Flame in the Night Read online

  “In the Tanières? What did you think you were going to do, fall off a meter-high rock and break your back?”

  Benjamin’s eyes had gone flat. “I’m probably capable of it,” he said coolly. “Maybe you and Pierre should make a bet.”

  Julien crossed his arms and looked his friend in the eye, his jaw tightening. “I’ve lived with you three years now. And here’s what I know. You’re capable of a lot more than you think.”

  Benjamin looked away, his feet working the forest floor again. His voice, when it came, was thick. “You think I don’t wish that was true? So I could stop being a burden on your family? On you?”

  “You’re not a burden.”

  “Don’t lie to me,” said Benjamin wearily.

  “Then don’t bring it up,” Julien growled. His tightening fist closed on the tip of a bough beside him and crushed it. The sharp scent of pine rose in the air.

  Benjamin turned away.

  The wind sighed in the pines. From the farmhouse came Pierre’s distant voice, saying something about a harness. A thrush called somewhere nearby. Julien opened his mouth, his heart beginning to race, and said, “You could be safe forever.”

  Benjamin whirled on him. “Or I could be dead before the new year,” he rasped. His eyes were black coals.

  “That could happen here, Benjamin. Right here. It’s only going to get worse—”

  “Shut up. Just shut up!” Benjamin was trembling. “You don’t know what it’s like. You have no idea.”

  “It’s not my job to know what it’s like. It’s my job to get you out of it alive.”

  Benjamin gazed past Julien into the forest, such bleak fear in his face that Julien almost turned to look.

  “It’s not,” said Benjamin softly.

  “What?”

  “It’s not your job.” Benjamin jerked his chin at the slate roof of the farmhouse barely visible through the trees. “Or theirs, or—or your father’s. Listen,” his voice shook slightly, “I’m grateful—”

  “C’mon, Benjamin.”

  “Last night wasn’t your fault. I panicked. All right?”

  Julien realized his mouth was open and closed it abruptly. “Um. Sure.” He looked at the ground: Benjamin’s broken leather shoes, dull where they had once gleamed black; his own war shoes, canvas and wood. He lifted his head. “So you want anything from home?”

  “My hat. I guess. It gets chilly out here at night.”

  “Sure thing,” said Julien.

  Elisa was playing Bach when the knock came at the door. Lost in a dream of beauty and order, recalled to reality only when she touched high E or low C—both just slightly out of tune. She loved this old piano and hated it. Like a friend who tried too hard and made you feel guilty. Even six years later she still woke sometimes from dreams of playing her lost piano back in Heidelberg, her hands spread out on her covers as if on the keys.

  The knock sounded again. Mama’s voice came from the kitchen: “Would you answer it, Elisa?” She lifted her hands, and the music fell away; she heard the bubbling of soup, the squeak of the bed, feet shifting in the hall outside the door as she rose and went to it.

  She opened it to find two policemen in uniform.

  For a moment everything was still: her hand on the doorknob, her heart not beating, the men watching her with official, expressionless eyes.

  She forced her lips open. “What do you need, messieurs?” Her voice betrayed her, and wavered.

  “We need to speak with your parents. We need to see the papers of the entire household. Is this in fact the residence of the”—the man checked a paper—“Schulmann family?”

  “Papa?” Elisa called, not taking her eyes off of the cold face, as if fascinated, a bird staring at a snake. She could hear the fear in her own voice. She could feel it jolt through the apartment, a live current through the deep water the air around her had somehow become. “Papa? It’s the police.”

  She felt her father behind her before he spoke. It was only then, as if his warmth behind her back released her, that she made any movement backward. As she slid away from that cold gaze, Papa stepped forward and filled the doorway, looking the men in the eye. She stood looking at his back, his shoulders squared beneath his blue-collared shirt, the seam on the yoke she had mended for Mama last week. A sharp stone was in her throat. They were speaking. Asking for papers. “Élise,” Papa said in French, not turning. “Please get me the document case from the bedroom.” The men were pressing in on him. He did not move.

  Her steps sounded strangely loud on the floorboards. In the kitchen Mama stood by the cutting board, a knife poised in her hand. “Elisa, did you say the police?”

  “They want papers. He wants the document case—”

  “I’ll get it. Elisa. Stay here.”

  Mama wiped her red hands on her apron carefully, took it off, and hung it on its nail. Elisa stood watching the soup simmer, hearing the hiss of Mama’s slippers, the muted voices, the heavy tread of the upstairs neighbor overhead. Objects caught her eye with a strange sharpness: the black crack in the countertop, the ring of rust on the brightly scoured faucet, the orange rounds of the carrot Mama had been chopping, only a stump of it left. Abruptly she swept them into her palm and stuffed them all into her mouth. As if she’d need them. It was stupid; they had come for Papa—my Papa. Why should she eat? The knife lay on the cracked counter, the sharpest meat knife with the scorch mark on its handle. She stared at it; her hand moved forward. She was breathing fast. The voices at the door were growing louder. She dropped her hand, chewed and swallowed rough carrot chunks, stepped out into the hall. Mama stood straight and pale beside Papa, their shoulders touching, as they did when they sat together in the evenings. Tova stared from the bedroom doorway.

  “As you can see,” said Papa, “we are legal residents of France since 1936. Everything is in—”

  The cold policeman waved him silent. Papa flushed dark red. The man gestured to his shorter partner, who was leafing through a thick document. “There they are. Schulmann,” the partner said.

  The man lifted their cartes d’identité out of the document case. All five of them. Elisa’s heart began to race. “Schulmann, David,” he said in a monotone. His partner nodded. “Schulmann, Rachel.” Another nod. “Schulmann, Elisabeth. Schulmann, Brigitte. Schulmann, Karl.” At each name the man holding the document gave another nod.

  “That’s all of them on the list,” he said.

  What list? Elisa thought. What list is that? Her feet were rooted to the floor, her mouth too dry to make a sound.

  “We are under orders to detain the five of you,” said the first policeman in a bloodless voice. “You may have five minutes to pack one bag. Then you will come with us.”

  “I will come with you,” said Papa. “You will leave my wife and children alone. And you will tell me of what crime I am accused.”

  The man laid a hand on the gun strapped to his hip. “Be advised that we are absolutely authorized to use force.”

  Papa went red, then white. “You come to arrest women and children who are accused of no crime and you threaten us with violence?”

  “Yes,” said the man flatly. He checked his watch. “Your five minutes started thirty seconds ago.”

  Elisa turned and started down the hallway as her father spoke again. She had almost reached Tova when the man’s voice followed her. She saw her sister’s body jerk as her eyes met cold eyes behind Elisa’s back. “We are not authorized to use force only against you.”

  Heat and cold rushed through Elisa. She gripped Tova by the arm and pulled her into the bedroom. “We have to pack.”

  “Are they—”

  “We have five minutes to pack!” She looked around frantically, jerked the top dresser drawer open. The dresser trembled and creaked, the pitcher clanked in the washbasin, and the front of the drawer came off on the left side, the way it did, the way it always did when Karl pulled it too hard. “Get sweaters! Socks! Karl, get up! Get the prayer book—yours, it’s
newer. Tova, soap, get soap, and toothbrushes—” She yanked her pillow out of its case and started filling it from the top drawer: socks, her little rosewood box of hairpins, her sewing kit, underwear for each of them. One of Tova’s had a hole in it. She stood with it in her hands, cold dread finally skittering up her spine. She ran to the window, jerked it open, looked down at the bone-breaking pavement four stories below. No escape. Mama opened the bedroom door and set down the stiff-sided blue suitcase. Karl flew into her arms.

  Elisa threw sweaters into the suitcase. Tova brought the prayer book and the soap, huge-eyed and silent. Karl clung to Mama. “Do we have to go?”

  “Yes,” Mama whispered. “They’ll shoot us if we don’t.”

  Karl’s voice went high: “But they’re not allowed to shoot us in France. You said!” Elisa could feel the enemy’s presence like a weight, the worn hallway boards creaking at his approach. It was only when Mama turned to packing too that she dared lean over, grab an unseen handful of sheet music from the cluttered bookshelf, and stuff it into the suitcase. The creaking came nearer. The bedroom door opened. Mama shoved a last book into the suitcase; Elisa snapped it shut and stood up sharply between the officer and her siblings.

  “Time to go.”

  Papa came down the hall for the suitcase. Mama took Tova by the hand. Elisa took Karl. The policeman gestured them forward.

  They went down the stairs in silence, one policeman ahead of them and one behind, their steps echoing in the concrete stairwell like hammer taps in a mine. Outside, at the end of the street, stood a big khaki bus. The policemen walked on either side of the Schulmanns, hands on their guns.

  At the door of the bus Papa turned and spoke one final time. “Where are you taking us?” There was still dignity in his straight back, in his voice.

  “Get in the bus,” said the policeman.

  They got in the bus.

  The bus took them out of Lyon to the suburb of Vénissieux, to a high blank wall topped with razor wire. A uniformed man with a machine gun passed by the window. Karl stared. Elisa took his hand.

  Another armed man opened a gate. Their bus pulled through it. Elisa glimpsed rows of gray barracks. Someone at the front of the bus asked whether this was an internment camp, whether they were staying here.

  “This is a sorting camp,” said an impatient voice. “No one stays here.”

  They gripped each others’ hands so hard it hurt. The gate clanged shut behind them.

  Chapter 4

  NO ONE STAYS HERE

  AT THE OTHER end of the courtyard someone screamed. Elisa didn’t look up.

  The line for the water spigot shuffled forward.

  She would not watch. She would watch nothing. They were putting people on a bus over there. Or maybe another person had broken and was running hard through the camp—no way out, no way over the high, blind wall or through the gate guarded with machine guns, but you ran anyway, because you had to. You had to. She could feel it in her body, that pounding need.

  She was used to denying herself.

  A hand touched her arm. She whirled, fumbling and clashing the lid of the cookie tin she held. She took in the brown eyes and gapped teeth, and the breath went out of her as if Julie Altman had punched her in the stomach.

  “You’re here,” she breathed. “Julie—I thought …” She reached blindly for her friend. They grasped each other’s hands. “I didn’t see you at the mess hall last night, or this morning. I looked for you. I thought …”

  “I saw you. You gave your soup to Mischa Rosen. That was kind.”

  Elisa twitched a shoulder, shook her head. “We’re not eating their food. Not till we have to. My father wants to wait … till we know.” Julie’s hand tightened on hers. “We went through the line to get whatever we could save.” Elisa touched the two thin, square slices of bread in the pocket of her cotton dress. “For later.”

  “Elisa,” Julie whispered. “I’m so scared.”

  “Don’t. Julie, please don’t.”

  A woman behind Julie touched her shoulder, pointed at the gap in the line ahead of them. They moved forward.

  Julie spoke into Elisa’s ear. “Do you know anything?”

  “No one knows anything. I don’t listen to rumors.” She might as well say she didn’t sleep on straw. They can make you. They can put you in a place where there’s nothing else you can do. They could put you in a windowless barracks where you lay staring into pitch dark beside your brother and sister and every prayer you attempted turned to dust in your mouth.

  “Madame Weider’s next to us in our barracks, you know, the rabbi’s niece, and she won’t stop crying—they said if her little boy was under two they’d both be exempt, but he’s two and a half. Elisa, everyone keeps saying the kids will be deported and the kids won’t be deported and it’s kids under sixteen—it’s always, always kids under sixteen …”

  Elisa took her friend’s hand again. She had made Julie a new collar for her best school dress as a birthday present. Three weeks ago. Julie was wearing it.

  “I’m glad you’re not sixteen,” Julie whispered.

  “Another week,” murmured Elisa.

  “I was making you something. It’s at home.” Julie’s eyes filled with tears. Elisa turned away sharply, eyes on the ground, feeling the rasp of her teeth as she clenched them. She managed to breathe without shuddering. “It’s your turn,” Julie said softly.

  Elisa knelt and drank deep from cupped hands to fill her belly. She filled her cookie tin—the one that used to have their family photos in it, the only kosher container any of them had thought to bring—and put the lid on carefully, trying not to spill a drop. She stood and watched her friend drink, there on her knees in the bare-dust courtyard between the barracks and the wall.

  When Julie stood, Elisa pulled her aside and spoke low. “You have to get away.”

  Julie looked up at her, brown eyes wide, and Elisa gripped her arm and went on, fast. “If they try to put you on a train or a bus or anything—run. The minute you get a chance. Even if they have guns. Better to die getting away than die from whatever they—whatever they want to—”

  “Are you going to do that?” Julie’s eyes were huge.

  Elisa’s lungs struggled to fill. The sun hung white and wavering above the razor wire, as if she saw it from fathoms deep under the sea. She blinked, but her vision didn’t clear. “I don’t know if I can,” she whispered. “Tova—and Karl …”

  “Elisa,” Julie whispered.

  They stood there together beneath the wavering sky, Julie weeping again, Elisa’s mind saying over and over like a heartbeat the only prayer it still knew: Please.

  At the other end of the courtyard, a bus engine started.

  “So what’s this message?” said Pierre, working the pump as Julien sank down on the stone stoop of the Rostins’ farmhouse. “From Marcel?”

  “From my father.” Julien watched the cold clear water splash into the chipped cup, and wiped sweat from his face. “Special Scout meeting tomorrow at five. He thinks the police mean to stay till they catch someone. He says we need strategies.”

  Pierre handed him the cup and he drank deep. It was cold from its time under the earth, and sweet.

  “Your father?”

  Julien lifted his head. “The instructions were all from him. Not the pastor. Found out the other night.”

  Pierre’s eyebrows rose. “Huh.”

  “Yeah. Didn’t even tell me. He thinks …” He glanced up at the stone farmhouse and barn, then out at the little field where Monsieur Rostin was still hoeing, back bent, shirt as dark with sweat as Pierre’s was. “My sister took the train to Lyon this morning. Paquerette sent for her—that woman she used to travel with sometimes and bring kids here, you know? The telegram didn’t say much. Besides urgent urgent urgent and an address. Papa thinks …”

  Pierre looked grim. “Lyon too.”

  “Maybe everywhere.”

  Pierre shook his head, his eyes on the far hills. Julien saw the
m widen very slightly, a split second before he heard it himself: a long high buzz from the west—from Tanieux. Motorcycle engines.

  They were coming.

  Somewhere deep inside the fear there was a little space, a tiny space. Elisa found it for her brother.

  Her mother was out with Tova, her father across the barracks with the rabbi and his wife. Karl slept, and she watched him from where she leaned against the barracks wall—that soft, open face, that steady breathing. She had stared into darkness all last night, meeting the whites of her parents’ eyes when she tossed and turned on the straw. While Karl wandered in his dreams the halls of the old house in Heidelberg, the old sane world they’d been born in. She hoped. He blinked and stirred, opened untroubled eyes, breathed in the smell of the barracks, sharp sweat, and straw. She watched his face change. She was at his side before she knew she had moved. He looked up at her.

  And then she found it. Because she had to.

  “Will you pray with me?” she said.

  He nodded.

  “Out of the depths I have called to You, O Lord,” Elisa whispered, and the words shaped themselves to her lips this time. “O Lord, hear my voice.” The words were like the handle of a door, worn and familiar to her hand, letting her in. A small space, a tiny space, within the fear. “May Your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications,” she whispered, and Karl whispered it with her. “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits.”

  Footsteps. They came nearer. She looked up.

  A short woman with gray braids and a clipboard stood over them. “Where is your father?”

  “Papa!” Elisa shouted.

  She knelt there on the straw, her heart stuttering as the woman asked Papa his name. Told him she had a few questions. “More than watchmen wait for the morning,” Elisa whispered. More than watchmen wait for the morning.

  “Do you have a child under two?”