The Nightingale (38 page)

A train waited, puffing black smoke into the already hot air. Two German soldiers were standing on the platform. One of them was Beck. He was holding a whip. A
whip
.

But it was French police who were in charge of the roundup; they were forcing people into lines and shoving them onto the cattle cars. Men went into one cattle car; women and children in the other.

Up ahead, a woman holding a baby tried to run. A gendarme shot her in the back. She pitched to the ground, dead; the baby rolled to the boots of the gendarme holding a smoking gun.

Rachel stopped, turned to Vianne. “Take my son,” she whispered.

The crowd jostled them.

“Take him. Save him,” Rachel pleaded.

Vianne didn't hesitate. She knew now that no one could be neutral—not anymore—and as afraid as she was of risking Sophie's life, she was suddenly more afraid of letting her daughter grow up in a world where good people did nothing to stop evil, where a good woman could turn her back on a friend in need. She reached for the toddler, took him in her arms.

“You!” A gendarme stabbed Rachel in the shoulder with the butt of his rifle so hard she stumbled. “Move!”

She looked at Vianne, and the universe of their friendship was in her eyes—the secrets they'd shared, the promises they'd made and kept, the dreams for their children that bound them as neatly as sisters.

“Get out of here,” Rachel cried hoarsely. “Go.”

Vianne backed away. Before she knew it, she had turned and begun shoving her way through the crowd, away from the platform and the soldiers and the dogs, away from the smell of fear and the crack of whips and the sound of women wailing and babies crying. She didn't allow herself to slow until she reached the end of the platform. There, holding Ari closely, she turned around.

Rachel stood in the black, yawning entrance of a cattle car, her face and hands still smeared with her daughter's blood. She scanned the crowd, saw Vianne, and raised her bloody hand in the air, and then she was gone, shoved back by the women stumbling in around her. The door to the cattle car clanged shut.

*   *   *

Vianne collapsed onto the divan. Ari was crying uncontrollably and his diaper was wet and he smelled of urine. She should get up, take care of him, do something, but she couldn't move. She felt weighed down by loss, suffocated by it.

Sophie came into the living room. “Why do you have Ari?” she said in a quiet, frightened voice. “Where's Madame de Champlain?”

“She is gone,” Vianne said. She hadn't the strength to fabricate a lie, and what was the good of one anyway?

There was no way to protect her daughter from all of the evil around them.

No way.

Sophie would grow up knowing too much. Knowing fear and loss and probably hatred.

“Rachel was born in Romania,” Vianne said tightly. “That—along with being Jewish—was her crime. The Vichy government doesn't care that she has lived in France for twenty-five years and married a Frenchman and that he fought for France. So they deported her.”

“Where will they take her?”

“I don't know.”

“Will she come back after the war?”

Yes. No. I hope so.
What answer would a good mother give?

“I hope so.”

“And Ari?” Sophie asked.

“He will stay with us. He wasn't on the list. I guess our government believes children can raise themselves.”

“But Maman, what do we—”

“Do? What do we
do
? I have no idea.” She sighed. “For now, you watch the baby. I'll go next door and get his crib and clothes.”

Vianne was almost to the door when Sophie said, “What about Captain Beck?”

Vianne stopped dead. She remembered seeing him on the platform with a whip in his hand; a whip he cracked to herd women and children onto a cattle car.
“Oui,”
she said. “What about Captain Beck?”

*   *   *

Vianne washed her blood-soaked clothes and hung them to dry in the backyard, trying not to notice how red the soapy water was when she splashed it across the grass. She made Sophie and Ari supper (What had she made? She couldn't remember.) and put them to bed, but once the house was quiet and dark, she couldn't suppress her emotions. She was angry—howlingly so—and devastated.

She couldn't stand how dark and ugly her thoughts were, how bottomless her anger and grief. She ripped the pretty lace from her collar and stumbled outside, remembering when Rachel had given her this blouse. Three years ago.

It's what everyone's wearing in Paris.

The apple trees spread their arms above her. It took her two tries to tie the scrap of fabric to the knobby wooden branch between Antoine's and Sarah's, and when she'd done it, she stepped back.

Sarah.

Rachel.

Antoine.

The scraps of color blurred; that was when she realized she was crying.

“Please God,” she began to pray, looking up at the bits of fabric and lace and yarn, tied around the knobby branch, interspersed with unripe apples. What good were prayers now, when her loved ones were gone?

She heard a motorcycle come up the road and park outside Le Jardin.

Moments later: “Madame?”

She spun to face him. “Where's your whip, Herr Captain?”

“You were there?”

“How does it feel to whip a Frenchwoman?”

“You can't think I would do that, Madame. It sickens me.”

“And yet there you were.”

“As were you. This war has put us all where we do not want to be.”

“Less so for you Germans.”

“I tried to help her,” he said.

At that, Vianne felt the rage go out of her; her grief returned. He
had
tried to save Rachel. If only they had listened to him and kept her hidden longer. She swayed. Beck reached out and steadied her.

“You said to hide her in the morning. She was in that terrible cellar all day. By afternoon, I thought … everything seemed normal.”

“Von Richter adjusted the timetable. There was a problem with the trains.”

The trains.

Rachel waving good-bye.

Vianne looked up at him. “Where are they taking her?”

It was the first substantive question she'd ever asked him.

“To a work camp in Germany.”

“I hid her all day,” Vianne said again, as if it mattered now.

“The Wehrmacht aren't in control anymore. It's the Gestapo and the SS. They're more … brutes than soldiers.”

“Why were you there?”

“I was following orders. Where are her children?”

“Your Germans shot Sarah in the back at the frontier checkpoint.”

“Mein Gott,”
he muttered.

“I have her son. Why wasn't Ari on the list?”

“He was born in France and is under fourteen. They are not deporting French Jews.” He looked at her. “Yet.”

Vianne caught her breath. “Will they come for Ari?”

“I believe that soon they will deport all Jews, regardless of age or place of birth. And when they do, it will become dangerous to have
any
Jew in your home.”

“Children, deported. Alone.” The horror of it was unbelievable, even after what she'd already seen. “I promised Rachel I'd keep him safe. Will you turn me in?” she asked.

“I am not a monster, Vianne.”

It was the first time he'd ever used her Christian name.

He moved closer. “I want to protect you,” he said.

It was the worst thing he could have said. She had felt lonely for years, but now she truly
was
alone.

He touched her upper arm, almost a caress, and she felt it in every part of her body, like an electrical charge. Unable to help herself, she looked at him.

He was close to her, just a kiss away. All she had to do was give him the slightest encouragement—a breath, a nod, a touch—and he would close the gap between them. For a moment, she forgot who she was and what had happened today; she longed to be soothed, to forget. She leaned the smallest bit forward, enough to smell his breath, feel it on her lips, and then she remembered—all at once, in a whoosh of anger—and she pushed him away so he stumbled.

She scrubbed her lips, as if they'd touched his.

“We can't,” she said.

“Of course not.”

But when he looked at her—and she looked at him—they both knew that there was something worse than kissing the wrong person.

It was wanting to.

 

TWENTY-FOUR

Summer ended. Hot golden days gave way to washed-out skies and falling rain. Isabelle was so focused on the escape route that she hardly noticed the change in weather.

On a chilly October afternoon, she stepped out of the train carriage in a crowd of passengers, holding a bouquet of autumn flowers.

As she walked up the boulevard, German motorcars clogged the street, honking loudly. Soldiers strode confidently among the cowed, drab Parisians. Swastika flags flapped in the wintry wind. She hurried down the Métro steps.

The tunnel was crowded with people and papered in Nazi propaganda that demonized the Brits and Jews and made the Führer the answer to every question.

Suddenly, the air raid sirens howled. The electricity snapped off, plunging everyone into darkness. She heard people muttering and babies crying and old men coughing. From far away, she could hear the thump and grumble of explosions. It was probably Boulogne-Billancourt—again—and why not? Renault was making lorries for the Germans.

When the all clear finally sounded, no one moved until moments later, when the electricity and lights came back on.

Isabelle was almost to the train when a whistle blared.

She froze. Nazi soldiers, accompanied by French collaborators, moved through the tunnel, talking to one another, pointing at people, pulling them out to the perimeter, forcing them to their knees.

A rifle appeared in front of her.

“Papers,” the German said.

Isabelle clutched the flowers in one hand and fumbled nervously with her purse with the other. She had a message for Anouk wrapped within the bouquet. It was not unexpected, of course, this search. Since the Allied successes in North Africa had begun, the Germans stopped people constantly, demanding papers. In the streets, the shops, the train stations, the churches. There was no safety anywhere. She handed over her false
carte d'identité
. “I am meeting a friend of my mother's for lunch.”

The Frenchman sidled up to the German and perused the papers. He shook his head and the German handed Isabelle her papers and said, “Go.”

Isabelle smiled quickly, nodded a thank-you, and hurried for the train, slipping into an open carriage just as the doors slid shut.

By the time she exited in the sixteenth arrondissement, her calm had returned. A wet fog clung to the streets, obscuring the buildings and the barges moving slowly on the Seine. Sounds were amplified by the haze, turned strange. Somewhere, a ball was bouncing (probably boys playing in the street). One of the barges honked its horn and the noise lingered.

At the avenue, she turned the corner and went to a bistro—one of the few with its lights on. A nasty wind ruffled the awning. She passed the empty tables and went to the outside counter, where she ordered a
café au lait
(without coffee or milk, of course).

“Juliette? Is that you?”

Isabelle saw Anouk and smiled. “Gabrielle. How lovely to see you.” Isabelle handed Anouk the flowers.

Anouk ordered a coffee. While they stood there, sipping coffee in the icy weather, Anouk said, “I spoke with my uncle Henri yesterday. He misses you.”

“Is he unwell?”

“No. No. Quite the opposite. He is planning a party for next Tuesday night. He asked me to extend an invitation.”

“Shall I take him a gift for you?”

“No, but a letter would be nice. Here, I have it ready for you.”

Isabelle took the letter and slipped it into the lining of her purse.

Anouk looked at her. Smoky shadows circled her eyes. New lines had begun to crease her cheeks and brow. This life in the shadows had begun to take a toll on her.

“Are you all right, my friend?” Isabelle asked.

Anouk's smile was tired but true. “
Oui.
” She paused. “I saw Gaëtan last night. He will be at the meeting in Carriveau.”

“Why tell me?”

“Isabelle, you are the most transparent person I have ever met. Every thought and feeling you have reveals itself in your eyes. Are you unaware how often you have mentioned him to me?”

“Really? I thought I had hidden it.”

“It's nice, actually. It reminds me of what we are fighting for. Simple things: a girl and a boy and their future.” She kissed Isabelle's cheeks. Then she whispered, “He mentions you as well.”

*   *   *

Luckily for Isabelle, it was raining in Carriveau on this late October day.

No one paid attention to people in weather like this, not even the Germans. She flipped her hood up and held her coat shut at her throat; even so, rain pelted her face and slid in cold streaks down her neck as she hauled her bicycle off the train and walked it across the platform.

On the outskirts of town, she climbed aboard. Choosing a lesser-used alley, she pedaled into Carriveau, bypassing the square. On a rainy autumn day like this, there were few people out and about; only women and children standing in food queues, their coats and hats dripping rainwater. The Germans were mostly inside.

By the time she reached the Hôtel Bellevue, she was exhausted. She dismounted, locked her bicycle to a streetlamp, and went inside.

A bell jangled overhead, announcing her arrival to the German soldiers who were seated in the lobby, drinking their afternoon coffees.

“M'mselle,” one of the officers said, reaching for a flaky, golden
pain au chocolat
. “You are soaking wet.”