The Nightingale

“Ga?t,” he said, moving toward her.

“I haven’t decided if we’re friends yet.”

He touched her hair, let a few strands coil around his dirty finger. “We’re friends. Bank on it. Now let’s go.”

When he reached for her hand, it occurred to her to refuse him, but she didn’t. They walked out of the forest and back onto the road, merging once again into the crowd, which opened just enough to let them in and then closed around them. Isabelle hung on to Ga?tan with one hand and held her suitcase in the other.

They walked for miles.

Automobiles died around them. Cartwheels broke. Horses stopped and couldn’t be made to move again. Isabelle felt herself becoming listless and dull, exhausted by heat and dust and thirst. A woman limped along beside her, crying, her tears black with dirt and grit, and then that woman was replaced by an older woman in a fur coat who was sweating profusely and seemed to be wearing every piece of jewelry she owned.

The sun grew stronger, became stiflingly, staggeringly hot. Children whined, women whimpered. The acrid, stuffy scent of body odor and sweat filled the air, but Isabelle had grown so used to it that she barely noticed other people’s smell or her own.

It was almost three o’clock, the hottest part of the day, when they saw a regiment of French soldiers walking alongside them, dragging their rifles. The soldiers moved in a disorganized way, not in formation, not smartly. A tank rumbled beside them, crunching over belongings left in the road; on it several whey-faced French soldiers sat slumped, their heads hung low.

Isabelle pulled free of Ga?tan and stumbled through the crowd, elbowing her way to the regiment. “You’re going the wrong way!” she screamed, surprised to hear how hoarse her voice was.

Ga?tan pounced on a soldier, shoved him back so hard he stumbled and crashed into a slow-moving tank. “Who is fighting for France?”

The bleary-eyed soldier shook his head. “No one.” In a glint of silver, Isabelle saw the knife Ga?tan held to the man’s throat. The soldier’s gaze narrowed. “Go ahead. Do it. Kill me.”

Isabelle pulled Ga?tan away. In his eyes, she saw a rage so deep it scared her. He could do it; he could kill this man by slitting his throat. And she thought: They opened the prisons. Was he worse than a thief?

“Ga?t?” she said.

Her voice got through to him. He shook his head as if to clear it and lowered his knife. “Who is fighting for us?” he said bitterly, coughing at the dust.

“We will be,” she said. “Soon.”

Behind her, an automobile honked its horn. Aah-ooh-gah. Isabelle ignored it. Automobiles were no better than walking anymore—the few that were still running were moving only at the whim of the people around them; like flotsam in the reeds of a muddy river. “Come on.” She pulled him away from the demoralized regiment.

They walked on, still holding hands, but as the hours passed, Isabelle noticed a change in Ga?tan. He rarely spoke and didn’t smile.

At each town, the crowd thinned. People stumbled into Artenay, Saran, and Orléans, their eyes alight with desperation as they reached into handbags and pockets and wallets for money they hoped to be able to spend.

Still, Isabelle and Ga?tan kept going. They walked all day and fell into exhausted sleep in the dark and woke again to walk the next day. By their third day, Isabelle was numb with exhaustion. Oozing red blisters had formed between most of her toes and on the balls of her feet and every step was painful. Dehydration gave her a terrible, pounding headache and hunger gnawed at her empty stomach. Dust clogged her throat and eyes and made her cough constantly.

She stumbled past a freshly dug grave on the side of the road, marked by a crudely hammered-together wooden cross. Her shoe caught on something—a dead cat—and she staggered forward, almost falling to her knees. Ga?tan steadied her.

She clung to his hand, remained stubbornly upright.

How much later was it that she heard something?

An hour? A day?

Bees. They buzzed around her head; she batted them away. She licked her dried lips and thought of pleasant days in the garden, with bees buzzing about.

No.

Not bees.

She knew that sound.

She stopped, frowning. Her thoughts were addled. What had she been trying to remember?

The droning grew louder, filling the air, and then the aeroplanes appeared, six or seven of them, looking like small crucifixes against the blue and cloudless sky.

Isabelle tented a hand over her eyes, watching the aeroplanes fly closer, lower …

Someone yelled, “It’s the Boches!”

In the distance, a stone bridge exploded in a spray of fire and stone and smoke.

The aeroplanes dropped lower over the crowd.