The Nightingale

But on this Monday afternoon, after a long day’s travel, she saw the truth. The occupation might have left the buildings in place, and there was no evidence outside the Gare de Lyon of bombings, but there was a darkness here, even in the full light of day, a hush of loss and despair as she rode her bicycle down the boulevard.

Her beloved city was like a once-beautiful courtesan grown old and thin, weary, abandoned by her lovers. In less than a year, this magnificent city had been stripped of its essence by the endless clatter of German jackboots on the streets and disfigured by swastikas that flew from every monument.

The only cars she saw were black Mercedes-Benzes with miniature swastika flags flapping from prongs on the fenders, and Wehrmacht lorries, and now and then a gray panzer tank. All up and down the boulevard, windows were blacked out and shutters were drawn. At every other corner, it seemed, her way was barricaded. Signs in bold, black lettering offered directions in German, and the clocks had been changed to run two hours ahead—on German time.

She kept her head down as she pedaled past pods of German soldiers and sidewalk cafés hosting uniformed men. As she rounded onto the boulevard de la Bastille, she saw an old woman on a bicycle trying to bypass a barricade. A Nazi stood in her way, berating her in German—a language she obviously didn’t understand. The woman turned her bicycle and pedaled away.

It took Isabelle longer to reach the bookshop than it should have, and by the time she coasted to a stop out front, her nerves were taut. She leaned her bicycle against a tree and locked it in place. Clutching her valise in sweaty, gloved hands, she approached the bookshop. In a bistro window, she caught sight of herself: blond hair hacked unevenly along the bottom; face pale with bright red lips (the only cosmetic she still had); she had worn her best ensemble for traveling—a navy and cream plaid jacket with a matching hat and a navy skirt. Her gloves were a bit the worse for wear, but in these times no one noticed a thing like that.

She wanted to look her best to impress her father. Grown-up.

How many times in her life had she agonized over her hair and clothing before coming home to the Paris apartment only to discover that Papa was gone and Vianne was “too busy” to return from the country and that some female friend of her father’s would care for Isabelle while she was on holiday? Enough so that by the time she was fourteen she’d stopped coming home on holidays at all; it was better to sit alone in her empty dormitory room than be shuffled among people who didn’t know what to do with her.

This was different, though. Henri and Didier—and their mysterious friends in the Free French—needed Isabelle to live in Paris. She would not let them down.

The bookshop’s display windows were blacked out and the grates that protected the glass during the day were drawn down and locked in place. She tried the door and found it locked.

On a Monday afternoon at four o’clock? She went to the crevice in the store fa?ade that had always been her father’s hiding place and found the rusted skeleton key and let herself in.

The narrow store seemed to hold its breath in the darkness. Not a sound came at her. Not her father turning the pages of a beloved novel or the sound of his pen scratching on paper as he struggled with the poetry that had been his passion when Maman was alive. She closed the door behind her and flicked on the light switch by the door.

Nothing.

She felt her way to the desk and found a candle in an old brass holder. An extended search of the drawers revealed matches, and she lit the candle.

The light, meager as it was, revealed destruction in every corner of the shop. Half of the shelves were empty, many of them broken and hanging on slants, the books a fallen pyramid on the floor beneath the low end. Posters had been ripped down and defaced. It was as if marauders had gone through on a rampage looking for something hidden and carelessly destroyed everything along the way.

Papa.

Isabelle left the bookshop quickly, not even bothering to replace the key. Instead, she dropped it in her jacket pocket and unlocked her bicycle and climbed aboard. She kept to the smaller streets (the few that weren’t barricaded) until she came to rue de Grenelle; there, she turned and pedaled for home.