The Nightingale

Her heart seemed to stop. “E-excuse me?”

“I speak of your employment as a teacher. You are terminated. Go home, Madame, and do not return. These students do not need an example such as you.”

* * *

At the end of the day, Vianne walked home with her daughter and even remembered now and then to answer one of Sophie’s nonstop questions, but all the while she was thinking: What now?

What now?

The stalls and shops were closed this time of day, their bins and cases empty. There were signs everywhere saying NO EGGS, NO BUTTER, NO OIL, NO LEMONS, NO SHOES, NO THREAD, NO PAPER BAGS.

She had been frugal with the money Antoine left for her. More than frugal—miserly—even though it had seemed like so much money in the beginning. She had used it for necessities only—wood, electricity, gas, food. But still it was gone. How would she and Sophie survive without her salary from teaching?

At home, she moved in a daze. She made a pot of cabbage soup and loaded it up with shredded carrots that were soft as noodles. As soon as the meal was finished, she did laundry, and when it was hanging out on the line, she darned socks until night fell. Too early, she shuffled a whiny, complaining Sophie off to bed.

Alone (and feeling it like a knife pressed to her throat), she sat down at the dining table with an official postcard and a fountain pen.

Dearest Antoine,

We are out of money and I have lost my job.

What am I to do? Winter is only months away.

She lifted the pen from the paper. The blue words seemed to expand against the white paper.

Out of money.

What kind of woman was she to even think of sending a letter like this to her prisoner-of-war husband?

She balled up the postcard and threw it into the cold, soot-caked fireplace, where it lay all alone, a white ball on a bed of gray ash.

No.

It couldn’t be in the house. What if Sophie found it, read it? She retrieved it from the ashes and carried it out to the backyard, where she threw it into the pergola. The chickens would trample and peck it to death.

Outside, she sat down in Antoine’s favorite chair, feeling dazed by the suddenness of her changed circumstances and this new and terrible fear. If only she could do it all over again. She’d spend even less money … she’d go without more … she’d let them take Monsieur Paretsky without a word.

Behind her, the door creaked open and clicked shut.

Footsteps. Breathing.

She should get up and leave, but she was too tired to move.

Beck came up behind her.

“Would you care for a glass of wine? It’s a Chateau Margaux ’28. A very good year, apparently.”

Wine. She wanted to say yes, please (perhaps she’d never needed a glass more), but she couldn’t do it. Neither could she say no, so she said nothing.

She heard the thunk of a cork being freed, and then the gurgle of wine being poured. He set a full glass on the table beside her. The sweet, rich scent was intoxicating.

He poured himself a glass and sat down in the chair beside her. “I am leaving,” he said after a long silence.

She turned to him.

“Do not look so eager. It is only for a while. A few weeks. I have not been home in two years.” He took a drink. “My wife may be sitting in our garden right now, wondering who will return to her. I am not the man who left, alas. I have seen things…” He paused. “This war, it is not as I expected. And things change in an absence this long, do you not agree?”

“Oui,” she said. She had often thought the same thing.