The Keeper of the Walls Page 2

  Suddenly she’d come to the end of her studies, and the peaceful life she’d grown to love had ended. Passed so swiftly. She hadn’t wanted to return to Paris.

  She was always glad to be with her mother. But how much of the house was really Mama’s? Father was such an imposing man, so loud, so peremptory. She felt she had nothing in common with him, and remembered how, as a child, she’d imagined that her mother had fallen in love with a foreign prince, and she’d been the result of their affair. She’d finally admitted this in confession, and had been severely reprimanded. Now she smiled about it.

  Claude’s voice sliced into the softness of her thoughts. “The Comtesse de Béhague has a splendid mansion, and receives the most elegant people in Paris. Many are of foreign extraction. Try to think of interesting things to say, Lily. Not just hello, how do you do. You’ve no idea how much this invitation cost me.”

  “I don’t understand. You paid to be invited there?”

  He was lighting a cigarette. “Don’t be silly. I didn’t pay in money. I paid in favors. I passed somebody a handsome client.”

  “But . . .”

  She was frankly bewildered, and uncomfortable. Before, they’d lived in a small house in Bougival, on the outskirts of Paris, and her father had handled small to average construction jobs. They’d had one maidservant. But after the war, things had begun to change. Two or three years after the Armistice of 1918, the French government had announced that it would pay for the rebuilding of the north and east sectors of the country, from which the inhabitants had fled one step ahead of the German invaders. Nothing had been left of their properties, and now those in power had proposed to pay four times the estimated value of each lost building, as long as what was rebuilt coincided exactly with what had been razed. Where there had been a house, a house had to be built; where a factory, a factory. And because the franc had been greatly devalued, the government had set the rate at four times the original worth of the property. Those who had fled their homes could return, and industry could begin again in the blighted parts of France. For contractors like Paul Bruisson, Lily’s father, a gold mine had been uncovered. And now the family lived in the Villa Persane, in Boulogne-sur-Seine, just ten minutes on foot from Paris, with a butler, two maids, and a cook. Only the chauffeur worked part-time, for the women.

  Lily didn’t like the Villa Persane. It rose proudly near the beautiful Boulevard d’Auteuil, bordered by old, majestic trees. It was entirely covered with enamel mosaic in small squares of blue, white, and green, with some black ones thrown in for a more modern look. “See how geometric is this design,” her father had expostulated to a guest. “It’s the design of the future!” But Lily thought it devoid of good taste, and the turret failed to resemble a Moorish minaret, and seemed, in its pretentiousness, no more than ridiculous.

  Lily, in that house, where the furniture was heavy and dark, felt like a small white cloud imprisoned in a dungeon. Only her mother’s boudoir and her own room were light and soft and delicate, because everywhere else her father’s will had imposed itself.

  She didn’t like what Claude had told her. Ever since she had returned from Brittany, she’d noted things he’d said that didn’t feel right. He worked with their father. He solicited new clients. He drove a medium-priced car “in order not to seem richer than the clients.” He was a young man-about-town, but there was no joy to him except when he could speak of money, of benefits, of contracts. Although he’d inherited their mother’s dark good looks, he was, Lily thought, a younger replica of their father.

  But it wasn’t only that. Father was straightforward, but he was honest. He dealt with facts, with figures. Claude went beyond that. He manipulated. She wondered if there was anyone at all for whom he felt respect, or genuine caring. Maybe for their mother, because no one could remain immune to her gentleness or fineness of spirit. Certainly he didn’t love her, his sister. Then . . . what was it he wanted with her? Why couldn’t he leave her alone, to paint or to read, instead of insisting that she go to endless fittings that made her ankles swell, and to gatherings with people she’d never met, whose extreme stylishness made her feel like a small child peeking into a world where she didn’t belong?

  “The Comtesse de Béhague won’t even notice me, Claude,” she said. “It won’t matter what I say. She doesn’t know me and doesn’t care about me.”

  “But I want people to notice you! What do you want to do with your life, Lily? You have no profession. In society we don’t yet have a name. It’s up to you to make this name, because you’re lucky, you’re a beautiful girl, and men will notice.”

  “So what are you hoping for? That some elderly marquis will build a castle for me? In return for what?”

  “I just want you to have an opportunity to marry well.”

  “And if not, to become a rich man’s whore.”

  He turned to her, amazed, and started to laugh. “I didn’t know they taught you these words at the convent!”

  But she wasn’t amused. When he tucked her under the chin, in an effort at friendliness, she remained impassively staring ahead of her, at the lighted streets of the Paris winter. He withdrew his hand, and once more they were strangers sharing the same name, the same space, but nothing else.

  * * *

  Mikhail Ivanovitch Brasilov plucked a coupe of champagne from a passing tray, and leaned against a panel of the wall. From his vantage point, for he was excessively tall, he could peer through two reception rooms clear into the vestibule, where the Comtesse de Béhague’s maître d’hôtel stood at attention. He was restless, bored. He’d worked all day since six that morning, going over all the company books with the chief accountant, and he’d come here to feel around him the atmosphere of his early youth, in Kiev and Moscow. He’d thought that since the countess entertained a great many exiled Russians, like himself, his usual nostalgia for the golden moments of a dead era would be assuaged through the company of his compatriots. But so far it hadn’t been so. He’d been disappointed. Yussoupov had talked endlessly of his antique business, and the delicious prattlings of Tessa de Pulszky, Nijinsky’s sister-in-law, had been like thick moths buzzing around his head. He felt tired, irritable. He shouldn’t have come—but if not this, then what? He’d had enough of that little model from the Latin Quarter, and nothing new had appeared on the horizon.

  He half closed his green eyes, amused, detached. The maître d’hôtel was letting in two late arrivers, a man and a woman. The man was ordinary. He might have been any one of a dozen young Frenchmen always on the lookout for an opportunity to mix with the right crowd. They bored him. Every day two or three came to his office and opened the conversation in the same fashion: “My dear Prince, we met two days ago at—” and there would follow the name of a famous hostess, directly in front of a petition for a job. Inevitably he turned them down. On principle. He never mixed work and fun.

  But the young woman was different. Mikhail Brasilov’s eyes widened. She clashed with everything that spelled 1924. She was too tall, and her breasts and hips were too ample. She wasn’t large—merely statuesque, slender but full. He liked that. The woman of today had no breasts worth mentioning, and was flat as a board—Madame Chanel at the forefront of them all. She wore a long gown of lemon-yellow muslin, and her arms were a dark creamy color. Girls of today liked to be white, bleached out.

  And this one didn’t wear makeup. Her dark, almond-shaped eyes were fringed with curling black lashes, and her complexion was the same bronzed color as her arms. She looked exotic, not French at all—perhaps Arabian, or Greek. Mikhail Brasilov picked up his coupe and sipped from it, eyeing the girl.

  She had long brown hair, almost black, that undulated down her back and over her shoulders. Her posture was erect, proud. But she looked very young. Certainly, he thought, a virgin. And that, added to all the rest, topped off his fascination. He strode forward, nearly upsetting a passing tray of caviar on toast points, and followed the angle of his vision toward the girl.

  She was
alone, on the threshold of the first reception room, and nobody had noticed her. Where, Mikhail wondered, was her escort? And, more important, who was he? Her husband? She looked like the sort of person who’d be happily married, who’d never venture anywhere without her cohort. But now she looked confused, ill at ease.

  Reaching her, he said, bowing slightly: “Are you looking for someone? May I help you?”

  She blushed. What girl had blushed in the last year? She looked up, tried to smile. She was shy, but not overwhelmed. “I was waiting for my brother,” she answered. “He went to say hello to somebody he knew. . .”

  Then he must be the last of the boors, Mikhail thought. It was incredible to leave her standing there, not to introduce her! Surely that brother of hers was a nouveau riche social climber of the worst sort. But he said: “Allow me to present myself. Prince Mikhail Ivanovitch Brasilov. You are?”

  “Liliane Bruisson.” She was holding out her hand, long and well kept, and he bent over it and touched it with his lips.

  “Would you like me to introduce you around? Are you curious about all these people?”

  Her smile widened. She said nothing, but he caught the irony in her brown eyes. “You couldn’t care less,” he said.

  “It’s not that. I just—I’m not sure why I’m here. What I can possibly have in common with most of these people.” Then she turned red again, looked aside. “I’m sorry. You’re here, and what I just said was terribly rude. . .”

  “It was merely terribly honest, mademoiselle. I hope to God that I, like you, don’t have too much to share with the rest of this crowd.”

  He had laid her fingers over his arm, and had started to walk. She wondered if this was all right, to go with this stranger into another room, without waiting for Claude. But there was something so powerful, so hypnotic, about this man, that she matched his step instinctively. She’d worry about her brother later. Prince Brasilov rose at least six feet four inches, with shoulders that matched, wide and strong. But his waist tapered down, and his hips were no larger than Claude’s. He had long legs with thighs that showed muscle under the broadcloth of the evening suit. She liked his largeness—it made her feel small, while at the same time allowing her to walk in her usual bold stride, which Claude had told her was decidedly unfeminine. She didn’t feel self-conscious.

  But—he was a prince. Princes belonged in fairy stories. A Russian prince. She said: “You do belong here. Why do you reject your peers?”

  “Because they’re not. I came from Russia with my father, a little man with a pointed beard and the best mind this side of Asia. We lost my mother to the Bolsheviks. We came here penniless—not like Felix Yussoupov, or even Felix Litvinne, the diva. But we brought with us four sacks of sugar beets from our plantations in Kiev. And because we were hungry, because we couldn’t be satisfied with anything less, we built from these four sacks our own empire. I got up at four thirty this morning, mademoiselle. I was at the office at six. If I danced all night, or spent it with a chanteuse de café-concert, that is nobody’s business but my own, and my work was not affected by it. ... No, I am not at home with those who waste their life in cognac and coffee conversation.”

  He’d spoken in a rush of words, and as she looked into his face, she was struck by the passion of this man. There was something savage about him. He had a large face with strong cheekbones, a large nose, and big white teeth. She caught herself abruptly, surprised at the turn of her thoughts. His green eyes, under the soft arch of their brows, were appealing to her, suddenly vulnerable. He was everything she didn’t know, everything foreign, everything male. Not at all like her father, with his plump stomach hanging ridiculously over his belt—or like her civilized, cut-and-dried brother, Claude. Lily was afraid and fascinated, at the same time.

  He had stopped a valet with a tray filled with small sandwiches, and was saying to her: “What is your preference? Foie gras? Smoked salmon? Caviar?”

  She wasn’t sure. At home Mama gave pastries for tea, and sometimes small pieces of round bread covered with a cheese pâté. At school, tea had been even simpler: a brioche with hot chocolate. This wasn’t tea, it was evening, it was . . . cocktails? She wanted to make sure this man wouldn’t desert her when he learned how simple she was, how backward. “I’ll take anything,” she said. “Thank you.”

  He took the tiniest sliver of smoked salmon on pumpernickel, and held it before her. “Open your mouth, Cinderella.”

  She laughed. He listened, delighted. Then he popped the tiny morsel into her mouth, and watched her astonishment. He laughed too. It was a moment she thought she would always remember: The Russian prince feeding her and laughing with her in the midst of a crowd of elegant people, in a strange town house, waiting for her brother.

  And then the magic bubble burst; Claude was at her elbow. “We’ve met before, my dear Prince. At the Baronne d’Oettingen’s costume ball, six months ago. . . .”

  “Yes, yes,” Mikhail Brasilov muttered, barely acknowledging the hand that was thrusting itself at him.

  “We spoke then about the government contracts to repair the war damage in the north—and how our firm could be useful to you.”

  “Perhaps we did,” the Russian said, already beginning to look over Lily’s head into the next reception hall. “I really couldn’t say. . . .”

  Lily felt waves of mortification washing over her. A young woman was coming near them, her hips flat, her hair cut short, chin length. Her lips were outlined in carmine red, and her cheeks were dotted with rouge over white powder. Rows and rows of long strands of pearls were knotted over her small, perky breasts.

  “Misha, darling, where have you been? We need your counsel. Tessa says the best Negro jazz club is Le Boeuf sur le Toit, but I myself prefer—”

  Mikhail Ivanovitch Brasilov smiled, laid a finger over the painted girl’s lips, and took Lily’s hand. “Mademoiselle,” he stated, raising it to his lips. “It’s been a pleasure. Perhaps we’ll meet again. . . .”

  No, we won’t, Lily thought. You’ve met my brother, and now you know exactly who I am, where I come from. And she was furious with Claude for bringing her here, for letting her meet a man who would laugh with others behind their backs, who would say: Guess who came to la Béhague’s reception? They didn’t belong with the cognac-and-coffee set, with the fast set and the cream of French society. No matter how well she dressed, she’d never be comfortable with these people, who weren’t her kind, weren’t her people.

  “Bravo, my dear sister,” Claude was whispering. “That’s the richest bachelor in Paris. He’s of the oldest Kiev aristocracy.”

  The Villa Persane was, to Lily, a monument to bad taste and the desire to flaunt new money. And the worst part about it was that its location was superb. The Boulevard d’Auteuil began in Paris, a block or so away from the Porte d’Auteuil, and in Boulogne-sur-Seine there were houses only on one side, all with gardens. Only the Villa Persane had its gate on the boulevard. In front stretched the nursery of the Bois de Boulogne. Why Paul Bruisson had insisted on creating a Persian monstrosity amid such typically French surroundings was beyond his daughter’s understanding.

  The vestibule was flanked by the kitchen and the garage, and on the first floor were the reception halls; on the second, the family bedrooms; on the third floor were the laundry and the servants’ quarters. Paul had fixed the windows with heavy velvet drapery, but the reception rooms were furnished in the style of the First Empire. Every piece was encrusted with mother-of-pearl inlays, with curlicues and complicated drawers, and had

  borders of carved bronze representing swans and cupids. Lily thought them hideous. She never went into the living room if she could help it; and for meals, she sat erect in the dining room, trying to avoid looking at the enormous oil painting of her grandfather in frilled shirt and curled hair— her grandfather Bruisson, who’d been a carpenter in Lille and had never worn a frilled shirt at any time in his life.

  She liked her mother’s boudoir. At forty-three, Claire
Bruisson was still a handsome woman. She was tall, like Lily; but with the years her figure had grown more ample. She had dark eyes in a beautiful cameo face, and wore her dark hair in a topknot at the crown of her head. She dressed simply but tastefully in greens and reds, which went with her somewhat sultry coloring. Light hues didn’t enhance her looks. But in the boudoir she had selected walls of beige raw silk, a Louis XV bergère, a small secretary with delicate, unobtrusive inlays of lighter woods, also Louis XV, and a pale green and pink and beige silk, hand-painted, for her bedspread and canopy.

  Lily felt at home with her mother. They didn’t have to talk to feel each other’s moods. Lily sometimes took a book into the boudoir, and read there while her mother embroidered. Claire was a quiet person, reserved, contemplative, and rarely talked about her childhood, about the parents who were now dead. But Lily remembered her grandfather. He’d been from Brussels, where he’d owned and managed a small business. Lily didn’t know, and perhaps had never known, what that business involved. But she’d been told that Claire had been an only child. Lily couldn’t remember her grandmother, and thought she’d died before her own birth.

  Knocking on the door to the boudoir, Lily hugged her shawl closely around her. Claire told her to come in, and she did. At once the feeling of constriction around her throat eased off.

  “Claude tells me you were quite the belle of the ball,” her mother said, smiling. She was sitting on the bergère, repairing a lace napkin.

  “It wasn’t a ball, and I was by no means a belle,” Lily replied crossly. She drew up the hassock near her mother’s armchair, and plopped down. “Claude humiliated me. He has a horrible way of insinuating things . . . of . . .”

  “Claude has ways about him that are disconcerting. I’ve never quite understood him. But darling, don’t mind him so! If you’re a lady, nobody else can bring you down. And besides—I’m sure he means well, taking you out and showing you to society. That’s what your father wants.”