The Nightingale(8)

Inside the barn sat their old, green Renault. When they were all in the automobile, Antoine started up the engine, backed out of the barn, and drove on browning ribbons of dead grass to the road. Vianne stared out the small, dusty window, watching the green valley pass in a blur of familiar images—red tile roofs, stone cottages, fields of hay and grapes, spindly-treed forests.

All too quickly they arrived at the train station near Tours.

The platform was filled with young men carrying suitcases and women kissing them good-bye and children crying.

A generation of men were going off to war. Again.

Don’t think about it, Vianne told herself. Don’t remember what it was like last time when the men limped home, faces burned, missing arms and legs …

Vianne clung to her husband’s hand as Antoine bought their tickets and led them onto the train. In the third-class carriage—stiflingly hot, people packed in like marsh reeds—she sat stiffly upright, still holding her husband’s hand, with her handbag on her lap.

At their destination, a dozen or so men disembarked. Vianne and Sophie and Antoine followed the others down a cobblestoned street and into a charming village that looked like most small communes in Touraine. How was it possible that war was coming and that this quaint town with its tumbling flowers and crumbling walls was amassing soldiers to fight?

Antoine tugged at her hand, got her moving again. When had she stopped?

Up ahead a set of tall, recently erected iron gates had been bolted into stone walls. Behind them were rows of temporary housing.

The gates swung open. A soldier on horseback rode out to greet the new arrivals, his leather saddle creaking at the horse’s steps, his face dusty and flushed from heat. He pulled on the reins and the horse halted, throwing its head and snorting. An aeroplane droned overhead.

“You, men,” the soldier said. “Bring your papers to the lieutenant over there by the gate. Now. Move.”

Antoine kissed Vianne with a gentleness that made her want to cry.

“I love you,” he said against her lips.

“I love you, too,” she said but the words that always seemed so big felt small now. What was love when put up against war?

“Me, too, Papa. Me, too!” Sophie cried, flinging herself into his arms. They embraced as a family, one last time, until Antoine pulled back.

“Good-bye,” he said.

Vianne couldn’t say it in return. She watched him walk away, watched him merge into the crowd of laughing, talking young men, becoming indistinguishable. The big iron gates slammed shut, the clang of metal reverberating in the hot, dusty air, and Vianne and Sophie stood alone in the middle of the street.





FOUR

June 1940

France

The medieval villa dominated a deeply green, forested hillside. It looked like something in a confectioner’s shopwindow; a castle sculpted of caramel, with spun-sugar windows and shutters the color of candied apples. Far below, a deep blue lake absorbed the reflection of the clouds. Manicured gardens allowed the villa’s occupants—and, more important, their guests—to stroll about the grounds, where only acceptable topics were to be discussed.

In the formal dining room, Isabelle Rossignol sat stiffly erect at the white-clothed table that easily accommodated twenty-four diners. Everything in this room was pale. Walls and floor and ceiling were all crafted of oyster-hued stone. The ceiling arched into a peak nearly twenty feet overhead. Sound was amplified in this cold room, as trapped as the occupants.

Madame Dufour stood at the head of the table, dressed in a severe black dress that revealed the soup spoon–sized hollow at the base of her long neck. A single diamond brooch was her only adornment (one good piece, ladies, and choose it well; everything makes a statement, nothing speaks quite so loudly as cheapness). Her narrow face ended in a blunt chin and was framed by curls so obviously peroxided the desired impression of youth was quite undone. “The trick,” she was saying in a cultivated voice, clipped and cut, “is to be completely quiet and unremarkable in your task.”

Each of the girls at the table wore the fitted blue woolen jacket and skirt that was the school uniform. It wasn’t so bad in the winter, but on this hot June afternoon, the ensemble was unbearable. Isabelle could feel herself beginning to sweat, and no amount of lavender in her soap could mask the sharp scent of her perspiration.

She stared down at the unpeeled orange placed in the center of her Limoges china plate. Flatware lay in precise formation on either side of the plate. Salad fork, dinner fork, knife, spoon, butter knife, fish fork. It went on and on.