The Keeper of the Walls Page 3

  “And you?”

  Claire’s shoulders rose and fell, and she sighed. “I want to see you happy. You were cloistered for too many years. You’ve forgotten what Paris is like. But it’s your home; you have to fit into it. I know you didn’t enjoy the ball your father gave for your début in the fall. But sometimes, Lily, you must make an effort to do what’s expected of you.”

  “I didn’t like the ball because I didn’t know a single soul there. And Papa wouldn’t let me invite Maryse.”

  Claire kept her eyes on her work. “Maryse Robinson is always welcome here. I know you two have loved each other since before you left for Brittany. But your father has his ideas about this—about Jewish people.”

  “That’s ridiculous! Maryse’s family is the real thing, not like Papa’s absurd pretensions! They live in a palace, almost, and they’ve had money and servants and fineries for generations. What does it matter if they’re Jewish, or Protestant—or Buddhist, for goodness’ sake?”

  “It’s just how your father feels.”

  “But it’s unjust. Papa’s never been religious. It’s all just another one of his pretensions.”

  “Lily, he’s your father.”

  Their eyes locked. Lily asked, almost in a whisper: “And you never disagree with him?”

  Claire laid a long smooth hand over her daughter’s. “In my head and in my heart, I’m free to think what I like. But marriage is a compromise. Your father has been good to us all. He works very hard to give us a life of ease and comfort.”

  Lily knew that her mother was closing the subject. Claire never really spoke her intimate thoughts. Lily stood up, conscious of all the unresolved, unanswered questions. Her mother was looking at her. “You didn’t tell me about the Russian,” Claire said softly.

  Lily wheeled about, her cheeks red. “I didn’t tell you because it didn’t amount to anything. I met a man—a Russian prince. There are thousands of them roaming the streets of Paris. He couldn’t wait to get away from me. And I don’t blame him. Claude standing there, as if waiting for a handout—and then the pretty girl who came along, who belonged, not like me! Maybe Claude’s right: I am six years behind the times. Her hair was bobbed, and she wore makeup—outrageous makeup. I’d die if I had to look like that. But he liked it. He didn’t even really say good-bye—”

  “But you’d like to see him again.”

  Lily said, her hands clenched so tightly that the knuckles shone white: “I hope I never see him again. My brother’s never going to sell me for thirty pieces of silver!”

  Claire’s eyes, so large and dark, stayed on Lily’s face until the passion wrung out of her, the young woman sat down again. I’m never going to have another outburst, she was thinking. I’m never going to lose control because of someone else’s behavior.

  And then, as she watched Claire resuming her needlework: I’m never going to be like my mother, trapped into a marriage that isn’t right.

  Maryse Robinson was small and very frail, and wore her short ash-blond hair permanented in tight curls around her pixie face. Lily always felt awkward and big when she was with her. They’d met ten years before, when they’d been eight, at a ballet school where their mothers were sending them. Maryse had been the best student, executing all manner of steps, but she’d also been the class clown, losing points for bad behavior. Lily adored her. Only with Maryse could she feel free of the oppression that hung around her, from the sadness brought on by living in a house dominated by a strident, self-important man like her father, and by her brother, whom she didn’t trust.

  Sometimes Claire came with her to the beautiful apartment in the Avenue Henri-Martin, where the Robinsons lived. Claire liked Maryse, her mother, her young brother. Claire laughed, easily, the worry lines around her mouth and eyes disappearing for a few hours during these visits. David Robinson, Maryse’s father, was the most important confectioner of sugared biscuits in France. His family had started this business generations ago. Maryse remembered being told that Czar Nicholas II and Queen Victoria had ranked among her grandfather’s preferred customers.

  The Robinsons lived, with their six servants, in an enormous high-ceilinged apartment close to the Bois de Boulogne. Maryse’s mother, Eliane, had furnished each room with exquisite taste. Maryse’s room was hung with pink-and-white striped wallpaper, and her furniture was all white, with pink-and-white striped curtains and bedspread. The living room was delicate Louis XVI, but Eliane Robinson had mixed Impressionist paintings with this period decor, and scenes from Manet and Dufy in no way took away from the curved armchairs and enamel-inlaid tables that adorned the room.

  Lily, always conscious of underlying thoughts and motives, couldn’t help but feel awkward coming again to a tea at the Robinsons’. Claire made certain to invite Eliane and Maryse at least once a month to the Villa Persane, but Lily realized that tea was always served early on these occasions, so that by the time Paul and Claude Bruisson returned from their offices, the guests had left. She was as glad about that as her mother, because she was afraid that her father might speak coarsely, or too loudly, to Madame Robinson, so fine and distinguished. Nevertheless she felt ashamed. In Maryse’s house, one inevitably became involved in a long discussion, and suddenly David Robinson would appear, cheerful and gallant, to add yet another note of brightness to the occasion. Unlike her father, Monsieur Robinson was a charming, easy man, one who could get along with women and not be bored or boring in their company.

  Sometimes Lily wondered if Maryse had been the reason her parents had insisted on sending her so far away to boarding school. The girls had planned to go together to a tutor chosen by Maryse’s mother. Then, suddenly, Lily’s father had declared that she was to go to a convent school in Brittany. The only sort of school where Maryse wouldn’t have been able to follow her.

  That summer of 1923, when Lily had come home for good, her parents had organized her début. She was eighteen; it was time to enter society. Since the war, it mattered only if one was rich enough to do so; débutantes abounded, from all sorts of backgrounds. Granddaughters of factory workers married sons of famous noblemen—the war had changed everybody’s values. What held meaning was, above all, to have money in the bank, which many aristocrats no longer had. And Paul had refused to invite Maryse Robinson.

  “You’re part of the elite, now, Lily,” he’d said to her. “You don’t need people like that anymore.”

  “But the Robinsons have been part of society longer than we have! Madame Robinson is a Rueff!”

  “The Robinsons are not our kind of people.”

  She couldn’t help but recall this conversation as she and Claire stepped off the elevator into the hallway that led to the Robinsons’ door. Another invitation that might or might not be returned.

  A young maid in uniform opened the door. Behind her came Eliane Robinson, holding out her hands to Claire. She kissed Lily, and an expensive perfume filled the air around them. “Welcome, darlings. We have quite a gathering here today. David’s sister sent us a fascinating young American journalist. He tells of such things ...” She let the sentence hang, to tantalize her guests, and Lily saw Claire’s half smile of amusement. The Bruissons had never met David Robinson’s sister, who had committed the intrepid act of marrying an American architect in the Deep South. But of course they’d heard of her.

  They entered the salon. Maryse almost upset her cup of tea in an effort to reach her friend and kiss her. Lily, always so quiet and controlled, loved and envied Maryse’s exuberance. It was so foreign to her own nature, yet winsome and warm. Everybody liked Maryse Robinson. Five hundred people had flocked to her début, and, Eliane had confided to Claire, the telephone never stopped ringing. Maryse was a woman of the world who went three times a week to hear jazz at small, exclusive, intellectual clubs, or to listen to the tziganes at the Russian cabarets. Yet nobody had one word to say against her reputation. Nobody ever saw her alone with a young man, in a compromising situation.

  She had been sitting on the bro
cade love seat next to a stranger with fine features whom Lily assumed to be the American journalist. Lily was intrigued. Maryse, in her cowl-necked, short-sleeved blouse tucked into her tight, knee-length Kiki skirt, seemed as sleek as a kitten. Lily felt too tall, and blessed the fur trim that lengthened her own Maggy Rouff afternoon dress of soft green silk.

  “Lily, this is Mark MacDonald, of Charlotte, North Carolina,” Maryse declared. “Liliane Bruisson, my oldest and dearest friend. We tripped over our own feet and fell over each other’s in ballet school.”

  The young man laughed. He rose, and Lily noted that he was exactly her height. He was built in a tight, compact manner, like a small panther. He had an oval face with a straight nose and hazel eyes, and his hair was a soft brown mass of curls. He went well with Maryse: two small, well-shaped young people. He looked to be about twenty-four years old—Claude’s age.

  There were six or seven other people present, and Lily had met some but not others. She made her rounds politely. Mark was the only man present, except for an elderly gentleman leaning his chin on a silver-tipped cane, who had accompanied his silver-haired wife. Lily turned back to the love seat and saw that Maryse had disappeared. She sat down next to Mark, suddenly awkward.

  “Do you know, Mademoiselle Liliane, that Maryse speaks nearly perfect English?” he said to her.

  “Maryse has many talents. But I wouldn’t have the temerity to judge her English. I didn’t learn it. In Brittany, where I was in school, the nuns taught us Latin and Greek.”

  “My heavens!” he cried, playfully moving away from her on the sofa. “Maryse’s introduced me to an intellectual!”

  “Oh, I’m really not. We had no choice about taking Latin and Greek. With the nuns, one seldom has any choice.”

  “You’re so serious. I was only teasing you. Tell me, mademoiselle, are you always so serious? With Maryse, a person can’t ever fit in a serious word.”

  “I suppose,” Lily said, “that’s one of the reasons our friendship has survived ten years. She brings me out of my brooding moods, and I tone her down a bit. But I don’t like to do that. Maryse’s perfect—don’t you think?”

  “I never try to find a perfect person. They’re unwholesome. But I like Maryse. I like the whole family. Eliane is great. She reminds me of my mother.”

  “But Madame Robinson is so typically French! Is your mother of French origin, perhaps?”

  Mark laughed. “No. We’re what is called a Family of the American Revolution. Our ancestors were Pilgrims who came over on the ship Mayflower. You must understand, Mademoiselle Liliane, that this doesn’t mean a thing. I couldn’t tell you whether my great-great-grandfathers were Puritan scholars or criminals let out to free the congested jails of England. But in the United States, people are very snobbish about having ancestors that came over on the Mayflower.”

  Lily was silent, listening. Yes, she thought, he would make a fine husband for Maryse. He has humor, charm. She felt curiously at ease with him. How different from what she had felt in the strange company of the imposing, somewhat frightening Mikhail Brasilov. . . .

  “You see,’ Mark was saying, “the Deep South isn’t at all like New York or San Francisco. It’s still the stronghold of Old World gentility. My parents live in a white mansion with Doric pillars that has been in our family for many generations. My mother entertains magnificently with nothing but the best. That’s life in Charlotte.” Mark MacDonald smiled, raising his brows: “Boring.” She laughed. He took out a cigarette case of tortoiseshell and gold, and a gold lighter. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

  She motioned no, and he looked at her, squarely in the eye. For the first time she fell silent, embarrassed. Why was he staring? He said: “You’re remarkably beautiful. I’ve never seen a woman like you. You’re a real ingénue, born yesterday, and yet you’re full of the wisdom of the ages. Ceres, the goddess of the earth.”

  She felt her cheeks burning. “I don’t know anything. I don’t even know much about Paris. I don’t go out much.”

  “That’s what I like about you. Tell me, what do you do for amusement?”

  “I embroider, I read, I listen to music.”

  “Things one does alone.”

  “Or sometimes with my mother.”

  “And what dreams do you have?”

  She looked back at him, surprised. “Dreams? I’m afraid of dreams. Life always seems to disappoint the dreamer.”

  “But if you weren’t afraid? What would you dream?”

  “I’d be married, with a household of my own, and I’d have friends—intelligent people, like Maryse. I’d have a gentle husband who never shouted, never gave orders—just suggested his wishes to me. Or maybe—maybe I wouldn’t be married. Maybe I’d be a poetess, or a concert pianist.”

  “You play the piano?”

  “Yes. I’ve been playing since I was five. You asked me what I like to do best. My favorite pastime is my piano. It’s a beautiful Pleyel and it plays with a deep, mellow resonance that lifts up one’s heart. . . . Do you think I’m odd?”

  He shook his head, and the hazel eyes remained on her face, pensive. “Never odd. But somewhat lonely.”

  “My brother wants me to get out more. But I’m not sure I like it. Six years in a convent haven’t helped—I’m awkward in society. I’ll never be,” she stated wistfully, “like Maryse.”

  “But you are every bit as charming as Maryse. I doubt that the world will forget you.”

  She opened her mouth, amazed, and didn’t close it. He remained looking at her with a steadfastness that studied her features and tried to read her mind. They were silent thus, for a few minutes. And then Maryse returned, holding out a chain of perfect rubies in a gold clasp. “Look, Lily,’ she said. “Papa brought this back from Amsterdam last week. Aren’t they wonderful?”

  Above her curly head, Lily caught a gently ironic expression on Mark MacDonald’s face. And then she realized that she’d been speaking to him with such honesty and candor because she’d thought he belonged to Maryse. She felt suddenly disconcerted, and a little angry. He’d won his way into her thoughts on a pretense.

  But that’s not fair, she thought. He never pretended. It was I who assumed.

  She didn’t know why, but the softness of the afternoon seemed warped, like a fine Stradivarius left out in the sun and rain.

  The girl closed the door of the tall, thin confession box, and kneeled in front of the grating. Her long hair was held back by a silk ribbon and covered by a woolen scarf. Beyond the grating she could discern the vague, ominous shadow of the confessor.

  “Oh, Father, I have sinned.”

  “How long has it been since your last confession?”

  “One week.”

  “How have you sinned, my child?”

  Her voice, strong and clear in its purity, wavered. “I have had indecent thoughts.”

  “That is not good, my child. You must renounce such thoughts.”

  “Father, I am afraid.”

  “Those who honor the Lord’s commandments have nothing to fear. Why are you afraid?”

  “I’m afraid of myself.”

  “My child, who is the man who has not entertained self-doubt? As long as you use the word of our Lord Jesus Christ as your protective shield, no harm shall come to you.”

  “And . . . about the man?”

  “You shall recite five Hail Marys, and forgo the morning meal for one week in penitence. And you shall not see him.”

  She bowed her head, and felt the tension letting go, the pain slowly ebbing, the guilt being washed away by centuries of Latin litanies. “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, I absolve you of your sins.”

  The disembodied voice was like the soothing, impersonal hand of the Mother Superior when she had passed out pictures of the saints to reward a particularly deserving pupil. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

  “There isn’t any reason why you shouldn’t try for a career as a concert pianist,” Mark said. They were wa
lking in the gardens of the Tuileries, their collars up to ward off the freezing cold of the bleak January day. In

  the distance, Maryse was romping in the snow, a small ball of fur among the statues.

  “You heard me play Brahms. I’m not so good.”

  “You’re beyond-this-world good. Why don’t you have more confidence in yourself, Lily?”

  She stopped, hugging herself in her wool coat with the full skirt and large sleeves that let in the wind in great, bone-chilling gusts. She stood facing him, her long hair blown away from her face, her cheeks stung red. “I’m not sure what I have that should give me confidence. I play for my own pleasure. In concert halls the artist is dramatically good—not just agreeable. And then, I was taught that self-importance is a great sin. Jesus was humble.”

  He started to laugh. “You believe such things?”

  She shrugged, embarrassed. “In the United States, people don’t have faith?”

  “Some do, some don’t. I’m a confirmed skeptic.”

  “But a person can’t ignore the Bible. It’s such a beautiful testimonial to God’s love for his people.”

  Mark MacDonald reached for her gloved hand, and brought it to his lips. He remained holding it, looking into the velvet brown eyes of the young woman in front of him. “You make me want to be young again,” he said softly, mild humor in his hazel eyes.

  “But you are young. Why do you say that?”

  “Because I’m a journalist. My job has been to print facts, and most of the time, facts are ugly, raw, crude. I used to work on world news. It disgusted me what countries can do to one another. Then they put me to head the society column. I had to go to all the fine houses in Charlotte to interview its leading citizens, the women with their diamond rings and their fur coats, the men with their three-piece suits and shining spats. What exists among members of the same family is far, far worse than anything you can imagine.”

  “Not so far,” Lily whispered.

  “But you are unchanged. You are like a lost illusion.”