Black Radishes (4 page)

“What did you do that for?” he shouted. But the boy had vanished between the buildings or maybe into one of them.

“Coward!” Gustave shouted again, but only his own voice echoed back at him. He looked around. The shadows were long on the bare road. He had no idea where the boy had gone, and Maman wanted him home before sundown. He checked the change in his pocket. Not enough money to buy a third baguette to replace the waterlogged one. Maman was going to be upset not to have the customary two loaves of bread for the Sabbath. Sloshing and shivering, Gustave slowly made his way back up the hill toward his new house.

“I did it,” Maman was saying as Gustave opened the door. “I got us ready to have our first Shabbat in Saint-Georges.”

She and Papa stood together by the table. While Gustave had been outside exploring, Maman had transformed the dark kitchen. Her copper-bottomed cooking pots shone warmly on the walls, and the open shutters let in the smells of spring, the soft cooing of the doves, and the glow of the late afternoon. The white tablecloth and polished silver candlesticks gleamed. Maman’s face was calm and serene, ready to welcome in the Sabbath. But when she turned to look at Gustave, her expression changed.

“What happened?” she exclaimed. “How did you get so wet? Oh, your shoes too! And couldn’t you buy a second baguette?”

“Sounds like an odd boy,” said Papa when Gustave had finished reluctantly telling them about the boy from the bakery. “I guess he doesn’t like strangers. Or maybe he resents city people.”

“What did he call you, exactly?” asked Maman, twisting her fingers together. “He didn’t say ‘Jew,’ did he?”

“No. Just ‘Paris kid.’ ” Gustave’s stomach felt hollow. “Don’t they like Jews here either?”

“I don’t imagine that many people in Saint-Georges know any Jews,” said Papa. “It’s a small Catholic village. The families here have lived in this area for generations. Don’t worry about it, Lili,” he said to Maman. “If we only have one loaf of bread, that’s what we’ll use. Go change quickly, Gustave, and then let’s welcome in Shabbat.”

When Gustave came down in dry clothes, Maman pulled her lace shawl over her head and struck a match to light the first candle. Then she hesitated, glancing through the open window at the road just outside.

“Let’s close the windows and shutters first,” she said quietly. “So nobody can overhear us singing in Hebrew. It’s better if nobody here knows for sure that we’re Jewish.”

She blew out the match, and she and Gustave and Papa closed the shutters in the kitchen and living room and latched the windows. The rooms were suddenly dark and somber again.

They gathered around the table, and Maman again lifted the shawl over her head, lit the candles, and closed her eyes. In her clear, high voice, she sang the Hebrew blessing over the candles. She sang more quietly than she usually did, and Gustave heard a slight quaver. Papa stood beside Maman, solid and calm. His voice was warm and rich when he and Gustave joined in to chant the Sabbath prayers. Gustave watched their faces in the glow of the candlelight, singing the blessing over the wine, singing the blessing over the bread.

“Shabbat shalom,”
said Papa and Maman and Gustave to each other when they had finished. “A Sabbath of peace.”

But even though it was Shabbat, and despite what Papa had said earlier, Maman had two small worry lines between her eyes. A Sabbath of peace, thought Gustave, remembering Maman’s earlier words about Saint-Georges. A peaceful place. But would Saint-Georges really turn out to be a safe place, a place of peace? Looking at the shutters hiding them from the street, and remembering the snarling dog and the blank face of the boy with the pale eyes, Gustave didn’t feel sure of that. Not sure at all.

6

Saint-Georges, April 1940

G
ustave had been in Saint-Georges for three long weeks. Late one Tuesday afternoon in April, with his rucksack on his back, he pulled himself up into his fort in the loft of the garage and threw down the three long, sturdy sticks he was holding. Madame Foncine wouldn’t let Gustave explore the attic, but she hadn’t said anything about staying out of the garage—not that Gustave had asked her, exactly. He knew better than to do that, after what she had said about boys messing around in her attic. So Gustave slipped in and out of the garage when she wasn’t watching. The old building had once been a barn, and it had a hayloft at one end that made a perfect fort.

Gustave looked around in satisfaction. He had spread a khaki blanket over the splintery floor and arranged three bales of hay in a triangle for seats. If Jean-Paul and Marcel came to join Gustave in Saint-Georges, the fort would be all ready for the three of them. There were two lookout windows facing in different directions.

“Perfect for spying on the enemy,” Gustave said to himself. “If the Boches ever dare come here.”

He took out his pocketknife and began sharpening the first of the three long sticks that he had found in the yard behind the house. When he had made three spears, one for each boy, he arranged the weapons against the wall. In his rucksack were the Y-shaped stick he had found last week and an old pair of underwear. Yesterday he had torn them so badly when they caught on a twig while he was climbing one of the hazelnut trees that Maman had said they couldn’t be mended. Now he carefully cut the elastic off with his pocketknife and attached it to the Y-shaped stick, making a perfect slingshot. He shoved it into his back pocket.

“Just in case,” he muttered.

In Gustave’s opinion, the fort was the best thing about Saint-Georges. Otherwise, it was lonely. Luckily, he had never run into the pale-eyed boy again, but he also hadn’t found anyone else to hang around with. He wasn’t going to school. Papa said that it didn’t make much sense to go, since the school year was nearly over, and they might not be in Saint-Georges very long. Once, at the post office, Gustave had spotted the little boy who had peered out at him from the gate that first day, and another time, Gustave had seen a group of girls about his age in the village. One girl had looked at him curiously, but it was hard just to go up and start talking to girls you didn’t know. Maman was away from home a lot now, working at a typing job she had found almost right away. She pedaled off in the mornings on an old bicycle she had bought from Madame Foncine.

Without his store, Papa didn’t have much to do in Saint-Georges either. He listened to the radio a lot, and sometimes he and Gustave worked together, fixing things in the new house. Sometimes he walked to nearby villages and sat in cafés for hours, talking with other men about the war. The house was often empty. Gustave would never admit it to Jean-Paul, and especially not to Marcel, but these days, he usually carried Monkey around in his pocket, just to have a little company.

Gustave climbed down from the loft and wandered into the kitchen. Maman was home from work early, and she had a box of photographs open on the table. She was sorting them into piles while dinner simmered on the stove.

“Look, Gustave,” Maman said, smiling. “Here’s a picture of you when you were a baby. Do you remember this little tricycle you used to ride? And look—here is one of you and Marcel, eating your first ice cream cones ever!”

Gustave looked over her shoulder and laughed. In the ice cream picture, Marcel was standing and Gustave was in a stroller. Both of them were grinning, their faces and shirts covered in chocolate.

“Do you have a newer one of me and Marcel and Jean-Paul?” Gustave asked. “One I can put in the picture frame that’s in my room?”

“Oh, I’m sure there’s one in there somewhere,” Maman said, getting up from her seat to check on the pot on the stove. “Go ahead and look. Just be sure to hold the photos by their edges so that you don’t get fingerprints on them.”

Gustave went up to get the frame and came back down, rubbing the dull metal on his shirt to make it shiny. He sat at the table and shuffled through the photographs. He found one of Maman and Aunt Geraldine as teenagers, smiling astride their bicycles, and one of Papa with a much younger Gustave on his shoulders. There was Papa as a boy, standing waist-deep with his friends in a lake in Switzerland, snow-capped mountains soaring behind them.

“Oh, look—perfect!” Gustave cried. Maman leaned over his shoulder to see a photo of Gustave, Marcel, and Jean-Paul on their winter camping trip in the mountains two years ago. Gustave and Jean-Paul were bundled up, but Marcel had stripped off his hat, jacket, and shirt for the photograph and was standing bare-chested in the snow, flexing his arm muscles to show how tough he was. The three of them were standing close together, laughing.

The photograph fit perfectly into the frame. Holding it against his chest, Gustave walked upstairs. He put it down slowly on the night table. Maybe he would see his friends again soon. The way things were going with the war, it sounded as if they would need to come to Saint-Georges after all.

Gustave glanced over his shoulder at the map on his wall, then quickly looked away. There was an awful lot of red on it now. A week ago, the Nazis had launched a surprise attack on Denmark and Norway, so now Denmark was red too. Denmark’s army was so small that it hadn’t even tried to fight back. Now Norway was fighting the Germans.

When the news of Norway’s entry into the war had come, Maman had gone straight to the post office to telephone her sister. Aunt Geraldine had said that she would think again about coming to live in the countryside. She had also promised to talk to Madame Landau, Marcel’s mother, since the Landaus didn’t have a telephone.

“We could easily find a cheap place for Geraldine to rent here,” Maman said to Papa. “And I told her to tell the Landaus that they can stay with us if they can’t afford a place of their own. Surely, now that they see what is happening, they will come soon.”

“Since Aunt Geraldine hates outhouses, you should just tell her that some of the houses here have bathrooms,” Gustave suggested. “That way she won’t have any reason not to come.”

Maman laughed. “I’m not sure that any of them really do have bathrooms. But it’s a good idea. I’ll tell her next time I call.”

But whatever Maman had said to Aunt Geraldine, days passed and still Jean-Paul’s family and the Landaus did not come. And every night on the news broadcast, the radio announcer talked about the war. “Aided by the British navy, Norway fights valiantly!” the broadcaster announced, as Gustave and his parents listened to the radio that evening after dinner. “King Haakon rejects Nazi demands!”

The radio announcer always sounded so certain that the Nazis would soon be beaten, Gustave thought as he put on his pajamas. But when was it going to happen? The Nazis had taken over so many other countries. What was happening now to all the people in the occupied countries, to ordinary, nice people like his family who just wanted to live their lives?

Another thought came into Gustave’s mind, so quietly that it was like a whisper, insistent and taunting, making his temples throb. If the Nazis hated Jews so much, what was happening to the Jews in those countries that they had taken over? Were those prison camps for Jews and other people the Nazis didn’t like just in Poland, or in all the defeated countries? And when would they let the people in them out?

Downstairs, Maman was listening to a symphony on the radio as she cleaned up the kitchen. The music, drifting up from below, suddenly sounded unbearably sad. Gustave closed his door, but he could still hear the muffled notes. He threw himself down on the bed, squeezing a pillow against each side of his head to block out the sound.

“Shut up, shut up, shut up!” he muttered into the mattress, not sure whether he was talking to the whispers in his head or to the radio. He lay there in the dark, his head buried in the pillows, trying to sleep, but he could still hear the melancholy strains of the music. It was a long time before Maman switched the radio off.

7

O
ne warm morning in May, Madame Foncine shuffled by the wide-open shutters while Gustave and his parents were eating breakfast, and a moment later she banged loudly on the front door.

“Now, finally, we are going to start fighting back against the Boches,” she announced, her broad face flushed with excitement. “Our war has begun. The Germans have invaded Holland, Belgium, and Luxembourg.”

Gustave’s mouth felt dry. Luxembourg and Belgium were between France and Germany. That meant that now the Nazis were heading right toward France.

Gustave’s family was quiet as Madame Foncine walked away. Then Maman leaned against Papa and sighed.

“Oh, why won’t Geraldine see that she should leave Paris?” she moaned into Papa’s chest.

“Well, at least the waiting is over,” Papa said, stroking her hair. “Now the French army can start pushing the Germans back.”

But that wasn’t what happened. On Monday evening, Papa turned on the radio after dinner. It crackled, making Gustave jump. A somber voice spoke into the room.

“German tanks have crossed the Meuse River from Belgium and penetrated France,” boomed the announcer. “There is fierce fighting in the French region of Sedan.”

Gustave felt hollowed out inside. The Nazis were in France. Was it possible? For a moment, he could hardly breathe. The room swirled around him, and a roaring sound filled his ears. When his head quieted, Maman and Papa were talking.

“
When
will we hear about those visas?” Maman cried, hugging herself with both arms and rocking back and forth on the sofa.

Papa paced, limping up and down the room. “Maybe we should leave for Switzerland instead of waiting to hear about emigrating to America,” he said.

“But Geraldine and her family will never be able to cross the Swiss border to meet us there,” Maman wailed. “And what if Germany decides to invade Switzerland? What should we do? Oh, what should we do?”

“Be calm, Lili
chérie
, be calm,” Papa said. “The Germans are only slightly over our border. General Weygand has established a second front. The second front is holding.”

But day after day, the names of the countries collapsing in front of the German army came on the news bulletins, solemn and funereal, like a church bell tolling. “Luxembourg offers no resistance.” “Holland surrenders.” When would the Nazis stop? Gustave wondered as he painted in the fallen countries on his map.

He was washing paint over Luxembourg when his hand jerked, and a smear of red slid onto the blue of France. Gustave wiped at it furiously with his handkerchief until it was clean, then clenched the brush tightly so that he wouldn’t slip and get any more red where it didn’t belong. After all, the Nazis hadn’t taken over the whole world.

France was still free.

Days passed, and the fields turned a darker shade of green. Flowers budded and opened, and, even at night, the air was soft and warm, like the fuzzy skin of a peach. One night after the news broadcast, Gustave could smell spring in the air as he walked upstairs with heavy feet. But the weather felt all wrong. How could spring come the same way it always did? Under his open bedroom window, the garden was full of flowers, and birds were singing as the sun set. But Gustave felt separated from the warm night, as if it were all happening on the other side of a wall of glass. He flipped open the metal watercolor box and looked down at his paints. He had plenty of all the other colors, but in the center of the well of red paint, he could see the metal at the bottom. And again, tonight, red was the color he needed. Belgium had surrendered to the Nazis.

Gustave swirled the wet brush around in the paint and slowly washed red over Belgium. When he was finished, he studied the map in bewilderment. Red was spreading like blood all over Europe, even along much of the French border.

And, still, the strange spring kept on coming. One hot June morning, Gustave woke up late, tangled in sticky sheets. Voices were coming from outside. He stumbled downstairs, but neither of his parents was in the house, and the front door stood open.

“Papa?” he called out. “Maman?”

Still half-asleep, he walked out into the yard. The paving stones under his bare feet were already warm, almost hot, from the sunshine. Out in the road, five or six adults he didn’t know and a few small children stood huddled in a tight group. A woman ran down the street toward them, her hair disheveled, her dress flapping around her legs, screaming. Gustave watched her lips moving. He heard the sounds, but at first the words didn’t make sense. “They’re coming! The Germans! They’re coming! The Germans!”

The woman’s husband pulled her toward him, and a small child let out a high, piercing cry.

A rush of energy swept over Gustave, leaving him sweaty, then cold an instant later. He heard a noise behind him and turned. Papa had taken the truck out. The back, still filled with stock from the Paris store, was open. Papa ran, limping unevenly, out of the garage, toward the truck, a spare can of gasoline sloshing in each hand. Light glinted off the truck and the cans of gasoline. Gustave darted toward Papa. “Are the Germans really coming?” he cried.

“Yes!” Papa shouted. “The Nazis have bombed Paris. The second front has collapsed. Help Maman grab some clothes and food. We have to get out of here.
Now
.”