How Huge the Night

by Heather Munn

  He and Grandpa were digging the last fall potatoes, Grandpa putting a digging fork in the ground and turning up a handful of them all golden for Julien to gather. He’d thought this was a weed patch till Grandpa had showed him the thin, withered stalks in a neat line where the potatoes hid. They worked in silence together, keeping up the rhythm, the only sound the small nourishing thunk of potato on potato in the basket.

  When the silence had deepened and lengthened between them, Grandpa opened his mouth.

  “How’s life with Benjamin?”

  “Oh,” Julien said, and exhaled slowly, his fingers digging into the dirt. His mind was suddenly blank. “It’s … it’s not …”

  Grandpa turned up another clutch of potatoes, and Julien gathered them with quick fingers. Grandpa planted his fork, put his foot on it, and paused.

  “Not so good,” said Julien finally.

  Grandpa nodded without surprise, and Julien felt the ache in his chest give way a little.

  “I don’t know, Grandpa, it’s just …” Horrible. He makes everything weird, and wrong, and he’s German, and I think he hates me. “I wish …”

  “What do you wish, Julien?”

  “I wish one single thing was the way it used to be.”

  Grandpa nodded. “You’ve lost a lot this summer,” he said.

  A rush of tears filled Julien’s eyes, and he blinked fast. He bent down to gather a stray potato.

  Grandpa was quiet for a moment, leaning on his fork. Julien looked up and followed his gaze past Tanieux’s hill and the farther wooded ridge, on toward low green mountains in the west, with the sun above them.

  “The two-headed mountain. See it?” Grandpa pointed with his chin. One of the green peaks was split in two, one part taller than the other. “Her name’s Lizieux.”

  Julien nodded.

  “I like to think she’s the first thing our ancestors saw of this place on their journey north.” He looked at Julien. “Never let them tell you you’re not from Tanieux, Julien. You’re part of the story Tanieux is most proud of.”

  “What?”

  “You weren’t listening when your father and the pastor were talking to the Kellers. You were thinking, ‘That’s just history.’ Julien, history is where we come from.” His grandfather’s warm eyes were webbed with a thousand smile wrinkles. “Listen now. Our people came up from the south. They came in fear. Because they were Huguenots, and religious freedom had been revoked in France, and the king’s soldiers were arresting and torturing any Protestant they could find. They came looking for shelter. Refuge.” He looked at the far green mountains. “They came up the Régordane road, the old road beyond those mountains, and I like to think they looked east one morning and saw Lizieux holding up her wounded head and thought, ‘Maybe there. Maybe there is a place for us.’”

  Grandpa turned to Julien. “They came here. And they were taken in.”

  Julien looked at the mountains from where he knelt, his hands in the dirt. “I see,” he said.

  “Oh, Julien, I want to tell you so many stories, if you’ll hear them. I want to tell you the stories of Tanieux. The story of how it started. Of Manu and how he built the chapel by the stream—have you seen it? Four hundred years old, that chapel is. Listen. Winter’s coming. That’s when we tell each other stories here. By the fire, when the burle is blowing outside. Come winter, I’ll tell you the stories of Tanieux. If you’re willing.”

  “Yeah,” said Julien slowly. “That sounds good.”

  Julien walked home slowly, watching the sun sink over Lizieux behind long bars of white and gold. Thinking of how Grandpa had called the mountain she. Of his people, whoever they were, fleeing north on the old road past the mountains.

  Julien had fallen behind the others as he climbed the hill; halfway up, he passed a farmhouse, old stone with a slate roof and a broad orchard in back. A wall around the farmyard. And, leaning on the wrought iron gate, one of the guys who had stared at him in town.

  Julien gave him a nod; the ice blue eyes looked right through him as if he wasn’t there. It didn’t matter whose people had come up the Régordane road; this road, on this hill, was someone else’s ground. That guy’s ground.

  Julien gave the cold look back and walked on past with his head high. He’d see him at school tomorrow.

  And he would show him.

  Chapter 4

  Go

  Death came for Father in the night.

  That was how she thought of it—could not help thinking of it—that something had come and taken him. She hadn’t known. He’d been the same as ever when she went to bed. But this morning—She could feel the stillness of his body even from the doorway, even in the dark, and her throat tightened. She tried to keep her hand from shaking as she laid it on his heart to feel for the pulse; his flesh was cold, and for a moment, raw terror touched her.

  Death has come, the stranger. Death, the thief.

  But as the words rose in her mind, she was already turning away from him and into action. There was only one way to love him now. Promise you’ll do everything I said.

  I want you to leave the instant I die. Take my eiderdown. Unlock the drawer. Take the tickets and the money, put my will and the first letter on the kitchen table. Mail the second letter. Uncle Yakov will get it within the day and come. He’ll bury me. Let the dead bury the dead. But you—get out of Austria while you still can. Go to the station, and get on that train.

  She had the eiderdown off him and rolled up and the papers out of the drawer, and she was down the stairs before she had time to think, to tell her mind in so many words what had happened. Then she was shaking Gustav, whispering. “Gustav. Gustav. It’s time.”

  She couldn’t go up to him again. She knew she should go up with Gustav, kiss Father on the forehead, say goodbye; but she could not. If she let herself do that—if she let herself cry—no. She had to do everything he’d said. Check through the packs, put in the money, the tickets, the letter; put the will on the table with her books and her mother’s painting—the only thing she had from her … Please give these things to Heide Müller at my school, and tell her to keep them for me. Do not worry about us. God will take care of us. She hadn’t written that to please Uncle Yakov. It was true.

  “There is no God, most likely,” Father had told her once, when he was healthy and strong. “And if there is—” He’d stopped, his eyes very sad, and hadn’t finished the sentence, even when she asked. But she couldn’t believe like him, she couldn’t help it. Somehow there just had to be a God. Especially now. Especially—she turned sharply from the letter, to the window; no sign of dawn in the sky. Oh Gustav, come down. She began to check through the packs again.

  He came down. His eyes were huge in the darkness, looking at her. She held out his pack to him, and he took it. “Are you ready?”

  He nodded.

  They crept down the stairs and through the dark clutter of the workshop to the back door; Nina unlocked it, and stopped, her heart beating fast. They would walk out this door into the world. Alone. Only God to protect them. “Hear, O Israel,” she heard herself murmur, and stopped. She felt Gustav’s hand seeking hers, and took it and held it tight; and he joined in. “Hear, O Israel. The Lord our God”—they whispered the Sh’ma into the stillness—“the Lord is one.” Hear, O God. Hear us, help us, oh help.

  Together they slipped out the door into the dark.

  Chapter 5

  King of France

  One day, Julien would have a real soccer ball. But for now, he had what he had: an old volleyball Papa had brought home from his school, with a couple seams Mama had repaired. It wasn’t beautiful, but it was his. He couldn’t bring it to school; no soccer balls allowed during school hours, just like back home. But there would be a way. There always was.

  A single oak tree stood in the schoolyard, smooth dust and trampled grass in its shade; under it lounged a group of guys, and Julien knew them for what they were. At his old school, the broad stone steps were where the in-group o
f the troisième class would be holding court; the kings of the school. Here it was the tree.

  In the center, his back against the trunk, sat the cold-eyed boy from yesterday.

  Henri Quatre, they were calling him. Henri the Fourth, king of France in fifteen-whatever. King of France, anyway. He got the idea.

  He’d lost Benjamin in the crowd before crossing the bridge; at least there was that.

  But he was invisible. The twelve-year-olds in sixième—les petits sixièmes, he’d been one a lifetime ago—ran and shouted in the sun. Guys stood in groups by the low black stone wall or under the préau rain-shelter talking; Benjamin sat on the wall reading; Julien stood a few paces outside the royal court under the tree, and no one saw him. Not one glance.

  The bell rang for assembly, and Monsieur Astier, the broad-shouldered principal, announced their fates for the year. Monsieur Matthias for French, Madame Balard for geography, Papa for history. Monsieur Ricot, a skinny frowning character, for physics and as professeur principal for the troisième class. A groan went up. “Not Cocorico!” someone whispered. Ricot frowned harder and led them away to their homeroom.

  They scrambled for seatmates at the heavy double desks—or Julien scrambled; everyone else paired off instantly, leaving him looking at Benjamin across an empty front-row desk. He gritted his teeth and sat down.

  Ricot called the roll. Henri Quatre was Henri Bernard. Bernard. Julien had heard that somewhere—the stationmaster with the cold, angry face. Naturally. Henri’s seatmate was a bull-necked guy named Pierre Rostin—as in, “Pierre Rostin, sit down!”—who, every time Julien glanced back, was flicking tiny drops of ink onto the neck of Gaston Moriot in front of him. They’d both been under the tree. They’d both been in town that day with the soldier. So had Gilles Perrault, with the light brown hair and the constant smile, and Jérémie, grinning and whispering to him. So had half the class.

  And at break it was the same again, and Julien stood outside the circle, hesitant, unseen except for a moment’s hostile glance from Henri. They talked. He listened. Getting old Cocorico for homeroom was just their luck. Léon Barre’s father had said last week he’d vote for a Communist, and him and Gaston’s father had almost gotten into a fistfight. Pierre’s brother André, who drove a tank, had left a week ago for the Maginot Line. They were having a soccer game just as soon as they got the field set up. Tomorrow after lunch.

  Julien stood still as a statue, an invisible statue on the wrong side of the tree, his blood pounding in his ears. He would be there. Oh yes, he would be there.

  A little field lay behind the school, on the other side of the wall. Everyone was there.

  Pierre was hacking at a sapling with a hatchet while Henri watched; guys were scraping the touchlines in the grass with hoes. Gilles and a short, solemn-faced guy were standing by a half-constructed goal, deep in discussion. The solemn-faced one glanced over at him, and a corner of his mouth went up.

  “Hey,” said Julien, “you guys want some help?”

  “You know the regulation height of a goal?”

  “One-third of the width.”

  Gilles’s eyebrows rose. He glanced at the goal. “Let’s see, that’d be …” He paced it out, then stared at one of the uprights. “Give me a leg up, Roland?” But Roland wasn’t looking at him.

  “It needs to be three meters. Same as ours.” It was Henri Quatre’s voice, from behind them, with an edge in it.

  “The new guy says one-third of the width, Henri—”

  “The new guy? What’s he got to do with this?” Henri turned to Julien, cold eyes flashing. “Where’re you from?”

  “Paris.”

  “Thought you’d come show us all how it’s done in Paris? It’s three meters, Gilles. Here’s the tape measure.” Henri tossed it to him and turned away.

  “But—” That’s too high, it should come to about two-and-a-half—

  “You can watch,” said Henri, whirling back. “If you shut up.”

  Watch? “What, you got full teams already? First day of school?”

  “Yeah,” said Henri flatly. “Since last year.”

  Julien looked at Gilles and Roland. But they were both looking away. Dear Vincent, Julien wrote. Wish you were here.

  He scratched that out. Wish I were there. You’d hate it here. You would not believe what happened today.

  Julien sat on the low stone wall and watched the games. Henri brought the ball, real leather, rich brown, and almost new. He wanted to scream at the injustice of it.

  He sat in class beside Benjamin, walked home beside Benjamin, stood by the wall with him while Benjamin read his book. Same book as last week. He walked home and did his homework and took his pathetic little volleyball down to the narrow backyard to play against the wall. They were everywhere he turned these days. Walls.

  There was nobody. Worse than nobody. At school, they wouldn’t look at him; nobody met his eye. At home, Mama and Papa asked him how school was and he wanted to scream but he said fine, looking at their bright eyes that wanted him to be fine, their eyes that in the end were only another wall.

  He checked the mail every day. But Vincent didn’t write.

  He watched the games. It was fascinating. He watched Henri’s team beat Gilles’s team day after day, but they never mixed up the teams. And Gilles had good players: Antoine was a great forward; Roland was one of the most solid defenders he’d seen. Yet they lost. They lost because Henri had a gift.

  Henri was a real captain, a professional. His team worked as a unit, followed his signals—and won. It would never have worked with a different team every time; so they didn’t mix them. The whole thing served Henri, and only Henri. And they let him. The idiots. The sheep.

  Gilles won one game and lost four. Then it began to rain.

  They had these fall rains back home too; whole pouring days that churned the schoolyard to deep mud to be tracked into the school by dozens of feet, and that drenched the soccer field. At break, they crowded under the préau roof, and it rang with the rain and the echoing voices, with the scrape of the bottle caps the sixièmes kicked around on the smooth concrete. It rained for days. Julien kicked the volleyball around in his room. He walked to school in the rain, walked back in the rain, stared out the window at the drowned soccer field, and raged.

  The rain, the walls, the boys with their stupid boring gossip and their sheeplikeness, Henri with his stupid vendetta. Benjamin with his stupid book. There he was now, huddled under his hood as they trudged home through the rain and the mud, holding a flap of his coat over his stupid book. “Haven’t you read that before?” Julien snarled.

  Benjamin looked at him sullenly from under his hood.

  “Like for two whole weeks? Don’t you have anything better to do?” It felt so good to raise his voice. “During break! Does anyone else have their nose stuck in a book during break? No!”

  “Want to tell me why I should care?”

  “Do you just not want to make any friends?”

  “With this bunch of farmers with dirt between their ears? Thanks, but no thanks.”

  Julien shut up. That was exactly what they were like, but coming from Benjamin, it sounded so … snobby. He opened the door and stepped into the dim hallway.

  A fragile and lovely thread of sound was floating down from upstairs. He stopped. Mama was singing.

  Benjamin bumped into him from behind. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. Shh.”

  “Julien, get—”

  “Shut up!”

  It was an aria, a bright one, quick golden stairsteps of song. Benjamin stopped as he caught the sound, and in the dim rainlight, his face began to soften as he listened. “Wow,” he breathed. “She’s good.”

  “Yeah.”

  Her singing wove a thread of gold through the dingy air as they kicked off their wet boots on the landing. “Come in!” she called. “I have a special goûter for you.” She did: three pieces of bread on the kitchen table, a whole third of a bar of chocolate on top
of each one. And Mama smiling like sudden sunlight through the rain. Benjamin froze in the doorway.

  “Something wrong?” said Mama.

  “No,” he said thickly. “I’m fine, Ma—Madame Losier.”

  “There’s something for you on the dining-room table, Benjamin. Go see.”

  Two thick brown envelopes. Benjamin snatched them and ran for the stairs.

  “From his parents,” Mama said. “Postmarked a week apart. It’s a shame how slow the mail is these days.”

  Supper was merry that night, somehow; Papa smiled, and Mama sang as she brought the bread to the table; even Benjamin’s face looked more … relaxed. Magali was going on about her new friend at the girls’ school: “Her name’s Rosa, her parents run the Café du Centre, you know, the Santoros …” She beamed, and stuffed a whole piece of bread in her mouth.

  “Santoro? They’re not French, are they?”

  “Fe’s Fpanif,” said Magali. She swallowed. “I mean, she’s Spanish. Or was. She says her father’ll never go back now that what’s-his-name won the war.”

  “General Franco,” said Papa.

  “Yeah. Him.”

  “Your mother’s got a new friend too,” said Papa. Mama gave him a smile like Julien hadn’t seen on her in weeks. “Sylvie Alexandre just asked her to join the sewing circle, so if you ever come home and the place is overrun with women, don’t be surprised.”

  They ate, and Papa began telling stories. About Charlemagne, whose army loved him because he lived in the field with them on campaign and who liked to swim in the hot springs at Aix-la-Chapelle with his knights—sometimes a hundred knights in the water at once. (“I hope they took their armor off!” said Magali.) About Clovis, king of the Franks, whose baptism was the only bath he ever took. And who didn’t exactly turn into Saint Francis. Once his soldiers fought over a huge vase taken in the spoils of war, and one of them settled it by splitting the thing from top to bottom with his sword—and Clovis, when he heard, called the offender forward during troop inspection, took his sword, and did, well … the exact same thing.