war, toy soldiers sitting on a border somewhere, nobody he knew. Not his aunt and uncle and best-friend cousin in a fallen city, watched in the streets by German soldiers, forbidden to write to him. Not defeat. Not hunger, and waiting.

So many things he had not believed.
She’s not safe yet
, his mother had told him.
If she is sent to a camp, she will die
. He hadn’t wanted to believe it. He’d stayed downstairs in the bookstore and pictured Nina up there in her bedroom, sitting up, a little better every day. Someone he had helped. Who’d be okay now. He’d wanted to protect her, yes, he’d done everything he could—he had been careful, walking Gustav into town—but he hadn’t believed it. Not until he’d seen.

His mind clawed at the terrible tangle of what he had learned these past two months. Defeat was nothing to this, potatoes for breakfast were nothing; you could get used to them. But to see your own people doing such things—Henri with his arm upraised in a proud and hateful salute, the stationmaster standing tall in his uniform and smart
képi
. Benjamin’s face white with fear, Nina’s bone-thin arm and her eyes with the light gone from them.

There were some things no one could get used to.

He thrust his hands into his pockets and watched the water, clear and simple, running forever past.

He hated them.

It was wrong. It was wrong to hate. He could hear Pastor Alex’s ringing voice in the church:
without fear, without pride, and without hate.

But God, he tried to send Nina away! And you want me not to hate him?

He clawed up a stone from beside his feet and threw it, with all the strength in his body, down at the river. It fell short in the grass, and bounced, and was caught in the weeds on the bank.

He pressed his hands hard against his face to hide his tears from the sky.

On Tuesday afternoon, Papa came home with the newspaper and spread out on the table the news Julien should have known was coming.

A new law from Vichy. Front page, big headline, no apology: “Jews Barred from Positions of Trust.” They could not hold government jobs. They couldn’t be army officers. No Jewish teachers, no Jewish CEOs, no Jewish journalists; it was the law. Papa looked up from the paper, ran his fingers through his hair, and told Julien what the Germans had decreed for the occupied zone.

The Jews had to have JEW stamped on their
cartes d’identité
, just like in Germany. They had to have yellow signs in the windows of their shops that said “Jewish shop” in French and German. And … and there were rumors that young men wearing blue shirts and calling themselves fascists were going around Paris, smashing those windows.
French
young men.

Their own people.

“Why?” said Julien, the anger rising in his throat. “Why are they doing this to us?”

“Who’s doing it to us?” said his father bitterly. “Looks like we don’t need any more help. Looks like we’re doing it to ourselves.”

The next morning, kneeling on the wood floor beside his bed, Julien prayed again for Nina; and for Benjamin, who had seen the headline and said nothing, had gone pale and left the room. He prayed for Gustav, for Vincent and his family, for Benjamin’s parents, and for Pierre still up in the hills somewhere. He
remembered
how he’d prayed for Pierre when they were enemies. There he stopped. He saw blue-shirted men throwing bricks through
windows
, men with Henri’s scornful eyes. And the heavy knot of anger in his stomach uncoiled itself, and rose up, and blossomed into rage.

Before he left for school, he slipped the newspaper into his
cartable.

The paper passed from hand to hand in the little group by the wall. The flag circle stood around their flagpole, Ricot and seven boys, their arms pointed stiff and brittle toward the sky.

“Someone’s got some explaining to do,” said Louis through his teeth.

“Yeah,” said Dominique.

“Yeah,” said Philippe.

“Yeah,” said Julien. He set his face toward the flagpole. “Let’s go.”

There were ten of them to Henri’s seven. They met the flag salute just as it was breaking up. Henri stepped out to meet them, and Julien looked him in the eye.

“We have some questions,” he said. “We thought maybe you could answer them.”

Henri stood with his feet planted. “Sure.”

Julien brandished the paper. “We’d like to know what you call
this
.”

“The news.”

“We want to know what you call it when your government starts persecuting an entire race. We want to know if you call
that
the honor of France.”

“It’s your government,” said Henri, his eyes scornful. “You seem to be forgetting where you’re from. And since when is it persecution to refuse somebody a government job?”

“Would you call it persecution,” said Julien, leaning forward and looking Henri straight in the eye, “if they started refusing
government
jobs to all the
Protestants
?”

It was like delivering a hard blow to the jaw and watching your opponent stagger. Henri Quatre, king of France, with everyone looking on, took a step back, opened his mouth, and closed it again. Said nothing.

“This isn’t the honor of France,” said Julien. “This is
shame
. I am
ashamed
that my people are doing this. Kissing up to murderers.
Imitating
them.”

Henri’s eyes narrowed. He stepped forward again. Julien’s blood beat in his temples,
I can take him, I can
…

“You say that again about the marshal,” Henri snarled. “You say that again, and I’ll—” Henri’s hand was balled in a fist. Shaking.

Julien teetered on the edge of freedom, the edge of danger.
That’s
right, Henri, hit me.
The flag snapped above them in the wind. He felt light. Invincible. “Say what?” he said quietly. “That the marshal is kissing up to the Nazis?”

Suddenly Gaston was between him and Henri, and Roland had Julien by the arm. Gaston was blustering. “You idiot, Julien Losier! Don’t listen to him, Henri. He’s doesn’t know a thing about the marshal, don’t you know that?” Henri shot Gaston an unfriendly look.

“Julien,” said Roland quietly, “you might wanna watch out.” He gestured with his chin toward the
préau
, where Ricot stood
watching
them.

“Why didn’t you fight him?” said Benjamin vehemently.

Julien turned on him. “Why didn’t
you
fight him?” he snarled. “You should talk. You don’t even have the guts to visit Nina!” Benjamin’s face turned white. He bit out three words in Yiddish, stepped into his room, and slammed the door in Julien’s face.

Julien brought Gustav into town that night, answering his
broken
French in monosyllables. He stayed downstairs with his math.

Thursday morning, Julien woke up late, to rain streaming down his window and a knock on his door.