Children of the Stars

by Mario Escobar

  The train was already moving at a slow pace, so the impact of the jump was minimal. Even so, Moses banged his legs on the track and sat for a while, rubbing the spot that hurt.

  “Come on,” Jacob said. “We need to get away from the tracks.”

  “Will we do this again to get to Valence?” Moses asked.

  “Let’s sneak up to the station and check out the trains and schedules. We’ve got nothing to lose by trying it,” Jacob said, smiling. He felt very proud of having gotten so far along by themselves. No one had helped them on the last leg of their journey. Then he wondered what had happened to Marcel and Paul, though he shook the thought away. Surely, after a reprimand, they would be returned to their father. Jacob hoped that the uncle would protect his own flesh and blood, even if only to keep his name clear of scandal. He knew that a lot of people did the right thing out of fear of what would happen if they did not, instead of out of true love for others or due to some higher sense of justice. Jacob mused on all of this as the boys picked their way to the station.

  They entered the great hall and went up to the board that displayed the train schedules. After a few minutes of studying, they deciphered the abbreviations and saw that a train to Valence would be leaving early the next morning.

  “So what do we do until tomorrow morning?” Moses asked.

  Jacob shrugged. “Look for somewhere to rest.”

  They had never slept on the streets before. Even on the worst days during their search for their parents they had found some sort of food and some sort of roof over their heads. But in Lyon, they were completely on their own.

  They knew that if they went to a park, someone might see them and report them. The police would waste no time in arresting them and asking what they were doing so far from home. Finally, they decided to try out what looked like an abandoned house near the train tracks.

  Through the open door they saw no furniture inside, but most of the windows still had their glass. It seemed like a decent place to take shelter for the night. They fashioned a sleeping mat of sorts from the many old newspapers they found lying around the house.

  “This place creeps me out,” Moses said.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll stay up and keep watch. I can sleep on the train tomorrow,” Jacob said. He did not like the place either. He would rather stay up and make sure they did not miss the train instead of sleep in such a place.

  The hours passed slowly. Jacob began to nod off, sleep finally overcoming him. He was resting peacefully when a noise startled him. He lifted his head and saw movement in the shadows. He shook Moses. Before they had laid down for the night, Jacob had checked to see if there was a back door, and he thought they should make a run for it now out the back. But before they could move, noises surrounded them.

  Moses woke in fright and screamed. Still dazed, he thought the shadows all around him were ghosts, but one of them flicked open a cigarette lighter and lit up part of the room.

  The dirty, angry face of a boy was inches from his face, and Moses screamed again. The boy clamped his hand over Moses’s mouth. “Shut up, you little rat! Do you want all the guards from the station to come running?” The boy had a strange accent, but his words were enough to quiet Moses.

  “What do you want?” Jacob asked, trying to disguise his terror.

  “First, every penny you’ve got. Then your shoes and that backpack. If you behave, I might let you go after that, but if you make me angry, I’ll slit your throats. Nobody’s going to care about two little vagabonds sleeping in an abandoned house.” His voice was hoarse, punctuated by dry, staccato laughter.

  The three others with him also laughed. Moses was trembling beyond control and feared he would wet himself.

  Jacob made every effort to master his fear. “We’ll give you the money, but we need our shoes and clothes, and a couple of papers that won’t do you any good.”

  The youth grabbed Jacob by the collar and pulled him to his feet. “You trying to make a deal with me? You think you’ve got gumption? You’re a piece of trash to talk like that, but I’ll teach you a lesson.”

  Seeing that all the attention was on Jacob, Moses kicked the thief hard in the groin. The boy went to his knees with a cry. In the second it took his cronies to react, Jacob and Moses dashed to the back door and disappeared into the darkness. They hid behind a cargo train and caught their breath, still not believing they had managed to get away alive.

  “The backpack! I left the backpack!” Jacob moaned in a whisper.

  “So what? They were going to kill us,” Moses said. He was still unable to control his trembling, but he was proud of his daring act.

  “The letters are in there, Mother and Father’s letters. I’ve got the money with me, but the letters are the only thing we had left of them. I have to go back,” he said, trying to stand.

  “But they’re going to kill you,” Moses warned. “Soon we’ll see Mother and Father face-to-face, so what do we need their letters for?” His brother was being irrational.

  “Their address is in the letters,” Jacob said, his head hung low.

  “Didn’t you memorize it?”

  “I can’t remember it.”

  “You read them a zillion times. When you’ve calmed down, I’m sure it’ll come back to you,” Moses said.

  Jacob tried to be still and quiet and willed his mind recall the address. He could call up every word of the letters, seeing them on the page in his mind like a photograph. But the return address on the envelope was fuzzy.

  They had come so close, yet hope had vanished again. He began to cry. Those white envelopes were the only thing that proved their parents were real, were alive, could be found in a real place—that they were not ghosts or figments of his childish imagination. His mother’s stylized script was what kept her alive in Jacob’s mind, the ink that ran a touch lazily at the end of her signature. His memory was so weak, so fragile, so capricious, always subject to the inexorable march of time.

  “And her picture,” he mumbled between tears. But then he searched his pockets and found the picture was there.

  At his brother’s words, Moses tried to call up his parents’ faces, and his breath caught when he could not. He could still recall his mother’s smell and his father’s voice, but their faces were just out of reach. They were like two voids, slowly being consumed by nothingness while forgetfulness gnawed away at the thin thread that tethered them to the world of the living.

  Chapter 16

  Lyon

  July 25, 1942

  Neither of the boys was able to sleep for what remained of that night. They were terrified that the thugs who had stolen their backpack would return at any moment. Jacob leaned against the metal wheel of the train car and looked back and forth, back and forth. Moses closed his eyes and tried to sleep, but he woke with a start each time.

  They felt better as soon as the sun started to rise. It would not be too long before the train left the station. They might even be with their parents in a few hours, and all of this would seem like a bad dream. Jacob tried again to remember the name of the street and the house number. He knew the letters by heart and could see them when he closed his eyes, but he cursed himself for not having paid as much attention to the envelopes.

  “I’m hungry,” Moses said, getting to his feet. He spied the abandoned house from their spot among the train cars.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Jacob warned, knowing what his brother was thinking.

  “But maybe they threw out some food.”

  “I seriously doubt that anyone in their situation would throw out canned meat and bread.”

  Moses knew his brother was right, but sometimes it was better to make completely sure.

  “The train will leave in about twenty minutes. We’d better hide nearby so we can jump on as it’s moving, like last time,” Jacob said, changing the subject.

  The brothers walked along the tracks. Very few people milled around the station that early in the morning. The train heading to Valenc
e carried goods, not passengers, but that was all the better for them, as they would not have to hide from an inspector.

  Soon they saw the train creeping toward them. It was a much older steam engine than the one on the passenger train from Lyon, and it would be easy to hop on and hide in one of the cars. The journey to Valence would be longer, but they would arrive before nightfall.

  They ran alongside and jumped into the fourth car, and no one seemed to take notice. They had inadvertently chosen an empty cattle car that had already delivered its goods of cows or sheep to Lyon.

  “I can’t breathe!” Moses said, pinching his nose. The stench was unbearable.

  “You’ll get used to it in a while.”

  Moses winced and felt like he was going to vomit, but he knew Jacob was usually right. They were so exhausted that the steady rocking of the train soon lulled them to sleep, bunched up together. Straw covering the floor offered some cushion, and a full two hours passed before they woke.

  Jacob’s eyes opened, and he stretched and yawned. “I really needed that sleep.” Then he set about studying the train car. It was rather dark, the only light filtering in through the wooden slats of the walls.

  “What are you looking for? Do you think there might be food?” Moses asked, joining his brother.

  “Who knows, maybe we’ll find some leftover grain they gave the animals. I think I’d eat just about anything right now.”

  After a fruitless search, Jacob found some newspapers in a corner. He pushed them aside slowly and saw something. It was a book, a little journal, with a pencil stuck between the pages.

  He took it and they moved closer to the door where they had entered the car, to a spot with more light. They sat, and Moses leaned back on Jacob and drifted off to sleep again. Jacob opened the book to the first blank page and started to write something when he noticed the long, delicate writing of perhaps a woman. He flipped back a few pages and then started reading at the beginning. He was surprised to see the date was very recent, just a few weeks prior. There was a location he did not recognize: Rivesaltes Camp. The owner of the diary was a woman named Gemma Durieu. As Jacob read and was drawn in by the young woman’s words, he realized how similar their stories were:

  We got here from Perpignan just a few days ago, and it already feels like months. Life in the camp is hard. Spring is hot and rainy this year. If there’s wind, it blows clouds of dust that make it impossible to breathe. We spend all day shut up inside the suffocating houses with dirt floors and glassless windows. Then it rains really hard, and everything becomes a huge mud pit. It’s horrible. We can’t go out to get food, use the disgusting bathrooms at the end of the street, or stand for roll call without sinking into the mud. I’ve had to pull my boots out by hand several times. Some people say summer is even worse, though we’ll be gone by the time the heat really cranks up. They’re sending us Jews up north to work in factories for the Germans. At least time will go quickly if we’re working and it won’t feel like time is standing still and we’re slaves to nothingness . . .

  The last few weeks, so many trains have come and gone. We’ll be next. A lot of them have taken our friends and neighbors, the people I would see on the streets back home, but I hardly recognize them now. Their clothes are torn apart, and the people are so skinny. Thank God the Quakers and the Red Cross bring us some food. At least this unending hunger sometimes lets us sleep and dream. Only in the arms of Morpheus are we really free . . .

  They’ve made us get into long lines, separated by age and sex, then they put us on trucks to take us to the train station. For me, leaving is better than staying, though a lot of people are afraid of what will happen. At least something is happening, and the monotony becomes curiosity. I’m still alone. I lost sight of my family back when they arrested us. People have told me there are lots of camps, and maybe we’ll find our families up north. I cry myself to sleep most nights. I feel like an orphan. I never knew what loneliness and fear were ’til now. Everything terrifies me, even going outside in broad daylight or the heavy rains of early summer. It’s starting to get really hot now. Sometimes it feels like being underwater, but it’s heat instead of water, and I try to get my head above the surface to breathe before the burning smothers me . . .

  I had no idea they would ship us in a cattle car. Camp life was already horrible. There were absolutely no comforts of daily living, and hardly any food, but at least we were considered human beings. This cattle car reeks of feces, sweat, and urine. Sometimes I think I can’t take it anymore. I’m so alone, so afraid . . .

  We’ve been traveling for three endless days now. We’re hungry, we’ve barely slept, and many of the people crammed in here are sick. I’ve wondered if they aren’t actually taking us anywhere, but we’ll just travel back and forth until we all die, as if our final station is death itself . . .

  Now the train has stopped on an unused track. I see nothing around us. I can hear the doors of the other cars banging open, many voices, dogs, shouting, and heat, it’s so unbearably hot . . .

  The diary cut off there, midsentence, as if someone had ripped the journal out of the girl’s hand and thrown it into the corner. Jacob tried to make sense of what he had read. He could not understand all of it, and the chilling, abrupt ending confused him especially. He wondered if something like this had happened to Joseph. Then Jacob thought about his parents. Had they been arrested and sent up north? It turned out that Jews in the unoccupied zone were also being held in camps and sent to Germany.

  “What are you thinking about?” Moses asked, waking to find Jacob holding the diary.

  “Nothing,” Jacob lied. He did not want Moses to worry, especially now that they were so close to Valence and their parents.

  “What’s in the journal?” he asked, curious.

  “Just ideas, the things the girl who lost the diary was thinking about. It wouldn’t interest you.”

  “Well, you’ve been reading it for hours.” Moses frowned.

  “I’ve got nothing else to do.” Joseph stood up and opened the train car door a bit to look out at the scenery. The trees stretched for miles around. There were more hills and mountains than in Lyon, though he could also see grain fields and animals grazing in pastures.

  “I’m so hungry,” Moses complained, coming up to Jacob.

  “Me too. Maybe Mother will cook supper for us tonight.” Jacob smiled at the thought. He desperately wanted to believe they had reached the end of their long journey, though he was afraid their parents would have left already, or afraid he would not be able to find the right street. Regardless, he figured Valence would be small enough. They would find them eventually.

  They spent the next few hours watching the scenery. The cool wind from the surrounding forests cleared their heads, and they grew more and more nervous as time passed.

  Moses could not hold it in any longer. “Have you remembered the name of the street?”

  “I don’t think it was a street, but more like a plaza . . .”

  “A plaza? Well, at least there can’t be that many plazas in one city,” Moses said, somewhat encouraged.

  “Yeah, and it was something like republic, or equality, or fraternity . . .”

  “Liberty,” Moses offered, filling in the third value of the French motto.

  “Yeah, it was the Place de la Liberté, Liberty Plaza!” Jacob answered, thrilled to have finally remembered the name. Now they just had to get there. They would find their parents in no time.

  The train was following a river and, little by little, the houses that had been few and far between became denser until it seemed they were traveling on the outskirts of a city. The river split the city in two, though most of the city fell east of the river, the side the train was on. They passed through a few neighborhoods before the train entered a railway section with enormous storage vessels. On the other side of a fence, the boys glimpsed pale, uninspiring buildings. They looked like poor imitations of the more decorative buildings in Lyon. The whole place had a gray,
provincial air about it.

  The train began to slow as it drew near the station, which was sloughing off its yellow and white paint. Despite the deterioration, it was the most beautiful city in the world to Jacob and Moses. Euphoric, they jumped out before the train came to a halt.

  Making their way through the tracks toward the station, they came out on a narrow road covered by thick trees. They did not know where to go next. Finally, Jacob went up to a street vendor who pushed a heavy cart laden with vegetables.

  “Sir, could you tell us how to get to the Place de la Liberté?”

  The street vendor studied them with his little eyes barely visible below the bill of his cap. He had a salt-and-pepper mustache and wore a dark apron over an old suit.

  “You go north up that street, Avenue Victor Hugo, until you reach the main boulevard, then it becomes Rue Emile Augier. Keep going north. You can’t miss it. The plaza is at the end, on the left.”

  “Thank you so much, sir!” Jacob hollered as the boys ran toward the avenue the man had pointed to. Within minutes they were standing on Place de la Liberté. It was an elegant rectangle with lively buildings, including a theater on one side painted with bright, shining colors.

  Jacob just stood and looked at the place his parents had lived all that time. His eyes were seeing the same buildings, trees, and cobblestones they had seen, his feet were standing on the same ground they had walked. The knot in his throat threatened to burst. He wanted to hug them, have their embrace wash away the memories of the last ten days.

  “What number is it?” Moses asked, impatient.

  Jacob pointed to a three-story, green building. If he remembered correctly, they lived in the top floor, in the attic apartment. The boys stared at the outside of the building for a while, then began to walk. Rather, it felt like they floated, every nerve tingling with terrified hope. At the door, they looked up. Taking a deep breath, they pushed it open and walked into the cool entryway.