Flame in the Night Page 5

  “No.”

  “Is your wife pregnant?”

  “No.”

  “Are you a veteran of the French army or any Allied army?”

  “No.”

  O Israel, hope in the Lord.

  “Or”—the woman’s voice lowered—“would it be possible for you to portray yourself as one?”

  Elisa’s head snapped up. For a moment Papa didn’t move. “If I’m exempt,” he breathed, “will they spare my family?”

  “Yes.”

  From this time forth and forevermore.

  “Elisa,” said Papa, “get me the document case.”

  “Do we have your permission to search your farm, monsieur?”

  Monsieur Rostin shrugged and shot disapproving glances at the policemen’s neat blue uniforms and shiny motorcycles. “You’re going to anyhow, aren’t you?”

  “We’d prefer to do it with permission,” said the officer politely.

  Monsieur Rostin grunted. “Well, don’t throw everything around. I’m trying to get my barn in order. If you move things, put them back.”

  Julien watched both policemen’s eyes go to the barn, and blinked. Monsieur Rostin shot him a glance. Neither looked at the woods.

  “Is there another hoe, monsieur?” Julien asked the farmer in a low voice when the officers had disappeared into the barn. Pierre was already hoeing again, head down.

  “In the shed. Left-hand side.”

  The soil was moist and loose, the weeds short and green and even; Julien moved forward steadily and fast, not looking at the barn, not looking at the woods, not looking at the wet patch on the stone stoop where he had spilled his water two minutes ago as Benjamin almost collided with him, bursting out of the barn at Pierre’s sharp whistle. Or at the half footprint in it from where Gustav had followed and vanished into the woods.

  Thumps from the barn. The footprint was drying, steadily drying in the sun. Voices from the hayloft. Voices from the barn’s open door, dark like a mouth, which Julien did not raise his eyes to. A sudden motion from Pierre and his father, heads up and bodies gone alert as deer for an instant, then heads down and hoeing again. Pierre, incredibly, was suppressing a smile. Out of the corner of his eye Julien could see the policeman walking toward the chicken coop—walking over those dirt-encrusted boards on the ground. What were they for again, and hadn’t Pierre said something about replacing—?

  There was a hollow, rotten-wood crack, a sudden and very undignified squeal from the policeman, and a splash.

  After a few moments, a truly evil stench began to waft their way.

  Pierre and his father stood leaning on their hoes, Pierre’s mouth twitching helplessly, his father’s face arranged in a look of impressively sincere concern. “Hmm. Guess we forgot to tell ’im about those,” muttered Pierre. Julien barely managed to suppress his own growing grin.

  “Poor man,” said Monsieur Rostin. “He’ll be needing some help.” He strolled toward the poor man, who didn’t seem to be in danger of drowning; in fact he was trying frantically to climb out, hands braced on the unbroken board, body jerking downward as his polished boots slipped, somewhere under there, on the slick sides of the cesspit. “Monsieur!” cried Pierre’s father, speeding up. “Be careful! The other board is—”

  There was another crack. Then another splash.

  The second policeman was just coming out of the barn. Julien saw his eyes bulge.

  Julien would have participated in the rescue—he really would have—if there had been room for him to get a purchase on those slimy uniform sleeves. But he did his duty: he went in to let Madame Rostin know that comfort would be needed; he came back out and hovered at a slight distance as the rescued man stripped off his uniform jacket, unspeakable bits falling from it to the ground, and he managed, with heroic effort, not to smile.

  There were apologies, there were explanations, there was a good deal of washing up at the pump and then a great deal more. There was a huge mug for each officer of Madame Rostin’s best fake coffee. It smelled awfully good. There were embarrassed thanks from the wet policeman, and another warm neighborly cup just for him.

  There was no more searching.

  When the sound of their motorcycles had faded in the distance, Monsieur Rostin turned to Julien and Pierre. “They won’t come here again.” He raised a hand. “Oh, we’ll be as careful as before. But they won’t come here again.” He smiled, glancing toward the woods. “Let’s go tell them the news.”

  Elisa woke slowly in the dim barracks, her body limp and heavy as dough. Karl’s breath was in her face, his knee digging into her side, a red imprint of straw on his cheek. She blinked twice, and sat bolt upright.

  How could she have slept? Papa was facing the sorting committee. They’d been praying for so long, her chest still ached from it …

  Her parents sat with their backs to her, shoulders touching. Her eyes traced the worn edges of Papa’s shirt collar in the dimness. Then he turned, and her stomach dropped out.

  His eyes were red and dull. In his hand was half of a square, thin slice of bread. He was chewing.

  “Papa.” Her voice didn’t sound like hers. “Papa?”

  His hand clenched and the bread broke in it; his face twitched around his terrible eyes. “I thought I had protected you,” he whispered. Mama put a hand on his arm. “I thought I had gotten you all to safety. But I chose France. I chose France.”

  Her lips shaped the words No, Papa. But her breath was trapped in her chest.

  “Elisa?” came Tova’s soft, sleepy voice from behind her. “What’s happening?”

  Elisa closed her eyes.

  The last time she woke that night, she woke hard into pitch darkness. Someone had screamed.

  Tova lay on her; Mama’s hand gripped her wrist. They had slept, in the end, in a pile. You couldn’t mourn forever. Not unless you preferred to die right here—right now.

  Mama was scrambling to a sitting position, the whites of her eyes the one thing Elisa could see. The scream came again.

  “They’ve come for the children!”

  Mama’s fingers grabbed her wrist again, tightened painfully. Elisa groped in the dark for Tova’s hand, scrabbling in straw and dirt. “Tova. Karl!”

  Three figures stood in the barracks doorway, flashlights making white pools of light at their feet. She stared at them, trying to make out the shape of their guns. They stepped into the barracks, and the faint shine of their flashlights on straw lit them just enough to see.

  They didn’t have guns. They had clipboards.

  The Schulmanns were all on their feet before the man came to them. They caught words as he spoke fluent Yiddish to their neighbors: Children under sixteen. Only chance you will have. Before morning. Sign over custody. Elisa could feel her father trembling. When the man came toward them, Papa stepped out to meet him, and stopped.

  The gleam of his flashlight lit a heavy, jowled face above a white clerical collar.

  “You were in the sorting committee,” said Papa after a long moment.

  “Yes.”

  Papa’s voice lowered. “I heard them threatening you.”

  “I have hoped to tell you how sorry I am,” said the priest, “for what happened. You witnessed the commissaire reaching the limit of what he would accept from me and my colleagues. But there is a chance now for your children.”

  “Where do I sign?”

  Mama stepped forward as the priest held out his clipboard. They stood shoulder to shoulder, reading. Mama raised her head.

  “You will give them back?” Her voice barely shook. “If we return?”

  “You have the personal pledge of Cardinal Gerlier on this.”

  Papa’s head snapped up, his eyes blazing in the pale light of the flashlight. “I know nothing about your Cardinal Gerlier,” he said. “You’re the Abbé Glasberg, aren’t you? Are you a convert?” With his name and his Yiddish he had to be, and a citizen as well—or he’d be in here with the rest of us …

  “My parents were,
” the priest said quietly.

  “Please. Don’t tell me what you ought to say, or what your church says. Tell me, you, Glasberg, can we trust this Gerlier?” He held the man’s eyes, his voice lowering. “With our children?”

  “The cardinal lent us his pledge,” said Glasberg, “but it is my colleagues in the Amitié Chrétienne—the people you see here, seeking exemptions for as many as possible—they will actually take charge of your children. I would trust every one of them with my life, or anyone else’s.”

  Papa’s voice dropped further. “And with more than their lives? Can you swear to me no one will force them to become Christians?”

  “You have my personal word no such wrong will be done to your family,” said Glasberg, looking her father in the eye.

  Papa turned to Mama. She took the pen from him without a word. Elisa stood and listened to the beating of her heart, to the tiny scratching sound as her mother, then her father, put her legally into the hands of strangers. The barracks was a shifting sea of white light and black shadow. She was breathing fast. Outside the doorway was a pale floodlit space of gravel and dust. The gray-braided woman was leading two children out into it, one of them clutching a doll. A night guard stepped toward the woman, the white light harsh on the shape of his gun. She spoke to him and passed on.

  “Elisa.” Papa stood by her. “Hold your pocket open.” Mama was rising from beside the blue suitcase, holding her jewelry box.

  A hiss and glint of tiny gold links over polished wood, a brief chink, and a small added weight to one side of her dress; her family’s savings were hers. Her father took off his watch and added it. Mama was on her knees again, making a bundle. Tova was weeping silently. Karl stood over Mama, his face like pale stone in the shine of flashlights on straw. “Not me,” he said. “I’m staying with you. I’ll protect you.”

  Mama rose, her bundle in one hand, eyes blazing. Elisa didn’t hear what she said, because at that moment Papa held out a worn, well-oiled leather case to her. She did not move to take it. She stood like stone, hearing nothing but the sound of her own blood beating in her ears.

  “Your tefillin, Papa?” It came out as a dry whisper.

  “Keep them for Karl,” said Papa hoarsely. “In a year he’ll be a bar mitzvah.”

  “You’ll need them,” she whispered. She was falling through nothing; the earth had let her go.

  “Help him keep the Commandments,” Papa whispered. “Help Tova. Help them to remember. But Elisa, eat when you must. Remember that is commanded too. Don’t risk your lives.”

  She couldn’t speak. Mama was holding Karl’s head against her shoulder. A thin young man was dragging a boy through the doorway, the scratching of their shoes in the gravel the only sound.

  “Take care of them,” whispered Papa.

  Her hands shot forward. He put the case in them, and they closed around it. The leather felt warm, almost alive. She swallowed hard through her clogged, sour throat. “I will,” she said thickly and fiercely. He put his hand on her shoulder for a moment, fire flaring in his eyes.

  “I know,” he said. “My daughter.”

  It was one part fierce joy and a hundred parts pain. It would break her. She lifted a tearless face to her father. “Come back,” she whispered.

  His eyes in the shadows were pools of darkness. He looked away. She felt a paper pressed into her hand. “The address of my cousin in London,” her father whispered.

  Her fingers clenched around it. He turned away. She couldn’t breathe. He was giving a paper to the priest; he was speaking: “This one is my brother. If he can’t be found, contact the other.”

  Everything was splintered light and darkness. She was under the sea, the weight in her pocket dragging her down. A hand on her head—her mother, it was her mother’s hand. She gasped a breath, saw it in her mind, the knuckles red and cracked, lying gently on her hair. They were praying. “O thou who dwellest in the covert of the Most High and abidest in the shadow of the Almighty …” Their voices were lifted up, a power in them. It was almost like joy. She was trembling. The words poured like water over her head. “He will deliver thee from the snare of the fowler. Thou shalt not be afraid of the terror by night…. It shall not come nigh thee.” It seemed she could see everything now in the dark. Her father’s long hands, the ink stains on his fingers, the thin white scar on his thumb. The faint sheen of sweat in the lines around her mother’s closed eyes. Every pebble in the bare, lit courtyard, and the wall, and the far shapes of men with guns. “There shall no evil befall thee,” her parents proclaimed, and she shivered. The priest’s eyes met hers. She looked away.

  The voices fell into silence; the warm hand lifted from her hair. She saw their eyes bright in the darkness, her mother and father, for a moment that slowed and stretched to eternity and was gone. They fell into darkness. The priest had turned his flashlight toward the doorway.

  She felt for Karl’s and Tova’s hands, and held on like death. Her mother kissed her cheek, gripping her head in both hands, one last warm touch—and gone.

  “Go,” Mama whispered.

  She went.

  At the door of the barracks she turned her head one last time to see her parents there together, leaning on each other in the dark. Then she gripped her siblings’ hands and led them out into the night.

  Chapter 5

  THE HANDS OF STRANGERS

  ELISA SAT PROPPED against the plaster wall, a hand on each of her sleeping siblings, watching the Amitié Chrétienne workers burn addresses.

  In the back corner of the great convent hall, a child wailed. It echoed against the bare walls, mingling with the sound of voices, the clacking of heels against the flagstones as the tense French women came and went around the table by the door. The table was a plank laid over two sawhorses, the only furniture in this place, nothing on it but a green ledger and an ashtray—there, they were doing it again. A blond woman bringing a young girl to the table, holding out a slip of paper to the tall woman behind it with her dark hair in a bun. She wrote in the ledger, as she had before: first in the back, then in the front. Then the paper in the ashtray, and the brief flare of flame.

  Elisa’s heart beat faster. She watched the door.

  They had come through that door in the dark hour before dawn, her stomach plunging at the sight of the white marble statue of Mary standing over the lintel, a pale ghost with an upraised hand. The place turned out to be empty, echoing. They were given bedrolls and bread as the sky began to pale in the high-arched windows. Now children slept around her everywhere, motionless and open-mouthed, snail trails of tears and snot drying on their faces.

  Julie Altman wasn’t there.

  She watched the door, her skull a space of darkness and flushed heat. The blond woman was shepherding the little girl out the door, picking a bit of straw out of her tangled hair. Another group approached the table; far down the line of bedrolls a woman walked, calling softly: “Lavandel? Is the Lavandel family here?” Tova stirred in her sleep.

  London. Doors fluttered through Elisa’s mind, the doors of every girl or teacher at her school who’d ever spoken decently to her, the doors of every family in her congregation who were citizens. The door of Madame Mercier’s shop; a brief painful laugh escaped her. Tova stirred again. Elisa watched the dark-haired woman, the one who’d said the name Œuvre de Secours aux Enfants. The OSE was a Jewish organization, Papa had once told her—the Children’s Aid Society. Could she—?

  Tova’s eyes flew open. She grabbed Elisa’s arm. “What are they doing?”

  Elisa rubbed her back. There were flames reflected, very small, in her sister’s eyes. “Burning addresses.”

  “Why?” Tova’s voice went high.

  “I suppose because they’re coming after us,” Elisa whispered. She closed her eyes. Horse and chariot He has thrown into the sea.

  Tova turned and stared at the empty bedroll pushed up beside Karl’s, where Hava and Ida Pinski had slept till half an hour ago.

  “Someone came fo
r them,” Elisa told her. “Hava said to tell you goodbye. I don’t have an address for her. I’m sorry.”

  Tears welled in Tova’s eyes. “You should’ve woken me!”

  “I tried.” No more sleepovers. No more of Hava’s jokes, or her joyous barking laugh. But Tova—at least she’s out …

  “Elisa—”

  A sharp bang from the entrance. The front door had struck the wall as a woman strode in, urgent-faced. The dark-haired woman slammed the ledger closed. Elisa put a hand on Karl and shook him. His eyes stayed shut; his head wobbled.

  A moment later they jumped as a shout echoed through the hall. “Your attention please! We are removing to this building’s other entrance. Gather up your things. Follow your guides and stay with the group. It’s a huge place and you will get lost. I repeat, we are removing to the other entrance immediately.”

  The room surged to life around them, babble rising, the sound of feet on flagstones; Karl lay limp. “Karl!” Elisa shouted into his face, and his eyes blinked open briefly. She grabbed him by his shirtfront and pulled him up, yelling at Tova, “Take the bundle! I’ll catch up!” A woman’s voice rose behind her, instructing someone not to know where they’d gone, no matter who asked: “Tell them to ask Gerlier, and if they ask again, say it again, understand?” Elisa slapped her brother’s face and his eyes flew open. She hauled him to his feet and shouted, “The police are coming! Run! That way!”

  Her words stirred a flurry of quick feet and shocked eyes, the last of the crowd speeding up toward the back door. She pulled her stumbling brother along and her sister too. A shrill high wail in Yiddish from behind them—“Put me down, put me down!”—and Tova turned, wrenching Elisa’s arm.

  A teenage girl with a thick black braid was struggling to keep Madame Weider’s little boy in her arms as he kicked and cried for his mama. He pushed with both hands against her chest—his foot caught in her satchel strap—his head pivoted hard toward the stone floor, and she fell to her knees with a cry, barely catching him, her knuckles mashed between his skull and the stones. She roared in pain. Tova jerked her fingers out of Elisa’s and in another moment was kneeling by the two, disentangling the strap.