The Nightingale

She had seen buses outside of the prefecture of police, dozens of them parked in the courtyard. “Papa…” Before she could finish, she heard footsteps coming up the stairs outside of the apartment.

A pamphlet of some kind slid into the apartment through the slit beneath the door.

Papa left the table and bent to pick it up. He brought it to the table and set it down next to the candle.

Isabelle stood behind him.

Papa looked up at her.

“It’s a warning. It says the police are going to round up all foreign-born Jews and deport them to camps in Germany.”

“We are talking when we need to be acting,” Isabelle said. “We need to hide our friends in the building.”

“It’s so little,” Papa said. His hand was shaking. It made her wonder again—sharply—what he’d seen in the Great War, what he knew that she did not.

“It’s what we can do,” Isabelle said. “We can make some of them safe. At least for tonight. We’ll know more tomorrow.”

“Safe. And where would that be, Isabelle? If the French police are doing this, we are lost.”

Isabelle had no answer for that.

Saying no more, they left the apartment.

Stealth was difficult in a building as old as this one, and her father, moving in front of her, had never been light on his feet. Brandy made him even more unsteady as he led her down the narrow, twisting staircase to the apartment directly below theirs. He stumbled twice, cursing his imbalance. He knocked on the door.

He waited to the count of ten and knocked again. Harder this time.

Very slowly, the door opened, just a crack at first, and then all the way. “Oh, Julien, it is you,” said Ruth Friedman. She was wearing a man’s coat over a floor-length nightgown, with her bare feet sticking out beneath. Her hair was in rollers and covered with a scarf.

“You’ve seen the pamphlet?”

“I got one. It is true?” she whispered.

“I don’t know,” her father said. “There are buses out front and lorries have been rumbling past all night. Isabelle was at the prefecture of police tonight, and they were collecting the names and addresses of all foreign-born Jewish people. We think you should bring the children to our place for now. We have a hiding place.”

“But … my husband is a prisoner of war. The Vichy government promises us that we will be protected.”

“I am not sure we can trust the Vichy government, Madame,” Isabelle said to the woman. “Please. Just hide for now.”

Ruth stood there a moment, her eyes widening. The yellow star on her overcoat was a stark reminder of the way the world had changed. Isabelle saw when the woman decided. She turned on her heel and walked out of the room. Less than a minute later, she guided her two daughters toward the door. “What do we bring?”

“Nothing,” Isabelle said. She herded the Friedmans up the stairs. When they reached the safety of the apartment, her father led them to the secret room in the back bedroom and closed the door on them.

“I’ll get the Vizniaks,” Isabelle said. “Don’t put the armoire in place yet.”

“They’re on the third floor, Isabelle. You’ll never—”

“Lock the front door behind me. Don’t open it unless you hear my voice.”

“Isabelle, no—”

She was already gone, running down the stairs, barely touching the banister in her haste. When she was nearly to the third-floor landing, she heard voices below.

They were coming up the stairs.

She was too late. She crouched where she was, hidden by the elevator.

Two French policemen stepped onto the landing. The younger of the two knocked twice on the Vizniaks’ door, waited a second or two, and then kicked it open. Inside, a woman wailed.