Black Radishes by Susan Lynn Meyer Read Free Book Online Page A

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