Nightingale (12 page)

Harfner smiled at him. “You’re welcome.” He slowly rose from his position.

With a start, Yves realized it was dark outside, and he hadn’t blacked out the windows. He stood and pulled the heavy curtains closed, hoping that Harfner would take the hint and leave.

He could feel his presence in the flat, pensive, maybe, waiting for something, but Yves stood facing the curtains and kept a handful of the heavy material in one hand.

Finally, Harfner moved, his nailed boots stepping away, then toward the door. Yves closed his eyes, didn’t dare to hope, but then heard the door close. He unfroze, moved with stiff limbs around the flat to cover the rest of the windows, shutting out a darkened, silent Paris. He returned to the living room, gathered up the cups, and carried them into the kitchen.

Just then, the air sirens began to howl.

Yves froze, and if he’d thought he’d been scared with Harfner in the room, this was real fear. He left the kitchen and grabbed his heavy coat, while Paris around him howled like all demons of hell, the swelling sound an assault on every scrap of music he’d ever dreamed up.

He reached for his keys, but they weren’t there. Where . . . ? He patted his pockets, trousers, coat; rushed back into the bedroom and came up empty. Hadn’t he dropped them somewhere in the bedroom when he’d come in? He fell to his knees, reached under the bed. Maybe they’d slipped from the nightstand.

The light flickered out.

Yves stretched further, heart racing, swept across the carpet, then remembered he might have dropped the keys on the bed and ran his hands across the duvet, then pulled it back, checking the mattress. His fingers touched something cool and hard. Keys!

He snatched them and turned, found his way blind to the door again when the air siren’s howl diminished, or maybe his ears were getting used to the deafening noise. He opened the door, locked it behind himself, and carefully made his way down the dark staircase. Somewhere, a baby cried, and he heard shouting on the street.

He had to reach the shelter, which was dug out in the garden of a neighboring house, as the Germans reserved the Métro stations for their own use. He opened the door to the street and paused. The sky over the river was tinged with red, like a distant furnace, and he heard airplanes. People were on the street; there was some kind of commotion up ahead, dark shapes moving against the reddish gloom. He smelled fire, maybe gas. Stone dust.

Somebody ran toward him. An odd whistling sound froze him again, as he fully expected the bomb to fall right onto his head for a moment of perfect understanding—it was so clear, so inevitable, that he wasn’t even afraid of it. Much like accepting a thunderstorm he couldn’t escape.

Somebody shouldered heavily into him and hauled him back into the entrance of the door. The uniform. It was Harfner. He hadn’t made it to the Métro station. “The door. Go inside!” the man shouted at him in German, and Yves managed to get the keys out of his pocket, found the right one immediately, slipped it into the lock.

Just then, an explosion shook the whole road, houses and everything, and all sound ceased. Yves’s ears popped, and he heard nothing, the numbness of sound all-pervading. A strong body pushed him back into the house, up the stairs.

Stumbling, coughing dust, they somehow managed to clamber back up toward Yves’s flat. Yves got the door open, despite his shaking hands. He thought maybe the German was shouting at him, but he heard nothing. He didn’t see anything either—the demonic glow of whatever was burning across the river didn’t make it through the heavy curtains. But he remembered to stay away from windows, which made the most protected room in the house the bedroom.

Not that anything would save them if his building was hit. His flat was high up, so at least a direct hit would make it quick. He marveled at the thought and simply obeyed when Harfner pulled the covers and duvet off his bed and wrapped them both up.

Somehow, they’d ended up close together, bound by Yves’s bedclothes in a corner of the room, in pitch darkness, Harfner’s arm around him. Yves realized he was shaking and couldn’t seem to stop. He felt the smooth vibration of Harfner’s voice in his chest, felt his hands move up and down his arms, then a touch of Harfner’s head to his. Yves grabbed his hands, gloved against the cold, at least until Harfner took them off and slid them over Yves’ cold hands in the dark, then pulled the duvet closer around him as if physically shielding Yves against a bomb and splinters even he couldn’t stop.

His ears hurt, but slowly, his sense of hearing returned enough that he could make out the swell of sirens and the dull thump of distant bombs. Every time, he shrank into nothing, until all that was left of him was a racing heart and frozen terror.

“Shhh,” Harfner said, rubbing his arms as if to warm him. It worked, too, though the strong, warm body and the rough cloth of his uniform, trapped with him under the duvet, created more warmth than the gentle friction against his arms.

“I can’t . . . I can’t . . .”

Harfner pulled him closer with an arm around his shoulder until Yves rested very nearly on top of him. Right now, nothing mattered; they were both animals trapped in a storm. Yves half-turned and pressed his face into the uniform jacket; if he could have crawled into Harfner then and there, he would have. It seemed the only escape against the bombs and explosions and sirens.

It went on and on until Yves was convinced there couldn’t be anything left of Paris. Harfner kept holding him in his arms, and he wasn’t shaking, didn’t cry out in fear, just patiently held him as if worried Yves might grow so scared he’d bolt and run straight back into danger.

Eventually, the fear exhausted him, and he found an odd acceptance of the situation somewhere deep in his soul. Nothing could avert a falling bomb; nothing could truly shield or protect him. No prayers, no promises to be a better man or lighting a candle in a church. No amount of negotiation or begging.

The ensuing silence was nearly as oppressive as the noise, and Yves listened breathlessly into the night. He heard voices down on the street. Wailing, maybe, screaming.

Harfner shifted underneath him, then carefully ran his fingers through Yves’s hair. “It’s done,” he said. “Finished.”

Yves nodded, numb inside and out, nearly unwilling to give up the position he’d been in, pressed against the soldier’s strong body. But when Harfner straightened his legs, so did Yves, and then Harfner pushed back the duvet. It was cold outside, even colder than before. Likely, the windows had blown out, but it seemed like a small price for survival.

Harfner stood and touched his hand. “Do you . . . light?”

“I have candles in the kitchen.” Yves stood and took Harfner’s hand, leading them both out. Eventually, he found the drawer with candles and matches, and managed to light one. The darkness receded like a startled, wild animal. Harfner looked pale in the golden light, and one side of his face was bloodied.

“You’re injured.”

Harfner touched his face, where the blood had run from a cut along his cheekbone, painting the lower part of his face in a savage display. “Yes. Stone.” He gesticulated, seemingly frustrated at an unknown word.

Yves found a clean towel, wet it, and offered it to Harfner. The man carefully daubed at the cut. A little fresh blood seeped out of the cut when it was disturbed, but this was a scratch and nothing more. “Better?”

“Yes. You’ll live,” Yves said, and caught himself smiling.

Harfner flashed another grin. They might not have much to talk about, but the understanding was clearly mutual, about their first meeting, and maybe that they both attracted danger, just faced it differently. Yves wished he’d have even a fraction of Harfner’s courage under fire.

“Thank you for coming back,” Yves said softly.

Harfner frowned, then nodded. “It’s no problem.”

Not quite what he meant, but Yves knew what lay beyond those unwieldy words. He must have left slowly, or maybe hesitated, and then broken into a full run back at the sound of the first siren. What for? To make sure Yves was safe. Harfner could have reached a shelter, any shelter, and nobody would have dared deny him. Instead, he’d returned to take care of Yves.

Maybe there was something more about this soldier than Yves had thought. He was so used to being afraid, maybe that had become a habit.

Harfner pushed the cuff of his uniform from his watch and frowned. “It’s late.”

Yves had no idea what time it was, but curfew was likely well in effect. He couldn’t imagine that Harfner would be punished, not when he’d needed to take shelter. But part of him feared the sirens would sound off again, and then he’d surely go insane from fear. He was too shaken to trust himself to be alone now, needed, above all, any form of human company.

“You can stay.” At the puzzled look, he added. “Here. You can stay here.”

Harfner hesitated, then nodded.

Yves breathed deeply. “I’d offer the couch, but that’s not practical. My bed is large enough for two.”

Harfner was very still now, and Yves assumed that meant he knew the meaning of those words. “Thank you.”

Yves nodded, took a candle, and went into the bedroom. He set the candle down on a puddle of its own wax on the nightstand, then gathered the duvet from the floor and spread it back over the bed. For extra warmth, he pulled a couple of woolen blankets from the bottom of the wardrobe and spread them over the duvet.

Harfner sat down on the bed, pulled off his boots, and then stood, took off his belt and pistol, then opened a few buttons on his tunic. He didn’t undress beyond that, and Yves merely took off his shoes. They seemed to have an agreement with this, and Yves breathed easier.

They settled in at opposite ends of the bed, and Yves pulled the duvet over them both. He blew out the candle and shivered in the cold—but it was good to not be alone after something so horrifying.

He lay on his back, staring at the dark ceiling. He felt the mattress shift under Harfner’s weight, and was completely awake again. Maybe because of what had just happened, maybe because he so rarely shared his bed with anybody, maybe because of the cold. Or maybe simply because he’d slept so long into the day.

Harfner turned again, now facing him. Yves looked at the shape in the darkness.

He didn’t shrink away when Harfner reached out, slid his arm under his neck, and pulled him closer, not tight, but close enough to be comfortable and mostly warm. Again, his face was against Harfner’s chest, feeling him breathe, feeling the strong heartbeat, steady enough to lull him to sleep. He nudged in a bit further, and Harfner lay back, Yves resting on his chest, arm across his belly.

Harfner’s hand lay open on his shoulder blade, just heavy enough to be reassuring rather than oppressive. And wasn’t that word a joke in this situation? Yves placed a flat hand under his cheek when the uniform cloth seemed too rough, and once he felt no coarse seam dig into his face, he relaxed almost despite himself.

Caught with love.

Chapter 18

Of course, the next morning brought its own problems. Yves awoke, started at having a second person in his bed, and only then realized he didn’t smell like Heinrich. Didn’t, in fact, feel anything like Heinrich.

Although it was bitter cold outside the blanket, he pushed out and stood. Shivering, he found his shoes and put them on, remembering there would be broken glass in the flat. Then he crossed the room and pushed the curtains to the side, looking back at the figure in the blankets.

Harfner was still sleeping. In his bed. Peacefully like no German should sleep in Paris by any right, but here he was, face blank and gently stubbled in blond. In that gray uniform was clearly a man, likely younger than Yves. A man; not a fearsome warrior, or at least not
just
that.

It’s a lie.

Maybe it all was. Who could really look inside a man’s head? Who could know who was really, truly, an enemy and who might be a friend, or an ally? No, Heinrich was an ally. Harfner, though, had no power to lend, not the rank to be anything but a friend. His power was in the runes at his collar or the rifle he’d carry into battle. In some way, that was easier to cope with. War was simple. Power was an altogether different creature.

He went into the kitchen and made coffee, thinking he owed Harfner a little kindness after the man had stayed with him through the raid. He poured two cups and walked back into the bedroom, where Harfner was rubbing his eyes.

Yves offered him the cup, dithering over whether to sit on the bed or on the chair in the corner. Apart from being too far away to be polite, the chair was occupied by Harfner’s belt and pistol. He didn’t want to have to touch them; God knew how Harfner would respond if he saw Yves handle his pistol. So he sat on the bed and sipped the coffee.

Harfner blew on the hot liquid and glanced at Yves. His eyes were a startling blue; Yves wondered why any god would make a man like that so pretty. Not pretty. Maybe that wasn’t the right word for the wide-set eyes with their long lashes; the clear, elegant lines, and that unsettling earnestness that seemed to be at the very heart of this particular hunter. He hunted not to destroy and humiliate.

The deep scratch along his cheekbone looked angry but was scabbing over already and did nothing to lessen the impression. If anything, it make him look more serious—a young warrior after battle.

“
Danke
,” Harfner said and reached down to touch Yves’ knee. Too familiar, and yet, after a night spent huddled together, it seemed like no infraction at all.

Yves smiled and nodded. “They’ll be waiting for you. Your officers.”

Falk scowled. “They will be. I must go.” He checked the time on his wristwatch. “Can I . . .” He mimicked tracing a razor down his cheek.

Yves nodded toward the bathroom, further down the hall. “By all means, be my guest.” Because he was. A startling thought, to say the least.

Harfner finished the coffee and stood, respectfully leaving the bed without forcing Yves to get up. Righting his uniform, he walked around to the chair and picked up his boots. Yves watched him put them on, after he’d pulled up his socks over large feet—of course. He was a tall man, but they seemed unusually large, which Yves found terribly endearing.

He shook his head, forced himself to watch Harfner put on his belt and pistol, which seemed so much more like him. When Harfner went for the bathroom to clean up and shave, Yves stepped to the window to ascertain the damage—most windows seemed blown out, and the broken glass crackled under his shoes as he walked along the windows, only opening the curtains enough so he could see around the flat. He’d have to find a repairman, but judging by the activity down on the street, that thought was not unique to him.

The waiting queue would be long, and he didn’t believe it could possibly be done today. The whole street—like many streets in Paris, likely—was in need of new windows. He could only be grateful that was all that seemed to have happened to his house.

“I have to go,” Harfner said.

Yves turned, felt more glass shift and break under his shoes, and met the man’s gaze. “Thank you. For what you did.”
And didn’t do.

Harfner smiled. How odd, the thought that Heinrich would have straightened and maybe clicked his heels, but those gestures didn’t seem anywhere in Harfner’s physical vocabulary. He stood at ease, despite the uniform, despite the chasm between them. “Can I see you?”

Yves paused, bit his lips. He should not encourage him. His head knew this to be true, but his heart was no longer behind it. Strangely, he liked the man, didn’t even mind his company. Rather, perversely, enjoyed looking at him.

“I’ll be back at the Palace tomorrow.” He’d have to organize that with Maurice today, but it shouldn’t be a problem. At worst, he’d only do a few numbers until Maurice had rearranged the program.

“Tomorrow.” Harfner glanced around the flat. “Where are you today?”

“I’ll have to do something about the windows.” For clarity, he gestured toward the curtains. “It’s cold without windows.”

Harfner frowned, but his features smoothed when he looked at Yves. “I will see you.” It seemed a promise and pledge much more than a threat. He put on his cap, which shielded his blue eyes, and then walked away.

Yves hurried to get dressed fully, putting on two pairs of socks, a shirt, two pullovers, and the warmest coat he owned before taking his notes in a briefcase and leaving the flat, like a conspirator making sure he didn’t follow on Harfner’s heels.

In the stairwell, he heard the hushed voices of couple of his elderly neighbors, exchanging the story of the air raid and how everybody had fared last night. It struck him that it didn’t sound any different from the hundreds of little dramas that made up the ladies’ daily chatter. In fact, he enjoyed listening to people exchanging their stories—it gave him material to work with that he didn’t have to invent all by himself. He only wished the latest story hadn’t meant blown-out windows in winter. That was too much of a sacrifice for art.

When he stepped outside, the sight of a crater in the middle of the road startled him. A car had vanished into the dark hole, punched through the surface as if by the fist of a heathen god. Other passers-by stopped and stared inside.

Around it, the houses had all lost their windows, and Yves spotted a team of craftsmen taking measurements and being besieged by other citizens imploring them to fix their windows first. Yes, this was hopeless. He was too late to get a reasonable spot in the queue, though, unlike many people, he did have other options. Under the most dire circumstances, he might have been able to stay with Édith, but she rented a tiny attic apartment from a widow, and he didn’t plan to inconvenience her or scandalize Mme Royer. He could stay at Maurice’s, which, the danger of walking into Polish pilots notwithstanding, also meant that Heinrich couldn’t possibly visit him. So, while all this was a nuisance, it did have positive aspects, though the thought alone felt petty and cold. After all, he had allowed Heinrich to become part of his life and take such liberties with him.

He took the Métro
to Maurice’s house, noticed how the passengers seemed part resigned and part wide-eyed after last night. He didn’t make eye contact with anybody after catching the tail end of a few conversations about the attack and why anybody would attack Paris—didn’t they see that it would harm ordinary citizens more than the others? Who could even tell where a bomb would hit from so high up?

Yves remembered a German boasting about their dive-bombers’ precision, and he might have cared if he’d still been in uniform, but the technicalities of war repulsed him. Even when he served, he’d never had more than a cursory interest in the technology of destruction. Not that any technological advantage had done France one bit of good—overwhelmed in six weeks by a military force dismantled just two decades earlier. By all rights, it shouldn’t have happened.

Yves hurried along the street until he arrived at Maurice’s villa, relieved that neither the building itself nor its surroundings bore any scars of last night. And when Maurice opened the door, seeing him still in a dressing gown (though awake) flooded Yves with relief.

“Yves! Come in, come in! I had no idea you’d returned.”

“It appears that ‘my oberst’ knows where my mother lives.”

Maurice ushered him in but cast a glance that seemed to prompt for the punch line.

“He came personally to fetch me and bring me back.”

“Well, to be perfectly honest, Madeleine Lacroix is not hard to find.”

The unflappable tone confirmed Yves’s suspicion that had formed just a moment before. Had Maurice been surprised, he’d have commented on Heinrich’s gesture of carrying him off on a white steed, maybe commented in a saucy tone about the “romanticism” of it all.

“Did he say anything about—” Maurice waved his hand, then settled in a heavy chair in the main salon, offering Yves a seat with nothing more than a nod. They were beyond formalities here; Yves had spent a lot of time in this room.

“What I did?”

“Any dangers?” Maurice leaned forward to right the angle of the cigar box in the middle of the table.

“He said he’d talked to Abetz.”

“Oh, good. Dr. Abetz’s wife is French.” Which was one of the things almost everybody knew in this careful game of seeking allies and assessing threats. Moreover, Abetz was quite possibly the most powerful man in France. Some pundits called him “King Otto I.”

“And he’d make sure I’m safe.”

“Well, then. When do you want to return to work? People are missing you. What about tonight?”

“I’m . . . writing.”

“You should just buy a song. Nobody cares if you don’t write them yourself. Much less work.”

“Maybe.”

“And a more guaranteed success.”

Yves forced himself to not respond. He’d learned music from his mother; singing, too. If he put in his own work, paradoxically, it made him feel more worthy, like he’d earned it all by himself. Like writing his own songs was more honest, somehow, in a world that was largely deceit. But would that be more popular? He was in two minds about that. While buying songs might enable him to focus entirely on his delivery, it was two different stages of the same process. Just repeating one stage over and over again—

“But I see, you’re not even entertaining the thought.”

Yves lifted his shoulders and let them drop again. “We’ll see. I’m working on a song.”

“Fine, fine.” Maurice leaned back. “But in all seriousness, your audience misses you. If people know you’ve returned and you’re not showing up, they’ll think you’re ill or you don’t care. And the latter is unforgiveable. Paris wants to be wooed, courted, and charmed. You can’t look indifferent to her.”

“I will have to ask you a favor.”

Maurice lifted an eyebrow, and Yves already knew what the payment would be. But he’d come here expecting nothing else. He couldn’t very well claim sanctuary in Maurice’s house and then refuse to go back onstage.

“A bomb hit my street. My flat has barely a window left intact.”

“Oh yes, that was your area, wasn’t it?” Maurice looked him up and down, as if to check him for bullet or shrapnel holes. “You’re welcome to stay. I certainly have enough space.” He paused just long enough to bat his eyelashes. “Tonight, then?”

“Tonight.” Yves breathed more deeply and more easily. “Thank you.”

* * *

When he returned to his dressing room, he paused in the doorway, stunned at the display of roses that covered every surface. White roses, regal and formal, and yellow roses, more sunny and cheerful than their pale cousins that could have adorned a sarcophagus or a wreath.

He’d been good out there; he knew it. He’d overcome the nausea more easily, had actually been eager to get out onstage and prove to himself that, despite the shattered windows and winter and misery and the bomb crater just outside his door, he was
still
singing. Like laughing in the face of death, but strangely, there was no hysteria in it. Relief, maybe, or he was beginning to get used to the gray uniforms in the audience, the smoking German officers with their gleaming boots and painted French mistresses. Used to seeing Heinrich in the audience, arriving just slightly late—enough to draw attention.

In the middle of it, a thought struck him, a melody, and he almost stopped his song, nearly dropped it like a boy bored with one toy and captivated by another. But that was the only lapse in the show. He held them in his hand and enjoyed it, enjoyed the laughter when he mimicked a French-German lovers’ exchange where one side misunderstood the other. He now knew more pitfalls of that infernal language than he’d ever cared to learn. What had been torture to his tongue and throat now at least yielded material for jokes—and his mixed German-French audience found it a riot.

And now: roses. He closed the door behind himself, hung his top hat up on the hook in the door, ran his fingers over his sweaty hair, and went to the bathroom to wash his hands and face and hands again.

A knock on the door, but it wasn’t the grave-sounding knock Heinrich employed.

“Yes?”

A waiter entered with a silver bucket of champagne and two glasses. The man was momentarily foiled when he glanced around and couldn’t locate a place to put them. Yves took one of the bouquets and put it on the floor, allowing the waiter to set up the champagne and leave again.