Skating with the Statue of Liberty (3 page)

3

“
C
olored?” Gustave sounded out the English word.

“What does that mean?”

Monsieur Benoit cleared his throat. “The Americans have separate toilets for ‘whites' and ‘coloreds.' ”

“Which are we?”

“We're…In America, Jews are considered ‘white.' You should use the other toilets. ‘Colored' is what the Americans call Africans. Or ‘Negro'—I believe that's the more polite word.”

“Why are there different toilets?”

“It's just the custom here, in the South. On one of my trips here before the war, someone told me about it,” Monsieur Benoit said. “You won't see it farther north, when you're in New York.”

“But…”

Papa flipped the timetable shut. “Gustave, we need to hurry! The train leaves in twenty minutes. Help bring
the bags in and see if you and Jean-Paul can find the right toilets.”

The men's room off the waiting room was heated and larger than the one outside the building. As Gustave waited for Jean-Paul, he washed his hands with soap, studying the brilliant white basins and shiny mirrors gleaming under bright lights. It was a lot cleaner than the bad-smelling room where he had been a few minutes ago.

When the boys left the men's room, the grand, high-ceilinged train station lobby was filled with echoing sound. It had gotten crowded and was now full of soldiers wearing khaki-colored military uniforms. He felt a surge of panic. They're American soldiers, Gustave told himself, as he and Jean-Paul hurried across the vast room to join their parents and they all went down the stairs to the track. They're on our side. But his breath came fast.

The train was packed. Sweating in their winter coats, squeezing their bags between the full seats, they made their way to the back of the train. Finally, they came to a car with a few empty seats and watched as the other French passengers ahead of them stowed their bags and sat down.

Papa and Monsieur Benoit took two seats together, and Aunt Geraldine and Maman sat in the two behind them. The seats across the aisle were empty. Gustave heaved the suitcase he was carrying onto the luggage rack.

Jean-Paul pushed ahead. “I call the window seat!” he said. “Want to play cards?” He pulled a deck out of the small bag by his feet.

“Me play!” Giselle whined, wiggling down from Aunt
Geraldine's lap and crawling over Maman so that she could squeeze in between the boys.

“You're too little,” said Jean-Paul.

Giselle climbed onto Jean-Paul's lap and grabbed at the cards, knocking some to the floor.

“Giselle!” Jean-Paul cried out.

“Maman!” Gustave said, nudging his mother across the aisle. “Tell Aunt Geraldine that Giselle is annoying us!”

Maman groaned. “Can't you boys tell her a story? Then maybe she'll go to sleep. She's cranky because she's tired.”

“No way. Not me. You do it, Gustave.”

“She's
your
sister.”

“Forget it.”

Aunt Geraldine was already asleep in the corner, leaning against the window, her head tilted back and her mouth slightly open. Gustave looked reluctantly at Giselle, who was sucking her curled index finger. She was a decent sort of kid when she was in a good mood, but she was being aggravating right now, and he couldn't think of any fairy tales. Then he grinned, remembering the way Marcel had once narrated “The Three Little Pigs” for a skit at Boy Scouts.

“Once there were three stupid little pigs and a very smart, hungry wolf,” Gustave started. “But one of the pigs wasn't
quite
as dumb as the others.”

Giselle took her finger out of her mouth and looked at him with big, dark eyes.
“Les maisons?”

“Yep, you know this story? They made houses.”

By the time he had gotten to the part of the story where the wolf tries to blow down the brick house, Giselle had fallen asleep. Gustave finished the story out loud anyway, murmuring it to himself. He wasn't going to stop before telling the best part—the part where the wolf slides down the chimney, lands in the boiling water, screams his way back up the chimney, and runs away forever. Giselle's curly head was heavy, warm, and damp on his arm. Gustave shoved her upright several times, trying to get her to lean on Jean-Paul instead, but she kept flopping back against him, and finally he let her stay there. Across the aisle, Maman's eyes were closed. Jean-Paul seemed to have fallen asleep too, with his head leaning against the rain-spattered window. Gustave let his head fall back on the seat, listening to the wheels of the train, the chuff of the engine, and the intermittent, lonesome wail of the whistle.

In the darkness, behind his closed eyes, Gustave could be almost anywhere. His mind drifted along with the rhythm of the train wheels. Gradually, the wheels started to sound like the ticking of the clock in their old apartment in Paris, where they had lived before the war. In his mind, Gustave could see the way the sunlight fell across the wooden floor. It was Sunday morning, and he was running with Marcel and Jean-Paul down the steps of the apartment building and over to the bakery at the corner. For a moment, Gustave could almost smell fresh French bread, could feel it, warm and crusty, in his hand.

He pulled himself awake, focusing his eyes on the cold American night outside and the rain running down
the train window. He wouldn't think about Paris again. That world was gone. Misery twisted inside him. The Nazis were in Paris now, their soldiers on the streets in ugly green uniforms, their banners draped arrogantly over French buildings. Although Gustave and his parents had fled Paris just before the Germans came, he had seen photos in the newspaper. Sometimes Jean-Paul talked about what it had been like, but he usually wouldn't say much.

Gustave pushed his memories of Paris away fiercely. If he wanted to think about France, he might as well think about the tiny village of Saint-Georges-sur-Cher, where he and his parents had been living until recently. Things were better there because, unlike Paris, it wasn't in the part of France occupied by the Germans. But even in Unoccupied France, the Germans still told the French leaders what to do.

Gustave should look to the future, his parents said. Think about America, about the good new life they would have here.

A-me-ri-ca
, the train wheels started to sing in his ears.
A-me-ri-ca, A-me-ri-ca
. Gustave remembered the way the American flag had looked, waving in the deep blue sky over the train station. The darkness behind his eyes closed in from all sides, and he drifted into sleep.

Gustave's head snapped forward, waking him, as the train stopped with a jolt.

“Where are we?” murmured Maman's voice. “Not Philadelphia already?”

“It must be a checkpoint,” Papa said.

“A border?” asked Aunt Geraldine nervously. “They're going to check our papers again?”

“Oh, no. No borders—it's all one big country,” said Monsieur Benoit. “There must be some mechanical problem with the train.”

Jean-Paul was awake too, rubbing his eyes. Giselle still flopped, heavily asleep, against Gustave's side. Beyond the French voices, Gustave heard the Americans talking, sounding indignant at this unplanned stop. In the blackness outside the window, he could see only that they were at a small, dimly lit station.

The door at the front of the train car opened, letting in a gust of cold air. The conductor stepped in, and behind him came two men with stern faces, one tall and broad-shouldered, the other much more slightly built. All conversation ceased abruptly.

“Who is Mister Ben-oyt? Mister Arn-owd Ben-oyt?” the bigger of the two men demanded.

The man's accent was so strange that it took Gustave a moment to realize that he was saying Monsieur Benoit's name. A chill ran over him as the conductor pointed toward the French passengers.

Monsieur Benoit stood up slowly and stepped past Papa into the aisle. Both men walked toward him. The bigger one said something and gestured. Monsieur Benoit held his arms out to his sides. The man examined the flaps of his coat, then patted his hands over Monsieur Benoit's chest and arms and even down his legs.

The burly man straightened, his face red, and barked
something again. Monsieur Benoit reached up and took down his bags from the rack over the seat. The man examined their exteriors, rubbed at their metal corners, then shook his head and handed them to the thinner man behind him.

The front door of the car opened again. Two railway men staggered in, carrying Monsieur Benoit's trunk.

“Ah!” The burly man squeezed past the thin man and strode toward it. He leaned over.

“Arn-owd Ben-oyt!” he read out, pointing at the label on the trunk. “Yours?” he demanded.

“Yes.” Monsieur Benoit spoke the English words quietly. “I am Arnaud Benoit.”

Huffing, the big man leaned down and scratched at one of the corners of the trunk. The dark paint flaked off. Gustave gasped. Even from his seat, he could see the soft gleam of the trunk's corner.

“Gold!” the thinner man said triumphantly. “There it is!”

Gustave's heart thudded. Were they all going to be searched?

The man with the big belly unclasped something from his waist and held it out toward Monsieur Benoit. Light glinted on dull metal. The elderly jeweler held his arms out, and the handcuffs clanked shut around his wrists. He stumbled slightly as the big man pushed him to the side and strode toward the other French passengers, shouting.

They looked at one another, bewildered. Monsieur Benoit turned around. His face was pale, his hands were shackled awkwardly in front of him, and Gustave saw
sweat on his forehead below the brim of his hat. His voice was shaky but still courteous as he translated the command.

“These gentlemen are from the government, from the FBI. They say that all foreign passengers must get out their papers and bags for inspection. One row at a time. Starting here.”