gendarmes were looking, he took some bread out of his pocket and gave it to the boys. “In the basement you’ll find some fire hoses where you can get fresh water. That’s the door,” he said, pointing to a small opening concealed in the concrete wall at the base of a stairwell.
The three boys descended the stairs and opened the door cautiously, hoping not to rouse suspicion. They closed it behind them and stood groping in the dark until Jacob’s hand moved over the cold, damp wall and found a switch. A dim light flicked on. The bulb was caked with dirt and cast only sparse, dusty light.
It was the first time since they had been forced into the velodrome that they did not feel the suffocating July heat. The bowels of the stadium maintained a low temperature, and it almost felt cool. They walked down a long hall, turning on lights as they went, and came to two hydrants.
Jacob struggled to turn a giant bolt, and water leaked from the hose. Moses grabbed it and started drinking greedily. His thirst slaked, Joseph took a turn, and then Jacob.
The three boys sat on pieces of rubble left over from some past mishap in the building and divided up the bread from the gendarme. It was not much, but it abated their hunger for a moment.
“I think we discovered the best spot in the velodrome!” Joseph said, almost triumphantly.
Jacob looked around. It was a horrible basement, dark and rank, but compared to the inferno above them, it felt like paradise. “This doesn’t change our plans,” he said. “We need to get out of here as soon as possible. You need to find your family, and we’ve got to find Aunt Judith. If it turns out your family is in that other camp, you’d be better off staying with us. When the war is over, I’m sure the Germans will send everybody back home. I’ve heard Hitler wants us all as cheap labor while his soldiers are fighting on the front, but after that, they won’t need us anymore.”
Joseph recovered his serious tone. “I’d rather be with my family, even in an internment camp.”
Jacob could understand. He would travel the world over to be with his parents again, even if it meant being stuck right back in the same horrible situation. He missed them—missed them bitterly—their laughter, their games, just walking along enjoying a pretty afternoon together. A familiar knot started to form in Jacob’s throat. Before Eleazar and Jana had gone into hiding, he had spent eleven years with his parents. And now he had to face something like this alone. What could they do? How would he keep his brother alive? Questions ran through his brain while the two younger boys bantered, as if their situation were not yet truly dire.
“Okay, I get it. If it’s the best solution after all, we’ll take you to the camp at Drancy, wherever that is, but you could also just stay with our aunt.”
“What makes you think she isn’t locked up somewhere too?” Joseph asked.
“My aunt wasn’t registered as a Jew. I already told you, they captured us because the doorwoman started hollering.”
“But you’re wearing the yellow star,” Joseph objected.
“Yes, to be able to go to school and in case they stop us on the street, but we’re registered at a different address. That’s why I think our aunt is probably still free,” Jacob explained.
The three boys sat quietly. Then they heard Moses’s stomach growl, and all burst out laughing.
“What we really need is more food,” Jacob joked, trying to change the subject.
They crept up from the basement as carefully as they had entered and closed the door silently. Night had fallen in the velodrome. They picked their way around the tents. At this hour they saw just a couple police agents smoking off to one side of the stadium, and the boys took advantage of the moment to creep into one of the tents. There they found stacks and stacks of half-opened boxes of food: canned goods, loaves of bread, crates of fruit.
Moses was incensed. “If there’s so much food here, why are they making everybody go hungry?”
“I bet they don’t know how long we’ll be here, so first they want people to eat up whatever they brought with them,” Joseph said.
“Well, we didn’t bring anything. So we’d better stock up,” Jacob said. The boys filled their pockets with food, then crept out of the tent and back to their hideout.