Defy the Night

by Heather Munn

  “You were telling me not to come near, I could see that. It made me afraid for you.”

  My throat hurt, just thinking of her there on the bridge, so close, in fear. “I couldn’t stand for you to be in danger again. I didn’t want you to … to try …”

  She took my hand and squeezed it. She said nothing. There were tears in her eyes too.

  “Magali,” she said after a moment. “What exactly did the soldier say to you?”

  I told her. I told her what he’d done too, and then what we had done. I told her about the log, because I couldn’t bear for her to think I’d been a fool again so soon. Her eyes watched mine, her face very serious. She made a noise deep in her throat. “You did save his life, then.”

  I looked down.

  “You and Nina did well, Magali.” She looked away from me, a troubled look. “Yes,” she said more softly. “You did well.”

  “It doesn’t matter, though,” I said bitterly.

  She turned a sharp glance on me. “It does matter, Magali. Everything true matters.”

  But the bad matters more.

  “Magali, do you know what you did wrong, in the train station?”

  I swallowed.

  “I’m sorry to ask you this, but I think it’s important that you understand what happened.”

  “I did something stupid. And I had a baby in my arms.”

  “You are choosing exactly the wrong word, Magali. You’re not a stupid young woman. I think you know that.”

  I just looked at her.

  “You are in fact very intelligent. Quick-thinking, calm in an emergency, resourceful, capable, decisive. Far, far more decisive than anyone ever should be at the age of sixteen. No, what you did wasn’t stupid. It was clever. Who knows? It might have worked.”

  I stared.

  “In the hands of an adult responsible only for herself, who had counted the cost and was willing to pay, it might have been heroic, Magali. But not in your hands. You got that right. You had something else in your hands.”

  I nodded. “Trina,” I whispered.

  “And that makes me suspect you also hadn’t counted the cost.”

  I shook my head.

  “You thought it would work?”

  “Yes,” I whispered hoarsely. “I never thought about …” I couldn’t finish.

  She nodded. “Listen, I think I need to tell you, because I think you don’t understand. What you did was prideful.”

  No. I didn’t understand.

  “It was pride that made you think it would work, Magali. Made you act without thinking, as if you had no doubts. Those things I said about you, you know those things about yourself. You’ve been proud of those abilities. Ever since I’ve known you you’ve wanted to be a hero. I tried to tell you over and over that this is not a hero’s business, that getting the children safely to Tanieux is the only priority. I thought you understood.”

  “I’m sorry, Paquerette,” I whispered. I could feel the tears coming on again.

  “Magali.” Her voice was gentler now. “I’ve forgiven you. I’m not saying this to hurt you. I’m saying this to help you learn. Because—look at me.” She turned my face gently upward. “I still respect you, Magali, and I believe that you can learn.”

  I started to cry for real.

  “I saw the worst and the best of you in that train station. The worst, you know. But do you know why I could step forward and take the rap for you the way I did? Do you know why, with five kids in my charge, I was able to do that?”

  I could hardly see her through my tears.

  “Because I knew you’d get them home. I didn’t have any doubts at all.”

  WHAT CAN I say? I went home. I cried some more. She’d forgiven me. She’d been wonderful. She was a saint.

  Nothing could change what I’d done.

  I went down to les Chênes to see Marek. He was in bed with bronchitis, but okay. He was sitting up in bed with a book, his hair all messy, his face scratched up by branches he’d hit in the river. He brightened when he saw me. I remembered his hard, untrusting eyes when I’d met him in the camp. I remembered him writhing in the grip of two policemen. I remembered so many things.

  He opened his mouth and coughed—long, rough coughs. He lay back for a moment, then whispered, “I told him my name was Jean-Marc. Like you said.”

  I swallowed. “Yeah. That was right.”

  There was silence for a moment.

  “Ma’m’selle Magali?”

  “Mm-hm?”

  “Will I always live here?”

  “I …” I looked at him, his bright black eyes. “I don’t know, Marek.” He had nowhere to go, his parents were dead. Who knew if even his aunt would live? I shivered. “I don’t know.” His eyes were getting larger, darker. I wanted to throw my arms around him. Instead I gripped a fold of his blanket, hard, and searched for words. Don’t ever lie to him, Magali. “We want you to be safe,” I said, looking at him. “We’re going to try to keep you safe, wherever you live. We’re going to do everything we can.”

  He looked back at me. “Okay,” he said.

  I HELPED the Squirrels wash sheets and make beds. I went home. I went with my parents to church the next morning. I sat not hearing the sermon, thinking about Rivesaltes—the dust, and the tramontane blowing, and the kids waiting, waiting for someone who would never come.

  Mama asked me at lunch why I wasn’t eating. I started eating.

  After a while I asked her if I could walk out to the farm that afternoon. She said yes.

  The new green was coming out in the pastures. I could see it from the hilltop, just the first hint of it, nudging itself between last year’s brown grass. Half of Grandpa’s land was plowed, the furrows dark and fresh. I could see the horses were in the barn, the ones he hires from Jean-Luc, and the plow stood clean and ready for tomorrow. Today he’d be resting.

  He seemed to know what I’d come for. He put the kettle on, and we sat at his scarred kitchen table, and he didn’t say anything. After a while I started to talk.

  I told him everything. Almost.

  I told him the things I’d thought and felt, back before everything happened. About women, and strength, and people like Nina. I told him what I’d overheard Nina say, how angry I’d been. I told him she was right—that I’d thought I was in control.

  Then I gathered my courage and told him about the gorgeous Nazi. He listened soberly, and told me my fear of him was a wise instinct, and I should listen to such instincts. I couldn’t believe he was so calm about it. He said he supposed I had never tried such a strategy since.

  I said no.

  I told him about Rosa going on a trip instead of me, how angry I’d been. How angry she’d been. I told him about hearing God by the river, although it didn’t go into words very well. He nodded, though.

  I didn’t tell him about Nina, of course. Except that I was wrong about her.

  The whole time I talked, it was like this: like untangling a snarl of twine, like the moment it starts to work. You’ve found the thread, you’re not yanking knots tighter anymore, just following the tangle and easing it out, slow and smooth. None of it was confusing anymore. Now that I wasn’t trying to twist it into some shape I liked. I was ashamed. But there was something clean about it, too. Looking the truth in the face.

  And then I did it. I told him why Paquerette got arrested.

  He listened very intently. His weathered face looked sadder and sadder as I spoke.

  I came to the end of the string, and it hung in the air, tied to nothing. The unshakable, intolerable fact of what I’d done. I stopped talking, and sat looking at him. Hoping.

  He sat silent too.

  “Grandpa?” I said finally, my voice tight in my throat. “What do I do?”

  “Do?” he said.

  “I … I can’t change it, I know. But I can’t live with myself either. I know it’s forgiven. But … but they talk like that makes it like it never happened, and it doesn’t. It doesn’t at all.”

>   “You want it to have never happened?”

  I looked at him.

  “Child,” he said, and the way he said it, it didn’t sound like an insult. He said it almost in a groan. Like he felt sorrier for me than anyone he’d ever known. “It’s so hard,” he said. “It’s so hard to be a human being. And to learn it now. At your age.”

  His eyes were dark with pain, looking into mine.

  “Magali,” he said, “I’m sorry. I don’t have anything to say that will comfort you.” He glanced away. “I feel like you came for supper and all I have to give you is hard bread.”

  I thought of Rivesaltes. “People eat hard bread,” I said. “It’s still bread.”

  Grandpa nodded, and sighed.

  “There’s only one thing you can do, Magali. And that’s go on. No one turns back time. Not even God. You’re not alone. You’re only young. But I tell you true, when you get to my age, there’s no one, not a one, who doesn’t have one thing they’d cut off their hand not to have done. You lie awake at night and think about it. But it’s done. The past doesn’t change. You can pray that God makes good out of it. I believe he can. But even that … even that you may never know.”

  It was like a hollow space slowly opening up inside me. A space like a piece of ground covered, enclosed, that would never feel the rain again; bitter and dry.

  “But it’s true that God forgives us. Even if we can’t undo. We go on, and God still loves us.” He looked at me. “Paquerette still loves you, yes?”

  I nodded. She did, and I knew it.

  It hurt me, to be loved like that.

  “We’ve got to live with what we are, Magali. The bad as well as the good. I’m sorry. That’s all I can give you.”

  He gave me tea. We sat in silence a long time.

  Then I walked home.

  I WENT to Paquerette that night. Somehow I understood that I could. I went, and let her love me as I am. Sitting by the fire with Rosa, talking about the children’s health. I went again the next night, after working at les Chênes. I told her I would miss her. She looked at me with her gray eyes—sorrow and regret and that awful, painful, generous love—and said she’d miss me too. I asked if I could walk her to the train the next day. She said yes.

  We all walked her there together. Mama and Rosa and Sonia and Madeleine Sabatier, and Nina and me. She hugged every one of us. Most of us were crying. Before she hugged me she pulled a rolled-up paper out of her bag, and slipped it into my hand.

  I stood with the others on the pavement while her train pulled out. That long high whistle pierced right through my heart.

  I was almost afraid to unroll the paper. But when I got to my room I did.

  It was a pen-and-ink drawing, the finest of hers I’d seen. It was me, with a child held close to my chest, glancing over my shoulder. I looked determined and alert. But happy. I looked happy. There was something about the way I was drawn, somehow, that said danger couldn’t have him, I was watching. It said fierceness and it said love. The kid was Léon, and he was laughing.

  I laid the picture down carefully on my desk. Then I lay down on my bed and cried a long time.

  YOU DO go on. That’s the thing. You think the sun’s going to stop rising in the morning, just for you, but it never does. It comes up, it goes down, it comes up again. There’s another day, and then another. You’ve got to do something with them. I worked at the children’s home.

  I cooked. I did laundry. I cleaned toilets. I helped kids with their homework. I even sang with them, when I could stand it without crying. I stayed with Marek when he needed it. Yelled at him when he needed it too. I walked the kids home from school, helped with their shopping chores. I tried to be gone before the train came. Hearing the whistle hurt too much.

  Some evenings I helped Rosa and Sonia with the babies, at l’Espoir. Roza was learning to crawl. Trina was gaining weight. She moved more now. She even cried.

  I did what I had to do. What I could. It was work, all of it, and worth doing, and needed. I lived with myself. I lay awake at night and thought of Paquerette, in her mountain valley—where?—and in my mind I saw her lying awake too, her mind too full. Of the knowledge that is poison. Of the people she couldn’t save.

  On the good nights, I was too tired to lie awake for long.

  I was glad I’d be going back to school next year. With homework as well, I would always be tired enough to sleep. That was what I wanted.

  That, and to help the kids. Always that. To see Chanah’s grinning face as she rushed toward me, or Stepan’s serious expression as he wiped the table as if the earth depended on it; Manola’s laugh, Tonio’s cocky grin, Marek’s rare, bright smile. It was for them. If they were the only ones I could help now, then so help me God I would help them. My kids.

  Them and Trina. They always let me feed her on the nights I could come to l’Espoir. Feed her, and put her to bed, and sing to her. Mama’s lullaby. Star, little star. The ewe has her lamb, the hen has her chick, everyone has her child.

  APRIL PASSED into May. The grass grew green in the pastures beside the road to les Chênes, and the river ran clear and shining in the sun. I looked at it as I crossed the bridge and tried to forget, sometimes, what I knew about it; but sometimes I tried to remember. Because it was true what Paquerette said: everything true matters. So you don’t forget. Sometimes I want to. But really, I don’t know why I act like I have a choice.

  April passed into May. I went on. Nina came every week for supper. We went up to my room and talked. Lucy and Rosa came—sometimes even together. One day I told Rosa the truth, finally, about Paquerette’s arrest. She cried, and hugged me. She never mentioned it again after that day. Nor did Lucy. My friends are some of the kindest people. Each in their own way.

  But with Nina I actually talked about it. Sometimes.

  I told her how I felt, seeing the train come in and no children on it. A Swiss Aid worker had come once, with three kids. But no one brought anyone from Rivesaltes. Were they going elsewhere? Or just waiting? Did the CIMADE have anyone to take Paquerette’s place?

  Nina listened. Then she said, “There are many able women, in Tanieux.”

  “But they already have so much to do! Like Madeleine, she could do it, but she has all those babies. Why’s it like that, Nina? The people who can do it should. I know I was stupid, before … or … or prideful, about doing it, but I wasn’t wrong about that. Not everyone can do it, so those who can, should. Like you—what you’re doing—giving you a different job would be a waste!”

  Nina looked at me so long and so intensely that I was afraid I’d offended her. That I shouldn’t have even referred to what she did. But what she said, finally, was, “And the work you should be doing, it is lost to you.”

  Tears pricked behind my eyeballs. “We’re not talking about me,” I said angrily. “I can never do it again. You know that.”

  “No, Magali. In fact I do not know that. It was your work. I saw that. As my work is mine. You did it well and you would do it better now. When the terrible thing happens, that is when a person stops being foolish. For certain there is someone at the CIMADE who understands that.”

  “Nina. They never met me. They look at me, all they see is the girl who got their best worker arrested. And tortured, and sent home.”

  “But she knows you. If they ask her, she will tell the truth. Always she told the truth.”

  The tears pricked behind my eyes again. “Yes,” I whispered. “She did.” I looked up at her. “But Nina—what are you saying? Are you saying I should …?”

  I don’t know what it’s like for other people, the moment when you see what you want to do with your life for real. But for me it was almost fearful. The CIMADE. My heart started pounding. I swallowed, dry-mouthed. Never. Never, never. I had ruined my own chances before they started. “You don’t really think …”

  She looked me in the eye, and her eyes burned a little. “You must understand, Magali. I do not say this to make you happy, or because you are my fr
iend. Do you understand how it is for me? They are arresting my people. I do not know what is coming, but it is very bad. I do not want for us to lose anyone who is ready and able to help. So. I have in fact spoken to Madeleine. And I am speaking to you. I do not want you to say never. It must not be so. Because—” She looked down, and spoke fast. “Because I am afraid that we will need you, that we will need everyone. Soon.”

  My throat was tight. “But are you sure you want … me?”

  She nodded.

  My heart felt full of something. I wasn’t sure what. Hope. Fear. Terror. A desperate, desperate wish for another chance.

  If you’ll let me, God. If you’ll just let me have one chance. I won’t play hero. I’ll think only of them and what they need. I’ll do what I have to do. I’ll do what I can. Oh please. Please.

  Nina was looking intently at me. I think something must have shown on my face.

  “So?” she said quietly.

  “But, Nina …” I closed my eyes for a moment, seeing Paquerette’s face. The fire alarm cord. The faces of children: Marek. Carmela. Stepan. Trina. Léon. Zvi. The living room of l’Espoir with the fire burning; voices upstairs; the scrape of a chair across the floor. I opened my eyes and looked straight at her. “I thought,” I said slowly, “that you said this was work only for adults.”

  “Yes,” said Nina. “It is.”

  I SAT up late, that night, at my desk, chewing on the end of my pen. Finally I put it to the paper.

  Dear Mlle. Barot, I wrote.

  Epilogue

  Everything True

  THEY JUST got back day before yesterday from their first trip together. Madeleine and Rosa. Mama and I replaced Madeleine at l’Espoir.

  It was a hard trip, apparently. Five days. We spent them changing diapers, feeding children, taking turns making meals. I slept in Madeleine’s bed, and woke in the night to feed babies when they cried. I hung rows of diapers on the line. It’s June now. The genêts are coming into yellow bloom. We took the babies to the river, and Trina splashed in the water and laughed. There’s life now in her brown eyes. Mama loves her.