Part 2 (1/2)
When the silence had deepened and lengthened between them, Grandpa opened his mouth.
”How's life with Benjamin?”
”Oh,” Julien said, and exhaled slowly, his fingers digging into the dirt. His mind was suddenly blank. ”It's ... it's not ...”
Grandpa turned up another clutch of potatoes, and Julien gathered them with quick fingers. Grandpa planted his fork, put his foot on it, and paused.
”Not so good,” said Julien finally.
Grandpa nodded without surprise, and Julien felt the ache in his chest give way a little.
”I don't know, Grandpa, it's just ...” Horrible. He makes everything weird, and wrong, and he's German, and I think he hates me. ”I wish ...”
”What do you wish, Julien?”
”I wish one single thing was the way it used to be.”
Grandpa nodded. ”You've lost a lot this summer,” he said.
A rush of tears filled Julien's eyes, and he blinked fast. He bent down to gather a stray potato.
Grandpa was quiet for a moment, leaning on his fork. Julien looked up and followed his gaze past Tanieux's hill and the farther wooded ridge, on toward low green mountains in the west, with the sun above them.
”The two-headed mountain. See it?” Grandpa pointed with his chin. One of the green peaks was split in two, one part taller than the other. ”Her name's Lizieux.”
Julien nodded.
”I like to think she's the first thing our ancestors saw of this place on their journey north.” He looked at Julien. ”Never let them tell you you're not from Tanieux, Julien. You're part of the story Tanieux is most proud of.”
”What?”
”You weren't listening when your father and the pastor were talking to the Kellers. You were thinking, 'That's just history.' Julien, history is where we come from.” His grandfather's warm eyes were webbed with a thousand smile wrinkles. ”Listen now. Our people came up from the south. They came in fear. Because they were Huguenots, and religious freedom had been revoked in France, and the king's soldiers were arresting and torturing any Protestant they could find. They came looking for shelter. Refuge.” He looked at the far green mountains. ”They came up the Regordane road, the old road beyond those mountains, and I like to think they looked east one morning and saw Lizieux holding up her wounded head and thought, 'Maybe there. Maybe there is a place for us.'”
Grandpa turned to Julien. ”They came here. And they were taken in.”
Julien looked at the mountains from where he knelt, his hands in the dirt. ”I see,” he said.
”Oh, Julien, I want to tell you so many stories, if you'll hear them. I want to tell you the stories of Tanieux. The story of how it started. Of Manu and how he built the chapel by the stream-have you seen it? Four hundred years old, that chapel is. Listen. Winter's coming. That's when we tell each other stories here. By the fire, when the burle is blowing outside. Come winter, I'll tell you the stories of Tanieux. If you're willing.”
”Yeah,” said Julien slowly. ”That sounds good.”
Julien walked home slowly, watching the sun sink over Lizieux behind long bars of white and gold. Thinking of how Grandpa had called the mountain she. Of his people, whoever they were, fleeing north on the old road past the mountains.
Julien had fallen behind the others as he climbed the hill; halfway up, he pa.s.sed a farmhouse, old stone with a slate roof and a broad orchard in back. A wall around the farmyard. And, leaning on the wrought iron gate, one of the guys who had stared at him in town.
Julien gave him a nod; the ice blue eyes looked right through him as if he wasn't there. It didn't matter whose people had come up the Regordane road; this road, on this hill, was someone else's ground. That guy's ground.
Julien gave the cold look back and walked on past with his head high. He'd see him at school tomorrow.
And he would show him.
Chapter 4.
Go Death came for Father in the night.
That was how she thought of it-could not help thinking of it-that something had come and taken him. She hadn't known. He'd been the same as ever when she went to bed. But this morning-She could feel the stillness of his body even from the doorway, even in the dark, and her throat tightened. She tried to keep her hand from shaking as she laid it on his heart to feel for the pulse; his flesh was cold, and for a moment, raw terror touched her.
Death has come, the stranger. Death, the thief.
But as the words rose in her mind, she was already turning away from him and into action. There was only one way to love him now. Promise you'll do everything I said.
I want you to leave the instant I die. Take my eiderdown. Unlock the drawer. Take the tickets and the money, put my will and the first letter on the kitchen table. Mail the second letter. Uncle Yakov will get it within the day and come. He'll bury me. Let the dead bury the dead. But you-get out of Austria while you still can. Go to the station, and get on that train.
She had the eiderdown off him and rolled up and the papers out of the drawer, and she was down the stairs before she had time to think, to tell her mind in so many words what had happened. Then she was shaking Gustav, whispering. ”Gustav. Gustav. It's time.”
She couldn't go up to him again. She knew she should go up with Gustav, kiss Father on the forehead, say goodbye; but she could not. If she let herself do that-if she let herself cry-no. She had to do everything he'd said. Check through the packs, put in the money, the tickets, the letter; put the will on the table with her books and her mother's painting-the only thing she had from her ... Please give these things to Heide Muller at my school, and tell her to keep them for me. Do not worry about us. G.o.d will take care of us. She hadn't written that to please Uncle Yakov. It was true.
”There is no G.o.d, most likely,” Father had told her once, when he was healthy and strong. ”And if there is-” He'd stopped, his eyes very sad, and hadn't finished the sentence, even when she asked. But she couldn't believe like him, she couldn't help it. Somehow there just had to be a G.o.d. Especially now. Especially-she turned sharply from the letter, to the window; no sign of dawn in the sky. Oh Gustav, come down. She began to check through the packs again.
He came down. His eyes were huge in the darkness, looking at her. She held out his pack to him, and he took it. ”Are you ready?”
He nodded.
They crept down the stairs and through the dark clutter of the workshop to the back door; Nina unlocked it, and stopped, her heart beating fast. They would walk out this door into the world. Alone. Only G.o.d to protect them. ”Hear, O Israel,” she heard herself murmur, and stopped. She felt Gustav's hand seeking hers, and took it and held it tight; and he joined in. ”Hear, O Israel. The Lord our G.o.d”-they whispered the Sh'ma into the stillness-”the Lord is one.” Hear, O G.o.d. Hear us, help us, oh help.
Together they slipped out the door into the dark.
Chapter 5.
King of France One day, Julien would have a real soccer ball. But for now, he had what he had: an old volleyball Papa had brought home from his school, with a couple seams Mama had repaired. It wasn't beautiful, but it was his. He couldn't bring it to school; no soccer b.a.l.l.s allowed during school hours, just like back home. But there would be a way. There always was.
A single oak tree stood in the schoolyard, smooth dust and trampled gra.s.s in its shade; under it lounged a group of guys, and Julien knew them for what they were. At his old school, the broad stone steps were where the in-group of the troisieme cla.s.s would be holding court; the kings of the school. Here it was the tree.
In the center, his back against the trunk, sat the cold-eyed boy from yesterday.
Henri Quatre, they were calling him. Henri the Fourth, king of France in fifteen-whatever. King of France, anyway. He got the idea.
He'd lost Benjamin in the crowd before crossing the bridge; at least there was that.
But he was invisible. The twelve-year-olds in sixieme-les pet.i.ts sixiemes, he'd been one a lifetime ago-ran and shouted in the sun. Guys stood in groups by the low black stone wall or under the preau rain-shelter talking; Benjamin sat on the wall reading; Julien stood a few paces outside the royal court under the tree, and no one saw him. Not one glance.
The bell rang for a.s.sembly, and Monsieur Astier, the broad-shouldered princ.i.p.al, announced their fates for the year. Monsieur Matthias for French, Madame Balard for geography, Papa for history. Monsieur Ricot, a skinny frowning character, for physics and as professeur princ.i.p.al for the troisieme cla.s.s. A groan went up. ”Not Cocorico!” someone whispered. Ricot frowned harder and led them away to their homeroom.
They scrambled for seatmates at the heavy double desks-or Julien scrambled; everyone else paired off instantly, leaving him looking at Benjamin across an empty front-row desk. He gritted his teeth and sat down.