The Nightingale (25 page)

It embarrassed Isabelle that he felt the need to say this to her, and in front of everyone. “Of course.”

“And if you get caught,” Anouk said, “it will be as a
woman
. You understand? They have special … unpleasantries for us.”

Isabelle swallowed hard. She had thought—briefly—of imprisonment and execution. This was something she had never even considered. Of course she should have.

“What we all demand of each other—or, hope for, at any rate—is two days.”

“Two days?”

“If you are captured and … questioned. Try to say nothing for two days. That gives us time to disappear.”

“Two days,” Isabelle said. “That's not so long.”

“You are so young,” Anouk said, frowning.

*   *   *

In the past six days, Isabelle had left Paris four times. She'd delivered packages in Amboise, Blois, and Lyon. She'd spent more time in train stations than in her father's apartment—an arrangement that suited them both. As long as she stood in food queues during the day and returned home before the curfew, her father didn't care what she did. Now, though, she was back in Paris and ready to move forward with the next phase of her plan.

“You are not reopening the bookshop.”

Isabelle stared at her father. He stood near the blacked-out window. In the pale light, the apartment looked shabbily grand, decorated as it was with ornate antiques collected over the generations. Good paintings in heavy gilt frames graced the walls (some were missing, and black shadows hung on the wall in their place; probably Papa had sold them), and if the black-out shades could be lifted, a breathtaking view of the Eiffel Tower lay just beyond their balcony.

“You told me to get a job,” she said stubbornly. The paper-wrapped package in her handbag gave her a new strength with her father. Besides, he was already half drunk. In no time, he'd be sprawled in the bergère in the salon, whimpering in his sleep. When she was a girl, those sad sounds he made in his sleep had made her long to comfort him. No more.

“I meant a
paid
job,” he said dryly. He poured himself another snifter of brandy.

“Why don't you just use a soup bowl?” she said.

He ignored that. “I won't have it. That's all. You will not open the bookshop.”

“I have already done it. Today. I was there cleaning all afternoon.”

He seemed to go still. His bushy gray eyebrows raised into his lined brow. “You cleaned?”

“I cleaned,” she said. “I know it surprises you, Papa, but I am not twelve years old.” She moved toward him. “I am doing this, Papa. I have decided. It will allow me time to queue up for food and a chance to make some small bit of money. The Germans will buy books from me. I promise you that.”

“You'll flirt with them?” he said.

She felt the sting of his judgment. “Says the man who works for them.”

He stared at her.

She stared at him.

“Fine,” he said at last. “You'll do what you will. But the storeroom in back. That's mine.
Mine,
Isabelle. I will lock it up and take the key and you will respect my wishes by staying out of that room.”

“Why?”

“It doesn't matter why.”

“Do you have assignations with women there? On the sofa?”

He shook his head. “You are a foolish girl. Thank God your maman did not live to see who you have become.”

Isabelle hated how deeply that hurt her. “Or you, Papa,” she said. “Or you.”

 

SEVENTEEN

In mid-June of 1941, on the second-to-the-last school day of the term, Vianne was at the blackboard, conjugating a verb, when she heard the now-familiar
putt-putt-putt
of a German motorcycle.

“Soldiers again,” Gilles Fournier said bitterly. The boy was always angry lately, and who could blame him? The Nazis had seized his family's butcher shop and given it to a collaborator.

“Stay here,” she said to her students, and went out into the hallway. In walked two men—a Gestapo officer in a long black coat and the local gendarme, Paul, who had gained weight since his collaboration with the Nazis. His stomach strained at his belt. How many times had she seen him strolling down rue Victor Hugo, carrying more food than his family could eat, while she stood in a lengthy queue, clutching a ration card that would provide too little?

Vianne moved toward them, her hands clasped tightly at her waist. She felt self-conscious in her threadbare dress, with its frayed collar and cuffs, and although she had carefully drawn a brown seam line up the back of her bare calves, it was obvious that it was a ruse. She had no stockings on, and that made her feel strangely vulnerable to these men. On either side of the hallway, classroom doors opened and teachers stepped out to see what the officers wanted. They made eye contact with one another but no one spoke.

The Gestapo agent walked determinedly toward Monsieur Paretsky's classroom at the end of the building. Fat Paul struggled to keep up, huffing along behind him.

Moments later, Monsieur Paretsky was dragged out of his classroom by the French policeman.

Vianne frowned as they passed her. Old man Paretsky—who had taught her sums a lifetime ago and whose wife tended to the school's flowers—gave her a terrified look. “Paul?” Vianne said sharply. “What is happening?”

The policeman stopped. “He is accused of something.”

“I did nothing wrong!” Paretsky cried, trying to pull free of Paul's grasp.

The Gestapo agent noticed the commotion and perked up. He came at Vianne fast, heels clicking on the floor. She felt a shiver of fear at the glint in his eyes. “Madame. What is your reason for stopping us?”

“H-he is a friend of mine.”

“Really,” he said, drawing length from the word, making it a question. “So you know that he is distributing anti-German propaganda.”

“It's a
news
paper,” Paretsky said. “I'm just telling the French people the truth. Vianne! Tell them!”

Vianne felt attention turn to her.

“Your name?” the Gestapo demanded, opening a notebook and taking out a pencil.

She wet her lips nervously. “Vianne Mauriac.”

He wrote it down. “And you work with M'sieur Paretsky, distributing flyers?”

“No!” she cried out. “He is a
teaching
colleague, sir. I know nothing about anything else.”

The Gestapo closed the notebook. “Has no one told you that it is best to ask no questions?”

“I didn't mean to,” she said, her throat dry.

He gave a slow smile. It frightened her, disarmed her, that smile; enough so that it took her a minute to register his next words.

“You are terminated, Madame.”

Her heart seemed to stop. “E-excuse me?”

“I speak of your employment as a teacher. You are terminated. Go home, Madame, and do not return. These students do not need an example such as you.”

*   *   *

At the end of the day, Vianne walked home with her daughter and even remembered now and then to answer one of Sophie's nonstop questions, but all the while she was thinking:
What now?

What now?

The stalls and shops were closed this time of day, their bins and cases empty. There were signs everywhere saying
NO EGGS, NO BUTTER, NO OIL, NO LEMONS, NO SHOES, NO THREAD, NO PAPER BAGS
.

She had been frugal with the money Antoine left for her. More than frugal—miserly—even though it had seemed like so much money in the beginning. She had used it for necessities only—wood, electricity, gas, food. But still it was gone. How would she and Sophie survive without her salary from teaching?

At home, she moved in a daze. She made a pot of cabbage soup and loaded it up with shredded carrots that were soft as noodles. As soon as the meal was finished, she did laundry, and when it was hanging out on the line, she darned socks until night fell. Too early, she shuffled a whiny, complaining Sophie off to bed.

Alone (and feeling it like a knife pressed to her throat), she sat down at the dining table with an official postcard and a fountain pen.

Dearest Antoine,

We are out of money and I have lost my job.

What am I to do? Winter is only months away.

She lifted the pen from the paper. The blue words seemed to expand against the white paper.

Out of money.

What kind of woman was she to even think of sending a letter like this to her prisoner-of-war husband?

She balled up the postcard and threw it into the cold, soot-caked fireplace, where it lay all alone, a white ball on a bed of gray ash.

No.

It couldn't be in the house. What if Sophie found it, read it? She retrieved it from the ashes and carried it out to the backyard, where she threw it into the pergola. The chickens would trample and peck it to death.

Outside, she sat down in Antoine's favorite chair, feeling dazed by the suddenness of her changed circumstances and this new and terrible fear. If only she could do it all over again. She'd spend even less money … she'd go without more … she'd let them take Monsieur Paretsky without a word.

Behind her, the door creaked open and clicked shut.

Footsteps. Breathing.

She should get up and leave, but she was too tired to move.

Beck came up behind her.

“Would you care for a glass of wine? It's a Chateau Margaux '28. A very good year, apparently.”

Wine. She wanted to say yes, please (perhaps she'd never needed a glass more), but she couldn't do it. Neither could she say no, so she said nothing.

She heard the
thunk
of a cork being freed, and then the gurgle of wine being poured. He set a full glass on the table beside her. The sweet, rich scent was intoxicating.

He poured himself a glass and sat down in the chair beside her. “I am leaving,” he said after a long silence.

She turned to him.

“Do not look so eager. It is only for a while. A few weeks. I have not been home in two years.” He took a drink. “My wife may be sitting in our garden right now, wondering who will return to her. I am not the man who left, alas. I have seen things…” He paused. “This war, it is not as I expected. And things change in an absence this long, do you not agree?”

“
Oui,
” she said. She had often thought the same thing.

In the silence between them, she heard a frog croak and the leaves fluttering in a jasmine-scented breeze above their heads. A nightingale sang a sad and lonely song.

“You do not seem yourself, Madame,” he said. “If you do not mind me saying so.”

“I was fired from my teaching position today.” It was the first time she'd said the words aloud and they caused hot tears to glaze her eyes. “I … drew attention to myself.”

“A dangerous thing to do.”

“The money my husband left is gone. I am unemployed. And winter will soon be upon us. How am I to survive? To feed Sophie and keep her warm?” She turned to look at him.

Their gazes came together. She wanted to look away but couldn't.

He placed the wineglass in her hand, forced her fingers to coil around it. His touch felt hot against her cold hands, made her shiver. She remembered his office suddenly—and all that food stacked within it. “It is just wine,” he said again, and the scent of it, of black cherries and dark rich earth and a hint of lavender, wafted up to her nose, reminding her of the life she'd had before, the nights she and Antoine had sat out here, drinking wine.

She took a sip and gasped; she'd forgotten this simple pleasure.

“You are beautiful, Madame,” he said, his voice as sweet and rich as the wine. “Perhaps it has been too long since you heard that.”

Vianne got to her feet so fast she knocked into the table and spilled the wine. “You should not say such things, Herr Captain.”

“No,” he said, rising to his feet. He stood in front of her, his breath scented by red wine and spearmint gum. “I should not.”

“Please,” she said, unable even to finish the sentence.

“Your daughter will not starve this winter, Madame,” he said. Softly, as if it were their secret accord. “That is one thing you can be sure of.”

God help Vianne, it relieved her. She mumbled something—she wasn't even sure what—and went back into the house, where she climbed into bed with Sophie, but it was a long time before she slept.

*   *   *

The bookshop had once been a gathering place for poets and writers and novelists and academics. Isabelle's best childhood memories took place in these musty rooms. While Papa had worked in the back room on his printing press, Maman had read Isabelle stories and fables and made up plays for them to act out. They had been happy here, for a time, before Maman took sick and Papa started drinking.

There's my Iz, come sit on Papa's lap while I write your maman a poem.

Or maybe she had imagined that memory, constructed it from the threads of her own need and wrapped it tightly around her shoulders. She didn't know anymore.

Now it was Germans who crowded into the shadowy nooks and crannies.

In the six weeks since Isabelle had reopened the shop, word had apparently spread among the soldiers that a pretty French girl could be found often at the shop's counter.

They arrived in a stream, dressed in their spotless uniforms, their voices loud as they jostled one another. Isabelle flirted with them mercilessly but made sure never to leave the shop until it was empty. And she always left by the back door, wearing a charcoal cloak with the hood drawn up, even in the heat of summer. The soldiers might be jovial and smiling—boys, really, who talked of pretty
fräuleins
back home and bought French classics by “acceptable” authors for their families—but she never forgot that they were the enemy.