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Summary
Chapters 21-25
Chapter 21
During the warm summer in Carriveau, Sophie falls ill. Beck supplies medicine, but also becomes bolder in his romantic advances toward Vianne.
After another successful trip across the Pyrenees, Isabelle receives further funding for her project from Ian, codenamed “Tuesday,” her contact in the British government, who warns her that the Nazis are looking for the Nightingale. The project has become more sophisticated, now involving a network of helpers and a series of safe houses across the country. Back in Paris, Anouk tells Isabelle that the Nazis are hiring a large number of women for clerical work and instructs her to investigate. Isabelle joins a group of French women who are tasked with sorting boxes of cards bearing the names of Jewish individuals in France. They must separate Jews born in France from foreign-born Jews. As Isabelle speculates as to the purpose of this task, she sees a card bearing the name of Paul Levy, of the Resistance, and leaves the building on the pretext of being ill. She later chats with her father in his apartment about the nature of these cards when a piece of paper is slipped under their door, warning her and her neighbors that the police will round up foreign-born Jews for deportation to camps. Isabelle and her father convince a family in their building to hide from the police, but Isabelle is too late to stop the police from catching another family.
Chapter 22
Isabelle leaves the apartment and sees that Jewish families are being placed on buses and taken to the sports stadium. A French police officer warns her to go home, but she walks onwards to the stadium where she sees a huge crowd of people being violently corralled by the police. A police officer tells her that the foreign-born Jews of France will be sent to labor camps in Germany.
In Carriveau, Vianne takes some bread and cheese to Rachel, who now faces severe restrictions on movement due to her status as a Jew. Their conversation is interrupted by Beck, who warns them that Rachel should not be at home the following morning, or she will be taken by the police for deportation. That night, at Le Jardin, Beck sees Vianne in her overalls and understands that she is going to help Rachel cross into the unoccupied Free Zone. He gives her some directions to a part of the border with relatively few patrols. After putting Sophie to bed, Vianne accompanies Rachel and her children to the border. When they get in line to cross with their false papers, suddenly an order is sent to the guards and they begin to shoot wildly into the crowd, hitting Sarah multiple times. Rachel and Isabelle carry Sarah back to Le Jardin where she dies due to her injuries. After ordering Rachel to hide with Ari in the cellar, she buries Sarah.
Chapter 23
The next day, Vianne goes into town but does not see the police rounding up any Jewish individuals, as Beck had warned. Believing that they are safe, Rachel leaves the cellar to bathe. However, the French police detain Rachel for deportation, and Vianne follows her to the train station, where Jews are being rounded up and forced onto trains at gunpoint. Vianne sees Beck there, holding a whip, and she is horrified. Rachel hands Ari, who was born in France, to Vianne and asks that she take care of him. At home, Vianne explains to Sophie that Sarah has died and Rachel has been sent away. When Beck returns home, they have a tense, frank conversation and he insists that he only wanted to help Rachel, expressing his own disapproval of the brutal policies of the Gestapo. After he insists that he will protect her, Beck and Vianne almost kiss before Vianne guiltily pushes him away.
Chapter 24
In Paris, Isabelle meets with Anouk, who uses coded language to tell her that Henri is arranging a meeting for Resistance members in Carriveau. She travels there, posing as a guest at Henri’s hotel. He informs Isabelle that her sister has been fired from her post and that rumors have begun to circulate regarding Vianne and Beck.
Meanwhile, Vianne hides Ari from the world, telling everyone that he was deported alongside Rachel. Beck provides false papers for Ari under the name of Daniel Mauriac. That day, they begin to train Ari to respond to his new name.
Chapter 25
A disguised Isabelle is walking through Carriveau when she sees an American plane bomb the German airfield. After seeing a parachute, she carefully notes where it lands and moves quickly to the American pilot, warning him to hide. She hears voices advancing but is relieved to see Henri, Didier, and Gaëtan approach. Together, they carry the unconscious man to the shed at Le Jardin. The men leave Isabelle there with him, promising to return the next day with a doctor. In the shed, Isabelle attempts to treat the man’s wounds, but he dies. The following morning, Vianne speaks to Beck, who has been tasked with finding the airman by the Gestapo. Noticing that the door to the shed is partially open, she finds Isabelle and the dead airman. Furious that her sister would put her and the children in danger, Vianne forbids Isabelle from returning to their home, claiming that she will report her sister to the police if she does so.
When Beck returns home, he is in a frustrated state and speaks rudely to Vianne, angry because the Gestapo blame him for failing to find the airman. Accusing the French of treachery, he begins searching Le Jardin, eventually making his way to the shed. Realizing that he will find Isabelle and believing that Beck can no longer be reasoned with, Vianne hits him on the head with a shovel just as two shots are fired, one from Beck’s gun and the other from Isabelle’s. Beck dies as Gaëtan, Didier, and Henri return. As they plan to remove the bodies of Beck and the airmen, Vianne and Isabelle’s argument is cut short when Isabelle collapses, revealing that she was shot by Beck. Vianne insists on accompanying the Resistance members to a safe house in the Free Zone.
Analysis
The shadow of the Holocaust lingers heavily over this section of the novel, which traces the gradual dehumanization of the Jews of France. At first, Rachel and her family must submit to restrictions that limit their ability to work, participate in business, and move freely. Later laws passed by the Nazis singled out the Jewish population for further humiliation. Ultimately, after years of oppression, the Nazis begin to carry out their planned genocide, rounding up Jews across the nation and deporting them to concentration camps in Germany. Through the story of Rachel and her family, The Nightingale examines the Holocaust as it transpired in France, where, as elsewhere in Europe, Jews were subject to an incremental process of discrimination that ended in mass murder. Rather than depicting the mistreatment of the Jews of France as the sole responsibility of the German occupation, the novel underscores the widespread collusion of various sectors of French society, most notably the French police. When the Nazis call for the Jews of Paris to be rounded up, for example, it is the French police who carry out their orders. Isabelle questions a police officer outside of the sports stadium who claims that he has no idea what the Germans intend to do with the Jews, as he is merely following the instructions he has received from his superiors. In Carriveau, the policeman Paul serves as a willing collaborator, arresting and brutally mishandling his former neighbors. Vianne notices that he grows increasingly fat while the other French citizens of Carriveau starve, highlighting his willingness to receive material benefits for his treacherous behavior.
Read an explanation of a key quote (#2) about the theme of Collaboration in the novel.
Throughout the novel, there is a thin line between receiving a favor and outright bribery. When Sophie falls ill, Vianne wonders how she will afford medicine when they have no money left. Beck comes to her aid, offering her medicine, but allowing his fingers to stroke hers suggestively while handing them over. Vianne is torn by her decision to receive the medicine from Beck. Though she has long been reliant upon him for food, she is able to rationalize this to herself, as she also prepares his dinner using the ingredients he brings into the house. She understands, however, that there will be a “cost” to taking the pills from him. Ultimately, in her desperation to save Sophie, she accepts what she herself understands as a form of bribe. Throughout these chapters, an awkward form of intimacy rises between Vianne, whose husband is absent due to his imprisonment in Germany, and Beck, who is far away from his own wife and children. She feels uncomfortable when Beck sits in Antoine’s chair, taking his place as the “head” of the family at Le Jardin, but she keeps her thoughts to herself. At various points, Vianne almost allows him to kiss her before pushing him away, reluctant to betray her husband. Though she does not give in to his advances, she acknowledges, with deep guilt, that her desire for Beck still constitutes a form of betrayal. Henri informs Isabelle upon her return to Carriveau that there has been a good deal of local gossip regarding her sister’s complex relationship to a Nazi, suggesting that others have also observed the favors he grants her.
Beck is a relatively courteous man, and he is often kind to Vianne and Sophie. He misses his own family in Germany and promises to protect Vianne and Sophie. In private conversation with Vianne, he suggests that he does not approve of various Nazi policies, particularly the brutal treatment of the Jews. Occasionally, he even proves willing to disobey his orders, warning Rachel to leave her home before she is rounded up by the police and obtaining fake papers for Ari when Vianne takes him into her family at Le Jardin. Ultimately, however, he is still a Nazi. Vianne is shocked to see him whipping the crowds of Jews being deported at the train station. When the Gestapo puts pressure on him to find the American airman whose plane went down in Carriveau, he undergoes a surprising transformation. The previously polite family man becomes angry and rude, insulting the French and accusing Vianne of lying to him. Despite acknowledging to herself that she cares for him, when Vianne sees Beck approaching the shed where Isabelle is hiding, she knows that she will not be able to reason with him. Fearing that he will report her and her family to the Gestapo, she kills him.
