How Huge the Night

chapter 17





End of the Line





Julien spent his first week in bed, burning and freezing, his throat raw as meat and almost as bloody. He’d never felt so awful in his life. He tossed and rolled through fever-dreams of white, crawling through snow toward lantern light that receded into the night. Then he was in his room again, Mama bending over him, saying, Drink this. Then he was gone again.

Then he was back. He woke, and blinked, and outside his window were huge clouds lit brilliant white against the blue of the sky, and he stared and stared at them. He was alive.

He spent his second week in bed getting very bored.

Mama said she was glad his fever had broken but he wasn’t healed yet, and he was going to stay put. Benjamin brought him the homework from school and sat on his bed and helped with his math. Grandpa brought up a knife and some wood and started him carving a cat rolled into a ball. He carved, he did homework, he wrote to Vincent. He prayed.

Will you teach me? he’d said. As if he believed for a moment that God would talk to him, that praying wasn’t like sending a letter at all. Maybe God had been talking to him, in the snow, in the fire, in Pierre’s face; maybe the storm was God’s terrible speech, the warmth of the fire his love. But what was he saying now, in the blue bedspread, the white walls, day after day?

Still, there was something there. He wasn’t eyeing God across the room anymore, like him and Benjamin the day he’d arrived, wondering what they could possibly have to say to each other. Now there was something to talk about.

He read the gospel of Matthew, then Mark. By the time he’d finished, he knew one thing: Jesus was cool. Wore himself out healing people and walked on water and wasn’t afraid to say anything to anyone. All that yelling and flipping tables in the temple, and the next week they killed him—was that what they killed him for? Was that loving your enemies? Confronting them and not caring what they did to you? He’d imagined something … nicer. Not that Jesus couldn’t do nice with sick little girls and all. He wondered if just anybody could do the yelling part, or if you had to be the Son of God.

He prayed, Teach me, still, like a letter, like renewing his application. He prayed for Pierre, that this time they’d actually end up friends, and for Henri, that … that anything. Whatever God had in mind. He didn’t know.





By the third week in bed, Julien had run out of things to talk to God about. He’d finished his cat carving, he’d finished the Gospels, and he wanted out of this stupid bed. He told Mama this. She smiled. “Sounds like you’re going to live.”

Downstairs, Magali and Benjamin had their homework spread out by the fire. “Hello, long-lost brother!” said Magali. “What news?”

“What news? My walls are white, and there are four of them.”

“How’s the leg?”

He pulled up his pant cuff and showed the ankle. The network of angry, reddish-purple bruises had died down to faint dark-brown and yellow, fading away under the skin.

“Ew,” said Magali.

“How ’bout you?”

Magali vented a long sigh. “Rosa’s not talking to me. ’Cause according to her I like Lucy better. She could try letting me say who I like. You know what she said to me yesterday?”

“I thought she wasn’t talking to you.”

“Hush. She said, ‘Go to—’”

“She didn’t!”

“‘Go to Ireland!’”

Julien and Benjamin burst out laughing. “It’s not funny,” said Magali. “I don’t know what to do!”

“Can’t you invite her to hang out with you and Lucy? Can’t you all be friends?”

Magali shot him a look. “Oh, I forgot how much you know. Mister ‘girls are different and that’s why you have to help them.’”

“Oh,” he said, his face warm, “shut up.”





Roland came by and stood in the doorway, wiping his boots and looking awkward till Julien offered him a drink of Grandpa’s strawberry sirop. They sat at the kitchen table, watching the reddish swirls of concentrate dissolve in their glasses, and began to talk. Julien told his story from start to finish; the story of how he’d learned that he could die. Roland was nodding soberly. “Heard your fight’s off.”

“Yeah.”

“Speaking of … all that. I wanted to tell you.” Roland looked out the window. “I feel stupid. About, you know, not hanging out with you in homeroom. It was … stupid.”

Was stupid. Julien’s heart lifted, just a little.

“Hey,” he said. “Don’t worry about it. Please.”

And Roland smiled his shy, quirky smile.





On the night of the church Easter pageant, Julien stepped out of the house for the first time since his accident and breathed the fresh air deep into his lungs. It had that lightness, that tiny touch of warmth, and flocks of swallows flew round and round overhead, crying, black against the sunset. Spring had come when he wasn’t looking.

“Julien Losier! Julien’s back!” Gilles shook his hand and clapped him on the shoulder, Léon and Antoine wanted to see his leg, and then suddenly Pierre was there, grinning broadly, his eyes alight, shaking his hand with such a powerful grip it was all Julien could do to match it. “Hey, man. Long time. How are you?”

Julien laughed. “Fine. It’s so good to be outside.”

Inside the church, he sat for once not with his parents but with his—friends. Yes, friends. Roland and his family showed up as they were sitting down—his mother short and plump, his father thin and weathered with Roland’s exact same crooked smile. And Louis, grinning. And they were together again—Roland and Louis and Julien and Benjamin. And Gilles. And Pierre. They sat together and watched the passion play, and Mama came on and sang “A Toi la Gloire,” her voice rising pure and lovely as when she’d sung it the night the war began. Benjamin had come just to hear it, and who wouldn’t? Maybe the Thibauds had too. “She’s good,” Gilles whispered. Pierre nodded. Julien grinned.

They made their way round the refreshments tables; Julien shook hands with half the church and told them he felt better and lifted his pant cuff to show his leg. Monsieur Thibaud shook Benjamin’s hand and said he’d like to have them over for supper sometime, and Benjamin gave him his rare smile. Then the smile dropped as Monsieur Bernard’s low voice cut through a lull in the conversation, speaking to Monsieur Moriot: “God loves Germans, God loves Poles, and a good tanieusard does too and invites them all to the big Tanieux party. Why keep anyone out? God even loves Hitler!” Henri beside him was nodding, a wry look on his face. Benjamin was looking fixedly at the back of Monsieur Bernard’s collar. Julien grabbed his shoulder and steered him firmly the other way. “D’you see they’ve got real hot chocolate over there?”

“Don’t listen to that guy,” Julien whispered to Benjamin as they got out of earshot. “Like father, like son. They wouldn’t know God if he smacked them in the face.” Benjamin’s scowl split into a sudden, helpless grin. “You’re crazy,” he said.





The sun was shining the morning Julien went back to school. The sky was a pale, luminous blue, and the frozen earth in the schoolyard was mud again. On the tree were tiny buds, the merest dabs of yellow-green. The muddy yard was full and loud with boys. It was spring.

Julien walked in the gate and hesitated.

“Hey look, guys!” cried Gilles. “Julien Losier’s back!”

The in-group of his class stood under their tree, its budding branches trembling a little in the breeze. He was being beckoned over. Roland was grinning, and Pierre. “Hey! How are ya!” He walked slowly toward them. Benjamin followed.

They greeted him warmly, shook his hand and Benjamin’s; they wanted to know how he was, how was the leg. He showed it to them, the faintest traces of dark yellow under the skin. “Used to be this sort of glowing red and purple. There, and there. When it happened, I thought I’d broken it, I swear. It hurt that much. I thought there were bones sticking through the skin.” He laughed. They were all looking at him.

“Well?” prompted Jérémie. “Then what did you do?”

“I kept walking. I had to. And then it started to hurt so much I passed out and fell. And then I started crawling.” I had to, he almost said again, but he could see it in some of their eyes as they nodded soberly, that they knew what had looked him in the face. In their eyes was something like respect. He glowed.

They pressed Benjamin for his story, and he told it, looking a little surprised at being asked to speak. It sounded kind of harrowing, being out in the dark, searching for someone lost. “And then Pierre skied up to us and told us he was all right. He didn’t tell us he’d mangled his ankle and was going to half die of fever,” he added with a wry smile at Pierre, who grinned back.

“You wouldn’t believe how I felt when he tripped over me out there,” said Julien. “I swear, I thought he was Jesus.”

“So you can imagine what he said when he saw it was me,” Pierre tossed back with a straight face. Julien laughed. They all laughed. Except Henri Quatre.





The days grew warmer. The long rains of spring came, and the courtyard was pure mud, and the boys stood under the préau in little groups, looking out at the rain. The royal court broke up and shifted, without its tree; Julien stood in a corner with Gilles and Dominique, talking spring and soccer, or sat with Roland and Benjamin against the wall, reading one of Benjamin’s books. Jean-Pierre talked math with Benjamin. Julien helped Pierre with his history.

Henri watched with stony eyes, and said nothing. Julien prayed for him. Or tried. Mostly, You know what to do, I guess.

Vincent wrote. He couldn’t believe Julien had almost died. He wished something that exciting would happen to him. He was failing math, and he wished this Benjamin guy would come live with him, and honestly, if Benjamin had let Pierre copy a few things off his physics homework at the get-go, maybe there wouldn’t have been so much trouble. Julien smiled crookedly and wrote back to Vincent that that would be the day and that it was weird having almost died; everyone was nicer to you. Almost everyone.

He sat with Benjamin at the dining-room table, doing homework; and Benjamin—Benjamin who had walked in here with his head so far down you had to talk to the tops of his glasses—looked across his homework at him just like a normal person. Like a friend. And they walked down to school together, and Julien’s chest did not grow tighter with every step down the hill, and at the bottom of the hill, he waved and called to Roland and Louis.

The river rose under its stone bridge with the snowmelt and the rain, and the grass along its banks grew green and thick. The genêt bushes on the hills, once the only green against the pale dead grass, grew dark as the new growth outshone them, and the young leaves opened, and there were violets against the black stone schoolyard wall. They laid new lines out on the soccer field and gathered the teams. Julien convinced Benjamin to come watch the first game.

Henri’s team won. By one goal.





The trumpeting music that began the nine o’clock news played in Julien’s head during the day. Fighting in Norway, Denmark in defeat. The announcer’s fruity voice made it sound far away, a story; but it wasn’t. Mama stared at the radio; Papa ran his hands through his hair. They were waiting. Spring was the time for war, Papa said. At school, Pierre bragged on his brother André and his tank, his eyes a little too bright; they traded stories they’d heard about the Great War, the trenches. They wondered out loud how long it would last.

Julien sat at the table and listened to Papa’s devotions: Joseph forgiving his brothers, saying at the end of his life that what they’d meant for evil, God had meant for good. “That’s how I know I didn’t invent God. A God I invented wouldn’t let evil men have their way. The real God does. And works it for good. Lets it look like he’s doing nothing—and comes through in the end. I believe this: he always has, and he always will come through, with good, in the end.” In the end. When’s the end? The clock began to chime nine o’clock, and Papa turned sharply toward it. In a moment, he was on his feet, switching the radio on.

The fanfare played, the look-at-me music; Julien settled back in his seat, rubbed his finger on the smooth wood of the table as the announcer said the usual words in the usual tone. The tape cut like a fracture to the same voice, its fruitiness gone, speaking quickly with an undertone of fear. “Dramatic developments. Since yesterday, German troops have been pushing deep into both Holland and Belgium, in complete violation of these countries’ neutrality.” Julien looked up, his eyes wide. Holland. Belgium. His father’s hands were gripping the edge of the table, hard.

“German tanks and infantry have met heroic resistance from the Dutch army. The Dutch and the Belgian governments have dropped their efforts to stay neutral in this war and have called for help from British and French troops to push back the Nazi tyrant.” They were straining toward the radio. The boches were bombing Holland and dropping paratroopers everywhere; an “impregnable” fort in Belgium had been taken in less than a day. Holland, whispered Julien’s mind. Belgium. They’re coming here.

“There are unconfirmed reports tonight,” said the announcer more slowly, “of a strong push by several divisions of German tanks onto French soil. They are reported to have crossed the Ardennes hills,” he said, “bypassing the end of the Maginot Line.”

Time stopped as they sat staring at each other. The room became vivid, suddenly, the shadows sharp-edged: the dents and scars in the smooth golden pine of the table were etched into Julien’s eyes as he stared. It had come. The lamplight bloomed like a rare, precious flower, and the faces around the table, the faces of the people he loved, in that wide-eyed moment filled with fearful beauty. The sound in his head echoed above the stumbling voice of the radio, a high, buzzing echo speaking the words again and again. The end of the Maginot Line. The end of the Maginot Line.

His mother’s face was white and frozen, her hands knit together, the knuckles pale. Julien looked at Papa. He would go and comfort her now. He always did.

But he didn’t. His face was buried in his hands.