The Nightingale(14)

At last he opened the door and pulled her out onto the Avenue de La Bourdonnais.

Chaos. Dust. Crowds. The street was a living, breathing dragon of humanity, inching forward, wheezing dirt, honking horns; people yelling for help, babies crying, and the smell of sweat heavy in the air.

Automobiles clogged the area, each burdened beneath boxes and bags. People had taken whatever they could find—carts and bicycles and even children’s wagons.

Those who couldn’t find or afford the petrol or an automobile or a bicycle walked. Hundreds—thousands—of women and children held hands, shuffled forward, carrying as much as they could hold. Suitcases, picnic baskets, pets.

Already the very old and very young were falling behind.

Isabelle didn’t want to join this hopeless, helpless crowd of women and children and old people. While the young men were away—dying for them at the front—their families were leaving, heading south or west, although, really, what made any of them think it would be safer there? Hitler’s troops had already invaded Poland and Belgium and Czechoslovakia.

The crowd engulfed them.

A woman ran into Isabelle, mumbled pardon, and kept walking.

Isabelle followed her father. “I can be useful. Please. I’ll be a nurse or drive an ambulance. I can roll bandages or even stitch up a wound.”

Beside them, a horn aah-ooh-gahed.

Her father looked past her, and she saw the relief that lifted his countenance. Isabelle recognized that look: it meant he was getting rid of her. Again. “They are here,” he said.

“Don’t send me away,” she said. “Please.”

He maneuvered her through the crowd to where a dusty black automobile was parked. It had a saggy, stained mattress strapped to its roof, along with a set of fishing poles and a rabbit cage with the rabbit still inside. The boot was open but also strapped down; inside she saw a jumble of baskets and suitcases and lamps.

Inside the automobile, Monsieur Humbert’s pale, plump fingers clutched the steering wheel as if the automobile were a horse that might bolt at any second. He was a pudgy man who spent his days in the butcher shop near Papa’s bookstore. His wife, Patricia, was a sturdy woman who had the heavy-jowled-peasant look one saw so often in the country. She was smoking a cigarette and staring out the window as if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

Monsieur Humbert rolled down his window and poked his face into the opening. “Hello, Julien. She is ready?”

Papa nodded. “She is ready. Merci, Edouard.”

Patricia leaned over to talk to Papa through the open window. “We are only going as far as Orléans. And she has to pay her share of petrol.”

“Of course.”

Isabelle couldn’t leave. It was cowardly. Wrong. “Papa—”

“Au revoir,” he said firmly enough to remind her that she had no choice. He nodded toward the car and she moved numbly toward it.

She opened the back door and saw three small, dirty girls lying together, eating crackers and drinking from bottles and playing with dolls. The last thing she wanted was to join them, but she pushed her way in, made a space for herself among these strangers that smelled vaguely of cheese and sausage, and closed the door.

Twisting around in her seat, she stared at her father through the back window. His face held her gaze; she saw his mouth bend ever so slightly downward; it was the only hint that he saw her. The crowd surged around him like water around a rock, until all she could see was the wall of bedraggled strangers coming up behind the car.

Isabelle faced forward in her seat again. Out her window, a young woman stared back at her, wild eyes, hair a bird’s nest, an infant suckling on her breast. The car moved slowly, sometimes inching forward, sometimes stopped for long periods of time. Isabelle watched her countrymen—countrywomen—shuffle past her, looking dazed and terrified and confused. Every now and then one of them would pound on the car bonnet or boot, begging for something. They kept the windows rolled up even though the heat in the car was stifling.

At first, she was sad to be leaving, and then her anger bloomed, growing hotter even than the air in the back of this stinking car. She was so tired of being considered disposable. First, her papa had abandoned her, and then Vianne had pushed her aside. She closed her eyes to hide tears she couldn’t suppress. In the darkness that smelled of sausage and sweat and smoke, with the children arguing beside her, she remembered the first time she’d been sent away.

The long train ride … Isabelle stuffed in beside Vianne, who did nothing but sniff and cry and pretend to sleep.