Children of the Stars

by Mario Escobar

  “We’ve got to go. I don’t want Mr. Bonnay to get into trouble because of us. We’ve already caused him enough problems.”

  Moses stared at him, still half asleep. He had no idea what Jacob was talking about, but he got dressed quickly. They crept down the stairs and were halfway out the door when they heard a voice behind them.

  “Where are you going so early?”

  They turned and saw the mistress of the house. She wore a lovely pink suit, and her hair was pulled back in a bun. Despite the early hour, she was fully dressed, as if she had been standing at the ready all night.

  “We just wanted to go out and play a bit. We’re used to getting up before dawn.”

  “But you must be hungry,” she said. “You’d better eat something.”

  The brothers hesitated, but Clotilde put her soft hands on their backs and led them toward the kitchen. She opened the door and said sweetly, “Go on and eat whatever you’d like. There are croissants, cake, and fruit.”

  Moses moved forward, but Jacob grabbed his arm. Yet Clotilde took advantage of their movement to give them a push forward. Then she shut and locked the door.

  They were in total darkness. From the mixture of smells, it seemed like they were in a pantry. Jacob beat on the door awhile, then kicked it, then threw himself on the ground and started weeping.

  “What’s going on?” Moses had no idea what was happening.

  “That woman’s going to call the gendarmes. I overheard a conversation she had with Marcel and Paul’s uncle.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  “She’s afraid they’ll be found out for helping us.”

  At that, Moses began to cry. The impenetrable darkness was oppressive, and his brother’s words terrified him. What would become of them? Surely they would never see their parents again.

  Meanwhile, Bonnay awoke refreshed. He had not slept so well in years. He usually woke two or three times a night. The early morning was the time he most missed his wife, though they had their best talks at night. It was too hard to find any time the rest of the day with the kids being little and both of them working nonstop.

  The shower water relaxed him even more. Bonnay dressed slowly, without the typical early morning rush, and went out to the huge upstairs hallway covered in rugs. He met his sons as he was going downstairs and they were running up to meet him.

  “Good morning, boys. I hope you slept as well as I did.”

  “Father, we can’t find Jacob or Moses anywhere,” Marcel said.

  Bonnay’s eyebrows knit together, and he looked all around to make sure no one was watching them.

  “I told you not to use their names,” he whispered severely.

  “But they’re gone!” Paul cried.

  “This is a huge house, not to speak of the yard outside. They’re bound to turn up any moment. Surely they’ll come to the dining room when they get hungry.”

  “No, we’ve looked everywhere, and our cousins haven’t seen them either.”

  Bonnay went downstairs to search the living room, the dining room, the music room, the porch. Back inside, he searched the spacious entryway. He found no sign of the boys.

  Clotilde emerged then from the kitchen. Impatiently, Paul asked, “Have you seen our friends?”

  She smiled as if his question were cute. “Oh, they left early this morning. I gave them some food for their journey. It seemed they did not want to stay here any longer. They were anxious to find their parents. They wanted to take the first train to Lyon. At least, that’s what they said.”

  Bonnay stopped in his tracks. It seemed very odd that the boys would have gone off just like that, without even saying goodbye to Marcel and Paul.

  Just then Fabien descended the stairs, grinning widely. He came up to them and put his hands on his brother-in-law’s shoulders.

  “We’ve got so much to do. This morning we’ll go to the notary. I’ve already called my lawyers to formalize the terms of the limited partnership. I’m sure that, within a year, once you’ve got a house like this, you’ll thank me for making you a rich man.”

  The collier looked at his children. Caressing Paul’s face, which bore a concerned look, he said, “I’m sure they’re fine. They were with us for a while, but they’ve decided to continue their journey.”

  Fabien put his hand on Bonnay’s back and the two men went toward the door. The chauffeur was already waiting for them outside in a Mercedes.

  The boys watched their father walk away. They could not believe he was unconcerned for their friends.

  “All right, young men, you must have your breakfast. I’m sure you woke up hungry. Your cousins have already eaten,” their aunt said with a forced smile. She made every effort to hide her disgust that such vermin were mixing with her refined children.

  Like many children, the boys had a sixth sense that detected intentions and what lived in people’s hearts. They saw something in their aunt’s expression that made them comfortable.

  “Come now, your food is ready in the dining room,” she insisted, gesturing for them to hurry up and get to eating.

  Marcel and Paul followed her to the dining room, but as soon as she turned to leave, Marcel discreetly followed her. Paul hesitated but then joined his brother.

  “Where are we going?” he whispered. Marcel motioned for him to keep quiet. They watched their aunt go into the kitchen and then followed.

  “What are you doing?” Paul asked again.

  “I think Aunt Clotilde knows where Jacob and Moses are.”

  Paul scrunched up his face. He could not understand why his aunt would do anything bad to his friends.

  Clotilde came back out of the kitchen, a set of keys tinkling at her side. Marcel stared at them a moment, then said to Paul, “Call to her. While you talk to her, I’ll try to steal the keys.”

  Paul stepped forward and stopped his aunt in the middle of the hallway. Marcel slipped out behind the door and stood just behind her.

  “What’s going on, Paul? Have you already finished eating?” she asked with annoyance.

  “Yes, but I can’t find Alice or Fabien. The house is so big . . .”

  Marcel managed to slip the keys from Clotilde without jingling them, then tiptoed away.

  “But don’t worry, I’ll find them!” Paul said, turning and running away.

  Clotilde was puzzled but went on about her tasks. The gendarmes would arrive any minute, and she did not want the inconvenience of those children to make her lose her whole morning.

  Paul caught back up with his brother, who was examining the keys one by one. “If they’re locked up somewhere,” Marcel said, “it’ll be where only the maids go, since she knows we wouldn’t look for them there.”

  Marcel tried each door one by one until he found one that was locked. Then he tried several keys until the lock finally gave way.

  Jacob tumbled out of the room so fast he knocked Marcel over. Moses followed, armed with a stick he had found.

  “What happened to you?” Paul asked the boys.

  “Your aunt locked us up,” Jacob said.

  “You have to get out of here right away. I bet she called the gendarmes.”

  The boys headed for the door, but then Jacob remembered his backpack.

  “I’ll go get it, and you just get out of here,” Marcel said. He ran back to the pantry as fast as he could. On his way out again, he found himself standing face-to-face with his aunt.

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  He pushed her hard and ran to the door. The others were waiting for him, jittering with impatience. They could see a cloud of dust at the end of the drive. “A car is coming,” Jacob said.

  They ran through the cornfields, then along the river. If they followed the current, it would lead them to Roanne. “You’ve already done so much for us,” Jacob said through ragged breaths. “You’d better get back to the house.”

  “No, we’ll go with you to the city. I know where the train station is. We were here a couple o
f years ago. When the train leaves the station, it goes really slow, and you can jump on it and get to Lyon. You’ll have to avoid the ticket collector and make sure you jump off before you get to the last station,” Marcel said, panting.

  Jacob hugged his friend, and Moses hugged Paul. “Thank you,” he said.

  “We’re your friends.” Marcel shrugged.

  They ran farther along the river’s edge. The vegetation protected them from being seen from the road, but they knew they did not have much time. The gendarmes would not be slow to pick up their trail. Besides, their pursuers had a car, and the boys would soon lose their advantage.

  They slowed and walked for some time until they reached the city center. They turned up Avenue Gambetta and walked until they saw the great mustard-yellow station. “We have to get to the tracks,” Marcel said, pointing toward the end of the road.

  “How will we know which is the right train?” Jacob asked.

  “Each train has a sign, and we’ll be able to see it from the tracks.”

  They ran again until the station was behind them, crossed the street, jumped a fence, and went down to the tracks. Minutes later they heard a train slowly approaching. They let the engine go by and saw the sign: Lyon. They waited a little longer, so they would not hop on the very first cars where travelers would see them and alert the inspector.

  “It’s going fast,” Moses said, watching the train picking up speed with each passing second.

  “You’d better go for it now,” Marcel said, breathless.

  The two brothers began running alongside the train. When they reached a good speed, Jacob jumped and grabbed a handle between two cars. Moses kept running, but the train sped up, and no matter how fast he went, Moses could not reach Jacob’s outstretched hand.

  “Come on! You’ve got to jump now or else you won’t be able to!” Jacob yelled, on the verge of panic.

  Moses started to lose ground, and the train moved away from him little by little. Then he felt someone grab him from behind and run with him. It was Marcel. He had seen what was happening and knew Moses would never make it on his own. He picked the younger boy up, ran as fast as he could, and threw Moses with a great heave toward his brother. Moses flew suspended in the air for the briefest of seconds before Jacob clutched him and pulled him onto the little platform. Recovering their breath, they waved goodbye to Marcel and Paul.

  As they watched the train fade away into the distance, Marcel turned toward his brother. “Let’s go to the station,” he said.

  “Why? We’re already going to be in trouble for what we’ve done.”

  “We have to help them gain some time.”

  Paul did not understand what his brother meant, but he dutifully followed to the train platforms. They hopped up on the nearest one and walked to the main entryway. The gendarmes rushed over as soon as they saw them.

  “Did you think you would get far? Come with us to the gendarmerie,” a policeman said, his strong fists clenching the boys’ arms.

  Marcel kicked his leg hard, and the man instinctively let go. The boys ran to the exit and slipped away into the streets as half a dozen gendarmes ran after them.

  Running through the peaceful roads of Roanne, Marcel could not help but smile. He was imagining his friends on the train to Lyon, just a bit closer to their parents, which made him feel victorious. He would probably never see them again, but he would always carry them in his heart. Neither time nor distance could make him forget them. Jacob and Moses were two brave souls who had decided to face their destiny with everything they had, and he was sure nothing would hold them back.

  Chapter 15

  Near Lyon

  July 24, 1942

  The wind blew in their faces as if announcing their impending arrival. Jacob and Moses knew Lyon was just a little over sixty miles from Valence and that the river that escorted them from afar, the Rhône, was the same river that refreshed the city where their parents were.

  Jacob pointed out the current of the water to his brother through the little window of the car they had slipped into. He got lost in thought about how the water he had seen seconds before was moving faster than the old wooden train run by a steam engine that laboriously chugged them toward what they hoped would be the final layover of their journey.

  At times, Jacob wondered how they had been able to come so far. Without the help of so many people risking their lives day after day to protect the persecuted—pariahs of the land so universally despised—they would never have made it that far. It had been a harrowing journey. Paris now felt like a distant memory, as if they had never even lived there. All Jacob and Moses had was the present—the past was a dense fog they could never return to, hardly even in their memory—and the future seemed so uncertain they dared not imagine their lives beyond this moment.

  In one sense, childhood is an eternal present. The road traveled is just a few feet beyond the starting point, and the end goal seems so far away that it gives the false sense of eternity that the young always feel.

  Moses looked out again at the ripe fields, the patches of forests, and the spread-out towns with white, peaceful-looking houses. He thought about how huge the world was. He tried to imagine what the ocean was like, how it would feel to climb the high Swiss mountains, or how the coasts of Africa appeared. In the past few days, his vision of the world had expanded so greatly that, on the one hand, he felt insignificant, and on the other, he felt the fascinating power of soaring in his imagination, regardless of what was happening all around them. His brother, however, seemed overwhelmed by worry and the certainty of constant danger, the anguish of what might happen to Moses, or the fear that their parents would no longer be at the only address they had for them.

  “What will happen if we’re all alone in the world?” Moses asked, not looking at Jacob. He seemed lucidly aware that what they were going through was an agonizing flight from death, not an exciting adventure.

  The question felt like an uppercut to Jacob’s jaw. He wanted his brother to remain unaware of the realities that were more and more unbearable for him. “We’re not alone in the world,” he said. “We’ll find Mother and Father.” His voice was firm as he tried to convince himself of his own words.

  “Don’t lie to me,” Moses whispered. “We’re in a war. I know what that means. I also know our parents will have found out what happened to Aunt Judith, and maybe they went back home. So what will we do if we don’t find them?” His question throbbed with pain. His eyes watered, but Moses willed them not to spill over.

  “We’ll keep looking. We’ll move heaven and earth to find them,” Jacob said, though he could see his answers no longer convinced his brother.

  “For how long? What if we look for them forever and never see them again?” Moses finally began to cry.

  “Well, I’ll always be here. You can’t get rid of me that easily,” Jacob joked.

  “You’re an idiot,” Moses said, punching his shoulder.

  “We’ll work, we’ll get out of France, far away from the Nazis, go somewhere safe . . .”

  Moses looked up. “Is there somewhere safe for us?”

  Again, the child’s question reverberated in his ears. Jacob wondered the same thing. Just over a year ago, anywhere their parents took them seemed like a safe place. But in that moment, everywhere on earth felt dangerous.

  Their stomachs growled. They had not, after all, had any breakfast, and even though they had eaten a huge dinner the night before, they were very hungry. Jacob checked his backpack. They still had a few tins of food and some hard bread. They ate in silence but had hardly begun to digest the food when at the end of the aisle they saw a man dressed in black.

  “The ticket inspector,” Moses whispered, pointing down the aisle. The boys gathered their things quickly and walked in the opposite direction. They went from car to car until they reached the last one.

  “What do we do now?”

  “I’m not sure how much time is left until Lyon,” Jacob said. Right then the trai
n seemed to be going faster than it had the rest of the journey. They looked out at the ground whizzing by as they left the world they had known and catapulted toward an uncertain future.

  “You aren’t thinking about jumping, Jacob.”

  Jacob shrugged. “I can’t think of any other option.”

  Moses saw a ladder that led to the roof, tapped Joseph on the shoulder, and pointed up. “I bet he won’t find us if we stay up there the rest of the journey.”

  “But that’s even more dangerous than jumping off while in motion,” Jacob said. He was not a fan of heights.

  “Come on, we don’t have much time.”

  Jacob started up slowly, suddenly sweaty and feeling the racing beat of his heart. He looked to one side, saw the landscape rushing by, and felt like he was in a free fall. He took a deep breath and kept climbing.

  Moses followed, pushing Jacob with his head to move him along. The inspector could look out at any moment. When they were on the roof of the car, they felt the full blast of the wind and the clickety-clack of the train. They threw themselves down, clinging to the top of the ladder, and waited.

  The inspector came out onto the final platform, glanced around, then returned to the car, the door banging shut behind him.

  “Let’s go back down,” Jacob pleaded. The terror on his face startled Moses.

  “Let’s wait just a little longer,” Moses said. It was not smart to go down too quickly. The inspector could be anywhere.

  “I’ve got to get down,” Jacob said, his face pale and his stomach turning over.

  Jacob descended much faster than he had gone up the ladder and collapsed onto the floor of the platform. Eventually he noticed his brother descending with a smile. “So I found something I’m better at than you!” Moses joked.

  They stayed there on the platform for another hour, waiting for the train to close in on Lyon. Despite the heat, the breeze was cool. As they approached the forested region, the heat was less unbearable than in the plains and marshy areas they had traversed in recent days.

  A sign on a nearby roadway let them know they were not far from Lyon. The train slowed as they entered the city limits, and when the boys spotted the station ahead, they jumped.