How Huge the Night

chapter 26





West





Niko lay under the bench in the army truck, hidden behind footlockers, trembling. The ride up the Valle d’Aosta had been a steep, jolting nightmare—scrabbling for a grip on the bare truck floor, being thrown against the knees of soldiers, suddenly. Men’s grinning faces around her in a terrible blur; loud, rough laughter; men’s big hands. Gustav saying, Niko, it’s all right. All those eyes. Lorenzo’s voice slicing through the laughter: “Cut it out guys. He’s not all there. You’re scaring him.”

She couldn’t look at him. Lorenzo who had fed her every night for the last three weeks, who’d hidden her—she didn’t know him, didn’t know what he’d have done if he had known. What he would still do.

Gustav loved him. He’d lit up at the sound of his footsteps. She’d lain under the table and heard their loud laughter, and felt a leap and plunge in the pit of her stomach. Oh Gustav. He trusted him. At the thought, longing rose up in her—and terror.

Lorenzo came for them at dusk, alone, his lean face serious, and walked them to the road.

“This is it, guys. You’re on your own from here on out.”

“We’ll be all right, Lorenzo,” said Gustav. Niko nodded.

“See that old barn down the road? There?” Its roof stood out black against the fading sky. “It’s empty. Good place to spend the night. Hang around here tomorrow and then cross after dark. Won’t be any guards at that border, not after tomorrow. Maybe go off the road a little ways. They might leave a couple of our guys behind, but they won’t watch real hard. Here, I got blankets for you, it’ll be real cold at night, you wanna get down out of these mountains quick—there’s rations in this bag here, a little money too—you take care of yourselves, okay?”

“Yeah, Lorenzo,” said Gustav. He swallowed. “Yeah. We will.”

“Well. Um. Bye then. Always land on your feet.”

“Yeah. Yeah. We will.” Lorenzo put out his hand, and Gustav shook it; he glanced at Niko and made a funny little motion toward her, then stopped. She looked up at him. His eyes were wet. She put out her hand. He took it in his big rough palm and shook. Then turned away. She watched him walk away into the camp, a tall shadow of a man.

She turned toward the road and filled her lungs with the free air.





“He was a good guy, y’know, Nina.”

They were sitting together on the grass between huge, sun-warmed rocks; below them, a valley full of deep blue haze. Mountains all round them. Huge. The highest peak stood snowcapped and blinding against the blue sky: the Mont Blanc. France.

“Yeah,” said Niko quietly. “I know.”

“Well”—Gustav was tearing up bits of grass—“You’d’ve known a lot sooner if you’d ever looked him in the eye.”

Anger flared in her. “Oh yeah. I should’ve looked him in the eye and told him the truth so all his friends could find out there’s a teenage girl under the table right in the middle of their army camp.” How could he not know? “Didn’t you learn anything from what happened on the border?”

“Nina! It didn’t happen! We got away!”

“Oh yeah, someone tried to get me alone in the woods and rape me, but he didn’t quite manage it, so now I should trust every man I meet because I’m invincible. Gustav, I’m gonna tell you this now and you remember it: that was pure, blind luck.”

“You trusted your instincts, Nina. You grabbed your chance. Lorenzo says that’s the absolute best way to get away from someone in the woods. Run like h—like mad—until you’re well out of sight and then freeze.”

“You told Lorenzo?”

“I told him he tried to rob us. Started acting funny and playing around with his knife. I’m not stupid.”

“I panicked, Gustav. I just plain panicked and ran. And then I tripped. That’s not gonna save me next time.”

“There’s not gonna be a next time, Nina.”

She turned on him, grabbed his collar, and hissed into his face: “Yes, there is. And quit calling me Nina.” His eyes were big. She let go. “You think I call myself Niko for fun? I just felt like cutting my hair? There’s more like him out there. Everywhere. This is what it means to be a girl in this world, Gustav.”

“It’s not, Nina!” Gustav yelled. “It’s not what it means! How can you think that!”

“What’s it mean?”

“It means … it means—you’re my sister, it means someday you’ll have a husband and children, I—it … I dunno, Ni—Niko … Niko I mean … aren’t you ever gonna be Nina again?”

The force of her anger left her suddenly. She was staring at him. A husband. Children. It was completely unimaginable. A house. A door. One that locked from the inside. Oh, if she could have a door again! She turned from him violently and threw herself down full length with her wet cheek against the grass, her eyes filling with tears.

“Niko? Are you all right?”

“I’m tired, Gustav. I’m so tired.” She felt a blanket laid over her. One of Lorenzo’s. It was warm.





She woke to a world she had never seen before. She lay on a little grassy ledge above a deep valley ringed with mountains, a bowl filled to the brim with clear air and light. Every blade of grass stood out as sharply as if it had been chiseled; she could see every leaf on every tree. It was the quality of the light. Not bright like midday when colors swim together under the hot sun; this light was dim, but with the absolute clarity of pure crystal. Niko lifted her eyes and cried out with surprise.

“Gustav,” she whispered. “Wake up. Look.”

Towering above them, so close she could almost reach out and touch it, the snowy peak of Mont Blanc had caught rosy fire from the setting sun. They watched in silence, their backs against the sun-warmed rock, while the glow grew stronger, deeper, until even the rocks and trees blushed rose with the mountain. They watched in silence, aware of nothing but the light, as the mountain faded slowly into glowing, icy blue, and the sky grew dark.

“Niko,” Gustav whispered, “I’m sorry.”

She looked at him. She could still see his face in the dim light. “I’m sorry too.”

“I—Niko—What I meant to say …” He fell silent.

“Yeah?” she whispered.

“Well, I’m bigger than I used to be. Aren’t I?”

He was. She had noticed. He was as tall as she was now, thin and wiry. Stronger than he had been. She could not say to him, to his face like this under the vast dark sky, that it was not enough. “Yes. You are.”

“I—Nina—Niko—if I can—I’m not gonna let anybody hurt you.”

She said nothing. Above the mountain, a star had come out, a faint point of light against the deep blue.

“And we’ll find a place where it’s safe. Another house maybe, like in Trento—maybe I can get a job, I’m fourteen now. After a while we could have a place that’s really ours—I mean, I really think we could do it, if we just found a place where people … left us alone. Y’know?”

Niko nodded. “Yeah,” she whispered.

“Niko?” said Gustav after a moment, in a very low voice. “Do you still believe in God?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered. They had whispered the Sh’ma together, and walked out the door into the world. The terrible world.

“I don’t know either,” said Gustav.

There was a long silence. The mountain was barely visible now, a huge blue shadow against the night, under cold stars.

“We’re free now,” she said quietly. “We can go wherever we want.”

“Where do you want to go?”

“France,” she whispered. Her father’s last command. “And down out of these mountains. It’s getting cold.”

Gustav pulled the edge of the blanket toward her, and she took it and wrapped it around both of them. “Well,” he said quietly, “let’s do that, then.”





They crossed into France through the trees, barely a hundred meters from the road, in the cold dark after nightfall. They walked down the mountain for two days. On the third they found a railroad, and a freight train stopped on it, and they climbed into a boxcar. It took them to Lyon.