How Huge the Night (32 page)

Julien felt his heart lifting. “Are those the weapons of love?”

Grandpa’s eyes lit up. “Yes, Julien. Yes. I think you could say they are.” His face sobered a little, and he looked out the window at the gathering dark. “Some, at least. Some of them.”

“Hey Henri,” said Julien, headed out the school gate. “Can I talk to you?”

“About what?” Henri’s voice was flat.

“Well. I … wanted to say—”

“Hey Lucien!” Henri called. “You walking with me?”

Lucien came up. “Sure. Is
he
walking with us?”

“I just wanted to say something, Henri. I won’t bother you after that.”

“Great,” said Henri. “Say what you wanna say and we can get going.”

Julien looked at Henri, whom God wanted back. “I’ve said some stupid, jerky stuff to you since school started, Henri. And I’m sorry.”

Henri recovered very quickly from his double take. “What do you want from me, Julien Losier?”

“I still think that law stinks. That one I showed you in the paper. And the flag salute stinks too. But they’re not your fault, and I’m sorry I waved the paper in your face like that, and I want to thank you for coming to me last week to talk about that thing because—because that was the honorable way to do it. And I’d like to talk to you about it some more. If that’s okay.”

Henri was looking at him. Just looking. Julien looked back. “Could I come over?” Julien said. “Maybe Sunday?”

Henri’s eyes flicked to Lucien, and he shrugged. “Nothing better to do on a Sunday. Sure.”

“Thanks,” said Julien. 

Oh God, please forgive us. Me and Henri. Undo what we have done.

He could feel it now. It was so strange, after all this time, not to feel like he was sending a telegram at all, but more like—like
holding
hands under a table might feel, or the touch of sunlight on your face when your eyes were closed. Something you were totally aware of but couldn’t see.

God, will you show me what’s good in Henri?

Still no answer came. He would have to look, he supposed. This was show, not tell.

But today, okay, God? Please?

Today was the day.

“So their father thought it was so dangerous to be Jews that they should leave the country with no adults, no papers, and apparently no money. And you believe that?”

“Yes,” said Julien.

“It’s insane. No father is that stupid.”

Julien sat in the Bernards’ kitchen, facing Henri across a pine table. Pale light came through the window; the house was empty except for them, dim and quiet. He lifted his cup of fake coffee to his lips to hide the fact that he had nothing to say. That he had come to talk terms of surrender. That he was scared.

“So they told your mother this ridiculous story, and she believed them, and then they told her the girl is sick?”

Julien put down the coffee and leaned forward. “They didn’t ‘tell’ us the girl was sick. She couldn’t stand up. I had to bring her up the street in a wheelbarrow, she was burning up with fever, any fool could have seen she was sick.” He tried to stop. “Except,
apparently
, your father.”

Henri’s eyes went very cold. “If you and your parents and that sanctimonious pastor want to get taken in by every pickpocket and street performer that comes along, that is no concern of my father’s,” he said. “When my father saw that girl, she was dressed as a boy and standing on her own two feet.”

“You mean on her crutches.” Julien closed his eyes for a moment. Then said in a quieter voice, “Your father probably mentioned that.”

“No,” said Henri. “He didn’t.”

Julien looked into his eyes; they looked back, pale and
unreadable
. “Her leg is twisted. My mother examined her and bathed her. I think it would be hard to fake that.”

“Hm.”

“Ma—someone’s taking care of her round the clock. I visited her the other week—she looked awful. Her arms are this big around. She looked like she was dying.”

Henri was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Are they at your house?”

Julien’s head jerked up. “No.” His eyes burned.
He doesn’t deserve to be forgiven
. “You can come to my house and search it,” he said bitterly.

Henri shook his head quickly. “No. I believe you.” He took a sip of coffee. “But listen, Julien, if she’s really that sick, I don’t see what you’re so worried about. We’re only talking about informing the authorities so that this can be dealt with in the proper way. Whatever they decide is most appropriate. If they decide to send them to a refugee camp, they won’t make the girl travel while she’s dangerously ill. They’ll wait till she’s recovered.”

Julien stared. He trusted them.
If you were in Paris, would you give them to the Nazis? If you were in … in the
désert
…
would you just hand over the Protestants to the king?

“Henri, where did your family come from?”

Henri blinked. “From the Rhône Valley, right near Vienne. Village called Saint-Rémy. During the persecution under Louis the Fourteenth.”

“
Le désert
?”

“How d’you know what it’s called?”

“I’m from here, Henri. My father grew up here, he moved to Paris, he moved back. My grandfather’s told me the stories.”

Henri looked at him.

“Henri, this is what I wanted to tell you. Persecution is
persecution
. It was Protestants then, and now it’s gonna be Jews. I see it coming. I know government jobs aren’t that big a deal, but that’s how it starts. Isn’t it? In Paris, they’ve started breaking the
windows
of Jewish shops. Not
boches
—French people. And then the Marchandeau Law—the papers were already blaming the defeat on Jews before that. Didn’t they say stuff like that about Protestants too? That they weakened the nation by being different?” Henri was looking away. “Now that—”

“You can’t,” Henri interrupted in a low voice, “make a
comparison
between Marshal Pétain and Louis the Fourteenth.”

“I guess I wouldn’t compare him to the marshal. I’d compare him to Hitler.”

“What’s Hitler got to do with it?”

“Well—”
Can’t you see?
“We were defeated. I mean, they
let
us set up the Vichy government. The marshal has to give them what they want, because what’s to stop them taking the rest of the country?”

Henri’s eyes were hard. “You can harp on ‘Marshal Pétain is a Nazi puppet’ till kingdom come, Julien Losier, if that amuses you. I’m not going to listen.”

The doorknob rattled. Julien’s heart leapt to his throat, and he half turned, scraping his chair loudly on the floor. Henri lifted his lip.

The door opened. Victor Bernard had come home.

“Hello, boys. Talking politics? Well,” said Monsieur Bernard, “I’m sure he hasn’t got you promising to stop saluting our flag.” And he beamed at his son. Henri gave him a look Julien had never seen in his eyes before; the melting of the ice at last, the clear dance of water in the sun.
So that’s what he looks like when he smiles.

“Um,” said Julien. “So. I should probably go.”

“Here. Take this to your parents from us.” Henri’s father pulled a bottle of cider out of the cupboard, smiling, and put it into Julien’s hand. Julien had to look at him then, meet the eyes of Victor Bernard, whom God loved, who had tried to send Gustav and Nina away. He took the bottle.

“Thanks,” he said, his voice odd in his clogged throat, and he shook Monsieur Bernard’s hand. Then Henri’s. Then he walked out the door into the dark day.

It had happened all wrong. When his mother asked, he growled, “At least we got a bottle of cider out of it.” The falling of her face hurt him so badly he turned away without a word, went to his room, and slammed the door.

On Monday morning, Henri Quatre was in his place, saluting the flag.

Nina slept, and woke, and slept again. Dark figures moved through her dreams. Fräulein Pinatel sat her up in bed and fed her soup, fed her milk, fed her spoonfuls of fishy oil; she lay down and slept again. In the morning, when the sun came in her window, Marita was there, rubbing her back and singing softly in Italian. She spoke to her sometimes. She said her name was Maria not Marita. She said it would be all right, she was safe now, God loved her.

Gustav was here now. She’d woken so many times, and he’d been gone. They’d said he was away working or that he’d be here soon. And he had come and gone again. But now he was here whenever she called for him. He sat by her bed and fed her soup and said she would be all right. He didn’t say anything about God. He talked about Father, and the good times, the way he used to swing them round and round in the living room when they were little, and the little white cat he’d brought home one day that he’d found in the rain. And the songs he used to sing while he was working. Gustav sang them to her: “I Had a Little Overcoat” and “Tum Balalaika” or “My Resting Place” if she was sad. But mostly she wasn’t. She woke more often now. There seemed to be more light.

“How long have I been sick, Gustav?”

“I don’t know, Nina. But I know how long you’ll be better.”

“How long?”

“A long, long time. All your life!”

She smiled weakly. She remembered lying on her quilt in the Lyon train station, letting herself go, the peace of it. And that peach, like the taste of sunlight. “Will I be happy?” she murmured.

“Yes, Nina. You’ll be happy as … happy as …” He grinned his old Gustav grin. “As a hog in slop!”

“A
hog
, Gustav?” She laughed out loud. It felt good.

And she lay, and felt deep inside herself, and found that maybe she could do it. If it was true, if she could trust them, if the
nightmare
was ending finally. For Gustav, for herself, for a chance again at the sweetness of life. For the taste of sunlight, on a morning without fear.

She could live.

On Friday, there was another headline, a black banner of shame across the top of the paper. Julien’s heart leapt at the sight. “Collaboration!” it read. Above a photo of Hitler and Pétain
shaking
hands.

Oh Lord
, he thought.
You’ve had mercy.

They’d had a meeting—Hitler and Pétain—at a place called Montoire, in a train car, and it was official. Collaboration. It was nothing new, nothing he hadn’t known already. Yes, it was awful, yes it made him angry, but there it was in black and white, a picture of two men shaking hands, it could never be erased. Henri would have to see it now.

Henri hadn’t told his father yet. Mama’d heard nothing. He had come to school all week, saluted the flag, looked past Julien—and said nothing to his father …

Julien walked down to school beside Benjamin, hope beating in his heart.

Henri wasn’t there. Julien stood by the wall with his friends, who were buzzing about the news, and he watched the flag circle gather and the flag rise, and Henri was not there. Maybe he was sick. Or maybe …
oh Lord, tell me it’s true.
Henri slipped in through the gate just before the bell. Julien looked at him, wild with hope.

Henri looked back with hatred in his eyes.

Julien drew back, and went into class and copied the Pythagorean triples from the board. All that day, whenever Julien looked at him, Henri turned his face away.

He prayed that night, and he prayed the next morning. He prayed for Nina and Benjamin and Gustav, and Vincent and his family, and Pierre. And for Henri.

He could still feel it. The sunlight on his face, though the sky was drowned in cloud.

On Monday, the schoolyard was in absolute chaos. By the
flagpole
, Monsieur Ricot called shrilly, but no one listened. No one but Gaston and Lucien. The rest of the school was gathered by the wall around a stocky figure with a loud, familiar laugh.

Pierre.

Pierre, even bigger than before, and deeply tanned; Pierre,
grinning
at the
petits sixièmes
’ wide-eyed admiration, eating it up. Pierre spotted him. “Hey, Julien, long time!”

“No kidding!” When they reached each other and shook hands, Pierre grinned and added under his breath, “I met your friend. He’s pretty cool.”

There was so much to hear, so much to tell. So much that was going to have to be told in private … the bell rang before they were halfway started, and Pierre went on talking as they filed into class. “So what’s with that flag thing? What was Ricot hollering about?”

Lucien answered. “It’s this new thing Marshal Pétain instituted—we’re renewing a spirit of patriotism in France. You want to join us tomorrow?”

“Wait. Who’s this marshal guy?”

Wow. He
had
been gone a long time.

“
You
know. He won the Battle of Verdun. He became head of government after the defeat. Head of Free France. He’s given
everybody
new hope—”

“He’s not the guy in the picture who’s shaking hands with Hitler, is he?”

“Um …”

Julien almost laughed out loud. Pierre was the best.

“And he’s supposed to be this
war hero?
”

“Pierre Rostin,” said Monsieur Matthias, “
sit down.
”

On Tuesday Henri was there again, saluting the flag, but Julien stopped and stared across the schoolyard at him. Henri’s hand was not raised stiffly in the air like the others’.

It was over his heart.

There was a letter. A flimsy, preprinted postcard, and on it Uncle Gino’s handwriting: