Chapter no 15

The Nightingale

Asking yourself a question, that’s how resistance begins. And then ask that very question to someone else.

—Remco Campert

May 1941

France

On the Monday Isabelle left for Paris, Vianne kept busy. She washed clothes and hung them out to dry; she weeded her garden and gathered a few early- ripening vegetables. At the end of a long day, she treated herself to a bath and washed her hair. She was drying it with a towel when she heard a knock at the door. Startled by an unexpected guest, she buttoned her bodice as she went to the door. Water dripped onto her shoulders.

When she opened the door, she found Captain Beck standing there, dressed in his field uniform, dust peppering his face. “Herr Captain,” she said, pushing the wet hair away from her face.

“Madame,” he said. “A colleague and I went fishing today. I have brought you what we caught.”

“Fresh fish? How lovely. I will fry it up for you.” “For us, Madame. You and me and Sophie.”

Vianne couldn’t look away from either Beck or the fish in his hands. She knew without a doubt that Isabelle wouldn’t accept this gift. Just as she knew that her friends and neighbors would claim to turn it down. Food. From the enemy. It was a matter of pride to turn it down. Everyone knew that.

“I have neither stolen nor demanded it. No Frenchman has more of a right to it than I. There can be no dishonor in your taking it.”

He was right. This was a fish from local waters. He had not confiscated it.

Even as she reached for the fish, she felt the weight of rationalization settle heavily upon her.

“You rarely do us the honor of eating with us.”

“It is different now,” he said. “With your sister away.”

Vianne backed into the house to allow him entry. As always, he removed his hat as soon as he stepped inside, and clomped across the wooden floor to his room. Vianne didn’t notice until she heard the click-shut of his door that she was still standing there, holding a dead fish wrapped in a recent edition of the Pariser Zeitung, the German newspaper printed in Paris.

She returned to the kitchen. When she laid the paper-wrapped fish out on the butcher block, she saw that he’d already cleaned the fish, even going so far as to shave off the scales. She lit the gas stove and put a cast-iron pan over the heat, adding a precious spoonful of oil to the pan. While cubes of potato browned and onion carmelized, she seasoned the fish with salt and pepper and set it aside. In no time, tantalizing aromas filled the house, and Sophie came running into the kitchen, skidding to a stop in the empty space where the breakfast table used to be.

“Fish,” she said with reverence.

Vianne used her spoon to create a well within the vegetables and put the fish in the middle to fry. Tiny bits of grease popped up; the skin sizzled and turned crisp. At the very end, she placed a few preserved lemons in the pan, watching them melt over everything.

“Go tell Captain Beck that supper is ready.”

“He is eating with us? Tante Isabelle would have something to say about that. Before she left, she told me to never look him in the eye and to try not to be in the same room with him.”

Vianne sighed. The ghost of her sister lingered. “He brought us the fish, Sophie, and he lives here.”

“Oui, Maman. I know that. Still, she said—”

“Go call the captain for supper. Isabelle is gone, and with her, her extreme worries. Now, go.”

Vianne returned to the stove. Moments later, she carried out a heavy ceramic tray bearing the fried fish surrounded by the pan-roasted vegetables and preserved lemons, all of it enhanced with fresh parsley. The tangy,

lemony sauce in the bottom of the pan, swimming with crusty brown bits, could have benefited from butter, but still it smelled heavenly. She carried it into the dining room and found Sophie already seated, with Captain Beck beside her.

In Antoine’s chair. Vianne missed a step.

Beck rose politely and moved quickly to pull out her chair. She paused only slightly as he took the platter from her.

“This looks most becoming,” he said in a hearty voice. Once again, his French was not quite right.

Vianne sat down and scooted in to her place at the table. Before she could think of what to say, Beck was pouring her wine.

“A lovely ’37 Montrachet,” he said.

Vianne knew what Isabelle would say to that.

Beck sat across from her. Sophie sat to her left. She was talking about something that had happened at school today. When she paused, Beck said something about fishing and Sophie laughed, and Vianne felt Isabelle’s absence as keenly as she’d previously felt her presence.

Stay away from Beck.

Vianne heard the warning as clearly as if it had been spoken aloud beside her. She knew that in this one thing her sister was right. Vianne couldn’t forget the list, after all, and the firings, or the sight of Beck seated at his desk with crates of food at his feet and a painting of the Führer behind him.

“… my wife quite despaired of my skill with a net after that…” he was saying, smiling.

Sophie laughed. “My papa fell into the river one time when we were fishing, remember, Maman? He said the fish was so big it pulled him in, right, Maman?”

Vianne blinked slowly. It took her a moment to notice that the conversation had circled back to include her.

It felt … odd to say the least. In all their past meals with Beck at the table, conversation had been rare. Who could speak surrounded by Isabelle’s obvious anger?

It is different now, with your sister away.

Vianne understood what he meant. The tension in the house—at this table

—was gone now.

What other changes would her absence bring?

Stay away from Beck.

How was Vianne to do that? And when was the last time she’d eaten a meal this good … or heard Sophie laugh?

* * *

The Gare de Lyon was full of German soldiers when Isabelle disembarked from the train carriage. She wrestled her bicycle out with her; it wasn’t easy with her valise banging into her thighs the whole time and impatient Parisians shoving at her. She had dreamed of coming back here for months.

In her dreams, Paris was Paris, untouched by the war.

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 façade 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.

The apartment on the Avenue de La Bourdonnais had been in her father’s family for more than a hundred years. The city street was lined on either side by pale, sandstone buildings with black ironwork balconies and slate roofs. Carved stone cherubs decorated the cornices. About six blocks away, the Eiffel Tower rose high into the sky, dominating the view. On the street level were dozens of storefronts with pretty awnings and cafés, with tables set up out front: the high floors were all residential. Usually, Isabelle walked slowly along the sidewalk, window shopping, appreciating the hustle and bustle around her. Not today. The cafés and bistros were empty. Women in worn clothes and tired expressions stood in queues for food.

She stared up at the blacked-out windows as she fished the key from her bag. Opening the door, she pushed her way into the shadowy lobby, hauling her bicycle with her. She locked it to a pipe in the lobby. Ignoring the coffin- sized cage elevator, which no doubt didn’t run in these days of limited electricity, she climbed the narrow, steeply pitched stairs that coiled around the elevator shaft and came to the fifth-floor landing, where there were two doors, one on the left side of the building, and theirs, on the right. She unlocked the door and stepped inside. Behind her, she thought she heard the neighbor’s door open. When she turned back to say hello to Madame Leclerc, the door clicked quietly shut. Apparently the nosy old woman was watching the comings and goings in apartment 6B.

She entered her apartment and closed the door behind her. “Papa?”

Even though it was midday, the blacked-out windows made it dark inside. “Papa?”

There was no answer.

Truthfully, she was relieved. She carried her valise into the salon. The darkness reminded her of another time, long ago. The apartment had been shadowy and musty; there had been breathing then, and footsteps creaking on wooden floors.

Hush, Isabelle, no talking. Your maman is with the angels now.

She turned on the light switch in the living room. An ornate blown-glass chandelier flickered to life, its sculpted glass branches glittering as if from another world. In the meager light, she looked around the apartment, noticing that several pieces of art were missing from the walls. The room reflected both her mother’s unerring sense of style and the collection of antiques from other generations. Two paned windows—covered now—should have revealed a beautiful view of the Eiffel Tower from the balcony.

Isabelle turned off the light. There was no reason to waste precious electricity while she waited. She sat down at the round wooden table beneath the chandelier, its rough surface scarred by a thousand suppers over the years. Her hand ran lovingly over the banged-up wood.

Let me stay, Papa. Please. I’ll be no trouble.

How old had she been that time? Eleven? Twelve? She wasn’t sure. But she’d been dressed in the blue sailor uniform of the convent school. It all felt a lifetime ago now. And yet here she was, again, ready to beg him to—(love her)—let her stay.

Later—how much longer? She wasn’t sure how long she’d sat here in the dark, remembering the circumstances of her mother because she had all but forgotten her face in any real way—she heard footsteps and then a key rattling in the lock.

She heard the door open and rose to her feet. The door clicked shut. She heard him shuffling through the entry, past the small kitchen.

She needed to be strong now, determined, but the courage that was as much a part of her as the green of her eyes had always faded in her father’s presence and it retreated now. “Papa?” she said into the darkness. She knew he hated surprises.

She heard him go still.

Then a light switch clicked and the chandelier came on. “Isabelle,” he said with a sigh. “What are you doing here?”

She knew better than to reveal uncertainty to this man who cared so little for her feelings. She had a job to do now. “I have come to live with you in Paris. Again,” she added as an afterthought.

“You left Vianne and Sophie alone with the Nazi?”

“They are safer with me gone, believe me. Sooner or later, I would have lost my temper.”

“Lost your temper? What is wrong with you? You will return to Carriveau tomorrow morning.” He walked past her to the wooden sideboard that was tucked against the papered wall. He poured himself a glass of brandy, drank it down in three large gulps, and poured another. When he finished the second drink, he turned to her.

“No,” she said. The single word galvanized her. Had she ever said it to him before? She said it again for good measure. “No.”

“Pardon?”

“I said no, Papa. I will not bend to your will this time. I will not leave. This is my home. My home.” Her voice weakened on that. “Those are the drapes I watched Maman make on her sewing machine. This is the table she inherited from her great-uncle. On the walls of my bedroom you’ll find my initials, drawn in Maman’s lipstick when she wasn’t looking. In my secret room, my fort, I’ll bet my dolls are still lined up along the walls.”

“Isabelle—”

“No. You will not turn me away, Papa. You have done that too many times. You are my father. This is my home. We are at war. I’m staying.” She bent down for the valise at her feet and picked it up.

In the pale glow of the chandelier, she saw defeat deepen the lines in her father’s cheeks. His shoulders slumped. He poured himself another brandy, gulped it greedily. Obviously he could barely stand to look at her without the aid of alcohol.

“There are no parties to attend,” he said, “and all your university boys are gone.”

“This is really what you think of me,” she said. Then she changed the

subject. “I stopped by the bookshop.”

“The Nazis,” he said in response. “They stormed in one day and pulled out everything by Freud, Mann, Trotsky, Tolstoy, Maurois—all of them, they burned—and the music, too. I would rather lock the doors than sell only what I am allowed to. So, I did just that.”

“So, how are you making a living? Your poetry?”

He laughed. It was a bitter, slurred sound. “This is hardly a time for gentler pursuits.”

“Then, how are you paying for electricity and food?”

Something changed in his face. “I’ve got a good job at the Hôtel de Crillon.”

“In service?” She could hardly credit him serving beer to German brutes. He glanced away.

Isabelle got a sick feeling in her stomach. “For whom do you work, Papa?”

“The German high command in Paris,” he said.

Isabelle recognized that feeling now. It was shame. “After what they did to you in the Great War—”

“Isabelle—”

“I remember the stories Maman told us about how you’d been before the war and how it had broken you. I used to dream that someday you’d remember that you were a father, but all that was a lie, wasn’t it? You’re just a coward. The minute the Nazis return you race to aid them.”

“How dare you judge me and what I’ve been through? You’re eighteen years old.”

“Nineteen,” she said. “Tell me, Papa, do you get our conquerors coffee or hail them taxis on their way to Maxim’s? Do you eat their lunch leftovers?”

He seemed to deflate before her eyes; age. She felt unaccountably regretful for her sharp words even though they were true and deserved. But she couldn’t back down now. “So we are agreed? I will move into my old room and live here. We need barely speak if that is your condition.”

“There is no food here in the city, Isabelle; not for us Parisians anyway. All over town are signs warning us not to eat rats and these signs are necessary. People are raising guinea pigs for food. You will be more

comfortable in the country, where there are gardens.” “I am not looking for comfort. Or safety.”

“What are you looking for in Paris, then?”

She realized her mistake. She’d set a trap with her foolish words and stepped right into it. Her father was many things; stupid was not one of them. “I’m here to meet a friend.”

“Tell me we are not talking about some boy. Tell me you are smarter than that.”

“The country was dull, Papa. You know me.”

He sighed, poured another drink from the bottle. She saw the telltale glaze come into his eyes. Soon, she knew, he would stumble away to be alone with whatever it was he thought about. “If you stay, there will be rules.”

“Rules?”

“You will be home by curfew. Always and without exception. You will leave me my privacy. I can’t stomach being hovered over. You will go to the shops each morning and see what our ration cards will get us. And you will find a job.” He paused, looked at her, his eyes narrowed. “And if you get yourself in trouble like your sister did, I will throw you out. Period.”

“I am not—”

“I don’t care. A job, Isabelle. Find one.”

He was still talking when she turned on her heel and walked away. She went into her old bedroom and shut the door. Hard.

She had done it! For once, she’d gotten her way. Who cared that he’d been mean and judgmental? She was here. In her bedroom, in Paris, and staying.

The room was smaller than she remembered. Painted a cheery white, with a twin iron-canopied bed and a faded old rug on the wooden plank floor and a Louis XV armchair that had seen better days. The window—blacked out— overlooked the interior courtyard of the apartment building. As a girl, she’d always known when her neighbors were taking out the trash, because she could hear them clanking out there, slamming down lids. She tossed her valise on the bed and began to unpack.

The clothes she’d taken on exodus—and returned to Paris with—were shabbier for the constant wear and hardly worth hanging in the armoire along with the clothes she’d inherited from her maman—beautiful vintage flapper

dresses with flared skirts, silk-fringed evening gowns, woolen suits that had been cut down to fit her, and crepe day dresses. An array of matching hats and shoes made for dancing on ballroom floors or walking through the Rodin Gardens with the right boy on one’s arm. Clothes for a world that had vanished. There were no more “right” boys in Paris. There were practically no boys at all. They were all captive in camps in Germany or hiding out somewhere.

When her clothes were returned to hangers in the armoire, she closed the mahogany doors and pushed the armoire sideways just enough to reveal the secret door behind it.

Her fort.

She bent down and opened the door set into the white paneled wall by pushing on the top right corner. It sprang free, creaked open, revealing a storage room about six feet by six feet, with a roof so slanted that even as a ten-year-old girl, she’d had to hunch over to stand in it. Sure enough, her dolls were still in there, some slumped and others standing tall.

Isabelle closed the door on her memories and moved the armoire back in place. She undressed quickly and slipped into a pink silk dressing gown that reminded her of her maman. It still smelled vaguely of rose water—or she pretended it did. As she headed out of the room to brush her teeth, she paused at her father’s closed door.

She could hear him writing; his fountain pen scratched on rough paper. Every now and then he cursed and then fell silent. (That was when he was drinking, no doubt.) Then came the thunk of a bottle—or a fist—on the table.

Isabelle readied for bed, setting her hair in curlers and washing her face and brushing her teeth. On her way back to bed, she heard her father curse again—louder this time, maybe drinking—and she ducked into her bedroom and slammed the door behind her.

* * *

I can’t stomach being hovered over.

Apparently what this really meant was that her father couldn’t stand to be in the same room with her.

Funny that she hadn’t noticed it last year, when she’d lived with him for

those weeks between her expulsion from the finishing school and her exile to the country.

True, they’d never sat down to a meal together then. Or had a conversation meaningful enough to remember. But somehow she hadn’t noticed. They’d been together in the bookshop, working side by side. Had she been so pathetically grateful for his presence that his silence escaped her notice?

Well, she noticed it now.

He pounded on her bedroom door so hard she released a little yelp of surprise.

“I’m leaving for work,” her father said through the door. “The ration cards are on the counter. I left you one hundred francs. Get what you can.”

She heard his footsteps echo down the wooden hall, heavy enough to rattle the walls. Then the door slammed shut.

“Good-bye to you, too,” Isabelle mumbled, stung by the tone of his voice. Then she remembered.

Today was the day.

She threw back the coverlet and climbed out of bed and dressed without bothering to turn on the light. She had already planned her outfit: a drab gray dress and black beret, white gloves, and her last pair of black slingback pumps. Sadly, she had no stockings.

She studied herself in the salon mirror, trying to be critical, but all she saw was an ordinary girl in a dull dress, carrying a black handbag.

She opened her handbag (again) and stared down at the silk hammock-like lined interior. She had slit a tiny opening in the lining and slipped the thick envelope inside of it. Upon opening the handbag, it looked empty. Even if she did get stopped (which she wouldn’t—why would she? a nineteen-year-old girl dressed for lunch?) they would see nothing in her handbag except her papers, her ration coupons, and her carte d’identité, certificate of domicile, and her Ausweis. Exactly what should be there.

At ten o’clock, she left the apartment. Outside, beneath a bright, hot sun, she climbed aboard her blue bicycle and pedaled toward the quay.

When she reached the rue de Rivoli, black cars and green military lorries with fuel tanks strapped onto their sides and men on horseback filled the

street. There were Parisians about, walking along the sidewalks, pedaling down the few streets upon which they were allowed to ride, queueing for food in lines that extended down the block. They were noticeable by the look of defeat on their faces and the way they hurried past the Germans without making eye contact. At Maxim’s restaurant, beneath the famous red awning, she saw a cluster of high-ranking Nazis waiting to get inside. The rumor was rampant that all of the country’s best meats and produce went straight to Maxim’s, to be served to the high command.

And then she spotted it: the iron bench near the entrance to the Comédie Française.

Isabelle hit the brakes on her bicycle and came to a bumpy, sudden stop, then stepped off the pedal with one foot. Her ankle gave a little twist when she put her weight on it. For the first time, her excitement turned a little sharp with fear.

Her handbag felt heavy suddenly; noticeably so. Sweat collected in her palms and along the rim of her felt hat.

Snap out of it.

She was a courier, not a frightened schoolgirl. What risk there was she accepted.

While she stood there, a woman approached the bench and sat down with her back to Isabelle.

A woman. She hadn’t expected her contact to be a woman, but that was strangely comforting.

She took a deep, calming breath and walked her bicycle across the busy crosswalk and past the kiosks, with their scarves and trinkets for sale. When she was directly beside the woman on the bench, she said what she’d been told to say. “Do you think I’ll need an umbrella today?”

“I expect it to remain sunny.” The woman turned. She had dark hair which she’d coiled away from her face with care and bold, Eastern European features. She was older—maybe thirty—but the look in her eyes was even older.

Isabelle started to open her handbag when the woman said, “No,” sharply.

Then, “Follow me,” she said, rising quickly.

Isabelle remained behind the woman as she made her way across the wide,

gravelly expanse of the Cœur Napoléon with the mammoth elegance of the Louvre rising majestically around them. Although it didn’t feel like a place that had once been a palace of emperors and kings, not with swastika flags everywhere and German soldiers sitting on benches in the Tuilleries garden. On a side street, the woman ducked into a small café. Isabelle locked her bicycle to a tree out front and followed her inside, taking a seat across from her.

“You have the envelope?”

Isabelle nodded. In her lap, she opened her handbag and withdrew the envelope, which she handed to the woman beneath the table.

A pair of German officers walked into the bistro, took a table not far away. The woman leaned over and straightened Isabelle’s beret. It was a strangely intimate gesture, as if they were sisters or best friends. Leaning

close, the woman whispered in her ear, “Have you heard of les collabos?” “No.”

“Collaborators. French men and women who are working with the Germans. They are not only in Vichy. Be aware, always. These collaborators love to report us to the Gestapo. And once they know your name, the Gestapo are always watching. Trust no one.”

She nodded.

The woman pulled back and gazed at her. “Not even your father.”

“How do you know about my father?”

“We want to meet you.”

“You’ve already done that.”

“We,” she said softly, “meet at the corner of boulevard Saint-Germain and rue de Saint-Simon tomorrow at noon. Be punctual, don’t bring your bicycle, and don’t let yourself be followed.”

Isabelle was taken aback by how swiftly the woman stood and disappeared. In an instant, Isabelle was alone at the café table, under the watchful eye of the German soldier at the other table. She forced herself to order a café au lait, though she knew it would be without milk and made with chicory. She finished it quickly and left the café.

At the corner, she noticed a sign on the window warning of executions for infractions. Next to it, in the cinema window, was a yellow poster that read INTERDIT AUX JUIFS—no Jews allowed.

As she unlocked her bicycle, the German soldier appeared beside her. She accidentally bumped into him.

He asked with feigned concern if she was okay. Her response was a practiced smile and a nod. “Mais oui. Merci.” She adjusted her dress, tucked her purse under her arm, and mounted the bicycle. Without looking back, she pedaled away from the soldier.

She had done it. She’d secured an Ausweis, come to Paris, convinced her father to let her stay, and delivered her first secret message for the Free French.