The Nightingale

“I just want to keep you safe.”

I smile. Americans can be so naïve.

Once I shared his optimism. I thought the world was safe. But that was a long time ago.

“Who is Juliette Gervaise?” Julien says and it shocks me a little to hear that name from him.

I close my eyes and in the darkness that smells of mildew and bygone lives, my mind casts back, a line thrown across years and continents. Against my will—or maybe in tandem with it, who knows anymore?—I remember.

TWO

The lights are going out all over Europe;

We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.

—SIR EDWARD GREY, ON WORLD WAR I

August 1939

France

Via

Sophie.

Via

“Your daughter is a tyrant,” Antoine said, appearing in the doorway.

He walked toward her, his pomaded hair glinting black in the sunlight. He’d been working on his furniture this morning—sanding a chair that was already as soft as satin—and a fine layer of wood dust peppered his face and shoulders. He was a big man, tall and broad shouldered, with a rough face and a dark stubble that took constant effort to keep from becoming a beard.

He slipped an arm around her and pulled her close. “I love you, V.”

“I love you, too.”

It was the truest fact of her world. She loved everything about this man, his smile, the way he mumbled in his sleep and laughed after a sneeze and sang opera in the shower.

She’d fallen in love with him fifteen years ago, on the school play yard, before she’d even known what love was. He was her first everything—first kiss, first love, first lover. Before him, she’d been a ski

A motherless girl.

You will be the adult now, her father had said to Via

B-but I’m just a girl, she’d said.

Not anymore.

She’d looked down at her younger sister, Isabelle, who still sucked her thumb at four and had no idea what was going on. Isabelle kept asking when Maman was coming home.

When the door opened, a tall, thin woman with a nose like a water spigot and eyes as small and dark as raisins appeared.

These are the girls? the woman had said.

Papa nodded.

They will be no trouble.

It had happened so fast. Via

Via

It was Antoine who’d saved Via

But that was old news. Not the sort of memory she wanted on a beautiful day like today.

She leaned against her husband as their daughter ran up to them, a

“Well,” Antoine said, gri

Via

Via

Now and then an automobile rumbled past, or a bicyclist, or an ox-driven cart, but for the most part, they were alone on the road. They lived nearly a mile from Carriveau, a town of less than a thousand souls that was known mostly as a stopping point on the pilgrimage of Ste. Jea

In town, narrow cobblestoned streets wound through ancient limestone buildings that leaned clumsily against one another. Mortar crumbled from stone walls, ivy hid the decay that lay beneath, unseen but always felt. The village had been cobbled together piecemeal—crooked streets, uneven steps, blind alleys—over hundreds of years. Colors enlivened the stone buildings: red awnings ribbed in black metal, ironwork balconies decorated with geraniums in terra-cotta planters. Everywhere there was something to tempt the eye: a display case of pastel macarons, rough willow baskets filled with cheese and ham and saucisson, crates of colorful tomatoes and aubergines and cucumbers. The cafés were full on this su

A typical day in Carriveau. Monsieur LaChoa was sweeping the street in front of his saladerie, and Madame Clonet was washing the window of her hat shop, and a pack of adolescent boys was strolling through town, shoulder to shoulder, kicking bits of trash and passing a cigarette back and forth.

At the end of town, they turned toward the river. At a flat, grassy spot along the shore, Via