The Nightingale

He slammed his palm down on the table so hard the light shuddered. “What?”

“Herr Captain suddenly said, ‘I know where he’s hiding,’ and grabbed his sidearm and left my home, slamming the door shut behind him. I saw him jump on his motorcycle and take off down the road at an unsafe speed, and then … nothing. He never returned. I assumed he was busy at the Kommandantur. As I said, his comings and goings are not my concern.”

The man drew a long drag on his cigarette. The tip glowed red and then slowly faded to black. Ash rained down on the desk. He studied her from behind a veil of smoke. “A man would not want to leave a woman as beautiful as yourself.”

Vianne didn’t move.

“Well,” he said at last, dropping his cigarette butt to the floor. He stood abruptly and stomped on the still-lit cigarette, grinding on it with his boot heel. “I suspect the young Hauptmann was not as skilled with a gun as he should have been. The Wehrmacht,” he said, shaking his head. “Often they are a disappointment. Disciplined but not … eager.”

He came out from behind the desk and walked toward Vianne. As he neared, she stood. Politeness demanded it. “The Hauptmann’s misfortune is my fortune.”

“Oh?”

His gaze moved down her throat to the pale skin above her breasts. “I need a new place to billet. The H?tel Bellevue is unsatisfactory. I believe your house will do nicely.”

*

When Vianne stepped out of the town hall, she felt like a woman who’d just washed ashore. She was unsteady on her feet and trembling slightly, her palms were damp, her forehead itchy. Everywhere she looked in the square were soldiers; these days the black SS uniforms were predominant. She heard someone yell “Halt!” and she turned, saw a pair of women in ratty coats with yellow stars on their chests being shoved to their knees by a soldier with a gun. The soldier grabbed one of the two and dragged her to her feet while the older one screamed. It was Madame Fournier, the butcher’s wife. Her son, Gilles, yelled, “You can’t take my maman!” and started to surge at two French policemen who were nearby.

A gendarme grabbed the boy, yanked hard enough to make him stop. “Don’t be a fool.”

Vianne didn’t think. She saw her former student in trouble and she went to him. He was just a boy, for God’s sake. Sophie’s age. Vianne had been his teacher since before he could read. “What are you doing?” she demanded to know, realizing a second too late that she should have tempered her voice.

The policeman turned to look at her. Paul. He was even fatter than the last time she’d seen him. His face had puffed out enough to make his eyes as small and slitted as sewing needles. “Stay out of this, Madame,” Paul said.

“Madame Mauriac,” Gilles cried, “they’re taking my maman to the train! I want to go with her!”

Vianne looked at Gilles’s mother, Madame Fournier, the butcher’s wife, and saw defeat in her eyes.

“Come with me, Gilles,” Vianne said without really thinking.

“Merci,” Madame Fournier whispered.

Paul yanked Gilles close again. “Enough. The boy is making a scene. He is coming with us.”

“No!” Vianne said. “Paul, please, we are all French.” She hoped the use of his name would remind him that before all of this they’d been a community. She’d taught his daughters. “The boy is a French citizen. He was born here!”

“We don’t care where he was born, Madame. He’s on my list. He goes.” His eyes narrowed. “Do you want to lodge a complaint?”

Madame Fournier was crying now, clutching her son’s hand. The other policeman blew his whistle and prodded Gilles forward with the barrel of his gun.

Gilles and his mother stumbled into the crowd of others being herded toward the train station.

We don’t care where he was born, Madame.

Beck had been right. Being French would no longer protect Ari.

She clamped her handbag tightly beneath her armpit and headed for home. As usual, the road had turned to mud and ruined her shoes by the time she reached the gate at Le Jardin.

Both of the children were waiting in the living room. Relief loosened her shoulders. She smiled tiredly as she set down her handbag.

“You’re all right?” Sophie said.

Ari immediately moved toward her, grinning, opening his arms for a hug, saying, “Maman,” with a grin to prove that he understood the rules of their new game.

She pulled the three-year-old into her arms and held him tightly. To Sophie, she said, “I was questioned and released. That is the good news.”

“And the bad news?”

Vianne looked at her daughter, defeated. Sophie was growing up in a world where boys in her class were put in train carriages like cattle at the point of a gun and perhaps never seen again. “Another German is going to billet here.”

“Will he be like Herr Captain Beck?”