Part 23 (1/2)
”It's stupid,” said Julien, kicking at a stone.
”Yeah,” said Roland. ”It is.”
It was stupid being at school too. There was no point. Julien stared out the window at the hills and the flat blue sky, hearing Ricot buzz on about velocity, or Papa about the Revolution, and wondered: Didn't they know? That now was more urgent than the Revolution, that the sons of saints and murderers were sitting in their cla.s.srooms taking notes?
”One day,” said Papa, ”there will be boys like you, sitting in a cla.s.sroom learning about the defeat of France and what came after it. And they'll be fidgeting too.” The cla.s.s groaned.
He walked with Roland to Mademoiselle Pinatel's shop, browsed the bookshelves until the other customers were gone and he and Roland could slip upstairs with their delivery. Nina wasn't well enough to see anyone, Mademoiselle Pinatel said. But thank you. Tell your parents thank you very much.
At home, he sat down with Mama over a gouter of unsweetened mint tea, and she asked him if he would be a guide again, for Gustav to visit Nina sometimes. He sat up straighter.
On Wednesday after lunch, they had their third soccer game; it was catching on quick, really quick; they had Leon and Jean-Michel and Antoine now, and the score was tied one-to-one. Julien was hammering away at it, driving down the field for a clear shot at Dominique's goal, when he heard a clear, scornful voice from beyond the touchline. ”Call that a soccer ball?”
Someone else had showed up too.
Julien didn't look; but he could see Henri's face anyway. The next moment Philippe had stolen the ball. And Julien played and played and ignored Henri there on the touchline with his arms folded, and missed three more shots. But as they walked off the field, Philippe slapped Henri Quatre on the shoulder and suggested that he join the new soccer games.
Julien saw his back stiffen. ”What's so new about them?” asked Henri. ”Using an old volleyball to play soccer with?”
”We're switching the teams around now,” said Dominique. ”Every other game. It's great.”
”Well, it's good there's still some kind of soccer game,” said Henri. ”For those who're still interested in that, with everything that's happening.”
Julien picked up his pace, but Roland pulled at the back of his s.h.i.+rt. ”Don't listen to him.”
”Yeah,” said Gilles. ”He's just a sore loser. Always was.”
Henri talking about everything that's happening. Henri talking like he'd outgrown soccer when the truth was the guys had outgrown him. Broken free of him. He thought of saying these things to his face; words that had no answer, fighting words. But he wasn't going to fight Henri. He could see his father's face.
Yet for some reason he thought of it again that night, as he walked down the lonely north road with Gustav; Gustav, who could only go to see his sister after dark.
It would have been such a good life for Gustav if only Nina were better. If she could have lived with him in that lovely green valley and woken to see what he saw. He looked through his window at the dew on the long gra.s.s in the rising sun, and joy sprang up in him like a flame.
The Rostins fed him all he could eat and wouldn't let him lift a finger. He tried to tell them, in his broken French and Italian and German, that he wanted to work, that if he couldn't go see Nina today, he had to muck out the goat barn or go crazy. They let him peel chestnuts, do dishes, but if he tried to go outside, Madame Rostin stood at the door, shaking her head determinedly, as if wolves were out there waiting for him.
The third night, Julien took him to see Nina.
She was in a white, clean bed in a tiny room with a book-strewn desk, her crutches propped in a corner. She smiled at the sound of his voice but did not raise her head. He sat and held her hand and told her about Madame Rostin and her frown, and the way she heaped his plate high and said, ”Good? Good?” And how Monsieur Rostin had clapped him on the shoulder, his craggy face beaming, and shouted ”Tu vas voir Nina” as if he were deaf. Nina smiled weakly at him, but did not speak.
”It's normal,” Fraulein Pinatel told him. ”She's come somewhere safe, and her body has let down its defenses. She will seem even sicker to you now, but she needs this time to heal.”
He wasn't sure.
Three nights later, Julien brought him up again. She was worse. The doctor had come. She had diarrhea, and they were afraid she was losing too much of what she ate. There was medicine-Gustav swallowed hard at the thought of the price-and Fraulein told him fiercely that he certainly wasn't going to pay for it. Nina was delirious, sweating and breathing quickly. She didn't seem to recognize him.
”I wish you could have seen her yesterday,” said Fraulein Pinatel. ”She was lucid. She kept asking for you. I wish you could come more often.”
He suffered through an endless four days before Julien came again. He made them let him work; he hit the table and shouted, ”Je veux travail!”
Monsieur Rostin gave him a shrug and a wry half smile, and said, ”Bon, si tu veux alors.”
He filled his days as full as he could, picking apples, mucking out the goats, digging parsnips. If he tired himself out, he couldn't lie awake at night, wondering.
She was better. She knew him, and sat up in bed and asked why he didn't come more often. He didn't know what to say. He told her to eat, and take her medicine, and that when she got better she could come live on the farm with him. She promised. ”I won't be much use on a farm though, Gustav,” she said.
”Yes, you will. You can weed. And cook.”
”You know I can't cook!” She laughed. She actually laughed!
Fraulein Pinatel said she was glad he'd seen her on a good day.
The next three days he worked with a will-even scrubbed Madame Rostin's kitchen while she was away at market. Soon, his mind sang, soon; soon she would get up and walk, and he'd work so well Monsieur Rostin would be able to plant more next year, and he'd earn their keep for both of them. They'd live here in the valley, and learn French, and ...
Sat.u.r.day night, he was walking light when he started down the starlit road with Julien. Tonight he would bring Julien up to see her too.
”Viens, viens, Julien,” said Gustav. ”Bitte.”
Julien hesitated. He always stayed down in the bookstore doing homework. He'd figured she wanted to see her brother, not him. But there was no mistaking viens, or Gustav's eager beckoning. He followed him up the narrow stairs.
Mademoiselle Pinatel, her face strained, said low words to Gustav, and Gustav answered. To Julien she said, ”I just want you to know that she's not like this every day.”
He was led into a little narrow room with a bed, and there lay Nina, the girl he had brought to safety and help; motionless, her eyes closed, one stick-thin arm on the cover. Short dark hair hung s.h.i.+ny with sweat around her sunken face. Gustav went to his knees.
”Nina,” he said. ”Nina.”
For a moment, there was no response. Then the eyes opened, slowly, and looked into nothing. Julien had never seen such tired eyes, not even the first time he'd seen her: flat, lightless, shallow pools that no wind stirred. Gustav was speaking urgent Yiddish. Julien heard his name. Nina's eyes settled for a moment on her brother's face, then fell back again into their weariness.
Gustav half turned for a moment, then jerked back; but Julien had seen the tears that trembled in his eyes.
He backed out of the room and shut the door.
In the morning, Julien prayed for Nina, as desperately, as urgently as he had prayed only once. The night before Paris fell. He could not think what it would be like to watch your sister die.
He got up. He had to get away. Somewhere where no one could see him. It was dawn. He'd be back by church time. He slipped downstairs.
He took the road up the hill out of town, but as he got near the hill's crest he stopped, shaking his head. The sight he knew he would see-the green lovely sweep of the hills, and in the foreground an apple orchard laden with fruit and an old stone farmhouse, in which lived a man who had tried to send a young girl to her death. He turned left abruptly, off the road.
The river was calling to him, the clearness of its flowing water, as if it could wash clean the matted tangle of his mind. He ran down the closest alley and out from between the houses; he stumbled and slid down the steep slope and was suddenly alone, s.h.i.+elded from eyes. He could breathe.
The Tanne flowed past him. The hills were green in the sun. Down on his left around the broad bend of the river, he could see his school, its low black wall, the flash of its flag in the wind. He had stood by that wall only a year ago and raged against life because he couldn't get in on the soccer games. And his country had been at war then, but he'd never believed it. Play war, toy soldiers sitting on a border somewhere, n.o.body he knew. Not his aunt and uncle and best-friend cousin in a fallen city, watched in the streets by German soldiers, forbidden to write to him. Not defeat. Not hunger, and waiting.
So many things he had not believed. She's not safe yet, his mother had told him. If she is sent to a camp, she will die. He hadn't wanted to believe it. He'd stayed downstairs in the bookstore and pictured Nina up there in her bedroom, sitting up, a little better every day. Someone he had helped. Who'd be okay now. He'd wanted to protect her, yes, he'd done everything he could-he had been careful, walking Gustav into town-but he hadn't believed it. Not until he'd seen.
His mind clawed at the terrible tangle of what he had learned these past two months. Defeat was nothing to this, potatoes for breakfast were nothing; you could get used to them. But to see your own people doing such things-Henri with his arm upraised in a proud and hateful salute, the stationmaster standing tall in his uniform and smart kepi. Benjamin's face white with fear, Nina's bone-thin arm and her eyes with the light gone from them.
There were some things no one could get used to.
He thrust his hands into his pockets and watched the water, clear and simple, running forever past.
He hated them.