Flame in the Night Page 7

  It was Magali, bleary-eyed, up on one elbow and staring at her. “Are you on watch?”

  Elisa nodded slightly.

  “You don’t have to do that. They don’t have any way of knowing we’re here. I heard you last night getting up all those times, and I know none of you slept the night before. You must be dying.”

  Elisa looked at her. Inside the bag her fingertips still brushed the leather case; her fingers slid along it and wrapped themselves tight around it. She said nothing.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Listen—really—you’ve got to sleep. Lie down. I’ll keep watch.”

  “I don’t know if I could sleep,” whispered Elisa.

  “After all that?”

  Elisa said nothing.

  Magali’s shoulders slumped. “I’m sorry.” She looked up at Elisa, her eyes big in the dark. “I’m so sorry about your parents,” she whispered.

  Shut up.

  “I thought I knew, I thought I knew what this stuff was like—I used to do this, you know. Paquerette got kids out of internment camps—legally—and I used to help her bring ’em to Tanieux. They’d had a rough time, you know? But this—I never saw anything like this before, like what’s happened to you—in just a couple of days! I … I’m sorry.”

  Elisa closed her eyes. There was something that had been floating in her mind, slipping here and there among the memories, elusive. Something Magali had said. She concentrated on forming the words. “What trouble did you have,” she said slowly, “with the police?”

  Magali froze. For three long heartbeats she stared at Elisa, her eyes like a cornered animal’s. Then she whispered, “I got Paquerette arrested in the Valence train station.”

  Time spun out slowly, so slowly, as the sentence hung in the night air. Elisa’s lips shaped the next word: “How?”

  “Stupid heroics.” Magali’s voice was low and hard. “They were arresting somebody—a Jewish boy, I thought—and I pulled the fire alarm because I thought it’d give him time to get away. It didn’t. They went after me. I had—had a child with me—so Paquerette took the fall. Claimed it was her. They arrested her right there.”

  “A child?”

  “A baby,” said Magali in a tiny, dry whisper. “From a camp.”

  “You were bringing kids from the camps? Like you said?”

  “Yeah. A whole group. I had to get them home without her.”

  “And you did?”

  “Yeah.” Magali slumped against the wall. “Oh, why’d you make me tell you this? In the middle of traveling together? I shouldn’t have told you. Why should you believe I’ve changed?” Her voice was anguished.

  Elisa looked ahead into the darkness of the station hallway, seeing them like shadows in her mind: blue uniforms, closing in. “You know,” she said slowly, “when you told me in that hallway that they weren’t coming for us right away and it was all right, I thought you didn’t know anything. About, about …” She shook her head. About walls topped with razor wire. About fear. About hard-eyed men putting their hands on their guns and telling you a second time that they are authorized to shoot your children. At lunchtime, with Mama in the kitchen doorway with her apron still on … “I guess you know some things,” she whispered finally. “How did she get free again?”

  “Someone helped her escape.”

  “And she’s still doing this.”

  Magali nodded. “She had to go home to recover awhile. From … from the interrogation.”

  There was a long silence.

  “You really don’t think you can sleep?” said Magali.

  “Maybe.” Elisa looked down at her unused bedding, then up at the other girl. Magali propped herself against the wall.

  “Maybe,” said Elisa fuzzily, and laid her weary body down.

  Julien scanned the windows as the train pulled in. Her steam rose slowly in the heavy air, in the light and shadow of the shifting clouds overhead. As the ring and scrape of her brake sounded, he spotted Magali inside, and paused for a split second, his mind kilometers away in a dark church where perhaps lines of light still fell from the tall windows, fell on his father’s and mother’s heads sitting side by side. She doesn’t know.

  The doors were opening. Two children, flushed and weary, eyes alive with fear; a girl Magali’s age, her skin badly pockmarked, her hair pulled back tightly from her face with strands escaping everywhere. In her bloodshot eyes was something that was not quite fear, something that made him look again even as Magali came down behind her saying, “It’s my brother, they sent my brother.” The girl stood poised protectively behind the other two, a hand on each of their shoulders, as Magali stepped up. “Julien, this is—”

  “Élise,” said the girl. Then with a swift glance at the other two, “And Charles and Brigitte. Where should we go?”

  “This way,” said Julien. “Can I carry something for you?”

  The girl gripped her string-tied bundle more closely, shook her head with a tiny motion, and said to her siblings, “Let’s go.”

  Julien led them at a good pace out of the station and down out of Tence to the Tanieux road before he paused to tell them the name of their host family and the distance to their farm. He had to speak loud; the east wind was rising. He led them jogging, watching the road, watching the line of clouds in the east, no sound but their running feet on the pavement behind him. Open country on their left, on their right pine forest and rocks. He could see the turnoff for the farm, a grassy unpaved track down to the left.

  He froze.

  A dog barking in the distance. A long, high buzz, getting higher.

  “Into the woods!” He heard them stop in their tracks. “Into the woods! Now!”

  Élise pushed her brother forward, and then they were all ahead of Julien, racing over the springy brown needles, blessedly silent except for the soft crash of pine boughs as they forced their way through the trees, as the buzz from the south turned to a tinny roar—a boulder loomed ahead, a great hunch of bedrock coming up through the earth, and Julien blessed them all as they went straight for it, behind it. “Down!” he hissed, and flung himself on his belly, Scout bag bouncing on his back. All down. Julien lay with his cheek against needles, the strong earth bearing him up, as the first motorcycle roared past. Then the second, close on its heels, growing and then receding, farther and smaller till it died away into the silence of the hills.

  Silence. The smell of pine. Pale faces lifted from the forest floor. Julien drew a long breath. “I am so sorry,” he whispered. “They don’t usually come this far.”

  Magali sat up, shaking her head. Élise turned, her hand on her sister’s back, and looked at Julien.

  “If you don’t want to go back on the road,” said Julien, “there’s another place.”

  “Where?” said Élise.

  It was decided within seconds. Élise’s eyes said a black no to the road, the same no to seeking shelter among the little sheep farms that dotted the half-wild land just north of the Tanières. No; not when there was another place. At the idea of a cave, however richly stocked with firewood and water, her sister’s eyes grew round and dark, but in Élise’s a little flame lit when he said, “No one could find you there.” She nodded.

  “We’ll have to go fast,” said Julien. “It’s almost a kilometer farther. We need to beat that storm.”

  Élise was on her feet before he finished.

  It was less familiar country than the Tanières, but he led them through it as fast as he could find a decent path, sighting by the great hill the cave was in, trying to trace with his eyes the best way to it as he stood calf-deep in the river waiting for them to get their leather shoes off and follow. They passed no farmhouses, only a ruined shepherd’s shelter as they half ran single file on a narrow dirt path that curved between rocks and twisted pines and scrubby, green-fingered genêt bushes, sheltering them from the road. Behind him they were breathing hard. The clouds were dark and close, a gray curtain of rain beneath them. He did not slacken the pace.

 
; The wind rose in their faces as they reached the Tanières; the storm was sweeping toward them, fast. “This hill!” Julien called above the rushing sound in the treetops. “Up this gully here, follow me!” The wind blew his hair wildly around his head as he came up into an unsheltered spot; he heard a cry and turned back, gave his hand to Brigitte where she had fallen. “We’re close,” he shouted. “Just up there round the other side of the hill!” She nodded mutely, and began to climb again.

  And the storm swept in.

  The rain hit them in blinding sheets, the hiss and roar of it so loud they could hear nothing else. Julien stood stock still under the cold shock of it, then began inching back down the hill, hand held out. “Take my hand!” he screamed to Brigitte and she took it, soaked and slippery, grabbed it in a death grip that barely held. “All hold hands!” he screamed again, but Élise seemed to have the others already, and then he was leading them upward in a half-blind line, someone stumbling and slipping in the sudden mud every ten seconds, wrenching the others’ arms and scrambling back up. Together they clawed their horribly slow way up the slope under the onslaught of water. Thunder rumbled. Julien crested the slope, saw the horizon wiped out in a gray seething of rain, saw the rock on his left shining wet and dark. “Here!” he shouted. The rain was slacking off just the tiniest bit; he could hear himself now. “Climb up here! It’s a ledge! Be careful, it’ll be slick! Hug the hillside!”

  “You first!” Élise shouted to her brother. Julien gave him a leg up and kept a hand under him as Charles scrambled onto the dark gleaming rock. “Hug the hillside!” and “Away from the edge!” Élise and Julien shouted at the same moment, and the boy flinched down and to his left toward safety.

  “Now wait there!” Julien called to him, and bent to help the sister, her sodden skirt flapping around her ankles as he lifted her, Élise bearing her up on the other side. Next Élise, who flung her bundle up onto the ledge and then put her muddy foot in his interlaced hands; he boosted her hard, his back and legs and shoulders braced and straining beneath her weight. Her narrow skirt wouldn’t let her get a knee up, and she struggled, pulling herself up by her arms; he saw her ankles scrape on the rock as she got them up under her. Magali hoisted herself up one-handed, cradling the other; it had scabs on the knuckles. The rain and wind slacked, bright patches of white sky tumbling amid the chaos of gray, then they picked up again as Julien clawed his fingers into the handholds and scrambled up.

  The wind was from the west, thank God, driving them inward toward the hillside; they shielded their faces as it lashed them, and Julien screamed, “Ten steps! Ten steps this way! Be careful!” So close. They crept along the ledge, the youngest ones in front, Élise dragging her bundle by one hand, the rain running down their faces and through their soaking hair. He saw them reach the spot and see it. “Go on in! Go!” The boy disappeared, then the girl, then Élise, and he breathed a great breath. Then Magali was gone too into the hillside, and Julien crouched alone under the battering rain, looking out at the wild sky and the drowned horizon. Looking east, to where Tanieux hid from him behind the sheltering mass of the hill.

  Then he bent his head, and tumbled on his knees into the warm, dark, crowded safety of his cave.

  Elisa knelt on stone in the belly of the earth, in the first cave she had entered in her life, twisting her long, wet hair back up into its knot and pinning it tight. Above and behind her the deep dark; before her a small red-gold fire and a kneeling boy blowing into it, making it flare bright against the curtain of rain beyond.

  She could feel the darkness like a weight, pressing on her head and shoulders: a thousand tons of rock and earth between her and the road. No one could find you.

  “It’s all soaked, Elisa, there’s nothing to change into.”

  “Go sit by the fire,” she told her sister. “It’s the only way to warm up.”

  The boy built it higher as Tova made her awkward way toward him.

  “We can’t use it all,” he said, gesturing to the woodpile against the dark cave wall. “If this keeps up all day—”

  “We need coals,” said Magali. “I’ve got to cook, I’ve got raw potatoes—”

  “I’ve got cooked ones. And cheese and beans.” The boy stared into the fire.

  “They can’t eat anything already cooked, they’re very religious—”

  “Tova,” murmured Elisa. “Do we have the cookie tin?”

  Within a couple of minutes she had potatoes laid on the fire to boil, the tin propped on three stones, and Karl and Tova were eating apples from the French boy’s pack. She shook her head at the offer of half of Tova’s and sank back on her heels, watching the rain hiss down outside the cave mouth, watching the flames dance bright and the smoke rise. There was mud all down the front of Tova’s dress, gleaming wet on her torso, drying on her folded knees; there was mud in her wild hair. Karl watched the potatoes, eating his apple down to the seeds. Firelight was in his eyes. Elisa let her breath out all of a sudden; suddenly Magali laughed.

  “You thought Benjamin could get up here?” she said to her brother.

  He didn’t smile. “It’s easier round the south side. We didn’t have time.”

  “Hey, you did great, Julien. C’mon. We made it.”

  Julien stared at the fire.

  Magali’s grin fell away. “Is Benjamin all right?” she said in a rushed half whisper.

  “Benjamin’s fine,” Julien said to his hands. They were clenched.

  “Who?” breathed Magali.

  “Monsieur Barre says …” Julien licked his lips, started again. “Said they wanted to arrest Pastor Alexandre and—Papa.” He looked up at his sister and his face was naked suddenly, terribly exposed. He said the last words in a whisper: “This morning in church.”

  The fire snapped and shot up sparks. In the dim blue beyond the cave mouth the rain sheeted down. Magali’s hand was over her mouth. Her brother watched her. His eyes, which had been hard and focused as a soldier’s as he’d run and watched over them and shouted orders, were dark and empty now. Dark as that other place, that deep, unwalled well in Elisa’s mind, where kind people stood with clipboards in the gleam of flashlights on straw.

  Magali was up, scrambling to get her feet under her in the cramped space. “We have to go!”

  “It’s noon, Magali.”

  “Was he going? Was he going to go to church?”

  Julien nodded.

  “Of course he was,” said Magali. “He’s—he’s so stupid!” The last word was a scream, high and ragged from a closing throat, almost unbearable in that small space. Karl cringed.

  “He’s not stupid,” Julien whispered. He stirred the fire with his stick. It fell apart. He scraped it together again, not looking up.

  “When they’re after you,” said Magali fiercely, “you run.”

  “What d’you think would happen in Tanieux if they ran?”

  “Nothing worse than what’ll happen now they’re arrested.” Magali’s voice was thick.

  Julien’s head came up sharply at the word arrested. “We don’t know that for sure.”

  “Don’t know what?”

  “That they went through with it.”

  Magali hit the cave wall with her good hand. “You think these people hold back? You think these people up and decide to have some compassion? Do you have any idea what just happened in Lyon?”

  Julien’s eyes fell on Elisa. They were large and dark, the fire reflected in them. “My father told me,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

  Elisa felt Tova beside her, shivering. She turned. Tova’s eyes were welling with tears.

  “Are we?” Tova’s voice was a thin thread. “Are we safe—enough?” Elisa pressed her palms hard against the rough cave floor, and nodded.

  “Elisa.” Tova’s tears streamed down. “Do you—honestly—do you think they’ll come back?”

  Elisa looked at her muddy knees, and pressed her hands harder into the rock. She shut her eyes, trying to open her closed throat. She hear
d the crackling of the fire. She shook her head.

  She heard her sister’s breath, tiny and trembling in the silence. She heard Karl’s, sharp.

  “What are you talking about?” her brother said. “You can’t know that!”

  She did not look at him. She reached behind her, to the bundle, felt for the smooth warm leather, drew out the case. Karl stared at it, his eyes red around the edges. “He gave me this. For you.”

  Tova’s breath caught. Karl’s eyes were getting redder. “He didn’t. He wouldn’t! He—he didn’t give them to you!” He scrambled up and made for the cave mouth.

  Julien blocked his way instantly, his face wiped clean of all emotion. “You’re not going out there. Sorry. You could get hurt.”

  Karl whirled as if seeking an exit from a trap. “Let me out.” His voice cracked, and he shouted, “Let me out!” He made a move toward Julien.

  Julien filled the cave mouth, arms out, poised. “Stay where you are.”

  “Do as he says,” Elisa snapped.

  Karl turned on her. “I hate you!”

  Elisa looked her brother in the eye, and said nothing. The darkness in his pupils went down and down. I’m sorry. She watched him break, his face giving one twitch before he hung his head in shame.

  “I’m sorry,” said Elisa stiffly to Julien. He shook his head.

  “But you don’t know,” said Karl in a low voice. “Not for sure. You don’t.”

  God help me. “I don’t know.” Her voice was a stranger’s. Magali was looking at her; Elisa met her eyes and looked away. Julien blew into the fire. Nobody spoke.

  Tova wiped her eyes on her sleeve. Flecks of dried mud fell to the rock or stuck to the curve of her cheek. “Why do they want to arrest your father?” she asked Julien softly.

  “He’s the assistant pastor.” Julien looked at his hands. “He’s … an organizer. The police came two weeks ago and asked him and the lead pastor for a list of the Jews in town. They said no.”

  “That’s why they’re still here,” said Magali, jerking her chin toward the back of the cave: eastward, to the road where the roar of motorcycles had passed them by. “They’re still hoping one of these days they’ll find somebody.”