The Keeper of the Walls Read online

  Misha was out of a job. He went to all his old clients, trying to drum up business as a mediator between companies, and as a finder for new business. But on the whole, Parisians shunned him. He’d lost his wealth, and now he’d also lost his reputation. The afternoon when Kira ran home from recess, in tears, crying that a friend had called her father a “dirty thief,” stayed in his mind like an imprint of his shame. He felt responsible. And yet, of course, he had done nothing wrong. In fact, he had worked for many months at the Rovaro without any pay, and only free board.

  He’d put off finding an attorney, despite Varvara’s pleas, because, in his mind, he couldn’t really believe that this matter would ever come to trial. It was so incredible—so preposterous. He’d built his reputation on his integrity. He had been forced, however, to tell Lily the truth. And she had listened, her face set, her eyes hard, unmoved by any real surprise. At thirty-one, she was already well acquainted with the perfidy of men.

  But on the whole, the children were still happy. On Sundays, Lily would pack a picnic basket, and the four of them would board the bus with their games, a ball, and some books to go to the Bois de Boulogne. Near a shady bush they would spread a blanket, sit or lie on it, and remain there from noon to dusk, just like poor people. For the Brasilovs were poor now. But for the first time in their lives, the children had their Papa home every night, early, and he played with them. Lily tried to laugh and joke with her family, for brooding didn’t help. And so, when they were all together, she tried to close the drawers of trouble in her brain, and to open those that were full of joy.

  They owed money to the boardinghouse. Lily begged the owner to allow them not to take their meals there, which was a custom in all French boardinghouses. Kindly, the rotund little bourgeoise acquiesced. And so their debts became smaller. Whenever Misha was paid one hundred francs, Lily paid half to the landlady, and kept fifty for their food. She had made an arrangement with the Restaurant Moscou, where Misha and his cronies had been habitual patrons during the days of wine and roses. They’d eaten oysters, pheasant, and drunk champagne, and left the restaurant huge sums of money. Now she asked the owners if, in memory of those splendid times, they could help him out a little. And so, at noon, she went there with a closed pot and was given a large portion of good food for the children. In the evening they ate a light meal, but at noon, Misha and Lily frequently went without food in order to give to Kira and Nicolas whatever was left over. Lily and Misha never discussed it. But sometimes, when it was lunchtime and there wasn’t anything to eat, one would look at the other and shrug, saying: “I don’t think I’m hungry today. We’ll have an early dinner.” And the other one would nod, and agree.

  Between September and Christmas, an eruption of right-wing reprisals occurred in Paris. The Secret Committees for Revolutionary Action, more commonly known as the Hood, undertook the murder of an Italian anti-Fascist newspaperman and his brother, and blew up the headquarters of the Employers’ Association. And just before the holidays, Italy and Germany left the League of Nations. Lily wrote Maryse: “Things have become so ugly, I wonder now if you wouldn’t be better off following your parents to America. At least there, one’s civil liberties are respected, and there’s no threat of war.” But Wolf replied that if his own mother and father still refused to heed the signs of danger, he would be forced to get out of Austria without them, bringing Maryse and Nanni to the South of France. For, he told Lily, many of his Jewish patients were now leaving in droves, and many had ended up on the French Riviera. A semblance of gracious living still seemed to be maintained there.

  “You must understand how we feel, Lily,” he wrote. “For the Jews of Europe, it is most important to stay together at this time of fear and horror. We feel threatened in our very existence by Hitler. In Nice, we shall at least have the illusion of being in a safe enclave among our own kind.”

  She’d felt a shock, reading his lines. She wondered if Claire and Jacques felt this way, too. After the summer, they had remained in Cannes, in their rented villa. She thought: Then there can be no more escape. And thought again: I am Jewish, too. For how long will Paris remain safe for me, and for my children? And in this moment, she felt her Jewishness. It was in her bones, in her flesh, making her identify with the thousands who, like the Steiners, were fleeing from lives of comfort and grace, in Germany and Austria, in order to keep one step ahead of the small, puffy-faced man with his toothbrush mustache.

  Lily had strengthened her friendship with Rabbi Weill. Because she was no longer free to come and go as she pleased, having no one to supervise her children if she was out, her visits to the temple in the Rue de la Victoire had had to be spaced out to fit an erratic schedule. But the Grand Rabbi of Paris had taught her a great deal. Lily yearned to share her new religion with her son, who was turning thirteen—but, of course, it was impossible. And there were still many times when the tug of her old religion continued to pull her in the opposite direction: at Christmas, at Easter. She was familiar with the most minute details of Catholicism, and only with the rudiments of Judaism. Sometimes she prayed to God, the God of all religions, to give her guidance, to tell her who and what she was. But no direction came. And so she felt like a curious hybrid, a nomad in a confusing no-man’s-land. She was a Jew, and yet not completely; she was still a Catholic, though without right to take the sacraments.

  With the end of the year, of course, there were her children’s birthdays. Claire and Jacques came home, and reintegrated their suite at the Ritz. With them in the city, Lily felt oddly relieved. She helped her mother plan a birthday dinner for Kira, whose birthday came first; and then one for Nicky. And, as they set the table and wrapped packages, the two women’s eyes met, knowing without having to say the words that this boy would not have the bar mitzvah of his ancestors. He didn’t even know he was a Jew.

  Kira’s day had come and gone in a pretense of joy, characterized by the girl herself, full of exuberance and fire as she had tried on her grandmother’s coral necklace, and had pinned her hair up like a young lady to view herself in the mirror. The faces around the table had been wreathed in smiles, but the smiles had been like painted creases on the faces of wooden dolls. Nobody spoke of Misha’s problems; but he hadn’t worked in months, hadn’t been paid in almost as long. Elegant and stately, strands of white mixed with the shining black of his hair, he had sat between both his children, ever the proud father. But then, when Kira had fallen asleep on her grandmother’s bed, and Lily and Claire had covered her with a mohair blanket, he’d slipped out of the suite, to walk in the cool night air, snow falling about his shoulders, neck, and hair. He’d found it suddenly hard to breathe, surrounded by all these people who meant well, who loved him— and whom he had cruelly disappointed. He wondered what might have occurred if his father had not been killed, four years before. Lily and the children might have stayed in Austria, and who knows? she might even have married another man, and now been living in a vast, comfortable house, as she so richly deserved. He wished then that he had had the courage to kill himself, or at least, to exit from the lives of his loved ones. By staying, he had hurt them ten times more deeply.

  On the day of Nicky’s thirteenth birthday, he left the house with the last hundred francs he had saved. Months ago, he’d felt forced to pawn his father’s ruby cuff links, but now he hoped to redeem them. Maybe, if he left the pawnbroker the hundred-franc note, the man might make an exception and let Misha take them back. He knew that the rubies alone were worth five thousand francs. But the man had given him a mere four hundred for them, which Misha had accepted with a beggar’s relish at the time. He’d offer him one hundred up front, and the rest payable within the year. For surely, in the space of twelve months, a job would crop up. And if it didn’t, he’d forget his pride and go to work in the kitchen of a restaurant, or as a bellhop. Anything, so that Lily wouldn’t speak again about going out into the streets of Paris, like that poor, obsequious, forever famished Sudarskaya, looking for piano students.

&n
bsp; He didn’t tell Lily where he was going, but told her, instead, that he would join her at the Ritz. And so, when he appeared there in the evening, freshly shaved and dressed for his son’s birthday, she wasn’t surprised. He went out frequently to look for clients, to try to drum up business; she had ceased to question him about it, in order not to depress him when the answer was inevitably negative. They all had dinner in the suite, and Jacques had ordered Mumm Cordon Rouge champagne, to toast the young man. The entire evening had been rich in warmth, more subdued than Kira’s night, but at the same time, more real. Lily felt, as she looked around the table at her mother, now fifty-seven, and at the white-haired man who had come to be more of a father to her than Paul had ever been, that her heart was full of gratitude that they had never let her down, that during all her misfortunes, they had stood solidly behind her, giving her two beautiful children a sense of permanence and strength.

  When it was time to open the presents, Nicky felt his father’s eyes upon him, and, with his innate sense of intuition, he set aside the small wrapped box that Misha had brought with him. It was only after he had disposed of his other gifts that he slowly, carefully, removed the colored paper from his father’s. A velvet box appeared, and Kira cried: “Open it! It’s a piece of jewelry!” as excited as if it had been for herself. Misha’s heart contracted; how rarely, now, did his children have the opportunity to see anything of value.

  Nicky worked the catch, and the box opened. His grandfather’s ruby cuff links, set in Florentine gold, gazed up at him from their velvet bed. He picked them up, a slow smile forming on his smooth boy’s face. And when he unhooked his simple metal studs to slip the new ones through the buttonholes of his white cambric shirt, Misha noticed that his wide brown eyes, duplicates of Lily’s, were liquid with unsuppressed tears.

  He’d always had a slight penchant toward his daughter; but on this December night of 1937, Mikhail Brasilov saw, across the table from him, the young man who would redeem his honor, and make good again the ancient, proud name of Brasilov.

  Claire prevailed on them to leave the children with her, and so Misha and Lily went home alone, walking in the moonlight, his arm tight around her in the cold. And when she went to sleep, her head safe in the crook of his arm, she had no way of knowing that on this very night of their son’s thirteenth birthday, Misha had given up the last tenuous hope to which he had been clinging. In the morning, when she rose, he had already left the room, and so she went downstairs alone to share a cup of coffee with Madame Antiquet, the landlady.

  They sat together in the small, cheerful kitchen of the pension, watching the snowflakes dancing down on the streets of Paris. When Léone, the young maid, ushered in a uniformed bailiff, Madame Antiquet frowned, puzzled and not a little irritated at this unpleasant appearance. But Lily saw him with a sinking of the heart, knowing that he had come to cause her husband yet another problem. So she rose, a little unsteadily, and said: “I’m Princess Brasilova. Are you looking for me?”

  The bailiff bowed slightly, and replied, with some embarrassment, “I beg your pardon, Madame, but it was your husband I was searching for. Do you know where I could find him, or when he is due home?”

  Madame Antiquet, plumping out her pigeon breast, said sharply: “When are you people going to leave the Brasilovs alone? It’s Christmastime. Why do you want the Prince, anyway?”

  The bailiff looked down at the polished linoleum of the neat little bourgeois kitchen. Then he raised his eyes to Lily’s, and, ignoring the landlady, declared: “I have come to arrest him, Madame. As of nine o’clock this morning, he became a fugitive from justice.”

  “What on earth are you talking about?” Lily cried. Suddenly her forehead was moist, and a pulse was rapidly beating in her throat. A dreadful anxiety enveloped her senses, and she felt dizzy.

  “I’m really terribly sorry. But the Prince was supposed to appear before a court of law, regarding the De Chaynisart affair, first thing this morning. He was sent a summons some weeks ago.” In a softer tone, the bailiff asked: “You didn’t know?”

  Lily shook her head, mutely. Next to her, Madame Antiquet was holding her arm—holding her up, she realized with shock. Because she couldn’t feel her toes, and then, her knees.

  “Get out,” the landlady said. The bailiff raised his brows, stunned, but then, understanding, he began to beat a hasty retreat to the front door. When they were finally alone, Madame Antiquet forced Lily to sit down. “You mean, you really didn’t know?” she inquired.

  “No. And I have no idea where Misha’s gone. I don’t know where to go, to warn him not to come back—to find a hideaway, somewhere else—” Her voice broke off, and she began to sob, her head at last bending into her hands, her fingers forming a woven screen across her eyes.

  Hours later, after Léone had escorted her back upstairs to her own room, Lily lay down on the bed, trying to sort things out. She was certain that no summons had been sent to the pension. Madame Antiquet would have known about it, and told her, even if Misha had been trying to hide the truth from her. Why, he hadn’t even gone to speak to a lawyer . . . ! She felt her eyes fill up anew, and buried her face in the pillows, letting her grief pour out naturally, silently.

  After a while she became aware that a steady knocking was coming from the door. Afraid of more bad news, and another bailiff, she pushed the hair from her forehead and went to open. On the threshold stood a superb woman with red hair, wearing a black sable coat and a matching toque. Lily’s surprise made her step back inside the room, momentarily caught completely off guard. She’d recognized her at once.

  “Please,’ Varvara said, coming in and closing the door herself. “Don’t be angry that I’ve come. I had a number of things to tell you, and I felt that if we talked, you might perhaps better understand.”

  Bewildered, her heart hammering inside her chest, Lily nodded, bereft of words. Varvara untied the belt of her coat, and let it drop from her shoulders. She sat down on a narrow wooden chair with a straight back, and said, softly: “Madame—we don’t really know each other, but we are not enemies. In fact, through Misha’s descriptions, through so many of the touching things he’s told me about you over the years, I feel that I’ve come to know you.”

  The tears threatened to spill once more, and so Lily swallowed hard to keep a composed face. “Madame,” she said, “I don’t quite know what to reply. I ... hadn’t realized that you . . . and Misha . . .”

  “. . . stayed very good friends. You see, Lily ...if I may call you that . . . , I always loved Misha. But he married me largely out of loneliness, because I was a familiar object in a foreign world, when he ended up in France. It was never a real marriage, as I’m sure you know.”

  Again, Lily nodded, still at a loss for words. And so Varvara continued. “You mustn’t be upset that we stayed friends, and that he never told you. I’m sure he felt that you might have judged our friendship to be ... something else. Be that as it may, when he was hit by the De Chaynisart lawsuit, he came to me, and told me all about it. And so, just a few days ago, I concluded arrangements for Maître Maurice Garçon to represent him in this matter.”

  Lily’s lips parted. Maurice Garçon was one of France’s foremost trial lawyers. But the surge of hope that had lifted her heart was immediately replaced by a new feeling of despair. “Under normal circumstances, Madame,” she stammered, “I would be dancing with joy at your generous kindness. But—a few hours ago, a bailiff came to find Misha, because he failed to appear in court. The start of the trial, it seems, was today—and we never received a summons.”

  Varvara was playing with the clasp of a large gold bracelet on her right wrist. She said, in such a soft voice that it was hard to hear her: “He’s left, Lily.” The words hung in the room like a diaphanous cloud, breaking up and reforming, then, like a thunderstorm, hitting Lily about the shoulders with the power of their significance. And all the while, Varvara’s blue eyes stayed glued to her face: her serious eyes, full of the wisdom of the ages.<
br />
  “What do you mean?” Lily finally cried.

  “What I’ve just said. Misha left the country this morning. He knew nothing about the summons, you can be sure. He left because his heart had broken—because he didn’t have any courage left, and he didn’t want you to continue to carry the burden of his presence in your life.”

  “No!” Lily screamed. She stood up, her whole body trembling, the tears spurting out so that she could no longer see Varvara. “No! He would never leave us! We were together, last night, in this room—”

  “I told him the same thing, Lily. I advised him to stay with you, to come to you for the strength to face the problems in his life. But he was always too proud to bring you down to his level. He didn’t want you to suffer anymore, on account of him. He wants you to get a divorce,” she added, folding her arms around the other, taller woman, and starting to caress Lily’s hair, loose on her back. “He wishes for you and the children to forget him.”

  Slowly, with infinite gentleness, she maneuvered Lily to the bed and forced her to lie down. “He didn’t care about Maurice Garçon, at this stage of the game,” Varvara explained, holding Lily’s hand. “He felt that he would lose, no matter who represented him.”

  Lily struggled to sit up, and asked: “Where has he gone?”

  “To Belgium, to begin with. But he wants very much to sail to the United States.”

  “He has no money. I have seventy francs, for our food, and that’s all.”

  “He has some money,” Varvara declared, looking away from Lily at the doll on Kira’s bed. “Enough for his trip, and to get himself started.”

  “But if you love him—why did you let him go?” Lily cried.

  Then Varvara stood up, and smoothed down her skirt. Looking down at Lily, she sighed, and murmured: “Because, when a woman loves Misha Brasilov, she has to learn that he will always do what he feels is best. I tried to keep him once, and I learned this lesson long ago. I was young then, though that’s a few years older than you are now. But maybe you can find it in your heart to understand his pain, and also to forgive him. He didn’t leave you because he didn’t love you enough; he left you, on the contrary, because he felt that he loved you too much.”