How Huge the Night (9 page)

Sorry, it said in messy block capitals. My friends don’t know when to stop. Good book. He glanced back. Roland glanced at him and then away. Julien grinned.

Benjamin stared at the note for much longer than it took to read it. He pulled it out of the book, folded it neatly in fourths, and put it in his pocket.

“I’ll collect your essays now,” said Monsieur Matthias.

They went home for lunch together, walking in step in the
sunshine
, Benjamin telling Julien about the book. Diagrams of every sub, from the German U-boats to the latest American ones, every part labeled, and the combat strategy—torpedoes, depth charges, evasive maneuvers. Now
that
sounded cool. They spread it out on the table after lunch and read that chapter until the soccer game.

The teams played a hard-fought game in bare feet, in a sea of mud. They played like they knew snow was coming and this game might be their last. They tied. Julien scored two goals. When they lined up at the pump to wash the mud off their feet, the rest of the boys coming in for class crowded around them, as excited as if they’d just run the annual footrace from Saint-Agrève to Lamastre, excited as if they’d all won. Julien laughed along with the others and tromped up the stairs in bare feet, carrying his shoes. Life was good.

As they went out the gate that afternoon, he heard Benjamin’s voice beside him “Hey, Roland.”

Roland stopped by the gatepost, looking at them.

“D’you like submarines?”

“Um, yeah,” said Roland slowly.

“I’ve got this great book about them, if you wanna borrow it.”

Roland’s eyebrows shot up. He hesitated. “I couldn’t do that. It’s brand-new.” Benjamin blinked, and Roland filled him in with a flat voice: “My parents won’t let me borrow stuff I can’t replace.”

Benjamin’s head tilted to one side. “Um. How about homeroom … or during break?” Yeah, Roland who pretended not to know who Foucault was, sitting in homeroom with a bona fide
boche
.

“My brother Louis, he loves this stuff. How about after lunch?”

“Sure. I’ll give it to you after history then?”

“Um, yeah … or you know, we could look at it together. If you’ve got time.”

Benjamin’s eyes lit. Julien blinked. The mud-puddled schoolyard and the hills and pale sky had all taken on a slight spin.

“Sure. Yeah. That’d be great.” Benjamin was beaming.

Roland shook hands solemnly with both of them. Then he turned and set off down the farm track, between puddles full of sky, toward home.

“You should come next time, Julien. They said so. Hey, you’re not gonna believe this. You know his family’s in that, uh, unusual
religious
group? That ‘fellowship’ thing?”

“They are?” The Fellowship was weird but harmless, was what he’d heard. No pastor or leader of any kind, no church building, no short hair or makeup on women, things like that, and all about preparing for Jesus to come back in twenty or thirty years.

“So … he introduces me to his little brother Louis, and the kid goes, ‘Oh. You’re the Jewish guy. Right? Is it true?’ And I say yes, and he grabs my hand and shakes it all over again and says he’s always wanted to meet
one of the Chosen People!
” Benjamin was shouting under his breath. “I have
never
gotten that from a Christian before!”

“Wow,” said Julien, blinking. “Well … cool.”

Louis was a black-haired, bright-eyed, wisecracking kid; he only shook Julien’s hand once, but Julien liked him immediately. The four of them stood by the wall, Roland wearing his quirky smile, Louis wearing Vincent’s own grin, trading jokes and friendly insults with his brother. Benjamin sat down on the wall and spread the book out on his knees, and their eyes lit up; and Julien’s lit with them.

Julien prayed every morning as his grandfather had asked him—his knees on the hardwood floor by his bed—asking God what to do. After a few mornings of asking and getting flat nothing—no words thundered from the sky, no quiet whisper in his soul—he started to feel stupid. It sounded especially dumb as a question: “Lord, what do you want me to do?” Then kneeling there, listening to the silence. “Lord, please tell me what you want me to do” felt more open-ended, like a letter or a telegram that God could answer at his leisure—less like asking someone a question to their face and being ignored. He knew they’d say God was in the room with him and all that, but he just couldn’t see it. Really, it felt more like writing to someone in Russia or America; a letter to a faraway,
incomprehensible
place, a flimsy little message that, for all he knew, might end up at the bottom of the sea.

He prayed about other things too.

It had made the rounds pretty quickly that Benjamin was a
boche
. Probably the only one who didn’t know was Benjamin himself. Nobody talked to him.

Except Roland and Louis. And they’d never tell him.

Julien prayed to God to erase it, to make it never have happened; he prayed much more foolish prayers than Grandpa’s question, but he didn’t care. God could do anything. Just make it go away. And maybe God was listening. It was good to be with the guys, sitting on the wall after lunch together, laughing out loud. It was something he’d never expected.

Julien was sitting at the table with his homework when Papa came home from a meeting about the new school, wiped his shoes on the mat with a jerk, and banged his briefcase on the floor.

“Martin?” said Mama. “Is everything all right?”

Papa took a deep, trembling breath. “No. No, it’s not all right.” He sank down onto the couch and ran his hands through his hair. “I cannot believe that man.”

“What happened?”

“I’ll tell you what happened. We were having a bit of debate on wartime and Alex’s vision for this as a sort of international school, and then Victor Bernard—” He drew in his breath. “Victor Bernard informed the assembly that a family in town is boarding a young man from
Germany
. And asked us all whether,
times being what they are
, it might not be
safer
to look to our own.”

Julien swallowed. “Victor Bernard? Henri Bernard’s father?”

“Yes,” said Papa absently.

“He thinks
Benjamin
is a threat?”

“I don’t understand it, Maria. I don’t.”

“Maybe he was under the impression it was a young
man
—in his twenties or so?”

“That’s what I thought. But he never batted an eye when Alex explained the truth. Oh, Alex gave a magnificent defense, Maria. And then just when he was really getting into it, someone in the back raises his hand and says that if the school’s going to take German students, maybe people should just be told who they are. It sort of knocked the wind out of his sails.” Papa snorted. Mama wore a look of distaste.

“I think,” she said slowly, “that we’ve been insulted.”

“Well, yes, Maria. We have.”

There was a moment of silence. Papa’s mouth quirked. “The funny thing is, that other guy didn’t mean any harm. You could tell. He thought he was proposing a compromise. Alex was just floored.” Papa shook his head. “That’s the one thing he doesn’t understand, really. Stupidity.”

“Speaking of stupidity, I wonder how Bernard got the impression Benjamin is actually German?”

“Well, technically—”

“Technically he spent the first five years of his life there. He doesn’t even
speak
German. They didn’t—take the man’s suggestion, did they?”

Papa sighed, and looked into the fire. “No. They didn’t. Someone changed the subject, and everyone was happy to move on. Nobody’s interested in Bernard’s obsessions. But when we got around to
talking
to old
père
Gautier about renting that old children’s home he owns by the Tanne,
he
said not if we were going to put Germans in it. You should’ve seen Alex. But it’s his building, Maria. Nobody can force him. I saw Monsieur Raissac talking to him after the meeting, and Gautier was just shaking his head
no, no, no
.” He sighed again. “That was going to be our largest dorm, Maria. We can’t do what we’ve got planned anymore—we’ll have to cut the numbers and start with only
sixième
and
cinquième
, and even then …”

“There won’t be enough work for you—”

“We’ll figure it out, Maria. Astier might keep me on.”

Mama shook her head, her brow creased with worry.

“That man … to go and ferret out that information on Benjamin … I will never understand.”

No
, thought Julien, staring down at his book, his heart beating fast.
No,
you never will.
 

Julien lay in his bed, the dark pressing hard against his open eyes, running the words through his mind for the hundredth time.
There won’t be enough work for you
.
We’ll figure it out, Maria.

What have I done?

His father’s job. He’d messed up his father’s job.

And Pastor Alex’s plans; and the next school year for himself and Benjamin, they were supposed to be switching schools next September; and … and his father’s dreams, the light in his eyes when he talked about it … he saw him sitting by the fire, the lines of worry in his forehead. He saw the shining tracks of the tears down Benjamin’s face.
But all I did was say something true!
They were sneering at me!

“God, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” prayed Julien, hands pressed against his face. But underneath were deeper, quieter words
pounding
in time to his heart:
No one. Must ever. Know
.

Herr still had her pack. He’d been carrying it when they ran.

All their money and half their food. One of their blankets; but they had the eiderdown. All her clothes but what she had been wearing.

The first three days were terrible, walking and hiding and
walking
again under pine trees tall and black as fear, looking behind at every sound, not daring to stay on the road. They slept on the ground in the woods; or Gustav slept. Niko lay looking into the dark, trying not to think. Not to remember what Uncle Yakov had said.
Nina, he’s delirious with fever. It’s madness to send two children out into the world alone. Nina, listen to me: there is no safe place for Jews on this earth, nor for women. Everywhere there are evil men.

Everywhere there are evil men.

I know about evil men,
she’d thought.
Here in Vienna
. The Nazis marching in the streets, the men roaring the latest drinking song from the bars, the one with the chorus of “We are hunting Jews.” The boys from Gustav’s school who’d crippled her.

Friedrich had been with them; tall, blond Friedrich, the boy she’d dreamed over for a year when she was fourteen—till he’d turned up in a Hitler Youth uniform, and the dreams had gone. Five or six of them chasing her up the alley—she never knew who threw the rock—but in her mind it was Friedrich laughing his loud, manly laugh as she fell, heavily and wrong, something breaking painfully in her left knee. “You got her!” someone had called, and then feet pounding around her and the pain in her knee exploding into white fire as one of them kicked it hard … and the scream she had heard, not even knowing it was herself, and the voices. “No one’ll care, she’s just a Jew.” “I think it’s broken.” “Maybe we should go …”

She remembered the market basket she’d been carrying, tipped on its side, the eggs spilled and broken, their gold yolks bright against the paving stones. Broken. She remembered the walk home.

So she’d known about evil men.
But not everything,
whispered the shadows.
Not even close
.

She stared into the dark, seeing the rabbi in prison or dead;
seeing
Father still and cold in his bed; seeing Herr roaming the woods in the dark.
Did you know this, Father? About the world you sent me out into? Did you know about the evil men?

Now she knew. She knew, and she would not forget, though she lay awake at night trying. Back to back with Gustav, wrapped tight in Father’s eiderdown, staring into the dark, listening for footsteps. Hearing only Gustav’s breathing and the tiny noises of the forest all around her; the small sounds of the hunted, filling the night.

They walked on the road. It was cold up here in the mountains. Herr had her gloves; Gustav gave her his and put his hands in his pockets. They ran out of food and went to bed hungry, and still Niko did not sleep. The next day, she could hardly walk for
weakness
, but she did; they came to a farmhouse, and Niko hid shivering in the woods while Gustav went in to ask for work and food. He was gone a long time and came back sweaty and grinning, with a bag of bread and cheese and a story about learning to split wood. She ate, and the shivering left her.

They slept in a barn the first night that it rained; they walked on, the food ran out, Gustav stopped and worked again. He told people he was looking for his father, who had left his mother when he was young, and lived in Italy. In what town, people asked. Oh, he didn’t know the name, some city not far from the border, on this road. You must mean Trento. Just keep going, down out of the mountains, you’ll find it. They say there’s work there too.

They made for Trento.

It was cold, and getting colder. Gustav wore socks on his hands. He wouldn’t take his gloves back from her. Her arms ached from walking all day on the crutches; ached and then hardened. But it was so cold. At night they huddled, back to back, wrapped in the eiderdown, shivering. When they found a barn to sleep in, it was warmer, but Niko started full awake at every sound. She got up each morning and kept walking, but her head felt hollow and full of wind, and her heart shivered in her chest, and fear and hunger fought in her belly every time Gustav stopped to ask for work. And everywhere there were evil men.