Part 14 (1/2)

He took the cup, hot against his fingers. It would warm his stomach. Fool it awhile. ”Were you ... were you hungry?”

She was looking straight ahead. She was looking at the candle as if it was the last light on earth. ”Yes. Your grandmother. Your grandmother died of hunger.”

He stared at her. She did not look at him.

”They took our goats. We hid the best three, but they found them-they were hungry too-but they had guns. Julien.” He could feel her shaking. ”Julien. I'm sorry. I can't talk about this.” Her voice had lowered. ”I pray you'll never understand.”

They sat for a long time, watching the candle quiver in the dark. Listening to her breathing grow slower. ”I've never been back,” she murmured. ”It was so quiet. Without Mamma singing.”

She looked at him, and her mouth lifted in the ghost of a smile. ”She sang off-key,” she said.

They walked south. Benjamin suggested it. Benjamin, who never spoke.

Benjamin wanted to make a map. They found a slate and some chalk and traced the roads they'd walked. Julien marked where they found nettles or blackberry brambles. Benjamin traced the south farm track and its lanes and the roads to Le Puy and the Rhone Valley, a full morning's walk south. He marked the field near that same crossroads, where they found the bees.

A whole field of white clover, buzzing, alive with them; and in the woods behind, a dead tree golden with promise. He could taste it already. That feeling of sweet fullness after a meal, of having eaten dessert-he'd almost forgotten what it was like.

”Monday,” he said. Benjamin nodded and almost smiled.

That night there was news, finally. The Germans had captured forty thousand French troops at Dunkerque, and they were on the move again. Headed south.

Then the power went out.

”Though an army lay siege to me, my heart will not fear,” read Pastor Alex. Everyone was listening. ”Though war break out against me, I am still filled with confidence.” And if they're bombing Paris right now? ”How could David be confident?” asked Pastor Alex. He described David's situation. He could have been describing theirs. Every eye in the room was on him. Julien saw Monsieur Bernard in the next pew, his face still as stone, tightening ever so slightly when Pastor Alex used the word defeat, the word refugee.

”This man can speak to us,” Pastor Alex said. ”Let us listen.”

Julien listened. David wanted only one thing in his defeat, Pastor Alex said. Only one, but he had to have it. ”He wanted G.o.d. 'Do not abandon me, do not hide your face from me.' In G.o.d, he says, he has a light, a stronghold, a shelter. If G.o.d is with him, he says, 'I will not be afraid.'”

Not afraid. Were Mama and Papa afraid, was Pastor Alex afraid? Was G.o.d with them?

”Show me the road you want me to go,” read Pastor Alex. ”Lead me along the straight path.” Then he leaned forward in his pulpit and paused. A hush fell over the crowd.

”Friends,” he said, ”we know what is happening. The time has come to say it. France is defeated.” The words fell slow and heavy. ”The straight path is to walk, without closing our eyes, into this defeat. To know that the presence of G.o.d is not, for all this, taken away from us unless we choose to despair of him. To ask him to show us the road he wants us to go-now-” He said the next three words in a slow and level voice: ”under German occupation.”

Julien opened his mouth, and tears were in his eyes. His parents were holding each other. Benjamin had his head down. Julien put an arm over his friend's shoulder and sat looking up at the pulpit, the tears running down his face, grieving for his country.

Pastor Alex came that night to talk to them.

”I wish I had spoken about this sooner. I'm sorry. I didn't expect all this.” Really. ”We all know the Germans will probably be here before the end of June. What-what do you know? About the n.a.z.is? And ... the Jews?”

”I know there's persecution,” said Papa. ”I know there's prejudice-maybe hatred.”

”Hatred. Yes. Listen. I have relatives in Germany. I traveled there before the war, while Hitler's power was rising. Martin, Maria, hatred is a mild way of putting it.” He looked down at his hands, which were clasping each other tightly. ”I believe that if the n.a.z.is could find a way to make people accept it, they would kill them all.” He swallowed. ”I believe it is very dangerous now to be a Jew in Germany. And soon ...” He looked at them.

”Germany will come here,” Papa finished.

”Yes. It would be best if very few people knew that Benjamin is a Jew.”

”It's a little late for that,” said Papa quietly.

Julien and Benjamin carried coals in a pot, feeding them with twigs, a full half-day's walk to where the bee tree was. They carried a hatchet and the two biggest buckets they could find.

They lit a fire under the tree, a small one, the ground around it cleared. When it was big enough, they threw wet leaf mould onto it and blew the thick gray smoke into the tree. The many-voiced hum of the bees rose to a ma.s.sed and angry buzz. Bees boiled out of the top of the tree; Julien grasped his hatchet in both hands and struck.

Once. Twice. The third time, a great rotten piece of wood came away, and honeycomb came with it.

The rest was mad and sticky and golden; there was honey on their gloves and honey on their s.h.i.+rts; and in the buckets, there was beautiful, beautiful honeycomb to the brim; and they were licking it off their dirty gloves and laughing as they ran. They got to the road and looked back, and Julien held his bucket up and whooped. Benjamin's face was smudged with black, and there was a bee sting by his eye; there were two on Julien's neck and one on his stomach, and the boys were grinning wildly at each other.

The sun was setting by the time they made it home, tired, dirty, and very happy. They were late for supper. They didn't care.

When they opened the door, they stopped. The power was on. No lights. But everyone huddled tightly around the radio.

They set the buckets among the dirty dishes on the table. No one turned to greet them. They began to take in what the newsreader was saying.

Thousands upon thousands of refugees choking the roads of France. The Germans were headed straight for Paris. Every soldier France still had was being rushed to stop them, but there was no hope. The government, from the prime minister on down, had fled south. Military sources said it was inevitable. Paris would fall.

The buckets sat forgotten on the table. Papa's Bible lay forgotten on his lap. No one moved or spoke. They sat in silence, while outside the open window, the evening sky darkened slowly into night.

Chapter 22.

Gate Gustav stood by the convent wall, waiting for his sister. For Niko.

He hated calling her Niko. Nina was his fierce-eyed sister, who had walked home one day on a shattered leg, her teeth gritted, not a single tear in her eyes. Who had said so fiercely, ”We have to do everything he told us.” Who had made him cut her hair. But Niko-Niko was this strange, new, sad person. Niko was someone who lay on the floor with empty eyes, looking at something he could not see. Something that was eating her. Ever since the border. He knew. But he couldn't make it stop.

They never talked about that night. He hated it. Hated that there was nothing he could do.

He'd tried so hard. He'd learned to split wood, milk goats; he'd learned rough Italian and the alleys of Trento to get food for her. He'd tried so hard to make her laugh. She'd laughed. Sometimes. And with the Gypsies, she'd been almost herself. But he'd never imagined this.

”Gustav,” Sister Theresa had told him, ”you have to get your brother out of here. I went to Mother Superior about it, I told her I don't believe he's crazy-just frightened-but she wouldn't listen. She keeps saying she saw with her own eyes-Gustav, she's written to the bishop about sending him to some kind of 'home'-I don't know ...”

He knew. He knew he had to get her out now.

They were letting her out once a day for a couple of hours; Sister Theresa had gotten that much. Soon. If they let her out soon enough, her chance was sitting in the driveway.

A delivery truck. Men unloading it, manhandling huge sacks of flour through the double kitchen doors. A truck that would be driving out the convent gate when it was done.

The far door opened, her door. He heard the click of her crutches on the stones. He stood waiting as she walked toward him, and when she reached him, he looked her in the eye. ”Niko,” he said quietly, ”do you want to get out of here? Now?”

She took a deep breath, standing a little taller. ”Yes,” she said.

Niko woke when the truck stopped, her cheek on a hard bag of flour, her mouth open. It was almost pitch dark.

”Got your crutches?”