The Keeper of the Walls Page 16

  Chastened, she listened to her father’s labored breathing, knowing that he wasn’t going to last out the week, and loving him for the first time.

  Chapter 8

  After Paul Bruisson’s death, Lily tried to convince Claire to move into the apartment with them. She had decided to ask Zelle to share Kira’s room, to make space for her mother. But, to her surprise, Claire declined.

  “You can’t stay here,” Lily said. “You’ve always hated the Villa Persane. And alone, with just Claude, you aren’t going to need such a large house, with so many servants.”

  Claire shook her head. “Claude can’t be alone,” she answered softly.

  “He’s twenty-seven. It might be better for him to be on his own in a garçonnière, too.”

  Claire sat down in an immense bergère, its feet and arm rests of mounted bronze, and looked at her daughter. “Claude is a very lonely young man, Lily. Even if he goes out, it’s for business only. And now, the entire business of Bruisson et Fils is going to be resting on his shoulders.”

  “Not really. You know that Misha’s taken over most of the administrative functions by absorbing Bruisson et Fils into Brasilov Enterprises. Besides, Mama, Claude was never close to you. We need you.”

  “I’ll be here when you do. But it’s Claude who needs me more. He doesn’t know it—but I do, and because of this, I have to stay.”

  There were so many things that baffled Lily! At the funeral, Claude had stood apart, his face impassive. She’d always assumed that father and son had been close: certainly, their ideas had been much alike. But now she was beginning to see that Claude had never been close to anyone. Claude was much more remote than her father had ever been, for Paul had not been a complicated man. He’d been a bully, but he hadn’t been an island of ice, closed off to the rest of the world. She felt that in his fashion, he’d loved his wife and children, but that Claude had never allowed himself to love anyone.

  Did he even feel gratitude for Misha’s goodness in giving him a vice-presidency in the firm? And did he understand that their mother was sacrificing the chance to be with the daughter and son-in-law who wanted her, and with her grandchildren, just to make sure that he was never too alone?

  After Paul’s death, Claire auctioned off some of the heavier pieces of furniture, and changed the drapery to lighter, softer shades and materials. But she didn’t make a complete refurbishment, as Lily would have thought. Maybe she was worried about finances. She kept Alphonse and the chauffeur and the cook, and one maid, dismissing the rest. And Lily knew that she was keeping the old maître d’hôtel only because, at his age, he would have found it difficult to obtain new employment.

  Lily saw, with profound emotion, how Misha arranged for Claire to be with them at least two or three times a week. He reserved theater seats, took the two women out for dinner. Once, he suggested a fitting for his mother-in-law at Worth, and had all the bills sent to his office. Claire was discreet in showing her appreciation. She was deeply touched, and whenever he came home from work and she happened to be there, she always tried to spend a little time with him, alone, talking of this and that—to show him how fond she was of him, and how important she considered him to be. For she understood that he was a man who needed to be needed; and also, that he was someone whom lavish displays of gratitude would have made uncomfortable.

  Lily spent half her week with her mother. They took the children for walks in the Bois, and went together to gallery openings and matinées at the Comédie-Française. She realized that her mother was an eminently self-sufficient woman. Claire was a private individual, and didn’t discuss her life. And she rarely spent a night with the Brasilovs. Discreetly, she usually asked François to drive her home after supper, and sometimes before. She had her own program.

  Sometimes she rushed through the end of an afternoon, glancing at her watch to make sure she wasn’t late for an appointment. Once, laughingly, Misha had asked her what mischievous plans she had that didn’t include them. She’d smiled—that cameo smile that was a touch like the Mona Lisa’s, distant yet humorous. “My dear children,” she’d replied. “I do have appointments of my own.”

  “But you never really had many friends, when Father was alive,” Lily said.

  “I just didn’t have as much time to see them. Don’t forget, my love, that you were in Brittany for six years, and that, shortly afterward, you married Misha.”

  Lily had renewed her connection with her old piano teacher. Misha didn’t much like Sudarskaya. He thought her coarse. And, truly, Lily couldn’t blame him. Raïssa Sudarskaya was middle-aged, short, and plump, with a round face that looked like a polished pink marble. She had been born in Moscow and had attended the Conservatory there. She was a widow, and lived in almost desperate straits in a mansard room in the Rue des Sablons, in Neuilly. Whenever she came to Rue Molitor, Lily made sure that Annette prepared a delicious high tea, knowing that Sudarskaya, near starvation, would be only too happy to assuage her hunger. Lily tried to put herself in Misha’s shoes. Refined, a gentleman, he would never be able to tolerate Sudarskaya’s lack of manners and delicacy near himself or his children. So Lily tried, as tactfully as she could, to send Sudarskaya home before he returned from his day’s work.

  Lily herself didn’t find the woman personally appealing. She enjoyed the beauty of her playing: her velocity, her neatness of rendition, her feeling and comprehension when she played some of her favorite pieces. But when Sudarskaya looked around a room, her small, pig’s eyes darting this way and that, it was annoying to behold. When she peered at a canvas or touched the silk nub of a chair seat, Lily felt an absurd sense of violation. Lily tried to excuse her behavior as the result of poverty, but Sudarskaya was the most indiscreet woman she’d ever met. She pried, even when all she was really doing was looking at a postcard on the table, or at a child’s toy left behind on the piano bench. Lily had the sensation that if left alone in a room, Sudarskaya’s first impulse would have been to unlock the secretary and examine all the bills, and read all the letters.

  Great indeed, therefore, was her surprise when she came home one afternoon to learn that her mother was there, conferring with Annette in the kitchen about leftover food. She went there, and saw Claire putting some cake and sandwiches into a large bag, while Annette folded some salami slices into some wax paper. “I didn’t know you were coming today,” Lily said, kissing Claire on the cheek.

  “I was at the Musée Galliéra, and so I asked the driver to take me here.”

  “Are you staying for dinner?” Lily asked. “We’re not having anything fancy. Annette made a delicious meal last night for Ivan Vassilievitch, and there’s a lot left over.”

  Claire smiled. “I know. Nicky told me that already, as soon as I arrived. So I thought you wouldn’t mind if I took just a few things over to Sudarskaya later on.”

  “You’re not eating here tonight, then?”

  “I’m afraid not. Raïssa Markovna asked me to come to see her. She wants me to help her sell tickets for her concert next month.”

  Lily was astounded. Claire abandoned the packing to Annette, and followed her daughter into the blue and yellow study. Lily said, feeling ridiculous: “Mama, I’d no idea you knew Sudarskaya that well.”

  “But you knew I was the one who selected her for you.”

  “Of course. But . . . piano teachers come well recommended. I myself have found some new students for her among the sons and daughters of our acquaintances. But she’d never think to ask me to ... sell tickets for her.”

  “And you think I’m too good for such a thing?”

  Lily shrugged, embarrassed. “No. I didn’t mean it quite like that. It’s just ... such an act of familiarity . . . and I never thought Sudarskaya knew you more than to say hello to. How did you meet her?”

  Claire sighed. “Julien Weill sent her to me, some years ago.”

  The Grand Rabbi of Paris? The one who was at Maryse s wedding?

  “That one. Sudarskaya had just arrived from R
ussia. She was a poor refugee, and came to him at the Consistory, for help and referrals. He sent her to me.”

  “But—why? Why not send her to the Baronne de Rothschild—or Eliane Robinson? Why to you?”

  “First of all, because he knew that you were interested in a good piano teacher. And then, of course, because we’re friends. Friends help each other, Lily.”

  Lily’s mouth opened, but no sound came out. She could feel her heart pounding. She said: “Mama. Friends? But you live in Boulogne, and aren’t even Jewish! What possible connection could there be between you and one of the foremost rabbis in France? I thought your only Jewish friends were the Robinsons. Did you meet Weill through them?”

  “It was the opposite. I met Eliane through Julien Weill. It wasn’t by accident, Lily, that I took you to that particular dance studio when you were eight. I took you there because Eliane had recommended its teachers.”

  “But—Maryse and I thought that we’d started the friendship! Why—why did you let us believe that, all those years?”

  “Because that was the way it had to be. For everybody’s sake.”

  Lily stood up, began to walk slowly toward her mother. Her expression was puzzled. “Why?” she finally asked.

  Claire turned away, and Lily went to face her. She saw such grief in her mother’s face that she was momentarily ashamed of her relentless hounding. But for once, she couldn’t contain herself. “Tell me!” she exclaimed. “Isn’t it time I knew why you couldn’t tell me the truth?”

  Claire whispered: “Sometimes it’s better not to know.”

  “I don’t agree!”

  “But if your husband were involved with another woman, would you want to know everything about that?”

  “It’s not the same thing. No, I wouldn’t want to know. Of course not.” Lily had a fleeting image of Jeanne Dalbret with her egret feather, and pushed the image out of her mind. “But this is different. You’re my mother.”

  “And mothers should be open books to their children?”

  “Maybe they should. It would save them from many disillusionments later on.”

  “Oh, my God, what a child you still are,” Claire murmured. She passed a weary, trembling hand over her forehead. “I wish I hadn’t told you anything about this small concert of Sudarskaya’s. Then all this could have been avoided. I wish I hadn’t come to see you, to kiss the children. It was just an impulse—and it was ill-timed.”

  “It’s never ill-timed for you to be with us.”

  The two women faced each other. Lily knew that her hair had come undone, that her skin was moist with perspiration. Claire’s face was strangely white, the small lines around her eyes more visible this way. “It doesn’t matter about Sudarskaya,” Lily said. “Ever since Mari’s wedding, I’ve felt something strange between us. Something . . . not like before. I attributed it first to my illness after Kira’s birth, and then to Papa’s death. But it wasn’t that at all. It was . . . you and Rabbi Weill, standing together at Mari’s reception—smiling at each other like two old friends. Someone you weren’t even supposed to know. Someone ...of a different world entirely.”

  “Someone . . . Jewish.”

  Lily thought for a moment, then nodded, suddenly self-conscious. “Yes. I suppose that’s it.”

  “And this made you feel—how, Lily? Uncomfortable?”

  “No. Just—baffled.”

  “Your father would have said: ‘out of your skin.’ Your mother wasn’t supposed to know a rabbi. And why not?”

  “Because. It makes sense to me, why not. Wolf shocked me when he told me, one afternoon chez Poiret, that non-Jews couldn’t be made to understand all that a Jew might feel in a hostile, anti-Semitic situation. But afterward, I understood him.”

  “I understand him, too,” Claire said.

  “Then why can’t you understand me? Rabbi Weill is part of Wolf and Mari’s world, part of what holds it together against the intruders. How could a man so close to the fundamentals of Jewish society have any connection to you: a matron with grown children, living in the suburbs of Paris in absolutely typical bourgeois style, á la Poincaré?”

  “Sit down, Lily,” Claire stated, in that odd, almost cold tone that she had used the day Lily had come to her father’s bedside. Lily went to the sofa, sat, crossed her legs. She felt drained, and yet nervous, expectant. “I’m going to tell you a story, but you have to listen without interrupting. Can you do that?”

  Lily nodded. Claire cleared her throat, stared at her hands, then concentrated on a pattern in the Persian carpet. “Every human life is a network of complexities that weaves together into a tapestry of many threads. You never knew my mother. She was a beautiful woman. She was a native of Braila, in eastern Rumania, Her parents were well-to-do merchants—they dealt, I believe, in some sort of dry goods that they exported on a line of freight ships which they owned, on the Danube River. When she was sixteen, a young man from Belgium came to town, to see some relatives. He fell in love with my mother, and married her, and took her home to Brussels with him. This was in 1878. The young man was my father.

  “My parents were very happy together. The community where my mother had grown up, in Braila, had had the tradition of speaking French and German more than Rumanian: so, in Brussels, my mother didn’t feel lost. My father was running a series of very successful workshops where women of all ages handcrafted lace. In those days, every well-to-do matron owned hundreds of lace items, from table linen to personal lingerie. A woman could hardly have survived without her trousseau of lace. My father employed about two hundred women, and they had the best reputation in the city for turning out the most elegant lace at the fastest speed. He sold to private customers and to the big stores, such as the Maison de Blanc here in Paris.

  “Then, two years later, I was born. But my mother hadn’t had a healthy pregnancy, and never fully recovered from my birth. It wasn’t anything like your problem after Kira. My mother was a small woman, and I was a large child. My mother suffered horribly, and afterward, was never again the same. I adored her; but the brief years we were together, I can’t remember seeing her once on her feet. She suffered intermittently from internal bleeding, and eventually, when I was twelve, she died from a hemorrhage that couldn’t be stopped. Medicine wasn’t so sophisticated in 1892.”

  Claire closed her eyes, and continued. “After that, everything seemed to go wrong. They’d been so happy—we’d been so happy. . . . Papa couldn’t keep his mind on the shops, and his competitors took advantage of our tragedy to close in on the business. By then, of course, women weren’t relying so exclusively on handmade lace, so this, too, contributed to his collapse. By the time I was eighteen, there was almost no money left.

  “And so Papa decided that in Brussels, I would have no future. He collected a small sum, and sent me to Paris to study art at the Académie Julian. I, like you, possessed a few talents. He made a tremendous sacrifice, both financial and personal: for I had become his right hand, and his dearest companion. But he wanted me to make something of my life. What could I have become, in Brussels: poor, without dowry?

  “Through some connections, I was able to find a room in a small boardinghouse on the Left Bank. My life was very frugal. I studied, I painted, and I cooked my own meals over a Bunsen burner when I couldn’t afford to pay the landlady for my board. Of course, I considered myself the Marie Laurencin of the turn of the century. I wasn’t nearly so good—but I wasn’t bad.

  “But I was very lonely. There were so few people I knew in Paris, and my student friends were all so much wealthier than I! I couldn’t afford to go anywhere. I felt lost in my room, or walking alone on the edge of the Seine. I needed to feel that there was one place where I belonged. And I found that place. It was the Jewish Consistory.”

  Lily was staring at her, her eyes wide, her lips parted. Claire nodded. “Because, Lily, my parents were both Jews. In Braila, my mother had grown up in a kosher house; and in Brussels, she and my father had dutifully observed all the t
raditional holidays. I wasn’t just brought up a Jew: I was brought up a religious Jew, with respect for all the Jewish laws and taboos. You are right: Maryse’s world, Wolf’s world, is a very special place, where customs are venerated and culture is prized, and where the outsider has no place. Because the outsider, Lily, is never absent. He lurks just outside the borders of the golden ghetto, which, however gilded, is still a ghetto. And, as a lonely young art student, I found comfort in the synagogue, and comfort in the friendship of a young rabbi whose wisdom helped me through many a tear-streaked moment.

  “Thus began my friendship with Julien Weill. But I was eighteen, living alone in Paris. All the kind words of Rabbi Weill weren’t enough to fill my life. Inevitably, I met a young man. He was rich, he was attractive, he was Jewish. I met him at the synagogue, where his parents were great patrons. I fell in love with him. He was tall, dark, slender—and spoiled, by generations of incredible wealth. He said that he wanted to marry me, and I accepted. I never really found out the truth. I suspect his love was only words, but Julien Weill told me that it was his parents who sent him away when they learned of our plans and of my expectations. It doesn’t really matter, though, does it? I was already pregnant when I learned that he’d sailed for New York.”

  She looked pointedly at her daughter, her face impassive. Lily was sitting, hands clasped beneath her chin, her neck muscles taut—waiting. Not breathing, it seemed. Claire wet her upper lip with the tip of her tongue. “I couldn’t go home, to face Papa like this. And Julien Weill really couldn’t help me. In all my desperation and sense of betrayal, I blamed the rich French Jews who had allowed this injustice to happen: these selfish philanthropists who had sent their son away because the girl had been too poor. But I did listen to Julien when he advised me not to have the pregnancy . . . taken care of. Somebody like me, reared in the utmost respect for human life, couldn’t have ended the new life that was being created inside me. And so, without resources, I waited until my baby was born. Claude was born when I was not yet twenty, and I did the only thing I could: I gave him up to the Assistance Publique.”