The Nightingale

She heard grumbling behind her from the women who wanted meat, and farther back, from the women who knew they wouldn’t even be lucky enough to get octopus.

Isabelle took the paper-wrapped octopus and left the shop. At least she’d gotten something. There was no tinned milk to be had anymore, not with ration cards or even on the black market. She was fortunate enough to get a little Camembert after two more hours in line. She covered her precious items with the heavy towel in her basket and hobbled down rue Victor Hugo.

As she passed a café filled with German soldiers and French policemen, she smelled brewed coffee and freshly baked croissants and her stomach grumbled.

“M’mselle.”

A French policeman nodded crisply and indicated a need to step around her. She moved aside and watched him put up a poster in an abandoned storefront’s window. The first poster read:





NOTICE


SHOT FOR SPYING. THE JEW JAKOB MANSARD, THE COMMUNIST VIKTOR YABLONSKY, AND THE JEW LOUIS DEVRY.

And the second:





NOTICE


HENCEFORTH, ALL FRENCH PEOPLE ARRESTED FOR ANY CRIME OR INFRACTION WILL BE CONSIDERED HOSTAGES. WHEN A HOSTILE ACT AGAINST GERMANY OCCURS IN FRANCE, HOSTAGES WILL BE SHOT.

“They’re shooting ordinary French people for nothing?” she said.

“Don’t look so pale, Mademoiselle. These warnings are not for beautiful women such as yourself.”

Isabelle glared at the man. He was worse than the Germans, a Frenchman doing this to his own people. This was why she hated the Vichy government. What good was self-rule for half of France if it turned them into Nazi puppets?

“Are you unwell, Mademoiselle?”

So solicitous. So caring. What would he do if she called him a traitor and spat in his face? “I am fine, merci.”

She watched him cross the street confidently, his back straight, his hat positioned just so on his cropped brown hair. The German soldiers in the café welcomed him warmly, clapped him on the back and pulled him into their midst.

Isabelle turned away in disgust.

That was when she saw it: a bright silver bicycle leaning against the side wall of the café. At the sight of it, she thought how much it would change her life, ease her pain, to ride to town and back each day.

Normally a bicycle would be guarded by the soldiers in the café, but on this snow-dusted morning, no one was outside at a table.

Don’t do it.

Her heart started beating quickly, her palms turned damp and hot within her mittens. She glanced around. The women queued up at the butcher’s made it a point to see nothing and make eye contact with no one. The windows of the café across the street were fogged; inside, the men were olive-hued silhouettes.

So certain of themselves.

Of us, she thought bitterly.

At that, whatever sliver of restraint she possessed disappeared. She held the basket close to her side and limped out onto the ice-slicked cobblestoned street. From that second, that one step forward, the world seemed to blur around her and time slowed down. She heard her breath, saw the plumes of it in front of her face. The buildings blurred or faded into white hulks, the snow dazzled, until all she could see was the glint of the silver handlebars and the two black tires.

She knew there was only one way to do this. Fast. Without a glance sideways or a pause in her step.

Somewhere a dog barked. A door banged shut.

Isabelle kept walking; five steps separated her from the bicycle.

Four.

Three.

Two.

She stepped up onto the sidewalk and took hold of the bicycle and jumped onto it. She rode down the cobblestoned street, the chassis clanging at bumps in the road. She skidded around the corner, almost fell, and righted herself, pedaling hard toward rue La Grande.

There, she turned into the alley and jumped off the bicycle to knock on the door. Four hard clacks.

The door opened slowly. Henri saw her and frowned.

She pushed her way inside.

The small meeting room was barely lit. A single oil lamp sat on a scarred wooden table. Henri was the only one here. He was making sausage from a tray of meat and fat. Skeins of it hung from hooks on the wall. The room smelled of meat and blood and cigarette smoke. She yanked the bicycle in with her and slammed the door shut.

“Well, hello,” he said, wiping his hands on a towel. “Have we called a meeting I don’t know about?”

“No.”

He glanced at her side. “That’s not your bicycle.”

“I stole it,” she said. “From right under their noses.”

“It is—or was—Alain Deschamp’s bicycle. He left everything and fled to Lyon with his family when the occupation began.” Henri moved toward her. “Lately, I have been seeing an SS soldier riding it around town.”

“SS?” Isabelle’s elation faded. There were ugly rumors swirling about the SS and their cruelty. Perhaps she should have thought this through …