The Nightingale (43 page)

It took her eyes a moment to adjust to the gloom. She was in a small, windowless room with stone walls and a wood floor. A desk sat in the middle of the room, decorated with a plain black lamp that delivered a cone of light onto the scratched wood. Behind the desk—and in front of it—were straight-backed wooden chairs.

She heard the door open behind her and then close. Footsteps followed; she knew someone had come up behind her. She could smell his breath—sausage and cigarettes—and the musky scent of his sweat.

“Madame,” he said so close to her ear that she flinched.

Hands clamped around her waist, squeezing tightly. “Do you have any weapons?” he said, his terrible French drawing sibilance from the words. He felt up her sides, slid his spidery fingers across her breasts—giving the smallest of squeezes—and then felt down her legs.

“No weapons. Good.” He walked past her and took his seat at the desk. Blue eyes peered out from beneath his shiny black military hat. “Sit.”

She did as she was told, folding her hands into her lap.

“I am Sturmbannführer Von Richter. You are Madame Vianne Mauriac?”

She nodded.

“You know why you are here,” he said, taking a cigarette from his pocket, lighting it with a match that glowed in the shadows.

“No,” she said, her voice unsteady, her hands shaking just a little.

“Hauptmann Beck is missing.”

“Missing. Are you certain?”

“When is the last time you saw him, Madame?”

She frowned. “I hardly keep track of his movements, but if pressed … I would say two nights ago. He was quite agitated.”

“Agitated?”

“It was the downed airman. He was most unhappy that he had not been found. Herr Captain believed someone was hiding him.”

“Someone?”

Vianne forced herself not to look away; nor did she tap her foot nervously on the floor or scratch the itch that was making its uncomfortable way across her neck. “He searched all day for the airman. When he came home, he was … agitated is the only word I know to use. He drank an entire bottle of brandy and broke a few things in my house in his rage. And then…” She paused, letting her frown deepen.

“And then?”

“I'm sure it means nothing at all.”

He slammed his palm down on the table so hard the light shuddered. “What?”

“Herr Captain suddenly said, ‘I know where he's hiding,' and grabbed his sidearm and left my home, slamming the door shut behind him. I saw him jump on his motorcycle and take off down the road at an unsafe speed, and then … nothing. He never returned. I assumed he was busy at the Kommandantur. As I said, his comings and goings are not my concern.”

The man drew a long drag on his cigarette. The tip glowed red and then slowly faded to black. Ash rained down on the desk. He studied her from behind a veil of smoke. “A man would not want to leave a woman as beautiful as yourself.”

Vianne didn't move.

“Well,” he said at last, dropping his cigarette butt to the floor. He stood abruptly and stomped on the still-lit cigarette, grinding on it with his boot heel. “I suspect the young Hauptmann was not as skilled with a gun as he should have been. The Wehrmacht,” he said, shaking his head. “Often they are a disappointment. Disciplined but not … eager.”

He came out from behind the desk and walked toward Vianne. As he neared, she stood. Politeness demanded it. “The Hauptmann's misfortune is my fortune.”

“Oh?”

His gaze moved down her throat to the pale skin above her breasts. “I need a new place to billet. The Hôtel Bellevue is unsatisfactory. I believe your house will do nicely.”

*   *   *

When Vianne stepped out of the town hall, she felt like a woman who'd just washed ashore. She was unsteady on her feet and trembling slightly, her palms were damp, her forehead itchy. Everywhere she looked in the square were soldiers; these days the black SS uniforms were predominant. She heard someone yell
“Halt!”
and she turned, saw a pair of women in ratty coats with yellow stars on their chests being shoved to their knees by a soldier with a gun. The soldier grabbed one of the two and dragged her to her feet while the older one screamed. It was Madame Fournier, the butcher's wife. Her son, Gilles, yelled, “You can't take my maman!” and started to surge at two French policemen who were nearby.

A gendarme grabbed the boy, yanked hard enough to make him stop. “Don't be a fool.”

Vianne didn't think. She saw her former student in trouble and she went to him. He was just a boy, for God's sake. Sophie's age. Vianne had been his teacher since before he could read. “What are you doing?” she demanded to know, realizing a second too late that she should have tempered her voice.

The policeman turned to look at her. Paul. He was even fatter than the last time she'd seen him. His face had puffed out enough to make his eyes as small and slitted as sewing needles. “Stay out of this, Madame,” Paul said.

“Madame Mauriac,” Gilles cried, “they're taking my maman to the train! I want to go with her!”

Vianne looked at Gilles's mother, Madame Fournier, the butcher's wife, and saw defeat in her eyes.

“Come with me, Gilles,” Vianne said without really thinking.

“Merci,”
Madame Fournier whispered.

Paul yanked Gilles close again. “Enough. The boy is making a scene. He is coming with us.”

“No!” Vianne said. “Paul, please, we are all French.” She hoped the use of his name would remind him that before all of this they'd been a community. She'd taught his daughters. “The boy is a French citizen. He was born here!”

“We don't care where he was born, Madame. He's on my list. He goes.” His eyes narrowed. “Do you want to lodge a complaint?”

Madame Fournier was crying now, clutching her son's hand. The other policeman blew his whistle and prodded Gilles forward with the barrel of his gun.

Gilles and his mother stumbled into the crowd of others being herded toward the train station.

We don't care where he was born, Madame.

Beck had been right. Being French would no longer protect Ari.

She clamped her handbag tightly beneath her armpit and headed for home. As usual, the road had turned to mud and ruined her shoes by the time she reached the gate at Le Jardin.

Both of the children were waiting in the living room. Relief loosened her shoulders. She smiled tiredly as she set down her handbag.

“You're all right?” Sophie said.

Ari immediately moved toward her, grinning, opening his arms for a hug, saying, “Maman,” with a grin to prove that he understood the rules of their new game.

She pulled the three-year-old into her arms and held him tightly. To Sophie, she said, “I was questioned and released. That is the good news.”

“And the bad news?”

Vianne looked at her daughter, defeated. Sophie was growing up in a world where boys in her class were put in train carriages like cattle at the point of a gun and perhaps never seen again. “Another German is going to billet here.”

“Will he be like Herr Captain Beck?”

Vianne thought of the feral gleam in Von Richter's ice-blue eyes and the way he had “searched” her.

“No,” she said softly. “I don't expect he will be. You are not to speak to him unless you must. Don't look at him. Just stay as invisible as you can. And Sophie, they're deporting French-born Jews now—children, too—putting them on trains and sending them away to work camps.” Vianne tightened her hold on Rachel's son. “He is Daniel now. Your brother.
Always
. Even when we are alone. The story is that we adopted him from a relative in Nice. We can never make a mistake or they'll take him—and us—away. You understand? I don't want anyone to ever even
look
at his papers.”

“I'm scared, Maman,” she said quietly.

“As am I, Sophie” was all Vianne could say. They were in this together now, taking this terrible risk. Before she could say more, there was a knock on the door and Sturmbannführer Von Richter walked into her home, standing as straight as a bayonet blade, his face impassive beneath the glossy black military hat. Silver iron crosses hung from various places on his black uniform—his stand-up collar, his chest. A swastika pin decorated his left breast pocket. “Madame Mauriac,” he said. “I see you walked home in the rain.”

“Mais oui,”
she answered, smoothing the damp, frizzy hair from her face.

“You should have asked my men for a ride. A beautiful woman such as yourself should not slog through the mud like a heifer to the trough.”

“
Oui, merci,
I will be so bold as to ask them next time.”

He strode forward without removing his hat. He looked around, studying everything. She was sure that he noticed the marks on the walls where paintings had once hung and the empty mantel and the discoloration in the floor where rugs had lain for decades. All gone now. “Yes. This will do.” He looked at the children. “And who have we here?” he asked in terrible French.

“My son,” Vianne said, standing beside him, moving in close enough to touch them both. She didn't say “Daniel” in case Ari corrected her. “And my daughter, Sophie.”

“I do not remember Hauptmann Beck mentioning two children.”

“And why would he, Herr Sturmbannführer. It is hardly noteworthy.”

“Well,” he said, nodding crisply to Sophie. “You, girl, go get my bags.” To Vianne, he said, “Show me the rooms. I will choose the one I want.”

 

TWENTY-EIGHT

Isabelle woke in a pitch-black room. In pain.

“You're awake, aren't you?” said a voice beside her.

She recognized Gaëtan's voice. How often in the past two years had she imagined lying in bed with him? “Gaëtan,” she said, and with his name came the memories.

The barn. Beck.

She sat up so fast her head spun and dizziness hit her hard. “Vianne,” she said.

“Your sister is fine.” He lit the oil lamp and left it on the overturned apple crate by the bed. The butterscotch glow embraced them, created a small oval world in the blackness. She touched the spot of pain in her shoulder, wincing.

“The bastard shot me,” she said, surprised to realize that such a thing could be forgotten. She remembered hiding the airman and getting caught by Vianne … She remembered being in the cellar with the dead flier …

“And you shot him.”

She remembered Beck flinging the hatch door open and pointing his pistol at her. She remembered two gunshots … and climbing out of the cellar, staggering, feeling dizzy. Had she known she'd been shot?

Vianne holding a shovel covered in gore. Beside her, Beck in a pool of blood.

Vianne pale as chalk, trembling.
I killed him.

After that her memories were jumbled except for Vianne's anger.
You are not welcome here. If you return, I'll turn you in myself.

Isabelle lay back down slowly. The pain of that memory was worse than her injury. For once, Vianne had been right to cast Isabelle out. What had she been thinking to hide the airman on her sister's property, with a German Wehrmacht captain billeted there? No wonder people didn't trust her. “How long have I been here?”

“Four days. Your wound is much improved. Your sister stitched it up nicely. Your fever broke yesterday.”

“And … Vianne? She is not fine, of course. So how is she?”

“We protected her as best we could. She refused to go into hiding. So Henri and Didier buried both bodies and cleaned the barn and tore the motorcycle down to parts.”

“She'll be questioned,” Isabelle said. “And killing that man will haunt her. Hating doesn't come easy for her.”

“It will before this war is over.”

Isabelle felt her stomach tighten in shame and regret. “I love her, you know. Or I want to. How come I forget that the minute we disagree about something?”

“She said something very similar at the frontier.”

Isabelle started to roll over and gasped at the pain in her shoulder. Taking a deep breath, she steeled herself and eased slowly onto her side. She'd misjudged how close he was to her, how small the bed. They were lying like lovers; she on her side looking up at him; he on his back staring at the ceiling. “Vianne went to the border?”

“You were in a coffin in the back of the wagon. She wanted to make sure we crossed safely.” She heard a smile in his voice, or imagined she did. “She threatened to kill me if I didn't take good care of you.”

“My
sister
said that?” she said, not quite believing it. But she hardly believed that Gaëtan was the kind of man who would lie to reunite sisters. In profile, his features were razor sharp, even by lamplight. He refused to look at her, and he was as close to the edge of the bed as he could be.

“She was afraid you'd die. We both were.”

He said it so softly she barely could hear. “It feels like old times,” she said cautiously, afraid to say the wrong thing. More afraid to say nothing at all. Who knew how many chances there would be in such uncertain times? “You and me alone in the dark. Remember?”

“I remember.”

“Tours already feels like a lifetime ago,” she went on. “I was just a girl.”

He said nothing.

“Look at me, Gaëtan.”

“Go to sleep, Isabelle.”

“You know I will keep asking until you can't stand it.”

He sighed and rolled onto his side.

“I think about you,” she said.

“Don't.” His voice was rough.

“You kissed me,” she said. “It wasn't a dream.”

“You can't remember that.”

Isabelle felt something strange at his words, a breathless little flutter in her chest. “You want me as much as I want you,” she said.