The Nightingale

SEVENTEEN

In mid-June of 1941, on the second-to-the-last school day of the term, Vianne was at the blackboard, conjugating a verb, when she heard the now-familiar putt-putt-putt of a German motorcycle.

“Soldiers again,” Gilles Fournier said bitterly. The boy was always angry lately, and who could blame him? The Nazis had seized his family’s butcher shop and given it to a collaborator.

“Stay here,” she said to her students, and went out into the hallway. In walked two men—a Gestapo officer in a long black coat and the local gendarme, Paul, who had gained weight since his collaboration with the Nazis. His stomach strained at his belt. How many times had she seen him strolling down rue Victor Hugo, carrying more food than his family could eat, while she stood in a lengthy queue, clutching a ration card that would provide too little?

Vianne moved toward them, her hands clasped tightly at her waist. She felt self-conscious in her threadbare dress, with its frayed collar and cuffs, and although she had carefully drawn a brown seam line up the back of her bare calves, it was obvious that it was a ruse. She had no stockings on, and that made her feel strangely vulnerable to these men. On either side of the hallway, classroom doors opened and teachers stepped out to see what the officers wanted. They made eye contact with one another but no one spoke.

The Gestapo agent walked determinedly toward Monsieur Paretsky’s classroom at the end of the building. Fat Paul struggled to keep up, huffing along behind him.

Moments later, Monsieur Paretsky was dragged out of his classroom by the French policeman.

Vianne frowned as they passed her. Old man Paretsky—who had taught her sums a lifetime ago and whose wife tended to the school’s flowers—gave her a terrified look. “Paul?” Vianne said sharply. “What is happening?”

The policeman stopped. “He is accused of something.”

“I did nothing wrong!” Paretsky cried, trying to pull free of Paul’s grasp.

The Gestapo agent noticed the commotion and perked up. He came at Vianne fast, heels clicking on the floor. She felt a shiver of fear at the glint in his eyes. “Madame. What is your reason for stopping us?”

“H-he is a friend of mine.”

“Really,” he said, drawing length from the word, making it a question. “So you know that he is distributing anti-German propaganda.”

“It’s a newspaper,” Paretsky said. “I’m just telling the French people the truth. Vianne! Tell them!”

Vianne felt attention turn to her.

“Your name?” the Gestapo demanded, opening a notebook and taking out a pencil.

She wet her lips nervously. “Vianne Mauriac.”

He wrote it down. “And you work with M’sieur Paretsky, distributing flyers?”

“No!” she cried out. “He is a teaching colleague, sir. I know nothing about anything else.”

The Gestapo closed the notebook. “Has no one told you that it is best to ask no questions?”

“I didn’t mean to,” she said, her throat dry.

He gave a slow smile. It frightened her, disarmed her, that smile; enough so that it took her a minute to register his next words.

“You are terminated, Madame.”

Her heart seemed to stop. “E-excuse me?”

“I speak of your employment as a teacher. You are terminated. Go home, Madame, and do not return. These students do not need an example such as you.”

*

At the end of the day, Vianne walked home with her daughter and even remembered now and then to answer one of Sophie’s nonstop questions, but all the while she was thinking: What now?

What now?

The stalls and shops were closed this time of day, their bins and cases empty. There were signs everywhere saying NO EGGS, NO BUTTER, NO OIL, NO LEMONS, NO SHOES, NO THREAD, NO PAPER BAGS.

She had been frugal with the money Antoine left for her. More than frugal—miserly—even though it had seemed like so much money in the beginning. She had used it for necessities only—wood, electricity, gas, food. But still it was gone. How would she and Sophie survive without her salary from teaching?

At home, she moved in a daze. She made a pot of cabbage soup and loaded it up with shredded carrots that were soft as noodles. As soon as the meal was finished, she did laundry, and when it was hanging out on the line, she darned socks until night fell. Too early, she shuffled a whiny, complaining Sophie off to bed.

Alone (and feeling it like a knife pressed to her throat), she sat down at the dining table with an official postcard and a fountain pen.

Dearest Antoine,

We are out of money and I have lost my job.

What am I to do? Winter is only months away.

She lifted the pen from the paper. The blue words seemed to expand against the white paper.

Out of money.

What kind of woman was she to even think of sending a letter like this to her prisoner-of-war husband?

She balled up the postcard and threw it into the cold, soot-caked fireplace, where it lay all alone, a white ball on a bed of gray ash.