The Nightingale(160)

A corpse of a woman lay in the mud in front of them. Isabelle stepped over the dead woman, too numb to think anything but keep moving. The last woman who’d stopped had been hit so hard she didn’t get up again.

Soldiers yanked the suitcases from their hands, snatched necklaces, pulled earrings and wedding rings off. When their valuables were all gone, they were led into a room, where they stood crowded together, sweating from the heat, dizzy from thirst. A woman grabbed Isabelle’s arms, pulled her aside. Before she could even think, she was being stripped naked—they all were. Rough hands scratched her skin with dirty fingernails. She was shaved everywhere—under her arms, her head, and her pubic hair—with a viciousness that left her bleeding.

“Schnell!”

Isabelle stood with the other shaved, freezing, naked women, her feet aching, her head still ringing from the blows. And then they were being moved again, herded forward toward another building.

She remembered suddenly the stories she’d heard at MI9 and on the BBC, news stories about Jewish people being gassed to death at the concentration camps.

She felt a feeble sense of panic as she shuffled forward with the herd, into a giant room full of showerheads.

Isabelle stood beneath one of the showerheads, naked and trembling. Over the noise of the guards and the prisoners and the dogs, she heard the rattling of an old ventilation system. Something was coming on, clattering through the pipes.

This is it.

The doors of the building banged shut.

Ice-cold water gushed from the showerheads, shocking Isabelle, chilling her to the bone. In no time it was over and they were being herded again. Shivering, trying futilely to cover her nakedness with her trembling hands, she moved into the crowd and stumbled forward with the other women. One by one they were deloused. Then Isabelle was handed a shapeless striped dress and a dirty pair of men’s underwear and two left shoes without laces.

Clutching her new possessions to her clammy breasts, she was shoved into a barn-like building with stacks of wooden bunks. She climbed into one of the bunks and lay there with nine other women. Moving slowly, she dressed and then lay back, staring up at the gray wooden underside of the bunk above her. “Micheline?” she whispered.

“I’m here, Isabelle,” her friend said from the bunk above.

Isabelle was too tired to say more. Outside, she heard the smacking of leather belts, the hissing of whips, and the screams of women who moved too slowly.

“Welcome to Ravensbrück,” said the woman beside her.

Isabelle felt the woman’s skeletal hip against her leg.

She closed her eyes, trying to block out the sounds, the smell, the fear, the pain.

Stay alive, she thought.

Stay. Alive.





THIRTY-FIVE

August.

Vianne breathed as quietly as she could. In the hot, muggy darkness of this upstairs bedroom—her bedroom, the one she’d shared with Antoine—every sound was amplified. She heard the bedsprings ping in protest as Von Richter rolled onto his side. She watched his exhalations, gauging each one. When he started to snore, she inched sideways and peeled the damp sheet away from her naked body.

In the last few months, Vianne had learned about pain and shame and degradation. She knew about survival, too—how to gauge Von Richter’s moods and when to stay out of his way and when to be silent. Sometimes, if she did everything just right, he barely saw her. It was only when he’d had a bad day, when he came home already angry, that she was in trouble. Like last night.

He’d come home in a terrible temper, muttering about the fighting in Paris. The Maquis had started fighting in the streets. Vianne had known instantly what he’d want that night.

To inflict pain.

She’d herded her children out of the room quickly, put them to bed in the downstairs bedroom. Then she’d gone upstairs.

That was the worst of it, maybe; that he made her come to him and she did. She took off her clothes so he wouldn’t rip them away.

Now, as she dressed she noticed how much it hurt to raise her arms. She paused at the blacked-out window. Beyond it lay fields destroyed by incendiary bombs; trees broken in half, many of them still smoldering, gates and chimneys broken. An apocalyptic landscape. The airfield was a crushed pile of stone and wood surrounded by broken aeroplanes and bombed-out lorries. Since Général de Gaulle had taken over the Free French Army and the Allies had landed in Normandy, the bombing of Europe had become constant.

Was Antoine out there still? Was he somewhere in his prison camp, looking out a slit in the barracks wall or a boarded-up window, looking at this moon that had once shone on a house filled with love? And Isabelle. She’d been gone only two months, but it felt like a lifetime. Vianne worried about her constantly, but there was nothing to be done about worry; it had to be borne.