This Light Between Us: A Novel of World War II

Alex doesn’t answer. Keeps walking.

“The gall they had, coming in like that! Making it look like they’re doing us a favor.” Seven strides later: “Alex, you hear me?”

Alex gives a quick nod of his head.

“And that Kuroki guy. What a patronizing piece of work. He was so full of himself.”

“I thought he was all right.”

Frank flings his head at Alex. “Really? Guy’s a total sellout. He’s lucky to get out of here alive, let me tell you. Heard some guys talking. They were thinking of beating the crap out of him. But he took off. What a coward.”

Alex can hardly believe his ears. “We’re talking about the same guy here? Sergeant Kuroki? The guy who shot down Nazis. Twenty-five combat missions? Him a coward?”

“If he had any self-respect at all, he wouldn’t be here. Wouldn’t allow himself to be paraded about like a little puppy. Would refuse to be their puppet. I get that he’s military and you need to obey orders. But heck, at some point you’ve got to draw the line somewhere. Have a little self-respect, for God’s sake.”

Alex stays quiet.

They pass a barrack. From inside, the sounds of a newborn baby screaming, a couple bickering, parents yelling at children. An elderly man, despite the cold, sits outside on the steps to the door. Doesn’t even look up as they walk past.

“Even so,” Frank says, “there will be some idiots who’ll still enlist. And that’s stupid. That’s foolish. They’ll think it’s patriotic. But it’s not. It’s being gullible. And they won’t realize this until it’s too late, until they’re lying on the battlefield, their guts oozing out of them, and finally thinking, Oh boy, I’m an idiot, America’s just used me as cannon fodder, and America doesn’t care, America won’t even remember me.”

He stares at Alex, eyes wet. “But real Americans won’t do it. Real Americans will show their patriotism the principled way. By protesting. By calling America to account. Exactly what I’ve been doing here at camp. And what I’ll keep on doing.” He drapes his arm around Alex’s shoulders. “I’m so glad you’ve got better sense than all them military idiots, Alex.”

“I don’t know, Frank.”

A slight break in his stride. “What d’ya mean?”

“Did you hear that lieutenant? Enlisting might help Father get released from Crystal City.”

Frank waves his arm dismissively. “Nah, that man’s full of crap. He’ll say anything to get us to sign up.”

Alex shrugs off Frank’s arm from his shoulder. “But what if he’s right, Frank? What if it’ll help Father get released?”

Frank is silent, his jaw set hard.

“And with Father reunited with Mother, she’ll return to her normal self,” Alex continues. “Everything will be back to the way it was—”

“Things will never be back the way they were,” Frank spits out.

Alex looks at Frank. “We’re his family. His sons. We’ve got to do whatever it takes to bring him here.”

Frank turns with a suddenness and a quickness. “Is this your way of being a hero, little bro? Your way of saving Father? Because I’ve got news for you: it’ll do squat.”

Alex keeps his eyes on the ground. “Yeah, well, at least I’d be doing something! Instead of wasting away in here—”

“I am doing something. I’m standing up to wrong. I’m protesting—”

“Which is doing nothing for Father! Or Mother!” Alex glares at Frank. “You used to care, Frank. About Father. You wrote a release petition even though you hate writing. You went after FBI agents, slammed your fists on their car. What happened, Frank?”

“I do still care! But it’s all noise, Alex, don’t you get that? Stupid release petitions, hitting FBI cars, and now enlisting? None of it makes a damn difference! It’s all just shaking fists at the sky. This country’s too big and we’re too small.”

“What, and doing stupid protests, that’s supposed to help Father? Shouting into the wind when no one outside cares or even sees—how the hell does that help Father?” He’s furious now. “Listen. If it’s me who has to enlist to help Father, then I’ll do it.”

Frank is silent, his face closing in on itself. When he finally speaks it is with a quiet, seething anger.

“I hate to be the one to break it to you, but you’ll die out there. You’re not cut out for war, plain and simple, baby brother. Get your head out of the clouds, out of your little fantasy world where you’re some imaginary tough guy, okay?”

The words slide in, silent as razors, cutting deep. Because it’s true. Alex won’t survive war. He’s a weakling afraid of violence. A bookish kid who couldn’t even boil a frog, who gets light-headed at the sight of blood. He won’t make it out there on a battlefield.

Frank isn’t done speaking. “And you think you’ll be helping Father? The opposite—news of your death will break his heart, he’ll literally have a heart attack out there in Texas. Because he’s got everything riding on you, his favored son.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, you’re his—”

“No, you don’t be ridiculous. I know what my future holds. I’m a farmer at best. But you, you’re his brainy son, his future dentist son, his retirement pension. So you dying for a country that spits on us—that will kill Father. And Mother. If you enlist you’ve just about shot them yourself.”

There are about a thousand red-hot words Alex wants to yell back. But he doesn’t. He swallows them down, the words like mangled paperclips cutting bloody trails down his throat. Because deep down Alex knows Frank is right. America has spit on him. Why should he put his life on the line for it? Why should he do as asked? He thinks of that incident years ago in front of the hardware store. Father being mocked by kids, then told by the policeman to move along. And Father kowtowing with a stupid grin, doing as told.

Alex enlisting would be just that. Kowtowing with a stupid gullible grin, doing as told.

He says none of this to Frank. The two brothers walk the rest of the way in a tense silence.

39

MARCH 18, 1943

In the early morning, Alex walks into the office of the Manzanar Free Press. The smell of printer ink and glue floats faint in the air. He turns on the lights, starts sweeping. He glances over at the in-box shelf where all the latest magazines and newspapers are stacked. It’s empty. News from Europe has slowed to a trickle.

He’s putting away the broom when he sees a magazine opened on Ray Takeda’s desk. It’s unusual for Takeda’s desk to be anything but immaculate, the stationery placed in its stands, fountain pen ink containers tightly capped and wiped clean, and notebooks aligned perfectly flush against the edges of the desk. An opened magazine on Ray Takeda’s desk is unusual, and Alex, curiosity piqued, glances down.

The New Republic, December 21, 1942, issue. He reads the title. “The Massacre of the Jews,” by Varian Fry.

He picks it up. The pages tremble in his hands like the leaves of a shaken branch.

Two minutes later he drops the magazine. His mouth has turned to chalk.

The door opens. “Morning, Alex,” Ray Takeda greets him. A pause as he observes the dropped magazine. “Alex.” He takes a step toward him. “I was going to let you know.”

A scrim of vomit burns his throat. Slaughterhouse, starvation pens, extermination centers. He cannot fathom these places. He cannot associate them with humans.

Of the 340,000 Jews of France, more than 65,000 have been deported.

That was back in December. It’s now almost April. How many more have been deported since then?

“Alex? Sit down. You look like you’re about to faint.”

Alex swipes aside Ray Takeda’s arm. He stumbles across the floor, picking up the magazine, and walks out. The cold air, it should sting away the nausea. But at the next barrack he upchucks.

He gets off his knee. Stumbles along. Dark barracks drift by like ghost ships on a cold dark sea. He is chased by words (purged, Judenrein), by numbers (nearly two million already slain), by phrases (there is burning alive … asphyxiation by carbon monoxide … starvation … embolism…), by a horror he cannot outpace; it chases him down. The good old-fashioned system of standing the victims up, very often naked, and machine gunning them, preferably beside the graves they themselves have been forced to dig. It saves time, labor, and transportation …

He needs Frank. Frank to comfort him, put his arm around him. Or Mother. Father. But he realizes the only person he wants to talk to about Charlie Lévy is … Charlie Lévy herself. But she’s not here. She’s over there, across the globe, unreachable.

Slaughterhouse, starvation pens, extermination centers.

He walks. Through funnels of windblown dust, through mud-sloshed grounds. He never stops moving, as if to do so would allow dark thoughts to catch up and devour him.

Nearly two million already slain.

He goes without breakfast, walking past the long lines. Lunch, too. He keeps walking, welcoming the pain that shoots up his aching legs, the cold that seeps into his bones, the thirst and hunger that consumes him whole and raw. Anything to drive out the thoughts, the words.