The Nightingale (5 page)

“You're late,” he said, looking up from his desk in the back. He was doing something with the printing press, probably making one of his books of poetry, which no one ever purchased. His blunt-tipped fingers were stained blue. “I suppose boys are more important to you than employment.”

She slid onto the stool behind the cash register. In the week she'd lived with her father she'd made it a point not to argue back, although acquiescing gnawed at her. She tapped her foot impatiently. Words, phrases—excuses—clamored to be spoken aloud. It was hard not to tell him how she felt, but she knew how badly he wanted her gone, so she held her tongue.

“Do you hear that?” he said sometime later.

Had she fallen asleep?

Isabelle sat up. She hadn't heard her father approach, but he was beside her now, frowning.

There was a strange sound in the bookshop, to be sure. Dust fell from the ceiling; the bookcases clattered slightly, making a sound like chattering teeth. Shadows passed in front of the leaded-glass display windows at the entrance. Hundreds of them.

People? So many of them?

Papa went to the door. Isabelle slid off her stool and followed him. As he opened the door, she saw a crowd running down the street, filling the sidewalks.

“What in the world?” Papa muttered.

Isabelle pushed past Papa, elbowed her way into the crowd.

A man bumped into her so hard she stumbled, and he didn't even apologize. More people rushed past them.

“What is it? What's happened?” she asked a florid, wheezing man who was trying to break free of the crowd.

“The Germans are coming into Paris,” he said. “We must leave. I was in the Great War. I know…”

Isabelle scoffed. “Germans in Paris? Impossible.”

He ran away, bobbing from side to side, weaving, his hands fisting and unfisting at his sides.

“We must get home,” Papa said, locking the bookshop door.

“It can't be true,” she said.

“The worst can always be true,” Papa said grimly. “Stay close to me,” he added, moving into the crowd.

Isabelle had never seen such panic. All up and down the street, lights were coming on, automobiles were starting, doors were slamming shut. People screamed to one another and reached out, trying to stay connected in the melee.

Isabelle stayed close to her father. The pandemonium in the streets slowed them down. The Métro tunnels were too crowded to navigate, so they had to walk all the way. It was nearing nightfall when they finally made it home. At their apartment building, it took her father two tries to open the main door, his hands were shaking so badly. Once in, they ignored the rickety cage elevator and hurried up five flights of stairs to their apartment.

“Don't turn on the lights,” her father said harshly as he opened the door.

Isabelle followed him into the living room and went past him to the window, where she lifted the blackout shade, peering out.

From far away came a droning sound. As it grew louder, the window rattled, sounding like ice in a glass.

She heard a high whistling sound only seconds before she saw the black flotilla in the sky, like birds flying in formation.

Aeroplanes.

“Boches,” her father whispered.

Germans.

German aeroplanes, flying over Paris. The whistling sound increased, became like a woman's scream, and then somewhere—maybe in the second arrondissement, she thought—a bomb exploded in a flash of eerie bright light, and something caught fire.

The air raid siren sounded. Her father wrenched the curtains shut and led her out of the apartment and down the stairs. Their neighbors were all doing the same thing, carrying coats and babies and pets down the stairs to the lobby and then down the narrow, twisting stone stairs that led to the cellar. In the dark, they sat together, crowded in close. The air stank of mildew and body odor and fear—that was the sharpest scent of all. The bombing went on and on and on, screeching and droning, the cellar walls vibrating around them; dust fell from the ceiling. A baby started crying and couldn't be soothed.

“Shut that child up,
please,”
someone snapped.

“I am trying, M'sieur. He is scared.”

“So are we all.”

After what felt like an eternity, silence fell. It was almost worse than the noise. What of Paris was left?

By the time the all clear sounded, Isabelle felt numb.

“Isabelle?”

She wanted her father to reach out for her, to take her hand and comfort her, even if it was just for a moment, but he turned away from her and headed up the dark, twisting basement stairs. In their apartment, Isabelle went immediately to the window, peering past the shade to look for the Eiffel Tower. It was still there, rising above a wall of thick black smoke.

“Don't stand by the windows,” he said.

She turned slowly. The only light in the room was from his torch, a sickly yellow thread in the dark. “Paris won't fall,” she said.

He said nothing. Frowned. She wondered if he was thinking of the Great War and what he'd seen in the trenches. Perhaps his injury was hurting again, aching in sympathy with the sound of falling bombs and hissing flames.

“Go to bed, Isabelle.”

“How can I possibly sleep at a time like this?”

He sighed. “You will learn that a lot of things are possible.”

 

FIVE

They had been lied to by their government. They'd been assured, time and time again, that the Maginot Line would keep the Germans out of France.

Lies.

Neither concrete and steel nor French soldiers could stop Hitler's march, and the government had run from Paris like thieves in the night. It was said they were in Tours, strategizing, but what good did strategy do when Paris was to be overrun by the enemy?

“Are you ready?”

“I am not going, Papa. I have told you this.” She had dressed for travel—as he'd asked—in a red polka-dot summer dress and low heels.

“We will not have this conversation again, Isabelle. The Humberts will be here soon to pick you up. They will take you as far as Tours. From there, I leave it to your ingenuity to get to your sister's house. Lord knows you have always been adept at running away.”

“So you throw me out. Again.”

“Enough of this, Isabelle. Your sister's husband is at the front. She is alone with her daughter. You will do as I say. You will leave Paris.”

Did he know how this hurt her? Did he care?

“You've never cared about Vianne or me. And she doesn't want me any more than you do.”

“You're going,” he said.

“I want to stay and fight, Papa. To be like Edith Cavell.”

He rolled his eyes. “You remember how she died? Executed by the Germans.”

“Papa, please.”

“Enough. I have seen what they can do, Isabelle. You have not.”

“If it's that bad, you should come with me.”

“And leave the apartment and bookshop to them?” He grabbed her by the hand and dragged her out of the apartment and down the stairs, her straw hat and valise banging into the wall, her breath coming in gasps.

At last he opened the door and pulled her out onto the Avenue de La Bourdonnais.

Chaos. Dust. Crowds. The street was a living, breathing dragon of humanity, inching forward, wheezing dirt, honking horns; people yelling for help, babies crying, and the smell of sweat heavy in the air.

Automobiles clogged the area, each burdened beneath boxes and bags. People had taken whatever they could find—carts and bicycles and even children's wagons.

Those who couldn't find or afford the petrol or an automobile or a bicycle walked. Hundreds—thousands—of women and children held hands, shuffled forward, carrying as much as they could hold. Suitcases, picnic baskets, pets.

Already the very old and very young were falling behind.

Isabelle didn't want to join this hopeless, helpless crowd of women and children and old people. While the young men were away—dying for them at the front—their families were leaving, heading south or west, although, really, what made any of them think it would be safer there? Hitler's troops had already invaded Poland and Belgium and Czechoslovakia.

The crowd engulfed them.

A woman ran into Isabelle, mumbled pardon, and kept walking.

Isabelle followed her father. “I can be useful. Please. I'll be a nurse or drive an ambulance. I can roll bandages or even stitch up a wound.”

Beside them, a horn
aah-ooh-gahed
.

Her father looked past her, and she saw the relief that lifted his countenance. Isabelle recognized that look: it meant he was getting rid of her. Again. “They are here,” he said.

“Don't send me away,” she said. “Please.”

He maneuvered her through the crowd to where a dusty black automobile was parked. It had a saggy, stained mattress strapped to its roof, along with a set of fishing poles and a rabbit cage with the rabbit still inside. The boot was open but also strapped down; inside she saw a jumble of baskets and suitcases and lamps.

Inside the automobile, Monsieur Humbert's pale, plump fingers clutched the steering wheel as if the automobile were a horse that might bolt at any second. He was a pudgy man who spent his days in the butcher shop near Papa's bookstore. His wife, Patricia, was a sturdy woman who had the heavy-jowled-peasant look one saw so often in the country. She was smoking a cigarette and staring out the window as if she couldn't believe what she was seeing.

Monsieur Humbert rolled down his window and poked his face into the opening. “Hello, Julien. She is ready?”

Papa nodded. “She is ready.
Merci,
Edouard.”

Patricia leaned over to talk to Papa through the open window. “We are only going as far as Orléans. And she has to pay her share of petrol.”

“Of course.”

Isabelle couldn't leave. It was cowardly. Wrong. “Papa—”

“Au revoir,”
he said firmly enough to remind her that she had no choice. He nodded toward the car and she moved numbly toward it.

She opened the back door and saw three small, dirty girls lying together, eating crackers and drinking from bottles and playing with dolls. The last thing she wanted was to join them, but she pushed her way in, made a space for herself among these strangers that smelled vaguely of cheese and sausage, and closed the door.

Twisting around in her seat, she stared at her father through the back window. His face held her gaze; she saw his mouth bend ever so slightly downward; it was the only hint that he saw her. The crowd surged around him like water around a rock, until all she could see was the wall of bedraggled strangers coming up behind the car.

Isabelle faced forward in her seat again. Out her window, a young woman stared back at her, wild eyes, hair a bird's nest, an infant suckling on her breast. The car moved slowly, sometimes inching forward, sometimes stopped for long periods of time. Isabelle watched her countrymen—country
women
—shuffle past her, looking dazed and terrified and confused. Every now and then one of them would pound on the car bonnet or boot, begging for something. They kept the windows rolled up even though the heat in the car was stifling.

At first, she was sad to be leaving, and then her anger bloomed, growing hotter even than the air in the back of this stinking car. She was so tired of being considered disposable. First, her papa had abandoned her, and then Vianne had pushed her aside. She closed her eyes to hide tears she couldn't suppress. In the darkness that smelled of sausage and sweat and smoke, with the children arguing beside her, she remembered the first time she'd been sent away.

The long train ride … Isabelle stuffed in beside Vianne, who did nothing but sniff and cry and pretend to sleep.

And then Madame looking down her copper pipe of a nose saying,
They will be no trouble.

Although she'd been young—only four—Isabelle thought she'd learned what alone meant, but she'd been wrong. In the three years she'd lived at Le Jardin, she'd at least
had
a sister, even if Vianne was never around. Isabelle remembered peering down from the upstairs window, watching Vianne and her friends from a distance, praying to be remembered, to be invited, and then when Vianne had married Antoine and fired Madame Doom (not her real name, of course, but certainly the truth), Isabelle had believed she was a part of the family. But not for long. When Vianne had her miscarriage, it was instantly
good-bye, Isabelle
. Three weeks later—at seven—she'd been in her first boarding school. That was when she really learned about alone.

“You. Isabelle. Did you bring food?” Patricia asked. She was turned around in her seat, peering at Isabelle.

“No.”

“Wine?”

“I brought money and clothes and books.”

“Books,” Patricia said dismissively, and turned back around. “That should help.”

Isabelle looked out the window again. What other mistakes had she already made?

*   *   *

Hours passed. The automobile made its slow, agonizing way south. Isabelle was grateful for the dust. It coated the window and obscured the terrible, depressing scene.

People. Everywhere. In front of them, behind them, beside them; so thick was the crowd that the automobile could only inch forward in fits and starts. It was like driving through a swarm of bees that pulled apart for a second and then swarmed again. The sun was punishingly hot. It turned the smelly automobile interior into an oven and beat down on the women outside who were shuffling toward … what? No one knew what exactly was happening behind them or where safety lay ahead.

The car lurched forward and stopped hard. Isabelle hit the seat in front of her. The children immediately started to cry for their mother.

“Merde,”
Monsieur Humbert muttered.

“M'sieur Humbert,” Patricia said primly. “The children.”