Black Radishes

by Susan Lynn Meyer

  “No. It says that they have all withdrawn to the northern part of the country,” Papa answered. “The new French Vichy government, headed by Maréchal Pétain, is in charge here, in the unoccupied zone.”

  “Oh!” Maman pushed the paper away and put her head down in her hands. “But Paris will be occupied.”

  “Of course they want Paris,” Papa exploded, looking at her incredulously. “What did you think?”

  “I thought they might just want to take back Alsace and Lorraine,” said Maman, gesturing toward the regions of France closest to Germany, her voice tremulous. “The Boches always thought Alsace and Lorraine should belong to them.”

  “Well, they did decide to take back Alsace and Lorraine,” Papa said, looking at the map. “But the paper says they aren’t just going to occupy them; they are declaring them part of Germany. It will be terrible for the Jews there.” He sighed and was silent for a while, studying the paper again.

  Tears welled up in Maman’s eyes. “Will people be able to get out of the occupied zone? Do you suppose there is any chance I could reach Geraldine again by telephone?”

  Papa shook his head. “I’m sure that the Germans have cut off the phone connections between the two zones, as well as the mail and the telegraph service. There’s no way to communicate.” He looked at Gustave. “Why don’t you go and play and meet us back at the house later,” he said. “Maman and I need to talk.”

  “Be careful, Gustave,” Maman added.

  Gustave nodded and ran away from the tiny café. Did they really think that he still didn’t understand? Paris was a dangerous place to be now if you were Jewish. So was the whole occupied zone. The Nazis would rule that part of the country, would do whatever they wanted, to innocent people. But he wondered what the demarcation line between the two zones of France looked like. How could the Nazis make a line across a whole country? Would they paint a black line on the ground? Then why couldn’t Jean-Paul’s family or Marcel’s or anyone who was trying to get out just run over the line when no one was looking?

  Francueil was a quiet, empty-seeming little village, a lot like Saint-Georges. Gustave took his slingshot out of his back pocket and flicked a pebble ahead of him, watching it skitter up the road and stop at the top of the hill. He ran to pick it up. Just over the crest of another hill, three boys were kicking a soccer ball around the road. Two of them were about Gustave’s age, and one was several years older. Gustave tucked his slingshot back into his pocket, studied their faces, then walked slowly forward. As he got closer, he heard the word “Boche.” Everyone was talking about the Germans today.

  “They won’t get us,” the tallest boy was saying, exultantly. “We’re on the free side of the line.”

  The ball rolled toward Gustave, and he kicked it back to the boy nearest him, who had a friendly face.

  “Are you new around here?” asked the boy.

  “Yes,” answered Gustave warily.

  But the boy smiled and stretched out his hand. “I’m Henri. That’s Julien”—he indicated the older boy—“and his brother, Luc.”

  Gustave and Henri shook hands. Julien stopped the ball under his right foot and looked at him.

  “Have you seen the line?” Gustave asked them. “Is it on the ground?”

  “Oh, it isn’t a line on the ground,” Henri said, but not as if Gustave were stupid for asking. “My uncle said that in some places, the Boches are putting up barbed wire. In other places, they march along and patrol it. Here, they use the river Cher for the line.”

  “They’re putting up barriers at all the bridges,” Julien explained. “Yesterday, we saw them building one near Saint-Georges. You want to go see?”

  “Sure,” said Gustave.

  They kicked the ball back and forth all the way to the river.

  “Do you go to school in Saint-Georges?” Gustave asked Henri on the way, feeling hopeful. It would be good to know someone friendly who might be in his class in the fall.

  But Henri shook his head. “No, Luc and I both go to boarding school in Lyon. Look, there’s the river.” He picked up the ball and tucked it under his arm. Gathering into a tight group, the boys walked slowly forward.

  At the bridge between Saint-Georges and Chissay, the village across the river, some German soldiers were installing a moving barrier on a post by the side of the road. One of them was painting a recently built shelter. When he smelled the wet paint, Gustave’s feet moved more slowly. Would the Germans be able to tell that he was Jewish? If they could, what would they do? Maybe he should go back to the house. But he wanted to be with the other boys and see what was happening.

  One of the soldiers looked up at the four boys and said something to the man next to him. They went on working. “Cowards,” muttered Julien furiously. Gustave glanced up at Julien’s scowling face. He had the dark shadow of a mustache on his upper lip. Henri murmured in agreement.

  “Be quiet, Julien—they might hear you,” said his younger brother nervously.

  “I just can’t stand them. Those filthy Boches!” said Julien, this time speaking loudly.

  At that, the same soldier lifted his head again. He stood up, picked up his rifle, slung it over his shoulder, and strolled toward the boys, smiling slightly. As he got closer, Gustave could see that he was young, although his head was already nearly bald. He was short and slight, but he strutted as he walked, thrusting his chest out each time he took a step forward, like the rooster that lived behind Gustave’s next-door neighbor’s house.

  “Do you have something to say to us, boys?” the German soldier asked. His French sounded foreign, harsh. Gustave wished he could run away, but his knees felt watery. No one said anything.

  “Who said that word, ‘Boche’?” The soldier wasn’t smiling now. His eyes were cold and blue.

  “I did,” said Julien, stepping forward. He held his head high. He was taller than the German soldier.

  “It is against the law to use that word now,” said the soldier. “You know what we do to French people who say it?”

  Julien didn’t say anything.

  “We shoot them,” said the soldier smoothly.

  He took his rifle down from his shoulder and pointed it at Julien’s chest. Julien’s face turned white. Luc gave a strangled cry. He started forward, but Henri grabbed his shirt and held him back.

  But this is our side of the line! Gustave wanted to shout. You aren’t in charge here! But his throat was choked, and he couldn’t say anything. For a second, he couldn’t swallow, couldn’t breathe.

  “At least, that’s what we do to men,” said the soldier. He was smiling broadly now, enjoying himself. “I guess we wouldn’t do that to a little boy. Which are you?” he asked Julien. “A man or a little boy?”

  Julien’s face flooded with color. “I am sixteen,” he said stiffly.

  “So, you need to tell me,” said the soldier. “If you tell me you are a man, I’ll shoot you. If you say that you are a little boy, I won’t. Which is it?”

  There was a long pause as Julien stared at the soldier. Gustave felt his pulse pounding in his throat. The soldier shifted. Julien dropped his eyes.

  “A boy,” he muttered.

  “I didn’t quite hear that,” said the German. His rifle clicked. “I’ll give you one more chance. If you look at me and shout, ‘I am a little boy,’ I won’t shoot you.”

  Julien looked up. His face was a furious crimson. “I am a little boy!” he shouted. His voice broke, and the last words squeaked out. The soldiers installing the barrier all looked up and laughed.

  “Yes, you are,” said the soldier. “Now you will march here with me for an hour, up and down the bridge.” He reached up, grabbed the back of Julien’s neck, and squeezed, shoving his head down. Julien coughed, choking. The soldier squeezed Julien’s neck again and shook it, his fingers digging into Julien’s flesh. “You will shout out, over and over, ‘This is a German, not a Boche. This is a German, not a Boche.’ ” He glared over at the other boys. “You—stand here
and watch.”

  Julien marched with the soldier and shouted. Each time he came to the end of the bridge, the soldier shoved him to turn him around. Gustave and the others stood helplessly and watched. A streak of heat burned on each of Gustave’s cheeks. How could he and the others let the soldier do that to Julien? His fingers moved to his back pocket. But what good was a slingshot? They were just kids. There was nothing they could do, and the soldier knew it. Gustave stood still and watched as the German had commanded them to, his body tingling with shame.

  “Louder,” said the soldier from time to time, smiling maliciously, glancing first at Julien and then at the younger boys. “Louder, boy.”

  Julien’s eyes were glazed, his face now a dull purple-red. Long before the hour was up, he could no longer shout. His voice was a rasping whisper. The soldier finally let go of his neck, shoved him to the ground, and kicked him, twice. His boots thudded into Julien. Julien groaned. Gustave bit down on the tip of his tongue and clenched his fists. But he stood still, and so did Henri and Luc.

  “Get away from here,” the soldier said in disgust.

  Julien scrambled to his feet. Without looking at anyone, he stumbled away from the bridge and vomited on the side of the road. His younger brother ran after him, crying. Julien turned. “Leave me alone! Just leave me alone!” he croaked.

  Luc continued to run, sobbing, away from the bridge, with Gustave and Henri right behind him. Without turning to say goodbye to Gustave, Henri and Luc ran off toward Francueil.

  Before heading in the other direction, toward Saint-Georges, Gustave looked back. The balding German soldier was strolling over to join his comrades, whistling tunelessly, stopping to pick up stones and skip them into the river. The other soldiers had finished their carpentry while Julien was marching and shouting. The red-and-white-striped barrier rested on posts across the road over the bridge, dividing the two zones of France, its fresh paint gleaming in the morning sun.

  When he got to the house, Gustave grabbed the folded newspaper off the kitchen table and ran upstairs. He snatched up his fountain pen, which was lying on the bureau. He looked at the demarcation line on the map in the newspaper, and he traced it furiously onto his map. It looked alien and ugly, curving up across the familiar shape of France. There was one more thing he had to do. He ran downstairs with his pitcher, pumped water into it in the kitchen, and raced back upstairs. The water sloshed out as he ran, but he didn’t care. He scratched violently at the few bits of red paint left in the paint well and paused, breathing hard.

  He ran his finger softly over the watercolor blue of Paris, where home was, where Marcel and Jean-Paul probably were still.

  “Goodbye, Paris,” he said, his voice hoarse.

  Then he looked at the map in alarm. A dark smear of blood followed his finger, soaking into the paper. Gustave looked at his hand and breathed in sharply with surprise. The keen edge of the paint well had sliced the tip of his finger, and he hadn’t even noticed. Now that he saw the wound, though, it started to throb painfully.

  But he had to finish what he had started. He dripped water onto the last fragments of red and washed paint over the rest of the occupied zone, the watercolor pigment mingling with the dark stain on the map. Now the coast and the northern part of France were red too, just like all those other trampled countries. Blood-red. Gustave let out a gasping sob.

  But the Nazis weren’t supposed to bother people on this side of the line. He reached for the black pen again and wrote in all capital letters, below the line, “ARRETEZ! ARRETEZ!” He shouted the words as he wrote them. STOP! STOP! STOP!

  Gustave jabbed the pen into the paper and traced the demarcation line over and over until the thin map ripped, startling him. It was a stupid map, anyway, almost all the same color. Smeared with red everywhere, it didn’t separate anything from anything. Gustave grabbed it and tore it down from the wall, then ripped it into smaller and smaller pieces, until the floor was covered with the torn-up pieces of Europe.

  12

  Saint-Georges, September 1940

  The night before school started in the fall, Gustave dreamed about Paris. A German soldier with a rifle slung over his shoulder had his hand clamped on Marcel’s neck and was making him march down a long, dark street. When they were about to turn the corner, Marcel looked back at Gustave. In the moonlight, his face was white. Gustave tried to call out, but something choked his throat. He woke up making a strangled cry.

  Gustave’s mouth was too dry to swallow his bread at breakfast that morning. It didn’t make him feel better when Maman sat down and looked earnestly at him across the table. “Remember, don’t tell anyone at school that you’re Jewish,” she told him. “They might guess because of when we came from Paris, yet they may not if you say as little as you can about yourself. Becker is not an obviously Jewish last name.”

  “But can people tell we’re Jewish by the way we look?” Gustave asked.

  “Maybe,” Maman said slowly. “You and Papa both have wavy, dark hair. But so do a lot of French people. No one could be sure you were Jewish just by looking.”

  “And, of course, you’re circumcised—but no one is going to see that, right?” added Papa, smiling. “Just try to be inconspicuous,” he went on. Gustave’s hand was on the table, and Papa patted it. “Don’t let anything bother you—try to get along with everybody so that you don’t stand out.”

  Gustave nodded. But at school, the kids were sure to ask questions. How was he supposed to avoid answering? Gustave reached into his pocket, checking to make certain that Monkey was there. It would be embarrassing if anybody knew how often he carried Monkey around with him, but he didn’t have any other friends in Saint-Georges.

  The principal of Gustave’s new school walked with him to his classroom and spoke in a hushed voice to the teacher, Monsieur Laroche. Monsieur Laroche had white hair and a weary face, but his voice was friendly.

  “I would like you to meet Gustave Becker,” he said to the class. “He comes to us from Paris. Let’s go around the room and introduce ourselves.” Gustave looked out at all the faces, some curious, some bored, as the names went by him in a blur. Then one face, in the back of the classroom, suddenly stood out. It was the pale-eyed boy who had shoved Gustave into the fountain. “Philippe,” the boy said curtly when his turn came.

  Gustave’s heart pounded. Why did that kid have to be in his class? It was going to be hard not to get into any arguments with him around. Philippe’s eyes bored into him. Gustave was glad when Monsieur Laroche handed him a book and pointed him to his desk.

  At recess, a group of children gathered around Gustave.

  “You’re from Paris?” asked a girl. “Why did you come here?”

  Philippe walked by the group and stopped. He pushed his lank, light hair away from his forehead, running his fingers through it. His hair looked greasy. “There are a lot of youpins in Paris, aren’t there?” he called out.

  Gustave’s face burned, and the other kids looked at him curiously. Once, back in Paris, some boys had shouted “Youpin!”—Yid!—at Marcel. One had thrown a rock that cut Marcel’s ear. Gustave didn’t want to let the insulting word for Jews go by. But he wasn’t supposed to let anyone guess that he was a Jew, so how could he defend Jews?

  “Um, yeah,” he said, looking at the ground. “I guess there are.”

  “I know what I’d do if I met a Yid,” said a freckle-faced boy cheerfully. “My cousin met one once, and he baptized him. Problem solved! Not a Yid anymore!”

  “How did he get the holy water?” a girl asked.

  “Oh, you can use any kind,” said the boy. He ran over to a puddle in the corner of the schoolyard, knelt down, and scooped up a handful of water in his cupped hands. “See, like this!” He smashed his clasped hands together and squirted the water at another boy through the space between his thumbs. “I baptize you, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost!”

  The wet boy yelled and knelt down to get a handful of water himself. Soon th
ey were all running around the yard, shouting about the Holy Ghost.

  Was it really true that the water could turn a Jew into a Catholic? Gustave’s heart raced, and his palms felt clammy. What if someone did it to him? It was hard being Jewish, but it was who he was. He didn’t want to become Catholic. The back of his neck felt very bare and exposed to the flying drops of water. Gustave turned and walked away stiffly, trying not to look as if he was hurrying.

  In another part of the schoolyard, some kids were sitting on the ground. Gustave squatted near them, keeping his head down. Two boys and a girl in a blue dress with a white collar were trying to get three large, black beetles to race.

  A little way apart, a girl with light brown curls was prodding at a cluster of beetles with a stick, pushing them into a line.

  “Bring one over and race it with ours, Nicole!” called the girl in the blue dress.

  “No, mine are soldiers,” answered Nicole. She noticed Gustave watching her. “Look!” she said to him. She prodded the line of beetles with her stick. “March!” One of the beetles flew away, but the others moved obediently forward, still in the line. Their shiny backs looked like the boots of the Germans. Gustave’s jaw clenched. He sprang to his feet and stamped, smashing the beetles that didn’t scurry away quickly enough.

  “Hey!” shouted Nicole, jumping up and shoving him. “What are you doing?”

  “They look like the Boches!” Gustave panted.

  “Oh.” Nicole looked at him for a moment with her hands on her hips. “Well, they aren’t. They’re just beetles. Look.” She sat back down and swept the insects together again with a stick.

  She was right, of course. They were just beetles. Gustave sat down on the ground next to Nicole, his ears hot.

  “How do you get them to line up and march?” he asked after a moment.

  “Oh, just poke at them!” said the girl, grinning at him.

  “One time my friend Marcel made a beetle spitball,” said Gustave.

  “Pas possible!” Nicole was scornful. “No way! I don’t believe you. Your friend chewed up a beetle?”