Flame in the Night Read online

  “Monsieur Faure … ?” Magali asked him in a voice that quavered.

  He gave his head a tiny shake, his eyes on Magali’s. Mama saw.

  He stood still beneath her anger, shutting his eyelids tight against the face of a mother when her own children turned on her. She said, “Look at me,” and he looked at her. Magali said something he didn’t hear, then pulled back suddenly as Mama reached for her. He ran into the bathroom and stood with his hands pressed against his face, breathing raggedly.

  After a while the voices moved off into the bedroom.

  He walked into the kitchen, light-headed, and flipped the switch. The glare off the night windows hurt his eyes. He dug shakily through the icebox: turnips, beets, carrots, a single egg. A stub of bread left on the breadboard. The voices from the bedroom were growing shriller. Benjamin opened cupboards and closed them, his eyes lost. Julien found a pot and ran some water. Boiled potatoes, you put them in boiling water and they boil, right? He had never felt so useless in his life. He had just bent to put more sticks in the stove when the knock came at the door.

  He froze.

  It came again, light and firm. Benjamin gestured to the living-room window. “I saw Élise go in the downstairs door.”

  Julien’s heart caught. “Alone?”

  Benjamin nodded.

  Julien looked at the dishes in the sink, the cold pot of water on the cold stove. Magali’s voice from the bedroom rose high and desperate, “Mama, I swear! It’s not real!”

  Julien went to the door and opened it.

  Élise stood on the landing, a scarf wrapped around her dark hair. Her eyes went to Julien then swiftly past him, as the opening door let the sound come through to her, the sound of helplessness and fear. Julien bent his head.

  “Please come in,” he said.

  Chapter 15

  IF GOD WILL ONLY SHOW HIMSELF

  ÉLISE WALKED IN like a miracle. A living, breathing miracle of God.

  She stood in the doorway as Julien cringed at the voices coming through the bedroom door; stood there flicking her eyes between the dirty dishes in the sink and the tangled mess of beets and carrots on the table, one side of her lip caught between her teeth. Then she spoke.

  “Have you eaten?”

  Julien shook his head.

  She pulled off her scarf. “Is that your pantry?” Then hesitated. “Is it all right if I—”

  “Yes.” The word leapt out of Julien.

  It was as though the kitchen filled with warm wind: finally, a sure voice to follow. “The fire first—smallest wood you have—get it to coals as fast as you can. Does your mother have a grater? Benjamin, would you peel these potatoes? Is that a meat knife—wait, never mind. Do you have any oil or lard?”

  Ten minutes later Mama emerged from the bedroom, drawn perhaps by the mouth-watering scent of the first potato pancake. Julien could take his eyes off it only because she stood at the stove, her face calm, her deep brown eyes lifting to meet his mother’s.

  “You …” Mama made an aborted gesture, staring.

  Élise ducked her head apologetically. “Won’t you please sit down, madame? You’ve had such a hard time. Here.” She pulled out a chair and served the pancake onto a plate. “They’re called latkes. My mother taught me to make them.”

  Mama sank into the chair. “You shouldn’t be here. It’s not safe for you.”

  “Julien, some water in the glasses? I’ll go home very soon, madame.” She put another latke in the pan. Julien nudged a fork toward Mama.

  He had never known what food meant. Not in the worst days of the first shortages after the invasion, when he’d dreamed of it constantly. He had never known how much was in it, in the fire that warmed it, the hands that offered; he had never seen the light that wove around it, setting the twisted world straight again. He had been an utter fool.

  Élise gave him the second latke.

  He should have passed it on to Benjamin or Magali. He didn’t. She had given it to him with her own hands. He sat gazing at it, at the calm in Élise’s gestures as she served the next one onto Magali’s plate, a calm that imprinted itself on the air, the miracle turning round and round them unseen like a gentle wind. The scent of fried potato filled his nostrils. He drew it into the depths of his lungs, feeling that he hadn’t drawn a single breath since yesterday.

  When she had served the last one, the others looked at him. He bowed his head and began to sing “Pour ce repas.” For this food, and for all joy, we praise you, Lord. He picked up his fork, then looked up at Élise. She stood smiling at them all, a smile suddenly false, painted-on, wrong as the dissonant note that had filled her with such frozen fury at the piano the day he had seen her soul. He put down his fork and stood abruptly. Filled the kettle and put it on the stove. Took her kosher cup out of the cupboard and filled it with water from the tap. He set the cup in front of Papa’s chair, and looked at her.

  She pulled Papa’s chair out with hesitant hands and sat, wrapping her fingers around the cup as if it could warm her. Her eyes met his, brown and clear as a pool with oak leaves at the bottom.

  “Thank you,” she said, and drank.

  “I want you all to go up and pack as soon as the table’s cleared,” said Mama. The morning sun shone through the kitchen window on her neatly brushed hair. Magali stared at her red-eyed. They had shared a bed last night. “When I’ve done the dishes I’ll go ask Madame Thiers about a hiding place for us.” Mama took her plate to the kitchen sink.

  Julien slipped out onto the landing and put on his boots, tying the knee flaps as high as they would go. Magali came out and shut the door and stood watching him.

  “I’ll go,” she said suddenly.

  Julien looked up. “You can’t. You know what she’ll do.”

  “Am I quitting school now, then?”

  “I don’t know, Magali—”

  “And staying with her all day and night? Do you have any idea what that was like?” Tears were streaming down her face unheeded. “And are you gonna feed this family while I do that or”—she fluttered a hand down the stairs—“go do important man things out of the house? Cause I can’t put three meals on the table and keep her from walking out the door at the same time by myself. You got a girl to rescue you last night, but she’s got a job. Cooking. Every noon and night except her Sabbath, and you know she’s not breaking that for you—”

  “I have to go get Grandpa!”

  “I’m just wondering what else you’re going to have to do.” Her tear-streaked face was like granite. “And how often.”

  Julien tightened his jaw and put on his coat.

  The door opened, and Benjamin slipped out. “I’ll go.”

  They looked at him. “We could hear some of that,” he added. “She wants to talk to you, Julien.”

  Julien stood for a long moment looking down the stairs.

  Then he began taking off his coat.

  “I’m sorry, Mama,” said Julien, his eyes on the table.

  “Sorry has nothing to do with it,” his mother snapped. “Your father is gone. I’m responsible for this family’s safety. You will explain why you are making plans behind my back to keep me in the house. And you will stop it immediately. I am working my hardest to overlook your disrespect, believe me. Because this is an emergency. Look at me, Julien.”

  He gathered a breath and wrenched his eyes up to hers. They were hard and sharp and determined. They didn’t look mad at all.

  “Tell me you’re going to obey me.”

  His eyes flew to the window behind her, to the fire, to the door.

  “I may not be him, but I’m all you have left, Julien. You will look at me and promise to do as I say.”

  His throat tightened painfully. His eyes found hers again though his vision wavered, and he forced the words out. “I can’t.”

  Her eyes were black and rimmed with red, tears flowing down her face. “You never respected me like you did him. I accepted it. I never even finished school, I was never his equal—b
ut I didn’t expect this.”

  “I respect you, Mama.” His voice was a croak. “It’s not that. It’s got nothing to do with Papa, or you not finishing school, I swear.”

  “Then tell me what on earth is going on!”

  He tried to square his shoulders. He had never felt smaller. He looked her in the eye and forced his lips open, and told her shakily how she had told him Magali was arrested when he’d seen her five minutes before in the café. “Normally I would obey you, Mama, I give you my word. But I think the—the shock must have turned your mind somehow. I can’t make you any promises—because—because I don’t know what you’re going to do next.”

  Mama stared at him, blank with shock. She turned slowly to Magali. “Tell your brother.”

  “You mean … ?”

  “How you were arrested.”

  “I was never arrested, Mama.” Magali’s voice dropped to a whisper. “What he said—that’s what happened.”

  “How could you,” Mama murmured, eyes unmoored. “How could you both have gone mad?” She laid her palms flat on the table, bowed her head, and took a long breath. “We’ll get through this,” she said evenly. “Never mind the dishes. I need to see Madame Thiers.”

  Julien looked at Magali, her eyes reflecting the gray light in his own. They moved together, between their mother and the doorway.

  “No, Mama,” said Julien.

  When it was over Julien sat slumped in his chair, a dirty plate still in front of him, listening to his mother’s sobs from behind her bedroom door. Magali was pacing, clenching her fists and unclenching them.

  He had faced it. He hadn’t run off to Grandpa’s. He had stayed and faced his mother and he had told her the truth.

  For all the good it had done anyone.

  She hadn’t even struck him when he blocked her way out with his body. He almost wished she had.

  Magali stopped in her tracks. “We’ll have to manage her,” she whispered. “Pretend we believe her. Make up reasons we shouldn’t go, or shouldn’t talk to anyone about it, or—”

  “Lie to her.”

  “Yeah.”

  Julien said nothing.

  Benjamin came in the door at ten, stripping off his snow-caked scarf and kicking off his boots, breathing hard, more physically sure of himself in his rush than Julien had ever seen him. “It’s so cold,” he panted, making straight for the fire.

  Grandpa wasn’t with him.

  “He’s sick in bed. A bad cold. He says he’s very sorry, and we should ask one of the women in town. Madame Raissac maybe.”

  A single hard shudder went through Julien. Magali said in a low, passionate voice, “Is he joking? Tell everyone?”

  “There’s no shame in needing help,” said Benjamin slowly, watching their faces.

  Julien looked away.

  The day became a labyrinth of time, coiling continually back on itself. They packed under Mama’s direction, promising over and over not to forget their socks. They unpacked frantically when her back was turned. Then packed again as she repeated Monsieur Faure’s tip-off word for word, filling the suitcases they had just emptied, like Penelope hopelessly weaving. Magali lied to her barefaced, claiming the train wasn’t running. Mama tried to leave the house to check.

  When the shouting was over Magali fled to her room.

  Ten minutes later Julien came up to get her. Her eyes were bloodshot and despairing. “She has to see you,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”

  As Mama wept on her, he slipped into Papa’s study. Papa’s Bible was gone; a few gaps showed in the bookshelf. On the desk beside the pad of blue-lined paper lay a letter: Dear Madame Jones, Please accept our profoundest gratitude for your generous donation to our school. I believe you know—

  Papa’s neat handwriting broke off there. His pen lay capped beside it.

  Julien walked back out.

  Julien and Benjamin cooked haphazardly that night with the aid of hurried directions from Magali, boiling lentils and potatoes and choking them down unseasoned. Élise came after dark, accepted a cup of tea, and asked Mama if she might speak with her in private. To ask her advice.

  Twenty minutes later she slipped out of the bedroom and whispered, “I think she’ll sleep soon. She just”—her eyes lit on Julien, a little rueful—“wants me to check that you packed socks.” Her gaze turned to a stare as the tears rose in Julien’s eyes; they both looked quickly away.

  In another ten minutes she came out and said Mama was asleep. “If she wakes up—are you planning to have someone stay down here?”

  Julien glanced at Magali. The slightest glance. Magali broke down sobbing.

  Élise rubbed her back and Julien brought her water as she tried to get her wildly heaving breath back under control. “I’ll do it,” Julien whispered. “I’ll sleep on the couch.” Magali almost started crying again. He could feel Élise’s eyes on him, warm. But in the pit of his belly, coldness lay curled.

  But Mama didn’t ask for Magali that night. She woke at three in a panic instead, convinced the Gestapo were at the door.

  Julien went down to check, over protests about the risk that must have woken the others on the third floor. The cold was bitter, earth and sky like iron, the stars like diamonds overhead, glittering and hard. He looked out at it all, feeling the touch of the air suck the warmth from his skin. If you stayed out here long enough your blood would freeze, starting just beneath the skin and working inward. Freeze and freeze, till you were as hard as the earth out here, a statue that would bruise any flesh that struck it. Out there among those hard, bright stars, he’d read, it was colder. A frail island of warmth and life swimming in a sea of death, and somehow they still expected things to hold together. Whole families to survive intact. Fools.

  He took a deep breath of the killing air, and went back upstairs to tell his mother the Gestapo weren’t there.

  He was still awake when Magali came down, just as the stars were beginning to fade. She whispered to him, “I figured out a story.”

  “Story?”

  “The tip-off is a trap. The police are watching and we mustn’t leave the house. Monsieur Faure told you. You can say he told you when you bought the bread this morning. But it has to be you. She’ll believe you.”

  His stomach felt strange. “Papa wouldn’t.”

  “You would,” hissed Magali. “Because you have to.”

  He said nothing.

  He went out to get the bread. On the street in front of the boulangerie, Pastor Alexandre’s young son hailed him.

  “We got a telegram from the police. They’re at Saint Paul d’Eyjeaux. It’s a, a political reeducation camp. They’re staying there.”

  “They’re in France?”

  “Yeah. Mama says it’s near Limoges. That’s all I know.”

  “They’re in France,” Julien whispered, and closed his eyes against the blinding line of sunrise in the east: just one long white-gold line between the frozen hills and the heavy sky.

  They could not make her believe the news. How could she, when they wouldn’t let her leave the house?

  A whispered brother-sister argument produced no decision—both of them started to breathe much too fast when they got anywhere near the idea of Mama and competent, curious Madame Alexandre in the same room. She’d get us help. And it would be all over town by tomorrow. They heard a wavering note in Mama’s voice and looked up.

  “Even if it’s true, Benjamin, you know what those people are. They could deport him anytime.”

  “Madame Losier,” said Benjamin earnestly, “it’s a political reeducation camp. That must mean it has a purpose internal to France.”

  Her voice dropped to a breath. “Don’t. Don’t try to give me hope.” She turned away.

  The weather softened outside under deep clouds; the harsh cold eased and the air filled with snow. It fell and fell; after an hour no one expected the trains to run.

  Mama hid Magali and Benjamin in the attic.

  Downstairs again, she paced. Julien n
o longer heard the things she said. Till she looked up with fear in her eyes and asked where Magali was.

  Upstairs they found Magali sneaking out of her bedroom, a book in her hand.

  Mama clasped her daughter to her heart and wept, then grabbed her by the shoulders and demanded to know why she had left her hiding place. The Gestapo might be at the door at this very moment!

  “I was going to the toilet,” Magali said whitely.

  “I left you a chamber pot. Back in the attic. Now.”

  Magali fought her.

  Julien had never seen his sister’s face like that. Not since the day she’d found a neighbor boy in Paris tormenting a stray kitten, nine years ago, and she scratched him hard enough to draw blood. She tried to jerk her arm out of Mama’s grip; they both staggered. Julien tried to set himself between them. Mama screamed at him.

  Julien ran.

  He took the stairs three by three at such a speed he nearly fell. Outside, the snow was swirling thick and drifted already against the door. He counted to thirty, his heart hammering, and ran in again. When he reached the top, thighs burning, Magali was on the bottom rung of the attic, still struggling, screaming, “I can’t! I can’t!” as Mama raged at her about trying to throw her life away and Benjamin’s too—

  “Mama!” Julien shouted. “Monsieur Faure! I saw him in the street.” He grabbed her arm and babbled into her face: “You were right, I’m sorry I didn’t believe, Monsieur Faure says he did tell you those things but he found out it’s a trap—a planted rumor—Antoine Duval—it’s not real.” He looked into his mother’s stunned eyes and gasped out in one breath: “He says we mustn’t leave the house.”

  “In the street, Julien? Why didn’t he come in?”

  “He came during the storm for secrecy! They’re watching us!”