by Heather Munn
Like not trying to rescue a guy from the police.
I put my hands up to my face and started shaking. It was a terrible, terrible thing to think. I shouldn’t have tried to save him. I should have stood and watched like everyone else.
But it was true.
I sat there with the heels of my hands against my eyes and I thought: You can’t save everyone. I can’t save everyone. Even Paquerette. She had to choose. She’s always had to choose.
Is that the knowledge that is poison?
Is this what it took, to make me know what I didn’t want to know? Is this what it took?
After a while I stopped shaking. You have to stop sometime. I couldn’t change this by crying, or biting myself. I couldn’t change it at all. I opened my eyes and I looked at the little sunbeams that came through the cracks in my shutters. They were beautiful. Light was beautiful. I wondered if God could ever forgive me.
And even if he did, could I ever go on?
I don’t deserve it, God. But please. Please.
Please save Paquerette.
After a while I realized I was hungry. Very hungry. I got up, got dressed. I opened my shutters, and then I went downstairs.
WHEN I opened the door I found two people sitting at the kitchen table over cups of tea, their heads bent together, silent; frozen, looking at me.
My mother and Nina.
I turned and walked back out.
I heard their voices behind me as I ran up the stairs. I got to my room and closed the door. After a minute, down the hall, I heard the clicking of crutches.
I’d asked God to punish me. Was this it?
I said she could come in. She didn’t. She stood leaning on her crutches in the doorway, her wavy hair hanging down around her shoulders, looking at me. After a moment she spoke. “Magali, I am sorry that I made a threat to you. That day, when you saw my work.”
I just looked at her.
“I was afraid. Also I did not know you. I had seen you only here—I had not seen, you know. Your work. Jakob and Sarah told me.”
I opened my mouth, slowly. “Told you what?” I said, trying not to let my voice crack.
“How you helped them to get home. You divided them for safety. You did very well.”
I was dizzy. I was standing on the edge of a deep pit, clinging blindly to some handhold in the dark. She didn’t know. Jakob hadn’t told her, he hadn’t realized— That meant—
My heart leapt and for a moment I was tallying the people who knew—the pastor, my parents, Lucy—wondering if I could keep this secret. Keep this secret too. The taste of bile rose in my throat. “No,” I rasped. “I didn’t.”
“Magali, you must accept. Paquerette did right, to save the baby. It was not your fault you were suspected.”
“No,” I said, forcing the word out. “No. It was, Nina. Sarah and Jakob didn’t see.”
It was awful, the truth dawning in her eyes.
I shut my eyes. “I pulled that fire alarm,” I whispered.
When I opened my eyes her face was like stone. Motionless, all expression gone. Looking at me.
“I was trying to save him,” I said, and tears ran down my face. “The man they were arresting, I thought I could save him!” My voice was a cracked scream.
She stood still a moment longer. Then she shut the door behind her, went to my desk, and sat down. The slanted morning sun lay on the desk and the chair, on her shoulder and her motionless face. Looking at me. I tried to hide the trembling of my hands. I couldn’t bear the silence.
“You were right,” I whispered, and the tears started to flow again. “I’m too young for this, I’m stupid.”
Nina said nothing. She turned and looked out the window, didn’t move. Then she frowned, suddenly, and turned to me. “Why do you tell me this?”
I shook my head.
“You do not like me. No. Do not pretend. We both know.”
“I heard you,” I said, my voice coming out strange. “That time you told Paquerette I was immature. I came into l’Espoir and I heard you up the stairs.”
“And you think now that this is true?”
I nodded.
“And so this is why you do not like me,” she said slowly, watching her finger trace a pattern on her crutch handle. “This I can understand. Why you tell me today the truth, that I cannot understand.”
Neither could I. Nor why she hadn’t blasted me yet, like I’d deserved ever since the day I’d smiled at a gorgeous Nazi in Montélimar station. “I’m tired of lying,” I blurted.
She turned to the window, and her face changed again. She blinked a couple of times, fast. She took a breath, and then she turned sharply to face me. “Listen,” she said. “I will tell you something.”
I listened.
“When I left my country I followed a plan my father made. He made me promise before he died, to dress as a boy and to do all he said. But the plan failed. We came to the border with Italy, and we found that the man who was to help us was arrested. We are alone, Gustav is afraid. I must decide. I decide to lie to Gustav. I say there is a second plan, I know what to do. We will cross alone. Then”—she took a breath—“a man offers to help us cross.” She looked down, away from me, at her finger tracing patterns on her crutch. Her voice was low. “This man looked like my father. I thought that we would have help, that it would be all right. We went with him into the woods, alone. He carried me. Then when we were alone and far away from everyone, he tried to make it that I would be alone with him. I understood then that I had made a very bad mistake. Because I understood …” She swallowed. “I understood while he carried me that he did not believe I was a boy. He knew I was a girl. You see?”
She looked at me. Her eyes didn’t waver from mine for a good three or four seconds. I thought I saw. I was afraid of what I saw.
“We ran from him. We escaped. He could not find us, in the dark, when we stopped moving and sat quiet. But—”
“You were all right? You made it?” My heart had leapt up like a bird. I’d thought for a minute I was listening to a very different kind of story.
“Yes. We made it. What do you think, Magali? Was I all right?”
I looked at her, and didn’t speak.
“We left my bag with him. It had all our money. We walked into Italy with nothing, knowing that there were such people in the world.”
I looked into her bitter green eyes, and saw, for a moment, that walk. Ignorance isn’t strength. But knowing you’re powerless, that is terrible.
Nina took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. She looked out the bright window again. “So. You see.”
“Is that why you told Paquerette you used to be like me?”
“I said that?” After a moment she nodded. “Yes. I suppose that is why.”
We sat a few seconds in silence. “What will you do now?” she said finally.
“I don’t know.”
She nodded.
“So,” I said after a moment. “Do you still take your threat back?”
“Yes,” she said. “You will not tell now.”
WE WENT downstairs together, and Mama gave us food. Bread and tea. We sat at the table in the late morning sun, eating, not saying much. There was a strange peace. Exhaustion, and the bitter taste of knowledge, and a gladness that didn’t sweeten it, and that didn’t go away.
It was better than nothing.
Nina was beginning to get up when we heard the footsteps in the stairwell, someone taking the stone steps two at a time. I stood up so fast I almost knocked my chair over. My heart was racing wildly as Rosa burst in.
“Marek’s missing,” she gasped. “They need you, Magali.”
HE’D BEEN gone since before breakfast. Hours. They’d found his coat still hanging up, or they wouldn’t have thought anything. He wasn’t anywhere in the house. The river was really high, and they were worried. “And they thought you might know where he’d go, Magali—can you come?”
“Of course I can come.” I was already pulling
on my coat. It was muddy and raw out there, the wet, naked time between winter and spring. It had rained all day yesterday. Nina was asking Rosa who else was searching. Saying she’d go for Gustav, that he was out at the Gaillards’ farm west of town. I tied my bootlaces and stood up. Rosa was still catching her breath. “Magali … do you think he’d … do something, you know, stupid?”
“Yes,” I said, and started down the stone steps two at a time.
In the hallway below, I heard men’s voices. I slowed. At the end of the dark hallway my father stood holding the door open, talking. I heard my name and froze.
“Best not to tell her. She’s in a state …” His voice faltered. “Alex, she’s so young.”
“Courage, Martin. I still believe God will deliver. Remember, it’s only the police. I would rather Vichy do its worst to me than hand me over to the Germans.”
My heart pounded, I felt the blood beat in my ears. I heard my father’s voice, very low, saying “We have no guarantees.” And then, “I can only imagine what they’ll think when she refuses to talk.”
I couldn’t move. The door was closing. I heard Rosa’s feet on the stairs above me. My father came toward me down the dark hallway, stopped, and peered.
“Magali?”
I forced my voice out of my throat. “Marek’s missing. They want me to help search.”
“I could …” His voice wavered again. “Magali, are you …”
“I have to hurry,” I said in a voice that didn’t even seem to belong to me. “Bye, Papa.”
“Magali—”
But I was gone down the hall. I heard Rosa’s voice as the door slammed shut, but I didn’t care what they said to each other. I ran.
Chapter 18
To Take His Prey
THE SKY was bright, and the wind was high, and there were mud puddles everywhere. I ran down through town, feeling my broken boots crack further under the strain. Best not to tell her—rather Vichy do its worst—when she refuses to talk— I stopped for a moment, and turned. I’d go back—make him tell me—
No, Magali. Marek. Do what you have to do!
I ran.
When I came to the bridge at the edge of town I stopped to catch my breath. What I saw didn’t help me calm down any. The river ran so high and fast that brown-and-white water beat against the bridge less than three meters below where people were walking.
The river—they’re worried—
I started running again.
I had a painful stitch in my side when I walked in to les Chênes. Claudine gave me a bise and asked me about the places where Marek went. The stream, of course, and behind the shed. Papa Thiély had checked the stream. Claudine wanted me to check it again, just in case he got the wrong place. Sure, I told her, my heart sinking. They’d called me here for that? They were that desperate?
This isn’t good.
The stream was swollen. Muddy water swirled over the roots of the pines. There were no tracks. I called “MAREK! MAREK!” The rushing of the water half drowned my voice.
All right. Upstream? Or downstream?
Downstream.
I started walking.
The footing was bad. I slipped and felt the mud getting into my cracked boots, caking between the leather and the canvas lining and wetting my socks. I walked like someone in a bad dream: I would rather Vichy do its worst … We have no guarantees …
Shut up and do what you have to do.
No. Do what you can do.
I called Marek’s name. I called it till it sounded stupid, two meaningless syllables. I reached the river, turned, and followed it downstream. When she refuses to talk. When she refuses to talk. I started to run again, clumsily, in my mud-caked boots. I called.
They’re interrogating her.
The wind blew cold against my face, and on my right the river raged, mud-brown water piling up into high white billows over rocks and fallen logs. They’re interrogating her. I reached up a hand and slapped my own face, hard. Magali, focus. Marek could be in danger.
The river was so high now, it would be over my head. And flowing with such force you’d get swept out of sight before you could scream, get your head cracked open against a rock somewhere …
I walked, and called Marek’s name.
I came around a bend and found the place where God had spoken to me. Months ago. Bare oaks, and tall grass flattened by the snow, colorless. And Marek was lost, and Paquerette was—
A big log lay lengthwise in the river, water surging around it, snagged on to the bank by just one dead root, shaking in the current. Any moment it would be swept down the river with awful force. I shuddered. If he’s in there, Magali, he’s dead.
“MAREK!” I screamed. I slipped in the mud and fell on my knees. I wasn’t going to find him, and Paquerette wouldn’t come back, and I was alone on the cold earth. God might have spoken to me once, but the dead grass and the naked trees were as empty of him as Rivesaltes. I didn’t deserve anything from him. They’re interrogating her. Oh God, please—
I got up. I kept on going.
It was around the next bend that I heard it. Like a faraway scream.
I started to run.
Again and again I slipped and fell. Slick, heavy mud caked on my boots, my hands. My heart was pounding and my breath was short. I heard it again. Definitely a scream now. Not fear, but a human voice stretched to its loudest above the roaring river. I ran faster.
The third time, I heard the word help. The voice was clearer now. It wasn’t Marek.
It kind of sounded like Nina.
There’s a bridge where the west road crosses the river, an ancient stone bridge. Lower than the one on the edge of town, but built really solid: there’s two-and-a-half meters of stone from the parapet down to the round arch the water flows under. The road bends sharply before and after, so you don’t see it till you’re almost on it, a stone bridge standing alone among the trees.
I came round the bend and there was Nina, standing on that bridge and screaming.
Directly beneath her, a tangle of trash was jammed against the opening of the stone arch—a small tree trunk, fouled branches and dead leaves and torn cloth. And clinging to it, white-faced, up to his armpits in the raging water, was a boy in a red sweater.
Marek.
It was one of those moments that are gone in a flash and that you remember forever—Marek below, pale face and red sweater, fighting the river; Nina above, standing on stone, her huge eyes taking in who’d answered her call. The disappointment in them. To be honest.
I didn’t blame her for a second. You can’t mess around when there’s a kid about to drown. She’d been hoping for someone stronger. But what she’d got was me.
I stood looking at the bridge, the branches, Marek. We need a rope. We didn’t have a rope.
Marek had one arm through the mess of branches and round the tree trunk—if you could even call it that, no thicker than my leg—and the other hand gripping a branch. He was tilted back as if his legs were being swept from under him, his body shaking with the violence of the current. My belly was tight with fear. Think. We couldn’t pull him up from above. No rope. And we probably weren’t strong enough anyway, and if we dropped him— I scrambled down the bank, grabbing at roots.
“We have to try from the side,” I called. “Here.”
The water swirled around my feet. Marek turned his pale face to me, his dark eyes staring. He was still two or three meters away, even from this angle. I wanted a rope so much.
“No,” said Nina, scrambling down the bank, not taking her eyes off him. “No, you must run to find help. If we do it wrong—”
I looked at her. We were a long way from any farm. Fear bloomed up in my mind, slow and terrible. I was seeing that log, shaking in the current, barely clinging to the bank. “Nina, there’s a log upstream going to get swept down here any minute. A big one. Barely hanging on.” I was shaking now. Oh please.
I saw her throat move, swallowing. She looked at the river. Foaming bro
wn water slamming against the bridge pilings with the force of a charging bull, as deadly as anything either of us had ever faced.
“My crutches,” she said slowly. She turned sharply to me. “We will use my crutch like a rope. I will go in, you will stay here and hold the crutch for me.”
One arm holding the crutch—the other reaching out for Marek—no. “You’ll need both arms.” I took off my belt and looped it through the top of her crutch. It was metal, bolted, solid. It would hold. “Put that around your waist.”
She nodded. She took the belt from me. My heart stopped. I grabbed her hand. “No. I’ll go in. I’ll go.”
She pulled her hand out of mine and fastened the buckle. “I could not hold you. You are stronger, you are heavier. Think.” She tightened the belt a notch.
“Nina, are you sure you want to do this?”
“Yes.” She looked at the river, then at me, her eyes gauging the distance.
I looked around. I needed something to anchor to or I might as well push Nina in the river and then jump in myself and get it over with. The stones of the ancient bridge were too smooth and well-fitted. I tried one of the tree roots. My hands were slick with mud. I crouched to wash them off. I could feel Marek’s terrified eyes on me, hurry! But to hurry now, that would be like pulling the fire alarm. It looks like the right thing. If you’re stupid enough to think you can’t fail.
I used to be that stupid. But I wasn’t, now.
I wedged the second crutch solidly behind two roots. I pulled on it as hard as I could and it held. I heard cloth ripping and then Nina knelt by me, lashing the crutch securely to the roots with strips from her skirt, making triple knots.
I washed my hands. She tied back her long hair. She beckoned to me and tied my hand and wrist to the crutch I’d braced. Then she tied my other hand to the lifeline crutch that she wore. She adjusted the belt. We looked at each other. At the water. I took a breath. “Ready?”