Black Radishes (5 page)

8

The Exodus, June 1940

G
ustave leaned forward in the front seat of the truck, pulling his damp shirt away from his back, bewildered by what he saw through the windshield of the truck. Papa had driven at breakneck speed through the roads leading out of the village. But now that they were on the highway, the space ahead of them was so jammed with vehicles and people, all heading in the same direction, that the truck was barely moving. Heat shimmered in the air. Cars and trucks overloaded with passengers clogged the road, honking. People shouted and horses whinnied, pulling heavy farm wagons piled high with mattresses and furniture. Men and women on bicycles wove in and out. Others walked, pushing wheelbarrows and baby carriages, some with babies and children in them, clinging to the sides, their eyes wide.

One man had fixed a strap across his own chest as if he were a donkey. Leaning forward, with sweat running down his face, step by step, he pulled a cart in which a frail, elderly woman sat, clutching a baby on her lap. People trudged along the side of the road on foot, their heads down, lugging bags and suitcases. A young woman sat on her suitcase by the side of the road, her eyes dull. Two small children with runny noses clung to her, wailing. The air was thick with dust stirred up by tires, by the feet of people, and by the hooves of horses. Exhaust fumes hung in the heavy air.

Where Gustave’s shorts ended, the rough seat of the delivery truck made his bare legs itch. They were driving so slowly that almost no breeze came in through the wide-open windows.

“Where are we going?” Gustave asked suddenly. “Are we going to Switzerland?”

“No. The Germans might cut us off before we got there,” said Papa, staring ahead at the clogged road. “We’re heading south, away from the Germans. We’re going to try to make it into Spain.”

“If they haven’t closed the border,” said Maman, who was squeezed in the middle. Her voice sounded thin, breakable. “At some point the Spaniards will say enough is enough, if mobs of people like this keep trying to get in.”

Gustave looked around the slow-moving crowd. “Are all of these people Jewish?” he asked. He hadn’t known that there were so many Jews in all of France put together.

Papa stopped trying to pass a huge, slow-moving hay wagon with eleven people, mostly children, seated against its railings, and sighed, craning his neck out the window and trying to see around the wagon.

“What did you say, Gustave?” he asked when he pulled his head back in. “Are they all Jewish? No. Maybe some of them. But anyone with any sense wants to get away from the Germans,” he added bitterly. “Everyone has heard what the Boches have done in other countries. Shootings, burning down villages—”

“Berthold!” Maman put her hand on Papa’s arm to stop him. But Gustave had heard enough. His pulse throbbed painfully in his throat. The Germans were marching through France, heading toward Paris. He couldn’t imagine it. What was happening to Marcel and Jean-Paul and their families? Had their apartment building been bombed? Were German tanks rolling through the streets? It seemed so unreal to think of soldiers with guns in front of the movie theaters and the shops full of bright flowers. Were soldiers ducking down to shoot from behind café tables and the bookstalls along the Seine? Gustave reached into his pocket and clutched Monkey. If only it were still last year instead of this one, and he and Marcel and Jean-Paul were safely together in the park in Paris, the light slanting down through the trees, as they stood together on the stone wall, about to jump, pretending they were spies parachuting out of an airplane.

“Papa,” Gustave asked, his voice wobbly, “where do you think Marcel and Jean-Paul …?”

Papa glanced at Maman. She was staring fixedly out the window, her face white. “Enough questions, Gustave,” he said. “We’ll talk about that later.”

Gustave turned and put his arm on the open window of the truck. He rested his head on it, and in a daze, he watched the mass of people outside. What was Jean-Paul doing? Was Aunt Geraldine rushing desperately through the streets in her high heels, perfume, and an elegant dress, pushing Giselle in her baby carriage, with Jean-Paul running beside her, the gas masks swinging from his shoulder? What about Marcel and his mother? Were they running away, or crouching in their apartment, peering out the window? The images in his head came so fast that Gustave felt as if he were spinning around until the world became a sickening blur.

At lunchtime, Papa stopped to get the food out of the back. Gustave and Maman got out to stretch for a moment. Gustave stood up unsteadily. The sun beat down, hot on his head, and between the sounds of motors, he heard insects buzzing over the fields. He and Papa and Maman ate bread and cheese as the truck moved slowly back into the stream of traffic. Gustave tilted his head back and drank the last, warm swallow of water in the canteen Maman handed him.

“That is the end of our food, Berthold,” Maman said, her voice tight.

“Don’t worry,” answered Papa. “We’ll stop in the next town and buy some.”

It was late afternoon when they rolled slowly into a town. For hours, Gustave’s mouth had felt dry and sticky, and by now, his stomach ached with hunger. Maman banged on the door of two bakeries and tried a shop that sold cheese, one that sold meat and sausages, and one that sold vegetables. But the bakeries were closed, and the other shopkeepers had empty shelves.

“Nothing?” Maman asked the woman who kept the vegetable shop, her voice trembling. Her face was drawn and exhausted. “Not a single potato? Not even an onion? Not a single bouillon cube to make soup? You have nothing at all to sell?”

“Not since about noon today,” said the shopkeeper. “People have been coming through here like locusts.”

“Would you give us some water?” asked Maman, showing her the empty canteen.

The shopkeeper had a round, grandmotherly face. She nodded and went to her house behind the store. She came back with a jug of water and a tall, creamy glass of milk.

“For the young one,” she said. She wouldn’t take the money Maman offered. Gustave squirmed when the shopkeeper handed him the glass. He wasn’t so young. He was a Boy Scout, and he was supposed to help others. He gulped down one-third of the milk. It was hard to stop, but one-third was his fair share. He held out the glass to Maman. She shook her head.

“Please?” he said. “Papa?”

Neither of them would take the glass. Looking at their faces, Gustave could see that they weren’t going to change their minds. He gulped down the rest while Papa and Maman watched. Even with the milk in his stomach, he still felt painfully hungry.

As the sky over the fields grew darker, Papa started looking for somewhere where they could spend the night.

“Shouldn’t we keep on as long as we can?” asked Maman, twisting her hands in her lap.

“Oh, you think so?” Papa snapped.

Gustave looked at him, startled. Papa never got angry like that.

“How would we look from above, with our headlights on?”

“Oh. Yes.” Maman turned her head, staring back out the window.

Papa stopped the truck beside a field where many other travelers had set up camp. Some people were already sleeping on the grass or under wagons. One large family nearby was cooking soup over a camp stove. The scent of chicken, carrots, and potatoes drifted in the air. The smells made Gustave’s stomach twist painfully again. If Maman had been able to buy an onion, he could have made a campfire, and she could have prepared onion soup. Gustave wanted onion soup so badly that he could almost taste it. The glass of milk he had drunk seemed very far away. His head ached, and he rubbed his fingers over his eyebrows and into his temples, trying to press away the pain. His arms and legs felt strangely weightless, as if he might float away into the rapidly cooling air.

“I’ll go knock at some doors and see if any of the farmers around here will sell us some food,” Papa said. He walked away with the up-and-down, limping walk that Gustave would know anywhere, toward the dark shape of a farmhouse, getting smaller and smaller, silhouetted against the deep blue of the sky. When he was out of sight, Gustave shivered. The air felt thinner with Papa gone.

“Let’s set up camp,” said Maman. She was trying to be cheerful, but Gustave knew she hated camping.

Gustave pulled out the blankets and pillows Maman had thrown into the truck that morning and arranged them on the grass. Maman sat down on the red plaid blanket, pulling her sweater around her shoulders and gazing in the direction Papa had gone. All at once, Gustave was exhausted. He lay down on the green blanket with his jacket over him. The ground was cold and lumpy through the thin wool.

Overhead, in the peaceful night sky, the stars were coming out. Somewhere else in the field, a baby was crying. Gustave let his eyes close and his mind drift. It was almost like going camping with the Boy Scouts, he thought sleepily. Almost. If Jean-Paul and Marcel were lying next to him in sleeping bags. If only they really were. He imagined the three families camping together, the parents sitting by a campfire, Aunt Geraldine holding the baby, while he and his friends whispered in the shadows. It would be fun, doing that together. If they had enough food. And if they weren’t running away.

9

W
hen Gustave opened his eyes, he blinked, confused for a moment, at the dark shapes around him and at the sky, growing lighter behind the silhouettes of the trees. He sat up, rubbing his shoulder where it was sore from pressing into the hard ground. A mosquito bite throbbed on his ankle, and then other places started itching, on his forehead, his neck, and his arm. He scratched, and the mosquito bites felt better, then burned again, itchy and hot. Maman was already sitting up on the blanket, smoothing her hair. Papa groaned and rolled over in his sleep, then sat up, awake in an instant. He stood and stretched, walked over to the truck, unlocked the front door, and pulled out a loaf of bread and some cheese he had bought from a farmer the night before.

“We waited to eat with you this morning, Gustave,” Maman said. “You were asleep when Papa got back.”

They all tore off a piece of bread, and Maman handed each of them a sliver of cheese. “We need to save some for later,” she said. “We may not be able to buy any more today.”

“Enjoy this food,” Papa said wryly. “It ought to be good. It’s the most expensive loaf of bread I’ve ever bought. That farmer charged me three times the usual price.”

Nearby, four children sat on a bed of hay in a farm wagon, sharing a long sausage. Gustave watched them while he chewed on his bread. The oldest child, a girl about Gustave’s age, ate her piece of sausage quickly and tended to a pony that was tethered nearby. First she brought him hay and water; then she brushed him. The pony was beautiful, chestnut-colored and sturdy, with a pale mane and deep brown eyes. When Gustave finished his hunk of bread and the small morsel of cheese, he got up and walked a few steps closer to watch.

The girl looked up from grooming the pony and smiled. “His name is Jacques,” she said. “He’s mine. Do you want to pet him?”

Gustave reached out and stroked the pony’s coarse mane, touching lightly at first, then wriggling his fingers in deep. The pony turned his head and nuzzled Gustave’s shoulder, tickling him with his warm, moist breath. “He’s hoping you have food for him,” said the girl.

“No. I wish I did,” said Gustave. “I’d eat it!”

The girl laughed. “Even if it was hay?”

Gustave grinned back. “Maybe. I’m almost hungry enough.”

“Gustave,” called his mother. “We’re leaving! Now!”

“I have to go,” Gustave said. “Maybe I’ll see you and Jacques later on the road.” The girl nodded and went back to brushing the pony.

The highway was as crowded with people and cars and trucks and farm wagons as it had been the day before.

“Are we almost there?” Gustave asked.

Papa laughed shortly. “We only went about forty kilometers yesterday,” he said. “It’s going to take us many days at this rate.”

“Many days?” Gustave groaned. He was already fidgety from sitting still so long, and he was hungry again too. His stomach felt like an impatient animal, ravenous so soon after eating. How could they possibly go on like this for many days, especially if they couldn’t buy any more food? The air was stifling in the cab of the truck, heavy with exhaust fumes from the slow-moving traffic. Gustave’s throat was very dry. “Can I have some water?” he asked.

“Just a few sips,” said Maman, handing him the canteen Papa had refilled at the farm. “We need to save the rest for later.”

Gustave sighed. If he could fill his stomach with water, maybe it wouldn’t gnaw at him so much, but they didn’t even have enough water. It was obvious that it was going to be another long day. Gustave rubbed his mosquito bites.

“Don’t scratch,” said Papa absently. “It makes it worse.”

How was he supposed to do
that
? The bite on Gustave’s arm was getting red and swollen. He pressed his fingernail down over it hard one way and then the other, making an X to cross out the pain. There, that wasn’t scratching, and it made the itchiness go away, at least temporarily. A loud honking was coming closer. Gustave looked up from his itchy arm and noticed that a few of the vehicles and people were shifting over to the side of the road, although most of them stayed where they were. A French soldier strode through the slow-moving crowd, heading in the opposite direction.

“Clear the way,” he shouted impatiently. “Army vehicles coming through.”

“Finally, we see some of our own soldiers,” Papa said, pulling over, “and people won’t get out of their way. Idiots.” Papa’s unshaven face looked tired and grim.

Eventually, the crowd gave way a bit, and several trucks full of French soldiers drove through slowly, honking. In one truck, three of the soldiers had binoculars pressed against their eyes and were scanning the sky. One of the soldiers saw Gustave watching and saluted him, smiling.

Gustave put his hands up to his eyes, wondering what it was like to look through army binoculars. As the trucks full of soldiers passed, Papa maneuvered his way back into the flow of traffic. Gustave scanned the crowd, looking through his imaginary hand binoculars. Did putting your hands to your eyes like that make things look closer? It almost seemed as if it did, especially when he closed his fingers in the middle, making two circles. Gustave looked through his hands at the tops of the trees on the side of the road, at clouds in the sky, at the hat of a man walking by the side of the road.

From time to time, Gustave spotted the girl with the pony. When she saw him, she waved, and he waved back. Jacques, wearing blinders, was tethered next to another pony, helping to pull a wagon loaded down with four children, a grandfather clock, and a heavy wooden bed frame. Gustave felt weary just watching the small ponies straining to pull the weight. It looked like really hard, hot work, even though the grown-ups of the family were walking beside the cart and the oldest girl often got out and walked next to Jacques with her hand on his neck.

Once, when they came into view on the road, she called to Gustave, who was now hanging out the window, “Come on out and walk with us!”

Gustave could see that there was a breeze outside. “Can I get out and walk for a while?” he asked. “We aren’t going any faster than that, anyway.”

“No!” said Maman sharply. “We don’t want to lose you.”

“I’m not going to get lost,” Gustave protested. “I’m
eleven
.”

Maman didn’t answer, and Gustave slammed himself back against the seat. How could anyone get lost? Everyone except for the soldiers was heading in the same direction, down the same endless road. The worst thing about the day wasn’t being hungry or hot or thirsty. It was having nothing to do. If only Jean-Paul or Marcel were there for him to poke or talk to or play rock-paper-scissors with. Gustave felt a heavy weight on his chest. He didn’t want to think about where Jean-Paul and Marcel might be right now. Instead, he tried playing rock-paper-scissors with himself, one hand against the other, but it didn’t work very well. Somehow, he always let the left hand win.

Gustave gave up and looked at the green fields stretching out on either side of the road, and then up into the sky. A buzzard hung in the hot air above the endless column of people on the road, circling, its wings in a V. Gustave put his hands up into the binocular shape again to watch the buzzard wheeling through the sky. Suddenly, a dark object appeared on the horizon behind the buzzard, then another, and another. Gustave moved his hand binoculars over to look at them more closely. Planes. Painted with dark crosses and swastikas. For a moment, Gustave’s mouth wouldn’t work. Then he shouted, “Planes! Nazi planes!”

“Pull over!” Maman screamed. The planes roared down through the sky, straight toward the column of people on the road, as if they were going to land on top of them. It sounded as if the sky were tearing in two. Through the roar came the wails of babies and the high, shrieking whinny of horses. People ran in every direction.

Gustave pushed the door open while the truck was still moving.

“Run!” Papa shouted. Gustave stumbled across the rutted field, his breath tearing through his lungs, making for a line of trees. Maman was to the side of him, but Papa, limping on his bad leg, was falling behind. Gustave turned around and reached out a hand to help him, but Papa waved him away, screaming, “Run!”

The machine guns began just as Gustave reached the trees. Glancing up, he saw a plane no higher than the tree-tops, its machine gun pointing down. Bullets exploded. Hands shoved Gustave to the ground as Papa threw himself over him, heavy and solid, shielding Gustave from the cruel sky. Gustave’s heart was hammering, and his breath came in gasps. His lip bled where his teeth had cut it, and his blood tasted like metal. His cheek pressed against a bumpy tree root. His nose was full of the smell of the damp earth and the familiar scent of his father’s shirt.

After a long while, the noise of the shooting stopped. Gustave could feel Papa’s heart pounding against his back. He heard the thrumming rising from the earth and the insects humming over the field. But he didn’t want Papa to get up. He wanted to stay there forever, wedged safely between the warmth of Papa’s body and the cool, damp ground.

When Papa finally did push himself to his hands and knees, Gustave lifted his head and saw that Maman was next to them, holding Papa’s arm.

The heel had broken off one of Maman’s shoes, and her left stocking was torn. Her breathing was ragged and hoarse. “Oh, Gustave!” she gasped, reaching for him. “Oh, Berthold!”

With Maman limping on the broken shoe, they made their way back across the rutted field. It was the same brilliantly sunny day it had been an hour ago, but it was as if the familiar world had been turned upside down and shaken into a new pattern, like bits of colored glass in a kaleidoscope. People were scattered around, some still screaming, others weeping. Some crawled out of the ditches beside the road and from under trucks and cars. Windshields had shattered. The road sparkled with broken glass. An elegant elderly woman sat in a ditch, her face dirty and her hat awry, looking stunned. A small boy, all by himself and too young to talk, stood crying forlornly. Maman paused and snapped the heel off her other shoe so that she could balance. She knelt down beside the little boy, wiping his nose with her handkerchief.

“Shhh,” she told him, taking his hand. “We’ll find your mother.”

“Maybe she’s over there,” said Gustave shakily, pointing toward a stone structure on the other side of the road where some people had run for shelter. Together, his family and the little boy made their way toward it. The ground was covered with dropped objects: a broken-handled suitcase, a sweater, a doll, one leg doubled under its body, gazing up at the sky with green glass eyes.

When they had almost reached the shed, a bedraggled young woman hurried toward them, weeping wildly, carrying a baby and clutching a little girl by the hand. The boy cried out and rushed toward her.

“He pulled and ran off,” the mother said over and over again to Maman, embracing her. “I couldn’t hold on to him.” The mother wept, but the boy, holding her skirt with one hand and sucking his thumb on the other, had stopped crying and was looking around, his eyes enormous. Gustave followed the boy’s gaze and looked out over the field. In the distance, under the bright glare of the sky, some people were still lying on the grass, unmoving.

“Don’t look, Gustave,” said Papa sharply. “Let’s get going.” He stepped between Gustave and the field, blocking his view, and, with his arm around Gustave’s shoulder, turned him in the direction of the road.

Gustave saw the delivery truck. It was like suddenly seeing home. “There it is!” he cried, running forward.

“Be careful of the broken glass!” Maman called.

No bullets had gone through the windshield of the truck. But there was something large and dark lying beside it in the road.

“Wait!” Gustave’s mother caught him from behind, but he shrugged her off and darted forward. It was Jacques, the pony. He had been shot. His beautiful brown head was thrown back, and a pool of dark blood spread out around him. His pale mane was stained where it lay in the blood. The girl Gustave had talked to that morning sat on the ground beside Jacques, her arms around him, crying, her hair falling over her face. Gustave’s stomach clenched. He took a few steps toward the bushes on the side of the road and threw up.

“Barbarians,” Papa muttered when they were back in the truck. “Barbarians.”

The road was jammed again with exhausted, desperate people. Gustave curled up on the seat and put his head down on his knees. He couldn’t stop seeing the dead pony. His chest started to shudder, gasping for breath, and his eyes leaked tears. After a while, he felt Maman’s hand on his back. He could hear her crying too.

“We’re going to be all right, Gustave,” said Papa hoarsely. “We will keep our family safe.” But how could Papa be sure of that? And what about Marcel and Jean-Paul and their families? After a long time, Gustave’s tears stopped. His eyes were swollen and hot, his mind empty. They drove on, slowly, for hours and hours. Around nightfall, the road was in complete confusion. Traffic stopped entirely.

Gustave’s father got out of the truck to see what was happening.

“A bomb exploded up ahead,” said a man on foot, his shoulders sagging under a heavy rucksack. His face was lined, and his eyes were sunken. “It destroyed the bridge and killed quite a few people. No one can get past.”