Flame in the Night Read online

  For a moment no one spoke. “Yes,” said Julien. His voice seemed to come from elsewhere.

  The younger officer stood too.

  On the top landing all was quiet. Julien did not, even for a split second, look upward.

  “Whose room is this?”

  “Mine,” Julien said. The closet was ajar.

  “And this?”

  “That was his room till he left us, yes.”

  The bed was unmade except for a blank sheet, two folded blankets. Science books stood in one neat row on the bookshelf. One of the officers opened the top dresser drawer.

  Empty.

  Nothing in the closets, nothing under the beds. When all the bedrooms were searched, one man turned to go downstairs. The other looked up. “Is that your attic trapdoor?”

  Julien’s heart stopped.

  “Yes,” said Mama. “Please feel free.”

  Julien watched from the kitchen window as the two men disappeared down the street, then collapsed into a chair, holding his head. “Where on earth is he?”

  “Down in the root cellar,” said Magali. Her face was slack. “We bundled everything into his sheets—went down the stairs in our socks. We thought they would hear us if we tried to get the ladder out.”

  “You were amazing,” said Julien.

  “They would have heard everything.” Mama looked sideways at Magali. “Did you find the sablé cookies?”

  Magali gaped. “That’s why you asked—”

  “Yes.”

  Magali sat down.

  “I don’t think you should go to school tomorrow,” said Julien.

  Benjamin sat on a potato crate, his back against shelves half full of jars. Two bulging bundles were wedged into the narrow space with him. His face was still bloodless to the lips. “I’m not going back to that school. Ever.”

  “You figured it out too, huh?”

  Benjamin looked away, at a bag of garlic on a shelf a handbreadth from his face. “They knew that much about me.”

  “That rat,” whispered Julien.

  Benjamin gave him a flat, cold look, a faint glimmer of tears in his eyes. “It would be all right with me if you didn’t use that word. Antoine Duval isn’t the one getting called that in the newspapers.” His voice lowered. “He’s not the one hiding in a cellar.”

  The walls pressed in around Julien, walls of shelves lined with food by the careful work of his mother’s hands, now gaping with holes like a moth-eaten coat. “This has to end. Now.”

  Benjamin looked at him, and said nothing.

  “Are you ready to go up?”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “We’ll have to take you to Grandpa’s farm.”

  “After dark.”

  “Just before first light maybe. Fewer people around.”

  “I’m not spending the night, Julien.”

  “If you like.” Julien took a deep breath, and looked at his friend. “I want you to apply for another visa.”

  The air was very still, as if holding its breath before the force gathering in Benjamin’s eyes. His voice was quiet and even, and frightened Julien. “Who do you think you are?” Benjamin bared his teeth, then cursed softly. Julien drew back against the narrow door. “Is that an order? Who do you think you are?” Benjamin hissed, almost in his face.

  Julien cringed, then flared at him. “Someone who doesn’t want you to die.”

  Benjamin took a shuddering breath. “If you don’t want me to die, don’t send me on that road.”

  “Benjamin. They came for you today—”

  “I was wrong. You still don’t have the faintest idea what it’s like.”

  “And you were supposed to have changed. I don’t want to know what it’s like to be—be someone who doesn’t understand that the only way out of the fire is through the fire.”

  “Why don’t you just say it, Julien.” Benjamin’s eyes were bleak and cold, his voice a weary whisper.

  Julien stared at his friend, feeling his molars grind against each other, tasting bile. He turned the handle behind him.

  “Hide till you rot,” he hissed. “If that’s what you choose.”

  And he stepped out and slammed the root-cellar door.

  They walked down to Grandpa’s farm in silence together beneath the cold hard stars, long after dark.

  Chapter 17

  TRUTH

  THEY FELT THEIR way blind into this new life, as though clambering out of a marsh on a moonless night. Walking with arms outstretched, thanking God for their lives, feeling for soft ground with freshening terror. Fear was Mama’s voice rising as she asked where Magali was, or a too-wild look in her eye; a blue or black uniform in the street; that moment with your hand on the doorknob, after the knock. Fear was the envelope in your hand before you turned it over, Papa’s neat handwriting looking up at you, the return address still unread. That moment before you were sure he was in the same camp still, eating decent food, leading services with Pastor Alexandre, standing room only.

  Hatred was Duval’s eyes.

  The sight of the man, the smell of his smoke, was a daily nausea to Julien. Every week he was in church. The Sunday after Papa’s arrest, Pastor Chaly from Tence had preached a dry, history-laden sermon on Herod and John the Baptist, saying not a phrase that would make a decent anti-fascist quote, while the people’s fury against tyrants rose like waves of heat in the old stone church. Fury and silence. Yes, you saw a black uniform sometimes in the street, like glimpsing a wolf in the woods. But the snake in your house, that was another thing. Show Yourself, Julien prayed. And strike him down.

  Victory was nothing more than another day without disaster. Power was standing by the Le Puy road wrapped up against the burle, knowing they could not get past without your seeing. Pain was knowing just how much you could lose anyway, if a man in an office chose. Pain was hearing, even still, his mother weep at night.

  Joy was Élise’s quiet knock, and her face behind the door.

  He could have kissed her feet in gratitude the first time she came. She came to invite them to La Roche. She would be playing for her friends there, and did they want to come? She looked at Mama as she said it.

  Awe. That was the music.

  The storm, the calm, joy and pain twisted together into one bright thread. Her face, her seeking face, eyes open to something nobody could see. “She has a gift,” Mama murmured. All the way home that night under the cold stars, Mama sang softly and sweetly as she hadn’t done in months.

  And Élise came again.

  It was a miracle. She came, of her own free will, up dark, icy streets after cooking and serving supper to thirty people, and knocked on his door. She came while his mother was out at her sewing circle, and sat at the table by lamplight with him and Magali. She sat across from him drinking tea from his old tin cup, and he looked at her and away, like looking at the sun. The calm of her face, like deep still water, and the light. He tried to keep his hand from trembling where it lay on the tablecloth a handspan or two from hers. Even at that distance he could feel the warmth rising from her skin, a fierce denial of the dark of death around them. He was with her inside a sphere of glass, fire-warm and radiant, their backs to the cold and the dark and the void. He was with her, although she didn’t know.

  He hoped to God she didn’t know.

  And yet he hoped to God she did. In spite of all he could say to himself about the folly of it. He would have given a chunk out of his flesh, and willingly—even if they never touched, even if none of his wild wishes could ever be—for one flash of those deep eyes seeing him.

  Seeing him as he saw her.

  It was impossible. But he thought of it as he lay awake hearing Mama sob in her bed. He remembered his parents kissing in the kitchen in the dead of night; he imagined them young and hungry-hearted, their soft hands meeting for the first time. He envied them so much. Even now, after police at the door who didn’t know where they were taking his father.

  They’ve had twenty years. I’ll have nothing
.

  He ground his face into his pillow, and ordered his body to forget her, and heard behind his back the voice of nothing, the cold and the darkness, laughing at him.

  Fear came in and in with the first spring thaws, the dripping from the roofs, the white drifts sagging down into dense ice-blue mounds—warmth and light and fear. How long? Julien’s mind whispered. How long?

  The softening ground held every footprint on the day he went down to the farm with a letter for Benjamin. Benjamin walked into his bedroom, already ripping it open, and shut the door, but a moment later he was out again. “They still don’t know. They still don’t know if they can get him released.” Julien looked at him and opened his mouth. Saw his friend’s eyes harden. He went home with clenched fists in his pockets and nothing to strike.

  At break Élise stood out on the patio with the others, and Duval walked past them, smoking, casting a sidelong glance. Julien wanted to reach out and grab him by the collar, throw him against the wall. He watched empty-handed as the betrayer passed by, watched empty-handed down the Le Puy road for the buses that were sure to come. Vigilance, he preached to the Scouts, but he no longer called them the first line of defense. He watched empty-handed, and thought of Pierre and the people he was training with, somewhere in the hills. The only people in all this land who had guns and were not pointing them at the innocent.

  It’s wrong, his mind reminded him. Do not resist an evil man. Turn the other cheek. In church they sang about the power of God, they read Psalms about how He protected the poor and the righteous. In church Papa and Pastor Alexandre were heroes, imprisoned for the cause; their deportation and their deaths would only strengthen their people’s faith. At Saint Paul d’Eyjeaux they were witnesses, holding prayer meetings with the Communists, preaching to the lost in prison. It was in the house that things unraveled. In the house where the ghosts remained in every doorway, sick reverberations in the air: screams, sobs, accusations. Lies. The lies worked best, Papa. Magali told me to, and she was right. You should have seen their eyes, Papa. But you didn’t, did you? You weren’t there.

  The truth has power. But what was the truth? He’d believed and believed in the things his father told him. Now he sat in church and cringed when he heard, “The mighty arm of the Lord has been revealed. The Lord has thrown down our enemies. Horse and chariot he has thrown into the sea.”

  Have you seen the chariots? I’ve seen them. They’re in fine condition, Papa. That’s the truth.

  He sat among the praying people, and wondered if it was time to start believing his eyes.

  On the twenty-fourth of March there was a knock on the door as the Losiers finished supper.

  It was Monsieur Astier, who’d been arrested with Papa.

  Suddenly there was no air in the room. Julien stared at the man, his travel-rumpled clothes, the sheer presence of him. He watched Mama open her mouth to ask.

  Saw the little warning shake of Astier’s head.

  “Did you escape?” breathed Magali.

  Astier shook his head again. “No. No. I was released. We …” He looked at Mama with dark, apologetic eyes, and Julien’s heart knotted. “Madame, your husband and Pastor Alexandre are still in the camp. I thought I should tell you personally.”

  “Go on,” said Mama whitely.

  “They—they announced our release. The other inmates congratulated us. At the poste de commande we were given a document to sign. I’ve been a government employee for years, God knows I’ve signed so many things.” He sat awkwardly in the empty chair across from Mama. “Your husband read it very carefully. He’s a meticulous man.”

  Julien’s mouth was growing dry.

  “He pointed out to monsieur le pasteur that it contained a promise of loyalty and obedience to the orders of Marshal Pétain.”

  Mama’s right hand was over her face.

  “They refused to sign. They said they couldn’t swear to a lie.”

  The silence in the room had a thick, viscous quality to it, like glue. Astier didn’t seem to know where to put his eyes. His voice fell into that silence like a struggling fly. “I’m ashamed. I offered to stay with them but they told me to go and I do confess—”

  “Because he didn’t want to lie?” breathed Magali. “That’s why?” Her voice rose. “That’s why he’s not here?”

  “Magali,” muttered Julien reflexively.

  She turned and looked right through him with burning black eyes. “He …” she said with a jerky, helpless gesture. “Didn’t …” She turned to the door, her hand trembling.

  “It’s just like him,” said Mama in a ghost of a voice. “It’s exactly what he would do.” She looked at the door as well. Her shoulders were curving forward, a hollow jar around her heart.

  Julien said nothing.

  The silence thickened. Hardened. Monsieur Astier cleared his throat twice, vigorously, as if to keep from choking. Nobody spoke. It was the moment when someone ought to have finally offered him something to drink, now or never, so he would know he was a welcome guest in their home and they weren’t just waiting for him to leave.

  Nobody spoke.

  Monsieur Astier stood, gave them all a quick nod. “I thought you should hear it from me. The whole story. Not a rumor.” He ducked his head again. “I’m sorry I didn’t have better news to bring you, madame. I admire your husband very much.”

  And he was gone, the door closing behind him. His footsteps echoed in the stone stairwell.

  “Of course you do,” murmured Mama tonelessly. She stood and made her way blindly toward the bedroom. Tears were streaming down Magali’s face.

  “He could’ve been released,” said Julien. His voice came out mechanically. He seemed to be floating a meter above his own head. Everything was very clear, the air like crystal, reality laid out before him like a map. He was the son of a man who had thrown his life away for an ideal. It had happened before, and it would happen again. A footnote in the terrible story of the world.

  He could have been released.

  But he wasn’t.

  Julien stood and walked away from the table, going he didn’t quite know where.

  Chapter 18

  SINCE THE WORLD BEGAN

  JULIEN SLEPT DEEP that night and had no dreams. When he woke the light was coming in his window. He lay a minute looking at it, then rose and dressed and knelt by his bed. He prayed the Lord’s Prayer. The wood floor was hard against his knees. He looked up into the brightness and whispered, “You don’t want us to be stupid, do You?”

  Then he stood and went downstairs.

  He watched Mama carefully, that morning. Her movements had a slow hopelessness to them. But she knew what had happened and what hadn’t. Her mind was clear.

  Like Julien’s.

  Everything was vivid to him, that day. The light on the remains of the snow was harsh white, the bare trees etched precisely against the sky. He felt grieved and alive and new. New in a new world, one where you believed your eyes, where the clear and simple reasons were the true ones. There was a God, but He didn’t stop wars, and hadn’t Julien always known that? If a rock fell in the mountains, it was because it was loose. If a man had a gun and chose to shoot you, or take you away, he could. The Germans had conquered France because they had so many tanks, and they knew how to use them. Maybe the Russians would beat them and be the new masters. Maybe not. In the meantime the Nazis were enslaving and probably murdering innocent people. They had to be stopped somehow.

  And telling them murder was wrong didn’t seem to be working.

  It was hard to hear the teachers over the clatter of rearranging in his head. It was like a housecleaning. All that trying and trying to make sense of it all, he tossed into the fire like a hopeless tangle of string. Enough. Sweep the floor, open all the windows; it’s time to face the truth.

  The truth had power, all right.

  Word hadn’t gotten around yet. It wouldn’t be long. But for now, he and Magali stood on the patio shoulder to shoulder with Élise and t
old her in low voices. She nodded gravely, and looked out at the broken, white-and-gray horizon. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  The next day, when he and Magali came home for lunch, Mama opened the door for them wide-eyed. “He’s been released,” she said.

  Julien’s throat closed. She’s gone again. He held out both hands in a suppressing gesture. “Mama—”

  “Look,” Mama snapped. She snatched something up from the kitchen table and thrust it into his hands. “Look.”

  It was a telegram.

  RELEASED STOP EXPECT US AFTERNOON TRAIN TOMORROW STOP MARTIN LOSIER

  Julien stood like stone.

  The station’s platform was packed, the streets lined with people all the way back to the place du centre. They parted silently for the Losiers, nodding respectfully, light in their eyes. Madame Alexandre and her children already stood on the platform.

  Ten paces beyond them, under the eaves of the station house, stood two Gestapo.

  The crowd shifted quietly, like grass beneath a breeze. Heads turned. The black coats of the enemy swung as they followed the people’s gaze toward the sound: a faint far whistle, away between the hills.

  Mama gripped Julien’s hand. He gripped back.

  The white steam flashing up into the cold blue sky; the shriek and grind of the brake on the track; the engineer staring. Then there was no sound in all that place but the creak of the passenger doors as they opened.

  Pastor Alexandre stepped down out of the train.

  A sound went up from the crowd, a sort of collective sigh. Then a drawing of breath. Faces turned. The Gestapo did not move. Julien watched the train.

  Mama started forward the instant she saw him, tears streaming down her cheeks. Papa came to her, tall and thin and smiling, took her face between his hands and kissed her briefly, then folded her into an embrace. There was such joy in his eyes. He took Julien by the shoulders and gave him the bise, again, again. You’re here. The hands on his shoulders were real, the stubble on Papa’s face, the fog of his breath in the cold moist air, it was real, he was here. Julien’s head swam. He glanced at the Gestapo again. Watched them watching. The hush and rustle of a hundred people standing in taut silence was around them, palpable as the sea.