How Huge the Night

by Heather Munn

  Four or five days.

  They turned the radio on that night. Triumphant music poured out, and then a voice. A new voice, calm and self-assured; no trace of a German accent, just a touch of smugness, as it told them serenely that the Germans were moving south with unstoppable force. They had reached Dijon today, the voice said.

  “They wouldn’t lie about that,” said Papa. “People would know.” He ran a hand through his hair.

  Dijon. Julien revised his calculation.

  Three days.

  Julien stood at the hillcrest and looked up at the north road and shut his eyes. It would be dust on the horizon first, a small cloud; then larger; then perhaps, tiny in the distance, the low-slung crawling silhouettes of tanks. In two days. The Germans. The conquerors. You don’t know what they’re like.

  That night, the walls crowded in as they cleared their plates from the table. The triumph music cut the silence like a knife. A special announcement, said the voice. Marshal Pétain, revered by all Frenchmen for his heroism in the Great War, would speak to the nation. Marshal Pétain, who in 1916 had won the Battle of Verdun.

  The Germans were in Verdun. They’d been there for two days.

  A new voice spoke in measured tones, full of force and dignity: the marshal. “Today I have taken over as head of government,” he said. “I am offering to France the gift of my person. It is with a heavy heart that I am telling you today that we must stop fighting. I have spoken to our enemy tonight to ask if he will seek with us, as one soldier to another, after a valiant fight and with all honor, the means to ceasing this conflict.”

  They looked at each other. “Papa,” said Magali, “are we surrendering?”

  Papa swallowed, ran his hand through his hair, and swallowed again, nodding slowly. “Yes, Lili,” he whispered. He switched off the radio. The crackle of the static died into silence. They sat looking at each other. It was over.

  It had been over long ago.

  “Julien.” Papa’s voice was very quiet. “Will you read tonight?”

  He nodded. Mama handed him the Bible.

  “‘God is our refuge and strength,’” he read. “‘A very present help in trouble. Therefore we shall not fear …’” He felt dizzy. The words were falling into the silence like the notes of a bell, like tiny stones thrown into a very deep well. He dared not sound, at this moment on the edge of time, as if he doubted them. “‘Though the earth may change, and the mountains slip into the heart of the sea. Though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains quake at its swelling pride.’” He didn’t need to doubt anything. This was no promise that all he had known wouldn’t drown in the tide.

  “‘There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy dwelling of the Most High. God is in the midst of her, she will not fall. God will help her when morning dawns.’” She will not fall. The city of God—won’t fall. “‘Nations are in an uproar. Kingdoms fall.’” Faraway, long-ago Sunday school kingdoms, names ending in ite, he’d thought. “‘The Lord of hosts is with us … He breaks the bow, and shatters the spear … Be still, and know that I am God … The God of Jacob is with us.’”

  He closed the Bible. No one spoke.

  “Papa,” said Julien, not quite looking at his father. “What’s it like? Being … occupied?”

  His father looked at his hands. “I don’t know, Julien,” he said quietly. “I suppose you could ask your mother.”

  Wednesday morning, Julien went out alone, early. It was the third day. At the hill’s crest, he took the north road; he climbed the ridge, slipping on brown pine needles, scrambling over rocks, wet green needles lashing his face with dew. He sat on a rock at the north end; from there he could see far off to where the road vanished on the broken horizon, to where the soldiers would come.

  He sat and kept watch as morning faded slowly into day. He ate the potato and cheese he had brought, his eyes fixed on that distance. He sat till the sun was low over the western hills, the pine shadows lengthening eastward. Then he stood.

  They hadn’t come.

  He almost wished they’d hurry.

  “You’re not going to the Santoros’s today,” Mama told Magali.

  “But Mama!”

  “I want you in the house with me till they get here. Till we know what we’re dealing with.”

  “Mama, I’m not scared!”

  Mama’s hand flashed out and her fingers dug into Magali’s shoulder and shook her. “Then you’re a fool,” she grated. Julien stared.

  “Say yes.”

  “Um. Yes, Mama.” Magali’s eyes were wide.

  Mama turned away and walked into Papa’s study and shut the door behind her. They heard voices. They looked at each other, and found nothing to say.

  Magali stayed inside. Benjamin stayed inside. Julien went to the rock on the ridge again, telling no one where he was going; his eyes on the green horizon, an ache in his throat. He would run down the hill, calling out that they were coming. And what would that change?

  On the news, the smooth-voiced announcer said not a word about where the boche army was; spoke of things returning to normal, of how impressed the Parisians were by the discipline and honor of the German soldiers. Of how movie theaters and dance halls were opening again. Papa switched the radio off.

  Then Friday night, worse. The terms of surrender, the voice said with pleasure, were being presented to the French generals right now in the very town, in the very same railroad car—brought out of its museum by Monsieur Hitler, specially—where Germany had signed its surrender in the Great War. In that very place now, Monsieur Hitler would accept the surrender of France. Julien’s eyes burned.

  He lay in bed that night a long time, twisting the covers in his fists, hating. Hating him so much.

  On the ridge the next day, Julien squatted on the rock, and the clouds flowed by, great hulks and mounds of white, their underbellies a dark and lowering gray. The horizon was erased, a long bar of gray with no beginning and no end: the north, from which the conquerors would come. The wind twisted the clouds and blew Julien’s hair into his eyes; it chased the tears in strange, cracked patterns across his face. Hot tears of shame and bitter fury. He had simply never thought, in his wildest and most terrible dreams; he had never thought of this. He hugged his knees to his chest and laid his face on them and wept, and shook with his weeping.

  It began to rain.

  He lifted his face to the dark wild sky, and let the rain fall.

  His heart felt hollow and oddly clean when he came home. Mama fussed over his wet clothes and made him take a bath. Supper was potatoes and beans. It tasted so good.

  Papa turned on the radio. Julien shut his eyes.

  Monsieur Hitler had accepted the surrender of France today, the voice said; the armistice had been signed. The full terms would be published soon. They included, among other provisions, German occupation and control of the north of the country and the western coast, but left the south as an unoccupied zone.

  It took him several seconds, but finally he understood the voice had really said it.

  Unoccupied zone.

  Benjamin was on his feet, his mouth open, blinking with tears in his eyes. Papa was gripping Mama’s hand. Mama was crying. Julien was breathing hard, they’re not coming, they’re not coming! He stood, his eyes wide open, and suddenly he laughed.

  “Mama?” said Magali. “Can I go to Rosa’s tomorrow?”

  “Hey, Julien!” Gilles called across the place du centre. “Julien Losier! How’s life?”

  Julien laughed. What a question. It was Sunday morning, and the sky was blue, and men were clustering around the Tabac-Presse to read the headlines about the armistice. “Fine,” he shouted. Everything is fine, just fine, except, you know, little stuff like Hitler personally stomping all over our nation’s flag … But we’ll never set eyes on him, never see a German with a gun here in the place, they’re not coming!

  “How’re you?” he asked Gilles, returning his ironic smile.

  “He
y, we’re alive, right? That’s a lot better than it could be. Did you know they’re in Saint-Etienne looting the munitions factories right now?”

  “They said the south—if they think Saint-E isn’t the south—”

  “My father says they’ll leave when it’s official, they’re just taking what they can till then. Sales boches. Did you hear about André?”

  “André Rostin? Is he okay?”

  “Yeah—he’s alive and all. It’s just they’re keeping him. The Rostins heard somewhere they’re gonna keep all the guys they caught—in prison camps, making bombs for them or whatever. You should see his mom this morning—all in black. Pierre says it’s awful at their place. He says she wishes it was him instead. I think he’s thinking of running off.”

  “Running off? Would he really?”

  Gilles shrugged. “If anybody would—”

  A shout came from the crowd around the Tabac-Presse. “He’s a hero,” someone was shouting. “He’s a true Frenchman, and he’s saved our honor—and he won the Battle of Verdun, Verdun mind you, and that’s a lot more than a lot of those politicians can say. Those pansies that ran south with their tails between their legs as soon as things got hot in Paris.” The men around him chorused agreement. “Give me a military man any day. He knows what honor is.”

  Dr. Reynaud said impatiently, “Of course he won Verdun and he knows what honor is. Whether he’s qualified to run a country is a completely different question. All I asked was what happened to our government. The one we elected.”

  They were all over him. “You say another word against our marshal—” “He’s the honor of France! He’s our savior!” “Elections at a time like this?”

  “Yeah,” muttered Gilles. “Honestly. ‘Hey the boches are overrunning the country, would you all please show up to the mairie to vote?’”

  “He got them to stop before they got here!” said Julien. “What more does he want?”

  Dr. Reynaud pushed past them, his brows drawn down in fury.

  “Aren’t you ashamed?” someone threw after him. He turned and said crisply, “The day I am ashamed of asking a simple question, Monsieur Moriot, will be a dark day indeed.”

  Julien watched him walk away across the place, his back very straight.

  But the bells began to ring, and he and Gilles took off running for the church service.

  Pastor Alex, as he walked up to the pulpit, looked very serious.

  He spoke of humiliation and repentance. The head of their denomination had called for a collective repentance and humbling for all the things that had brought their nation where it was today. “But we must know,” he said, “when not to humble ourselves. When humbling ourselves would be disobedience to God. Let us not humble our faith, not before anyone but our God.”

  He spoke of the “totalitarian doctrine of violence,” known to the world as fascism. It had gained prestige in the world in these days, Pastor Alex said, because it had, from a human perspective, wonderfully succeeded. Julien bowed his head; he understood that. They conquered us.

  “To humble ourselves before such a doctrine, friends, is not the humility of faith. I am convinced that this doctrine is akin to the Beast in Revelation. It is of the spirit of Antichrist.

  “Let us gather around Jesus Christ,” the pastor said, “our living Head; and let us draw our thoughts and our words and our actions from his gospel, and only from his gospel. Ungodly and terrible pressures will be imposed on us in the days to come, on us and on our families; this ideology will demand our submission. Our duty as Christians is to resist the violence imposed on our consciences, resist it by the weapons of the Spirit.”

  The weapons of the Spirit, Julien thought. Pastor Alex had said that before. But what violence was he talking about, what pressures?

  To love and to forgive our enemies is our duty, said Pastor Alex, but we will do it without cowardice. We will not give in to them. We will resist when our enemies demand from us obedience that is contrary to the gospel. Something in Julien leapt up, a sharp sweet pang, at the word resist. “We will do it,” said Pastor Alex, “without fear, without pride, and without hate.”

  Fear and pride and hate. Julien’s eyes stung. Who in the world was without fear and pride and hate? And did he mean— What did he mean?

  Well, he meant the boches of course, the Nazis—they would impose, he was saying, they would demand …

  Papa looked at him as they walked out together into the sunlight. “I’m afraid he’s right, Julien,” he said quietly. Julien looked up.

  “They said unoccupied,” said Papa. “They didn’t say free.”

  The full terms of the armistice were in the paper the next day. The flag on the mairie was flown at half staff.

  The Germans would occupy the north and the west coast like they’d said. The line was drawn north of Vichy in the middle of the country. The demarcation line, they were calling it.

  The boches would decide who could cross it, and what. For now, nothing at all; and no mail.

  The government of the unoccupied zone would pay a tax each month—an amount of money Julien couldn’t imagine—to cover the costs of the occupation.

  And they were officially forbidden to call it the free zone.

  Chapter 26

  West

  Niko lay under the bench in the army truck, hidden behind footlockers, trembling. The ride up the Valle d’Aosta had been a steep, jolting nightmare—scrabbling for a grip on the bare truck floor, being thrown against the knees of soldiers, suddenly. Men’s grinning faces around her in a terrible blur; loud, rough laughter; men’s big hands. Gustav saying, Niko, it’s all right. All those eyes. Lorenzo’s voice slicing through the laughter: “Cut it out guys. He’s not all there. You’re scaring him.”

  She couldn’t look at him. Lorenzo who had fed her every night for the last three weeks, who’d hidden her—she didn’t know him, didn’t know what he’d have done if he had known. What he would still do.

  Gustav loved him. He’d lit up at the sound of his footsteps. She’d lain under the table and heard their loud laughter, and felt a leap and plunge in the pit of her stomach. Oh Gustav. He trusted him. At the thought, longing rose up in her—and terror.

  Lorenzo came for them at dusk, alone, his lean face serious, and walked them to the road.

  “This is it, guys. You’re on your own from here on out.”

  “We’ll be all right, Lorenzo,” said Gustav. Niko nodded.

  “See that old barn down the road? There?” Its roof stood out black against the fading sky. “It’s empty. Good place to spend the night. Hang around here tomorrow and then cross after dark. Won’t be any guards at that border, not after tomorrow. Maybe go off the road a little ways. They might leave a couple of our guys behind, but they won’t watch real hard. Here, I got blankets for you, it’ll be real cold at night, you wanna get down out of these mountains quick—there’s rations in this bag here, a little money too—you take care of yourselves, okay?”

  “Yeah, Lorenzo,” said Gustav. He swallowed. “Yeah. We will.”

  “Well. Um. Bye then. Always land on your feet.”

  “Yeah. Yeah. We will.” Lorenzo put out his hand, and Gustav shook it; he glanced at Niko and made a funny little motion toward her, then stopped. She looked up at him. His eyes were wet. She put out her hand. He took it in his big rough palm and shook. Then turned away. She watched him walk away into the camp, a tall shadow of a man.

  She turned toward the road and filled her lungs with the free air.

  “He was a good guy, y’know, Nina.”

  They were sitting together on the grass between huge, sun-warmed rocks; below them, a valley full of deep blue haze. Mountains all round them. Huge. The highest peak stood snowcapped and blinding against the blue sky: the Mont Blanc. France.

  “Yeah,” said Niko quietly. “I know.”

  “Well”—Gustav was tearing up bits of grass—“You’d’ve known a lot sooner if you’d ever looked him in the eye.”

  A
nger flared in her. “Oh yeah. I should’ve looked him in the eye and told him the truth so all his friends could find out there’s a teenage girl under the table right in the middle of their army camp.” How could he not know? “Didn’t you learn anything from what happened on the border?”

  “Nina! It didn’t happen! We got away!”

  “Oh yeah, someone tried to get me alone in the woods and rape me, but he didn’t quite manage it, so now I should trust every man I meet because I’m invincible. Gustav, I’m gonna tell you this now and you remember it: that was pure, blind luck.”

  “You trusted your instincts, Nina. You grabbed your chance. Lorenzo says that’s the absolute best way to get away from someone in the woods. Run like h—like mad—until you’re well out of sight and then freeze.”

  “You told Lorenzo?”

  “I told him he tried to rob us. Started acting funny and playing around with his knife. I’m not stupid.”

  “I panicked, Gustav. I just plain panicked and ran. And then I tripped. That’s not gonna save me next time.”

  “There’s not gonna be a next time, Nina.”

  She turned on him, grabbed his collar, and hissed into his face: “Yes, there is. And quit calling me Nina.” His eyes were big. She let go. “You think I call myself Niko for fun? I just felt like cutting my hair? There’s more like him out there. Everywhere. This is what it means to be a girl in this world, Gustav.”

  “It’s not, Nina!” Gustav yelled. “It’s not what it means! How can you think that!”

  “What’s it mean?”

  “It means … it means—you’re my sister, it means someday you’ll have a husband and children, I—it … I dunno, Ni—Niko … Niko I mean … aren’t you ever gonna be Nina again?”