The Nightingale

Hours later, when they were on the train bound for home, seated on a wooden banquette in the third-class carriage, Vianne stared out the window at the bombed-out countryside. Antoine sat sleeping beside her, his head resting against the dirty window.

“How are you feeling?” Sophie asked.

Vianne placed a hand on her swollen abdomen. A tiny flutter—a kick—tapped against her palm. She reached for Sophie’s hand.

Sophie tried to pull away; Vianne gently insisted. She placed her daughter’s hand on her belly.

Sophie felt the flutter of movement and her eyes widened. She looked up at Vianne. “How can you…”

“We are all changed by this war, Soph. Daniel is your brother now that Rachel is … gone. Truly your brother. And this baby; he or she is innocent of … his or her creation.”

“It’s hard to forget,” she said quietly. “And I’ll never forgive.”

“But love has to be stronger than hate, or there is no future for us.”

Sophie sighed. “I suppose,” she said, sounding too adult for a girl of her age.

Vianne placed a hand on top of her daughter’s. “We will remind each other, oui? On the dark days. We will be strong for each other.”

* * *

Roll call had been going on for hours. Isabelle dropped to her knees. The minute she hit the ground, she thought stay alive and clambered back up.

Guards patrolled the perimeter with their dogs, selecting women for the gas chamber. Word was that another march was coming. This one to Mauthausen, where thousands had already been worked to death: Soviet prisoners of war, Jews, Allied airmen, political prisoners. It was said that none who walked through its gates would ever walk out.

Isabelle coughed. Blood sprayed across her palm. She wiped it on her dirty dress quickly, before the guards could see.

Her throat burned, her head pulsed and ached. She was so focused on her agony that it took her a moment to notice the sound of engines.

“Do you hear that?” Micheline said.

Isabelle felt a commotion moving through the prisoners. It was hard to concentrate when she hurt so badly. Her lungs ached with every breath.

“They’re leaving,” she heard.

“Isabelle, look!”

At first all she saw was bright blue sky and trees and prisoners. Then she noticed.

“The guards are gone,” she said in a hoarse, ragged voice.

The gates clattered open and a stream of American trucks drove through the gates; soldiers sat on the bonnets and hung out the back, their rifles held across their chests.

Americans.

Isabelle’s knees gave out. “Mich … e … line,” she whispered, her voice as broken as her spirit. “We … made … it.”

* * *

That spring, the war began to end. General Eisenhower broadcast a demand for the German surrender. Americans crossed the Rhine and went into Germany; the Allies won one battle after another and began to liberate the camps. Hitler was living in a bunker.

And still, Isabelle didn’t come home.

Vianne let the letter box clang shut. “It’s as if she disappeared.”

Antoine said nothing. For weeks they had been searching for Isabelle. Vianne stood in queues for hours to make telephone calls and sent countless letters to agencies and hospitals. Last week they visited more displaced-person camps, but to no avail. There was no record of Isabelle Rossignol anywhere. It was as if she had disappeared from the face of the earth—along with hundreds of thousands of others.

Maybe Isabelle had survived the camps, only to be shot a day before the Allies arrived. Supposedly in one of the camps, a place called Bergen-Belsen, the Allies had found heaps of still-warm bodies at liberation.