How Huge the Night (21 page)

The headlines were posted on a board outside the
Tabac-Presse.
It should change its name to just
Presse
: news, that was all there was to be had now. News no one wanted and everyone got. German Army Enters Paris, said the headline. Yesterday. A swastika flag flying from the Arc de Triomphe. People stood around the board, looking at it. Nobody spoke.

Back at home, Julien walked in circles in the living room—
where are they, where are they now
—until Mama took pity and made him weed. He knelt on the damp earth, pulling savagely at dandelions, leaving broken roots in the ground. Papa came out the back door and said quickly, “BBC says they’re moving south. Almost to Orléans by now.” The door slammed behind him. Mama stood, her face white, a spot of mud on her cheek. She went in the house without saying a word.

Sunday, he sat in church not hearing Pastor Alex, thinking: from Paris they got almost to Orléans in what, a day? So maybe eighty kilometers. From Orléans to here, maybe three or four hundred kilometers.

Four or five days.

They turned the radio on that night. Triumphant music poured out, and then a voice. A new voice, calm and self-assured; no trace of a German accent, just a touch of smugness, as it told them serenely that the Germans were moving south with unstoppable force. They had reached Dijon today, the voice said.

“They wouldn’t lie about that,” said Papa. “People would know.” He ran a hand through his hair.

Dijon. Julien revised his calculation.

Three days.

Julien stood at the hillcrest and looked up at the north road and shut his eyes. It would be dust on the horizon first, a small cloud; then larger; then perhaps, tiny in the distance, the low-slung crawling silhouettes of tanks. In two days. The Germans. The
conquerors
.
You don’t know what they’re like.

That night, the walls crowded in as they cleared their plates from the table. The triumph music cut the silence like a knife. A special announcement, said the voice. Marshal Pétain, revered by all Frenchmen for his heroism in the Great War, would speak to the nation. Marshal Pétain, who in 1916 had won the Battle of Verdun.

The Germans were in Verdun. They’d been there for two days.

A new voice spoke in measured tones, full of force and dignity: the marshal. “Today I have taken over as head of government,” he said. “I am offering to France the gift of my person. It is with a heavy heart that I am telling you today that we must stop fighting. I have spoken to our enemy tonight to ask if he will seek with us, as one soldier to another, after a valiant fight and with all honor, the means to ceasing this conflict.”

They looked at each other. “Papa,” said Magali, “are we
surrendering
?”

Papa swallowed, ran his hand through his hair, and swallowed again, nodding slowly. “Yes, Lili,” he whispered. He switched off the radio. The crackle of the static died into silence. They sat looking at each other. It was over.

It had been over long ago.

“Julien.” Papa’s voice was very quiet. “Will you read tonight?”

He nodded. Mama handed him the Bible.

“‘God is our refuge and strength,’” he read. “‘A very present help in trouble. Therefore we shall not fear …’” He felt dizzy. The words were falling into the silence like the notes of a bell, like tiny stones thrown into a very deep well. He dared not sound, at this moment on the edge of time, as if he doubted them. “‘Though the earth may change, and the mountains slip into the heart of the sea. Though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains quake at its swelling pride.’” He didn’t need to doubt anything. This was no promise that all he had known wouldn’t drown in the tide.

“‘There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy dwelling of the Most High. God is in the midst of her, she will not fall. God will help her when morning dawns.’”
She will not fall. The city of God—won’t fall
. “‘Nations are in an uproar. Kingdoms fall.’” Faraway, long-ago Sunday school kingdoms, names ending in ite, he’d thought. “‘The Lord of hosts is with us … He breaks the bow, and shatters the spear … Be still, and know that I am God … The God of Jacob is with us.’”

He closed the Bible. No one spoke.

“Papa,” said Julien, not quite looking at his father. “What’s it like? Being … occupied?”

His father looked at his hands. “I don’t know, Julien,” he said quietly. “I suppose you could ask your mother.”

Wednesday morning, Julien went out alone, early. It was the third day. At the hill’s crest, he took the north road; he climbed the ridge, slipping on brown pine needles, scrambling over rocks, wet green needles lashing his face with dew. He sat on a rock at the north end; from there he could see far off to where the road vanished on the broken horizon, to where the soldiers would come.

He sat and kept watch as morning faded slowly into day. He ate the potato and cheese he had brought, his eyes fixed on that distance. He sat till the sun was low over the western hills, the pine shadows lengthening eastward. Then he stood.

They hadn’t come.

He almost wished they’d hurry.

“You’re not going to the Santoros’s today,” Mama told Magali.

“But Mama!”

“I want you in the house with me till they get here. Till we know what we’re dealing with.”

“Mama, I’m not scared!”

Mama’s hand flashed out and her fingers dug into Magali’s shoulder and shook her. “Then you’re a fool,” she grated. Julien stared.

“Say yes.”

“Um. Yes, Mama.” Magali’s eyes were wide.

Mama turned away and walked into Papa’s study and shut the door behind her. They heard voices. They looked at each other, and found nothing to say.

Magali stayed inside. Benjamin stayed inside. Julien went to the rock on the ridge again, telling no one where he was going; his eyes on the green horizon, an ache in his throat. He would run down the hill, calling out that they were coming. And what would that change?

On the news, the smooth-voiced announcer said not a word about where the
boche
army was; spoke of things returning to normal, of how impressed the Parisians were by the discipline and honor of the German soldiers. Of how movie theaters and dance halls were opening again. Papa switched the radio off.

Then Friday night, worse. The terms of surrender, the voice said with pleasure, were being presented to the French generals right now in the very town, in the very same railroad car—brought out of its museum by Monsieur Hitler, specially—where Germany had signed its surrender in the Great War. In that very place now, Monsieur Hitler would accept the surrender of France. Julien’s eyes burned.

He lay in bed that night a long time, twisting the covers in his fists, hating. Hating him so much.

On the ridge the next day, Julien squatted on the rock, and the clouds flowed by, great hulks and mounds of white, their
underbellies
a dark and lowering gray. The horizon was erased, a long bar of gray with no beginning and no end: the north, from which the conquerors would come. The wind twisted the clouds and blew Julien’s hair into his eyes; it chased the tears in strange, cracked patterns across his face. Hot tears of shame and bitter fury. He had simply never thought, in his wildest and most terrible dreams; he had never thought of this. He hugged his knees to his chest and laid his face on them and wept, and shook with his weeping.

It began to rain.

He lifted his face to the dark wild sky, and let the rain fall.

His heart felt hollow and oddly clean when he came home. Mama fussed over his wet clothes and made him take a bath. Supper was potatoes and beans. It tasted so good.

Papa turned on the radio. Julien shut his eyes.

Monsieur Hitler had accepted the surrender of France today, the voice said; the armistice had been signed. The full terms would be published soon. They included, among other provisions, German occupation and control of the north of the country and the western coast, but left the south as an unoccupied zone.

It took him several seconds, but finally he understood the voice had really said it.

Unoccupied zone.

Benjamin was on his feet, his mouth open, blinking with tears in his eyes. Papa was gripping Mama’s hand. Mama was crying. Julien was breathing hard,
they’re not coming, they’re not coming!
He stood, his eyes wide open, and suddenly he laughed.

“Mama?” said Magali. “Can I go to Rosa’s tomorrow?”

“Hey, Julien!” Gilles called across the
place du centre
. “Julien Losier! How’s life?”

Julien laughed. What a question. It was Sunday morning, and the sky was blue, and men were clustering around the
Tabac-Presse
to read the headlines about the armistice. “Fine,” he shouted.
Everything is fine, just fine, except, you know, little stuff like Hitler personally stomping all over our nation’s flag … But we’ll never set eyes on him, never see a German with a gun here in the place, they’re not coming!

“How’re
you?
” he asked Gilles, returning his ironic smile.

“Hey, we’re alive, right? That’s a lot better than it could be. Did you know they’re in Saint-Etienne looting the munitions factories right now?”

“They said the south—if they think Saint-E isn’t the
south
—”

“My father says they’ll leave when it’s official, they’re just taking what they can till then.
Sales boches
. Did you hear about André?”

“André Rostin? Is he okay?”

“Yeah—he’s alive and all. It’s just they’re keeping him. The Rostins heard somewhere they’re gonna keep all the guys they caught—in prison camps, making bombs for them or whatever. You should see his mom this morning—all in black. Pierre says it’s awful at their place. He says she wishes it was him instead. I think he’s thinking of running off.”

“Running off? Would he really?”

Gilles shrugged. “If anybody would—”

A shout came from the crowd around the
Tabac-Presse
. “He’s a hero,” someone was shouting. “He’s a true Frenchman, and he’s saved our honor—and he won the Battle of Verdun,
Verdun
mind you, and that’s a lot more than a lot of those politicians can say. Those pansies that ran south with their tails between their legs as soon as things got hot in Paris.” The men around him chorused agreement. “Give me a military man any day. He knows what honor is.”

Dr. Reynaud said impatiently, “Of course he won Verdun and he knows what honor is. Whether he’s qualified to run a country is a completely different question. All I asked was what happened to our government. The one we
elected
.”

They were all over him. “You say another word against our marshal—” “He’s the honor of France! He’s our
savior
!
” “Elections at a time like this?”

“Yeah,” muttered Gilles. “Honestly. ‘Hey the
boches
are
overrunning
the country, would you all please show up to the
mairie
to vote?’”

“He got them to stop before they got here!” said Julien. “What more does he want?”

Dr. Reynaud pushed past them, his brows drawn down in fury.

“Aren’t you ashamed?” someone threw after him. He turned and said crisply, “The day I am ashamed of asking a simple question, Monsieur Moriot, will be a dark day indeed.”

Julien watched him walk away across the
place
, his back very straight.

But the bells began to ring, and he and Gilles took off running for the church service.

Pastor Alex, as he walked up to the pulpit, looked very serious.

He spoke of humiliation and repentance. The head of their denomination had called for a collective repentance and humbling for all the things that had brought their nation where it was today. “But we must know,” he said, “when not to humble ourselves. When humbling ourselves would be disobedience to God. Let us not humble our faith, not before anyone but our God.”

He spoke of the “totalitarian doctrine of violence,” known to the world as fascism. It had gained prestige in the world in these days, Pastor Alex said, because it had, from a human perspective, wonderfully succeeded. Julien bowed his head; he understood that.
They conquered us.

“To humble ourselves before such a doctrine, friends, is not the humility of faith. I am convinced that this doctrine is akin to the Beast in Revelation. It is of the spirit of Antichrist.

“Let us gather around Jesus Christ,” the pastor said, “our living Head; and let us draw our thoughts and our words and our actions from his gospel, and only from his gospel. Ungodly and terrible pressures will be imposed on us in the days to come, on us and on our families; this ideology will demand our submission. Our duty as Christians is to resist the violence imposed on our consciences, resist it by the weapons of the Spirit.”

The weapons of the Spirit,
Julien thought. Pastor Alex had said that before. But what violence was he talking about, what pressures?

To love and to forgive our enemies is our duty, said Pastor Alex, but we will do it without cowardice. We will not give in to them. We will resist when our enemies demand from us obedience that is contrary to the gospel. Something in Julien leapt up, a sharp sweet pang, at the word
resist
. “We will do it,” said Pastor Alex, “without fear, without pride, and without hate.”

Fear and pride and hate. Julien’s eyes stung. Who in the
world
was without fear and pride and hate? And did he mean— What did he mean?

Well, he meant the
boches
of course, the Nazis—they would impose, he was saying, they would demand …

Papa looked at him as they walked out together into the sunlight. “I’m afraid he’s right, Julien,” he said quietly. Julien looked up.