The Nightingale

“Don’t get too close. My breath is terrible.”

Vianne kissed Isabelle’s cracked, swollen, dry lips and whispered, “Welcome home, sister.”

“Home,” Isabelle repeated the unexpected word. She couldn’t bring up any images to go along with it, her thoughts were so jumbled and her head pounded.

Vianne gently put her arms around Isabelle and pulled her close. Isabelle felt her sister’s soft skin and the lemony scent of her hair. She felt her sister stroking her back, just as she’d done when she was a little girl, and Isabelle thought, I made it.

Home.

*

“You’re burning up,” Vianne said when they were back at Le Jardin, and Isabelle was clean and dry and lying in a warm bed.

“Oui. I can’t seem to get rid of this fever.”

“I will get you some aspirin.” Vianne started to rise.

“No,” Isabelle said. “Don’t leave me. Please. Lie with me.”

Vianne climbed into the small bed. Afraid that the lightest touch would leave a bruise, she gathered Isabelle close with exquisite care.

“I’m sorry about Beck. Forgive me…” Isabelle said, coughing. She’d waited so long to say it, imagined this conversation a thousand times. “… for the way I put you and Sophie in danger…”

“No, Isabelle,” Vianne said softly, “forgive me. I failed you at every turn. Starting when Papa left us with Madame Dumas. And when you ran off to Paris, how could I believe your ridiculous story about an affair? That has haunted me.” Vianne leaned toward her. “Can we start over now? Be the sisters Maman wanted us to be?”

Isabelle fought to stay awake. “I’d like that.”

“I am so, so proud of what you did in this war, Isabelle.”

Isabelle’s eyes filled with tears. “What about you, V?”

Vianne looked away. “After Beck, another Nazi billeted here. A bad one.”

Did Vianne realize that she touched her belly as she said it? That shame colored her cheeks? Isabelle knew instinctively what her sister had endured. Isabelle had heard countless stories of women being raped by the soldiers billeted with them. “You know what I learned in the camps?”

Vianne looked at her. “What?”

“They couldn’t touch my heart. They couldn’t change who I was inside. My body … they broke that in the first days, but not my heart, V. Whatever he did, it was to your body, and your body will heal.” She wanted to say more, maybe add “I love you,” but a hacking cough overtook her. When it passed, she lay back, spent, breathing shallow, ragged breaths.

Vianne leaned closer, pressed a cool, wet rag to her fevered forehead.

Isabelle stared at the blood on the quilt, remembering the end days of her mother’s life. There had been such blood then, too. She looked at Vianne and saw that her sister was remembering it, too.

*

Isabelle woke on a wooden floor. She was freezing and on fire at the same time, shivering and sweating.

She heard nothing, no rats or cockroaches scurrying across the floor, no water bleeding through the wall cracks, turning to fat slugs of ice, no coughing or crying. She sat up slowly, wincing at every movement, no matter how fractional. Everything hurt. Her bones, her skin, her head, her chest; she had no muscles left to hurt, but her joints and ligaments ached.

She heard a loud ra-ta-ta-tat. Gunfire. She covered her head and scurried into the corner, crouching low.

No.

She was at Le Jardin, not Ravensbrück.

That sound was rain hitting the roof.

She got slowly to her feet, feeling dizzy. How long had she been here?

Four days? Five?

She limped to the nightstand, where a porcelain pitcher sat beside a bowl of tepid water. She washed her hands and splashed water on her face and then dressed in the clothes Vianne had laid out for her—a dress that had belonged to Sophie when she was ten years old and bagged on Isabelle. She began the long, slow journey down the stairs.

The front door was open. Outside, the apple trees were blurred by a falling rain. Isabelle went to the doorway, breathing in the sweet air.

“Isabelle?” Vianne said, coming up beside her. “Let me get you some marrow broth. The doctor says you can drink it.”

She nodded absently, letting Vianne pretend that the few tablespoons of broth Isabelle’s stomach could hold would make a difference.

She stepped out into the rain. The world was alive with sound—birds cawing, church bells ringing, rain thumping on the roof, splashing in puddles. Traffic clogged the narrow, muddy road; automobiles and lorries and bicyclists, honking and waving, yelling out to one another as people came home. An American lorry rumbled past, full of smiling, fresh-faced soldiers who waved at passersby.

At the sight of them, Isabelle remembered Vianne telling her that Hitler had killed himself and Berlin had been surrounded and would fall soon.