How Huge the Night

chapter 20





Wrong





Gustav looked around the convent courtyard. Chimney smoke rose in the morning air; sheets billowed on the clotheslines in the warm spring wind, shining pure white against the sky. Workmen repairing the courtyard wall joked with the nuns as they passed by.

Maybe his luck was changing.

He had been scared, these last two weeks. Turned away from one farm, then another. After a day without food, he’d stolen three eggs from a henhouse and almost been caught by the most savage farm dog he’d ever seen. Then it started raining. He’d found Niko a goat shed outside Menaggio; but he could find no work.

He’d been begging in front of the church when the nun had found him. Sister Theresa. She’d promised a hot meal at the least for him and his brother, and maybe she could talk to the Mother Superior and see about more.

A convent. Niko was smiling. It was beautiful to see.

Sister Theresa vanished into the broad stone building. Another nun lugged a bucket of water across the yard; a second brought out a chair and beckoned Gustav to sit down.

“I cut your hair,” she told him. “Mother Superior doesn’t want pidocchi.” She scratched her head, and he laughed.

“But signorina, I will miss them. The pidocchi and I, we have been friends for so long!”

She laughed, throwing her head back. She pulled off his shirt and began to cut; the scissors were cold against his head. Niko sat on the bench, gazing at the blossoming trees. Gustav’s bare head was wiped with a rag that smelled of turpentine, and stung. This Mother Superior knew what she didn’t want, all right.

The other nun took Gustav’s hand and led him to a shed with a tub of water in it, soap, and clean folded clothes. He went in and shut the door and began to undress.

He was just putting his foot in the water when he heard the scream.

He lunged for the door, fell back, and jerked his pants on, grabbed the handle, and bashed his head against the door. He turned the handle one way, the other way, jerking the door back and forward— it was locked. Locked! He pounded on it, yelling, but there were so many voices crying outside—a flurry of shouts, Nina’s voice rising in shrill, panicked Yiddish—“Get your hands off me, get your hands off me, no!” Oh no, Nina.

They took off her shirt.

He was screaming, pounding on the door, but no one heard him. I didn’t think—why didn’t I think—they took off her shirt, in front of the men—he could hear through his cries a loud voice shouting orders, and Nina’s high-pitched sobs. He pounded till the door shook on its hinges. But no one came.

Outside, the shouting died into silence.





Niko lay in the dark, weeping.

She had thrown herself at the door and shaken it, but it hadn’t budged. She had beaten on the shutters, run her fingers over the walls for a light switch, but there was none; she had found the bowl of soup on the desk and thrown it against the wall. She had slumped on the floor, wanting to scream, wanting to rip her fingernails into that woman’s face. They had tied her up, tied her to a chair and shaved her head, they had locked her in the dark, and all without a word to her, like an animal, like a—she knew, she knew what they thought—

Crazy.

Crazy, said Uncle Yakov. Nina, your father has never been the most sensible of men, and I think you know that; but now he is very, very sick. He’s not thinking right.

She screamed.

Long and loud. The shrieks of the insane cripple, echoing through the convent halls. What would they do with her? What had they done with Gustav? He was gone—gone—she was alone in the dark and everyone was gone. Father had run on ahead of her in the dark woods and would not turn back for her no matter how she called—Oh, Father, Father, come back!

A harsh sob tore from her throat, then another, and another; her whole body shook; her fingers clawed at the stone floor; she convulsed. I did everything—everything—I kept my promise, Father, I did everything you said and WHERE ARE YOU? The white heat of anger shook her, and she screamed at him, her father whom she’d loved, who had shrunk down to nothing in his bed and died, and left her; and left her nothing but orders. How dare you, Father, how dare you leave me alone!

She hit the stone wall with her closed fist and hit it again and again till her knuckles began to bleed. But he did not come.





She had lain in the dark for hours, her fingers feeling her bare scalp, her mind wandering a dark maze. Father. Uncle Yakov. Herr. Alone in the dark on the border, under pine trees tall and black as fear. Uncle Yakov’s voice saying madness, Nina, madness. She hissed aloud, It’s Niko, then fell, her face against the ground, dry sobs shaking her chest, because she knew he was right. He was right and she was wrong, Father was wrong: there was no escape—the world would eat her and all the innocent, the trusting, the fools—and everywhere there were evil men. She should have listened to Uncle Yakov.

She had never tasted any thought so bitter.

I listened to my father. That’s why I’m here.

The door scraped as it opened. Bright light hurt her eyes. A figure stood dark against it, holding a bowl in a hand that shook, and set it on the desk. The door shut, the key turned in the lock. Niko lay on her bare mattress, looking up at it; a hot bowl of soup, white steam rising into the thin lines of light the shutters let in. She did not move. After three days, you didn’t feel it anymore, the hunger. She hadn’t been even one day in the dark yet, but already she knew.

After three days in the dark, she wouldn’t feel anything anymore. She would be gone. Like him. Like her mother. Gone.





A dark silhouette stood against the light in the doorway: a nun. She stood; not shaking, not turning to leave. Looking at Niko. Sister Theresa from the marketplace, who had promised them soup and a bed.

Slowly Niko stood, and looked back into Theresa’s steady eyes. She felt something give in her chest; her mouth opened. You do not think I am an animal. Sister. Do you?

Non sono … she didn’t know the word for crazy. The word for sane. She didn’t know.

She stood a long moment; then with her hand, she touched the bowl on the desk. Zuppa, she said. Soup. She pointed to the mattress and said letto. She touched the door, said porta. Then she looked Theresa in the eye and said luce. Light. “Per favore. Luce.”

“Non sei pazza,” said Theresa. “Vado a chidere.” Ask, that meant. I will ask. “Vado a chidere luce.”

And Theresa set the bowl on the desk, looked at Niko and stepped out the door. It swung shut behind her, and Niko heard the key turn in the lock.

She waited for hours. But no light came.