How Huge the Night (5 page)

A fragile and lovely thread of sound was floating down from upstairs. He stopped. Mama was singing.

Benjamin bumped into him from behind. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Shh.”

“Julien, get—”

“Shut
up
!
”

It was an aria, a bright one, quick golden stairsteps of song. Benjamin stopped as he caught the sound, and in the dim
rainlight
, his face began to soften as he listened. “Wow,” he breathed. “She’s
good.
”

“Yeah.”

Her singing wove a thread of gold through the dingy air as they kicked off their wet boots on the landing. “Come in!” she called. “I have a special
goûter
for you.” She did: three pieces of bread on the kitchen table, a whole third of a bar of chocolate on top of each one. And Mama smiling like sudden sunlight through the rain. Benjamin froze in the doorway.

“Something wrong?” said Mama.

“No,” he said thickly. “I’m fine, Ma—Madame Losier.”

“There’s something for you on the dining-room table, Benjamin. Go see.”

Two thick brown envelopes. Benjamin snatched them and ran for the stairs.

“From his parents,” Mama said. “Postmarked a week apart. It’s a shame how slow the mail is these days.”

Supper was merry that night, somehow; Papa smiled, and Mama sang as she brought the bread to the table; even Benjamin’s face looked more … relaxed. Magali was going on about her new friend at the girls’ school: “Her name’s Rosa, her parents run the
Café du Centre
, you know, the Santoros …” She beamed, and stuffed a whole piece of bread in her mouth.

“Santoro? They’re not French, are they?”

“Fe’s Fpanif,” said Magali. She swallowed. “I mean, she’s Spanish. Or was. She says her father’ll never go back now that what’s-
his-name
won the war.”

“General Franco,” said Papa.

“Yeah. Him.”

“Your mother’s got a new friend too,” said Papa. Mama gave him a smile like Julien hadn’t seen on her in weeks. “Sylvie Alexandre just asked her to join the sewing circle, so if you ever come home and the place is overrun with women, don’t be surprised.”

They ate, and Papa began telling stories. About Charlemagne, whose army loved him because he lived in the field with them on campaign and who liked to swim in the hot springs at Aix-
la-Chapelle
with his knights—sometimes a hundred knights in the water at once. (“I hope they took their armor off!” said Magali.) About Clovis, king of the Franks, whose baptism was the only bath he ever took. And who didn’t exactly turn into Saint Francis. Once his soldiers fought over a huge vase taken in the spoils of war, and one of them settled it by splitting the thing from top to bottom with his sword—and Clovis, when he heard, called the offender
forward
during troop inspection, took his sword, and did, well … the exact same thing.

“And the moral of the story is”—Papa finished up with a twinkle in his eye—“don’t let anyone kid you about the ‘good old days.’”

Even Benjamin laughed.

Julien sat with Benjamin in every class. It was great: a prime,
closeup
view of exactly how much smarter than him Benjamin was. Benjamin would sit drinking in Ricot’s equations, while Julien struggled to keep his eyes open.

“Pierre Rostin, stand
up!
” Julien jerked awake.

Ricot, red faced, was pulling Pierre out of his seat by the ear. “
What
did I just ask you, young man?”

Pierre stood, rubbed his ear, looked slowly around at the class. “Sorry, monsieur. Earwax.”

Ricot’s mouth shut like a trap. “Who proved,” he said slowly and loudly, “that the earth rotates on its axis? And how?”

“Um, Einstein maybe?” Pierre yawned. “Or, uh … Napoleon?”

A snicker ran through the class. Ricot’s ruler hit the desk. He grabbed Pierre by the ear again and marched him down to the blackboard. “You can stay
right there
, Monsieur Rostin, until
somebody
smarter than you has answered my question.”

Julien was wide awake.

Philippe didn’t know; he had to stay standing behind his desk. So did Dominique, and Antoine, and Léon. Jean-Pierre. Gilles. Jérémie. Lucien. Half the class was on their feet. Roland.

Roland would know. He paused, looking at Ricot.

“I’m sorry, monsieur. I’m not prepared to answer your question.”

Ricot sputtered. Julien began to chew his lip; three more guys and he was up. Um. Something about a pendulum …

Benjamin raised his hand.

“It was Foucault,
n’est-ce pas?
He hung a pendulum, sixty-seven meters long. He set it swinging, and its axis swiveled slowly over twenty-four hours. And then he proved that it was really swinging in the same plane all along, but the earth was rotating beneath it.”

“Ah.” Ricot’s voice was actually warm. “Well done, young man.” He gestured at the class. “The rest of you morons can sit down now.”

They sat. Benjamin was smiling. Pierre, Julien saw, was not.

Julien caught up with Roland on the way out of school, crossing the bridge. “You live in town?”

“No. Out that way.” Roland waved behind them at the dirt road that went south. “I’m buying bread.”

“You lived here long?”

Roland gave him a little smile. “Sure. About as long as that
chapel
there.” It stood on their left by the water, a humble little place; four black stone walls and an arched door, a roof of slates with their edges nicked and broken. It looked like it had grown there, out of the bones of the earth, and would still be there when the square concrete school had fallen to dust.

“I didn’t know you were four hundred years old,” Julien said. Roland laughed.

“Who told you how old it is?”

“My grandfather.” Roland’s eyebrows lifted, and Julien named Grandpa by his local name. “
Le père Julien
.”

“He’s your grandfather?” Roland gave his head a shake. “Did I know that?”

“Don’t ask me!”

After a moment’s pause, one corner of Roland’s mouth turned up. “You’re named after him.”

“Mm-hm.”

“You should tell people you’re from here. If they think you’re from Paris, they’ll ignore you. That’s what we do here. That’s what the
estivants
want.”

“Yeah? They don’t
want
to play soccer?”

Roland stuck his hands in his pockets and kicked at a pinecone on the sidewalk. “Hey listen,” he said suddenly, turning to Julien. “Are you good? What position d’you play?”

“Center forward. Yeah,” he said simply, “I’m good.”

“Just watch for when we’re missing a player and jump in, okay? Don’t ask. If you’re that good, Gilles won’t say anything. And Henri’s not gonna take his ball home or something in the middle of a game.”

“Thanks,” Julien said, surprised.

“No problem. We need you. We need
something
.”

“Hey … did you
really
not know the answer to that question?”

“Foucault?” Roland’s quirky smile came back. “Sure I knew. And Jean-Pierre knew. Pierre didn’t, that’s for sure.”

“So why didn’t you answer?” said Julien. “Was it some kind of prank?”

Roland gave him a sidelong look. “I don’t show up my friends for Cocorico, that’s why. So he can call them morons.” He snorted. “Nobody likes that. You should tell your friend.”

“Hm,” Julien grunted. They were at the
boulangerie
; the door opened, and the warm smell of fresh bread wafted out. Roland stuck his hand out to shake goodbye. “Well,” said Julien as they shook, “thanks.”

He walked on up the street behind Benjamin and his book.
I’m
supposed to tell him not to answer questions in class?
He’d laugh. No. If Benjamin felt compelled to make sure nobody liked him, and clearly he did, it was his own problem. Julien couldn’t spend his time worrying about him.

He had better things to do. And now he knew how to do them.

Nina had never been beautiful. A square, sturdy girl with long, frizzy, wavy hair down her back; the sort of girl who looked right in knee socks and a school skirt.
Right
; not beautiful. Even before what they all called
the accident.
Before the twisted leg.

Now, looking in the mirror in the tiny train bathroom, she was glad of that.

She made a believable boy, she thought. She ran her hands through her short, fuzzy cap of hair. With her chest bound, her square shoulders looked stocky, vaguely muscular. Like a sturdy boy who hadn’t lost all his puppy fat, an overgrown twelve-year-old. Gustav’s big younger brother. Great.

“Say hi to Niko,” she whispered to the mirror. “Hi, Niko.”

They were almost there. Villach, by the Italian border. She’d found a map, in the envelope with the tickets, showing the way to the synagogue. Not far from the station. The rabbi’s name.
He’ll help you. I wrote him. He’s helped a lot of people across.

They would have had to cross illegally, anyway. They had no visas. They had no right. Their papers wouldn’t have helped with the big letters JEW on them.
You’ll be safer in Italy. But Nina, if you ever have the chance—if there’s a way—get to France.

Niko heard the hiss of the brakes, felt the train begin to slow. She left the bathroom. Houses were going past the window, streets and alleys, people on bicycles, and behind them the mountains, huge and green. They would cross them. Somehow. The rabbi would know how.

Italiener Strasse, the papers said. Father had marked it on the map.

Italiener Strasse ran south from the station. The air was cold and bright. Father’s eiderdown swung behind her, a tight-wrapped
bedroll
hanging under her pack. South on Italiener Strasse, left at the traffic circle. Five doors down on the right, the synagogue would be painted white; there would be a sign. They should ask for Rabbi Hirsch and say they were youth volunteers to clean the synagogue. That was the password.

The synagogue was not painted white. It was painted green. Big splashes of sickly colored paint thrown at the door. Windows boarded up, and on the boards things scrawled in black. Pigs. Bloodsuckers. You Have Your Reward.

Niko and Gustav looked at each other. A strange feeling spread through Niko’s stomach.

“We have to knock,” said Gustav. “Don’t we?”

“Of course,” said Niko. “Looks like they need us. To clean.” Her mouth was completely dry. She was trying to hear the words in her head, the instructions.
Come on, Father. If you can’t find the Rabbi—if you can’t find the Rabbi—

He’d never said that. He had never said anything like that.

She raised her hand and knocked. Silence. She knocked again. The silence grew longer, louder, huge; the silence was a pit, and she was looking down it.
Father. Father
…

A man was passing by. She had to do it. “Excuse me,” she said in the deepest voice she could. “Do you know where is Rabbi Hirsch?”

The man gave her and Gustav a long look. “I do know. And you’d be well advised to stay away from him. Hirsch has been arrested. I presume you two don’t have any interest in his—activities.”

Niko’s head was spinning. She opened her mouth. Gustav had come up behind her, and she heard his laugh, sudden; a nasty laugh like she’d never heard from him. “Nothing like that,” he said in a hard voice. “He owed our father money. Guess it’s too late now.”

“Yes,” said the man. “I think it is.”

“You were great, Gustav.”

“Nina.” He didn’t sound great. “What are we gonna do?”

“It’s Niko. Please, Gustav. You’ve got to call me Niko.”

“What are we gonna do? Did he tell you anything to do? If—y’know?”

No. This is it, Gustav. We’re on our own
. She swallowed. “Yeah,” she said. “He told me some stuff.”

“What’d he tell you?”

“We’ve got to cross on our own.”

“How d’we do it?”

“He said there’s a fence.” He had said that. He’d said,
Hirsch knows where the gaps are
. “There’re gaps. Places you can get through. After that, you climb through the mountains. Hills. There’s another fence on the other side, and you have to find a way through again. There are lots of ways through. People do it all the time. That’s what he said.”

“Okay. Okay.” His eyes were wide, his lips pressed together,
considering
. “Are there guards or anything?”

“Yeah. Along the fences. We have to be really, really careful. We have to stay off the road and cross at night.”

He nodded slowly. She could see just a spark of light returning to his eyes. “You think we can do it, Nina? Niko, I mean. Niko.” He was looking at her, waiting for the word.

“Yes,” she said without looking at him. “Yes. We can.”

War was not what Julien had expected it to be. That hot night in September when he’d prayed for God to give him something to do, he’d imagined Paris overrun, German soldiers in the streets,
shrapnel
bursting through windows …

But
nothing was happening.

It wasn’t that he wanted it to happen. It just seemed so strange. He had felt so much
older
for a little while: part of a much larger story, a wartime story. But the troops were still sitting along the Maginot Line, and there was nothing he could do about it one way or the other. So he’d found himself back in his own world, his Julien world, where what mattered was school and soccer. Where the enemy was Henri Quatre, and Julien was waiting for his chance.

He watched Monday’s game, poised and ready; nothing. On Tuesday, Lucien fell down and grabbed his ankle—and got up again. He was going to go crazy.