The Nightingale

The room was smaller than she remembered. Painted a cheery white, with a twin iron-canopied bed and a faded old rug on the wooden plank floor and a Louis XV armchair that had seen better days. The window—blacked out—overlooked the interior courtyard of the apartment building. As a girl, she’d always known when her neighbors were taking out the trash, because she could hear them clanking out there, slamming down lids. She tossed her valise on the bed and began to unpack.

The clothes she’d taken on exodus—and returned to Paris with—were shabbier for the constant wear and hardly worth hanging in the armoire along with the clothes she’d inherited from her maman—beautiful vintage flapper dresses with flared skirts, silk-fringed evening gowns, woolen suits that had been cut down to fit her, and crepe day dresses. An array of matching hats and shoes made for dancing on ballroom floors or walking through the Rodin Gardens with the right boy on one’s arm. Clothes for a world that had vanished. There were no more “right” boys in Paris. There were practically no boys at all. They were all captive in camps in Germany or hiding out somewhere.

When her clothes were returned to hangers in the armoire, she closed the mahogany doors and pushed the armoire sideways just enough to reveal the secret door behind it.

Her fort.

She bent down and opened the door set into the white paneled wall by pushing on the top right corner. It sprang free, creaked open, revealing a storage room about six feet by six feet, with a roof so slanted that even as a ten-year-old girl, she’d had to hunch over to stand in it. Sure enough, her dolls were still in there, some slumped and others standing tall.

Isabelle closed the door on her memories and moved the armoire back in place. She undressed quickly and slipped into a pink silk dressing gown that reminded her of her maman. It still smelled vaguely of rose water—or she pretended it did. As she headed out of the room to brush her teeth, she paused at her father’s closed door.

She could hear him writing; his fountain pen scratched on rough paper. Every now and then he cursed and then fell silent. (That was when he was drinking, no doubt.) Then came the thunk of a bottle—or a fist—on the table.

Isabelle readied for bed, setting her hair in curlers and washing her face and brushing her teeth. On her way back to bed, she heard her father curse again—louder this time, maybe drinking—and she ducked into her bedroom and slammed the door behind her.

* * *

I can’t stomach being hovered over.

Apparently what this really meant was that her father couldn’t stand to be in the same room with her.

Funny that she hadn’t noticed it last year, when she’d lived with him for those weeks between her expulsion from the finishing school and her exile to the country.

True, they’d never sat down to a meal together then. Or had a conversation meaningful enough to remember. But somehow she hadn’t noticed. They’d been together in the bookshop, working side by side. Had she been so pathetically grateful for his presence that his silence escaped her notice?

Well, she noticed it now.

He pounded on her bedroom door so hard she released a little yelp of surprise.

“I’m leaving for work,” her father said through the door. “The ration cards are on the counter. I left you one hundred francs. Get what you can.”

She heard his footsteps echo down the wooden hall, heavy enough to rattle the walls. Then the door slammed shut.

“Good-bye to you, too,” Isabelle mumbled, stung by the tone of his voice.

Then she remembered.

Today was the day.

She threw back the coverlet and climbed out of bed and dressed without bothering to turn on the light. She had already planned her outfit: a drab gray dress and black beret, white gloves, and her last pair of black slingback pumps. Sadly, she had no stockings.

She studied herself in the salon mirror, trying to be critical, but all she saw was an ordinary girl in a dull dress, carrying a black handbag.

She opened her handbag (again) and stared down at the silk hammock-like lined interior. She had slit a tiny opening in the lining and slipped the thick envelope inside of it. Upon opening the handbag, it looked empty. Even if she did get stopped (which she wouldn’t—why would she? a nineteen-year-old girl dressed for lunch?) they would see nothing in her handbag except her papers, her ration coupons, and her carte d’identité, certificate of domicile, and her Ausweis. Exactly what should be there.

At ten o’clock, she left the apartment. Outside, beneath a bright, hot sun, she climbed aboard her blue bicycle and pedaled toward the quay.

When she reached the rue de Rivoli, black cars and green military lorries with fuel tanks strapped onto their sides and men on horseback filled the street. There were Parisians about, walking along the sidewalks, pedaling down the few streets upon which they were allowed to ride, queueing for food in lines that extended down the block. They were noticeable by the look of defeat on their faces and the way they hurried past the Germans without making eye contact. At Maxim’s restaurant, beneath the famous red awning, she saw a cluster of high-ranking Nazis waiting to get inside. The rumor was rampant that all of the country’s best meats and produce went straight to Maxim’s, to be served to the high command.

And then she spotted it: the iron bench near the entrance to the Comédie Française.

Isabelle hit the brakes on her bicycle and came to a bumpy, sudden stop, then stepped off the pedal with one foot. Her ankle gave a little twist when she put her weight on it. For the first time, her excitement turned a little sharp with fear.

Her handbag felt heavy suddenly; noticeably so. Sweat collected in her palms and along the rim of her felt hat.

Snap out of it.

She was a courier, not a frightened schoolgirl. What risk there was she accepted.