Flame in the Night Read online

  Benjamin gripped the chair in front of him; it scraped loudly on the floor. He broke and ran for the stairwell door.

  “I’ll come up in fifteen minutes!” Papa called after him. “I have to send word today!”

  “Lord have mercy,” whispered Mama.

  “Amen,” said Papa, already heading for his study door. Julien followed, almost running.

  “Papa.” Papa was head down, rummaging in a drawer. “Papa,” Julien said again, and Papa looked up, his eyes harried, and spoke quickly.

  “Annemasse route’s shut down. Close call, very close—our passeur compromised, our local allies shaken to the bone. Who knows how long till—and the second route’s not up yet—a complete fiasco. And his visa’s for October only—how they can justify that—”

  “Papa,” said Julien.

  His father looked at him.

  “I could go with him.”

  Papa’s mouth opened.

  “Hold his hand. One last time. It’d work. I can help him in the rough terrain. Just as far as they’ll let me. Just get him, get him moving, get his courage up till he can go on—don’t you think he’s more likely to say yes? If he’s got me?”

  “Yes,” said Papa slowly. “I do. I don’t know if the passeur would allow it. These alpine guides are professionals. I suppose I could give a recommendation.” He shook his head, eyes abstracted. “You just took over the Scout troop.”

  A flush of heat passed up through Julien’s neck, his face. “Give it to Sylvain.”

  “What?”

  “I said give it to Sylvain,” said Julien more loudly.

  “That probably won’t be necessary, but it’s—it’s …” Papa’s eyes finally met his fully, and suddenly his hand was on Julien’s arm, pulling. “Let’s go up and tell him.”

  Upstairs Papa knocked on Benjamin’s door. Silence. He knocked again.

  “You said fifteen minutes,” said a low, dark voice through the door.

  “We have something to tell you.”

  The door was flung open. Benjamin’s lightless eyes were very still in his thin face. “Yes?”

  “I could go with you,” Julien said.

  Benjamin’s shoulders rose slightly. The life that came back into his eyes looked mostly like pain.

  “What do you think?” said Papa.

  Benjamin closed his eyes, his lips parting. He forced out the words with a visible effort. “I’ll go.”

  Then he sank down on the bed. Put his face in his hands, raised his head, and whispered, “Can you leave me alone a little while now?”

  “Of course,” murmured Papa. Julien got one last glimpse of his friend as his father shut the door: his eyes looking at nothing, his head in his hands.

  One more day.

  Julien slipped Grandpa’s slim little songbook into his Scout bag, alongside the shaving kit Papa gave him. If God will only show Himself. Oh, show Yourself. I believe. It was intended—his father sending Julien to lead his best friend to safety—it was right. The time came toward him like a cold and rushing headwind, bracing him, lifting up his wings. Like a promise. He felt Papa’s warm eyes on him sometimes, and met them when he turned around.

  On his last afternoon he walked down to the La Roche boardinghouse after lunch, with a letter from Papa to the director. The sky was deep blue and very high as he walked south out of town. The wind rippled the long grass of hayfields gone to pale fluffy seed. He wondered if he would see Élise, whether she would want to talk to him. He’d thought about telling her privately where he was going. Maybe offering to tell her more about the border when he came back.

  He walked up the La Roche driveway and knocked, then walked in. He saw the director’s name on one of the pigeonholes along the lobby wall, but kept going. Was she here? Silence as he walked on through the foyer; a male voice somewhere up on the stairs.

  As he stepped through the doorway of the common room, the music struck him like a storm.

  It rolled and climbed and built itself higher, deeper, hanging and towering like a thunderhead in the sky. She built it. He stood transfixed, watching her. Her hair was up in its tight bun; a stained apron hung limp on the piano bench beside her; her sleeves were wet. Her face was hard and luminous, like a diamond. Like a diamond cutting glass. She bent to her work, shoulders tense, her eyes barely glancing at her twining, flying fingers; seeing nothing but the thing itself, in her mind, the music. She searched, her eyes seeking something beyond, something neither of them could see. She struck a false note, a dissonance that went through her like an arrow; she froze, trembling, as if someone had flung a curse in her face.

  The silence lasted one eternal second. Then slowly, with a breath that shook and then smoothed out, she bent to the piano again, touching it gently, building the thunderhead again, higher, deeper, her eyes on something beyond as if in prayer. He dug his fingernails into his palms, not breathing. She slowed, she paused, she crouched like a tiger for a moment over the keys. Then her hands flashed out and struck them again like lightning, and the air was filled with the anger of angels, and the light in her face made his body tremble.

  He stood rooted as the music washed over him, wave after wave. He stood till it slowed, till a voice was heard from the kitchen; till Élise’s fire began to dim, and a swift side glance of her eyes made him afraid. She hadn’t seen him. But she would. What on earth would he say to her?

  He faded backward into the shadow of the doorway, turned on silent feet, slipped Papa’s letter into the right pigeonhole, and fled.

  Chapter 9

  PROMISED

  “SEE THE HOUSE?” Julien murmured. “Number twenty-five, shed with a green roof.”

  Benjamin nodded, barely glancing up. He had made eye contact with no one on their two-day journey, except a gendarme who had demanded his papers. He had answered to the name Charles Béranger with a stony face and given the name of the bombed-out northern village he was supposed to be from, and gone on expressionless till the safe house door closed behind them in Saint-Étienne. Then he’d started gasping for breath while Julien told him how excellent he’d been, and the kind old lady hosting them plied him with tea. The tea worked, eventually.

  Here in Annecy he did better. When the door shut and Madame Cantal ushered them through the little wood-paneled foyer into the dining room, he merely sank into one of the oak chairs, leaning his head against the high back and closing his eyes. Madame Cantal looked him over with brisk compassion, said, “Coffee will be ready in a minute,” and bustled out. Julien turned at the sound of feet coming down the stairs, opened his mouth, and forgot to close it again.

  “Hello,” said Marcel. “I’m Jean-Pierre. Nice to meet you.”

  Benjamin opened his eyes. They widened a little, then closed again. Marcel shot him a worried look as he and Julien shook hands, and asked quietly, “How was Lyon?”

  “Better than Saint-Étienne. It was scary, but nobody stopped us.” The Lyon station had been like a night forest full of eyes, the uniforms everywhere seeming to watch them through the crowd: the blue of gendarmes, the gray-green of soldiers with their hooded German helmets.

  “You were lucky. Lyon’s the worst. You got stopped in Saint-Étienne?”

  “Just a contrôle. Benjamin was amazing. And his papers—”

  “I wasn’t amazing, Julien.” Benjamin glared at him.

  “You were! You were stone-cold like a—”

  “Please. You don’t have to praise me for not wetting myself with fright. If he’d decided to investigate it wouldn’t have mattered how much I moved my facial muscles—”

  “I’m not—”

  Marcel cleared his throat loudly. A young man and woman in dark clothes stood in the doorway, watching them warily. Julien gave them an apologetic nod. “This is Jean and Marie,” Marcel said. “The rest of our group. They don’t speak French. Charles, I’ve been told you speak Yiddish?”

  Benjamin straightened slowly, meeting the man’s eyes and then the woman’s. He spoke politely. The young
man answered with something about Krakow.

  “I have some instructions for you all,” Marcel said to Benjamin. “Do you think you can—” He broke off as Madame Cantal came in with a pot of coffee. “I’m sorry, you just got here.”

  Benjamin sat bolt upright now, his eyes pinning Marcel. “It’s fine,” he said. “Let’s hear it.”

  Julien spoke only once to Benjamin, in the silence of their guest room that night: “You’ll be in Switzerland tomorrow.” Benjamin said nothing. The next morning, he was already dressed when Julien woke. In another hour they were on a train to Chamonix.

  The Alps were a revelation.

  Julien had seen them before on the far horizon, cloudy blue masses sharp-peaked against the sky. The young mountains. Not like the green and gentle peaks of the plateau, smooth-sloped volcanoes dead and harmless for millennia, grown over with sweet grass. He loved those soft green mountains with all his heart, but he felt no awe. The feeling that rose in his chest as the train pulled toward Chamonix and the Alps rose up to their true height before him—this was something new.

  They grew and grew as the train rushed toward them, and he could not take his eyes off them. Huge, jagged shoulders and spires of rock thrust up from steep slopes mantled with dark pines, rising and rising toward heaven till they reached it, till the great snow-crowned peaks that soared above them gleamed whiter than white in the young morning sun, blinding as angels. Immensity that stopped his breath, that made his heart lift out of him and fly. He had never known there was so much sky before, fathoms and fathoms up into the blue—except once or twice, caught out on the road home from Grandpa’s as a summer storm built up to breaking, the thunderhead rising like a towering castle in the sky, and him small and running for home beneath it, wide-eyed and silent with fear and joy. Music rose in his mind as the mountains drew closer, music that built up and towered, that broke like thunder, like angels surging up with lightning in their eyes, and then a girl’s face blazing with intensity, with a sharp and single-minded love. And suddenly his eyes were shut and he was shaking. You have other things to think about. Other things. As if this of all times was the time to stop and stare like a fool, to forget everything because he had seen beauty.

  He took short breaths until his heart slowed. Then he opened his eyes and looked up at the great snowcapped walls between Benjamin and safety as the train pulled in to Chamonix.

  It was chilly. They huddled down into their layered clothes and followed Marcel’s Scout uniform through the air brilliant with white light from the snowfields above. There were no police. Marcel stood at the bus stop watching people get off, then turned away as if in disappointment. Julien led Benjamin and the Polish couple onto the bus.

  It climbed a long valley between steep mountain walls, its engine laboring; it stopped at clusters of houses, built of rough gray granite or polished wood, steep-roofed against the heavy winter snows. Down on their left a swift clear river ran, boiling over rocks. A bearded young man in a mended wool coat walked up the aisle, swaying easily with the motion of the bus. “You’ll drop me at my brother’s house today, Monsieur Chellet?”

  It was the signal Pastor Cantal had given them. Julien waited till the next stop after the passeur descended, then led the others down.

  Huge clouds hung above the mountains, unbelievably bright. It was colder here, almost freezing. He found the little footpath Marcel had described and took it, hearing the others breathe behind him, the skin of his back crawling with imagined eyes. They reached the forest, dark as an old stone church under the canopy of the pines, and stopped at the fallen log. The silence of the place sank heavy and soft around them. No one broke it.

  Not even the passeur. The bearded young man came up the path without a sound, pulled a pack from the hollow of the log, and beckoned them on.

  Up and up the tiny, winding path, legs laboring, breathing deep of the thin, cold air. Julien scanned around them, but there was no one, no presence but the rocks thrusting up through the hard earth, humps and jags and boulders crowned with emerald moss that glowed where the rare shafts of sunlight struck it. After a while the sound of water broke the deep cathedral hush, and they came to a swift rocky stream. The passeur crossed it first and made fast a rope to a tree on the far bank, then stretched it very taut over the stream and spoke his first words to them: “Use this to keep your balance. Don’t slip. Water’s even colder than you think.” They stepped cautiously from rock to shaky rock, Jean helping Marie, Julien helping Benjamin. “That was the easy one,” said the passeur, coiling up the rope.

  An hour later the others’ pace was faltering, and even Julien’s legs ached. The sound of white water, growing and growing, rose to a roar as they stepped into bright light beyond the trees and saw the river, its surface gnarled as muscle from the rocks hiding under its flow, wet boulders casting blue shadows on the foam. “This is the hard one,” murmured the passeur, and slipped the rope out of his pack. But Julien had eyes for nothing but the waterfall upstream.

  The pounding water, the water flinging itself over the edge, the weight and the weightlessness of its fall. It stopped Julien’s breath with a strange deep clenching. Then Benjamin gasped.

  The passeur had leapt across the white water, rope in hand; he clung to a great boulder. A scramble, another lithe, practiced leap. The blood was draining from Benjamin’s face. The passeur was making the rope fast to a rock somehow. Another leap, and he was on the far bank tying it to a tree. Then the return, swift and smooth. Benjamin was fish-belly white.

  “One at a time,” said the passeur. “Rope won’t hold two.”

  Julien had to ask Benjamin twice to translate for the others.

  Marie crossed first. Jean watched her, his hands clenched by his sides. Then Jean crossed, almost falling once, jerking hard on the rope. He reached Marie, safe on the riverbank, and they gripped each other.

  Benjamin’s turn.

  “In one minute you’ll be over there,” whispered Julien. Benjamin stepped forward, grasped the rope, looked at the ledge, and at his feet, and at the water. Then he leapt.

  A cry burst from Julien as Benjamin’s right foot missed the rock and splashed in the water, one hand grasping the rope white-knuckled, the other scrabbling at the boulder as he fell to one knee on the little ledge, his face striking the rock.

  “Stand up!” shouted the passeur, his calm dropped like a mask. “Stand up!”

  Benjamin pulled himself up, a scrape showing shocking scarlet against his white face. He paused, gasping, his hand tight on the rope, as the passeur held out palm-down hands. Calm now.

  Then he started to climb.

  Up that boulder, hauling on the rope, slipping, regaining, tearing his trousers, doing it. He stood panting on the boulder, then straightened, flinging his head back, hand on the rope—and swung into the second leap. He landed two-footed on the midstream stone, crossed it and jumped again, wide across the deadly water, and fell to his knees and hands on the grassy bank beyond. From across the torrent Julien could see him breathing like a bellows.

  “Thirty seconds,” he murmured, and smiled.

  “He’s lucky I brought extra socks,” muttered the passeur.

  They walked on, their pace flagging and strengthening, crossing the rare open places at a run. Benjamin panted and stumbled. They crossed a road once, after the passeur scanned the valley with field glasses; they walked slowly, looking straight ahead, the passeur’s hand going up once in an acknowledging wave to some unseen villager. The forest, when they entered it again, was like a mother’s arms.

  There was no path now. The slope was very steep. At the ridge’s crest the trees opened out, and they went on hands and knees on the short, tough grass, between sharp-scented evergreen bushes and tawny, fading heather. They stood when the passeur did, and followed him up a steep, dry gully between great ridges of rock. Julien’s thighs were burning now; Benjamin and the Poles were in a bad way, gasping for breath in the thin, freezing air, Benjamin leaning often on Julien. The pa
sseur motioned them to sit and climbed out of the gully. Benjamin sank down and watched dull-eyed, shivering in the cold shade.

  “Clear,” said the passeur, returning. He dug in his pack. “Eat.”

  They shared bread and cheese and water. Benjamin stopped shivering. Julien looked up as he ate, at the deep blue sky and the brilliant white clouds that flowed through it, at a hawk riding the air currents, turning in wide circles, flashing his intricate cream-and-brown markings in the sun. When the passeur called them to go on, Benjamin rose with gritted teeth and pain lines in his face. Julien put a hand on his friend’s shoulder and asked the passeur, “How far now?”

  “About a kilometer to the pass. That’s the border. You’re the Scout?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Stay with us till the pass.” The passeur asked Benjamin, “Can you translate again?” Benjamin nodded. The young man turned to the group. “After the pass,” he said, “you’re all right. But I’m not. If the Swiss border patrol picks us up, you get your visas stamped for entry and I go to jail.” He shrugged. “That’s how it works. So please be careful on the other side too. Understand?”

  They understood.

  He gave them a nod and led them out onto the heights.

  The world widened to hugeness around them, the sun high overhead in the deep, dark blue, great gulfs of air between the grassy uplands where they stood and the massive peaks rising like islands to east and west. Joy welled up in Julien as he walked, fresh strength flowing into his legs. They climbed slopes of grass and lichen-crusted granite, using hands as well as feet, Julien staying below Benjamin to brace him. They climbed between jagged boulders thrust up out of the earth like broken bones, now and then catching sight of the pass itself, up beyond hillcrests of rust-red heather and tawny winter grass: the gates to freedom. The image rose in Julien despite himself, the image he had repressed since the day he undertook this journey, for fear of rejoicing too soon: standing in a high pass in the mountains, watching from far away as his friend walked down and down. Already safe, already free, walking into the green valley: into the promised land.