Flame in the Night Read online

  “Tova!” Elisa snapped. “Come!”

  Tova spared her a bloodshot, reproachful look. Elisa pointed at the deadly door. “You can help people when we’re out of sight of that.”

  “Here, I can—” The French girl reached for the boy then hissed through her teeth in pain, closed the bloodied hand and cradled it.

  Elisa let go of Karl and knelt, her teeth clenched. Little David Weider wept silently as she gathered him up, but he didn’t resist. She stood with a grunt and shouted, “Keep up!”

  The boy’s head bounced as she ran. A stitch grew in her side as she pelted down the long hallway, nothing in her mind but the end of it, and the three pairs of feet clattering behind.

  Also the shouting. “Hey! Hey, they’re not coming this minute! Hey, wait for me, I know the way!”

  She slowed a little. “Who—isn’t coming—this minute?”

  “The police,” the girl panted. “You said. How’d you—find out?”

  “Tell me what you know. Everything!”

  “A priest—stole a telegram—from Vichy—new orders or something. It said—not to release you. They must’ve figured it out—but Madame Dreyfus says we have two hours—Hey, hey, it’s all right!” The voice receded behind Elisa as she ran again. Karl’s footsteps rang sharp as she dragged him along by the wrist. “Hey, I didn’t mean it like that, hey! Turn left! And then right—through the colonnade and stay away from the windows, and listen—”

  Elisa slacked her pace, finally; Tova was gasping.

  “Listen, these people know what they’re doing, I’ve—”

  “We’re leaving this building in an hour,” Elisa told the French girl, “whether they’ve found us somewhere to go or not.” She shifted David Weider to her other arm and dug in her pocket among the heavy sliding necklaces. Her father’s watch read ten fifteen.

  “And you’ll go where, then?” The girl’s black eyes flashed at her. “If you sleep on the street they’ll arrest you as vagrants!”

  “Karl, take the bundle.” Elisa gestured forward with her chin and began to jog.

  “Listen to me!” The French girl’s voice cracked, and Elisa stopped short as a bloody hand grabbed her shoulder. “We have places to take you! Listen—listen, I’m from a town up on the plateau, it’s a good place, everyone’s on your side there and Paquerette says we can take at least ten people who don’t have placements of their own—you can come. D’you want to come?”

  Elisa stood staring at the guileless, blazing eyes of a girl who’d never slept on straw behind barbed wire and who thought there was a place where everyone was on her side. I’ve seen how your country is on my side, girl. What could she know, who was she—that Elisa Schulmann should lay the lives of what was left of her family on this stranger’s word?

  The other girl drew her hand back suddenly from Elisa, grimacing in pain. “Sorry,” she murmured, gesturing. She had left a little stain of bright red blood soaking into the fabric of Elisa’s blouse. Elisa stared at it, her mind empty and dark as the air of the barracks last night, the dark that would never leave her. The girl’s eyes were wide on her when she looked up.

  “I’ll talk to Paquerette,” the French girl whispered. “As soon as we get there. She can make it official for you. Will you believe me then?”

  Elisa gave her a nod.

  The girl nodded back. “Um. I’m Magali, by the way,” she said.

  Grandpa raised an earth-stained hand. “Please don’t tell me.”

  “I’m not …” Julien dug his trowel hard into the soil and turned it up. “All I’m saying is, he’s doing things he’s not telling us about. That are dangerous.”

  Grandpa nodded, his weathered face sober. “It would surprise me more to hear that he wasn’t, at this point.” He lifted a cluster of little lettuces by the roots, worked one gently out with his broad fingers, and placed it in the hole. Julien filled in the earth around it. Far to the southeast a farm dog barked long and loud, the bark against untrusted strangers. They were searching the farms down there. “Péracs’ place,” Grandpa murmured, glancing up.

  “I just wonder. If the other things he’s doing … really mix well with that. The letter …”

  Grandpa looked up, the seamed web of wrinkles coming out around his brown eyes. “He has asked himself that. He sat in my kitchen a long time speaking with me about it.” His eyes rested on the far green hills. “The answer he came to was that God is faithful.”

  Julien dug, fingers in the earth, feeling its moist heaviness. There’d been rain last night. “Grandpa,” he said finally, “did you believe in nonviolence before Pastor Alexandre came to Tanieux?”

  Grandpa looked up from his lettuces. “Not exactly. Not in the way I do now.”

  “He brought it here. This thing about ‘Don’t worry about the consequences, do what’s right and God will back you up.’ Papa got it from him too.”

  “You could say that.”

  “Only …” Julien was digging his hole too deep, his fingers feverish. It shouldn’t be this hard, it never was this hard to talk to Grandpa. In the distance the dog stopped barking. A hawk rode above in the blue sky. Grandpa listened. “Only if you make a mistake,” he said. “About what God wants. Or if God wants us to, to be more careful …”

  Grandpa sat back on his heels and gave Julien a long look, wiped his hands on his trousers, and stood. “Why don’t you water these in,” he said, “and I’ll make tea.”

  When Julien came into the farmhouse, his sock-feet silent on the smooth flagstones of the kitchen, two mugs of mint tea were on the table. Grandpa was pulling a slim, battered book off the high shelf where the big leather-covered Bible lay, and the carving of praying hands. He laid the book gently on the table. The title read Hymnes Huguenots.

  “We have a lot of traditions on this plateau,” said Grandpa with a half smile. “Protestantism. Resisting the government. Arguing with one another. We did it constantly, in the time of the camisards’ revolt. We’d grown so weary of persecution. Of torture and forced conversions and our pastors being sent to row galleys. We were angry. Prophets arose in the Cévennes, and even some here on the plateau, who said God wanted us to rise up and take back our freedom to worship by force of arms. Others disagreed.” He flipped open the songbook, glanced at it, and looked at Julien. “One of your ancestors was a camisard, you know.”

  “You never said.”

  “No. I didn’t. It’s a short, painful story. I got it out of my grandfather just months before he died. Abdias Duvernet—he was an ancestor of my grandmother’s, from Lamastre—had just come into his majority. He heard that the prophet Abraham Mazel had come north here to the Vivarais to gather men for a new uprising. Abdias wanted to go. His father forbade it. He told his father he should come too. They had heard of massacres, villages burned. The son’s notion was that this had to be resisted. The father’s was that they’d lose everything if they fought. Abdias called his father a coward. Le père Duvernet said, ‘If I wasn’t a coward you’d be dead.’”

  “What did he mean?”

  “Nobody knows. He never spoke of it again, no matter who asked. Abdias went off to join the uprising. He was killed within the week.”

  Julien exhaled sharply, blinking. “What’s the moral?” he said harshly. “‘Don’t go against your father?’”

  “No,” said Grandpa. “I don’t know what the moral is. Except that things can be terribly painful between fathers and sons sometimes.”

  “Did you say he was one of our ancestors?”

  “I misspoke. His little brother was. Pierre.”

  Grandpa’s hand rested on the little book. Julien looked, but couldn’t read the old-fashioned print upside down. “Grandpa,” he said, “aren’t you going to tell me what you think?”

  Grandpa smiled sadly. “Not today, Julien. Maybe that is one of the morals of the story after all. There comes a time when you must let the young make their own decisions. They’ll do so anyway, after all.”

  Julien was silent.
“Why d’you bring that out?” he said after a moment.

  “What you said reminded me.” Grandpa slid the book gently over to Julien. Julien took it carefully, feeling its cover and its pages soft with age. He turned one, and read the title of the song, “Battle Psalm”:

  If God will only show Himself

  In an instant we will see

  The enemy scatter and flee.

  “Can I borrow it?”

  “Of course. You know some of them. Probably not all. But the answer isn’t in there. Just the struggles of our people, with each other as well as with their enemies.” Grandpa reached across the table and turned the page back, to a hymn with a familiar title, “La Cévenole,” the anthem of the Huguenots. “You’re right,” he said quietly, “that Pastor Alexandre brought the teaching of nonviolence to Tanieux. But there’s an older tradition, one that goes back to the beginning, that may be the reason we listened to him. That’s in there too. The martyrs have always been a witness that the sword does not have the last word.” He raised his eyes to where beyond the window the far green mountains stood. “That’s not a thing it’s easy to be sure of,” he said.

  Julien closed the worn book as gently as Grandpa had given it. “Thank you,” he said, though he was not sure what for.

  The woman named Paquerette took them to another convent. A real one.

  There were two other families with the Schulmanns, all children under ten. They were led through a maze of ancient clay-colored buildings, tiny alleys, streets so steep they broke into stairways; they followed, trying to believe police did not lie in wait behind every door. Then to the great hill that overlooked the city of Lyon, to climb endless steps to the church on its summit: Notre-Dame de Fourvière. Massive pillars and a great gold statue of Mary gleamed in the sun, watching Elisa with upraised hands. Elisa climbed, flushed and sweating, hearing her siblings’ heavy steps, toward that golden face. She had no other choice. She sat with the others in the convent refectory, feeling eyes on her till her skin crawled, and ate the bread and thick soup, ordering her siblings with her eyes to do likewise. Eat when you must. They were shown to a bunkroom. It had a door they could lock.

  She slept a short, hard sleep, black and hot and full of dim shapes pursuing her. She jerked awake and stared at the ceiling, checked on her siblings, checked every child in the room. She lay back down, trying not to think, trying to remember nothing, till she realized she needed a toilet, now.

  At the door she hesitated. There were voices in the corridor outside.

  “He doesn’t have the addresses and he wouldn’t give them if he did.” That was Paquerette.

  “They found his soft spot, mademoiselle. He trusts Marshal Pétain—an old friend—”

  “Sister, the police are still searching Tanieux!”

  A sound behind her made her whirl. Tova stood in the middle of the floor, blinking.

  “Elisa,” she whispered, moving closer. “Elisa, I wanted to ask you—while Karl’s asleep—do you think Mama and—”

  “No. Please. Not yet, Tova. Not till we’re safe.”

  “We’re not safe?” whispered Tova.

  Elisa took her sister’s hand, her eyes on the opening door, and said, “No.”

  Mama handed Julien a jar of cooked beans and wrapped a chunk of cheese in newspaper. “Here. Pack this too. I know the telegram said today, but things can happen with the trains.”

  “Remember to ask Pastor Chaly to choose a family that lives far off the road,” said Papa. “Tence has been searched at least once. Tell him it’s for a couple of weeks at most, till the police leave. I’ll find them a place in a children’s home or at the school once I know their ages.”

  Julien glanced again at Papa’s copy of the telegram. FRIENDS ARRIVING TODAY TENCE AND ST AGRÈVE. The first stop north of Tanieux and the first stop south of it on the railway line. Julien had chosen Tence; Magali was likeliest to come that way. He raised his head at the sound of footsteps on the stairs.

  It was Monsieur Barre, the plumber, his cloth cap in his hand, his eyes concerned. He stood on the landing, shaking his head, turning down Mama’s offers of something to drink. “I just need to tell you.” Papa’s eyes widened slightly and flicked to his study door, but Monsieur Barre went on. “A rumor. More than a rumor. Monsieur Drac, he’s been a policeman here for fifteen years and more, he says those city police’ve taken out a warrant for your arrest.”

  Julien felt rather than saw his mother behind him go still as a deer. The blood beat in his ears.

  “You and monsieur le pasteur. Rumor is”—Monsieur Barre cleared his throat—“rumor is they plan to do it tomorrow. In church, or after.”

  “Thank you.” Papa’s voice was firm, dignified, barely louder than a whisper.

  “Of course. Thought you should know. Those …” He trailed off, his lips twisting, then gave them all a nod. “We’re with you,” he said, and was gone down the stairs.

  For a moment nobody spoke. Then Mama turned toward Papa, her eyes not on him but on the bedroom door, wiping her hands on her apron. “You could go into the Ardèche. Rochepaule maybe. On your bicycle you could be there by nightfall. No one would tell them.”

  Papa made no move to follow her. “Maria,” he said hoarsely, “I need to stay.”

  Mama stopped dead. “Martin,” she whispered.

  “I must, Maria. I cannot abandon Tanieux. And I can’t hide in half measures. They know where to find me, unless I leave Tanieux for good.”

  Mama was pale. “They could deport you, Martin.”

  Papa made a helpless upward gesture of his hand, broken off. “We’re at a critical moment. The pressure they’ve begun to apply—if the people see us run at the first threat—”

  “Third threat.”

  Julien’s parents both turned to him. He stood aghast, his hand rising to his lips as if to search for why and how he’d spoken. He looked into his father’s eyes. Took a breath.

  But Mama spoke first. “You can stay out of this, young man.” Color was returning to her cheeks, her head high, her black eyes flashing. “This is between me and your father.” She pinned Papa with her gaze. “Let the people get their courage from Pastor Alexandre,” she said. “You have work to do. Go. Come back. It gives you a chance.”

  Julien licked dry lips, his eyes going to his father, to his mother, his heart speeding up.

  “I have to do what God calls me to do,” said Papa softly.

  “You should go,” Julien whispered.

  They were both staring at him.

  “You should go.” He could barely force his voice a little louder. “And you should be more careful. You should stop—witnessing to these men. It’s too dangerous. They’re too dangerous.” His heart was hammering. “I know what you’re doing.”

  Papa’s eyes were very wide. “How?” he said quietly.

  “I looked at one of your papers. When you were burning it. I apologize.”

  “You’re forgiven,” murmured Papa. His hand gripped the back of a chair. He spoke slowly, looking into Mama’s eyes. “Standing witness is not useless. It is vital. Is it worth, for a chance, showing Tanieux and Vichy that I do not believe God is my help?”

  Mama leaned forward, not taking her gaze from him. “Martin, I am begging you.”

  Papa drew a deep, shaky breath, and said, “My love, I hope you can forgive me this.”

  There was a long, sticky silence. It was broken by Julien’s mother whispering, “Julien, I think you have somewhere to go.”

  Go. He had to go. To Tence, for Magali, for the children, to Tence with a pack full of food in case something went wrong, wrong with the trains, in case he had to stay an extra day or—or something. Papa’s face, his eyes on Mama, the lines in it deeper than they ever were, you could see where the wrinkles would be when he was seventy. If he was ever seventy. Julien picked up his pack from the scarred pine table, slid it onto his back. It was heavy. He went to his mother and looked at her till she turned to him. He kissed her goodbye, held her
, her shoulder blades as tense as a staring cat’s. Then his father, the wound still in his eyes, his chest thinner in Julien’s arms than he remembered. But Papa held him, for one moment, so tight he couldn’t breathe.

  His parents’ faces were a blur as he turned away.

  For the first kilometer of his walk north, he barely remembered where he was going.

  Chapter 6

  ANOTHER PLACE

  THERE WAS A freight train derailed between Saint-Étienne and Firminy. Karl and Tova accepted the news, and Magali’s assumption that they would sleep in the train station, with exhausted meekness; Elisa did not.

  “Paquerette and I slept in train stations a dozen times last year and never had any trouble with the police,” Magali insisted. Elisa caught the girl’s flinch and frowned. Magali lifted her chin and said with rock-solid confidence, “We never had any trouble with the police about where we were sleeping.”

  In the end there was no choice. After sending Magali out to buy food for what turned out to be a miserable attempt at a kosher picnic—she hadn’t imagined raw potatoes were that stomach-turning—Elisa bedded her family down against a wall among a handful of other huddled families, a little flotsam of bodies and string-tied bundles left on the floor as the station emptied for the night.

  She didn’t sleep. She didn’t even lie down.

  She made up her bedding under Magali’s instruction to avoid the French girl’s questions, then watched the others fall asleep: Magali curled on her side, one arm cushioned with a sweater beneath her head; Karl tossing and turning till exhaustion took him; Tova on her stomach, a thin tear track still glistening on the bridge of her nose. Elisa knelt and stroked her back gently till her breathing grew deep. Then she propped herself against the wall. The hours stretched. She prayed psalms, her lips moving without sound. She put her hand in the bag and felt her prayer book and the leather case, tucked away at the bottom; she did not bring them out. She jumped, her heart knocking wildly, at the sound of a throat clearing beside her.