The Nightingale (57 page)

Americans.

Isabelle's knees gave out. “Mich … e … line,” she whispered, her voice as broken as her spirit. “We … made … it.”

*   *   *

That spring, the war began to end. General Eisenhower broadcast a demand for the German surrender. Americans crossed the Rhine and went into Germany; the Allies won one battle after another and began to liberate the camps. Hitler was living in a bunker.

And still, Isabelle didn't come home.

Vianne let the letter box clang shut. “It's as if she disappeared.”

Antoine said nothing. For weeks they had been searching for Isabelle. Vianne stood in queues for hours to make telephone calls and sent countless letters to agencies and hospitals. Last week they visited more displaced-person camps, but to no avail. There was no record of Isabelle Rossignol anywhere. It was as if she had disappeared from the face of the earth—along with hundreds of thousands of others.

Maybe Isabelle had survived the camps, only to be shot a day before the Allies arrived. Supposedly in one of the camps, a place called Bergen-Belsen, the Allies had found heaps of still-warm bodies at liberation.

Why?

So they wouldn't talk.

“Come with me,” Antoine said, taking her by the hand. She no longer stiffened at his touch, or flinched, but she couldn't seem to relax into it, either. In the months since Antoine's return, they were playacting at love and both of them knew it. He said he didn't make love to her because of the baby, and she agreed that it was for the best, but they knew.

“I have a surprise for you,” he said, leading her into the backyard.

The sky was a bright cerulean beneath which the yew tree provided a patch of cool brown shade. In the pergola, the few chickens that were left pecked at the dirt, clucking and flapping.

An old bedsheet had been stretched between a branch of the yew tree and an iron hat rack that Antoine must have found in the barn. He led her to one of the chairs set on the stone patio. In the years of his absence, the moss and grass had begun to overtake this part of the yard, so her chair sat unsteadily on the uneven surface. She sat down carefully; she was unwieldy these days. The smile her husband gave her was both dazzling in its joy and startling in its intimacy. “The kids and I have been working on this all day. It's for you.”

The kids and I.

Antoine took his place in front of the sagging sheet and lifted his good arm in a sweeping gesture. “Ladies and gentlemen, children and scrawny rabbits and chickens who smell like shit—”

Behind the curtain, Daniel giggled and Sophie shushed him.

“In the rich tradition of Madelaine in Paris, which was Mademoiselle Mauriac's first starring role, I give you the Le Jardin singers.” With a flourish, he unsnapped one side of the sheet-curtain and swept it aside to reveal a wooden platform set upon the grass at a not-quite-level slant. On it, Sophie stood beside Daniel. Both wore blankets as capes, with a sprig of apple blossoms at the throat and crowns made of some shiny metal, onto which they had glued pretty rocks and bits of colored glass.

“Hi, Maman!” Daniel said, waving furiously.

“Shhh,” Sophie said to him. “Remember?”

Daniel nodded seriously.

They turned carefully—the plank floor teetered beneath them—and held hands, facing Vianne.

Antoine brought a silver harmonica to his mouth and let out a mournful note. It hung in the air for a long time, vibrating in invitation, and then he started to play.

Sophie began to sing in a high, pure voice. “
Frère Jacques, Frère Jacques…”

She squatted down and Daniel popped up, singing, “
Dormez-vous? Dormez-vous?
”

Vianne clamped her hand over her mouth but not before a little laughter slipped out.

Onstage, the song went on. She could see how happy Sophie was to do this once-ordinary thing, this little performance for her parents, and how hard Daniel was concentrating to do his part well.

It felt both profoundly magical and beautifully ordinary. A moment from the life they'd had before.

Vianne felt joy open up inside of her.

We're going to be all right,
she thought, looking at Antoine. In the shade cast by the tree her great-grandfather had planted, with their children's voices in the air, she saw her other half, thought again:
We're going to be all right.

“…
ding
 …
dang
 …
dong
…”

When the song ended, Vianne clapped wildly. The children bowed majestically. Daniel tripped on his bedspread cape and tumbled to the grass and came up laughing. Vianne waddled to the stage and smothered her children with kisses and compliments.

“What a lovely idea,” she said to Sophie, her eyes shining with love and pride.

“I was concentrating, Maman,” Daniel said proudly.

Vianne couldn't let them go. This future she'd glimpsed filled her soul with joy.

“I planned with Papa,” Sophie said. “Just like before, Maman.”

“I planned it, too,” Daniel said, puffing out his little chest.

She laughed. “How
grand
you both were at singing. And—”

“Vianne?” Antoine said from behind her.

She couldn't look away from Daniel's smile. “How long did it take you to learn your part?”

“Maman,” Sophie said quietly. “Someone is here.”

Vianne turned to look behind her.

Antoine was standing near the back door with two men; both wore threadbare black suits and black berets. One carried a tattered briefcase.

“Sophie, take care of your brother for a minute,” Antoine said to the children. “We have something to discuss with these men.” He moved in beside Vianne, placing a hand at the small of her back, helping her to her feet, urging her forward. They filed into the house in a silent line.

When the door closed behind them, the men turned to face Vianne.

“I am Nathaniel Lerner,” said the older of the two men. He had gray hair and skin the color of tea-stained linen. Age spots discolored large patches of his cheeks.

“And I am Phillipe Horowitz,” said the other man. “We are from the OSE.”

“Why are you here?” Vianne asked.

“We are here for Ari de Champlain,” Phillipe said in a gentle voice. “He has relatives in America—Boston, in fact—and they have contacted us.”

Vianne might have collapsed if Antoine had not held her steady.

“We understand you rescued nineteen Jewish children all by yourself. And with German officers billeted in your home. That's impressive, Madame.”

“Heroic,” Nathaniel added.

Antoine placed his hand on her shoulder and at that, his touch, she realized how long she'd been silent. “Rachel was my best friend,” she said quietly. “I tried to help her sneak into the Free Zone before the deportation, but…”

“Her daughter was killed,” Lerner said.

“How do you know that?”

“It is our job to collect stories and to reunite families,” he answered. “We have spoken to several women who were in Auschwitz with Rachel. Sadly, she lived less than a month there. Her husband, Marc, was killed in Stalag 13A. He was not as lucky as your husband.”

Vianne said nothing. She knew the men were giving her time and she both appreciated and hated it. She didn't want to accept any of this. “Daniel—
Ari
—was born a week before Marc left for the war. He has no memory of either of his parents. It was the safest way—to let him believe he was my son.”

“But he is not your son, Madame.” Lerner's voice was gentle but the words were like the lash of a whip.

“I promised Rachel I would keep him safe,” she said.

“And you have. But now it is time for Ari to return to his family. To his people.”

“He won't understand,” she said.

“Perhaps not,” Lerner said. “Still.”

Vianne looked at Antoine for help. “We love him. He's part of our family. He should stay with us. You want him to stay, don't you, Antoine?”

Her husband nodded solemnly.

She turned to the men. “We could adopt him, raise him as our own. But Jewish, of course. We will tell him who he is and take him to synagogue and—”

“Madame,” Lerner said with a sigh.

Phillipe approached Vianne, took her hands in his. “We know you love him and he loves you. We know that Ari is too young to understand and that he will cry and miss you—perhaps for years.”

“But you want to take him anyway.”

“You look at the heartbreak of one boy. I am here because of the heartbreak of my people. You understand?” His face sagged, his mouth curved into a small frown. “Millions of Jews were killed in this war, Madame.
Millions.
” He let that sink in. “An entire generation is gone. We need to band together now, those few of us who are left; we need to rebuild. One boy with no memory of who he was may seem a small thing to lose, but to us, he is the future. We cannot let you raise him in a religion that is not yours and take him to synagogue when you remember. Ari needs to be who he is, and to be with his people. Surely his mother would want that.”

Vianne thought of the people she'd seen at the Hôtel Lutetia, those walking skeletons with their haunted eyes, and the endless wall of photographs.

Millions had been killed.

A generation lost.

How could she keep Ari from his people, his family? She would fight to the death for either of her children, but there was no opponent for her to fight, just loss on both sides.

“Who is taking him?” she said, not caring that her voice cracked on the question.

“His mother's first cousin. She has an eleven-year-old girl and a six-year-old son. They will love Ari as their own.”

Vianne couldn't find the strength even to nod, or wipe the tears from her eyes. “Maybe they will send me pictures?”

Phillipe gazed at her. “He will need to forget you, Madame, to start a new life.”

How keenly Vianne knew the truth of that. “When will you take him?”

“Now,” Lerner said.

Now.

“We cannot change this?” Antoine asked.

“No, M'sieur,” Phillipe said. “It is the right thing for Ari to return to his people. He is one of the lucky ones—he still has family living.”

Vianne felt Antoine take her hand in his. He led her to the stairs, tugging more than once to keep her moving. She climbed the wooden steps on legs that felt leaden and unresponsive.

In her son's bedroom (no, not her son's) she moved like a sleepwalker, picking up his few clothes and gathering his belongings. A threadbare stuffed monkey whose eyes had been loved off, a piece of petrified wood he'd found by the river last summer, and the quilt Vianne had made from scraps of clothes he'd outgrown. On its back, she'd embroidered “To Our Daniel, love Maman, Papa, and Sophie.”

She remembered when he'd first read it and said, “Is Papa coming back?” and she'd nodded and told him that families had a way of finding their way home.

“I don't want to lose him. I can't…”

Antoine held her close and let her cry. When she'd finally stilled, he murmured, “You're strong,” against her ear. “We have to be. We love him, but he's not ours.”

She was so tired of being strong. How many losses could she bear?

“You want me to tell him?” Antoine asked.

She wanted him to do it, wanted it more than anything, but this was a mother's job.

With shaking hands, she stuffed Daniel's—Ari's—belongings into a ragged canvas rucksack, and then walked out of the room, realizing a second too late that she'd left Antoine behind. It took everything she had to keep breathing, keep moving. She opened the door to her bedroom and burrowed through her armoire until she found a small framed photograph of herself and Rachel. It was the only picture she had of Rachel. It had been taken ten or twelve years ago. She wrote their names on the back and then shoved it into the pocket of the rucksack and left the room. Ignoring the men downstairs, she went out to the backyard, where the children—still in capes and crowns—were playing on the makeshift stage.

The three men followed her.

Sophie looked at all of them. “Maman?”

Daniel laughed. How long would she remember exactly that sound? Not long enough. She knew that now. Memories—even the best of them—faded.

“Daniel?” She had to clear her throat and try again. “Daniel? Could you come here?”

“What's wrong, Maman?” Sophie said. “You look like you've been crying.”

She moved forward, clutching the rucksack to her side. “Daniel?”

He grinned up at her. “You want us to sing it again, Maman?” he asked, righting the crown as it slipped to one side of his head.

“Can you come here, Daniel?” she asked it twice, just to be sure. She was afraid too much of this was happening in her head.

He padded toward her, yanking his cape sideways so he didn't trip over it.

She knelt in the grass and took his hands in hers. “There's no way to make you understand this.” Her voice caught. “In time, I would have told you everything. When you were older. We would have gone to your old house, even. But time's up, Captain Dan.”

He frowned. “What do you mean?”

“You know how much we love you,” she said.

“
Oui,
Maman,” Daniel said.

“We love you, Daniel, and we have from the moment you came into our lives, but you belonged to another family first. You had another maman and another papa, and they loved you, too.”

Daniel frowned. “I had another maman?”

Behind her, Sophie said, “Oh, no…”

“Her name was Rachel de Champlain, and she loved you with all her heart. And your papa was a brave man named Marc. I wish I could be the one to tell you their stories, but I can't”—she dashed tears from her eyes—“because your maman's cousin loves you, too, and she wants you to come live with them in America, where people have plenty to eat and lots of toys to play with.”