How Huge the Night

by Heather Munn

  “Because I’m going to die.”

  His eyes were wide. “Nina. No.”

  “I’m not getting better. I’m getting worse. Gustav, I’m so sorry—I don’t know how you’ll find a way to bury me, here.” She stopped. A boy with a suitcase was standing by the entrance to the toilets, looking at her.

  “Niko!” Gustav’s eyes were fierce. “Don’t you dare think like that, don’t you—”

  “Sh, Gustav. There’s someone listening. He might think we’re German too.”

  The boy was gone. Gustav’s head was in his hands. Above her, the light of the bare bulb flickered and dimmed, and she watched it; the last light she would ever see. She heard with a detached ear the shallowness of her breathing. Not long now. Days.

  Voices woke her. Gustav, a strange voice speaking Yiddish. The boy with the suitcase, sitting on the floor beside Gustav. Talking.

  “My train leaves in the morning—at eight. I could spend the night here with you. Will your brother be able to make it onto the train?” What was he talking about?

  “Niko,” said Gustav. “This is Samuel Rozengard from Grenoble. We have a plan.”

  He had heard them talk about her dying. He had thought about it for an hour, and come back.

  He was on his way to boarding school in a little town in the hills. He would sleep here with them tonight instead of in a hotel and use the money to buy them tickets. To this town, where there was food. Tickets out of here.

  He reached into his shoulder bag, and brought out something round, blotched in gold and red. It took her a moment to recognize it. A peach.

  “We have a tree in our backyard. This one is for you.”

  She stared at it. Its unbelievable color. In this dim place, it glowed like summer, like the sun. He put it in her hand. It was round, and heavy as life.

  She couldn’t. He wanted her to live, stand up, get on a train. She couldn’t even face crawling to the toilets. He didn’t understand how tired she was. The time comes, Gustav. It comes. When you can’t load all that hope and fear onto your back again, and keep walking. When you have to put it down. She would never love a boy, she would never read a book again, or sit at a table and eat. She had accepted it. She sat leaning against the wall where Gustav had propped her, looking at the peach cradled in her hand, and did not move.

  “Niko. Eat.” Samuel was gone. Gustav was looking at her.

  “I can’t do it. I can’t do any of it. Gustav, it’s too late for me, I’ll die on the way—Gustav, you should keep the tickets, wait a few days, you can go on your own …” She pulled feebly away from the anger that swept out from his eyes like a blow. He spoke in a low and furious voice.

  “You are getting on that train if I have to drag you.”

  “We should never have left home. Father was— Gustav … Gustav, Uncle Yakov was right …”

  “Do you think I don’t know that?” Gustav hissed. “We left. We’re here. We’re alive. We are—both—still—alive. Now you eat that peach or I will hit you.”

  “Gustav.”

  “So help me I will.”

  He wouldn’t. She knew he wouldn’t. He was beginning to cry. His eyes red, his mouth open, twisted, a wail without sound. She was doing this to him. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t. To turn around like that in an instant—and live …

  “Gustav, just give me time. I need … a little time. I need to sleep …”

  His red eyes held her, hard. He was afraid she would die in the night. She slid down against the wall to the ground and lay on the blanket, exhausted. The room was getting dark. The last thing she saw was the peach. He had put it by her head.

  The smell of it woke her in the night.

  She opened her eyes, and it was there, filling her vision: one perfect peach, its deep red blush glowing like a jewel against the grimy floor beyond. It smelled like life. Her stomach cramped with a hunger she had forgotten.

  Beyond the peach lay Gustav’s sleeping face, his mouth open, slack with weariness. He was tired too. And here she was asking him to go on alone.

  She’d just take a little bite.

  Sweet. So sweet. She had forgotten, she had never known, that such sweetness existed; sweet as sunlight on grass, as a morning when you wake into the light knowing all is well. Sweet as everything she had lost.

  She licked her fingers. Took another bite. Another. Her teeth met in the tender flesh, the richness of life in her mouth. She swallowed, and tears sprang to her eyes.

  Words rose in her mind, words she had heard Uncle Yakov say at Shabbat dinners with the family: Blessed art thou, O God, who brings forth bread from the earth. And peaches, O God. Blessed art thou, O God, who brings forth peaches from the earth, who lets us lick the juice of life from our fingers in the hour before we die.

  Chapter 33

  The Train Man

  Julien stood between the post office and station house, listening to the long whistle of la Galoche drawing closer, to the hiss and ring of her wheels on the track. Reading the postcard Mama had sent him to get. Preprinted: a space for a name and then “in good health/tired/slightly, seriously ill/wounded/killed.” And other options farther down. People were supposed to cross out the ones that weren’t true.

  It was the only mail allowed across the line.

  Mama had sent one to Uncle Giovanni and Aunt Nadine a month ago. They hadn’t written back yet.

  Today he would lead his first soccer game. He had fourteen guys—seven-man teams, and now Luc was in too. At this rate, he’d have full teams by next week. Henri Quatre didn’t even know. Too busy with his fascism. Julien felt the bulge of his soccer ball in his cartable and watched la Galoche pull in, bright steam rising from her in the sunny air. He watched the back of the train where the mailbags rode, imagined a postcard lying face down in the bottom of a bag, with in good health circled after all in Uncle Gino’s messy scrawl. Or with other things circled. He put his hands in his pockets, watched Monsieur Bernard walk with his clipboard to the back of the train.

  From the passenger car, a boy came down, neat dark hair and a suitcase, maybe fourteen. Julien glanced at him as he turned back to help a friend down out of the train.

  Then he stared.

  The boy’s hair was a greasy mat on his head, his clothes stiff and shiny with old sweat. The crutches he rested on were encrusted with grime; the hands and wrists gripping them were sticks. You could see the shape of his skull through the face.

  I thought I knew about hunger.

  Julien watched, motionless, as a third boy descended, thin and tough and unbelievably dirty, quick black eyes darting around the moment he hit the pavement, like a wary animal’s.

  He looked at them and knew: nobody was meeting them. Even the one with the suitcase; there was fear in his eyes too.

  They were helping the crippled one sit down on a crate, his crutches leaning against it; he sat and did not move. The other two began to walk toward the station house.

  Monsieur Bernard stepped up to them. Julien froze.

  He listened, not breathing, as the well-dressed boy spoke first.

  “Sorry to bother you, monsieur. Could you direct us to the Ecole du Vivarais?”

  Bernard’s back was to Julien, but his voice sounded courteous. “The new school? Oh, it’s just about everywhere. Up the hill, down the hill … are you enrolling?”

  “Yes.”

  “And,” said Bernard in a bland tone, “your friends?”

  The boy hesitated.

  “Or maybe they’re your brothers?”

  “Friends,” the boy said firmly.

  “How long have you known them?”

  He hesitated again, looking away from Bernard. The black-eyed boy said something to him in a language that sounded strangely familiar. The other looked at Bernard again. “Can you tell us the way to the school?”

  “I can tell you the way to the school,” said Bernard quietly. “But I have a question for your friend.” He turned to the black-eyed boy and said loudly, “Are you e
nrolling in the Ecole du Vivarais?” The boy stared at him.

  “He doesn’t speak French, monsieur.”

  “So it seems rather unlikely the answer is yes, doesn’t it? I’d like you to translate something for him.” Julien looked at him, at the straight back in the blue uniform, and his hand went up to his mouth as Bernard continued. “Tell him that if he heard this village takes in anybody who shows up on the doorstep, he heard wrong. Je regrette, but I’m telling you the truth. We are not rich. He’ll find people are not willing to give to beggars here like they are in the city. He’s made a mistake. But tell him this.” Julien bit down on his forefinger. “Tell him I’m willing to help him correct it. They can both have a free ticket back to where they came from, on me.”

  As the French boy translated, Julien watched the listener, saw his black eyes begin to burn. He snapped out something guttural to his friend, and the friend turned to Bernard and said in a firm, polite voice that didn’t give an inch—to Bernard, from someone Magali’s age—“Could you please tell me the way to the school?”

  Julien watched, not moving a muscle, as the two looked Bernard in the eye—and in the black eyes hatred burned—and Bernard told them the way to Pastor Alex’s house. He watched as the two boys walked back to their crippled friend. He watched as Bernard turned and walked into the station house, and picked up the phone.

  Julien stood for a moment, feeling the bulge of the soccer ball in his cartable; thinking of the game. Then he stepped out from the shadow of the station house, into the sun.

  “What did he say?” whispered Niko. She was light-headed. She could hardly stand.

  “Gave us directions to the pastor’s house.”

  “Should—should we go … find ourselves a place now?”

  “What place?” asked Samuel frowning.

  “Well,” said Niko, “we usually … usually …”

  “We usually look for an abandoned house or something like that,” said Gustav. There seemed to be something wrong with his face. She was so tired.

  “No!” said Samuel. “You’re coming with me.”

  “Bonjour,” said a voice from behind them. Niko turned. A boy her age with messy brown hair and worried eyes. Speaking a stream of French to Samuel—beckoning to her and Gustav—giving the station-house window quick, sidelong glances.

  “What … does he want?”

  “He says he’ll take us to the pastor’s house. He says not to listen to the stationmaster—they’ll help us—he says—”

  Help us. The words rolled over in her mind like two nonsense syllables. Help us. She closed her eyes and gripped her crutches. She was so tired. It seemed to be getting dark. She was so tired …

  “Nina!”

  Her mouth shaped the word Niko as the world blurred and swam around her. She didn’t know why it was so dark …

  “Catch him!”

  Julien made a grab for the crippled boy, caught one of his shoulders as he slumped forward; the black-eyed boy caught the other and gave Julien a sharp glance. He was so light. His brother gathered him into his arms like a child. Then stumbled. Julien held out his arms to take him, but the other shook his head, eyes bright with fear.

  Julien looked at him standing there, his thin arms shaking under the weight of his brother. We can’t do it like this. Farm carts and wheelbarrows stood alongside the station house, the ones the farmers had brought their shipments in— There was Roland’s father, thank God. “Excusez-moi, M’sieur Thibaud?”

  Roland’s father nodded as Julien explained, and gave him Roland’s exact lopsided smile when Julien asked if he’d give Roland his soccer ball on the way home so the guys could still have their game.

  They were arguing when he got to them with the wheelbarrow. In that language. He was pretty sure he recognized it. “Here. We can put him in here.” He almost asked them, to see if he was right. But he wanted them away from the station house, and the eyes inside.

  They laid the crippled boy in the wheelbarrow, legs dangling out the back. Julien bent to take the handles, but the black-eyed boy got there first. Sure. Whatever you want. Let’s get out of here.

  She was rolling. She was lying in a hard bed of some kind, rolling, the world was moving around her; the sound of voices was somewhere behind her, speaking in French. The boy with brown hair— the boy who’d said he’d help us. Or had he? The grainy blackness had lifted completely now, but the world was strange. The tops of houses went by against the blue sky above her head.

  The rolling stopped. A high black gate. Someone turned a handle and opened a little door in it, and she was being wheeled through. She was set down under a tree with yellow leaves that trembled against a deep blue sky. She did not move. She listened to the boy’s voice calling in a language strange to her, as all languages seemed to be now, and ran her finger slowly over the rough, rusty surface under her, the odd curve of it. She was lying in a wheelbarrow.

  “He says the pastor’s not here. He’s going to get his mother.”

  Niko lay and looked at the yellow leaves and the sky.

  “Mama. There’s refugees. Young—my age. Just got in on the train. I took ’em to Pastor Alex’s but no one’s home.” She was already putting her jacket on. “Mama, one of them’s sick. Real bad—his brother says he’s been sick a long time. He passed out at the station—”

  “Does he have a fever?”

  “I … I think so …” She was rummaging in a cupboard, pulling out a brown paper packet. She saw him watching.

  “Willow. It’s good for fever.” She put it in her pocket. “You’re missing your game, aren’t you?”

  “This is more important.”

  She gave him a long look and a moment’s smile. “True. What are their names?”

  “Gustav and Niko. They’re from Austria. They’re with this guy from Grenoble—a kid here for the new school—he brought them. He was walking into the toilets in the Lyon station and he heard them arguing about whether Niko was going to die. He says it’s terrible in Lyon, refugees everywhere and everybody hungry—really hungry … not like us. And Mama.”

  “Yes?”

  “They all speak the same language. I didn’t ask. But it’s Yiddish.”

  Samuel almost fell on Mama in relief when she and Julien walked in the gate; Gustav looked up from Niko’s wheelbarrow with quick black eyes. Samuel began to blurt out his story again—he just couldn’t leave them, he couldn’t think what to do except buy them tickets, his parents didn’t know, they certainly couldn’t afford room and board for three instead of one, but he couldn’t have, he couldn’t—

  “Samuel. It’s all right.”

  “But I don’t know what to do. I didn’t think! And now—”

  “You did think. You thought of them. Stop worrying. We’re going to help.”

  “What are we going to help with?” inquired a cheerful voice. Madame Alexandre opening the gate. “Hello, Maria, Julien. Hello, young man.” Her eyes took in the other two young men, and she sobered a little. “I see. Why didn’t you all come in? We never lock the door.”

  “We didn’t think we should—”

  “Come in, come in.” Madame Alexandre led the way, holding the door open. “And your friend …”

  “I’ll carry him,” said Mama.

  The wiry boy hovered nervously as she gathered up the thin form of his brother, his closed eyes like bruises in his bony face. She lifted him as if he weighed nothing at all. Julien saw the eyelids flutter, saw the eyes open green and wide with fear. His mother looked into those eyes, whispering to them softly in Italian. Julien listened, and a shiver went down his spine, and music came back to him: the sound of her voice singing in Italian, so long ago. Before everything. Before he had ever heard of war.

  She could take it from here.

  He took the handles of the wheelbarrow and turned to go.

  The dark-haired woman laid Niko on the couch. The pastor’s wife sat Gustav down at the table, asked in German with a thick French accent whether he was hu
ngry. He nodded mutely, but she was already speaking rapid-fire French to Samuel, then to the other woman who was moving into the kitchen, opening a brown paper packet. Gustav caught the word doctor and started up; Frau Alexandre ordered him sharply to sit down. “You will eat,” she said. “Your brother will eat. We’ll get a doctor for your brother; he is in terrible condition. We will pay for it. Do not worry.”

  Then she was speaking to Samuel, and Samuel was holding his hand out to Gustav to shake. “Good luck, Gustav. I … good luck.”

  And they were gone. In the sudden silence they left behind them he could hear Nina’s shallow breathing, and the moaning of a kettle; and the voice of the dark-haired woman, low and pure, singing.

  “You’re sicuro now.” That’s what the black-eyed woman said. Niko knew sicuro. Gustav had taught her. Siamo in un posto sicuro? he’d taught her. Is this place safe?

  The room was rocking gently. She lay on something soft. White walls. Red carpet. The black-eyed woman kneeling by her with a bowl that steamed. How had they found the Gypsies again?

  “Marita?” she whispered.

  Marita was making her drink something. Soup. It made her warm inside. Then something from a mug, hot and bitter, burning her throat. She swallowed, and coughed. Marita whispered strange words. Romany.

  “Marita,” she said, her voice cracking. Marita’s head turned at the sound of her name. “Marita, you won’t tell them will you? Tell them it’s Niko, I’m a boy. Marita, can I stay this time? Are you going away?”

  “Sst, sst, calma. Dovete riposare.”

  “Che cosa hai detto?” said Niko.

  “Parli l’italiano?”

  “Un po. Letto, porta, zuppa, luce. Per favore. Luce. Marita, how did you get to France?”

  But Marita was gone.