The Nightingale (42 page)

“It has been most difficult to track you down, Madame. I am calling about the
passeurs
' reunion tomorrow night. We are gathering to celebrate the people who made the Nightingale escape route so successful. Did you receive the invitation?”

“Oui,”
I say, clutching the receiver.

“The first one we sent you was returned, I am sorry to say. Please forgive the tardiness of the invitation. But … will you be coming?”

“It is not me people want to see. It's Juliette. And she hasn't existed for a long time.”

“You couldn't be more wrong, Madame. Seeing you would be meaningful to many people.”

I hang up the phone so hard it is like smashing a bug.

But suddenly the idea of going back—going
home
—is in my mind. It's all I can think about.

For years, I kept the memories at bay. I hid them in a dusty attic, far from prying eyes. I told my husband, my children, myself, that there was nothing for me in France. I thought I could come to America and make this new life for myself and forget what I had done to survive.

Now I can't forget.

Do I make a decision? A conscious, let's-think-it-out-and-decide-what's-best kind of decision?

No. I make a phone call to my travel agent and book a flight to Paris, through New York. Then I pack a bag. It's small, just a rolling carry-on, the sort of suitcase that a businesswoman would take on a two-day trip. In it, I pack some nylons, a few pairs of slacks and some sweaters, the pearl earrings that my husband bought me on our fortieth anniversary, and some other essentials. I have no idea what I will need, and I'm not really thinking straight anyway. Then I wait. Impatiently.

At the last minute, after I have called a taxi, I call my son and get his message machine. A bit of luck, that. I don't know if I would have the courage to tell him the truth straight up.

“Hello, Julien,” I say as brightly as I can. “I am going to Paris for the weekend. My flight leaves at one ten and I'll call you when I arrive to let you know I'm all right. Give my love to the girls.” I pause, knowing how he will feel when he gets this message, how it will upset him. That's because I have let him think I am weak, all these years; he watched me lean on his father and defer to his decision making. He heard me say, “If that's what you think, dear,” a million times. He watched me stand on the sidelines of his life instead of showing him the field of my own. This is my fault. It's no wonder he loves a version of me that is incomplete. “I should have told you the truth.”

When I hang up, I see the taxi pull up out front. And I go.

 

TWENTY-SEVEN

October 1942

France

Vianne sat with Gaëtan in the front of the wagon, with the coffin thumping in the wooden bed behind them. The trail through the woods was hard to find in the dark; they were constantly starting and stopping and turning. At some point, it started to rain. The only words they'd exchanged in the last hour and a half were directions.

“There,” Vianne said later, as they reached the end of the woods. A light shone up ahead, straining through the trees, turning them into black slashes against a blinding white.

The border.

“Whoa,” Gaëtan said, pulling back on the reins.

Vianne couldn't help thinking about the last time she'd been here.

“How will you cross? It's after curfew,” she said, clasping her hands together to still their trembling.

“I will be Laurence Olivier. A man overcome by grief, taking his beloved sister home to be buried.”

“What if they check her breathing?”

“Then someone at the border will die,” he said quietly.

Vianne heard what he didn't say as clearly as the words he chose. She was so surprised that she couldn't think how to respond. He was saying he would die to protect Isabelle. He turned to her, gazed at her.
Gazed,
not looked. Again she saw the predator intensity in those gray eyes, but there was more there, too. He was waiting—patiently—for what she would say. It mattered to him, somehow.

“My father came home changed from the Great War,” she said quietly, surprising herself with the admission. This was not something she talked about. “Angry. Mean. He started drinking too much. While Maman was alive, he was different…” She shrugged. “After her death, there was no pretense anymore. He sent Isabelle and me away to live with a stranger. We were both just girls, and heartbroken. The difference between us was that I accepted the rejection. I closed him out of my life and found someone else to love me. But Isabelle … she doesn't know how to concede defeat. She hurled herself at the cold wall of our father's disinterest for years, trying desperately to gain his love.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Isabelle seems unbreakable. She has a steel exterior, but it protects a candyfloss heart. Don't hurt her, that's what I'm saying. If you don't love her—”

“I do.”

Vianne studied him. “Does she know?”

“I hope not.”

Vianne would not have understood that answer a year ago. She wouldn't have understood how dark a side love could have, how hiding it was the kindest thing you could do sometimes. “I don't know why it's so easy for me to forget how much I love her. We start fighting, and…”

“Sisters.”

Vianne sighed. “I suppose, although I haven't been much of one to her.”

“You'll get another chance.”

“Do you believe that?”

His silence was answer enough. At last, he said, “Take care of yourself, Vianne. She'll need a place to come home to when all of this is over.”

“If it's ever over.”

“
Oui
.”

Vianne got down from the wagon; her boots sunk deep into wet, muddy grass. “I'm not sure she thinks of me as a safe place to come home to,” she said.

“You'll need to be brave,” Gaëtan said. “When the Nazis come looking for their man. You know our real names. That's dangerous for all of us. You included.”

“I'll be brave,” she said. “You just tell my sister that she needs to start being afraid.”

For the first time, Gaëtan smiled and Vianne understood how this scrawny, sharp-featured man in his beggar's clothes had swept Isabelle off her feet. He had the kind of smile that inhabited every part of his face—his eyes, his cheeks; there was even a dimple.
I wear my heart on my sleeve,
that smile said, and no woman could be unmoved by such transparency.
“Oui,”
he said. “Because it is so easy to tell your sister anything.”

*   *   *

Fire.

It's all around her, leaping, dancing. A bonfire. She can see it in quivering strands of red that come and go. A flame licks her face, burns deep.

It's everywhere and then … it's gone.

The world is icy, white, sheer and cracked. She shivers with the cold, watches her fingers turn blue and crackle and break apart. They fall away like chalk, dusting her frozen feet.

“Isabelle.”

Birdsong. A nightingale. She hears it singing a sad song. Nightingales mean loss, don't they? Love that leaves or doesn't last or never existed in the first place. There's a poem about that, she thinks. An ode.

No, not a bird.

A man. The king of the fire maybe. A prince in hiding in the frozen woods. A wolf.

She looks for footprints in the snow
.

“Isabelle. Wake up.”

She heard his voice in her imagination. Gaëtan.

He wasn't really here. She was alone—she was always alone—and this was too strange to be anything but a dream. She was hot and cold and achy and worn out.

She remembered something—a loud noise. Vianne's voice:
Don't come back
.

“I'm here.”

She felt him sit beside her. The mattress shifted to accommodate his imaginary weight.

Something cool and damp pressed to her forehead and it felt so good that she was momentarily distracted. And then she felt his lips graze hers and linger there; he said something she couldn't quite hear and then he drew back. She felt the end of the kiss as deeply as she'd felt the start of it.

It felt so … real.

She wanted to say “Don't leave me,” but she couldn't do it, not again. She was so tired of begging people to love her.

Besides, he wasn't really here, so what would be the point of saying anything?

She closed her eyes and rolled away from the man who wasn't there.

*   *   *

Vianne sat on Beck's bed.

Ridiculous that she thought of it that way, but there it was. She sat in this room that had become his, hoping that it wouldn't always be his in her mind. In her hand was the small portrait of his family.

You would love Hilda. Here, she sent you this strudel, Madame. For putting up with a lout such as myself.

Vianne swallowed hard. She didn't cry for him again. She refused to, but God, she wanted to cry for herself, for what she had done, for who she had become. She wanted to cry for the man she'd killed and the sister who might not live. It had been an easy choice, killing Beck to save Isabelle. So why had Vianne been so quick to turn on Isabelle before?
You are not welcome here.
How could she have said that to her own sister? What if those were among the last words ever spoken between them?

As she sat, staring at the portrait
(tell my family),
she waited for a knock at the door. It had been forty-eight hours since Beck's murder. The Nazis should be here any minute.

It wasn't a question of if, but when. They would bang on her door and push their way inside. She had spent hours trying to figure out what to do. Should she go to the Kommandant's office and report Beck missing?

(No, foolish. What French person would report such a thing?)

Or should she wait until they came to her?

(Never a good thing.)

Or should she try to run?

That only made her remember Sarah and the moonlit night that would forever make her think of bloody streaks on a child's face and brought her right back to the beginning again.

“Maman?” Sophie said, standing in the open doorway, the toddler on her hip.

“You need to eat something,” Sophie said. She was taller, almost Vianne's height. When had that happened? And she was thin. Vianne remembered when her daughter had had apple-like cheeks and eyes that sparkled with mischief. Now she was like all of them, stretched as thin as jerky and aged beyond her years.

“They're going to come to the door soon,” Vianne said. She'd said it so often in the past two days that her words surprised no one. “You remember what to do?”

Sophie nodded solemnly. She knew how important this was, even if she didn't know what had become of the captain. Interestingly, she hadn't asked.

Vianne said, “If they take me away—”

“They won't,” Sophie said.

“And if they do?” Vianne said.

“We wait for you to return for three days and then we go to Mother Marie-Therese at the convent.”

Someone pounded on the door. Vianne lurched to her feet so fast she stumbled sideways and hit her hip into the corner of the table, dropping the portrait. The glass on it cracked. “Upstairs, Sophie. Now.”

Sophie's eyes bulged, but she knew better than to speak. She tightened her hold on the toddler and ran upstairs. When Vianne heard the bedroom door slam shut, she smoothed her worn skirt. She had dressed carefully in a gray wool cardigan and an often-mended black skirt. A respectable look. Her hair had been curled and carefully styled into waves that softened her thin face.

The pounding returned. She allowed herself one indrawn, calming breath as she crossed the room. Her breathing was almost steady as she opened the door.

Two German Schutzstaffel—SS—soldiers stood there, wearing sidearms. The shorter of the two pushed past Vianne, shoving her out of his way as he entered the house. He strode from room to room, pushing things aside, sending what few knickknacks remained crashing to the floor. At Beck's room, he stopped and turned back. “This is Hauptmann Beck's room?”

Vianne nodded.

The taller soldier came at Vianne fast, leaning forward as if there were a harsh wind at his back. He looked down at her from on high, his forehead obscured by a shiny military cap. “Where is he?”

“H-how would I know?”

“Who is upstairs?” the soldier demanded. “I hear something.”

It was the first time she'd ever been asked about Ari.

“My … children.” The lie caught in her voice, came out too soft. She cleared her throat and tried again. “You may go up there, of course, but please don't waken the baby. He's … sick with the flu. Or perhaps tuberculosis.” This last she added because she knew how frightened the Nazis were of getting sick. She reached down for her handbag, clamped it to her chest as if it offered some protection.

He nodded at the other German, who strode confidently up the stairs. She heard him moving around overhead. The ceiling creaked. Moments later, he came back downstairs and said something in German.

“Come with us,” the taller one said. “I'm sure you have nothing to hide.”

He grabbed Vianne's arm and dragged her out to the black Citroën parked by the gate. He shoved her into the backseat and slammed the door shut.

Vianne had about five minutes to consider her situation before they stopped again and she was being yanked up the stone steps of the town hall. There were people all around the square, soldiers and locals. The villagers dispersed quickly when the Citroën pulled up.

“It's Vianne Mauriac,” she heard someone say, a woman.

The Nazi's hold on her upper arm was bruising, but she made no sound as he pulled her into the town hall and down a set of narrow steps. There, he shoved her through an open door and slammed it shut.