The Keeper of the Walls Read online

  Lily ran toward the first taxi that she saw, and gave the name of her parents’ villa, lying back against the cushions with relief.

  Misha sat in his office, his eyes bloodshot, the pulse in his throat hurting with its intensity. In front of him lay sheaves of invoices, which he now pushed aside with an almost listless gesture of hopelessness. This morning, while he’d been having breakfast in the dining room, with Philippe de Chaynisart, a strange, yet now familiar figure had approached their table, unceremoniously. Strange, because he’d never laid eyes on this particular messenger of fate, and familiar, because he’d come to recognize the telltale signs of their ominous presence every time one of them had come up to him: the ubiquitous bill collectors sent to confront him and humiliate him like scum at their feet. He’d seen this one before Philippe, and had straightened up, his face a mask of imperious hauteur, hiding the fear that gripped his stomach.

  “Mikhail Brasilov?” the small, rotund man had demanded.

  “Yes, it is I.”

  “I have an order to repossess your furniture for nonpayment of debts.”

  “Nonpayment to whom?”

  “To the Bouleaud Funeral Services.”

  Misha had registered this with a small inward shock. So they were planning to collect on his father’s casket, and embalmment. But this was natural: funerals, after all, were part of business. He had sighed once, shortly, and then said: “But I have no furniture.”

  “Then, unless you possess other valuables, I shall be obliged to put a lien on your earnings, to attach a part of your salary until the debt is cleared.”

  Philippe de Chaynisart’s bright blue eyes had rapidly gone from the huissier to Misha, then back to the huissier in embarrassment. His baby face had turned a shade of pink. Clearly, he’d been in sympathy ... or had he? It was always more difficult to read Philippe than the cunning snake who was his brother.

  Misha had rapidly considered the alternatives. If they attached his salary, Lily and the children would suffer every day. On the other hand . . . Lily still owned a few pieces of jewelry. She’d kept the tear-shaped diamond flanked by two emeralds, the Cartier ring he had given her for their engagement. To give away this piece, which wasn’t his to give, while she was in Cannes, had seemed abhorrent to him. Yet less abhorrent than to force his family to live on half of nothing for the next half year. And so he’d gone upstairs and relinquished the ring.

  He was now sitting in the comfortable Louis XIV bergère, thinking. The situation had gone from bad to worse. And still, no contract. He wondered about this, again. Philippe had always appeared to be on his side. Yet men like him were first and foremost businessmen . . . like the huissier. They might like you, they might spend time with you, but when business was bad, they forgot about you so rapidly that you wondered what chair had been seized from under you when you landed with a thump on your rear end.

  He’d spent every spare penny fortifying the Jeunesses Patriotes, whose ranks had swelled to almost one hundred thousand members. But to what avail? France now needed Russia, for the French stood on weak, scared legs in the shadow of Great Britain, which made all the two countries’ joint decisions. The decisions of cowards, always afraid to speak out against the affronts of Hitler and Mussolini. And in the meantime, Leon Blum sounded off about a forty-hour workweek and collective contracts. Misha had spent his money ...his family’s money ... to fight against a Blum takeover, and now he felt pangs of dismay and shame. He’d never told Lily he’d done this, because she’d needed the cash. He’d thought he’d been doing something altruistic, sacrificing the comfort of his family . . . for nothing. To reach this point.

  There was a knock on the door, and almost immediately it swung open. Philippe was standing in the doorway, his shoulders inside his immaculate jacket of beige raw silk looking oddly hunched, his face drawn—a tired cherub with bloodless lips. “Is something wrong?” Misha asked, rising. “You look ill.”

  Philippe stilled him with a wave of his hand. “No, no. Just a bit of the heat, probably. But I’m going home to rest. I’ve been thinking . . . about this morning.”

  He edged into the room, and passed a monogrammed linen handkerchief over his brow. “Misha, your problems have touched me. Of course, you must understand why Charles and I didn’t feel it was right to renew your original contract. The restaurant hasn’t done as well as you’d led us to expect. But we have every hope that come September, you will work wonders for us. Really—our confidence is still high; I want you to know that.”

  Misha said, his voice hard and low: “But you still owe me money from the first year.”

  Philippe sighed. “Yes. And that’s why I decided to stop in this afternoon. Charles and I just made an enormous profit on a property we sold in Auvergne. It’s time you collected the money we owe you. And while the cash flow is good, I’d like you to take an extra ten thousand francs, as an advance and a show of confidence on our part.”

  Misha said, without smiling: “Thank you, Philippe.”

  His hand on the doorknob, the Baron added: “From the hotel safe, of course, Misha. Use your keys, as always, and leave an invoice on my desk.”

  When he had left, Misha organized the papers in his office, locked the door behind him, and went to the small alcove in the basement where the hotel safe reposed behind two heavy steel panels. Only three people possessed keys to unlock it: the two De Chaynisart brothers, and he himself. Now he looked carefully behind him, saw that no one was there, and unlocked the first panel. He then inserted a second, serrated key into the lock of the second panel. The safe stood open before him, revealing sheaves of paper money neatly arranged in numbered piles.

  Misha counted out the eighteen thousand francs that was owed to him, and the additional ten thousand that Philippe had told him to take. He was trembling inside, with a cold, dark anger. Philippe had let him give Lily’s ring to the huissier, without lifting a finger. Only afterward had he felt a twinge of personal guilt. Damn it, Misha thought, I should have insisted for back pay when the bill collector appeared before us. It was my right, as much as it was that funeral parlor’s, to collect on what was owed to me. But he hadn’t done this. He had remained, as always, the prince, the gentleman, just as Philippe had expected him to. Another might have turned the tables and humiliated De Chaynisart—but not he.

  Philippe, under this guise of kindness and comprehension, had merely paid him hush money not to make a scandal. But also, Misha realized, he’d always known that the Brasilovs were now totally destitute, and therefore totally dependent on Misha’s position as manager of the Hotel Rovaro. Misha, who had always worked for the pleasure of making money, now worked because he had a family to feed. For even if the De Chaynisarts were lax in their payments, they did provide the Brasilovs free rooming. And in the eyes of Paris society, Prince Mikhail was a hotel manager, which, whatever way one looked at it, was still an honorable profession.

  They’ll bleed me to death because they know I can’t cry out, he thought angrily, putting the bills in his pocket and locking the safe doors.

  In the morning, as he was shaving, there was an urgent knocking at the door, and when he went to open it, his face full of lather, he saw Merpert, Philippe’s balding young office clerk, his eyes nearly popping out of their sockets. “Your Excellency,” Merpert said, his teeth beginning to chatter. “Monsieur Philippe is dead.”

  Misha stepped back, unbelieving. “Dead? But—how?”

  “He died of a massive heart attack in the middle of the night. His maître d’hôtel had to call Monsieur Charles, at the Hotel Majestic in Cannes. . . .”

  “Charles is in Cannes?” Misha said. It seemed to him an unhappy coincidence. With this new development, he’d have to call Lily and the children back too. He needed their warm presence around him. With Charles, the going wouldn’t be easy. He said to the young clerk: “Go downstairs, Merpert, and act like a man. This is the first order of business. It’s our job, yours and mine, to keep the hotel going smoothly. The guests ar
e not to be alarmed, do you hear?”

  But as he watched the retreating form of Merpert’s back, he wondered why, suddenly, he felt so uneasy. Philippe hadn’t exactly been a friend, but he’d been among the more trustworthy business relations he had had to deal with over the past few years. Not a bad man, fundamentally. He felt sad. He’d never really come to know the man, to see him in his intimate surroundings—but he had to admit that he’d liked him. They’d liked each other. Without Philippe, what would happen to the Rovaro? Charles wouldn’t want to keep it, Misha supposed, finishing his shaving and smoothing talcum powder over his jaw and chin. Or would he?

  And once again, the sensation of discomfort returned, like a dark cloud.

  “I’m so sorry for Philippe,” Lily said, picking up her cup of tea. “He was young, like my father. But, Misha—I don’t really want to stay here if there’s just Charles. I don’t like him.”

  Misha smiled, wryly. “Neither do I. I wonder if anyone does, actually. But look here: I’ve had an offer to renovate the Hotel Carlton, on the Champs-Élysées. They especially need to do something about the café. Do you remember which hotel this is?”

  She nodded. “On the Champs-Élysées, near the Étoile. On the shady side of the avenue. Are you sure they really want you, Misha?”

  He stared at her, confounded. But she hadn’t meant to belittle him with her remark. She’d merely wished to be reassured that he was speaking about a concrete offer, and not just a dim possibility. He glanced at the fingers of her right hand, singularly naked and tanned from the Cannes sun, and felt a moment of terrible shame that he had given her ring to the huissier. But she’d stilled his remorse when he had admitted this, upon her return. “The wedding ring is all I need,” she’d said quietly, and where another woman might have said the words to make a good impression, he knew she’d been sincere.

  “When will you tell Charles that we’re going?” she asked softly, her dark, liquid eyes on his face.

  “As soon as I can. He’s been going over all the invoices, all the books.”

  Lily sighed with relief. In all probability, life would begin to take a brighter color once they made the move. She wondered again what kind of man Charles really was, remembering the time she’d jumped from his car, and that other time, so recently, when she’d encountered him on the Croisette at Cannes.

  And then, with true horror, she asked herself whether he might know, through some fluke of fate, that she was half-Jewish. Things were so good now between her and Misha. And then, just as she was musing about the closeness between them since Prince Ivan’s death, she sat up with sudden horror. “Misha,” she whispered. “Mama told me, a few weeks ago, that Claude and Rirette had sold their apartment, and had decided to live in a hotel. Mama said they had chosen the Carlton. And you know how badly we all get along. . . .”

  He shifted his eyes from her face to the tea tray at her side, then back again to her direct, brown eyes, filled with mute appeal. Very gently, he said: “Lily, a job’s a job. We have no other choice now, do we?”

  “No other choice at all, in all of Paris?”

  He said, harshly: “I told you: no choice at all. So I will have to become manager of the Carlton. But I’ll find you and the children some other place to live. Though on the tiny salary they’re offering, I wonder how the hell I’ll be able to afford it!”

  The children loved the Hotel Carlton. It stood in perpetual shade at 119 to 121, Avenue des Champs-Élysées, tall, stately, and, like a decayed aristocrat who has seen better times, somewhat gone to seed. The Persian carpets in the lounge needed to be cleaned and renovated. The walls needed new paint. And, as Misha had said, the outdoor café needed the most work of all. And so the first thing that he did was to order tables, chairs, and a series of gaily colored parasols to shade the already shady tables. His hope was that during the hot season, passersby would stop in to hide from the sun on the opposite side of the street.

  Kira reveled in the marble columns of the reception hall, and in the fretwork around the molded ceilings of all the downstairs rooms. Often, on Thursday afternoons when all French children were off from school, her father brought her over from the pension a few blocks away on the Rue Lord-Byron, where he had set Lily and his children up in a small room with three beds. Nicolas didn’t always come. This fall of 1935, he was almost eleven, and in the sixth form, which was the first serious class, when one had to choose between a classical or a modern course of study. He had chosen classical, because, as he’d announced to his parents, anyone could master science, but not everyone could read Greek and Latin. And so, many a Thursday, he stayed at home with Lily to polish up his homework.

  But Lily knew that there was another reason why he didn’t like to go to the Carlton without her. He’d run into his Aunt Henriette one day in the lobby, and had come away with an odd sensation of repulsion. She’d fondled him, and tousled his hair, and sent her small son, Alain, to play with him; yet he’d felt her strange, amber eyes like a lizard’s stare, and had told his mother he didn’t like his aunt. And so, while the old hotel held as much charm for him as it did for his sister, it also made him a little apprehensive about meeting this lady whom he hadn’t liked. When his mother and aunt passed each other, they merely nodded and moved on.

  Kira, on the other hand, was different. There was a side to her nature that sought the forbidden, that liked to toy with danger and high adventure. She’d always sat on the very edge of her seat at the circus, when the lion and tiger trainers performed, almost hoping that something unexpected would occur, to test the bravery of man against beast. She didn’t care a hoot about adult problems. If Papa and Uncle Claude had disagreed, this had nothing to do with her. On the contrary, it suddenly made her somewhat insipid uncle more interesting to her. And she guessed, with her child’s intuition, that the mysterious lady he had married lay at the root of the question. So, when she went to have lunch with her father at the Carlton, she kept her eyes open for Henriette.

  She’d seen them once, all three of them. Uncle Claude, dark and handsome in his perfectly tailored brown pinstriped suit; the small boy, dark like his father, but with curiously moss-green eyes, not unlike her own, Kira had thought: decked out like Little Lord Fauntleroy in a cute sailor suit and patent leather shoes. But the lady had been extraordinary. She had an oval face, very delicate, and slanted eyes of a queer amber color, like light topazes. Her hair, styled in a pageboy bob of the newest fashion, had been topped by a marvelous heart-shaped dark green hat, to match her woolen suit with its padded shoulders and fitted skirt that came to just below the knee. What slender, elegant legs had emerged from that tight skirt, and so daintily shod in patent leather green shoes that went just perfectly with her patent leather bag! Kira had been amazed by the color of her hair: a burnished burgundy that contrasted dramatically with the pallor of her somewhat sunken cheeks. “She looks like an actress,” Kira had breathed.

  And then Christmas came, eclipsing all else behind it, and they went to Grandma’s at the Ritz, and opened presents at midnight. Kira received a brand-new silk nightgown, and a silver-backed hairbrush and comb from Grandma and Grandpa Jacques. Aunt Marthe had sent five books by the Comtesse de Ségur. Mama had made her a blue velvet dress, with an embroidered, hand-crocheted collar. Papa gave her his own Bible, its leather cover embossed with gold print. And then there was the mystery present, which had come to the Ritz addressed to “Princess Kira Brasilova, in care of Madame Jacques Walter.” It had said “Fragile: To Be Opened at Once,” and so Grandma hadn’t waited, and removed the wrapping.

  Grandma and Grandpa had found themselves staring at a small gilded cage, in which sat two lovebirds, terrified and soundless. By the time Kira arrived, they’d started to sing, and she fed them from the two boxes of special seeds that had been included in the package. Everyone had wondered who had sent this most wonderful of gifts, but Kira, in her heart of hearts, had known.

  She had no doubt that the beautiful woman in the green velvet suit, her
Aunt Henriette, had sent her the lovebirds. But she was afraid to tell anybody, even Nicky, about her secret knowledge.

  Chapter 16

  On February 13, 1936, Misha walked both his children to their lycées, and went bright and early to the Hotel Carlton. The Portuguese maître d’hôtel, Carvalho, greeted him with a somber expression. “Your Excellency, business was bad yesterday. The café only made eleven thousand francs. And now Marcel, the chef, is ill. Jean-Paul, the assistant chef, has never yet been on his own, and he’s got the worst case of stage fright you could imagine.”

  Misha sighed. “Well, then, I shall have to reanimate him. Where is he?”

  “In the pantry, sir.”

  Misha smiled, and walked resolutely past Carvalho. The Portuguese was a fine maitre d’hôtel, but he didn’t know how to handle his subordinates. Misha strode into the pantry and past some sinks to the row of closed doors that stored bins of dry goods. “Jean-Paul,” he called gently. “I won’t allow you to let us down. But more than this: I won’t allow you to let yourself down. Every assistant chef waits like a nervous frog for the moment when his superior will fall sick. Because that’s when his own worth will emerge. Many reputations have been built during a chef’s sick leave. Do you intend to remain an assistant for the rest of your days?”

  A man, inside one of the closets, coughed. “But your Excellency, if I fail . . .”

  Misha let the thought hang in midair. “How do you think I ever got started in this country?” he retorted. “It took a lot of guts and a strong stomach. I was scared, just like you. At least you’re a born Frenchman, Jean-Paul. You know the tastes here. Come on, man. There’s a small crowd waiting for breakfast, and we can’t keep feeding them yesterday’s leftover croissants. They desire small miracles, which only you can accomplish.”