Black Radishes by Susan Lynn Meyer

Author:Susan Lynn Meyer
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 0100-12-31T22:00:00+00:00

17

It was five-forty p.m. on Gustave’s watch and getting dark and bitterly cold when they arrived at the demarcation line. There was a car with a spare tire on its roof up ahead, and several men stood, shivering and stamping their feet, holding bicycles, in the line just in front of them. Papa turned off the engine to wait. Things seemed to be moving very slowly. Gustave watched his father’s fingers gripping the steering wheel. Coming back across the line, Papa always tried to arrive just at the end of the guards’ shift, when they were tired and less likely to be thorough. But arriving at this hour was risky, because it was hard to time it just right. When the day shift ended, at six o’clock, the new guards came on, well rested and in no hurry.

The car with the spare tire moved forward across the line, and two of the soldiers walked over to the men with bicycles. Gustave recognized one of them as the stocky blond soldier who had made them get out of the truck earlier in the day. The blond soldier said something to one of the Frenchmen with bicycles, and the Frenchman unbuttoned his coat and took it off. The blond German shook out the coat, then slowly reached inside all the pockets, turning them inside out. When he had finished examining the coat, the soldier dropped it onto the road. One of the sleeves landed in an icy puddle. The Frenchman leaned down to pick it up. But as he reached for it, the German, grinning, slammed his boot down, hard, on top of the coat, just missing the man’s fingers. The man straightened, shivering, and crossed his arms against his chest.

Gustave looked at Papa. He was watching too, his face grim. After asking a lot of questions, the blond soldier finally moved his boot and kicked the coat toward the Frenchman. The man picked up his coat, hastily brushed it off, squeezed out the wet sleeve, and put it on. He blew on his fingers and buttoned the coat rapidly, then swung his leg over the bicycle and pedaled off. Now there were only two men on bicycles ahead. Another car pulled up behind them and came to a stop.

The soldier Gustave did not recognize walked back toward the truck, and Papa rolled down the window. He was older than the burly, blond German, and he had curly reddish brown hair and a wide, snub-nosed face. Gustave relaxed his hands, suddenly realizing that he had been clenching them in his lap.

“Bonsoir,” said the German, in foreign-sounding French.

“Guten Abend, Herr Offizier,” Papa said in German, smiling politely and handing him the papers. Gustave could understand those words—“Good evening, Officer”—but not the other German words that followed. The snub-nosed soldier chuckled at something and nodded. Then the big, blond soldier, who was still examining the papers of one of the men on bicycles, looked back over his shoulder and shouted something. The soldier by the truck stopped smiling and walked back to the larger man.

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