The Nightingale(103)

The policeman cocked his head. “Go.”

Isabelle clutched the collar of her drab brown coat. Although it was warm out, she didn’t want to draw attention to herself tonight. One of the best ways to disappear in plain sight was to dress like a wren—brown, brown, and more brown. She had covered her blond hair with a black scarf, tied in a turban style with a big knot in front, and had used no cosmetics, not even lipstick.

She kept her head down as she walked through a throng of men in French police uniforms. Just inside the building, she stopped.

It was a huge space with staircases on either side and office doors spaced every few feet, but tonight it looked like a sweatshop, with hundreds of women seated at desks pressed close together. Telephones rang nonstop and French police officers moved in a rush.

“You are here to help with the sorting?” asked a bored French gendarme at the desk nearest the door.

“Oui.”

“I’ll find you a place to work. Come with me.” He led her around the perimeter of the room.

Desks were spaced so closely together that Isabelle had to turn sideways to make her way down the narrow aisle to the empty desk he’d indicated. When she sat down and scooted close, she was elbow-to-elbow with the women on either side of her. The surface of her desk was covered with card boxes.

She opened the first box and saw the stack of cards within. She pulled out the first one and stared at it.

STERNHOLZ, ISSAC





12 avenue Rast


4th arrondissement

Sabotier (clog maker)

It went on to list his wife and children.

“You are to separate the foreign-born Jews,” said the gendarme, who she hadn’t noticed had followed her.

“Pardon?” she said, taking out another card. This one was for “Berr, Simone.”

“That box there. The empty one. Separate the Jews born in France from those born elsewhere. We are only interested in foreign-born Jews. Men, women, and children.”

“Why?”

“They’re Jews. Who cares? Now get to work.”

Isabelle turned back around in her seat. She had hundreds of cards in front of her, and there were at least a hundred women in this room. The sheer scale of this operation was impossible to comprehend. What could it possibly mean?

“How long have you been here?” she asked the woman beside her.

“Days,” the woman said, opening another box. “My children weren’t hungry last night for the first time in months.”

“What are we doing?”

The woman shrugged. “I’ve heard them saying something about Operation Spring Wind.”

“What does it mean?”

“I don’t want to know.”

Isabelle flipped through the cards in the box. One near the end stopped her.

LéVY, PAUL

61 rue Blandine, Apt. C

7th arrondissement

Professor of literature

She got to her feet so fast she bumped into the woman beside her, who cursed at the interruption. The cards on her desk slid to the floor in a cascade. Isabelle immediately knelt down and gathered them up, daring to stick Monsieur Lévy’s card up her sleeve.

The moment she stood, someone grabbed her by the arm and dragged her down the narrow aisle. She bumped into women all down the row.

In the empty space by the wall, she was twisted around and shoved back so hard she slammed into the wall.

“What is the meaning of this?” snarled the French policeman, his grip on her arm tight enough to leave a bruise.

Could he feel the index card beneath her sleeve?

“I’m sorry. So sorry. I need to work, but I’m sick, you see. The flu.” She coughed as loudly as she could.

Isabelle walked past him and left the building. Outside, she kept coughing until she got to the corner. There, she started to run.

*

“What could it mean?”

Isabelle peered past the blackout shade in the apartment, staring down at the avenue. Papa sat at the dining room table, nervously drumming his ink-stained fingers on the wood. It felt good to be here again—with him—after months away, but she was too agitated to relax and enjoy the homey feel of the place.

“You must be mistaken, Isabelle,” Papa said, on his second brandy since her return. “You said there had to be tens of thousands of cards. That would be all the Jewish people in Paris. Surely—”

“Question what it means, Papa, but not the facts,” she answered. “The Germans are collecting the names and addresses of every foreign-born Jewish person in Paris. Men, women, and children.”