by Heather Munn
The force of her anger left her suddenly. She was staring at him. A husband. Children. It was completely unimaginable. A house. A door. One that locked from the inside. Oh, if she could have a door again! She turned from him violently and threw herself down full length with her wet cheek against the grass, her eyes filling with tears.
“Niko? Are you all right?”
“I’m tired, Gustav. I’m so tired.” She felt a blanket laid over her. One of Lorenzo’s. It was warm.
She woke to a world she had never seen before. She lay on a little grassy ledge above a deep valley ringed with mountains, a bowl filled to the brim with clear air and light. Every blade of grass stood out as sharply as if it had been chiseled; she could see every leaf on every tree. It was the quality of the light. Not bright like midday when colors swim together under the hot sun; this light was dim, but with the absolute clarity of pure crystal. Niko lifted her eyes and cried out with surprise.
“Gustav,” she whispered. “Wake up. Look.”
Towering above them, so close she could almost reach out and touch it, the snowy peak of Mont Blanc had caught rosy fire from the setting sun. They watched in silence, their backs against the sun-warmed rock, while the glow grew stronger, deeper, until even the rocks and trees blushed rose with the mountain. They watched in silence, aware of nothing but the light, as the mountain faded slowly into glowing, icy blue, and the sky grew dark.
“Niko,” Gustav whispered, “I’m sorry.”
She looked at him. She could still see his face in the dim light. “I’m sorry too.”
“I—Niko—What I meant to say …” He fell silent.
“Yeah?” she whispered.
“Well, I’m bigger than I used to be. Aren’t I?”
He was. She had noticed. He was as tall as she was now, thin and wiry. Stronger than he had been. She could not say to him, to his face like this under the vast dark sky, that it was not enough. “Yes. You are.”
“I—Nina—Niko—if I can—I’m not gonna let anybody hurt you.”
She said nothing. Above the mountain, a star had come out, a faint point of light against the deep blue.
“And we’ll find a place where it’s safe. Another house maybe, like in Trento—maybe I can get a job, I’m fourteen now. After a while we could have a place that’s really ours—I mean, I really think we could do it, if we just found a place where people … left us alone. Y’know?”
Niko nodded. “Yeah,” she whispered.
“Niko?” said Gustav after a moment, in a very low voice. “Do you still believe in God?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered. They had whispered the Sh’ma together, and walked out the door into the world. The terrible world.
“I don’t know either,” said Gustav.
There was a long silence. The mountain was barely visible now, a huge blue shadow against the night, under cold stars.
“We’re free now,” she said quietly. “We can go wherever we want.”
“Where do you want to go?”
“France,” she whispered. Her father’s last command. “And down out of these mountains. It’s getting cold.”
Gustav pulled the edge of the blanket toward her, and she took it and wrapped it around both of them. “Well,” he said quietly, “let’s do that, then.”
They crossed into France through the trees, barely a hundred meters from the road, in the cold dark after nightfall. They walked down the mountain for two days. On the third they found a railroad, and a freight train stopped on it, and they climbed into a boxcar. It took them to Lyon.
Chapter 27
The Homeland
Things changed. There were things he couldn’t have imagined a few months ago, and they were there, and he got used to them. Listening to Papa read aloud the terms of surrender, Julien had felt a hardness forming in the pit of his stomach, a weight of shame and helpless anger like a twisted lump of lead; he carried it with him through his days and nights; and he got used to it. He was a boy from a conquered country. He was not allowed to write to his cousin or hear if he was alive or dead. His friends’ brothers were prisoners of war.
There was bread again. There was no meat.
There was work. Half-grown squashes and pumpkins hung on the garden wall, and he helped Mama tie them up with rags so their stems wouldn’t break as they grew. Grandpa wanted them on the farm now. They walked between rows of beans or turnips, chopping at the weeds with long-handled hoes. Benjamin wore his oldest pair of dress pants, threads dangling from the cuffs. Things changed. Benjamin sweating, taking Grandpa’s old hat off, and wiping his brow, Benjamin with dirt under his fingernails. And Julien too—digging a pitchfork into a cartload of manure and lifting with all his strength. Their hands blistered, then toughened. Their backs ached. They ate their lunches ravenously.
Potatoes and beans, potatoes and lentils, potatoes and cheese. Carrots and leeks and spinach. Bread with a little precious honey scraped across it. But mostly potatoes. The hunger followed them, a tiredness in their blood; no amount of potatoes could chase it away. Sometimes it hit out in the field, and he dropped his hoe and sat down on the ground. Sometimes he thought of what Mama had said about his grandmother. Then he picked up his hoe and started again.
He dreamed at night of meat. It had been so long. Mama’s spaghetti sauce, all that ground beef. A chicken roasted with tarragon, a drumstick and a thigh—he could feel the flesh between his teeth. He needed to stop thinking about this.
Mama said when the ration cards came in, the prices would go down; they’d have meat again on Sundays, and butter. Sometimes sugar. She didn’t mention chocolate.
He remembered chocolate, the dark sweet richness of it, the buttery taste of a croissant, the smoothness of cream. They were still so vivid to him. Sometimes he wanted to ask Benjamin if he remembered those things too.
But he knew better.
He and Benjamin still walked once or twice a week; Benjamin silent, an inward look in his eyes; Julien looking at his hills. The variegated greens of them, the sunlight resting on them like a visible presence, the height of summer’s glory. He pointed out the marjoram and the wild thyme, and Benjamin knelt and gathered them with him without a word. Hard, red blackberries hung on the brambles, beginning to shade toward purple; the yellow genêt flowers lay withered on the ground, and dark seed pods hung in their place, pods which in the fall would twist and burst open to their silver-white lining and scatter their seeds. Then it would all wither, and pass into the long, terrible winter of the hills.
And the hills would remain.
On the fourteenth of July, a quiet gathering was held in the place du centre—no flags, no fireworks, just the mayor playing a recording of Marshal Pétain’s words about the armistice. People stood in the place, farmers with their worn cloth caps in their hands, listening to the marshal praise the fallen who had fought so valiantly against overwhelming odds and saved their nation’s honor. It was like listening to Grandpa—the gentle, dignified voice saying things that made sense in the depth of your heart. “You have suffered. You will suffer still. Many of you have lost your homes, your work. Your life will be hard. I refuse to tell you comforting lies. I hate all the lies that have done you such harm.
“The land does not lie. She is still your help in need. She is the homeland itself. A field left fallow is a piece of France dying. A meadow new plowed is a piece of France reborn.” Old, weather-beaten men of the land stood with tears in their eyes. Julien too. He could see it, the view from the crest of the hills—the wheat fields in the sun, the green of pasture, Grandpa’s endless rows bearing food for his children and grandchildren. That’s France: these hills, this land, these roots. That’ll never die. He felt like saluting.
Papa sent him into town for the day’s bread and the paper. Julien walked home slowly, reading as he went. He read the paper every day now. A couple of weeks before, the headline had been British Fire on French Fleet! and Betrayal at Mers-el-Kébir. Apparently most of the French Navy had been at anchor
in North Africa and the admiral had gotten an ultimatum from the Brits: give them the fleet or they’d fire. They’d kept their word too. Papa said they must have figured the Nazis would seize the ships for themselves. The marshal said nothing could justify such an act. Julien agreed with the marshal.
Let Us Be French! read the title on the editorial page. Foreign influences have weakened our nation. France had been defeated, the writer said, because it had slid into cultural weakness and decadence; as our good marshal put it, the spirit of enjoyment had trumped the spirit of sacrifice, and the French had abdicated responsibility, had been taken in by foreigners who claimed to have their good in mind—had let them take over important positions in the government, journalism, the arts … Why only a few short years ago, a Jew, Léon Blum, had been the prime minister of France! What other proof was needed, the writer wanted to know, of our nation’s criminal apathy or of the dangers of socialism, gateway to international communism? This movement, determined to break down all borders and wrest the land from those who had held it in sacred trust for generations, this movement, also led by Jews, had gained a foothold in France …
Julien folded the paper and tucked it under his arm with the bread and walked home slowly, even more slowly than before.
They were invited to dinner at the parsonage. Benjamin was home sick, which was just as well because suddenly the Alexandres were hosting a refugee family who’d just arrived. From the north.
They looked terrible. He was unshaven, a bruise on his cheek. There was mud in her wild hair. She was holding her baby like someone might steal it from her. A stunned-looking toddler sat on the floor.
Their names were Régis and Juliette Granjon. They were from Paris.
After supper, they told their story. They’d heard the Germans were coming, had packed their car, and gone. But the roads were jammed with cars and buses and people and carts, and they’d run out of gas. All the money in Régis’s wallet would hardly buy a liter—gas was worth its weight in gold, and that was the asking price. “So we left it by the road. Abandoned cars were everywhere—people like us thought they’d get away easy. Turned out farmers were the lucky ones with their hay carts and horses … We kept one suitcase and carried the children and started walking. Walked for a couple hours. It was getting hot—it was about noon—when they came.”
He stopped.
“They?” said Pastor Alex.
Monsieur Granjon nodded, looking straight ahead. He swallowed and spoke lower. “Planes. German planes. Over the road ahead of us, full of people—three planes flying low—” He looked up as if he could see them now; there was fear in his eyes.
“Michel. Go upstairs.” Madame Alexandre’s voice was sharp.
“But Mama!”
“Now.”
Michel dragged his feet up the stairs. When he was gone, Madame Alexandre leaned low over the table. “Monsieur Granjon,” she said in a low voice, “are you about to tell us that the Germans bombed those roads?”
Granjon looked into her eyes and nodded.
“God have no mercy on them,” she whispered.
Mama stood. “Excuse me.” Her face was white. She went into the bathroom and closed the door.
For a few moments, no one spoke. Then Pastor Alex said quietly, “We thank God that you have come to us safely.” Madame Alexandre said, “There’s only one bed—I hope it’s all right—” And then everyone was talking about rooms and beds and ration cards, and Mama came out of the bathroom pale and dry eyed and was asked if she could think of anyone in the church with houseroom. “The Bonnauds. That apartment his mother lived in, it must seem so empty to them now.” Julien didn’t know how she knew this stuff.
“You’re brilliant, Maria. Would you be so kind as to ask them for me?”
“Of course,” Mama said softly.
It was hot. The hills were baking in the sun. Under the pines, the air was still, without a breath of wind, and insects hummed over the forest floor, a carpet of tiny movement and sound. Benjamin sat down on the brown, springy needles, and Julien opened their lunch: lukewarm potatoes and goat cheese. Well-aged goat cheese. As the smell filled the clearing, Benjamin wrinkled his nose and said, “What died?”
He had spoken. He had made a joke. “Think we should give it a proper burial?” Julien asked.
“We can’t waste food.”
“Maybe there’s some other use. I would’ve thought bug repellent, but …” He waved his hand and scared up a cloud of gnats. “Maybe some sort of weapons application. Just think, Benjamin, if we’d had this cheese a few months ago—”
Benjamin gave a resounding—almost an echoing—snort. The look of surprise that passed across his face made Julien crack up completely. Suddenly, they were laughing helplessly, uproariously, as they hadn’t laughed in weeks, falling on the pine needles, holding their sides. It felt wildly good to let go, after weeks and months of defeat and hard work and not talking and getting used to it. It was freedom, it was— Benjamin was gasping. Too loud.
Benjamin was curled on the pine needles, breathing hard and fast, his gasps growing to great tearing sobs. His body convulsed, his hands curling like claws, his face distorted. Julien knelt by him staring, his stomach tight. What could he do? He put out a horribly awkward hand and laid it on the shaking shoulder. He could think of nothing to say. Except “It’s all right.”
But he knew better.
Benjamin was mad at him for days after that. Julien walked alone, kicking rocks. There was nothing he could have done. Except not be there at all. Not be there, not see him finally crack. There was nothing to be done about anything. Nothing but hoe rows of beans and potatoes till his arms hurt, and eat beans and potatoes, and do the dishes, and get up in the morning and do it all again.
He turned sixteen. He had Roland and Louis over and celebrated with wild blueberries and a goat saucisson they’d bought from Monsieur Rostin. He tried to invite Pierre too, but Pierre was gone.
He’d done a fugue, as they called it. Run off, just like Gilles said. Julien didn’t blame him. Lots of country boys did it, Grandpa said. “He’ll be up in the Tanières probably—lots of caves up there.”
“Tanières?”
“Those hills on the west side of the Tanne. Good place to hide.”
Julien stood on the bank of the Tanne and looked over at the western hills, a tumble of green and rocky places; then he took off his shoes and waded across and climbed into the most beautiful country he had ever seen.
Great jutting rocks and boulders, tilted ridges where lichen and moss grew on the layers of rock, and growing from every crack, tall southern pines with their papery bark that glowed rust red in the slanting sun. It stirred his blood. He climbed deer paths onto high outcroppings of rock; he slid down into a steep ravine with a tiny clear stream at the bottom and drank deep of the cold water. He ate his lunch on a small cliff, a fifteen-meter drop to the bushes, dangling his legs over the edge. This was the place. If the boches ever came here—if they ever got the chance to fight them here on their own ground—this was the place all right.
He went up to the Tanières every day he could get free. He was looking for Pierre; Monsieur Rostin badly needed him on the farm. But he was looking for something else too. At home, he would kneel by his bed and try to pray, and it was like pushing a boulder up a hill, like that guy in the Greek myth, all the time knowing it would just roll down again. War. Defeat. Work and waiting and nothing he could do. What had God changed about anything this year because Julien had prayed for it?
It was only here he could pray for Pierre. For Vincent. For Benjamin. Only here in the hills where all that weight lifted off him like a bird springing up into flight.
Chapter 28
Down
In Lyon, Niko learned to beg. There was no other way.
They searched for a hiding place and could not find one. The hiding places were full. Skinny kids, whole families with shell-shocked eyes, they were in the crumbling buildings around the train tracks, under br
idges, on park benches. Standing in long lines on the streets with desperate faces. They found a place at nightfall under a bridge, crowded with bodies. Men, women, children who whimpered in the night. She was glad of their presence, the safety in their numbers. She slept.
When morning came, the numbers weren’t so safe.
Gustav went round to the back doors of restaurants, came back to her empty-handed, taught her the French for, We have nothing. Go away. There were too many hungry. Looking for help, looking for work. Gustav stood in line all day. When he got to the front, he tried Italian, Yiddish, Romany; the man behind the desk looked at him blankly. In desperation, he tried German. The man spoke sharply and gestured for him to go.
“I’m so stupid, Niko. They’ve gotta be from the north, the Germans invaded … Lorenzo told me France was in bad trouble, I don’t know why I didn’t put two and two together, Niko, I can’t believe I was so stupid. I’m sorry …”
“It’s not your fault,” Niko whispered. “It was my idea.”
Niko took their bundle and made herself a place on the steps of the cathedral, among the other beggars. Since there was nowhere to hide. She spread out the army blanket and knelt on it, held out her hand. She said what the other beggars were saying. “S’il vous plait, monsieur, madame. Pour manger.” Something about food, she thought. Most people looked away. Most people looked like they didn’t have food either.
They were going through Lorenzo’s money as slowly as they could. One loaf of bread was food for a whole day. But the money would be gone soon.
They had to get out of here.
They talked about going on the road again. But there were so many refugees. They might walk days and find themselves somewhere just the same, or worse … They went back to the railroad yard where their boxcar had come in. It was their only chance.