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Authors: Madeleine L'engle

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BOOK: The Moon by Night
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But then, when everybody is relaxed and happy, they hear a terrible crash downstairs. They don't know what it is, and they're terrified, because they're afraid it may be the Nazis come to take them away. The father goes down to investigate, knowing that he may be going to his death, and Anne knows this, too, and it was as though Daddy were going, and I knew he might be shot at any moment. While they're waiting the mother falls to her knees, and her voice is shaking, and she says, very quickly, and it is a terrible cry for help,
I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills
From whence cometh my help.
My help cometh from the Lord
Which made heaven and earth.
He will not suffer thy foot to be moved;
He that keepeth thee will not slumber.
Behold, he that keepth Israel
Shall neither slumber nor sleep.
The Lord is thy keeper;
The Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand.
The sun shall not smite thee by day,
Nor the moon by night.
The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil;
He shall preserve thy soul.
The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in
From this time forth, and even for evermore.
Anne's mother got down on her knees and she said these words, which Mother has said to us so often, which we've said together, which I've said to myself because they hold so much security and comfort. But the Lord
did
n't preserve the Franks from evil. He
must
have slumbered and slept. Because the Nazis found them, they were captured, all of them who had hidden there in the attic for two years; they were sent to a concentration camp, and they died there, all except the father. The mother who had said those words died there. Anne Frank died there. She believed in the goodness of human beings, and I think that she must have believed that God would preserve her going out and her coming in. But He didn't. She died in a concentration camp. Before she had time to live. When she was just beginning.
Usually I cry like anything when a play or a movie is sad. As I said, Suzy doesn't like to sit next to me, I embarrass her so. At Anne Frank I couldn't cry. I was shaken too deep.
Zachary had asked permission to take me out for a soda after the show, so nobody expected us home right away. He took the car and drove to the beach. “Come on, Vic. Let's skip the soda and just sit out on a rock and talk.”
We sat on a rock overlooking the ocean and I started to shiver. “Cold?” he asked.
I nodded. I couldn't explain that I was cold inside and not outside. He took off his jacket and put it over my shoulders. “What about
you
?” I asked.
“I wish everybody'd stop worrying about me. I'm fine. How'd you like the play? Pretty good, wasn't it?” I just nodded, and he said, “Well, didn't you like it? I thought it was terrific.”
It would be rude if I said I wished he'd never taken me to it. I thought, well, if he doesn't understand the way I feel there's no point my ever seeing him again, so I said, “I guess I've lived a kind of sheltered life and all. I mean I knew about concentration camps, but it never hit me before.”
“It's about time you woke up, Victoria,” Zachary said. “Life's been too darned easy for you. It's about time you learned it isn't all peaches and cream.”
“I never thought that.”
“But you've never had to worry about people being cooked down, and made into soap, have you? That's the kind of thing they did to people like Anne Frank. And they made lampshades out of their skins. Don't they teach you anything at school? Haven't you ever read any modern history?”
Now I was having a hard time not crying. I just shook my head and stared out at the darkness of ocean so the tears would stay in my eyes and not overflow. I pressed my knuckles against my lips to try to stop them from trembling.
“You're just like that little dope, Anne Frank,” Zachary said. “All innocent and trusting. Life's going to be
hell
for you when you stop being protected, absolute
hell
.”
I just kept shaking my head.
“You still believe in God, don't you?” he asked. “Look what
he did to your precious Anne Frank. Maybe he'll do something like that to you, someday. Look what he's done to me. I'm probably going to die, and what for? Why?”
I spoke in a very trembly voice, but he didn't even seem to notice. “If you took better care of yourself—”
“Why the hell should I take better care of myself? What for? For the kind of stinking world we're living in? So I'll get blown up by a nuclear bomb? Or die of radiation sickness? No, thanks. I'd rather die of a nice, quiet heart attack. And then nice quiet nothing. No pie in the sky, Vicky. No burning in hell fires either. Just nice, quiet nothing.”
“No!” I shouted. I didn't even try to stop from crying, now. The tears streamed down my cheeks and I hardly noticed.
Zachary shouted back. “What's the point of believing in God when nothing makes any sense? Nothing makes
sense,
Vicky! Anne Frank doesn't make sense and Pop fleecing other people to make his millions doesn't make sense, but it makes about the best kind of sense there is. You're so darned
good,
Vicky, you dope! Don't you know it doesn't make any sense to be good?” I gave a kind of sob, and then his arms went around me and he was kissing me. “Ah, Vicky,” he murmured, “why do I
do
this to you? What makes me
do
it? You're such a
good
kid, why do I want to hurt you?” He held my wet face in his hands. “I only want to hurt people I love, Vicky.” Then he kissed me again.
R
ight after Zachary kissed me again we went back to the car and he drove me home. We didn't talk much, but this time it wasn't a bad silence. You could leave it alone. You didn't have to fill it.
When we got back to the house he took me in. Just before we opened the door he touched my cheek with the back of his hand, but he didn't kiss me again. Then he said, “I won't see you tomorrow, Vicky-O, but we'll do something in a couple of days. I'll call you.”
Uncle Douglas was the only one still up, and he was in his pajamas. He said good-night to Zachary, then took me by the arm and led me out to the balcony. “Sit with me and have a glass of ginger ale. I'll fix it for you.”
How did Uncle Douglas know that I didn't want to go right to bed, that the one thing in the world I wanted was to stay with him for a few minutes? I didn't want to talk, to tell him about
Zachary or getting all upset or anything. I just wanted to be with him. He gave me the ginger ale and sat down, then opened his arms wide. “Come on, sweetheart. You're not too big for Uncle Douglas's lap, are you?”
I wasn't. How did he know I needed it? The white wooden chair was big enough for both of us, and I sat there, my head against his blue and white striped pajamas, hearing the strong thud-thud of his heart against my ear. It was beautiful sitting with Uncle Douglas looking out over the night Pacific. It wasn't only that you could see the ocean and all the lights of the towns along the coastline, but you could see all kinds of airplanes going by overhead, and often you couldn't tell which was a plane and which was a star until you could decide whether or not it was moving.
We just sat there and sat there and the distant rhythmic sound of the ocean and the slow rise and fall of Uncle Douglas's chest began to untense me. At last he said, “Drink up your ginger ale, puddin'. Everybody else is sound asleep and if we want to drive over the border into Mexico tomorrow you've got to get
some
sleep. Did you have a nice time with your young man?”
I tried to keep my voice as quiet as Uncle Douglas's had been. “I'm not sure ‘nice' is the right adjective.”
“What adjective
would
you use?” Uncle Douglas wasn't prying. He never does. He's just interested in words. I thought. There didn't seem to be any one word you could use as an adjective for that evening. Terrifying. Horrible. Glorious. Then I more or less got it, though it wasn't a real adjective. “I guess you might call it a growing-up kind of evening.”
“Aren't trying to grow up too fast, are you?” Uncle Douglas asked.
“Uncle Douglas, I'm re
tard
ed.”
“I've never noticed it.”
“You're just
used
to me. You're just used to having me a little kid. The way it's sort of hard for me to realize we can't treat Rob like a baby any more. We have to let him grow up. I have to grow up, too.”
“Of course you do, Vicky. But it's something that takes time. And it's a process that never ends. It isn't a point you attain so you can say,
Hooray, I'm grown up.
Some people never grow up. And nobody ever finishes growing. Or shouldn't. If you stop you might as well quit. What I have to tell you, Vicky sweet, is that it never gets any easier. It goes right on being rough forever. But nothing that's easy is worth anything. You ought to have learned that by now. What happens as you keep on growing is that all of a sudden you realize that it's more exciting and beautiful than scarey and awful.”
I reached up to his chin, forgetting that he'd shaved off his beard a couple of months before he and Aunt Elena got married. His chin felt scratchy and sort of comforting. “
Why
did you shave off your beard?” I asked. I was beginning to get sleepy.
“Mostly for Elena's sake. Also when I first had my beard it was all right for an artist to have a beard because nobody else did. But now all kinds of people have beards. It isn't anything special any more.”
“You mean like beatniks and everything.”
“Yes. People who think things come easy in this life. People who sit around and wait for inspiration to descend upon them from the blue. Who think they can create with genius alone. Instead of with a background of work harder than any laborer's.
Am I philosophizing you to sleep, Vicky? That's my intention.” I nodded. “Then go on to bed, sweetheart. It's getting late and you want to have fun tomorrow.”
I didn't sleep well. I kept having dreams and waking up and not remembering what I'd dreamed. I just waked up because the dream had scared me awake, and then my conscious mind swatted at the dream and it went away before I could catch on to what it was and what had frightened me.
In the morning I had a headache and I felt the way you do when you're coming down with 'flu but I knew I wasn't. I decided maybe you got chills and fever with growing up as well as with 'flu. I tried to act as though nothing were wrong, but everybody noticed I wasn't talking as much as usual. But since I'd been acting more or less that way off and on for about a year they just left me alone, except for Maggy, who kept asking me what was wrong with me, until finally I had to snap at her.
When we went to bed that night Daddy put his hand against my cheek, and then he took my temperature, but I didn't have any.
I went to bed and tossed. And
why?
What did I have to be unhappy about? Nothing had happened to
me
. But that didn't seem to matter. That
any
body could be betrayed and killed by her own fellow men, like Anne Frank. That
any
body could die. Maybe somebody I knew. Maybe Zachary. That Zachary could say the things he did and feel the way he did. That he could feel that there wasn't any sense to anything, and make me feel that way, too. That he could maybe be going to die, feeling that way. I'd never known a kid to die. I knew it happened, but I'd never come close to it. I didn't want to come close to it. I didn't want to be involved in Zachary's dying, or in Anne Frank's death.
And I felt
guilty
. Can you understand that? I felt guilty because I wasn't fifteen yet and nothing had happened to me, while all over the world, in Asia and Africa and places, people my age had already had more than a lifetime's worth of suffering and horror. A woman right in Utah could be so desperate that she tried to give her baby away. And I wasn't doing anything about it at all. I was just going on a camping trip and letting it happen.
The next day everybody spent down at the beach, except Uncle Douglas, Aunt Elena and me. Daddy told me to stay home, sit around and take it easy. Aunt Elena said she had to practice. Uncle Douglas said he wanted to paint. After the others had put on their bathing suits and gone down to the beach Aunt Elena sat at the piano and worked on finger exercises, the same thing over and over again. When someone can play the way Aunt Elena does you never think about hours and hours on finger exercises.
Uncle Douglas came into the room where I was lying on the bed, not reading or anything, just lying there. Vicky's moping again, Suzy would say. “How about letting me do a few sketches of you, Vicky? Come on into the studio.”
I sat with my arms on the back of a chair and my head down on my arms and Uncle Douglas began sketching me. I don't know how long it was with me just sitting and Uncle Douglas working before he said, “What's up, Vicky?”
I shrugged. When I shrug it infuriates the family, but Uncle Douglas doesn't get enough of it to have it bother him. We don't see him that often, and when we do I'm usually at my best instead of my worst. This was his first real dose of what I suppose you'd call my worst.
He asked, very gently, “Want to tell me about it, Vic?”
“I want to,” I said. “But I don't think I can.”
“Try.”
“If I try it'll just sound dopey. I mean, I know everybody thinks it's something that happened with Zachary. But it isn't that. It's sort of everything. Uncle Douglas,
why
did Anne Frank have to die?”
“Because the Nazis put her in a concentration camp,” he answered in a reasonable way.
“But it wasn't
right
.”
“No. It was terribly wrong. But it happened.”
“But it wasn't
fair!
”
Uncle Douglas just nodded slowly, as though to himself, and went on sketching me. Finally he said, “It's a bit of a shock, isn't it, when you realize that things aren't fair in life? It comes particularly hard to you, Vicky, because your parents are eminently fair. It comes hard because of your grandfather. But it was your grandfather who once recited a little poem to me. Want to hear it?”
“Sure,” I said without much enthusiasm. I expected something religious and
comforting,
and the whole point was that the
comforting
things were what
scared
me most, because Zachary was right; they didn't make sense.
“The rain is raining all around,”
Uncle Douglas quoted,
“It rains on both the just and the unjust fellow.
But more, it seems on the just than on the unjust,
For the unjust hath the just's umbrella.
All I'm trying to get at, Vicky, is that life isn't fair, and your grandfather, who is one of the greatest human beings I've ever known, is quite aware of it. He doesn't have anything to do with pie in the sky.” (Pie in the sky again. It almost sounded as though Uncle Douglas could read people's minds.) “Your grandfather knows that the wicked flourish and the innocent suffer. But it doesn't destroy him, Vicky. He still believes, with a wonderful and certain calm, that God is our kind and loving father.”
“But how can he!” I cried. “If God lets things be unfair, if He lets things like Anne Frank happen, then I don't love Him, I hate Him!”
Uncle Douglas didn't look shocked. He just looked thoughtful. “Tilt your head a little to the right, Vicky. That's better. Hold it.” Then he said, “I guess you know I'm the heathen of the family.”
“You're not a heathen.”
“Thanks, dear. Happily your grandfather doesn't think so, either. Nor that I'm a heretic, bless him, though I have some pretty unorthodox ideas. I get mad at God, too, Vicky. I've gone out alone and bellowed in rage at God at the top of my lungs. But the fact that I bellow at him I suppose proves that I think he's there, doesn't it? Go ahead and be mad at God if you feel like it, Vicky. I happen to agree with your Grandfather that the greatest sin against God is indifference. But remember when you're yelling at God, what you're doing is saying,
Do it MY way, God, not YOUR way, MY way.
”
“How can things like Anne Frank be God's way? I don't want God if things like that are His way. It's a cockeyed kind of way. Look at Maggy. Both her mother and father died and she was too
young
. And the most cockeyed part of it is that she's probably
turned out a much nicer kid than if they
hadn't
died the way she was being brought up and everything. Does
that
make sense? It's
crazy
. What kind of a God does things like that!”
“Do you mind if I give you a little lecture?” Uncle Douglas asked. “Your mother says that you've been very resistant to parental preaching lately. Do you mind a little avuncular philosophy?”
“Go ahead,” I said stiffly.
“As I told you, sweetheart, I'm the heathen of the family. This is nothing to be proud of. It's just a fact we have to face. But if you go on the assumption—and I do—that man has freedom of choice, then you have to assume responsibility for your own actions. You can't go on passing the buck to God.” I must have looked blank, because Uncle Douglas wriggled his eyebrows. “How can I explain it to you? Look, Vicky, you remember your bike accident, don't you?”
“How could I forget it?”
“Why did you have the accident? Because you exercised freedom of choice to do something you knew perfectly well you oughtn't to do. When you went on the back road in the dark you did wrong and you knew you were doing wrong, and when you were in the hospital afterwards you didn't whine around saying,
Why did God do this to me?
You accepted the responsibility for your own actions.”
“But Anne Frank didn't do anything wrong. She didn't do anything to put her in a concentration camp.”
“When you had your bike accident do you think you were the only one who suffered? Everyone in your family was hurt. And what you had done was not so terribly wrong, after all. But
when the Germans set up concentration camps that was a very big wrong, and certainly many millions of people suffered because of it. Man exercised the freedom of choice to do wrong, and innocent people paid for it, but I don't think you can go around blaming God for it.”
“He could have stopped it,” I said stubbornly.
BOOK: The Moon by Night
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