Nightingale (16 page)

Chapter 22

“You shouldn’t let the piano get that cold again,
monsieur
.” The piano tuner regarded him with a reproachful look that was likely otherwise reserved for barbarians who defecated in public. “It’s a fine instrument. It doesn’t deserve to be treated like that.”

“My windows were blown out a couple months ago.” Yves pushed the franc notes into the man’s open hand. “And I haven’t been home much recently. I’ll see that it won’t happen again.”

He saw the piano tuner out the door, unsure if there was anything else he could do to soothe the affront he’d committed by living on a street that had been bombed. He’d barely returned to the instrument and taken his music sheets out of their folder when the doorbell rang again. Yves glanced around to see if the piano tuner might have forgotten his jacket or briefcase, but didn’t spot anything not belonging here.

When he opened the door, he was almost swept off his feet. Édith rushed in. “Finally you’re home!” It came out almost as one word.

Yves stepped around her and closed the door. “I was working.”

“And where do you sleep?”

“Where it’s warm. Maurice Lefèvre has better access to coal. And it’s closer to the Palace.” She looked ruffled—even more so than normal, her unruly hair without a memory of a comb or brush. “What’s wrong?”

“They got Améry.” Her voice was flat with shock.

“Oh God. Who?” The word “Gestapo” stuck in his throat, just as unsayable as unthinkable, and yet it was a reflex.

She shook her head. “Can I sit down for a moment? I feel like I’m going to faint.”

“Please. Give me your coat.”

She took it off, and he noticed the fraying seams. She wasn’t one of the Parisian women who turned themselves out carefully every single day and persisted despite the shortages. Édith didn’t wear makeup and didn’t seem to care about fashion in the least. But even by those relaxed standards, she looked shabby. Last time he’d seen her, she’d glowed with defiance; now he noticed a gray tone to her skin and a sense of exhaustion.

He decided to make them coffee to give her time to compose herself. When he returned from the kitchen and set a cup down in front of her, he gathered what bluntness he could muster.

“Do you get enough food?”

She cast him a derisive look. “We all get ration cards, Yves.”

“Yes, well, those and the packages from Mother. Have you been getting them? You look ill.”

“I get them fine,” she snapped. “There are people who need them more urgently than I do.”

“Is that something illegal again?”

She jumped to her feet. “By what law? That of the conqueror or that of that senile old bastard who sold us all to Hitler?”

He recoiled, coffee spilling over his cup and flooding the saucer. He set it down and busied himself with mopping up the liquid. “Something that could get you thrown into prison. Mother would never forgive me.”

She bared her teeth. “It would be an honor to end up in a concentration camp like so many good comrades. But I can do better work here.” She took a sip from her coffee and seemed almost surprised at the taste. She raised an eyebrow when she discovered that the sugar pot was full. “Black market?”

Yves lifted his shoulders. Gifts. Anything was possible for Heinrich. And Maurice would certainly never run out of delicacies. The tragedy was that, just three years ago, none of those coveted goods had been anything but normal staples. This was Paris, after all, capital of Europe, if not the world.

“You said they have Améry? Who?”

“The gendarmes stopped him outside the Métro station this morning and took him to the police station. He hasn’t returned home.”

“Do you have any idea why?”

She shrugged, which could have been a “no” or a lie by silence. “I don’t think it has to do with how they are now pressing people to work for the Germans. In the Reich.” She sat back and crossed her arms over her chest.

“I thought that was voluntary.”

“Laval passed a law. Now all men between 20 and 23 have to go.” She quirked a sarcastic eyebrow. “Maybe they’ll expand it. They likely will.”

Yves shook his head. That, on top of the POW camps full of French soldiers that were missing from French factories and farms. And the ceaseless attempts of the Germans to recruit the French for work, claiming that the pay was good and the costs of living lower than in France. They also promised to release POWs in exchange for volunteer workers. But there were rumors of draconian punishments, and whatever goodwill the Germans might, once upon a time, have offered, had since run out. But he was still shocked that they were now simply plucking a whole generation off the streets. “Isn’t he studying with you?”

“Yes. Students get deferred until September.” Édith shook her head. “But we can’t lose him, even then. He’s too important.”

He had long suspected that Améry was Édith’s boyfriend. Améry was bright, if too serious, bookish, but not obnoxiously so. If anything, he’d hoped the man’s traits would temper Édith. And until a few moments ago, he’d been glad that Améry was too young to have served in this debacle of a war.

“What for?”

“He’s doing other things as well.” Édith flushed a little. “Important things, for France.”

No use protesting it was too dangerous, though his heart clenched. Here was somebody who likely risked his life every day, and all he could think was that, far away in the Reich, Améry might be safer than free on the streets of Paris. But Édith was visibly distressed and angry; who could say she wouldn’t step into the gap that Améry had left, risking her own life? Their mother would never forgive him if anything happened to her.

“And what do you expect me to do?”

“You know more Germans than I do. Get Améry out. There has to be somebody you can pay off.” Her eyes flashed. “Money isn’t an object.”

“And just where would you be able to get your hands on enough money for that?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“No. Keep it.” He shook his head when she pushed a hand into her one of her trouser pockets. Maybe he didn’t want to see her pull out an amount that no student, even one generously supported by their mother, could legally have.

“So you’ll help him?”

“Yes. Yes, of course.” Yves took a deep breath. “Just do me a favor and don’t do anything stupid in the meantime.”

“Like?”

“Just don’t take any extra risks because of him. If they arrest you and find out you’re connected . . .”

“Then we all end up arrested and shot.” She scoffed. “You really don’t understand that I don’t care, do you?”

“And you don’t understand that I do.” That tightness and heaviness descended from his heart down to his stomach, roiling as it went. “And that there’s going to be a life after.”

“Not if we don’t fight them where we find them.”

Them.
Most people seemed to have given up on the nasty or humorous nicknames. Those who’d started as
boche
or
fridolin
were now simply the
others
, or
they
. It seemed like a superstition, as if naming them would summon them, like they were malicious spirits that manifested at will, appearing in hobnailed boots to take people away in the middle of the night or during the gray hours of dawn.

Only, of course, they weren’t a different species at all, once the language problem was overcome. But that was not an argument he could make. Part of him admired Édith for her conviction. Another part remembered what German guns sounded like up close. One of the things Yves would never forget was how some who’d talked bravely before their first battle couldn’t be found when the shells began to explode, and how soldiers who’d appeared meek and anything but martial ended up being the first ones to return fire. Before it actually happened, no man knew how he’d respond in battle.

Édith finished off her coffee. “You know I’m right.”

“I’ll see what I can do.” He stood, feeling that his promise had done nothing to close the chasm between them. Despite her harshness, he didn’t doubt Édith’s love for him. He, too, had no doubt about his own for her. They’d been close as children, even for twins. They’d even been mistaken for one another to the delight of their mother, who’d dressed them often the same.

But there was almost nothing left that they could talk about easily. He didn’t belong to her circles, and he didn’t believe she had any respect for the kind of people he spent his days with (and never mind some of the nights).

* * *

Stepping into the Hotel Majestic felt like leaving even the last pretense of normality behind. The enormous swastika flags that hung from the building never failed to jar him, regardless of where he encountered them. The red of the Reich’s flag felt stark and alien in Paris, whether he saw them here or on the Eiffel Tower or the nearby Arc de Triomphe. Outside the building, it was the Germans that mingled with Parisians, rarely, if ever, achieving superiority in numbers. Now, stepping inside, Yves felt like a lone sheep among the wolves.

It was from here that the enemy was running France, regardless of what nominal power they’d left at Vichy. And all officers entering and leaving looked driven with purpose, or at the very least discipline.

“You. What do you want?” A soldier challenged him before he’d even crossed the foyer.

“I’ve come to see Oberst Heinrich von Starck, please.” Yves reached for his papers. “
Ich heisse Yves Lacroix
.”

“On what matter?”

“The gala at the embassy next month.” Yves pulled his papers out—every encounter with a German guard seemed to require papers, but the man didn’t reach out to take them.

The soldier measured him, head to toe. Whatever he was looking for, weapons or anything else that gave Yves away as a terrorist, he didn’t seem to find it. “
Folgen Sie mir
.”

As bidden, Yves followed the soldier along the corridors. “Is the oberst expecting you?”

“He’s expecting an answer.” Yves tried a smile.

Eventually, the soldier stopped abruptly outside a door and rapped on it with his knuckles. The door opened and another soldier appeared—this one seemed much more junior. “
Ein Besucher für den Herrn Oberst. Yves Lacroix. Sagt, es geht um die Gala in der Botschaft
.”

“
Einen Moment, bitte
.” The door closed.

The soldier rolled his weight back onto his heels, hands folded in his back. “Aren’t you that singer from the Palace?”

“Yes,
monsieur
.” Yves swallowed.

“Marvelous voice, by the way.”

Yves lowered his gaze. “Thank you. It’s inherited. Both my parents are singers.”

The door opened again, this time wider. The younger soldier nodded to Yves. “
Der Herr Oberst wird Sie jetzt empfangen
.”

Yves nodded his thanks to his escort and followed the young aide through an anteroom, past a large desk with a typewriter and filing cabinets, into an opulent room with a larger desk.

Heinrich looked up from an open folder and folded his hands over it. “
Danke dir,
Willi.” He offered Yves the chair in front of his desk while the aide left, closing the door behind himself without making a sound.

“To what do I owe the pleasure, Yves?”

Yves sat down. “I’m sorry if I’m disturbing you here.”

Heinrich briefly glanced at his wristwatch. “I’ll have to be at a meeting with General von Stülpnagel in about half an hour. But I’ve prepared for it.” He closed the folder and pushed it to the side.

Yves forced himself to look away from the folder. A large map of France hung on the wall. A wire cage with a flawlessly golden canary that hopped from one bar to the other sat on the windowsill.

“I . . . have a request regarding a friend.”

“I see.” Heinrich nodded. “Who?”

“My sister is studying with a boy called Améry Lemaire, and he’s been stopped by gendarmes and taken away. She’s worried about him.”

“Wouldn’t that be a matter of the French authorities?”

“If he were involved in something . . .”

“Something like?”

“He’s an ardent communist.” Yves swallowed hard. It was the communists who were shot as hostages. And the French gendarmes didn’t hate them any less than the Germans did.

“Yves.” Heinrich stood and leaned over his desk. “We gave control of policing over to Himmler’s SS eight months ago. You’re talking about possibly dealing with Gestapo.”

“I know.”

“In other words, you’d be talking to von Grimmstein. Or, possibly worse, Helmut Knochen, though in my experience, they are about the same in many ways.”

Yves shuddered. Von Grimmstein had warned him in no unclear terms never to cross him again. Besides, he had nothing to face him with. No power, no leverage, nothing to bargain with. If the Gestapo had Améry, that was the end.

“Can you . . . is there any way to find out why he is being held?”