How Huge the Night (22 page)

“They said unoccupied,” said Papa. “They didn’t say free.”

The full terms of the armistice were in the paper the next day. The flag on the
mairie
was flown at half staff.

The Germans would occupy the north and the west coast like they’d said. The line was drawn north of Vichy in the middle of the country. The demarcation line, they were calling it.

The
boches
would decide who could cross it, and what. For now, nothing at all; and no mail.

The government of the unoccupied zone would pay a tax each month—an amount of money Julien couldn’t imagine—to cover the costs of the occupation.

And they were officially forbidden to call it the free zone.

Niko lay under the bench in the army truck, hidden behind footlockers, trembling. The ride up the Valle d’Aosta had been a steep, jolting nightmare—scrabbling for a grip on the bare truck floor, being thrown against the knees of soldiers, suddenly. Men’s
grinning
faces around her in a terrible blur; loud, rough laughter; men’s big hands. Gustav saying,
Niko, it’s all right.
All those eyes. Lorenzo’s voice slicing through the laughter: “Cut it out guys. He’s not all there. You’re scaring him.”

She couldn’t look at him. Lorenzo who had fed her every night for the last three weeks, who’d hidden her—she didn’t know him, didn’t know what he’d have done if he had known. What he would still do.

Gustav loved him. He’d lit up at the sound of his footsteps. She’d lain under the table and heard their loud laughter, and felt a leap and plunge in the pit of her stomach.
Oh Gustav
. He trusted him. At the thought, longing rose up in her—and terror.

Lorenzo came for them at dusk, alone, his lean face serious, and walked them to the road.

“This is it, guys. You’re on your own from here on out.”

“We’ll be all right, Lorenzo,” said Gustav. Niko nodded.

“See that old barn down the road? There?” Its roof stood out black against the fading sky. “It’s empty. Good place to spend the night. Hang around here tomorrow and then cross after dark. Won’t be any guards at that border, not after tomorrow. Maybe go off the road a little ways. They might leave a couple of our guys behind, but they won’t watch real hard. Here, I got blankets for you, it’ll be real cold at night, you wanna get down out of these
mountains
quick—there’s rations in this bag here, a little money too—you take care of yourselves, okay?”

“Yeah, Lorenzo,” said Gustav. He swallowed. “Yeah. We will.”

“Well. Um. Bye then. Always land on your feet.”

“Yeah. Yeah. We will.” Lorenzo put out his hand, and Gustav shook it; he glanced at Niko and made a funny little motion toward her, then stopped. She looked up at him. His eyes were wet. She put out her hand. He took it in his big rough palm and shook. Then turned away. She watched him walk away into the camp, a tall shadow of a man.

She turned toward the road and filled her lungs with the free air.

“He was a good guy, y’know, Nina.”

They were sitting together on the grass between huge, sun-warmed rocks; below them, a valley full of deep blue haze. Mountains all round them. Huge. The highest peak stood snowcapped and
blinding
against the blue sky: the Mont Blanc. France.

“Yeah,” said Niko quietly. “I know.”

“Well”—Gustav was tearing up bits of grass—“You’d’ve known a lot sooner if you’d ever looked him in the eye.”

Anger flared in her. “Oh yeah. I should’ve looked him in the eye and told him the truth so all his friends could find out there’s a teenage girl under the table right in the middle of their army camp.” How could he not know? “Didn’t you learn
anything
from what
happened
on the border?”

“Nina! It didn’t happen! We got away!”

“Oh yeah, someone tried to get me alone in the woods and rape me, but he didn’t quite manage it, so now I should trust every man I meet because I’m invincible. Gustav, I’m gonna tell you this now and you remember it: that was
pure, blind luck.
”

“You trusted your instincts, Nina. You grabbed your chance. Lorenzo says that’s the absolute best way to get away from someone in the woods. Run like h—like mad—until you’re well out of sight and then freeze.”

“
You told Lorenzo?
”

“I told him he tried to rob us. Started acting funny and playing around with his knife. I’m not
stupid
.”

“I panicked, Gustav. I just plain panicked and ran. And then I tripped. That’s not gonna save me next time.”

“There’s not gonna be a next time, Nina.”

She turned on him, grabbed his collar, and hissed into his face: “Yes, there is. And
quit calling me Nina.
” His eyes were big. She let go. “You think I call myself Niko for fun? I just felt like cutting my hair? There’s more like him out there. Everywhere. This is what it means to be a girl in this world, Gustav.”

“It’s
not
, Nina!” Gustav yelled. “It’s not what it means! How can you
think
that!”

“What’s it mean?”

“It means … it means—you’re my sister, it means someday you’ll have a husband and children, I—it … I dunno, Ni—Niko … Niko I mean … aren’t you ever gonna be Nina again?”

The force of her anger left her suddenly. She was staring at him. A husband. Children. It was completely unimaginable. A house. A door. One that locked from the inside. Oh, if she could have a door again! She turned from him violently and threw herself down full length with her wet cheek against the grass, her eyes filling with tears.

“Niko? Are you all right?”

“I’m tired, Gustav. I’m so tired.” She felt a blanket laid over her. One of Lorenzo’s. It was warm.

She woke to a world she had never seen before. She lay on a little grassy ledge above a deep valley ringed with mountains, a bowl filled to the brim with clear air and light. Every blade of grass stood out as sharply as if it had been chiseled; she could see every leaf on every tree. It was the quality of the light. Not bright like midday when colors swim together under the hot sun; this light was dim, but with the absolute clarity of pure crystal. Niko lifted her eyes and cried out with surprise.

“Gustav,” she whispered. “Wake up. Look.”

Towering above them, so close she could almost reach out and touch it, the snowy peak of Mont Blanc had caught rosy fire from the setting sun. They watched in silence, their backs against the sun-warmed rock, while the glow grew stronger, deeper, until even the rocks and trees blushed rose with the mountain. They watched in silence, aware of nothing but the light, as the mountain faded slowly into glowing, icy blue, and the sky grew dark.

“Niko,” Gustav whispered, “I’m sorry.”

She looked at him. She could still see his face in the dim light. “I’m sorry too.”

“I—Niko—What I meant to say …” He fell silent.

“Yeah?” she whispered.

“Well, I’m bigger than I used to be. Aren’t I?”

He was. She had noticed. He was as tall as she was now, thin and wiry. Stronger than he had been. She could not say to him, to his face like this under the vast dark sky, that it was not enough. “Yes. You are.”

“I—Nina—Niko—if I can—I’m not gonna let anybody hurt you.”

She said nothing. Above the mountain, a star had come out, a faint point of light against the deep blue.

“And we’ll find a place where it’s safe. Another house maybe, like in Trento—maybe I can get a job, I’m fourteen now. After a while we could have a place that’s really ours—I mean, I really think we could do it, if we just found a place where people … left us alone. Y’know?”

Niko nodded. “Yeah,” she whispered.

“Niko?” said Gustav after a moment, in a very low voice. “Do you still believe in God?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered. They had whispered the Sh’ma together, and walked out the door into the world. The terrible world.

“I don’t know either,” said Gustav.

There was a long silence. The mountain was barely visible now, a huge blue shadow against the night, under cold stars.

“We’re free now,” she said quietly. “We can go wherever we want.”

“Where do you want to go?”

“France,” she whispered. Her father’s last command. “And down out of these mountains. It’s getting cold.”

Gustav pulled the edge of the blanket toward her, and she took it and wrapped it around both of them. “Well,” he said quietly, “let’s do that, then.”

They crossed into France through the trees, barely a hundred meters from the road, in the cold dark after nightfall. They walked down the mountain for two days. On the third they found a railroad, and a freight train stopped on it, and they climbed into a boxcar. It took them to Lyon.

Things changed. There were things he couldn’t have imagined a few months ago, and they were there, and he got used to them. Listening to Papa read aloud the terms of surrender, Julien had felt a hardness forming in the pit of his stomach, a weight of shame and helpless anger like a twisted lump of lead; he carried it with him through his days and nights; and he got used to it. He was a boy from a conquered country. He was not allowed to write to his cousin or hear if he was alive or dead. His friends’ brothers were prisoners of war.

There was bread again. There was no meat.

There was work. Half-grown squashes and pumpkins hung on the garden wall, and he helped Mama tie them up with rags so their stems wouldn’t break as they grew. Grandpa wanted them on the farm now. They walked between rows of beans or turnips, chopping at the weeds with long-handled hoes. Benjamin wore his oldest pair of dress pants, threads dangling from the cuffs. Things changed. Benjamin sweating, taking Grandpa’s old hat off, and wiping his brow, Benjamin with dirt under his fingernails. And Julien too—digging a pitchfork into a cartload of manure and lifting with all his strength. Their hands blistered, then toughened. Their backs ached. They ate their lunches ravenously.

Potatoes and beans, potatoes and lentils, potatoes and cheese. Carrots and leeks and spinach. Bread with a little precious honey scraped across it. But mostly potatoes. The hunger followed them, a tiredness in their blood; no amount of potatoes could chase it away. Sometimes it hit out in the field, and he dropped his hoe and sat down on the ground. Sometimes he thought of what Mama had said about his grandmother. Then he picked up his hoe and started again.

He dreamed at night of meat. It had been so long. Mama’s
spaghetti
sauce, all that ground beef. A chicken roasted with tarragon, a drumstick and a thigh—he could feel the flesh between his teeth. He needed to stop thinking about this.

Mama said when the ration cards came in, the prices would go down; they’d have meat again on Sundays, and butter. Sometimes sugar. She didn’t mention chocolate.

He remembered chocolate, the dark sweet richness of it, the
buttery
taste of a croissant, the smoothness of cream. They were still so vivid to him. Sometimes he wanted to ask Benjamin if he
remembered
those things too.

But he knew better.

He and Benjamin still walked once or twice a week; Benjamin silent, an inward look in his eyes; Julien looking at his hills. The variegated greens of them, the sunlight resting on them like a
visible
presence, the height of summer’s glory. He pointed out the marjoram and the wild thyme, and Benjamin knelt and gathered them with him without a word. Hard, red blackberries hung on the brambles, beginning to shade toward purple; the yellow
genêt
flowers
lay withered on the ground, and dark seed pods hung in their place, pods which in the fall would twist and burst open to their silver-white lining and scatter their seeds. Then it would all wither, and pass into the long, terrible winter of the hills.

And the hills would remain.

On the fourteenth of July, a quiet gathering was held in the
place du centre
—no flags, no fireworks, just the mayor playing a recording of Marshal Pétain’s words about the armistice. People stood in the
place
, farmers with their worn cloth caps in their hands, listening to the marshal praise the fallen who had fought so valiantly against overwhelming odds and saved their nation’s honor. It was like
listening
to Grandpa—the gentle, dignified voice saying things that made sense in the depth of your heart. “You have suffered. You will suffer still. Many of you have lost your homes, your work. Your life will be hard. I refuse to tell you comforting lies. I hate all the lies that have done you such harm.

“The land does not lie. She is still your help in need. She is the homeland itself. A field left fallow is a piece of France dying. A meadow new plowed is a piece of France reborn.” Old,
weather-beaten
men of the land stood with tears in their eyes. Julien too. He could see it, the view from the crest of the hills—the wheat fields in the sun, the green of pasture, Grandpa’s endless rows bearing food for his children and grandchildren.
That’s France: these hills, this land, these roots. That’ll never die
. He felt like saluting.

Papa sent him into town for the day’s bread and the paper. Julien walked home slowly, reading as he went. He read the paper every day now. A couple of weeks before, the headline had been British Fire on French Fleet! and Betrayal at Mers-el-Kébir. Apparently most of the French Navy had been at anchor in North Africa and the admiral had gotten an ultimatum from the Brits: give them the fleet or they’d fire. They’d kept their word too. Papa said they must have figured the Nazis would seize the ships for themselves. The marshal said nothing could justify such an act. Julien agreed with the marshal.