Black Radishes (3 page)

4

A
t school the next day, Gustave’s teachers didn’t seem surprised when he told them he was leaving. Lately, more and more people had been emptying out of Paris. In fact, Gustave realized, looking around the room, almost a third of the desks were vacant, the desks of all the kids who had left since September. But when they heard the news, Jean-Paul and Marcel stared at Gustave in dismay.

“Why do you have to go?” Jean-Paul groaned after school. “We were going to have a marbles tournament, remember? And you’re going to miss the end-of-the-year camping trip, and summer, and … everything.”

“I know,” said Gustave. He looked down at his feet. Why did Jean-Paul have to remind him?

“Yeah, and what if there’s another politeness test at Boy Scouts?” Marcel said, poking Gustave in the shoulder until he looked up again. “Jean-Paul and I will get negative points! But seriously, Gustave, when are you coming back?”

“Nobody said when. After the war, I guess.”

“Hey, since we’re cousins, maybe your parents would let you stay with us, Gustave,” Jean-Paul suggested, his face brightening. “Then you wouldn’t have to go.”

Gustave’s heart leapt. “Yeah, maybe!” he said excitedly. “I’ll ask.”

But as Gustave got closer to home, he walked slowly, feeling less hopeful. Maman might get angry if he told her what Jean-Paul had said. She got angry a lot lately. But if he didn’t ask, there would be no chance at all. Gustave grasped the doorknob tightly, feeling the coolness of the metal under his damp hand, and pushed open the apartment door. Packing paper was everywhere, and coats and suits were draped over the sofa and chairs. The portraits of Great-grandmother and Great-grandfather had been taken down, and the spaces on the wall where they had been looked strangely blank. Maman was standing in the middle of the living room. There was dust in her hair, and loose strands fell around her face.

“Oh, Gustave,” she said. “Good, you’re back. I need you to pack up your things. There’s a suitcase in your room.”

Gustave’s pulse raced. It was now or never. “Why can’t I just stay in Paris?” he demanded. “Jean-Paul says I can live with them.”

“Absolutely not,” Maman answered, frowning. “Papa and I have already explained this to you, Gustave. We are moving to the country. All of us, together.”

Gustave shoved his hands into his pockets, feeling his fingers tremble. “Aunt Geraldine said you worry too much,” he burst out. “I heard her.”

Maman pinched her lips together. “We are going, Gustave,” she said evenly, “and you are going too. Now, pack.”

In his room, Gustave kicked at the leg of his bed. Why did grown-ups get to decide everything? He stared miserably at the suitcase Maman had left open on his bed. Papa sometimes took that little suitcase when he went away on business for two or three days. How was Gustave supposed to fit everything inside? He didn’t want to leave anything important behind. He started piling all his toys and books onto the bed and into the open suitcase.

Half an hour later, Maman put her head in the door. “How are you doing with the packing?” she asked.

Gustave stepped back, scowling, and pointed at the already-overloaded suitcase on the bed.

“Oh, no, Gustave!” Maman said sharply. “Use your head! Not playthings! We can take very little with us. You need clothes, especially warm clothes.”

Gustave looked back at her in disbelief. “You mean, all I can bring is clothes?”

His mother came in and sat down on the bed. “I have room in one box for two or three of your books and toys,” she answered, more gently. “But there’s only a little bit of space. The truck is going to be very full. I’m sorry, Gustave,” she added. “But we all have to leave behind things we love.”

After she left, Gustave sat on the bed for a long time. A damp cloud, dark and heavy, seemed to be pressing down on him. When he got up, he dumped his toys out onto his bed and looked slowly around his room. He had almost forgotten to pack the map on the wall, he realized. He took it down and folded it up carefully. He would need that and his paints to keep track of the war. He picked up his Boy Scout manual and his two favorite books,
The Three Musketeers
and
Around the World in Eighty Days
, and put them on the end of the bed, next to the paints and the map. That was already more than three things. But since it was mostly books, Maman would probably let him bring one more toy.

But how could he choose only one? Gustave picked up his new sailboat and ran a finger over its shiny blue and white paint. Uncle David had given him and Jean-Paul each a sailboat last summer to sail in the fountains in the parks. Saint-Georges was near a river, so a boat would be good to have. But then he saw Monkey, partly hidden under his train set on the bed, and his heart tightened. He had almost forgotten him. Monkey’s head tilted slightly to one side. A gold post in his ear and the bright black, beady eyes looking out from his face gave him a mischievous air.

The small stuffed animal had belonged to Gustave ever since he had been a baby, and Monkey had often been a part of his games with Jean-Paul and Marcel. Gustave remembered the time a few years ago when, for weeks, the three of them had played shipwreck. Monkey had been a mascot left behind by pirates. Another time they had played spies. Monkey had been their most powerful secret weapon, trained to climb the outside of buildings, pry open windows, and break into safes. They didn’t play with the little stuffed animal very much anymore. But having Monkey in Saint-Georges would be the next-best thing to having his friends there. Before he could change his mind, Gustave put Monkey on top of the books and the paint box and took the pile out to Maman.

After dinner, Marcel and Jean-Paul came over to help carry things down the stairs because Papa’s bad leg made dealing with the stairs difficult.

Gustave thrust the sailboat at Marcel. “Do you want to borrow it?” he asked. “That way you won’t get into any more trouble about umbrellas.”

“Really? Wow!” Marcel held the sailboat reverently. “Thanks! I promise there won’t be a scratch on it when you come back.”

Marcel hurried home to put the sailboat away where it would be safe, and when he came pounding back up the stairs to Gustave’s apartment, the three boys carried down the boxes and suitcases, an armchair that had belonged to Maman’s great-grandmother, and the mattresses from the beds. When Papa opened the back of the delivery truck, Gustave saw why they could take only five boxes, plus the suitcases. The truck was already two-thirds full with rolls of cloth and boxes of shoes from the store.

“Why are you taking so much stock with you, Uncle Berthold?” Jean-Paul asked. “Are you going to open up a new store in Saint-Georges?”

Papa heaved the big mattress from his and Maman’s bed until it stood upright, and wiped the sweat off his forehead. “Well, I don’t know about a new store,” he said. “I’m not sure if we’ll be there long enough for that to make sense. But I couldn’t sell off all the stock, and it’s too valuable not to bring along.”

Marcel was the tallest, so he helped Papa push the mattresses onto the top of the truck and cover them with canvas, while Gustave and Jean-Paul tied them down with ropes. When everything was fitted into the back of the delivery truck, Papa pushed the door shut.

It latched with a final-sounding click. His family’s whole life was in that truck now, Gustave thought. At least, the part of their life that they were able to take with them.

Papa reached out and pulled all three of the boys into a jostling embrace. “Be good, boys,” he said hoarsely to Marcel and Jean-Paul. “Take care of your families.” Then he went back into the building, leaving Gustave to say goodbye to his friends.

The three of them glanced at each other and looked down at the ground. Gustave couldn’t think of anything to say. The quiet stretched out a long time, too long. Suddenly, Gustave remembered the way they used to play Three Musketeers. “All for one!” he cried, holding out his fist.

Marcel looked up, smiled, and put his hand on top of Gustave’s fist. Jean-Paul clapped his hand on top of Marcel’s. Gustave looked at their three hands there, clasped together. “All for one—one for all!” the three of them chanted at the same time. “Jean-Paul, Marcel, Gustave—together forever!”

“Jean-Paul!” Aunt Geraldine’s voice sounded faintly from down the street.

“Bye!” Jean-Paul said quickly, and darted toward home.

Marcel and Gustave looked at each other for a long moment. “So,” Marcel said, “you’ll come back as soon as we’ve knocked off the Boches?”

Gustave nodded. “We’ll teach them not to mess with us,” he said. But his throat felt tight. When would that be? When would he see Marcel and Jean-Paul again? Gustave stood and watched as Marcel ran home, across the street and along the sidewalk, through the gathering darkness.

5

M
aman wanted to leave very early so that they could be all unpacked in Saint-Georges by nightfall. It had rained again overnight, and it was the darkest morning Gustave had ever seen. Outside, the city was strangely dim and quiet. As Gustave climbed into the truck, the edge of the sun came up, turning the creamy stones of the buildings a pale pink and glittering on the wet iron railings of the balconies. When Papa started the engine, a flock of pigeons rose up noisily from the apartment building opposite them, black against the pastel colors of the sky.

Gustave listened to the loud, flapping wings as they drove away in the truck, every moment getting farther away from home. It was so unfair, he thought. Why did he have to go, if Jean-Paul and Marcel were staying behind? The pigeons could fly wherever they wanted to. They didn’t have to worry about war, about Germany, or about guns and bombs. They didn’t have to worry about being Jewish either. He closed his eyes, the flapping wings still sounding in his ears, and fell asleep.

He woke up when they stopped to eat. As they drove on after lunch, Gustave watched the changing landscape outside the window. Farm fields stretched out on either side of the road. It was warmer than at home in Paris, and spring was further along. Trees were coming into leaf, and a green mist covered the fields. After a while the road began to wind through small villages, clusters of red-roofed houses with here and there a post office or a café. They crossed a bridge over a wide river and wound through more tiny villages. And then Gustave saw a sign:
ST-GEORGES-SUR-CHER
.

“Ah, it seems so peaceful here,” Maman breathed. Gustave could hear the relief in her voice. But what was so great about it being peaceful? Compared with Paris, Saint-Georges looked empty and boring. The only person Gustave could see was an old man sweeping the sidewalk in front of a shop.

Papa turned and drove up a hill, following a narrow, winding road. He stopped at a white stone-and-stucco house. A narrow strip of garden and a low stone wall separated it from the road.

“Here it is!” Papa called out cheerfully. “The house is divided into two parts. We’ll be renting the left-hand side. Madame Foncine is the landlady, and she lives in the other half. She wrote that the key will be between the roots of the potted tree next to the steps.”

“What a beautiful house!” Maman said. “It looks as if it’s about a century old.”

The house had three levels, and one of them was an attic. Gustave had read about attics in books, but, living in a city, he had never been able to go into one. At least exploring the attic would be something interesting to do, he thought, although it would have been a lot more fun if Jean-Paul and Marcel were there to do it with him.

Still, Gustave wanted to explore it, and, after the long trip, he was really starting to need the bathroom. He ran ahead of his parents and found the key between the roots of the small tree in the planter, brushed the soil off it, and fit it into the lock.

The door squeaked open. Inside, it was dark and smelled musty. When Maman opened the windows and shutters, they saw a small room with large, heavy country furniture—a sofa, two armchairs, and a large oak armoire. A radio sat on a table in a dark corner. Stairs separated the living room from an old-fashioned kitchen with a large sink and a pump. Gustave ran up the squeaky steps to the second floor. It was musty up there too.

The smaller bedroom must be for him. He pulled open the windows, pushed out the shutters, and looked out over a walled garden behind the house. Two hazelnut trees grew there, one on each side of a small shed. Inside the room, a narrow bed stood against the wall beside an old night table. There was nothing else but a dusty chest of drawers holding a basin and pitcher for washing.

But how did you get up to the attic? Gustave pulled open a door in the wall of his room, feeling hopeful. Maybe he had his own private entrance and the attic could be his secret place. But it was just a closet. Maman and Papa’s room didn’t even have a closet, only an armoire. Gustave tapped the walls to see if they sounded hollow anywhere. They didn’t. There was no pull-down trapdoor on the ceiling of either bedroom or in the hallway. And where was the bathroom, anyway? Gustave wondered. The situation was getting urgent.

Gustave ran to the landing halfway down the stairs. Maman was already dusting the living room, and Papa was bringing in boxes.

“Where’s the bathroom?” he shouted. “I need it, and I can’t find it!”

Papa grinned up at him. “Outside in the backyard! And there’s a chamber pot under your bed for nighttime. Remember how Aunt Geraldine complained that the country was uncivilized? Now you know why. But you’re a Boy Scout—you know how to rough it, right?”

Gustave ran to the shed in the backyard. So that was what it was. It smelled, but he needed it too badly to be fussy. When he came out, Papa was pulling the mattresses down from the top of the truck.

“How do you get up to the attic, Papa?” Gustave called.

“Come help me carry up the mattresses,” answered Papa. “We can put them on the bed frames, and I’ll help you look.” But Papa couldn’t find an entrance or a trapdoor either.

“But there
has
to be a way up to the attic,” said Gustave. “Otherwise, what’s the point of having one?”

“There must only be stairs up to it from the other side of the house,” Papa told Gustave.

“Oh, why couldn’t we rent the
other
side?” Gustave moaned.

Papa shrugged.
“Désolé, mon vieux,”
he said.
Sorry, old pal
. “That’s where Madame Foncine lives.”

“Why does
she
get the good side?” Gustave muttered under his breath. It was so unfair. The attic was the most interesting thing about the house, and Gustave couldn’t get into it. He turned and pounded down the stairs.

“I’m going outside to explore!” he shouted, pushing open the front door.

“Unpack first,” said Maman, sticking her head out of the kitchen.

“Do I have to? Can’t I do it later?”

“Now,” said Maman.

Maman had already opened the box with Gustave’s things in it, so unpacking didn’t take long. Gustave tucked Monkey into the loose pocket of his pants and put his books into the bottom of the armoire in the living room. He lugged his suitcase up the stairs and put his clothes into the bureau. When he pulled open the bottom drawer, he found some old jigsaw puzzles and an empty picture frame, but he didn’t have enough clothes to need that drawer anyway, so he left them there. Maman handed Gustave a pile of bedding, and he made the bed, spreading his familiar blue blanket on top. He set the paints on the shelf under the night table and pinned the map of Europe up on the wall. When everything was unpacked in his bedroom, Gustave glanced around. It was starting to feel as if it belonged to him, but it still seemed empty. Then Gustave remembered Monkey, in his pocket. He pulled him out and sat him against the lamp on the night table. Now it looked more like home.

Maman caught Gustave again as he was heading outside. “While you’re out, find the bakery and buy us two baguettes,” she said, handing him some money. “We can use those instead of challah, since there’s no time to make it this afternoon. Be back before sunset. Remember, it’s Shabbat tonight.”

Gustave walked up the road to the end, turned left, and wandered along another road that wound between closely clustered white and gray houses. The afternoon sun was warm on his shoulders. He was sure that if he kept walking, he would find some other boys. But road after road was deserted. Each was lined with stone walls and heavy iron gates. Behind the walls, the quiet gray stone-and-stucco houses, their windows sealed off with white wooden shutters, seemed to turn their backs to him, closing him out.

It was profoundly quiet. No traffic sounds, no voices. The cooing of doves, fluttering here and there around the roofs of the houses, resonated in the stillness. At the bottom of the hill, on the main street of the town, Gustave saw an old woman with a cane who was slowly starting up the hill and two younger women who stood talking to one another by the post office. But no kids. Was this a village with only grown-ups?

Gustave turned off the main street and wandered up another hill. He walked until the houses stopped and the farm fields began. Still no children anywhere. Gustave was starting to wish that he had taken Monkey along in his pocket for company. He turned and began wandering back to the center of the village to buy the bread. The empty road stretched out ahead of him, etched with sun and shadow.

What were Marcel and Jean-Paul doing now? Gustave felt a sharp twinge of loneliness. It was past four o’clock, so school was out. Maybe they were doing their homework together on Jean-Paul’s kitchen table. Or maybe they had finished, and now they were kicking a soccer ball around in the park. In the middle of the road was a large white stone. Gustave kicked at it aimlessly, and it skidded ahead of him. The game would be to kick the stone so that it skidded over the sunny areas and came to a stop only in the areas of shadow, he decided. He was doing well until the stone got stuck in a dent in full sunshine.

“Interference,” Gustave said out loud. “That doesn’t count.”

He picked up the stone and kicked it again, down the dusty road.

The house on the right had a high, dark, bumpy wall. Gustave wondered if the white stone would write on it. He tried, and the stone scraped loudly, leaving a faint trace. Suddenly, a hand pushed open a high black metal gate on the other side of the road, and a small boy’s face peered out.

“Hi!” Gustave called. He ran toward the boy, waving.

“Come back here, Jean-Christophe!” a woman’s voice scolded. The boy darted inside, letting the gate slam shut behind him. The sound rang through the stillness.

Gustave stared at the closed gate. Why wouldn’t that boy’s mother let him play? He was little, but at least he would have been someone to hang around with. Saint-Georges was so different from the cheerful, bustling streets of Paris. Didn’t anyone live here? If Gustave had walked around his neighborhood at home for half an hour, he would have run into ten or fifteen boys ready to play. He kicked the stone again, too hard, and it bounced with a clang off a rusty green metal gate. Something huge and hairy lunged at the gate from the other side, barking and snarling. His heart thudding, Gustave grabbed the stone and darted away. It was an enormous Alsatian dog, penned in the yard. It leapt, growling and slavering, trying to get its muzzle over the top. Too late, Gustave noticed the handmade sign:
CHIEN MÉCHANT
.
Mean Dog
. Many of the houses had that sign or
ATTENTION: CHIENS DE GARDE
.
Warning: Guard Dogs
. Even the animals were unfriendly here.

Gustave shoved the rock into his pocket and ran down the road. He didn’t feel like exploring anymore. He would buy the bread and go back home.

At least there were people in the bakery. Three stout ladies stood in front of the counter, chatting with the woman behind it. Beside one of them stood a tall, thin boy around Gustave’s age. As Gustave pushed open the door, they all turned to look at him and fell silent. After a moment, the women went back to their conversation. But the boy was still staring at Gustave. His hair was pale and his eyes were clear, almost colorless. The boy looked Gustave up and down, taking his time.

“Are you renting from Madame Foncine?” he asked after a few minutes. “You’re those city people from Paris?” He said the word “Paris” in a mocking way, as if there were something ridiculous about it.

“Yes,” said Gustave.

The boy didn’t respond.

Gustave fidgeted, rubbing the back of his neck. He couldn’t think of anything to say. Obviously the boy lived here, so there was no point in asking that.

“Do you know Madame Foncine?” Gustave finally managed. The boy didn’t nod or answer. He just stared silently at Gustave with those peculiar clear eyes. Gustave felt himself flushing hot with anger. Why was the boy acting so strange? When Gustave’s turn came, he quickly asked for his two baguettes, paid, and went out the door, feeling the boy watching him the whole time.

It was a relief to be outside. Gustave started back along the main street, toward the new house, stopping to look at a small fountain shaded by short, gnarled trees. In the middle, the stone figure of a dolphin waved its tail upward, while water bubbled merrily out of its mouth. Gustave put his baguettes on the wall that surrounded the fountain and leaned over to look down into it. Under the wavering water, coins shimmered on the bottom.

“Hey, Paris kid!” a taunting voice called out. Gustave turned. The pale-eyed boy from the bakery ran at him and shoved him, hard, making him lose his balance on the fountain’s edge. The water slammed against Gustave’s head and back. He felt a shock of cold as he went under. The boy was peering over the wall of the fountain when Gustave came up, gasping.

“Go back where you came from!” he jeered. Then his face disappeared, and Gustave heard his feet running away.

Gustave scrabbled for a foothold on the slippery bottom of the fountain. Next to him, one of the baguettes bobbed in the water, slowly submerging. He climbed over the edge, weighed down by his wet clothes. The other baguette was teetering precariously on the edge of the fountain. He grabbed it and ran after the boy, water sloshing in his shoes.