The Nightingale

Isabelle yanked away. The thought of Vianne’s comforting touch made her feel sick. She limped around to face her sister. “You don’t reason with men like Hitler.”

“So you know more than our heroes now?”

“I know we shouldn’t give up.”

Vianne made a tsking sound, a little scuff of disappointment. “If Maréchal Pétain thinks surrender is best for France, it is. Period. At least the war will be over and our men will come home.”

“You are a fool.”

Vianne said, “Fine,” and went back into the house.

Isabelle tented a hand over her eyes and stared up into the bright and cloudless sky. How long would it be before all this blue was filled with German aeroplanes?

She didn’t know how long she stood there, imagining the worst—remembering how the Nazis had opened fire on innocent women and children in Tours, obliterating them, turning the grass red with their blood.

“Tante Isabelle?”

Isabelle heard the small, tentative voice as if from far away. She turned slowly.

A beautiful girl stood at Le Jardin’s back door. She had skin like her mother’s, as pale as fine porcelain, and expressive eyes that appeared coal black from this distance, as dark as her father’s. She could have stepped from the pages of a fairy tale—Snow White or Sleeping Beauty.

“You can’t be Sophie,” Isabelle said. “The last time I saw you … you were sucking your thumb.”

“I still do sometimes,” Sophie said with a conspiratorial smile. “You won’t tell?”

“Me? I am the best of secret keepers.” Isabelle moved toward her, thinking, my niece. Family. “Shall I tell you a secret about me, just so that we are fair?”

Sophie nodded earnestly, her eyes widening.

“I can make myself invisible.”

“No, you can’t.”

Isabelle saw Vianne appear at the back door. “Ask your maman. I have sneaked onto trains and climbed out of windows and run away from convent dungeons. All of this because I can disappear.”

“Isabelle,” Vianne said sternly.

Sophie stared up at Isabelle, enraptured. “Really?”

Isabelle glanced at Vianne. “It is easy to disappear when no one is looking at you.”

“I am looking at you,” Sophie said. “Will you make yourself invisible now?”

Isabelle laughed. “Of course not. Magic, to be its best, must be unexpected. Don’t you agree? And now, shall we play a game of checkers?”

EIGHT

The surrender was a bitter pill to swallow, but Maréchal Pétain was an honorable man. A hero of the last war with Germany. Yes, he was old, but Vianne shared the belief that this only gave him a better perspective from which to judge their circumstances. He had fashioned a way for their men to come home, so it wouldn’t be like the Great War.

Vianne understood what Isabelle could not: Pétain had surrendered on behalf of France to save lives and preserve their nation and their way of life. It was true that the terms of this surrender were difficult: France had been divided into two zones. The Occupied Zone—the northern half of the country and the coastal regions (including Carriveau)—was to be taken over and governed by the Nazis. The great middle of the country, the land that lay below Paris and above the sea, would be the Free Zone, governed by a new French government in Vichy, led by Maréchal Pétain himself, in collaboration with the Nazis.

Immediately upon France’s surrender, food became scarce. Laundry soap: unobtainable. Ration cards could not be counted upon. Phone service became unreliable, as did the mail. The Nazis effectively cut off communication between cities and towns. The only mail allowed was on official German postcards. But for Vianne, these were not the worst of the changes.

Isabelle became impossible to live with. Several times since the surrender, while Vianne toiled to reconstruct and replant her garden and repair her damaged fruit trees, she had paused in her work and seen Isabelle standing at the gate staring up at the sky as if some dark and horrible thing were headed this way.

All Isabelle could talk about was the monstrosity of the Nazis and their determination to kill the French. She had no ability—of course—to hold her tongue, and since Vianne refused to listen, Sophie became Isabelle’s audience, her acolyte. She filled poor Sophie’s head with terrible images of what would happen, so much so that the child had nightmares. Vianne dared not leave the two of them alone, and so today, like each of the previous days, she made them both come to town with her to see what their ration cards would get them.

They had been standing in a food queue at the butcher’s shop for two hours already. Isabelle had been complaining nearly that whole time. Apparently it made no sense to her that she should have to shop for food.