Children of the Stars Page 8

  “What makes you think they hate us?”

  “Didn’t you tell me the Christians, like the priest, think we killed their God?” Moses asked, still trying to get the facts straight.

  “That’s just something people say. People who are smart and educated don’t think that. Leduc and the priest are helping us because they love France.”

  “But don’t the gendarmes love France too?”

  “Well, I guess in a way, yes. You know what? We always have to choose between love and fear. If we choose fear, our lives and our choices are going to turn out bad. We won’t be doing our best, we won’t even do what we wish we did, because we’ll just be trying to survive. But if we choose love, it’ll be a risky, bumpy ride. Death may find us before it’s time, but it will have been worth it,” Jacob reasoned.

  “Like when I tried swimming in the river. I didn’t know how, but I really, really wanted to learn. I almost drowned, but then I got the hang of it.”

  “Exactly, Moses. You can’t learn to swim unless you’re willing to risk drowning. Keeping your distance from water might keep you safe for a while, but it also keeps you far away from the things that are really worth it.”

  Moses pondered everything in the dark. He thought his brother was the smartest person on earth. Often he had overheard teachers tell their parents how bright Jacob was. Jacob liked to read their father’s books and stay up listening to the adults talking about politics, literature, or the theater. “You’re really smart,” was all he could think to say.

  Jacob chuckled. Intelligence seemed rather irrelevant in the world they were now living in. He somehow understood that what really made the world go round was power and violence. “Let’s go to sleep. Tomorrow will be a really long day, and we’ll have to get back in that hole.”

  “Again?” Moses complained.

  “’Fraid so.”

  “We’re a lot closer to Mother and Father now, aren’t we?”

  “Nothing’s going to stop us from seeing them again, I already promised you, and—”

  “A Stein never breaks a promise,” Moses finished. It had been their father’s refrain.

  Silence settled between them, and Jacob was left alone with his thoughts. A family was much more than a group of people united by blood. More than anything, it was the thin thread that kept the present linked to the past. Memories and memory itself kept both worlds together, which is why he and Moses had to keep remembering. As long as they did, Aunt Judith would still be alive and their parents would always be with them. Jacob let his quiet tears fall to dry on the pillow. He tried to imagine what had gone through his aunt’s mind as she plummeted from the window to the courtyard below. Had she been scared? Of course she had, but he was sure that, at least for a fraction of a second, she had thought about them, about how she had left them alone and had not kept her promise. A Stein never breaks a promise, he thought, as sleep loosened the grip on his consciousness. He repeated the phrase until words could no longer penetrate the thin veil of darkness, and he slept.

  Chapter 10

  Artenay

  July 20, 1942

  The night passed too quickly. Before light began to turn the sky, the boys found themselves once again hidden in the false floor of the Citroën, heading toward Nouan-le-Fuzelier. Leduc hummed through his repertoire of songs while Jacob and Moses felt every dip and pothole in the back road that Leduc had taken to avoid most of the checkpoints and curious looks. A few hours in, in the middle of a forest, he slowed down, pulled off onto a lane that led into a field, and let the boys out to have breakfast.

  Moses unfolded himself from the back of the van first and promptly vomited on the grass. Jacob rubbed his brother’s back until the nausea passed and Moses could stand up again.

  “Do we really have to ride in the compartment the whole time? Yesterday it was only ’til we got farther outside of Paris,” Jacob asked, frustrated.

  “The priest told me last night that they’re even stricter at the checkpoints now. In the past few weeks, several Allied pilots have been shot down in the area, and the Germans are looking for them. There’s a whole Resistance network helping them escape. We’re not part of the partisans, but the gendarmes and Nazi soldiers are combing the countryside trying to flush them out,” Leduc explained, folding some of the leftover meat from the night before into some bread.

  “But we aren’t pilots. You could tell the soldiers at the checkpoints that we’re your nephews, and . . .”

  Leduc frowned. The children were a nuisance, and the boy was being ungrateful. Leduc was risking his life to help them, but he swallowed back his comments and focused on his sandwich. There was less and less food with each passing day. His excursions into the countryside at least provided him with a bit more variety than he usually got in the city.

  “I’d rather not run that risk. Perhaps it would be better if I dropped you off in the next town and returned to Versailles,” he said, chewing slowly.

  Jacob nodded solemnly. “I don’t mean to sound like a brat. We understand what you’re risking by taking us to the unoccupied zone, but my brother is just a kid. He can’t stay locked up in there.”

  Fearful, Moses looked at the man. Leduc shrugged and said, “Fine, take the risk, but I assure you that getting deported to Germany is no pleasure cruise. During the Great War, I fought at Verdun, and the Germans captured me. I was locked up in a hole for almost two years in northern Germany. The Boche might seem like serious, conscientious folk, but they treated us like the scum of the earth. The winters were unbearable—no warm clothes and what I had on my feet one could hardly call shoes. And they forced us to work fixing the roads or in heavy factory jobs. It was torture, truly. I’d rather die than fall into their hands again.” His face was dark and he looked at something very, very far away.

  “I’m so sorry,” Jacob said. His family was German. In another lifetime, they would have been Leduc’s enemies. Evil had a way of transcending nationality and clan, becoming a darkness that overshadowed everything.

  “They’re just memories. I always knew we’d face each other again, but I have the feeling that it’s different this time. The issue is not the victory of some empires over others, or the survival of the French Republic’s values. This time we’re fighting a kind of evil the world has never known before. Totalitarianism on the left and the right is after the same thing: destroy everything good in human beings and turn them into cogs in an infernal machine that makes the world a very terrible place.”

  The boys stared at him with wide, confused eyes. They could not follow him completely but understood the gist of what he said. In the interminable discussions around the dinner table at Aunt Judith’s apartment, their parents, aunt, and other adult friends had talked about the Nazis and their leader, Adolf Hitler, and the power of evil to corrupt everything it touched. The power the führer held over the masses was not natural. The adults had said that he seemed like a magician doing devious tricks.

  They all three got into the front seat again. Leduc started the engine and guided the van down the rough lane flanked by beech trees that led them back to the road. The tall lines of trees on both sides of the road enclosed and protected them from the intense sun. They were quiet for a long time. Leduc no longer hummed, but Jacob and Moses felt much happier than they had been when hidden.

  “When we see our parents, we’ll tell them all you’ve done for us,” Moses said. “And when the war’s over, we’ll come visit you. It’ll be nice to spend time with you in Versailles. You can show us the palace and the gardens.”

  Leduc’s mouth twitched in an attempt to smile, but he doubted he would see the end of the war. If the gendarmes and the Gestapo did not find him, then hunger, disease, or old age would. “Old men don’t make plans for the future. Everything happens here and now, you see? Who knows what will become of me within a few hours. I’ve been alone my whole life. Art is my family. The paintings, the statues—they’re with me every day, and I can only be who I really am with them. Th
is world . . . It scares me,” he said, puzzled at his revelations to two Jewish kids.

  Leduc’s mother had raised him Catholic, and he had never known his father, who died of heart complications when Leduc was not yet four years old. From as early an age as memory could register, he recalled his mother’s black dress, the closed curtains that let in only the vaguest hint of light, and the dark smells of bitter coffee and garlic in his home. They lived comfortably enough on his father’s state employee pension. They spent little money and never traveled, but at least his mother allowed him to study at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, the French National School of Fine Arts. She appreciated his sketches and his ability to shape things. As a young man, Leduc was not socially skilled, but he had a special connection with works of art, which is why he believed in the absolute values. He did not believe in his mother’s God, that jealous, vindictive punisher. He had never felt much love, affection, or tenderness. For him, life was a simple chain in which each person’s link had its own work to be done, and when one was finished, one’s link simply stopped existing.

  Leduc continued, “Childhood, as I already told you, is a disease that passes soon enough. I don’t believe that children are happier than adults; they just don’t yet understand how the world works. First we glorify our parents, then the future and our youth, then our work and glory itself. But the only thing that really lasts is the grave and oblivion. I’m sorry, boys, but in these matters I cannot be an optimist, much less in the times we’re living in.”

  Jacob chewed on what the man said. Leduc was not so different from their father. Eleazar also thought life was a series of misfortunes that led inexorably to death. But Eleazar had not always thought that way. Jana had told Jacob how, when he was younger, Eleazar had been a successful playwright. He was invited to all the literary circles of Berlin’s salons and open houses among the educated. His works were hailed by both critics and the public, until Nazism left him in the streets. Eleazar loved his children dearly, but he could not forget who he had been or how suddenly his crash had come.

  As they headed south, the landscape became an interminable succession of thick forests. Broken up by a series of small lakes, everything was green and humid, and the villages they passed looked to be very small and poor. It was a kind of impoverished France few knew existed. Life was hard here, and making it from one day to the next was a great challenge. For the inhabitants of the region, war and peace were hardly distinguishable. In many ways, survival itself was already in open, constant conflict with life.

  Leduc slowed as they approached a gas station he knew well. He always stopped there to fill up. There were few vehicles in the area, and it was too easy to run out of gas and be stranded in the middle of nowhere. He stopped before a rusted pump. A tilted sign hanging on a timid nail read CFP: Compagnie Française des Pétroles.

  A young man with a dirty shirt and blue oil-stained overalls stepped out of the wooden shack behind the pump, spat a wad of tobacco onto the ground, and walked up to the van.

  “André, how are you? Could you fill it up?” Leduc said, stepping a few feet away to light a cigarette. Jacob and Moses had not seen him smoke before. Their parents did not smoke, and they hated the smell.

  “You want one?” Leduc offered the employee.

  “Thank you, sir.” André took it, steadied it behind his ear, and kept filling up the tank.

  “How are things around here, staying calm?”

  “Oh, as calm as ever. Summer is hot, but that’s nothing new. The wetlands send up sultry clouds, and the mosquitos near drive us mad. But in winter it’s as cold as hell is hot.”

  “Many checkpoints?”

  “The Boche seem agitated, like a beehive after you poke it. Better keep your distance from them. They come around here and leave without paying. The boss is full up with it, but there’s nothing to be done.”

  “Of course. Well, thank you, and I hope summer’s not too hard on you.”

  “You’d best stay off the highway. Go around by Jargeau. They’re stopping everybody in Orleans. Lots of Jews trying to get to Switzerland and Spain, but they’re hunting them down like rabbits.”

  Leduc just nodded, flushed. He got in the car and paused longer than usual before starting the engine. They rolled out of the service station and changed routes for the detour. He could not understand why the Nazis would be watching that route, which traversed the heart of France. The natural path to Spain from Paris was through Bordeaux, then cutting through French Basque Country. Leduc presumed the Jews were scrambling to get into unoccupied France, though the Vichy regime detained them and sent them back to the German-controlled side if they were not French nationals.

  Jacob and Moses listened intently to the entire exchange and grew scared.

  “I’m sorry, but you’ve got to get in the back again,” Leduc said. The children complied without hesitation and were silent for some time. As they approached Jargeau, Leduc spotted a checkpoint crossing the river. He slowed down and approached carefully.

  A German soldier with a machine gun raised a hand for the van to stop at the base of the bridge. Leduc braked but did not turn off the motor. Two Germans came up wearing the distinctive collar of the Feldgendarmerie. The one with the corporal’s braid saluted Leduc. The van’s nameplate bearing “Palace of Versailles” was helpful when it came to checkpoints.

  “Your papers, sir, and authorization for free movement throughout occupied France.”

  Leduc tried to remain calm. He opened the glove compartment, took out the papers, handed them over, and looked gravely at the German. The soldier flipped through them, went to a white-and-red sentry box, and came back a few minutes later. “We’ll need to inspect the van,” he announced.

  Leduc pursed his lips. They hardly ever searched him. “Is something out of order with my papers?” he asked.

  “No, sir, but we’re on high alert. Orders are orders.” The German’s face was stony.

  Leduc got out and walked around to the back. He opened the doors as wide as they would go and stepped back. The soldiers looked inside. There was a wooden sculpture wrapped in paper, some strips of wood, and a toolbox. One of the soldiers made to step inside, and the art restorer said in perfect German, “But what do you think you’re doing? That sculpture is French patrimony!”

  The soldier halted, surprised at such impertinence from a skinny little Frenchman—and in impeccable German. The corporal’s look bore a hole in Leduc. “How do you come to speak our language?”

  “I spent some time near Hamburg.”

  “Well. We will search the vehicle. Those are the orders.”

  “It’s a work of art, and you can see there’s nothing else there,” Leduc complained.

  At the end of the bridge they heard a car screech to a halt and saw it backing up furiously. The Feldgendarmerie lost interest in Leduc and turned to the fleeing car.

  “Can I go?” Leduc asked in German, but there was no response. He shut the trunk and shifted into drive quickly. The vehicle was slow to respond, like a cranky old man. But little by little it picked up speed. Sweat beaded where hair had once covered Leduc’s forehead, and his back and neckline were damp. His heart raced, and his mouth tasted bitter, like a premonition of vomit. He took the first lane he could find off the main road. The surface was very rough, but he hardly noticed the jostling. He had forgotten about the children in the back. He was entirely ready to die but absolutely not ready to be captured again. He swore to himself this would be the last journey he took. He could help in other ways, but not on these high-stakes missions. Good times had come and gone in France. The Germans were no longer there on vacation, and the repression only get much worse.

  After more driving, when the dense woods had calmed his nerves some, Leduc stopped the car and rested his head on the steering wheel. He panted as if he had been running. Then he remembered something, lifted his spinning head, and walked to the back of the van. He ran his hand over the gun he had put in his belt after l
eaving the checkpoint, then opened the panel for the boys to get out.

  “You’ll have to make the rest of the journey on your own. You’re less than sixty-five miles from Bourges, and you can stop at the house of the pharmacist Magné. His house is in Nouan-le-Fuzelier, near the town hall. It’s a stone house with red shutters, and the apothecary is on the ground floor.”

  “You’re just leaving us here?” Jacob asked. “But . . . it will take us days to get to Bourges. We’ll have to sleep outside, we have no food or water . . .”

  Leduc went to the front of the van, retrieved a sausage, some bread, a piece of chocolate, and a few other supplies. “Here, it’s all I have.”

  Moses shook his head. “We can’t eat pork. We’re Jewish.”

  “Curse it all, then. I don’t care what you Jews do or don’t eat!”

  “We should get to the town within two hours if we keep driving, right?” Jacob tried reasoning. “Could you at least take us that far? Then we’d be halfway there. You can rest for the night and then return to Versailles. Maybe this pharmacist, Magné, will have a good idea for what we should do. Surely it’s not the first time something like this has happened.”

  Leduc tried to think, but he was having trouble concentrating. He studied the boys: their dirty faces, cuts all over their legs, skinny bodies, and an eternal sadness haunting their eyes. “I’m a complete fool. Get in the car before I change my mind. I’m an art restorer, not a hero.”

  The boys hopped into their hideout in the back before he could reconsider. Leduc stepped on the gas and, for the first time in their journey, the vehicle responded immediately.

  It seemed the Citröen would break down at any moment. Worried, Moses kept looking at Jacob, even though he could barely see his brother in the darkness of their compartment. They covered the distance to the town as quickly as he could. Going around turns, the shocks groaned, and the vehicle tilted dangerously from one side to the other. Leduc sighed with relief as the town came into view. It was a small village built near a canal, and an enormous Norman tower loomed above the church. There was still plenty of daylight. The few houses were painted white, the windows framed in bright red brick that glinted in the light of the hot summer day. It was hot, and the air coming through the Citröen’s windows was powerless to cool off the sweating boys, closed in as they were.