Flame in the Night Read online

  Julien lay back down on his branch and closed his eyes.

  The préfet hadn’t said it only to Papa. He had said it to Pastor Alexandre as well.

  Because of the letter.

  Three days ago, Julien had stood in the church courtyard among the other young people of his town, waiting for a visiting official from the collaborationist French government in Vichy to walk out through the dark church doors. Marcel stood at the head of the group with a protest letter about the Vel d’Hiv roundup in his hand. Julien still had the torn flap from the envelope, a tiny ball of paper in his pocket, soft now with handling.

  We know what you people did in Paris. We know, and we do not condone.

  They might have had no warning of the census if they hadn’t provoked them with the letter. Papa said so. Papa said it was the right thing.

  The smile had faded off the official’s face as he read the letter; he stammered something about Jews not being his business, thrust the letter at the préfet beside him, and fled to his automobile. The préfet’s hard eyes dismissed the young people with a glance, and came to rest on the pastor and his assistant, Julien’s father.

  A census, the préfet had said, dusting his hands. There was nothing in this talk of deportation. He didn’t want to hear another word about arrests in Paris; here in the Unoccupied Zone, France made her own laws. Eventual resettlement was a possibility, the préfet had said, but what was it to them? Yes, in about a week.

  A word to the wise, messieurs les pasteurs. Do not obstruct us.

  Julien rolled and unrolled the ball of paper in his pocket between his finger and thumb as Marcel came to him under the tree.

  “That was well done.”

  “I never,” said Julien in a low voice, “ever want someone hanging over certain death from my hands again.”

  Pierre butted in between them, his farm-bred shoulders taking considerable space, and glanced up far too casually to gauge the distance. “That wasn’t certain death. Broken ankle. Maybe two. Or I’d have broken an arm catching him, I guess.”

  “Better if it was you,” said Marcel quietly. “Four more days.”

  “Mmm.” Pierre looked toward the children’s home. “There’d be ways to hide him. Root cellar maybe. I figure, you tell ’em how sorry you are about the rats, but the traps’ll take care of them soon. They ask what kind of traps, you tell them to step carefully. City man won’t set foot underground after that, you watch.”

  “I’d rather not, thanks,” Julien told his old friend coolly. “Not sure I’d enjoy the show.”

  Pierre grunted, looking grim.

  Under the oak tree, the Les Chênes director was gathering the children, a commending hand on Étienne’s shoulder, Anne on his other side. Brother and sister, Julien remembered suddenly. He looked past the children and met the eyes of his best friend, Benjamin, slight and pale among the suntanned Scouts, wiping his glasses on his shirt. Julien beckoned him over.

  “You came?”

  “I came to tell Marcel your father wants him.” Benjamin put his glasses back on. His eyes flicked from side to side. “I …”

  Marcel nodded. “In one more minute.”

  “You want to go straight to the Tanières?” Julien asked Benjamin softly. “See the cave?”

  Pierre gave a silent whistle. “A cave?” He cut his gaze over to Benjamin. “Has he ever been up in the Tanières?”

  Shut up, Pierre. “He’ll know the place like the back of his hand by tomorrow night. You watch.”

  Benjamin said nothing. The dark circles around his eyes stood out like bruises. Nearby Marcel and the Les Chênes director were speaking of alternate plans, long-term hiding places, a village in the Ardèche. Anne was speaking to her brother; Étienne turned and Julien met his eyes, still wide in his pale face.

  Julien’s mind stuttered back to the gravel church courtyard beneath the gray sky, the silence of the watching people as his father and Pastor Alexandre had stood shoulder to shoulder, looking the préfet in the eye.

  You ought not concern yourself with these foreign Jews.

  We do not know any Jews, the pastor said. Only people.

  Ten thousand people arrested. Children torn from their mothers’ arms—by French police. Ten thousand people shoved into a stadium, penned like cattle in the heat for days. Then given to the Germans—those who survived.

  Not a word about it on the radio. But Pastor Alexandre had a letter from an eyewitness. The memory of Benjamin’s face, when Papa had brought home the news, still hurt like a backhand blow. Benjamin was from Paris.

  His friend hadn’t spoken for two days after that. When he did, it was worse. He spoke names.

  Sara Weizman. Rudy Steinmetz. The Rosenbergs. The Schneiders—no—they’re citizens—I think they’re citizens, Julien …

  They hadn’t done it for defiance, that protest. They hadn’t done it for show. They had done it because silence was wrong. The truth had power, Papa said; God called those men to repent, even now. They had done it because it hadn’t even been on the radio—as if no one in France should care, as if no one should remember Sara Weizman. Julien crushed the paper between his fingers, watching Benjamin’s eyes travel the edges of the woods.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  “Going up the old bridge road?” said Pierre. Benjamin nodded. They fell in together, walking down the long sunlit path away from the oak tree. “I have to go up that way, see a farmer. Find out if he really has a—” Pierre bit down on the word he’d been about to say and threw them both a grin.

  “A what?” said Julien as the voices receded behind.

  “Not really supposed to talk about it.”

  “Great work so far, then.”

  Pierre gave him a rueful glare. “Hiding’s all right if you have to. Question is, why do we have to?”

  Benjamin spoke in a low, dark voice. “Because we don’t have guns.”

  “Got it in one.”

  A chill went down Julien’s spine. He glanced back toward Les Chênes. “You’re looking for—”

  “Someone’s got to do it.”

  “Someone does not have to do it, Pierre Rostin.” Julien stopped on the path and raised a stiff arm toward the children’s home. “Do you need me to draw you a picture? What happens to the kids if we bring Vichy down on us by shooting people? What happens to—” He broke off his gesture toward Benjamin, who had gone very still.

  “Well that’s rich. You people and your letter, like they’re gonna ask the boches to give those people back because somebody disapproves—”

  Benjamin was pale, Julien saw. Those people have names. “We couldn’t shut up about it. Let them go on thinking nobody cared—”

  “Grow up, Julien. We’re past that point. There’s only one thing they listen to.”

  Julien’s fist was up between them before he knew what had happened. His blood was pulsing in his ears. He stared at the fist, and put it away.

  Pierre crossed his arms. “Y’know, I liked you better when you didn’t think punching me was a sin.”

  Julien snorted. I thought it was a sin all right. I just yielded to temptation. “You hated me. You don’t remember?”

  “I remember you stood up for Benjamin. There wasn’t anything wrong with that.”

  A corner of Benjamin’s mouth turned up ironically as their eyes went to him. “No,” he said. “I don’t suppose there was.”

  “That’s all we’re trying to do,” Pierre said. “Protect the people we care about. All of them. Look, I believe in God as much as you do, but some things aren’t complicated. A mad dog comes onto your farm, you shoot it in the head or you run in and bar the door. You don’t poke it with a stick.” Benjamin was nodding. “Shooting’s better. It doesn’t come back.”

  “They’re not dogs.”

  “They’re traitors,” Pierre snapped. He looked away into the green. When he looked back, his voice was quieter, his eyes simple as earth. “They threatened your father, Julien.”

  Papa had preach
ed, the day of the letter. Preached like the school-teacher he used to be, drily parsing the Greek words for submit and obey and the limits of a Christian’s duty to the authorities. Not looking at the Vichy men in the front row. I offered to take this one, he’d said. Pastor Alex doesn’t trust himself. He gets carried away.

  Julien looked back along the path, a long tunnel of shifting leaf-shadow and sun, Marcel at the end of it, coming toward them. He remembered how the sun had come out strong for just ten minutes as they sat in the old stone church, the long squares of light falling sharp and brilliant from the windows, lighting heads here and there in the dimness like haloes. He remembered how small Papa looked as he passed through one of them on his way up to the pulpit, his serious face and combed brown hair exposed as in a searchlight before he walked forward into shadow. He remembered how sure his voice sounded, announcing the first hymn: “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” How the government men fumbled with their hymnals; how the voice of the church rang out as one.

  He turned back to Pierre. “They did. He still thinks we did right. He knows what he’s doing.”

  Marcel caught up to them, smiling. “Your father?”

  Julien nodded.

  “Yes. He does. Come on, you guys.”

  They followed him together, down the path through the shadow and light.

  Chapter 2

  A MIGHTY FORTRESS

  “AN AMERICAN VISA? Is this a joke?” Julien stared at the envelope on the dining-room table.

  Benjamin was pale, but his face was set. “You don’t understand.”

  It was all there: the American stamp, the address New York, NY written shakily below the new name of Benjamin’s mother. It was real. An American visa, or the hope of one. “You could be out of here,” he breathed. “You could be safe forever—”

  “Julien.” Papa’s voice was gentle. Julien looked up sharply at his father. Benjamin snatched the letter from the table and made for the stairwell door. Papa watched him go. The skin of his face seemed strangely dry, the line between his eyebrows deepening.

  “He doesn’t want it?” Julien asked softly.

  “Applying for an exit visa from France is too much of a risk,” said Papa. “Even if he turns out to be still a citizen. He’s afraid. Julien—I did think of asking you to speak to him about it. But not like that.”

  Julien looked down, his chest tightening. “I’m sorry, Papa.” He jerked his chin toward the big south living-room window that gave onto the downward-sloping streets and rooftops of Tanieux. His father nodded.

  It had been two weeks since the préfet’s warning. He had helped Marcel with the sentry-duty roster, made sure every Scout had a bicycle when he stood watch, had them recite to each other their duties in the alert chain—their partners, their streets, all the passwords—every time they changed watch. He had stocked the cave with water and firewood, promised to guide Benjamin to it when they came. He had listened till his head ached with it, listened for the far barking of farm dogs, for the sound of engines on the high plateau roads. “Every day I think they’re coming,” he whispered.

  “It’s a hard time.” Papa’s brown eyes were warm when they finally met Julien’s. Julien breathed deep again.

  “Papa, what you said—an exit visa …”

  “He’ll have to cross a border.”

  Julien’s belly went cold. “How?”

  “I know some people,” Papa said quietly. He raked a hand through his hair. “I believe he will come round. Given time. The visa itself isn’t certain yet, but his mother has friends now … Don’t speak to him about it again today, please.”

  Julien nodded.

  It was a strange evening. Benjamin avoided him, of course—but so did Magali when she came home from Les Chênes. She had no Marek stories at supper, no jokes; her eyes were on her plate. When Mama softly said her name, she leapt up and almost ran to the bathroom, and came back with a fresh-washed face. Mama watched her a few seconds, then turned away. “I’ve been asked to go down to the L’Espoir home tonight to help with the babies,” Mama said evenly. “I’ll do the dishes when I get home.”

  Magali glanced up. Julien saw her red eyes.

  The household scattered the minute the table was cleared: Benjamin up to his bedroom, Papa to his office, Mama out the door. Magali stood in the middle of the floor for a long moment, a fork forgotten in her hand. She raised her eyes to Julien’s. She was weeping.

  “They’re emptying Rivesaltes,” she whispered.

  “Emptying?”

  “Maybe the other internment camps too—we don’t even know. They’ve sent the Spanish refugees away and they’re—they’re putting the Jews on trains to Germany.”

  “All of them?” Julien’s mouth was dry.

  “We don’t know! They just keep loading trains. We heard it from a Swiss Aid worker there but they don’t tell her anything—half my kids’ parents are there, Julien—”

  “Chanah—Anne—and, and Étienne?”

  “Their mother’s in Gurs—Marek’s aunt is in Rivesaltes—”

  Papa’s study door opened. His eyes on Magali were dark. “Lili,” he murmured, and his arms opened slightly, but Magali did not move.

  “We don’t have any names,” she told him, ignoring the fresh tears that flowed down. “We don’t know what to tell them. One of you tell Benjamin. And Mama. I can’t.”

  “I will,” said Papa heavily, and turned to the south window.

  Down there the sun hung orange over the slate rooftops, filling the narrow streets and the broad place du centre with dusky gold. Filling the air, like that sound, that strange, low humming sound. Was that—?

  A bicycle shot across the place. Sylvain Barraud was on it.

  Tonight’s sentry.

  For a moment no one breathed. Julien heard his own voice speaking—“They’re here”—a strangely echoing sound in the suddenly emptied-out air. Then they all moved at once.

  Papa went for his study. Julien and Magali raced for the stairwell door and reached it together. Julien jammed his shoes onto his feet, glanced up the stairs, turned to Magali, opening his mouth—“Could you—?”

  Rage flared in her red eyes. “I can’t stay here and do your work for you. I’ve got duties. My kids’ll be in the trees all night now and we’re probably going to have to walk them to Rochepaule in the morning.” She was jerking her shoes on, not even pausing to wipe the tears from her face. “Tell Papa that, if I don’t come home tomorrow, all right? Bye.”

  She was gone. Papa came to the door, a roll of blue-lined papers in his hands. “What should I tell Benjamin?”

  “I just have to check in with my alert partners. Back in ten minutes and I’ll take him to the cave.”

  Papa nodded. Ducked into the kitchen a moment and reappeared empty-handed. “Go with God.”

  “You too.”

  Outside the air was gold with the setting sun and hummed with the unfamiliar sound of great engines. Julien saw them already parked in the place as he walked downhill to Gilles’s house, tense hands in his pockets, forcing himself not to run as the sky caught slow fire above. A black automobile, flanked by motorcycles. And three khaki buses.

  He confirmed with Gilles. He confirmed with Jérémie, who was assigned to warn the Le Puy road and was chewing his fingernails in his impatience to go.

  “You boys stand up straight out there,” Jérémie’s mother said. “You remember to look like you’re just off to visit friends.”

  Jérémie nodded, chewing.

  They shook hands and went their assigned ways. Julien walked back up the hill, skirting the edge of the place du centre, unable to take his eyes off the looming buses. The sleek black automobile, the man in a police kepi who stood with one foot on the lowest of the mairie’s stone steps, not going up them to the mayor’s office but turning back, speaking with sharp gestures to—

  Pastor Alexandre. And Papa.

  Julien stopped.

  He couldn’t help it. His body would not obey. The police ch
ief was speaking, jabbing a finger at them each in turn.

  As one bus engine shut off, then another, the hum dying down, Julien caught a single word: list. Then the third engine died. The hush spread like ripples in water, carrying the man’s last words, his angry face turning toward Papa: “… or will I be forced to arrest you both?”

  For a moment the place was gone, the buses, the men. All but Papa. For a moment he stood alone under the scarlet sky, alone but for the son he did not see. His face as he answered was as Julien had never seen it, calm and utterly cold. His voice was the same, each word carved out with chill precision. “There is no list. With all due respect, monsieur, you are wasting your time.”

  The police chief’s laugh rang sharp against the housefronts. “Time? We can comb this place faster than you can imagine. And we have a list.” Julien saw the man’s hand rise, saw him turn to the blue-uniformed men behind him; his heart stopped.

  The police chief pointed down the nearest street. Two policemen started down it. Pastor Alexandre turned away, and Papa followed him.

  Julien started up the place toward his own street, trying not to run.

  He managed to keep to a walk until the heavy downstairs door of his own house closed behind him. Then he raced down the hall past the ground-floor apartment and took the stone stairs three at a time.

  A dark figure barreled into him from above.

  Julien grabbed the railing with a jerk that made his teeth snap. In the dimness he made out the glint of glasses, the moon-white of Benjamin’s face. “What on earth?”

  “There’s someone upstairs,” Benjamin gasped. “There’s someone upstairs.”

  “But—”

  “Someone came in—to the second floor—I—”

  “Fine. Let’s go.” It couldn’t possibly be the police—could it? He took Benjamin’s arm and pulled him down the steps. He heard faint footsteps overhead, heard the thin voice of the old downstairs tenant talking to himself; then they were out the back door into Mama’s tiny high-walled garden under a fading sky streaked with rose and gray. “All right. Hold your head high out there, look normal, you hear?”