Flame in the Night

by Munn, Heather;

  “Are you all right, Benjamin?” The casual way his friend had said “If I make it” made Julien’s belly clench. Who are you?

  “Yes. Really, Julien. I’m well. I …” The tears started again. “I want to know who I am next time I die.”

  Julien took a deep, slow breath, staring at his friend. “Maybe,” he said, “you won’t die.”

  “Maybe. But if I do, I don’t want this again. I want something better.”

  Julien shook his head. Benjamin Keller. Élise’s fierce eyes flashed into his mind. Before he could stop himself, he blurted, “D’you have to eat kosher now?”

  Benjamin threw back his head like Jeannette Berger and laughed aloud. “Not out of a cookie tin. It’s actually not that complicated, the way I was raised.” He smiled. “Your mother’ll be fine.”

  Chapter 11

  A LITTLE DOOR

  BENJAMIN SANK DOWN onto a bench, chalk-white with pain, as Julien scanned the Annecy train station. Five police. Benjamin didn’t even notice. He must be in agony.

  Traveling so soon had been a mistake. Julien had known that hours ago. Yet if Clément was right—? This was better than arrest.

  “I’ve done something to it. I can tell. It hurts so much.”

  “If we make it, it wasn’t for nothing. Shh now—wait. All right, they’re gone.”

  Benjamin did not ask who.

  The one-kilometer walk from the station to the safe house took over an hour, Benjamin sweating and trembling every time he moved the bad leg. In the foyer Julien had to hold him up as Madame Cantal went for her husband; the three of them carried him to bed. A doctor gave Benjamin painkillers and a very stern lecture Julien couldn’t seem to focus on. “A vet?” and “two weeks’ complete rest” were the only words he heard.

  Benjamin slept deep; Julien woke twice, starting up at some blind fear and hearing his friend’s slow breathing. The peace of the Bergers’ house was gone. The world pressed in around the windows, the street sounds reminding and reminding him how far safety lay. Around his shut lids that night, many nights, questions gathered like ants.

  Marcel came and went, sleeping in his little guest room, often leaving at first light. Benjamin slept and slept. Julien paced. Switched on the radio and heard that in Stalingrad the Russians were holding on by their teeth, their backs to the Volga under heavy machine-gun fire. He switched it off, and slipped Grandpa’s slim songbook out of his pack.

  The Battle Psalm spoke of God carried on the wings of the storm. “He frees the captive from his fetters, He seizes the proud man and drives him from the city.” “La Cévenole,” in praise of persecuted camisards and martyrs, had phrases in it like “hunted from peak to peak” and images of bones lying hidden in deep valleys till judgment day. Julien let the worn page fall from his fingers.

  The songwriter called the camisards “lions,” and the martyrs “sublime.” You could tell who the man preferred right there. Did anyone actually want to be sublime?

  Had they wanted that? Surely not more than they wanted to protect their families, their villages? If God will only show Himself. They had lost their battles. Or had they believed, somehow, that they had won?

  Benjamin prayed propped up in bed, murmuring phrases in Hebrew, admitting to Julien afterward that he’d forgotten most of something called the Shemoneh Esrei. Julien knelt and prayed when Benjamin did, rose when he saw that his friend was done. Help, he prayed; he asked no questions. Marcel brought a refugee to Benjamin for translation; the man stayed for hours, talking softly in Yiddish and writing down prayers for Benjamin in a tiny script of strange letters.

  When they were alone Julien gestured at the paper. “You’re not going to … ?”

  “I’m going to hide it under the carpet. And memorize and burn it before we go.” Benjamin pulled out a blank sheet and stared at it, rolling his pen between his fingers. “What did you say again, in the telegram to my mother?”

  “Injury prevents travel, safe and recovering.”

  Benjamin uncapped the pen. “She’ll have to listen to me this time.”

  “About getting your father out?”

  Benjamin nodded.

  “Do you know how long that’ll take?”

  “Of course, I know Franco’s government like the back of my hand. What are you talking about, Julien?”

  “About trying again when it’s possible. In the spring.”

  Benjamin gave him a hard stare.

  “Papa says we’ll be safer in deep winter. It’s so hard to get vehicles up onto the plateau then. And by spring you’ll be well—”

  “Well enough to do that again? Thank you for asking what my plans are, Julien. I’ll tell you. I plan to stay in Tanieux and not waste any more of my family’s money on breaking my bones.”

  “You almost made it. You didn’t—it was a rock. It wasn’t you at all, it was …”

  It was God.

  Julien’s blood beat in his ears. His friend’s eyes were chips of ice. Benjamin said in a slow and measured voice, “She can get me a visa. You can get me a passeur. But you can’t put me on a train, because I will not go. Consider this your warning and don’t waste your time.”

  Julien licked dry lips, his sinuses aching. “Benjamin,” he said, “it’s your life.”

  “It is,” said Benjamin. “Mine. Now if you don’t mind, I have a letter to write.”

  It was God.

  It almost seemed true.

  A door had opened in his mind, a little door that would not close. Behind it the rock fell, over and over again, for eternity. Benjamin lay broken on the mountainside; Élise hid in the dark of a cave. Heads bowed in the church; bones lay mute beneath the valley grass; men with guns herded families into buses. The rock fell, and fell, and fell.

  The next morning, kneeling beside his bed while his friend prayed, Julien found himself not saying Please. Only, What would it have cost You? He had kept his mouth shut all this time; he had never asked God why. Not when tanks rolled over his country, not when children had to start changing their names. He knew the answers; he had known them from childhood. God’s plan behind it all. The infinite preciousness of man’s free will. God had His reasons for not stopping the Nazis, that was what it meant. But this? What would it have cost You to stop this? A rock!

  Julien dropped his head into his hands, seeing in his mind Benjamin’s face go cold at the mention of trying again, seeing Élise shake her head no, dark curly wisps of hair escaping her bun, a terrible calm in her eyes. God brought us here, she had said months ago, in the cave.

  His response welled up within him, impossible now to force down. The door was open.

  Are you sure?

  Behind his closed eyelids he saw her: that diamond-hard light in her eyes, that intense, wary grace. Would she go quietly, when they took her away?

  What would it have cost You?

  He rose from his knees and walked away, ignoring Benjamin’s stare.

  Elisa sat on a sofa in the common room of her dorm, Nadine’s feet tucked under her leg for warmth as they read a Molière play to each other. From the other couch Eva laughed at one of the lines, and Nadine grinned shyly. From the open door they caught a few words from a boy standing out on the stoop: “… need to ask Madame Mireille—madame, do you have any milk that you could spare?”

  The alert. They were on their feet in an instant, Madame Mireille calling after them as they flew up the stairs: “Alexandra and Marie should come too! And dress warm!”

  Alexandra seemed annoyed at being revealed to be Jewish, offering Elisa a tight-lipped frown.

  “It’s a raid,” Elisa snapped.

  “I’m French, I don’t need to hide!”

  “Downstairs. Two minutes.” Elisa stalked out.

  Elisa and Tova were the first downstairs; Elisa gripped her sister’s hand as Madame Mireille thrust girls at her and the other leaders. Tova—Nicole—Eva—Alexandra. Just my luck. “No talking,” Elisa hissed to her group as the cook filled her satchel.

 
The sky was blue, the wind cold in the treetops. She knew the landmarks by heart. The little path, the rock, twenty paces after the burned tree. Nicole was quiet on her crutches. The low shelter of pine boughs was as hard to see as Elisa remembered, and as small. She spread the blankets from her pack over the other girls, crawled in between Tova and Eva, and prayed.

  For Karl, for themselves, for every soul in hiding today, breathing quiet as the hunter passed. In the green shade she studied the tiny stitches in the gloves Julie Altman had made her, and asked God silently if there was a chance for her friend. Farm dogs barked in the distance. She prayed all the psalms she knew, then all of them again.

  She woke with a start. The light was slanting. Nicole was up on her elbow, looking eastward. “They’ve stopped barking,” she murmured.

  Elisa frowned, but Eva made a tiny gesture at the empty woods. “They can’t hear us.” They all listened for the all clear, a song called “Compère Guilleri.” A silly little song about a hunting mishap, but every verse ended with “te laisseras-tu mouri’”: Will you let yourself die? Someone hadn’t thought. Or had thought far too much.

  “You ever think about going, Élise?” whispered Eva.

  “No. Do you?”

  “Damien heard Benjamin Keller went. Heard he got through.”

  “He heard wrong,” said Nicole.

  Some tiny creature rustled among the pine needles. “What do you know?” whispered Elisa.

  “Nothing. Only Magali would have looked different when I said his name yesterday. If she had good news.”

  Elisa felt the long slow breath go out of Eva. Tova huddled closer.

  The wind whined in the pines. High in the small, cold patch of sky she could see from where she lay, a scrap of cloud turned to gold, then darkened into orange. A single bird was singing, over and over. Alexandra stirred suddenly and said, as if anyone had asked her, “They won’t arrest citizens.”

  There was a short, hard silence, the air above Elisa humming with heat. “Wait a month or two. They will.”

  “You’d like that, would you?”

  Elisa raised herself on her elbow, but her sister was up and speaking low through her teeth.

  “No she wouldn’t. She protects people. Even when they’re being—stupid like you. Our parents thought it was safe in France and now they’re deported and my sister—my sister’s always …”

  Tova broke off, breathily. Elisa’s mouth had opened, drinking in the chill evening air, eyelids blinking against the welling in her eyes. Here in the woods between Tova and Eva, here under orders to keep the rest safe—this was no place to weep. Tova gripped her hand. She closed her eyes and felt the tears spill down. In the shadows she could only hope that no one saw.

  Silence. Then Alexandra’s soft, daunted voice. “Sorry.”

  Elisa didn’t move. Tova shivered. Elisa pulled the blanket up higher over all of them. When Elisa opened her eyes, Alexandra looked away.

  The bird had fallen silent. You could feel the long slow dimming begin, in the cold golden light. There was a rustle under the shelter as heads turned suddenly. Away down on the road a young rough voice was singing that a little man named Guilleri had gone hunting partridges. Elisa let out a hard breath and sat up, pushing the blanket off, working her toes to get the blood flowing.

  “Good,” she said. “Let’s go home.”

  Two days after the Allies invaded North Africa, Julien and Benjamin made it from Annecy to Saint-Étienne without injury. At the contrôle Benjamin was calm, presented his papers, and told the gendarme, “I fell down a hill and hit it on a rock.” They took a good night’s sleep at the safe house in Saint-Étienne and woke early; the sun was just climbing above the slag heaps, the streets almost empty as they walked to the tram stop. As they waited for the tram a man walked by, straight down the middle of the street, uttering a low and continual stream of curses. Two teenage girls beside them gave the man a superior smile. The tram pulled up, its bell dinging, and they climbed aboard.

  Two stops later, Julien was on his feet, staring out the window. The hair on the back of his neck had risen, and he wasn’t sure why. Little knots of people talking on the sidewalk, gesturing, an intensity between them that felt eerily out of place in the quiet early-morning air. A man spoke to a woman and she grabbed her child, went into her house, and slammed the door while he hurried on. Another man walked down the sidewalk weeping openly. They’ve done a roundup, they are right now doing a roundup, we have to get out of this tram—

  “What’s that noise?” said Benjamin, struggling to his feet.

  “What?”

  A far-off mechanical roaring from the north, like the sound of engines bigger than Julien had ever seen. Buses? Must be dozens of them. I have to get him out of here—no. Stay on the tram. Make for the station. They’d be knocking on doors; they’d have a list. Should he send Benjamin on? Stay and try to warn people?

  The tram lurched to a stop. The driver bit off a curse, then fell silent. Somewhere in the streets ahead, the roaring grew. People crowded up against the windows, trying to see; whispers spread back through the tram; then shock in a palpable wave.

  Two soldiers in gray-green and hooded German helmets, bright metal plaques on their chests, blocked the street with a barricade between them. Julien’s mouth shaped the word What?

  And in the boulevard beyond, the tanks rolled into view.

  Julien watched open-mouthed, his bones turning to water, as the sight he had feared for so long came down the streets of Saint-Étienne. The sight he’d watched and waited for, the year he was sixteen, the year his country fell. It hadn’t come then. The armistice—they’re breaking the armistice.

  The massive war machines roared past, their huge treads almost as tall as a man, filling the street with deafening thunder. Stiff-backed soldiers standing up in the gun turrets stared coolly around, secure in their power, expecting no counterattack. There could be none. There was no army anymore, not to speak of—only the unarmed people silent on the sidewalk. The people turning their faces away.

  The conquerors had come.

  “You’ll have to get out,” said the conductor in a flat voice. Benjamin drew a sharp breath. Julien looked out on the final defeat of his country, thanked God this was not a roundup, and took his friend’s arm.

  “Train station,” he said. “As fast as we can.”

  By the time the station was in sight, Julien was frantic. There’d been troops after the tanks, rank upon rank of men singing in German, marching between them and safety. When the field police had let them through, the crowd surged around them till he had to protect Benjamin with his body. They faced two checkpoints, walked straight past their first SS in a crowd of evicted hotel guests spilling off a sidewalk under the calm eyes of gray-uniformed officers. They saw armed Germans forcing their way into houses, watching with long rifles from high windows. None of these things scared Julien as much as the thought that grew in him with every click of his friend’s crutches.

  They might be stopping the trains. They might have stopped them already.

  The shriek of a train whistle was almost drowned by the roar from behind them, distant engines drawing nearer. He urged Benjamin on, though the sweat stood out on his friend’s pale forehead. On either side of the station door stood two German field police. Benjamin stopped.

  “Today,” Julien murmured, not looking at him, “is the safest you will ever be in this city. They’re not looking for you.”

  He thought he felt Benjamin nod.

  “We are going to get on a train.”

  The two field police checked an old woman’s papers; a third officer spoke to a Frenchman in a station security uniform, who stood with his fists clenched by his sides, his face stiff and pale. “When they come,” the Frenchman said, and the German answered, “Now. Go in and tell them.” The Frenchman turned on his heel and walked into the station. Julien pulled Benjamin forward.

  “Papers.” One of the Germans took Julien’s papers, frowned at them.
“Coat off. Hands on the wall.”

  Julien’s heart pounded. He turned to obey—and saw Benjamin lurch against the doorframe as a German pulled one of his crutches away. Every nerve in his body screamed at him to strike out, to run to his friend’s side. No. You obey. He put his hands against the wall. The German felt his body all over, patting methodically, as he stood looking straight ahead, trembling with rage. Then with horror as the German picked up his coat to search it.

  Benjamin’s coat had his papers sewn into the lining.

  The other German was prodding and probing at Benjamin’s cast as he clutched the doorframe and tried not to cry out.

  “He has a broken ankle, monsieur,” said Julien in a voice he didn’t recognize, wholly empty of the fury and fear in his body. “Please be careful.”

  “And why is he traveling on that?”

  “We’re just trying to get home, monsieur.”

  One of them picked up Benjamin’s coat and went through the pockets. He said something in German. Julien’s heart paused. The man dropped it and gestured Benjamin onward. Julien knelt to gather up the crutches and the coat, fumbling beneath the scowls of the Germans. He got Benjamin onto the crutches, head bent as the Germans ordered them to hurry up, and shepherded his friend into the station.

  “I’m sorry,” he murmured. Benjamin didn’t seem to hear.

  He saw no Germans inside the station. A train stood at the nearest platform; Julien quelled a blind impulse to run toward it. “The train to Dunières?” he asked a man in coveralls. “To Annonay via Firminy and Dunières? Is it still running?”

  The man turned blank eyes to him. “Maybe. That’s the one over there. You get on it, I don’t know. Maybe they’ll let it leave.”