How Huge the Night

chapter 37





Life in Their Hands





Nina woke to fear, as she had every morning for the past year. As she always would.

Who was he hiding from? Hiding her from? What did they mean to do? He hadn’t seen fit to tell her. None of them had. They had left her in the dark.

In Lyon she had been ready. She remembered the hunger, and the way the hunger had faded, the still and heavy peace. Sinking toward sleep at the end of a journey, the end of a long and terrible day. And then Gustav pulling at her, shouting at her—“Live, live!” He would never know how hard it had been. But she had done it. She had fought her way back to life; she had found rest. She had found what she thought she would never taste again.

Joy.

She wished she had died.

In Lyon, she had been ready. But now! Now after one last taste of freedom, one day with the stone lifted from her heart—to feel the weight of fear again and know it would never go— There was no God. And if there is. And if there is he doesn’t know what he is doing. He is stark shrieking mad. He’s been too long in the dark.

Even this town in the hills, with its kind faces, was a place of danger. All her long-ago hope and her courage had been pretty lies, and Uncle Yakov was right. She knew this now. The world was full of thieves and soldiers who took whatever they could; even women and children had hatred in their eyes. Gustav with his desperate, fierce care had bought her one day of freedom, and this terrible truth. And now she had to do it all over again; to let go of peaches, and sunlight, and all the hopes she had hidden down inside herself for the things she would never have. A sweetheart. A husband. Children.

She lay dry-eyed, looking up at the blank ceiling.





There had been no word from the mayor, nor from Victor Bernard. It had been four days. Julien was beginning to breathe again.

He walked out to the farm Sunday afternoon behind the rented cart to haul wood for the winter. The wild thyme in the woods this year had grown taller than Grandpa had ever seen it. “Did I ever tell you what that means, Julien?” he asked as they stacked wood.

“No.”

“It means a hard winter. Maybe the hardest in a very long time.”

Julien glanced at the long woodpile, and Grandpa followed his gaze.

“We cut a lot of wood last year, Julien. As much as we could. Beyond that we’ll have to trust God.” He looked at Julien, his eyes bright. “Julien—” He broke off and smiled and rocked the cart to see if the load would shift. “In the city,” he said quietly, “I’ve seen tarps over woodpiles. As if the rain would rot them. When the rain’s what makes them strong. Leaches the sap out, seasons the wood— it’s not worth burning till it’s been out in the storms for a year.”

In the end of the gray log Julien was lifting were little lines. Little dents, the bites of a clumsy maul. He had split this log last year. When he was fifteen.

“You really think we’re ready?”

“It’s been quite a year for storms, Julien,” said Grandpa quietly.

“We’re as ready as we’ll ever be.”





News was in the wind, on the radio, news of change. More refugees. Tens of thousands expelled from Lorraine for “disloyalty,” which meant, Papa said, not speaking German. A bunch of them from some Protestant boarding school in Lorraine were enrolling in the new school. A few were Jewish. Benjamin was called into the principal’s office at lunchtime and came out with a bigger grin than Julien had seen on him in months.

“You’ll never guess,” he said as they walked home. “I bet you twenty francs.”

“If I had twenty francs,” said Julien, “I wouldn’t waste them on some dumb bet with you.”

“C’mon. Guess.”

Your parents are alive. “Full scholarship to the Sorbonne?”

“They want me up to the new school on Friday. To give a talk. On being Jewish.”

“Really? They invited you?”

“Yep,” said Benjamin. “Me.”

“Hey!” Magali was calling to them across the place du centre, waving. “Hey,” she shouted again, running toward them. “You’ll never guess what Rosa and I just saw!”

Julien and Benjamin both rolled their eyes. “Bet us twenty francs?”

“I’m serious, Julien. It was amazing. It was great.”

“All right, what d’you see?”

“Well, we were watching the twelve-fifteen train come in, and this guy got off. Older guy, real dirty, messy beard. Wearing a coat without any buttons—he had to hold it closed—and the soles of his shoes were coming off, and Monsieur Bernard sees him, right?”

Julien swallowed. Right.

“So he steps up to him like he’s a gendarme or something, like so”—she did a brisk military step, her face right in Julien’s—“‘What is your business in Tanieux?’” she said crisply. He could just hear the man.

“And the guy mumbles something in this accent, maybe Polish, and the Bernard guy’s about to give him his speech and a ticket back out, right? And then”—her eyes grew bright—“then old père Soulier steps up from beside this huge crate of cabbages he was shipping. He steps up and says, ‘Excuse me, Victor.’ Just like that—Victor—I didn’t know they knew each other that well! ‘Excuse me, Victor, he has business with me.’” Her laugh rang across the place. “And Victor does this complete double take—man, it was beautiful. Best thing I’ve seen all day.”

“Then what happened?” asked Benjamin, a fierce light in his eyes.

“Père Soulier says ‘He’s my guest’ and turns to the old Polish guy and says, ‘Monsieur, you will come. Come and eat with me today. Cabbage soup!’” She laughed again, happily. “Then he tells Bernard ‘Cross off my shipment,’ and Bernard says ‘How much were you going to get for it?’ And père Soulier says ‘Cross off my shipment,’ again. And the old guy’s standing there with tears in his eyes.”

“Then what happened?” whispered Julien.

“Bernard crossed off the shipment, that’s what. I guess he knows he’s up against more than just Pastor Alex now.” Her grin was fierce. “I saw Monsieur Faure and Monsieur Cholivet giving him dirty looks, and they helped père Soulier load up, and Monsieur Raissac took one of the sacks of potatoes he was shipping and just slung it on père Soulier’s cart without saying a word! Man.” She gave a huge sigh of satisfaction. “Let’s go have lunch.”

“Magali, was Henri there?”

“Yeah.” She frowned. “He was there, but I don’t know if he saw. I didn’t see him till they were all gone, and he was looking the other way. C’mon Julien. Let’s go.”

Looking the other way. Julien followed them down the street, slowly.





On Wednesday the wind rose; the burle come early this year, a promise of terrible cold. The French flag fluttered wildly in the icy wind, and the boys in their circle around it hunched and shivered; Henri’s jacket flapped and billowed against the hand he held hard over his heart. When the salute ended and the school doors opened, Julien paused a moment, watching. Henri Quatre had drifted away from his group and stood alone by the black stone wall, his hands in his pockets, looking out over the Tanne in the bitter cold.





“Julien,” said Papa, beckoning him into his office and shutting the door behind them. “There’s going to be an assembly at school today. I know they didn’t announce it. Now I want you to do what I say, Julien. Benjamin won’t be there today. And I want you not to tell him what you’ve heard.”

Julien blinked.

“If you have any questions about why, ask me at lunchtime.”

Julien nodded slowly. “Yes, sir.”





Gustav sat at the table staring at a piece of bread, his heart tight, trying to understand what had happened. Nina wouldn’t eat.

She wouldn’t eat.

She said she wasn’t hungry. She said he should eat it, he was going to live.

It was like Samuel hadn’t come to them, that terrible day in the train station, like none of it had happened. In her head, she was back in Lyon.

She knew they were hiding her. He told her it was only a precaution because of the stationmaster; she looked at him with flat, empty eyes and looked away.

Fräulein Pinatel had sent for Signora Losier. To talk to her. It was all she could think of. Gustav looked at her as she came in, remembering what she and Frau Alexandre had seemed to him: two mothers standing at the end of the road, with life in their hands for the taking. And saw that he’d been wrong. She was as lost as he was.





Nina did not turn her head when the door opened, but she saw her. The Italian woman. Here to make her eat. Make her live.

Make her die another day.

“Hello, Nina,” said Maria. “How are you?”

“Fine.” Nina did not move.

“You need to eat.”

“Go away.”

“I will not go away. You need to eat. You need to grow strong. I know you are afraid, but that is all the more reason why you need to eat.”

Nina turned her head and looked Maria full in the face. “You know I am afraid,” she said through her teeth. “You know?”

“Yes, Nina,” said Maria softly. “I know what it is to be afraid.”

Nina sat up and leaned toward her, her teeth bared. “You,” she spat. “You with your house, with your doors that lock”—she’d broken into Yiddish—“you tell me you know? Liar!” she shouted. “Liar!” She took a deep, shuddering breath, forcing herself to think of the words. This woman had to know what she had done. “You lie,” she said in Italian. “You say sicura. You say safe! I am not safe. Nowhere is safe, not for me. Nowhere.” Everywhere there are evil men.

Maria closed her eyes. “I am sorry. You have a place here, Nina. Here in Tanieux.”

“You talk. Easy talk. You do not know.”

“I do know, Nina.”

“You know hunger? You know fear? Here in your house—with door, food, bed, light—you say you know? You know nothing,” she spat. “You have never been alone.”

Even the air in the room stopped moving. For a split and silent second their eyes were locked on each other, and the force of Maria’s anger hit Nina like a blow. “You do not know me,” said Maria between her teeth, and her voice cut the air like a whip. But Nina was already recoiling, as if she had been slapped.

There was silence. Nina looked into the woman’s eyes, felt a trembling in her belly.

“I have been alone,” said Maria quietly.

Nina dropped her eyes.

“No. Look at me.”

She raised them slowly.

“Nobody to help you. You sit on the floor. You don’t move. You don’t speak. You don’t look at anything. There is nobody to help you when the man comes with his gun.” Nina’s eyes were wide, staring at her. Behind them she felt the sting of tears. They were both shaking.

Their locked gaze broke. They dropped their eyes to the white bedspread. Nina held a fold of it clamped in her fist. Maria sat down on the bed.

“You?” Nina whispered.

“Yes.”

They looked at each other. Maria’s eyes were wide as if with fear.

“In the Great War. The first war. You know war?”

Nina nodded.

“I was in Italy. My village. Bassano del Grappa. A small farm. We were poor. It was like now—when the war came, there was no food.” Nina was very still. “My two brothers, they were soldiers. My father, my mother, they worked very hard without my brothers, so we could eat. I worked hard too. I was fourteen. You understand my Italian?”

Nina nodded.

“We worked hard, three years; we were hungry. My mother, she made me eat, she always gave me some of her food. We were thin. Then the war came to our village—the Austrian soldiers came.” Nina looked away and looked back; the two women’s eyes met, and understanding was in them. “We were afraid. But they did nothing bad to us. Except the worst thing: they took our food.”

Maria paused a moment, looking down; then she continued.

“That winter was terrible. Always my mother said, ‘I’m not hungry. You eat.’” Of course. Of course she had said that. “I don’t know how we lived.”

Maria took a deep trembling breath.

“In the spring,” she said, “the sun came back. It was warm. We planted an early garden, and we hoped. You know this word, hope?”

Nina nodded, her eyes never leaving Maria’s face.

“Spring. We start to hope—then we get the news. My brother Tomasso is killed. My mother cries and cries. Then more news. My brother Gino has been killed also—they think he has been killed, they do not know. They cannot find him—you understand? My mother stops crying.” Yes. Yes. You stop crying. And then …

“She doesn’t cry, she doesn’t talk, she doesn’t eat. Soon she is in bed with a fever. She was so thin. So weak—” Maria looked down, her throat laboring. “I was with her,” she whispered. “I watched her die.”

It came back so vividly—the wet sound in Father’s throat, his struggle to breathe. To whisper to her to run, fight, live. She had found him—in the morning—could she have borne it if she’d had to watch him, to hear every breath come harder than the last, feel him growing cold? Oh, Father.

She had shut away the pain and obeyed him. She had shut away the pain, because deep inside she had known it would hurt this much.

“There was only me and my father. We worked as hard as we could to stay alive. I guided the plow, and he pulled it; all our animals were gone. He cried sometimes at night when he thought I was asleep. It was terrible to listen to. The soldiers came again, but there was no food for them to take. We should have left, but we didn’t know where to go. The soldiers came once more—running away, with the Italian Army after them. We hid in the cellar while the battle went over us. And then the war ended. We had hope again, but so tired. So tired.”

Nina could feel it in Maria’s voice, that bone weariness; she could feel it in her weary heart.

“We got sick. Both of us. The influenza. It killed more people than the war. I was delirious with fever for days. When I woke up I was alone.”

Nina’s stomach tightened. Tears were welling in Maria’s eyes.

“I ran through the house, calling for him, calling ‘Papa, Papa.’ It was so quiet. I thought he had left me while I was sick—that hurt so much … I ran outside to the chestnut tree where my mother’s grave was—you know grave?” Nina nodded. The tears made bright tracks down Maria’s cheeks. “There were two graves,” she whispered.

“All,” breathed Nina. “All your family …”

Maria nodded. They looked at each other for a moment. Then Maria took a breath.

“I was alone,” she said, not looking at Nina, her voice growing harsher. “The neighbors on the next farm came and left food for me. They left it outside the door. They were afraid of the sickness. I sat on the floor, I didn’t eat the food, I didn’t sleep, I didn’t see the light. I wanted to die. And then I looked up and in the doorway there was a man with a gun.”

Nina froze. No.

“A soldier—Austrian. He was dirty. His uniform was torn. He said something in German, and he pointed his gun at me. I didn’t understand.” She was gesturing as though she had a gun. But her eyes were looking into the darkness of the barrel. Nina saw it too, that deep blank eye. They were kneeling on that floor, together, in that dark.

“He yelled at me. He took the bowl of soup out of my hands—it was cold; I’d had it for hours. He drank it.” She lifted an imaginary bowl, tipped back her head, drinking savagely. Nina could see the soup spilling out the sides of his mouth. She could feel his hunger. “He threw it at the wall, and it broke. He yelled at me again. I was starting to cry.”

She grabbed Maria’s hand; they were both shaking. “And he—he looked at me, Nina. Do you know what I mean?” Maria’s face twisted with that look—ugly: lust and scorn and desperation. Nina drew back, shaking her head no, no. “And then he stopped. And he looked around.” The nervous eyes of a deer in an open field, the quick turning of the head. “There was nobody. But … he looked out the door and then looked at me and”—Nina’s mouth was open, she was leaning forward, tears wet on her face—“and then he was gone.”

Gone.

“Out the door. I was alone. Nina—I was alone for days. In the empty house. The door was broken. The neighbors who brought the soup had gone. Nobody came,” she whispered. “Nobody came for days.”

You have never been alone.

Maria’s eyes were closed. Her face was very still. Nina reached out a hesitant hand as if to touch her cheek—her throat hurt, she could hardly breathe, the salt taste of tears was in her mouth. Maria spoke, and she drew back. Her voice was very low.

“I escaped. Others didn’t. I don’t know why he left.” It was pure, blind luck. “But I learned what I learned, about the world. I have not told my children this story, Nina. I am afraid to tell them what I learned. But I have told you. Because I think you know.”

“Yes,” whispered Nina. “I know.”

“Nina.” Maria opened her eyes. They were very dark. “I have told you my story. Will you tell me yours?”

Story. As if it was something with a meaning. An end. She stared at Maria. Maria looked quietly back. Her face was so—open. Open like the door to a firelit house at the end of a long and terrible journey. Story. Nina swallowed, gripped a fold of the cover in her fist, and opened her mouth to speak.





It was bright and bitter cold. The boys in the schoolyard shuffled and stamped their feet to keep warm. Monsieur Astier stood before them with his bullhorn, his face very serious.

“I won’t keep you long. But I have something very important to tell you. It’s news you won’t read in the papers or hear on Radio Vichy. It’s news you have a right to know.”

Julien rubbed his hands together and wished he were somewhere where none of this was happening.

“I love my country,” said the principal. “I know you all do too. So it’s difficult for me to tell you this, but you have a right to know. As do your parents. You have a right not to be led blindly where our country seems to be going.

“Before I tell you this story, I want to emphasize that Pastor Alexandre and I heard it directly from an eyewitness.”

Julien’s throat was dry. Hurry up.

“You may know that the Nazis have persecuted the Jews in Germany almost from the day they came into power. It appears that now they want to be rid of them completely. They’ve been deporting many of them east into occupied Poland. But three weeks ago, they decided to send a trainload of deportees to France. To Lyon.”

Lyon! Julien and Roland looked at each other. Were they coming here?

“They didn’t tell our government their plans. Not a word. They just packed the train with Jews they had rounded up, and sealed the cars from the outside, and sent them. When the train arrived in Lyon, officials there were shocked to find it packed with people— men, women, children, the elderly—all Jewish.

“You have to understand,” said Monsieur Astier slowly, “that the Germans were breaking the armistice by doing this. And that the officials were afraid that there would be more. And you can imagine they asked themselves, what will these people eat?”

The crowd stirred. Everybody understood that question.

“Yes,” Monsieur Astier said heavily. “What will they eat?” He looked away for a moment. “So our government in Vichy stood firm and refused to accept them. They insisted the Germans take them back. But the Germans didn’t take them back.” His voice grew heavier. “And that train sat in a corner of the Lyon train station for three days, shut. Nobody was let out. Nobody brought them food or water. Nothing.”

The schoolyard had gone dead silent.

“After three days, they sent it on to an internment camp, without opening it. When it arrived, some of the people inside were dead.”

He would never tell Benjamin.

“Our eyewitness watched the bodies being unloaded. Many of the living were so weak they had to be carried. None of them were taken to a hospital; they all went directly to the camp. Where it’s said the conditions are so harsh that even healthy people are at risk.”

Julien was light-headed. How many times did he have to say, I never imagined this? Was this the future?

There was a long silence.

“We can still be shocked,” said Monsieur Astier, “at seeing human beings treated in this way. The Nazis have not finished their work on France. But how long? When does our government start to resist? Do any of us really believe this won’t happen again?”

Julien and Roland looked at each other. Roland looked sick.

“I do not believe,” said Monsieur Astier slowly, “that our new government is going to resist. They are cooperating with the Nazis. And the Nazis will expect them, and us, to get used to seeing certain people treated this way. To find it normal, to shut up. I felt I had to tell you this, boys, because you as much as your parents have a right to the truth. To make your choices in the light of day. Boys, it’s not just our government that has to decide what to do with the people who come in on the train. It’s us.”

There was silence.

“Let’s take a minute to think,” said Astier. “The podium is open, if anyone has a response.”

A powerful hush settled over the schoolyard. The flag was flying high in the cold bright air, red as blood and blue as Henri’s eyes. Julien closed his eyes against it and wondered, for a moment, if there really was a God. When he opened them, someone stood at the front, holding the bullhorn.

Henri Quatre.

“Let me tell you a different story,” said Henri in a clear voice. No, thought Julien, no. When does this stop? It doesn’t stop. Nina is only the first. This is the future.

“Old père Pallasson, who lived out at Le Chaux some years back,” said Henri, and Julien lifted his head. “Have you heard about him? He never set foot out his door all winter for fear of the cold. And then come spring, the snow melted, and père Pallasson looked out his window at the sunshine and thought it was summer—and he opened the door and walked out into the burle without a coat. May he rest in peace.”

There were a few chuckles from the crowd.

“I got up here to tell you,” Henri said, and he paused. Julien stared, his heart in his throat. A dark flush was coming over Henri’s face. “I got up here to tell you that père Pallasson is me.” His quiet voice rang into the silence. “When the armistice was signed, I thought we’d be okay. That it was spring, that it was back to normal. And it turns out,” he said slowly, “that the burle is blowing harder than ever.”

No one whispered. No one moved. The entire school was staring at Henri Bernard. Julien was faint, he was light, he would dissolve at any moment into the cold, clear air.

“Monsieur Astier is right,” said Henri, loud and clear. “The Vichy government isn’t resisting. They are cooperating with the Nazis.” His voice was harsh. “I hate to say it, and I hate to think my country is doing this, and I’d put my hand to the fire that if the marshal knew what was going on, he’d stop it. But I’ve made up my mind. I trusted them. But I can’t trust them anymore.” Julien was numb. Benjamin would never believe him.

“And we know.” Henri’s voice began to ring. “We know about persecution here in Tanieux. We know what to do with a government that makes unjust laws, laws that go against the law of God. We haven’t forgotten the Huguenots—we still sing their songs; we haven’t forgotten how our people came here fleeing the king’s soldiers, hounded and driven out because someone thought they were the wrong kind of people. And so we know how it feels. And I’m here to say”—there was the tiniest tremble in his voice, and his fist clenched and he raised it up—“that I have made my choice. I’m here to say—”

There was a pressure in Julien’s head, in Julien’s heart. He could feel them all around him, the heads thrown back, the faces turned up toward him, toward Henri Bernard. Who knew exactly what he was doing. Who was king of France again just like that, and always would be. His eyes burned.

“I’m here to say,” said Henri fiercely, “that anyone who wants to put people back on the train and send them somewhere else is not going to get any help from me!” Julien looked at him, at the clear blue sky above his head. Someone’ll tell him. You know that, don’t you. In Roland’s eyes was awe.

“We’re not going to keep refugees out of Tanieux!” Henri was shouting now. “It’s going to be what it was then: un abri dans la tempête—a refuge! We did it once, and we can do it again!” He stopped—Julien saw his throat working—and looked around. Monsieur Astier was stepping up to Henri, his hand held out; he was shaking Henri’s hand. Henri Quatre.

It should have been me, but it was Henri Quatre. Oh God. You’ve bested me again.

And Louis beside him began to clap.

And Roland clapped. And Jean-Pierre clapped, and Philippe clapped, and Pierre and Dominique clapped, and then it swelled, and it swept through the crowd, and the boys were cheering and stamping their feet, and Julien threw back his head and laughed out loud.

“Tanieux!” somebody yelled. “L’abri!” Someone else took it up, in rhythm, and then they were calling it out on the one-two beat: “Tanieux! L’abri! Tanieux! L’abri!” And Roland shouted and Louis shouted and Pierre shouted, and Julien shouted, at the top of their lungs.





Nina was crying. Hard sobs that shook her, her head held tight against Maria’s chest. Maria, who had heard her, who knew it all now. Who had been with her on the border in the dark; who had wept with her in her cell. Maria, Marita, the arms of a mother, holding her tight. The grief and fear shaking her, and the anger, like waves of the sea: they crashed over her, sucked her down, and lifted her again. Maria’s arms gripped her and took the shaking, and the waves washed her clean.

Slowly, the sobs wore themselves out, and she breathed.

The light from the window fell on the white bedspread. It glowed. It fell on Maria’s face that bent over her, her cheek bright, her eyes dark.

“Maria,” she whispered. “I was right. Wasn’t I. About the evil men.”

“Yes,” said Maria quietly.

“But I think maybe. Maybe.” She looked Maria in the eye, hard, searching. There was so much light. “Maria … is there a God?”

Maria looked at her, her dark eyes deep and steady. Then she smiled. That glowed too. “I didn’t tell you the end of the story,” she said. “Gino came home. My brother. One week after the man with the gun, my brother came home alive. We went to France. I got married. I had children.”

Tears filled her eyes. They filled her eyes with light.

“Is it—true?” Nina whispered. The light said it might be. The light said this woman would not lie to her, ever, while the earth went round. “Am I … safe … here?”

Maria bent over her. Her eyes were very dark. “Nina,” she said, “I am not God. I cannot say, ‘You are safe.’ But I can tell you two things: There is a God who loves you. And if they take you, they must take me too.”

Outside the window was the sky. She could see up and up, so far, she could see forever into the blue, and the sight amazed her; as though the edge of some huge shadow had passed over her, and was now gone.





It wasn’t until lunchtime, on the way out of school, that Henri caught Julien by the sleeve and pulled him aside.

“I wanted to shake your hand, Julien.”

Julien looked at him. Henri and his honest blue eyes looking straight back at him. “I’d like to shake yours,” he said. And there at the gate, as the boys walked past them on their way home for lunch, Henri Bernard and Julien Losier shook hands.

“You’re a real tanieusard, Julien. I’m sorry I ever said any different.”

“I’m sorry too. You know.”

“Yeah. Listen. Tell your friends they don’t need to worry about my father.”

Julien blinked and was silent a moment. “Are you sure?”

“Would I say it if I wasn’t sure?”

And Julien looked at Henri Bernard and saw it, the answer to all his praying. Henri would never lie. Not in any way, not to him, not to his worst enemy. The warmth of an unseen sunlight for a moment touched his face.

“No,” he said. “I’ll tell them.”





Epilogue





The winter of 1940 was the worst Grandpa had ever seen.

The cold was deadly. The ice in the streets turned a dull gray-white, reflecting nothing of the sky. Grandpa looked at the woodpiles with sober, calculating eyes and called the family together to talk.

They went out together into the painful cold, to climb the hillsides and gather genêts to burn.

But tonight, it was Christmas Eve, and the fire was piled high and blazing, lighting the circle of faces: Mama and Papa, Magali and Benjamin, Grandpa and his new houseguest, Jacques Bellat, whose real name was Jacob Blumenfeld.

There was no Christmas tree, no presents. But the smells from the kitchen made Julien’s stomach ache with longing: a coq au vin from an old rooster of the Rostins’, an apple cake topped with real cream. Cups of mint and blackberry tea with real sugar, the mugs reflecting the fire’s light; the nativity scene on the mantelpiece; and in the window, three candles glowing warm against the blue evening. Benjamin had put them there for Hanukkah.

“What was Hanukkah like?” asked Grandpa.

Benjamin looked shyly round the circle. “I—it’s the only thing I remember from before we left Germany. I was so little. I remember the lights, the whole house filled with them, and all my aunts and uncles and cousins and everyone talking and singing—and my uncle would play the fiddle, and everyone would dance …” He looked at the window again, at the candles, and stopped, blinking hard.

“I’m sorry,” said Grandpa.

“No,” said Benjamin quietly. “No. I’m glad I remember.”





It was only five minutes later, they remembered afterward; only five minutes before they heard the sound of boots coming up the stairs. And Pastor Alex came in.

His cheeks were bright pink with the cold when he came in the door, and he didn’t take off his boots, and in his gloved hand was a brown paper envelope held out before him like a sword.

“Bonjour, bonjour,” he said hurriedly as they rose to greet him. “One of our guests gave us this. It’s addressed to me, but I think it’s for Benjamin. From his parents.”

Benjamin stood up so fast he knocked his chair backward, and it clattered on the floor. He stood breathing quickly, his eyes huge in a white face. “My parents?” he whispered. Then he took the letter Pastor Alex held out to him and ran out the door.

They sat looking after him for a moment. Then made Pastor Alex sit down and gave him tea. As he drank, he told them what he knew.

The Kellers had left Paris before the first wave of refugees; they had found a train that took them to Bordeaux. From there, they’d walked south across country all the way to the Spanish border. But there they found crowds, masses of people trying to cross into Spain, scenes of panic. There had been a rush on the guard post, people trampled, many more arrested. Monsieur Keller had pulled a wad of money out of his pocket, and the policeman had let them go.

They didn’t dare try the crossing again. They didn’t dare risk anything. Not even mailing a letter to their son. They went into hiding in southern France. Eventually, they made it to Marseille. And there they met a man who knew a man who knew Pastor Alex, and they gave the letter to him.

The door was flung open, and Benjamin was back, his face like a beacon filling the room. He ran at Julien, grabbed him by the shoulders, shouting “They’re all right, Julien, they’re alive, they’re alive!” And then he was being whirled around the room, and Magali was whirling with them, laughing, and Papa was beaming, and Mama’s face shone with tears. Benjamin was hugging everyone and laughing and saying things they couldn’t even understand in every language he knew, and Julien caught only those strange words he had once heard in the dark of Manu’s chapel, when Benjamin stopped and spoke them almost too softly to hear, his eyes on the glow of the fire. “Ribbono Shel Olom,” he whispered. “Ribbono Shel Olom.”

And he understood when Benjamin turned to him, and put a hand on his shoulder. And called him brother.





Nina looked out the window at the town, at the blue twilight that surrounded them. Snow was falling—brilliant white in the pools of light under the streetlamps—swirling, drifting, floating through the light, almost as lightly as her heart.

She was going back to school.

In January she could start, they said. At the Ecole du Vivarais—for free, they would stick an extra desk in the back. School! And Gustav too. They would both be in sixième, a grade below Samuel—a girl of sixteen in a class of twelve-year-olds. She didn’t care. She could feel no fear of anything, of anybody’s eyes. Not today.

The fire in Miss Fitzgerald’s fireplace blazed high, and it was Christmas Eve, and they were drinking Miss Fitzgerald’s Irish tea with real milk and sugar. The blond girl across from her grinned shyly. Fräulein Pinatel on the sofa argued with Gustav.

“You’re going to need all the time you can get for homework. You’re fourteen years old. You don’t need to earn your keep; what you need is an education.”

“To help you earn your keep later,” put in Miss Fitzgerald in her oddly accented German.

“But I already know what I want to do! I like farming, I like livestock, I’m learning that. You want me to stop learning what I’m going to use and learn—geometry?”

“You’d be surprised at the uses of geometry in farming,” said Fräulein drily.

“Gustav,” said Nina, “give it a try. For me. Not much is going to grow out there for a while anyway.”

He gave her a rueful grin. “I’ll try it. Sure I’ll try it. But you’re the one who’s gonna go to college in this family.”

“College?”

He laughed. They all laughed, throwing their heads back in joy. Her long dark hair fell back over her shoulders, and the sheer feel of it was joy; there was joy in the soft clean cloth of her new dress, in the face of the laughing blond girl, in the memory of her own face, that morning, in the mirror. The color in her cheeks, the way she filled out the green dress now, her first in a long year, the way her eyes looked … alive. Like a girl, a normal girl who went to school—read books—made friends. She drank joy down like water, even in this rock-hard winter knowing again the taste of sunlight. The taste of having woken, that morning, without fear.





Julien went to the window for a moment, away from the circle of faces, his heart too full, and looked out into the blue and bitter night. The snow was still falling, covering the cracked gray ice, softening the harshness, whitening the cold. He knew it had only begun, this winter; and they would burn genêts and shiver; and eat potatoes, not enough. Winter had come to his country, the most terrible of winters, and he knew it could last the rest of his life. He looked up into the deepening sky, and he could barely see them still; the flakes swirling, dancing in the darkening air, falling light as grace onto Tanieux. He watched for one long and quiet moment. Then he turned back to the faces, and the light.





Historical Note



by Heather Munn





It’s not true that the Germans killed thirty thousand people in the bombing of Rotterdam.

The Luftwaffe carpet-bombed downtown Rotterdam and killed almost a thousand civilians; but the city had been under attack for four days already, and most people had evacuated. (Good thing they had: a whole square mile of the city was completely leveled.) The Allies inflated the number of victims for propaganda purposes: their news sources reported thirty thousand civilians dead. So Julien would have believed it was true, if he’d existed.

All the other historical information in the book is true: the news that Julien hears on the radio and reads in the paper, the summaries of the invasion of France and its surrender. The title of the editorial Julien reads, “Let us be French!” was the title of a real editorial written after the French defeat, and the ideas it expresses were common at the time. Marshal Pétain’s speeches in the novel are direct translations of speeches he really gave. The story the principal tells his students in the last chapter is also true.

The news Julien gets about anti-Jewish laws from Vichy is true, and represents the Vichy government’s gradual buildup to the point of full cooperation with the Nazis in rounding up Jews. Most of this news wasn’t common knowledge, however; the Nazis ran a cover-up campaign aptly called “Night and Fog,” and Vichy’s tactics were similar. Julien gets this information because he is surrounded by people who are paying attention—and because he has a Jewish friend. It was very easy in those days not to know what was really going on. Next to no one in France at that time had heard even a rumor about the death camps.

The camps Vichy set up in the unoccupied zone of France, like the one Nina and Gustav might have been sent to, were internment camps, not death camps; their purpose was to isolate Jews, Communists, and other “undesirables” from the rest of the population. But people did die in them. Living conditions were terrible and even healthy people sickened. They were also deadly in another way: just a little later in the war, Vichy began to let the Nazis deport all interned Jews to Germany and the death camps. This is what would have happened to Nina and Gustav, even if Nina had lived. You’ll hear more about the French internment camps in our next book.

One of the reasons this period of history fascinates me is choices. In France under the Nazis, people made all kinds of choices. Some got rich off the black market; some through collaboration. Some used the Nazis for revenge, feeding them true or false information against their enemies. Some followed Pétain unquestioningly; some just survived, as attentistes, “wait-ists,” who chose not to get involved. Some vowed to fight the Germans to the bitter end and started the Resistance, which in those early days seemed completely doomed. And a few, like the people of a village in central France called Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, chose to focus on those in the deepest need and danger, and protect them from harm.

The true story of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon is told in Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed by Philip Hallie and in the documentary Weapons of the Spirit made by Pierre Sauvage. I recommend them both if you want to know more. Basically, Le Chambon, a village of 3,000 people in the plateau country of central France, far from everything that mattered, over the course of the war, saved the lives of more than 3,000 Jews.

Tanieux is loosely based on Le Chambon: the landscape is similar, though it’s mixed a little with the landscape of my childhood, about an hour’s drive away. The people are (I hope) similar too. The real Reformed pastor of Le Chambon, André Trocmé, considered to be the guiding force behind the town’s rescue movement, is the inspiration for Pastor Alexandre: like Alex, he was a Christian pacifist who preached resistance through “the weapons of the Spirit.” (The sermon in which Alex uses that phrase is a loose translation of a sermon preached by Trocmé. The other sermons are fictional.) The story of Manu is fictional, but Le Chambon really did have the history of the Huguenots and le désert, and it was a history they cared about; it probably did have something to do with their choices during the war.

Vichy did hand down an order to use the fascist flag-salute in French schools, and the pastor and principal did deliberately undermine it. A third man also helped: Edouard Théis, principal of the new school (which had actually been started in 1938). Their plan was to have a combined flag ceremony, each school’s students making a half circle in their own schoolyard—with a busy street in between. The flag-salute fell apart after a few weeks, just as they hoped it would.

The real stationmaster of Le Chambon never did any such thing as offering refugees a ticket back where they came from. But Magda Trocmé, Andre Trocmé’s wife, did go to the mayor and ask for a ration card for a Jewish refugee, and the mayor did tell her angrily that she was endangering Le Chambon and had better get this person out of town immediately. The refugee was a middle-aged woman, and she was not sick, so Magda found a family in a nearby town who would take her in.

At the end of the book, Julien expects his country to be under Nazi domination for the rest of his life. This also is accurate. There was no good reason, then, to think otherwise. It was with no hope in sight that the people of Le Chambon trusted God and did what they could for the people they saw being persecuted. Sixty-five years later what they did is still remembered. I hope it always will be.





About the Author

Heather Munn was born in Northern Ireland of American parents and grew up in the south of France. She decided to be a writer at the age of five when her mother read Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books aloud, but worried that she couldn’t write about her childhood since she didn’t remember it. When she was young, her favorite time of day was after supper when the family would gather and her father would read a chapter from a novel. Heather went to French school until her teens, and grew up hearing the story of Le Chambonsur-Lignon, only an hour’s drive away. She now lives in rural Illinois with her husband, Paul, where they offer free spiritual retreats to people coming out of homelessness and addiction. She enjoys wandering in the woods, gardening, writing, and splitting wood.


Lydia Munn was homeschooled for five years because there was no school where her family served as missionaries in the savannahs of northern Brazil. There was no public library either, but Lydia read every book she could get her hands on. This led naturally to her choice of an English major at Wheaton College. Her original plan to teach high school English gradually transitioned into a lifelong love of teaching the Bible to both adults and young people as a missionary in France. She and her husband, Jim, have two children: their son, Robin, and their daughter, Heather.