How Huge the Night

chapter 10





Broken





Herr still had her pack. He’d been carrying it when they ran.

All their money and half their food. One of their blankets; but they had the eiderdown. All her clothes but what she had been wearing.

The first three days were terrible, walking and hiding and walking again under pine trees tall and black as fear, looking behind at every sound, not daring to stay on the road. They slept on the ground in the woods; or Gustav slept. Niko lay looking into the dark, trying not to think. Not to remember what Uncle Yakov had said. Nina, he’s delirious with fever. It’s madness to send two children out into the world alone. Nina, listen to me: there is no safe place for Jews on this earth, nor for women. Everywhere there are evil men.

Everywhere there are evil men.

I know about evil men, she’d thought. Here in Vienna. The Nazis marching in the streets, the men roaring the latest drinking song from the bars, the one with the chorus of “We are hunting Jews.” The boys from Gustav’s school who’d crippled her.

Friedrich had been with them; tall, blond Friedrich, the boy she’d dreamed over for a year when she was fourteen—till he’d turned up in a Hitler Youth uniform, and the dreams had gone. Five or six of them chasing her up the alley—she never knew who threw the rock—but in her mind it was Friedrich laughing his loud, manly laugh as she fell, heavily and wrong, something breaking painfully in her left knee. “You got her!” someone had called, and then feet pounding around her and the pain in her knee exploding into white fire as one of them kicked it hard … and the scream she had heard, not even knowing it was herself, and the voices. “No one’ll care, she’s just a Jew.” “I think it’s broken.” “Maybe we should go …”

She remembered the market basket she’d been carrying, tipped on its side, the eggs spilled and broken, their gold yolks bright against the paving stones. Broken. She remembered the walk home.

So she’d known about evil men. But not everything, whispered the shadows. Not even close.

She stared into the dark, seeing the rabbi in prison or dead; seeing Father still and cold in his bed; seeing Herr roaming the woods in the dark. Did you know this, Father? About the world you sent me out into? Did you know about the evil men?

Now she knew. She knew, and she would not forget, though she lay awake at night trying. Back to back with Gustav, wrapped tight in Father’s eiderdown, staring into the dark, listening for footsteps. Hearing only Gustav’s breathing and the tiny noises of the forest all around her; the small sounds of the hunted, filling the night.





They walked on the road. It was cold up here in the mountains. Herr had her gloves; Gustav gave her his and put his hands in his pockets. They ran out of food and went to bed hungry, and still Niko did not sleep. The next day, she could hardly walk for weakness, but she did; they came to a farmhouse, and Niko hid shivering in the woods while Gustav went in to ask for work and food. He was gone a long time and came back sweaty and grinning, with a bag of bread and cheese and a story about learning to split wood. She ate, and the shivering left her.

They slept in a barn the first night that it rained; they walked on, the food ran out, Gustav stopped and worked again. He told people he was looking for his father, who had left his mother when he was young, and lived in Italy. In what town, people asked. Oh, he didn’t know the name, some city not far from the border, on this road. You must mean Trento. Just keep going, down out of the mountains, you’ll find it. They say there’s work there too.

They made for Trento.

It was cold, and getting colder. Gustav wore socks on his hands. He wouldn’t take his gloves back from her. Her arms ached from walking all day on the crutches; ached and then hardened. But it was so cold. At night they huddled, back to back, wrapped in the eiderdown, shivering. When they found a barn to sleep in, it was warmer, but Niko started full awake at every sound. She got up each morning and kept walking, but her head felt hollow and full of wind, and her heart shivered in her chest, and fear and hunger fought in her belly every time Gustav stopped to ask for work. And everywhere there were evil men.

They were filthy, their clothes were filthy, the white stars on the eiderdown were black as dirt. The streams they found were icy; if they washed, they would never get warm again. They had no fire; they didn’t dare. They had no matches. Father hadn’t said to pack matches. She didn’t know what he’d had planned for them with the rabbi; but it wasn’t this.

It rained. Icy, pouring rain, and no houses or barns, and nothing to do but walk, their wet clothes clinging to their skin. Gustav’s pack was soaked; the eiderdown wet and heavy, the bread sodden and falling apart. It was so cold; and nowhere to stop and get warm and dry again, no help, no one they could trust. She had never imagined anything like this. She wanted to sink down beside the road, to give up, but she kept going. The rain stopped before nightfall, and they lay in the wet woods under the soaking eiderdown, and Niko knew in her heart that they could not go on much longer. They ate their soggy bread and said nothing. She would not let him see her cry.