by Heather Munn
“You’ll never guess,” he said as they walked home. “I bet you twenty francs.”
“If I had twenty francs,” said Julien, “I wouldn’t waste them on some dumb bet with you.”
“C’mon. Guess.”
Your parents are alive. “Full scholarship to the Sorbonne?”
“They want me up to the new school on Friday. To give a talk. On being Jewish.”
“Really? They invited you?”
“Yep,” said Benjamin. “Me.”
“Hey!” Magali was calling to them across the place du centre, waving. “Hey,” she shouted again, running toward them. “You’ll never guess what Rosa and I just saw!”
Julien and Benjamin both rolled their eyes. “Bet us twenty francs?”
“I’m serious, Julien. It was amazing. It was great.”
“All right, what d’you see?”
“Well, we were watching the twelve-fifteen train come in, and this guy got off. Older guy, real dirty, messy beard. Wearing a coat without any buttons—he had to hold it closed—and the soles of his shoes were coming off, and Monsieur Bernard sees him, right?”
Julien swallowed. Right.
“So he steps up to him like he’s a gendarme or something, like so”—she did a brisk military step, her face right in Julien’s—“‘What is your business in Tanieux?’” she said crisply. He could just hear the man.
“And the guy mumbles something in this accent, maybe Polish, and the Bernard guy’s about to give him his speech and a ticket back out, right? And then”—her eyes grew bright—“then old père Soulier steps up from beside this huge crate of cabbages he was shipping. He steps up and says, ‘Excuse me, Victor.’ Just like that—Victor—I didn’t know they knew each other that well! ‘Excuse me, Victor, he has business with me.’” Her laugh rang across the place. “And Victor does this complete double take—man, it was beautiful. Best thing I’ve seen all day.”
“Then what happened?” asked Benjamin, a fierce light in his eyes.
“Père Soulier says ‘He’s my guest’ and turns to the old Polish guy and says, ‘Monsieur, you will come. Come and eat with me today. Cabbage soup!’” She laughed again, happily. “Then he tells Bernard ‘Cross off my shipment,’ and Bernard says ‘How much were you going to get for it?’ And père Soulier says ‘Cross off my shipment,’ again. And the old guy’s standing there with tears in his eyes.”
“Then what happened?” whispered Julien.
“Bernard crossed off the shipment, that’s what. I guess he knows he’s up against more than just Pastor Alex now.” Her grin was fierce. “I saw Monsieur Faure and Monsieur Cholivet giving him dirty looks, and they helped père Soulier load up, and Monsieur Raissac took one of the sacks of potatoes he was shipping and just slung it on père Soulier’s cart without saying a word! Man.” She gave a huge sigh of satisfaction. “Let’s go have lunch.”
“Magali, was Henri there?”
“Yeah.” She frowned. “He was there, but I don’t know if he saw. I didn’t see him till they were all gone, and he was looking the other way. C’mon Julien. Let’s go.”
Looking the other way. Julien followed them down the street, slowly.
On Wednesday the wind rose; the burle come early this year, a promise of terrible cold. The French flag fluttered wildly in the icy wind, and the boys in their circle around it hunched and shivered; Henri’s jacket flapped and billowed against the hand he held hard over his heart. When the salute ended and the school doors opened, Julien paused a moment, watching. Henri Quatre had drifted away from his group and stood alone by the black stone wall, his hands in his pockets, looking out over the Tanne in the bitter cold.
“Julien,” said Papa, beckoning him into his office and shutting the door behind them. “There’s going to be an assembly at school today. I know they didn’t announce it. Now I want you to do what I say, Julien. Benjamin won’t be there today. And I want you not to tell him what you’ve heard.”
Julien blinked.
“If you have any questions about why, ask me at lunchtime.”
Julien nodded slowly. “Yes, sir.”
Gustav sat at the table staring at a piece of bread, his heart tight, trying to understand what had happened. Nina wouldn’t eat.
She wouldn’t eat.
She said she wasn’t hungry. She said he should eat it, he was going to live.
It was like Samuel hadn’t come to them, that terrible day in the train station, like none of it had happened. In her head, she was back in Lyon.
She knew they were hiding her. He told her it was only a precaution because of the stationmaster; she looked at him with flat, empty eyes and looked away.
Fräulein Pinatel had sent for Signora Losier. To talk to her. It was all she could think of. Gustav looked at her as she came in, remembering what she and Frau Alexandre had seemed to him: two mothers standing at the end of the road, with life in their hands for the taking. And saw that he’d been wrong. She was as lost as he was.
Nina did not turn her head when the door opened, but she saw her. The Italian woman. Here to make her eat. Make her live.
Make her die another day.
“Hello, Nina,” said Maria. “How are you?”
“Fine.” Nina did not move.
“You need to eat.”
“Go away.”
“I will not go away. You need to eat. You need to grow strong. I know you are afraid, but that is all the more reason why you need to eat.”
Nina turned her head and looked Maria full in the face. “You know I am afraid,” she said through her teeth. “You know?”
“Yes, Nina,” said Maria softly. “I know what it is to be afraid.”
Nina sat up and leaned toward her, her teeth bared. “You,” she spat. “You with your house, with your doors that lock”—she’d broken into Yiddish—“you tell me you know? Liar!” she shouted. “Liar!” She took a deep, shuddering breath, forcing herself to think of the words. This woman had to know what she had done. “You lie,” she said in Italian. “You say sicura. You say safe! I am not safe. Nowhere is safe, not for me. Nowhere.” Everywhere there are evil men.
Maria closed her eyes. “I am sorry. You have a place here, Nina. Here in Tanieux.”
“You talk. Easy talk. You do not know.”
“I do know, Nina.”
“You know hunger? You know fear? Here in your house—with door, food, bed, light—you say you know? You know nothing,” she spat. “You have never been alone.”
Even the air in the room stopped moving. For a split and silent second their eyes were locked on each other, and the force of Maria’s anger hit Nina like a blow. “You do not know me,” said Maria between her teeth, and her voice cut the air like a whip. But Nina was already recoiling, as if she had been slapped.
There was silence. Nina looked into the woman’s eyes, felt a trembling in her belly.
“I have been alone,” said Maria quietly.
Nina dropped her eyes.
“No. Look at me.”
She raised them slowly.
“Nobody to help you. You sit on the floor. You don’t move. You don’t speak. You don’t look at anything. There is nobody to help you when the man comes with his gun.” Nina’s eyes were wide, staring at her. Behind them she felt the sting of tears. They were both shaking.
Their locked gaze broke. They dropped their eyes to the white bedspread. Nina held a fold of it clamped in her fist. Maria sat down on the bed.
“You?” Nina whispered.
“Yes.”
They looked at each other. Maria’s eyes were wide as if with fear.
“In the Great War. The first war. You know war?”
Nina nodded.
“I was in Italy. My village. Bassano del Grappa. A small farm. We were poor. It was like now—when the war came, there was no food.” Nina was very still. “My two brothers, they were soldiers. My father, my mother, they worked very hard without my brothers, so we could eat. I worked hard too. I was fourte
en. You understand my Italian?”
Nina nodded.
“We worked hard, three years; we were hungry. My mother, she made me eat, she always gave me some of her food. We were thin. Then the war came to our village—the Austrian soldiers came.” Nina looked away and looked back; the two women’s eyes met, and understanding was in them. “We were afraid. But they did nothing bad to us. Except the worst thing: they took our food.”
Maria paused a moment, looking down; then she continued.
“That winter was terrible. Always my mother said, ‘I’m not hungry. You eat.’” Of course. Of course she had said that. “I don’t know how we lived.”
Maria took a deep trembling breath.
“In the spring,” she said, “the sun came back. It was warm. We planted an early garden, and we hoped. You know this word, hope?”
Nina nodded, her eyes never leaving Maria’s face.
“Spring. We start to hope—then we get the news. My brother Tomasso is killed. My mother cries and cries. Then more news. My brother Gino has been killed also—they think he has been killed, they do not know. They cannot find him—you understand? My mother stops crying.” Yes. Yes. You stop crying. And then …
“She doesn’t cry, she doesn’t talk, she doesn’t eat. Soon she is in bed with a fever. She was so thin. So weak—” Maria looked down, her throat laboring. “I was with her,” she whispered. “I watched her die.”
It came back so vividly—the wet sound in Father’s throat, his struggle to breathe. To whisper to her to run, fight, live. She had found him—in the morning—could she have borne it if she’d had to watch him, to hear every breath come harder than the last, feel him growing cold? Oh, Father.
She had shut away the pain and obeyed him. She had shut away the pain, because deep inside she had known it would hurt this much.
“There was only me and my father. We worked as hard as we could to stay alive. I guided the plow, and he pulled it; all our animals were gone. He cried sometimes at night when he thought I was asleep. It was terrible to listen to. The soldiers came again, but there was no food for them to take. We should have left, but we didn’t know where to go. The soldiers came once more—running away, with the Italian Army after them. We hid in the cellar while the battle went over us. And then the war ended. We had hope again, but so tired. So tired.”
Nina could feel it in Maria’s voice, that bone weariness; she could feel it in her weary heart.
“We got sick. Both of us. The influenza. It killed more people than the war. I was delirious with fever for days. When I woke up I was alone.”
Nina’s stomach tightened. Tears were welling in Maria’s eyes.
“I ran through the house, calling for him, calling ‘Papa, Papa.’ It was so quiet. I thought he had left me while I was sick—that hurt so much … I ran outside to the chestnut tree where my mother’s grave was—you know grave?” Nina nodded. The tears made bright tracks down Maria’s cheeks. “There were two graves,” she whispered.
“All,” breathed Nina. “All your family …”
Maria nodded. They looked at each other for a moment. Then Maria took a breath.
“I was alone,” she said, not looking at Nina, her voice growing harsher. “The neighbors on the next farm came and left food for me. They left it outside the door. They were afraid of the sickness. I sat on the floor, I didn’t eat the food, I didn’t sleep, I didn’t see the light. I wanted to die. And then I looked up and in the doorway there was a man with a gun.”
Nina froze. No.
“A soldier—Austrian. He was dirty. His uniform was torn. He said something in German, and he pointed his gun at me. I didn’t understand.” She was gesturing as though she had a gun. But her eyes were looking into the darkness of the barrel. Nina saw it too, that deep blank eye. They were kneeling on that floor, together, in that dark.
“He yelled at me. He took the bowl of soup out of my hands—it was cold; I’d had it for hours. He drank it.” She lifted an imaginary bowl, tipped back her head, drinking savagely. Nina could see the soup spilling out the sides of his mouth. She could feel his hunger. “He threw it at the wall, and it broke. He yelled at me again. I was starting to cry.”
She grabbed Maria’s hand; they were both shaking. “And he—he looked at me, Nina. Do you know what I mean?” Maria’s face twisted with that look—ugly: lust and scorn and desperation. Nina drew back, shaking her head no, no. “And then he stopped. And he looked around.” The nervous eyes of a deer in an open field, the quick turning of the head. “There was nobody. But … he looked out the door and then looked at me and”—Nina’s mouth was open, she was leaning forward, tears wet on her face—“and then he was gone.”
Gone.
“Out the door. I was alone. Nina—I was alone for days. In the empty house. The door was broken. The neighbors who brought the soup had gone. Nobody came,” she whispered. “Nobody came for days.”
You have never been alone.
Maria’s eyes were closed. Her face was very still. Nina reached out a hesitant hand as if to touch her cheek—her throat hurt, she could hardly breathe, the salt taste of tears was in her mouth. Maria spoke, and she drew back. Her voice was very low.
“I escaped. Others didn’t. I don’t know why he left.” It was pure, blind luck. “But I learned what I learned, about the world. I have not told my children this story, Nina. I am afraid to tell them what I learned. But I have told you. Because I think you know.”
“Yes,” whispered Nina. “I know.”
“Nina.” Maria opened her eyes. They were very dark. “I have told you my story. Will you tell me yours?”
Story. As if it was something with a meaning. An end. She stared at Maria. Maria looked quietly back. Her face was so—open. Open like the door to a firelit house at the end of a long and terrible journey. Story. Nina swallowed, gripped a fold of the cover in her fist, and opened her mouth to speak.
It was bright and bitter cold. The boys in the schoolyard shuffled and stamped their feet to keep warm. Monsieur Astier stood before them with his bullhorn, his face very serious.
“I won’t keep you long. But I have something very important to tell you. It’s news you won’t read in the papers or hear on Radio Vichy. It’s news you have a right to know.”
Julien rubbed his hands together and wished he were somewhere where none of this was happening.
“I love my country,” said the principal. “I know you all do too. So it’s difficult for me to tell you this, but you have a right to know. As do your parents. You have a right not to be led blindly where our country seems to be going.
“Before I tell you this story, I want to emphasize that Pastor Alexandre and I heard it directly from an eyewitness.”
Julien’s throat was dry. Hurry up.
“You may know that the Nazis have persecuted the Jews in Germany almost from the day they came into power. It appears that now they want to be rid of them completely. They’ve been deporting many of them east into occupied Poland. But three weeks ago, they decided to send a trainload of deportees to France. To Lyon.”
Lyon! Julien and Roland looked at each other. Were they coming here?
“They didn’t tell our government their plans. Not a word. They just packed the train with Jews they had rounded up, and sealed the cars from the outside, and sent them. When the train arrived in Lyon, officials there were shocked to find it packed with people— men, women, children, the elderly—all Jewish.
“You have to understand,” said Monsieur Astier slowly, “that the Germans were breaking the armistice by doing this. And that the officials were afraid that there would be more. And you can imagine they asked themselves, what will these people eat?”
The crowd stirred. Everybody understood that question.
“Yes,” Monsieur Astier said heavily. “What will they eat?” He looked away for a moment. “So our government in Vichy stood firm and refused to accept them. They insisted the Germans take them back. But the Germans didn’t tak
e them back.” His voice grew heavier. “And that train sat in a corner of the Lyon train station for three days, shut. Nobody was let out. Nobody brought them food or water. Nothing.”
The schoolyard had gone dead silent.
“After three days, they sent it on to an internment camp, without opening it. When it arrived, some of the people inside were dead.”
He would never tell Benjamin.
“Our eyewitness watched the bodies being unloaded. Many of the living were so weak they had to be carried. None of them were taken to a hospital; they all went directly to the camp. Where it’s said the conditions are so harsh that even healthy people are at risk.”
Julien was light-headed. How many times did he have to say, I never imagined this? Was this the future?
There was a long silence.
“We can still be shocked,” said Monsieur Astier, “at seeing human beings treated in this way. The Nazis have not finished their work on France. But how long? When does our government start to resist? Do any of us really believe this won’t happen again?”
Julien and Roland looked at each other. Roland looked sick.
“I do not believe,” said Monsieur Astier slowly, “that our new government is going to resist. They are cooperating with the Nazis. And the Nazis will expect them, and us, to get used to seeing certain people treated this way. To find it normal, to shut up. I felt I had to tell you this, boys, because you as much as your parents have a right to the truth. To make your choices in the light of day. Boys, it’s not just our government that has to decide what to do with the people who come in on the train. It’s us.”
There was silence.
“Let’s take a minute to think,” said Astier. “The podium is open, if anyone has a response.”