Nightingale by Aleksandr Voinov Page B

was jagged and the red smooth and wavy. It was enthusiastic, energetic. Still raw, but much less like a gut punch, more a gust of fresh air driving into a furnace, leading to sparks and a sudden whoosh of heat. It, too, was signed J. Brasche , but the title was Les Amoureux . The lovers. Yves smiled. Yes, it looked like the first flush of love, when attraction was still dangerous.
    Well, two Brasches. Whoever the man was. He wrapped that painting again and felt strong enough to open the third.
    Again one from the battlefield. The same brown, tortured earth, torn and sprayed and completely without root or structure, the only shapes those of stones. In the foreground was a bomb crater filled with muddy water, the surface restless. No. Yves’s eyes struggled to force sense from those blurred shapes. Again, he had to take a couple steps back, at which point the untidy shape in the water became horrifyingly clear. The shape of a soldier, face down, mostly submerged. Those were shoulders, the curve of a steel helmet. Arms outstretched somewhat, just enough to suggest the slackness of death. He was the same shade of muddy brown, impossible to tell the color of the uniform.
    Signed, Brasche . Titled: Le Baigneur . The Bather.
    Yves folded the brown paper back around the canvas and went into the kitchen to fetch new twine. No doubt, the other two canvases were Brasches, too. Just, right now, he didn’t want to expose himself to another. He wrapped up Le Baigneur and just finished tying him off like a prisoner of war, when his doorbell rang. It was only four in the afternoon, so unless Heinrich had skipped his duty—which he never did—it wasn’t him.
    He considered shoving the paintings under the couch or dropping them off in the bedroom, but if it did happen to be Heinrich, that would lead to questions. He glanced through the peephole and spied Harfner, and next to him an old man he’d never seen.
    Yves frowned, considered not opening, but Harfner must have heard his steps, because he now knocked. He glanced back at the canvases, then opened the door.
    “Good afternoon,” Harfner said in French, bright and happy like a star pupil. “Can we come in?”
    Yves nodded, exchanging glances with the old man, who wiped his face nervously and smiled at him with the wide-eyed stare of pure terror. Harfner was holding the man’s elbow rather like a prisoner’s, and Yves was half-hysterically considering telling him that he couldn’t keep his prisoners in Yves’s flat.
    Harfner closed the door. “Please,” he offered and nodded toward a chair. “Sit,” he commanded the old man.
    The involuntary guest scurried to a chair and sat down, stiff and still, like a man about to be executed.
    Yves looked from one to the other and back. “Would you like anything to drink?”
    “Water, please,” the old man said. He was French, clearly.
    Harfner shook his head. “Nothing. Thank you.”
    Yves went into the kitchen and filled a glass with water. He didn’t tarry, and saw the relief in his guest’s eyes. They were in this together. Yves nodded at him, trying to calm the man, although he felt anything but calm himself. “What does this mean?”
    “Slower,” Harfner said.
    “Why did you bring him? Who is he?”
    Harfner gesticulated to his prisoner.
    “Excuse me, if I may.” The man took a mouthful of the water and swallowed, then cleared his throat. “Monsieur Harfner has brought me to . . . ah, teach you.”
    “Teach me? What?” Yves stared at Harfner, who nodded.
    “My name is Albert Benichou. I used to teach at the lycée. Until, that is . . .” He drew a deep breath and lowered his arm. Yves stared at the yellow star sown onto his clothing and felt the bile rise. A teacher. A Jew. Dragged here on the whim of this overgrown, violent child. “I taught German and French.”
    “I think you should teach our gallant visitor French,” Yves said, his tone dripping with acid.
    The teacher cleared his throat again and sipped more