The Nightingale

At her front door, she paused, glanced around. The street was quiet, dark. She fitted the skeleton key in the lock and gave a little twist. At the click of sound, she sensed danger. Something was wrong, out of place—a shadow where it shouldn’t be, a clanking of metal from the bistro next door, abandoned by its owner months ago.

She turned around slowly, peered out into the dark, quiet street. Unseen lorries were parked here and there and a few sad little cafés cast triangles of light onto the sidewalk; within the glow, soldiers were thin silhouettes, moving back and forth. An air of desertion hung over the once lively neighborhood.

Across the street, a lamp stood unlit, a barely darker slash against the night air around it.

He was there. She knew it, even though she couldn’t see him.

She moved down the steps, slowly, her senses alert, taking one cautious step at a time. She was sure she could hear him breathing, not far away. Watching her. She knew instinctively that he’d been waiting for her to return, worrying.

“Gaëtan,” she said softly, letting her voice be a lure, casting out, trying to catch him. “You’ve been following me for months. Why?”

Nothing. Silence blew in the wind around her, biting and cold.

“Come here,” she pleaded, tilting her chin.

Still, nothing.

“Now who isn’t ready?” she said. It hurt, that silence, but she understood it, too. With all the risks they were taking, love was probably the most dangerous choice of all.

Or maybe she was wrong, and he wasn’t here, had never been here, watching her, waiting for her. Maybe she was just a silly girl longing for a man who didn’t want her, standing alone in an empty street.

No.

He was there.

* * *

That winter was even worse than the year before. An angry God smote Europe with leaden skies and falling snow, day after day after day. The cold was a cruel addendum to a world already bleak and ugly.

Carriveau, like so many small towns in the Occupied Zone, became an island of despair, cut off from its surroundings. The villagers had limited information about what was going on in the world around them, and no one had time to burrow through propagandist papers looking for truth when surviving took so much effort. All they really knew was that the Nazis had become angrier, meaner, since the Americans had joined the war.

On a bleak and freezing predawn morning in early February 1942, when tree limbs snapped and windowpanes looked like cracked pond ice, Vianne woke early and stared at the deeply pitched ceiling of her bedroom. A headache pounded behind her eyes. She felt sweaty and achy. When she drew in a breath, it burned in her lungs and made her cough.

Getting out of bed was not appealing, but neither was starving to death. More and more often this winter, their ration cards were useless; there was simply no food to be had, and no shoes or fabric or leather. Vianne no longer had wood for the stove or money to pay for electricity. With gas so dear, the simple act of bathing became a chore to be endured. She and Sophie slept wrapped together like puppies, beneath a mountain of quilts and blankets. In the past few months, Vianne had begun to burn everything made of wood and to sell her valuables.

Now she was wearing almost every piece of clothing she owned—flannel pants, underwear she’d knitted herself, an old woolen sweater, a neck scarf, and still she shivered when she left the bed. When her feet hit the floor, she winced at the pain from her chilblains. She grabbed a wool skirt and put it on over her pants. She’d lost so much weight this winter that she had to pin the waist in place. Coughing, she went downstairs. Her breath preceded her in white puffs that disappeared almost instantly. She limped past the guest room door.

The captain was gone, and had been for weeks. As much as Vianne hated to admit it, his absences were worse than his appearances these days. At least when he was there, there was food to eat and a fire in the hearth. He refused to let the home be cold. Vianne ate as little of the food he provided as she could—she told herself it was her duty to be hungry—but what mother could let her child suffer? Was Vianne really supposed to let Sophie starve to prove her loyalty to France?

In the darkness, she added another pair of holey socks to the two pairs already on her feet. Then she wrapped herself in a blanket and put on the mittens she’d recently knit from an old baby blanket of Sophie’s.

In the frost-limned kitchen, she lit an oil lamp and carried it outside, moving slowly, breathing hard as she climbed the slick, icy hillside to the barn. Twice she slipped and fell on the frozen grass.

The barn’s metal door handle felt burningly cold, even through her heavy mittens. She had to use all of her weight to slide the door open. Inside, she set down the lantern. The idea of moving the car was almost more than she could stand in her weakened state.

She took a deep painful breath, steeled herself, and went to the car. She put it in neutral, then bent down to the bumper and pushed with all of her strength. The car rolled forward slowly, as if in judgment.

When the trapdoor was revealed, she retrieved the oil lamp and climbed slowly down the ladder. In the long, dark months since her firing and the end of her money, she had sold off her family’s treasures one by one: a painting to feed the rabbits and chickens through the winter, a Limoges tea set for a sack of flour, silver salt and pepper shakers for a stringy pair of hens.

Opening her maman’s jewelry box, she stared down into the velvet-lined interior. Not long ago there had been lots of paste jewelry in here, as well as a few good pieces. Earrings, a filigree silver bracelet, a brooch made of rubies and hammered metal. Only the pearls were left.

Vianne removed one mitten and reached down for the pearls, scooping them into her palm. They shone in the light, as lustrous as a young woman’s skin.

They were the last link to her mother—and to their family’s heritage.

Now Sophie would not wear them on her wedding day or hand them down to her own daughters.

“But she will eat this winter,” Vianne said. She wasn’t sure if it was grief that serrated her voice, or sadness, or relief. She was lucky to have something to sell.