How Huge the Night

chapter 2





Burn





Nina read the words on the pale green card for the last time. Name: Nina Krenkel. Birth date: 07-08-1924. Birthplace: Vienna. Hair: brown. Eyes: green. Race: Jew.

Then she opened the furnace door and put it in.

The flames flared and ate the words in long licks. It was a ghost card of curled ash, the words still visible for a moment, slowly fluttering apart in the wind of the fire’s burning. Nina watched, transfixed, as her name fell away into flakes on the glowing coals.

“Nina! You did it?”

She whirled to face her younger brother. “I promised. And you promised too.”

“But we never got the fake ones!”

“He said we had to do it anyway. We have to, Gustav. We have to do everything he says.” Her eyes burned. She stood, pulling herself up by her crutches. “You want to go up there and tell him we’re not doing it? And let him die knowing that?”

“But Nina, Uncle Yakov—”

“Uncle Yakov is wrong!” she shouted. “Did you hear what he said? He said crazy. Is Father crazy, Gustav? Tell me.” She looked him in the eye. “Do you honestly think he is crazy?”

Gustav looked at her, his black eyes wide. “I—” He shut his mouth and looked down at his shoes. Shoes that Father had made him. “No,” he whispered. “He’s not crazy.”

“I know it’s scary, Gustav. I’m scared too. But he knows.” Just look in his eyes. Did you ever wonder if dying people can see the future? It scares me, Gustav, it scares me so bad, the things he looks like he knows. “He says we’re safer if we go. He knows. So we’re going.” She stood leaning on her crutches, looking at him; then she held out her hand. He looked back at her for a long time, put his hand in his pocket, and pulled out a pale green card.

She took it and bent again to the furnace door.





Everything was ready. She had packed food, clothes, blankets. She had the key to the drawer with Father’s letters in it, his will and the money and the tickets—the drawer where the false identity papers were supposed to have been when they came. They wouldn’t come now, Father had told her in his thin, labored voice—he could hardly breathe now. “He cheated me,” he’d whispered. “He cheated my children. May he be forgotten.” Then he’d swallowed and said, even softer, “Or maybe they caught him. Who knows?”

Father was in his attic bedroom, where he had been for weeks, the room where the doctor had told them he would die. Soon. The sun slanted in through the window; the white-stitched stars on the brown eiderdown shone, and so did Father’s eyes, out of the dimness. “Nina. Nina, my daughter.” She was still catching her breath from climbing the stairs on her crutches, but he had less breath than she.

“Father, I’ve done it. I burned mine, and Gustav’s too.”

His skin was paper thin around his eyes. His breathing rasped. “Good,” he whispered. “Nina. I love you so much.”



She looked at him. She must not cry. “What should I do next, Father?”

“Your hair.” His thin hand came up a little in a helpless movement toward her, as if he would have taken her long, wavy hair in his fingers to feel it. “It’s so lovely. So … Jewish. It won’t be safe. And the world was never safe for a woman alone, Nina. Tell Gustav to cut it now. You think you can do it? Be a boy?”

“I picked myself a name, Father. Niko.”

“That’s my girl. That’s a very smart name.” Suddenly a fit of something like coughing took him. Something in between coughing and choking, again and again the head bobbing forward and the wet sound in the throat. She bent over him, mouth open, hands going to him helplessly. Nothing she could do. He swallowed and breathed again. “Soon, Nina,” he whispered.

She bit her trembling lip hard.

“You will live, my daughter. You will give me grandchildren. You will find a place where you are safe.” Did you ever wonder if dying people can see the future? There was a strange light in his eyes.

He was gazing at her, the shimmer of tears growing in his eyes. His voice came out hoarse: “Nina, Nina, I want so much for you to live. Promise you’ll do everything I told you, Nina. Niko.”

“I promise,” she whispered, and bent her head.