“They look so alike, you know?” said Gustave to Marguerite’s mother.
She looked over at him, her hand on Marguerite’s head, as if she hadn’t heard. So Gustave said it again. “Marguerite and Giselle—they look so alike.”
Marguerite lifted up her head, and Madame Robert slowly looked from one child to the other. “Not to their mothers, of course,” she said, smiling at Aunt Geraldine. “But to someone else, to the Germans … Oh! It might work! I think we have a plan!”
Marguerite’s grandmother crooked her white head, looked at the two girls, and started to laugh. “Yes!” she agreed. “Of course! Giselle must wear Marguerite’s red jacket. Too bad we don’t have that monkey.”
Gustave reached into his pocket. “But I do have him!” he said, putting Monkey on the table. “I brought him along to say hello to Marguerite. Here he is.”
Papa and Aunt Geraldine looked bewildered. “What might work?” Papa asked.
Gustave smiled at them. “Don’t you see, Papa? Giselle looks like Marguerite—and Marguerite is allowed to cross the line with her mother!”
“I will dress Giselle in Marguerite’s little red jacket,” Madame Robert told them, “and she’ll carry Monkey, just the way Marguerite always does. Marguerite can stay here with her grandmother. I will bring Giselle with me across the line, the way I always bring Marguerite, as if we were going to see my mother. I’ll cross back at another bridge so that they won’t notice that I’m returning without a child.”
“It’s very kind of you to offer to do that,” said Papa slowly. He looked from one little girl to the other. “I think it would work,” he said. “They do look very alike. I’ve heard a lot of men say that all babies look exactly the same to them, anyway. But Giselle is so much thinner.”
“So, we’ll pad her with extra clothing underneath the red jacket to make her look more plump,” said the older Madame Robert. “My daughter-in-law can cuddle her close, telling them the child is sick and fussy.” She held her shoulders erect, her white head high, and she spoke with scornful confidence. “The Boches will never know the difference!”
29
Up ahead, in the line of waiting people, Madame Robert’s bony old horse tossed his head and whinnied. Gustave could see Madame Robert, with Giselle bundled up in her arms, sitting high on the seat of her open farm cart. In the darkening sky, a fast wind drove pale clouds, covering and uncovering the rising moon. It was cold even in the protected cab of the truck. Gustave was glad that sick little Giselle had on all those extra layers of clothing.
He was more worried about Jean-Paul and Aunt Geraldine, who were wedged in the cramped hiding space in the rear of the truck. They were sure to be warm, squashed in together, but did they have enough air to breathe? Even without the Landaus, it had been a tight fit. Gustave’s head throbbed. Where were Marcel and his mother? Why couldn’t anyone find them? But he wasn’t supposed to think about them right now.
Before they had all driven toward the line, with Madame Robert a little ahead so that they wouldn’t seem to be together, Gustave had helped Papa push the heavy barrels and boxes in front of the false back of the truck. It had taken a long time to do it. A German soldier would have to be really suspicious to bother taking all that stuff out on such a cold night, Gustave thought.
Jean-Paul and Aunt Geraldine must be sitting very quietly. Once, while they were driving, Gustave heard a muffled cough coming from the back, but now that the truck was stopped in the line, the back of the truck was absolutely silent.
What if Karl’s shift ended early? Gustave worried suddenly. Or what if the schedule had changed? Gustave could hear his own heart thudding in his chest, and he couldn’t seem to slow his breathing. He put his hand on the basket of vegetables next to him on the front seat. It held a few rutabagas, mixed in with the plumpest, largest black radishes Papa had been able to find. Looking at them there in the basket, Gustave could almost taste them, fresh and spicy, tingling on his tongue.
The line moved forward slowly and then stopped again. Now Madame Robert’s cart was at the front of the line. Behind it were two men on bicycles, followed by a farmer’s truck, piled high with hay. Then came Papa’s truck. The wind gusted again, tossing the branches of the trees.
A short German soldier appeared beside Madame Robert’s cart. Gustave saw the reddish curls under the soldier’s military cap and sighed with relief, feeling some of the tension melt out of his body. It was still Karl’s shift, then.
But what was he doing? He had walked down the line and was speaking now to the men on bicycles. Gustave peered forward. Madame Robert was climbing carefully down from the cart, holding Giselle. The men left their bicycles in the line of vehicles and followed Madame Robert to the side of the road. Karl walked up to the farmer in the truck ahead of them, and Papa rolled down his window so that he could hear.
“Out of the vehicle,” Karl’s voice said loudly. “Vehicles here, people over there.” He walked forward and saw Papa through the window of the truck. “Ah, good evening,” he said to Papa. “New procedure. Out of the vehicle. Vehicles here, people over there.” He moved on down the line.
New procedure? Gustave thought. Why? He and Papa got out of the truck, and a blast of cold wind hit them. They joined the silent group of people huddled beside the road. The fierce wind made Gustave’s eyes water. He looked at Madame Robert. She had turned her body so that she was shielding Giselle from the cold blast, but Giselle wailed thinly, the wind whisking her voice away. The pointed red hood of Marguerite’s little jacket was over her head, and she dangled Monkey limply from one hand. Papa bumped Gustave with his elbow, and Gustave realized what he was doing. He turned his gaze away casually, as if the woman and child ahead of him were strangers.
Karl walked briskly back to the front of the line of vehicles and then disappeared. Gustave hunched his shoulders against the wind and buried his cold hands deep into his pockets. He looked up when he felt his father stiffen beside him. Three German soldiers wearing long coats strode toward the huddled group by the side of the road. One was Karl, and one Gustave had never seen before, but at the sight of the bulky blond one, Gustave’s heart gave a great leap in his chest. It was Georg. The soldier Papa had never wanted to see again.
“Your papers,” barked Georg to Madame Robert. She shifted Giselle to the other side and handed her documents to him. He examined them thoroughly, glancing at Giselle and then at the papers. “And this is your cart?” He led Madame Robert toward it and began to examine the wagon, even though it was clearly empty. He opened the wooden seat and rapped his black-gloved fist along the wood in the back.
Karl and the other soldier moved closer to stand beside Madame Robert. “Ah!” said the third soldier in French with a thick German accent. “I know this little girl in the red jacket with the monkey!”
“Yes,” said Karl, smiling. “We know this little girl!”
Georg walked back toward Madame Robert. The third soldier reached out a big hand and patted the hood on Giselle’s head. She wailed. “Excuse me,” said Madame Robert, turning Giselle’s face in toward her coat. “She’s sick and fussy today.”
“If she is sick, you must take her to see a doctor, Madame,” said Georg smoothly, leaning in to peer more closely at Giselle. Then he said something in German to Karl, who seemed to object. Georg frowned at him and said it more loudly.
“Excuse me, Madame,” Karl said to Madame Robert. “But I must examine the toy.” He plucked Monkey out of Giselle’s hand, and she let out a rasping wail. Gustave saw something long and sharp gleaming in Karl’s other hand. He suddenly drew it back and jabbed it into Monkey’s soft, round belly. Gustave gasped loudly, then snapped his mouth shut. But Georg had heard the gasp. He turned and looked toward the group of waiting people, frowning, searching their faces in the darkness. Gustave flushed, furious with himself. He was so stupid. Why did he always have to let what he was feeling show? It was just like that time he had reacted to Philippe calling him a Jew and had given
himself away. He couldn’t do that again. Tonight, no matter what happened, he couldn’t show what he felt.
“Again,” barked Georg to Karl, keeping his eyes on Gustave. Gustave felt as if Georg’s eyes were boring into him. He clamped his teeth on the tip of his tongue and kept his face blank as Karl jabbed Monkey again and again, piercing his soft little body with the gleaming instrument. After a few more stabs, Karl handed the monkey back to Giselle. “There’s nothing hidden inside that toy,” he said to Georg. “No jewels, no money, nothing.”
“All in order,” barked Georg, sounding disappointed. “Go on.”
Gustave watched as Madame Robert climbed back into the cart with Giselle on her hip. She flicked the reins. The elderly horse lifted its head and clopped slowly over the bridge, and they disappeared into the darkness on the other side. Safe! Gustave thought. Two of them, safe!
Now Karl was speaking to the two men on bicycles, examining their papers and making them open their coats. Georg and the other soldier looked at the farmer’s truck, loaded high with hay.
“Is this your truck?” Georg asked the burly farmer, who was wearing a dirty, ragged overcoat. “Where are you transporting hay at this hour?”
The farmer muttered something about his brother-in-law and held out his papers. Georg examined them and said something to the other soldier, who walked back toward the truck piled high with hay. The soldier took his rifle off his shoulder and jabbed it into the hay in one spot after another. Gustave’s fingers trembled, and he clenched his hands into fists in his pockets. They must be looking for people hidden under the hay. What would happen when they came to Papa’s truck? Gustave felt his stomach tighten, and acid rose in his throat. He swallowed, forcing it down.
Some hay fell out of the wagon, and the farmer started forward to pick it up. “Halt!” shouted Georg. Then he barked another order in German. The soldier held his rifle up to his shoulder, gesturing to the farmer to keep back. Gustave’s stomach contracted. What if someone was in there? The soldier fired between the wooden slats on the back. Then again. And again. But no one cried out, and no blood stained the hay. The farmer only muttered as more hay fell out with each rifle shot.
“In order!” Georg scowled at the farmer. “Go on! Next.”
He turned to Papa. Papa’s face looked gaunt in the moonlight.
“This is your truck?” he asked. “Papers.”
Papa handed him the papers. Gustave noticed his father’s fingers quivering slightly. But Papa answered the soldier cheerfully in German.
“From Switzerland, eh? And this is your son?” Georg barked. His eyes bored into Gustave again. Gustave’s heart throbbed painfully in his chest.
“Open the back of the truck,” Georg ordered Papa.
Papa walked, limping up and down, toward the rear of the truck, and the door screeched open. The soldier gestured toward the back of the truck, speaking to the other two. “Search it.”
Karl and the other soldier peered in at the dark interior of the truck and the heavy boxes and bundles inside. The other soldier said something to Georg in German. It sounded like a complaint.
Georg turned to Gustave and Papa. “Too difficult to search through all that at this hour, my men say. You, boy. What do you think?” His eyes locked with Gustave’s. “We have to be sure no one’s hiding in there. Should we search your truck and keep you here for a few hours, or should we just shoot into the back?”
Gustave’s heart hammered so hard that he was sure the soldier could hear it. But he couldn’t react. If they searched, they would surely find Jean-Paul and Aunt Geraldine. And if they shot into the truck, one or both of them might be killed. But would they really want to shoot into it? Surely not. It wasn’t like shooting into hay. The bullet might ricochet off the metal sides of the truck and kill the soldier. Georg was testing Gustave to see if he would act worried, and he couldn’t react. He had to behave as if he were just a bored kid going home with his father.
Gustave stared steadily into Georg’s eyes and shrugged. “It’s too cold to stand here for hours. Just shoot, I guess. But don’t hit the tires. They’re impossible to replace.”
Georg gave a short, sharp laugh and walked toward the open back of the truck. To Gustave, the officer seemed to be stepping in slow motion, like a person in a dream, or someone walking under water, slowly pushing his legs forward, one after the other. In an unhurried way, he lifted his rifle to his shoulder. He was really going to do it, then. It wasn’t just a test. When the rifle clicked, Gustave’s heart jolted.
Suddenly, Karl was at the cab of the truck, looking in the side window. He called something to Georg in rapid German. Georg lowered his rifle and strode forward to join Karl.
“Come here!” Georg barked. Papa and Gustave walked forward. Karl opened the passenger door on Gustave’s side. There was the wicker basket with the rutabagas and the radishes. Georg looked in at it and then at Papa and Gustave.
They stood looking at each other in silence for a long moment, the two of them and the German officer.
“Ah!” said Georg, smoothly. “Black radishes. Very nice.” He reached in and plucked the four black radishes out of the basket. He called something in German to the other soldier, who was still standing by the open back of the truck. There was a pause, and the door slammed shut.
“All in order!” barked Georg. “Go on!”
Papa and Gustave got into the front of the truck, the basket on the seat between them empty except for a few rutabagas, and Papa drove on, up over the bridge, and safely into the unoccupied zone.
30
Lisbon, January 1942
A few weeks later, Gustave stood on the deck of a ship anchored out in the harbor of Lisbon, Portugal. Leaning on the railing, with Jean-Paul beside him, Gustave watched the January sun glisten on the blue ripples of the harbor and, across the water, on the white buildings and red roofs of Lisbon. The last weeks had passed in a blur of embraces, tears, packing, goodbyes, train rides, and border crossings, first into Spain and then into Portugal, where they were to set sail for America.
The Landaus were still missing. After Jean-Paul and Aunt Geraldine had crawled, stiff and cramped, out of the hiding place in Papa’s truck, after Aunt Geraldine had taken Giselle tearfully into her arms, and after Giselle had been rocked to sleep, Gustave had heard what had happened to Marcel and his mother.
“Do you remember when we last spoke by telephone?” Aunt Geraldine asked Maman. “It must have been in April or May of last year, just before the Nazis invaded. Right after we spoke, Madame Landau got a letter from her brother, who lives near Strasbourg, and she decided that she and Marcel would join him there. I didn’t want her to go to Alsace—why go to the part of France nearest Germany? I asked her. But she felt safer being with her brother.”
All three of the listening grown-ups gasped.
“Alsace?” Maman moaned. “Why didn’t she come to us?”
Gustave couldn’t understand what was wrong for a moment. Then he remembered. The Boches had taken back Alsace and Lorraine from France and made them part of Germany. “It’s terrible for the Jews living there,” Papa had said at the café last year, when they had looked at the map of France in the newspaper.
Something heavy seemed to be pressing down on Gustave’s chest. “But what happened to the Jews in Alsace?” he whispered.
Aunt Geraldine shook her head. “I don’t know for sure. But after a while, we started to hear rumors. People said that when the Germans took over Alsace, they forced the Jews out—gave them fifteen minutes to pack one bag, shoved them into buses, and then dumped them in unoccupied France, in the middle of nowhere, with no food or water. Elderly people too, and babies.”
“But in the unoccupied zone?” cried Gustave. “So maybe Marcel and his mother and uncle are somewhere safe now.”
“Maybe,” said Aunt Geraldine slowly. “But if so, they would have written to us, or to you. And Monsieur Morin’s contacts from the Resistance tried to find them, and they had no luck. Af
ter a while, we started hearing worse rumors. Some people said that other Jews from Alsace were put on trains and taken to internment camps. Camps somewhere in the south of France.”
Gustave felt as if he had swallowed an enormous stone that was getting heavier and heavier every minute. The room was silent.
“Terrible things are happening now,” Aunt Geraldine said after a while. “One day last summer in Paris, there was a raid in the eleventh arrondissement, the neighborhood right next to ours. Early one morning, the French police barricaded the streets and the Métro stations so that no one could leave. They dragged people out of bed and grabbed them on the street. They rounded up all the Jewish men and took them away. They are going after the foreign-born Jews especially, people like the Landaus. I think it is only a matter of time before they start going after us all.”
Gustave looked at Jean-Paul. He was staring straight ahead of him, his eyes blank, gray. Gustave thought about Marcel making beetle spitballs and dropping the nuts down from the balcony of the synagogue. Marcel fooling around in the park, kicking a soccer ball, inventing the looking-up game. Mischievous, laughing Marcel, who had been Gustave’s friend ever since they had been very young boys. Where was he now? Were Marcel and his mother in one of those terrible prison camps somewhere, living in filth, hungry and cold, maybe sick? Places where people were dying? The Germans forced Jews onto the trains, but how could the French government keep them in prison camps just because they were Jewish?
Lying in his bed at night during those weeks after hearing Aunt Geraldine’s stories, Gustave sometimes started shaking, thinking about Marcel, and couldn’t stop. If the Resistance couldn’t find Marcel and his mother, there was nothing anyone could do to help. How could Gustave’s family go to America and leave the Landaus behind? But how could they stay in France and wait for the same thing to happen to them?
Black Radishes Page 16