*
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.
In the silence between them, she heard a frog croak and the leaves fluttering in a jasmine-scented breeze above their heads. A nightingale sang a sad and lonely song.
“You do not seem yourself, Madame,” he said. “If you do not mind me saying so.”
“I was fired from my teaching position today.” It was the first time she’d said the words aloud and they caused hot tears to glaze her eyes. “I … drew attention to myself.”
“A dangerous thing to do.”
“The money my husband left is gone. I am unemployed. And winter will soon be upon us. How am I to survive? To feed Sophie and keep her warm?” She turned to look at him.
Their gazes came together. She wanted to look away but couldn’t.
He placed the wineglass in her hand, forced her fingers to coil around it. His touch felt hot against her cold hands, made her shiver. She remembered his office suddenly—and all that food stacked within it. “It is just wine,” he said again, and the scent of it, of black cherries and dark rich earth and a hint of lavender, wafted up to her nose, reminding her of the life she’d had before, the nights she and Antoine had sat out here, drinking wine.
She took a sip and gasped; she’d forgotten this simple pleasure.
“You are beautiful, Madame,” he said, his voice as sweet and rich as the wine. “Perhaps it has been too long since you heard that.”
Vianne got to her feet so fast she knocked into the table and spilled the wine. “You should not say such things, Herr Captain.”
“No,” he said, rising to his feet. He stood in front of her, his breath scented by red wine and spearmint gum. “I should not.”
“Please,” she said, unable even to finish the sentence.
“Your daughter will not starve this winter, Madame,” he said. Softly, as if it were their secret accord. “That is one thing you can be sure of.”
God help Vianne, it relieved her. She mumbled something—she wasn’t even sure what—and went back into the house, where she climbed into bed with Sophie, but it was a long time before she slept.
*
The bookshop had once been a gathering place for poets and writers and novelists and academics. Isabelle’s best childhood memories took place in these musty rooms. While Papa had worked in the back room on his printing press, Maman had read Isabelle stories and fables and made up plays for them to act out. They had been happy here, for a time, before Maman took sick and Papa started drinking.
There’s my Iz, come sit on Papa’s lap while I write your maman a poem.
Or maybe she had imagined that memory, constructed it from the threads of her own need and wrapped it tightly around her shoulders. She didn’t know anymore.
Now it was Germans who crowded into the shadowy nooks and crannies.
In the six weeks since Isabelle had reopened the shop, word had apparently spread among the soldiers that a pretty French girl could be found often at the shop’s counter.
They arrived in a stream, dressed in their spotless uniforms, their voices loud as they jostled one another. Isabelle flirted with them mercilessly but made sure never to leave the shop until it was empty. And she always left by the back door, wearing a charcoal cloak with the hood drawn up, even in the heat of summer. The soldiers might be jovial and smiling—boys, really, who talked of pretty fr?uleins back home and bought French classics by “acceptable” authors for their families—but she never forgot that they were the enemy.
“M’mselle, you are so beautiful, and you are ignoring us. How will we survive?” A young German officer reached for her.
She laughed prettily and pirouetted out of his reach. “Now, M’sieur, you know I can show no favorites.” She sidled into place behind the sales counter. “I see you are holding a book of poetry. Certainly you have a girl back home who would love to receive such a thoughtful gift from you.”
His friends shoved him forward, all of them talking at once.
Isabelle was taking his money when the bell above the front door tinkled gaily.
Isabelle looked up, expecting to see more German soldiers, but it was Anouk. She was dressed, as usual, more for her temperament than the season, in all black. A fitted V-neck black sweater and straight skirt with a black beret and gloves. A Gauloises cigarette hung from her bright red lips, unlit.
She paused in the open doorway, with a rectangle of the empty alley behind her, a flash of red geraniums and greenery.
At the bell, the Germans turned.
Anouk let the door shut behind her. She casually lit her cigarette and inhaled deeply.
With half of the store length between them, and three German soldiers milling about, Isabelle’s gaze caught Anouk’s. In the weeks that Isabelle had been a courier (she’d gone to Blois, Lyon, and Marseilles, to Amboise and Nice, not to mention at least a dozen drops in Paris recently, all under her new name—Juliette Gervaise—using false papers that Anouk had slipped her one day in a bistro, right under the Germans’ noses), Anouk had been her most frequent contact and even with their age difference—which had to be at least a decade, maybe more—they had become friends in the way of women who live parallel lives—wordlessly but no less real for its silence. Isabelle had learned to see past Anouk’s dour expression and flat mouth, to ignore her taciturn demeanor. Behind all that, Isabelle thought there was sadness. A lot of it. And anger.
Anouk walked forward with a regal, disdainful air that cut a man down to size before he even spoke. The Germans fell silent, watching her, moving sideways to let her pass. Isabelle heard one of them say “mannish” and another “widow.”