How Huge the Night by Heather Munn

renting that old children’s home he owns by the Tanne, he said not if we were going to put Germans in it. You should’ve seen Alex. But it’s his building, Maria. Nobody can force him. I saw Monsieur Raissac talking to him after the meeting, and Gautier was just shaking his head no, no, no .” He sighed again. “That was going to be our largest dorm, Maria. We can’t do what we’ve got planned anymore—we’ll have to cut the numbers and start with only sixième and cinquième , and even then …”
    “There won’t be enough work for you—”
    “We’ll figure it out, Maria. Astier might keep me on.”
    Mama shook her head, her brow creased with worry.
    “That man … to go and ferret out that information on Benjamin … I will never understand.”
    No , thought Julien, staring down at his book, his heart beating fast. No, you never will.  
     
     
    Julien lay in his bed, the dark pressing hard against his open eyes, running the words through his mind for the hundredth time. There won’t be enough work for you . We’ll figure it out, Maria.
    What have I done?
    His father’s job. He’d messed up his father’s job.
    And Pastor Alex’s plans; and the next school year for himself and Benjamin, they were supposed to be switching schools next September; and … and his father’s dreams, the light in his eyes when he talked about it … he saw him sitting by the fire, the lines of worry in his forehead. He saw the shining tracks of the tears down Benjamin’s face. But all I did was say something true! They were sneering at me!
    “God, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” prayed Julien, hands pressed against his face. But underneath were deeper, quieter words pounding in time to his heart: No one. Must ever. Know .

Chapter 10
     

Broken
     
     
    Herr still had her pack. He’d been carrying it when they ran.
    All their money and half their food. One of their blankets; but they had the eiderdown. All her clothes but what she had been wearing.
    The first three days were terrible, walking and hiding and walking again under pine trees tall and black as fear, looking behind at every sound, not daring to stay on the road. They slept on the ground in the woods; or Gustav slept. Niko lay looking into the dark, trying not to think. Not to remember what Uncle Yakov had said. Nina, he’s delirious with fever. It’s madness to send two children out into the world alone. Nina, listen to me: there is no safe place for Jews on this earth, nor for women. Everywhere there are evil men.
    Everywhere there are evil men.
    I know about evil men, she’d thought. Here in Vienna . The Nazis marching in the streets, the men roaring the latest drinking song from the bars, the one with the chorus of “We are hunting Jews.” The boys from Gustav’s school who’d crippled her.
    Friedrich had been with them; tall, blond Friedrich, the boy she’d dreamed over for a year when she was fourteen—till he’d turned up in a Hitler Youth uniform, and the dreams had gone. Five or six of them chasing her up the alley—she never knew who threw the rock—but in her mind it was Friedrich laughing his loud, manly laugh as she fell, heavily and wrong, something breaking painfully in her left knee. “You got her!” someone had called, and then feet pounding around her and the pain in her knee exploding into white fire as one of them kicked it hard … and the scream she had heard, not even knowing it was herself, and the voices. “No one’ll care, she’s just a Jew.” “I think it’s broken.” “Maybe we should go …”
    She remembered the market basket she’d been carrying, tipped on its side, the eggs spilled and broken, their gold yolks bright against the paving stones. Broken. She remembered the walk home.
    So she’d known about evil men. But not everything, whispered the shadows. Not even close .
    She stared into the dark, seeing the rabbi in prison or dead; seeing Father still and cold in his bed; seeing Herr roaming the woods in