The Nightingale (21 page)

“That's not true.”

“Isn't it? Go to Paris. Have your fun but don't for one minute forget that you are abandoning your niece and me.” Vianne crossed her arms and glanced back at the man in her yard who was supervising the looting of her house. “With him.”

 

FOURTEEN

April 27, 1995

The Oregon Coast

I am trussed up like a chicken for roasting. I know these modern seat belts are a good thing, but they make me feel claustrophobic. I belong to a generation that didn't expect to be protected from every danger.

I remember what it used to be like, back in the days when one was required to make smart choices. We knew the risks and took them anyway. I remember driving too fast in my old Chevrolet, my foot pressed hard on the gas, smoking a cigarette and listening to Price sing “Lawdy, Miss Clawdy” through small black speakers while children rolled around in the backseat like bowling pins.

My son is afraid that I will make a break for it, I suppose, and it is a reasonable fear. In the past month, my entire life has been turned upside down. There is a
SOLD
sign in my front yard and I am leaving home.

“It's a pretty driveway, don't you think?” my son says. It's what he does; he fills space with words, and he chooses them carefully. It is what makes him a good surgeon. Precision.

“Yes.”

He turns into the parking lot. Like the driveway, it is lined in flowering trees. Tiny white blossoms drop to the ground like bits of lace on a dressmaker's floor, stark against the black asphalt.

I fumble with my seat belt as we park. My hands do not obey my will these days. It frustrates me so much that I curse out loud.

“I'll do that,” my son says, reaching sideways to unhook my seat belt.

He is out of the automobile and at my door before I have even retrieved my handbag.

The door opens. He takes me by the hand and helps me out of the car. In the short distance between the parking lot and the entrance, I have to stop twice to catch my breath.

“The trees are so pretty this time of year,” he says as we walk together across the parking lot.

“Yes.” They are flowering plum trees, gorgeous and pink, but I think suddenly of chestnut trees in bloom along the Champs Élysées.

My son tightens his hold on my hand. It is a reminder that he understands the pain of leaving a home that has been my sanctuary for nearly fifty years. But now it is time to look ahead, not behind.

To the Ocean Crest Retirement Community and Nursing Home.

To be fair, it doesn't look like a bad place, a little industrial maybe, with its rigidly upright windows and perfectly maintained patch of grass out front and the American flag flying above the door. It is a long, low building. Built in the seventies, I'd guess, back when just about everything was ugly. There are two wings that reach out from a central courtyard, where I imagine old people sit in wheelchairs with their faces turned to the sun, waiting. Thank God, I am not housed in the east side of the building—the nursing home wing. Not yet anyway. I can still manage my own life, thank you very much, and my own apartment.

Julien opens the door for me, and I go inside. The first thing I see is a large reception area decorated to look like the hospitality desk of a seaside hotel, complete with a fishing net full of shells hung on the wall. I imagine that at Christmas they hang ornaments from the netting and stockings from the edge of the desk. There are probably sparkly
HO-HO-HO
signs tacked up to the wall on the day after Thanksgiving.

“Come on, Mom.”

Oh, right. Mustn't dawdle.

The place smells of what? Tapioca pudding and chicken noodle soup.

Soft foods.

Somehow I keep going. If there's one thing I never do, it's stop.

“Here we are,” my son says, opening the door to room 317A.

It's nice, honestly. A small, one-bedroom apartment. The kitchen is tucked into the corner by the door and from it one can look out over a Formica counter and see a dining table with four chairs and the living room, where a coffee table and sofa and two chairs are gathered around a gas fireplace.

The TV in the corner is brand new, with a built-in VCR player. Someone—my son, probably, has stacked a bunch of my favorite movies in the bookcase.
Jean de Florette, Breathless, Gone with the Wind
.

I see my things: an afghan I knitted thrown over the sofa's back; my books in the bookcase. In the bedroom, which is of a fine size, the nightstand on my side of the bed is lined with prescription pill containers, a little jungle of plastic orange cylinders. My side of the bed. It's funny, but some things don't change after the death of a spouse, and that's one of them. The left side of the bed is mine even though I am alone in it. At the foot of the bed is my trunk, just as I have requested.

“You could still change your mind,” he says quietly. “Come home with me.”

“We've talked about this, Julien. Your life is too busy. You needn't worry about me 24/7.”

“Do you think I will worry less when you are here?”

I look at him, loving this child of mine and knowing my death will devastate him. I don't want him to watch me die by degrees. I don't want that for his daughters, either. I know what it is like; some images, once seen, can never be forgotten. I want them to remember me as I am, not as I will be when the cancer has had its way.

He leads me into the small living room and gets me settled on the couch. While I wait, he pours us some wine and then sits beside me.

I am thinking of how it will feel when he leaves, and I am sure the same thought occupies his mind. With a sigh, he reaches into his briefcase and pulls out a stack of envelopes. The sigh is in place of words, a breath of transition. In it, I hear that moment where I go from one life to another. In this new, pared-down version of my life, I am to be cared for by my son instead of vice versa. It's not really comfortable for either of us. “I've paid this month's bills. These are things I don't know what to do with. Junk, mostly, I think.”

I take the stack of letters from him and shuffle through them. A “personalized” letter from the Special Olympics committee … a free estimate awning offer … a notice from my dentist that it has been six months since my last appointment.

A letter from Paris.

There are red markings on it, as if the post office has shuffled it around from place to place, or delivered it incorrectly.

“Mom?” Julien says. He is so observant. He misses nothing. “What is that?”

When he reaches for the envelope, I mean to hold on to it, keep it from him, but my fingers don't obey my will. My heartbeat is going all which-a-way.

Julien opens the envelope, extracts an ecru card. An invitation. “It's in French,” he says. “Something about the Croix de Guerre. So it's about World War Two? Is this for Dad?”

Of course. Men always think war is about them.

“And there's something handwritten in the corner. What is it?”

Guerre.
The word expands around me, unfolds its black crow wings, becoming so big I cannot look away. Against my will, I take up the invitation. It is to a
passeurs'
reunion in Paris.

They want me to attend.

How can I possibly go without remembering all of it—the terrible things I have done, the secret I kept, the man I killed … and the one I should have?

“Mom? What's a
passeur
?”

I can hardly find enough voice to say, “It's someone who helped people in the war.”

 

FIFTEEN

Asking yourself a question, that's how resistance begins.

And then ask that very question to someone else.

—
R
EMCO
C
AMPERT

May 1941

France

On the Monday Isabelle left for Paris, Vianne kept busy. She washed clothes and hung them out to dry; she weeded her garden and gathered a few early-ripening vegetables. At the end of a long day, she treated herself to a bath and washed her hair. She was drying it with a towel when she heard a knock at the door. Startled by an unexpected guest, she buttoned her bodice as she went to the door. Water dripped onto her shoulders.

When she opened the door, she found Captain Beck standing there, dressed in his field uniform, dust peppering his face. “Herr Captain,” she said, pushing the wet hair away from her face.

“Madame,” he said. “A colleague and I went fishing today. I have brought you what we caught.”

“Fresh fish? How lovely. I will fry it up for you.”

“For us, Madame. You and me and Sophie.”

Vianne couldn't look away from either Beck or the fish in his hands. She knew without a doubt that Isabelle wouldn't accept this gift. Just as she knew that her friends and neighbors would claim to turn it down. Food. From the enemy. It was a matter of pride to turn it down. Everyone knew that.

“I have neither stolen nor demanded it. No Frenchman has more of a right to it than I. There can be no dishonor in your taking it.”

He was right. This was a fish from local waters. He had not confiscated it. Even as she reached for the fish, she felt the weight of rationalization settle heavily upon her.

“You rarely do us the honor of eating with us.”

“It is different now,” he said. “With your sister away.”

Vianne backed into the house to allow him entry. As always, he removed his hat as soon as he stepped inside, and clomped across the wooden floor to his room. Vianne didn't notice until she heard the click-shut of his door that she was still standing there, holding a dead fish wrapped in a recent edition of the
Pariser Zeitung,
the German newspaper printed in Paris.

She returned to the kitchen. When she laid the paper-wrapped fish out on the butcher block, she saw that he'd already cleaned the fish, even going so far as to shave off the scales. She lit the gas stove and put a cast-iron pan over the heat, adding a precious spoonful of oil to the pan. While cubes of potato browned and onion carmelized, she seasoned the fish with salt and pepper and set it aside. In no time, tantalizing aromas filled the house, and Sophie came running into the kitchen, skidding to a stop in the empty space where the breakfast table used to be.

“Fish,” she said with reverence.

Vianne used her spoon to create a well within the vegetables and put the fish in the middle to fry. Tiny bits of grease popped up; the skin sizzled and turned crisp. At the very end, she placed a few preserved lemons in the pan, watching them melt over everything.

“Go tell Captain Beck that supper is ready.”

“He is eating with us? Tante Isabelle would have something to say about that. Before she left, she told me to never look him in the eye and to try not to be in the same room with him.”

Vianne sighed. The ghost of her sister lingered. “He brought us the fish, Sophie, and he lives here.”

“
Oui,
Maman. I know that. Still, she said—”

“Go call the captain for supper. Isabelle is gone, and with her, her extreme worries. Now, go.”

Vianne returned to the stove. Moments later, she carried out a heavy ceramic tray bearing the fried fish surrounded by the pan-roasted vegetables and preserved lemons, all of it enhanced with fresh parsley. The tangy, lemony sauce in the bottom of the pan, swimming with crusty brown bits, could have benefited from butter, but still it smelled heavenly. She carried it into the dining room and found Sophie already seated, with Captain Beck beside her.

In Antoine's chair.

Vianne missed a step.

Beck rose politely and moved quickly to pull out her chair. She paused only slightly as he took the platter from her.

“This looks most becoming,” he said in a hearty voice. Once again, his French was not quite right.

Vianne sat down and scooted in to her place at the table. Before she could think of what to say, Beck was pouring her wine.

“A lovely '37 Montrachet,” he said.

Vianne knew what Isabelle would say to that.

Beck sat across from her. Sophie sat to her left. She was talking about something that had happened at school today. When she paused, Beck said something about fishing and Sophie laughed, and Vianne felt Isabelle's absence as keenly as she'd previously felt her presence.

Stay away from Beck.

Vianne heard the warning as clearly as if it had been spoken aloud beside her. She knew that in this one thing her sister was right. Vianne couldn't forget the list, after all, and the firings, or the sight of Beck seated at his desk with crates of food at his feet and a painting of the Führer behind him.

“… my wife quite despaired of my skill with a net after that…” he was saying, smiling.

Sophie laughed. “My papa fell into the river one time when we were fishing, remember, Maman? He said the fish was so big it pulled him in, right, Maman?”

Vianne blinked slowly. It took her a moment to notice that the conversation had circled back to include her.

It felt … odd to say the least. In all their past meals with Beck at the table, conversation had been rare. Who could speak surrounded by Isabelle's obvious anger?

It is different now, with your sister away.

Vianne understood what he meant. The tension in the house—at this table—was gone now.

What other changes would her absence bring?

Stay away from Beck
.

How was Vianne to do that? And when was the last time she'd eaten a meal this good … or heard Sophie laugh?

*   *   *

The Gare de Lyon was full of German soldiers when Isabelle disembarked from the train carriage. She wrestled her bicycle out with her; it wasn't easy with her valise banging into her thighs the whole time and impatient Parisians shoving at her. She had dreamed of coming back here for months.