The Nightingale

No.

It couldn’t be in the house. What if Sophie found it, read it? She retrieved it from the ashes and carried it out to the backyard, where she threw it into the pergola. The chickens would trample and peck it to death.

Outside, she sat down in Antoine’s favorite chair, feeling dazed by the suddenness of her changed circumstances and this new and terrible fear. If only she could do it all over again. She’d spend even less money … she’d go without more … she’d let them take Monsieur Paretsky without a word.

Behind her, the door creaked open and clicked shut.

Footsteps. Breathing.

She should get up and leave, but she was too tired to move.

Beck came up behind her.

“Would you care for a glass of wine? It’s a Chateau Margaux ’28. A very good year, apparently.”

Wine. She wanted to say yes, please (perhaps she’d never needed a glass more), but she couldn’t do it. Neither could she say no, so she said nothing.

She heard the thunk of a cork being freed, and then the gurgle of wine being poured. He set a full glass on the table beside her. The sweet, rich scent was intoxicating.

He poured himself a glass and sat down in the chair beside her. “I am leaving,” he said after a long silence.

She turned to him.

“Do not look so eager. It is only for a while. A few weeks. I have not been home in two years.” He took a drink. “My wife may be sitting in our garden right now, wondering who will return to her. I am not the man who left, alas. I have seen things…” He paused. “This war, it is not as I expected. And things change in an absence this long, do you not agree?”

“Oui,” she said. She had often thought the same thing.

In the silence between them, she heard a frog croak and the leaves fluttering in a jasmine-scented breeze above their heads. A nightingale sang a sad and lonely song.

“You do not seem yourself, Madame,” he said. “If you do not mind me saying so.”

“I was fired from my teaching position today.” It was the first time she’d said the words aloud and they caused hot tears to glaze her eyes. “I … drew attention to myself.”

“A dangerous thing to do.”

“The money my husband left is gone. I am unemployed. And winter will soon be upon us. How am I to survive? To feed Sophie and keep her warm?” She turned to look at him.

Their gazes came together. She wanted to look away but couldn’t.

He placed the wineglass in her hand, forced her fingers to coil around it. His touch felt hot against her cold hands, made her shiver. She remembered his office suddenly—and all that food stacked within it. “It is just wine,” he said again, and the scent of it, of black cherries and dark rich earth and a hint of lavender, wafted up to her nose, reminding her of the life she’d had before, the nights she and Antoine had sat out here, drinking wine.

She took a sip and gasped; she’d forgotten this simple pleasure.

“You are beautiful, Madame,” he said, his voice as sweet and rich as the wine. “Perhaps it has been too long since you heard that.”

Vianne got to her feet so fast she knocked into the table and spilled the wine. “You should not say such things, Herr Captain.”

“No,” he said, rising to his feet. He stood in front of her, his breath scented by red wine and spearmint gum. “I should not.”

“Please,” she said, unable even to finish the sentence.

“Your daughter will not starve this winter, Madame,” he said. Softly, as if it were their secret accord. “That is one thing you can be sure of.”

God help Vianne, it relieved her. She mumbled something—she wasn’t even sure what—and went back into the house, where she climbed into bed with Sophie, but it was a long time before she slept.

*

The bookshop had once been a gathering place for poets and writers and novelists and academics. Isabelle’s best childhood memories took place in these musty rooms. While Papa had worked in the back room on his printing press, Maman had read Isabelle stories and fables and made up plays for them to act out. They had been happy here, for a time, before Maman took sick and Papa started drinking.

There’s my Iz, come sit on Papa’s lap while I write your maman a poem.

Or maybe she had imagined that memory, constructed it from the threads of her own need and wrapped it tightly around her shoulders. She didn’t know anymore.

Now it was Germans who crowded into the shadowy nooks and crannies.