The Nightingale

This is it.

The doors of the building banged shut.

Ice-cold water gushed from the showerheads, shocking Isabelle, chilling her to the bone. In no time it was over and they were being herded again. Shivering, trying futilely to cover her nakedness with her trembling hands, she moved into the crowd and stumbled forward with the other women. One by one they were deloused. Then Isabelle was handed a shapeless striped dress and a dirty pair of men’s underwear and two left shoes without laces.

Clutching her new possessions to her clammy breasts, she was shoved into a barn-like building with stacks of wooden bunks. She climbed into one of the bunks and lay there with nine other women. Moving slowly, she dressed and then lay back, staring up at the gray wooden underside of the bunk above her. “Micheline?” she whispered.

“I’m here, Isabelle,” her friend said from the bunk above.

Isabelle was too tired to say more. Outside, she heard the smacking of leather belts, the hissing of whips, and the screams of women who moved too slowly.

“Welcome to Ravensbrück,” said the woman beside her.

Isabelle felt the woman’s skeletal hip against her leg.

She closed her eyes, trying to block out the sounds, the smell, the fear, the pain.

Stay alive, she thought.

Stay. Alive.

THIRTY-FIVE

August.

Vianne breathed as quietly as she could. In the hot, muggy darkness of this upstairs bedroom—her bedroom, the one she’d shared with Antoine—every sound was amplified. She heard the bedsprings ping in protest as Von Richter rolled onto his side. She watched his exhalations, gauging each one. When he started to snore, she inched sideways and peeled the damp sheet away from her naked body.

In the last few months, Vianne had learned about pain and shame and degradation. She knew about survival, too—how to gauge Von Richter’s moods and when to stay out of his way and when to be silent. Sometimes, if she did everything just right, he barely saw her. It was only when he’d had a bad day, when he came home already angry, that she was in trouble. Like last night.

He’d come home in a terrible temper, muttering about the fighting in Paris. The Maquis had started fighting in the streets. Vianne had known instantly what he’d want that night.

To inflict pain.

She’d herded her children out of the room quickly, put them to bed in the downstairs bedroom. Then she’d gone upstairs.

That was the worst of it, maybe; that he made her come to him and she did. She took off her clothes so he wouldn’t rip them away.

Now, as she dressed she noticed how much it hurt to raise her arms. She paused at the blacked-out window. Beyond it lay fields destroyed by incendiary bombs; trees broken in half, many of them still smoldering, gates and chimneys broken. An apocalyptic landscape. The airfield was a crushed pile of stone and wood surrounded by broken aeroplanes and bombed-out lorries. Since Général de Gaulle had taken over the Free French Army and the Allies had landed in Normandy, the bombing of Europe had become constant.

Was Antoine out there still? Was he somewhere in his prison camp, looking out a slit in the barracks wall or a boarded-up window, looking at this moon that had once shone on a house filled with love? And Isabelle. She’d been gone only two months, but it felt like a lifetime. Vianne worried about her constantly, but there was nothing to be done about worry; it had to be borne.

Downstairs, she lit a candle. The electricity had been off for a long time now. In the water closet, she set the candle down by the sink and stared at herself in the oval mirror. Even in candlelight, she looked pasty and gaunt. Her dull, reddish gold hair hung limp on either side of her face. In the years of deprivation, her nose seemed to have lengthened and her cheekbones had become more prominent. A bruise discolored her temple. Soon, she knew, it would darken. She knew without looking that there would be handprints on her upper arms and an ugly bruise on her left breast.

He was getting meaner. Angrier. The Allied forces had landed in southern France and begun liberating towns. The Germans were losing the war, and Von Richter seemed hell-bent on making Vianne pay for it.

She stripped and washed in tepid water. She scrubbed until her skin was mottled and red, and still she didn’t feel clean. She never felt clean.

When she could stand no more, she dried off and redressed in her nightgown, adding a robe over it. Tying it at the waist, she left the bathroom, carrying her candle.

Sophie was in the living room, waiting for her. She sat on the last good piece of furniture in the room—the divan—with her knees drawn together and her hands clasped. The rest of the furniture had been requisitioned or burned.

“What are you doing up so late?”

“I could ask you the same question, but I don’t really need to, do I?”

Vianne tightened the belt on her robe. It was a nervous habit, something to do with her hands. “Let’s go to bed.”

Sophie looked up at her. At almost fourteen, Sophie’s face had begun to mature. Her eyes were black against her pale skin, her lashes lush and long. A poor diet had thinned Sophie’s hair, but it still hung in ringlets. She pursed her full lips. “Really, Maman? How long must we pretend?” The sadness—and the anger—in those beautiful eyes was heartbreaking. Vianne apparently had hidden nothing from this child who’d lost her childhood to war.