The Keeper of the Walls Page 39

  “God sent trials and misfortunes to Job, His disciple. But in the end He showed him that He hadn’t deserted him. We have to have faith, Mama,” he said, his voice tight.

  The old woman was silent, but he knew she didn’t believe him. The past few months had been too trying for her, and she was on the verge of forgetting her God. Wolf said, urgently: “Mama. For Papa’s sake, you must have hope! Every day, you must force your heart to feel the hope, even if it’s so tenuous you can hardly sense it inside you.”

  “For Papa’s sake?” she repeated, meeting his eyes for the first time. And he had to step back, her eyes were so cold. “Papa’s dead, Wolfgang. This is what I feel in my heart, instead of your hope. He’s dead, and we can’t even sit shiva for him.”

  And she turned away from him, her shoulders contracting in spasms of silent sobs.

  In the nighttime, he held her, his compassion so great that his insides felt twisted. For as much as he’d adored his father, Isaac had been Mina’s life. He understood then why she had signed the pact. He still had Maryse, and Nanni; but for her, the core of her being was gone.

  While the fate of the nine hundred seventeen Jews on the Saint Louis had been widely discussed, and the entire world had listened to the progress of their story, Maryse still had no idea that her husband and mother-in-law were among them. That summer, Claire had decided not to go to the Riviera. Instead, for a bracing change of climate, she elected the small Normandy community of Saint-Aubin-sur-Mer, in the Department of Calvados. She and Lily selected a spacious villa with many bedrooms, anticipating that friends from Paris would want to come for weekends. Nicky had already invited Pierre Rublon, and Sudarskaya had expressed the wistful desire to come for a part of the summer. Her little marble eyes had shined so brightly that no one had had the heart to refuse her.

  One afternoon, Lily and Kira went to the Ritz to have tea with Claire and Maryse, and when they arrived, they found the young woman in the midst of her packing, opened cartons strewn all over the sitting room of her suite, unheeded while she sat, hands folded in her lap, tears streaking her cheeks. Next to her, dapper and smart, stood, of all people, Mark MacDonald. I should have known I’d most likely run into him here, one day, Lily thought at once, conscious of his presence like a small dart into her chest. Her discomfort was such that at first, her friend’s distraught attitude didn’t even register. Claire was standing behind Maryse, her hands on the young woman’s shoulders, and it was she who said: “Mark received word that Wolf and Frau Steiner are going to land at Cherbourg. They’ve been ... on that ship that returned from Cuba.”

  Maryse lifted her eyes to Lily, and held her hands out to her friend. Lily ran to her, and they embraced. “He’s safe,” Maryse whispered, tears falling on Lily’s hair. “Thank God, thank God.”

  Lily fought the growing lump in her own throat, and, disengaging herself from Maryse, looked at Mark. He met her gaze with his perceptive hazel eyes, direct and probing. He reads into me, she thought, disturbed again as she always was when encountering him for the first time after many years. Her own dark eyes expressed nothing but gratitude, and she asked, softly: “How did you find them, Mark?”

  “Through the AP wire service,” he replied. “I still have many connections. A reporter friend called me, and said he remembered that I had had Jewish friends in Austria. He suggested that I come down to the offices of the Figaro to look through the passenger list they had received ...to check if any of the names were familiar. I found them, almost immediately, and came here at once.”

  Claire cleared her throat, said, “I had a call in for tea,” took Kira by the hand, and disappeared into another room. Maryse rose, hurriedly. “It’s such a mess in here,” she breathed. “But I—I’ve got to meet the train, tomorrow. He’s coming home . . . tomorrow.” She turned her head aside, wiped her nose, and followed Claire.

  “It’s miraculous news for her,” Lily remarked, finding herself alone with Mark. She glanced down at her feet, fidgeted with her ring, her wedding ring, she realized with a start. She was still wearing it, although he’d been gone a year and a half. Raising her eyes, she found him looking at her again, and colored. “Where have you been?” she asked then. “Maryse’s been in Paris for fourteen months. Yet I have never seen you here, until today.”

  “I didn’t think you’d want to see me,” he answered, always direct. “So when I wanted to see Mari, or even your mother, I made it a point to invite them out. I have a nice apartment now, much nicer than the old one, on the Avenue Montaigne, near the Rond-Point des Champs-Élysées. So I’m not far away, and there are many good restaurants to choose from in the area.”

  Lily was profoundly shaken. That someone would go to such extremes, only to respect her feelings, suddenly embarrassed her. She said, “But why, Mark? There were no problems between you and me. It would have been . . . nice ... to see you once in a while. To be friends with you.” God knows, she thought, how much I needed friends.

  He shrugged. “Well. Let’s let that one lie, shall we? Kira’s certainly a beautiful, grown-up girl. A far cry from the gangly kid I met in Vienna, six years ago. Could it have been that long, Lily?”

  “I don’t think she remembers you. Besides, she and Nicky were in Tobitschau for part of your visit, with Maryse and Nanni.”

  “She was, at that, wasn’t she?”

  They stood silently appraising one another, each one vividly recalling the night when he had caught her looking at him, in the garden. Lily felt herself turn red, down to the roots of her hair. Stupidly, she stammered: “We were still young then, weren’t we? And there was no war. And the Jews . . .” Her sentence was left off, and she made a face, tears starting to well up. “Damn it!” she murmured. “It was another life, and Wolf was home, and we were happy.”

  He had come close, was touching her on the arm, was drawing her close. Unexpectedly, she buried her face in the lapels of his jacket, and wept, unashamed. “Yes,” he whispered, smelling the soft fragrance of her hair. “We were, in a certain sense, happy. At any rate, Mari was. You were betwixt and between, and I ... who knows where I was? On my third book. Thank God for them: the books, I mean. I’ve learned to count the years by the number of my novels.”

  “Has your life been that empty?” she asked, raising her face to him, appalled.

  Embarrassed, he began to laugh, self-deprecatingly. “Well, nothing as dramatic as you might think. I was no hermit on my mountaintop. But you know, loneliness can exist even in a room full of sympathetic people.”

  “I should know,” she agreed.

  “And it grew worse, after Vienna. Because when we were together at the Steiners’, I felt that something new had developed between us. Something that we’d never had, when we were engaged.”

  She was chewing on her lower lip, reflecting. “But, Mark . . . after that, Misha’s father died, and I went back to him. Anything else had to stop.”

  “I understood.”

  “And now? Can you understand that the last thing on my mind is a new involvement? My dear, dear Mark: I need you as a friend, as a confidant. It wouldn’t be fair for me to tie up your feelings at this point. Because you see, I can’t feel anything. I’m still reacting to having been abandoned.”

  Tears clouded her vision, and she brushed them off with tired fingers. “Sometimes, I actually find myself hating Misha. And yet, I understand how he might have felt so disgraced, that no other door seemed open to him. But it was wrong—his leaving without us. Marriage is supposed to be for better or for worse. . . . I’m sorry,’ she added, smiling lamely. “These are my problems, and I shouldn’t be burdening you with them.”

  “It’s never a burden to listen to you. But I’m a man, too. And even now, when you’re speaking about him with bitterness and anger, I can’t help feeling jealous. He took you away from me when we were engaged. And then, when you and I might have had another chance ...”

  “Then, it was my decision to return to him. You can’t feel jealous, Mark. And please,
don’t let’s talk about this anymore. The point is that you shouldn’t love me, Mark. My life’s in disarray, and it would be the wrong time to try to make something work between us.”

  Gently, he caressed the line of her cheekbone. “If that’s the way you want it,” he whispered. “But I guess I’ve been like those fools I’ve always despised: in spite of the years, in spite of your husband . . . even in spite of you yourself, I’ve never stopped caring. I’ve met my share of interesting women, and I’ve lived a normal life. But there’s been no one, Lily, to replace you. That tug at my heart: I’ve felt it for you, through the years, whenever we’ve been thrown together. It has to mean something, doesn’t it?”

  She looked down, feeling the silence of the room around them.

  “And you?” he asked. “Haven’t you ever wondered why we’ve been able to pick up, time after time, exactly where we’d left off the last time we’d seen each other?”

  “We could be ‘soul mates,’ ” she said, smiling suddenly to lighten his mood, and to dispel her own sense of discomfort and uncertainty.

  “Soul mates make the best lovers,” he countered seriously. “I wish you’d think about it, Lily. You and Brasilov never understood each other. And perhaps what you’d like to think was a great love affair, was really only a moment of passion. Don’t be so quick to reject the idea of us. It could work. You might even be happy!”

  He’d wanted to smile, but couldn’t. Near him, he could feel her drawing away, pulling back inside herself. “Look,” he said. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe it is the wrong time. And maybe I should stop trying to make it right between us. I’ve handled enough rejection for an afternoon, haven’t I?”

  In the total silence, she could feel her heart beat. Abruptly she turned away, walked briskly to the other room, opened the door. “Maryse, Mama,” she called. “Hasn’t the tea tray come yet?”

  But when she came back to the sofa, holding Kira, his eyes were still on her, burning brightly. And she felt what they were spelling out to her: You can’t escape now, Lily. You can’t hold on any longer to what’s not there for you. To what perhaps was never there. And her heart pounded in a maddening roar, like waves crashing on a craggy shore.

  Saint-Aubin-sur-Mer lay on the coast of Normandy, and its houses gave onto a narrow seawall where no cars could pass. One could cross directly from the villa to the beach. The village was still rather primitive, and was pervaded by a scent of the sea, and of seaweeds. The beach was composed of the finest sand, and shells of all types and shapes, with fine designs and inlays of mother-of-pearl, were spread across its banks.

  The old gabled house that Claire had rented was filled with small, oddly shaped rooms, and was almost like a boardinghouse. And perhaps this was indeed the best way for Wolf and Mina Steiner to readjust to normal civilization, after the horrors that they had experienced in Vienna and on the ship. Mina had become a quiet, introspective woman, with a haunted expression in her brown eyes. But the presence of Sudarskaya, tactless and ebullient, helped to draw her a little outside herself. And for Wolf, the sun, the sea breeze, and the relative privacy of the beach provided a warm atmosphere in which, little by little, he learned to relax.

  Nanni’s joy at being reunited with her father helped him. For the first few days after his arrival from Cherbourg, where Maryse had gone to meet them, he was strangely silent, even hostile. Maryse went in tears to Lily, saying that he had closed himself off, that he was no longer the kind, gentle Wolf whom she had loved and married. At night, he stayed on his own side of the bed, immobile and isolated, and when she snuggled up to him, she could feel him stiffen. But on the fourth day he drew her softly to him, and, caressing her mass of golden curls, murmured: “You must give me time, Mari. You can’t understand the hell we lived through. I never thought . . . never imagined, even after the intensive classes I took in human behavior and psychosis, that man could behave thus against man, crushing out the soul.” And then he’d wept, and she’d rocked him in her arms, understanding at last, and weeping for him and with him at the indignity he had witnessed.

  There was a casino in one of the hotels, and sometimes, on the weekend, Jacques would invite his guests to go there for supper, and he would order Dom Pérignon champagne and oysters on the half shell, and treat the ladies to some gambling at the baccarat and roulette tables. For Sudarskaya, this brush with a world of distinction and luxury was almost too much, and she would glance swiftly across the table, then quickly riffle through the hors d’oeuvres tray and gobble up mounds of fresh Beluga caviar on small toast points. Everyone pretended not to notice, and Mina, who had hobnobbed only with the cream of Viennese society, smiled indulgently, accepting the small piano teacher with an openness she would never have been capable of displaying on her own turf. But times had changed, and it was best not to think of old Vienna. If she did, sometimes, then it reminded her of the house on the Schwindgasse, and the Night of Broken Crystal.

  But everybody felt the ghost of Isaac Steiner like a cloud hanging over them, not allowing them to forget. Even the children felt his absence almost like a silent presence in the room with them. “My Grandpa’s going to appear one day, out of nowhere,” Nanni had said, expressing what everyone else felt, and what they all hoped. Yet Wolf had told his wife that he was certain that his father had died.

  The older children played tennis and Ping-Pong. Pierre Rublon, Nicky’s friend from school, was a medium-sized young boy of sixteen, with well-developed muscles and a pleasant, tanned face sprinkled with freckles. His blond hair and shining blue eyes made him look like a child of the sea, sun-washed and salt-streaked. Lily liked him, because he was always carefree. He drew Nicky out, and was good for him. And Kira, shy around her brother’s friends, seemed less put off by him, and went along, playing with them. Lily watched her, hanging on the outskirts of the group of young boys that Nicky and Pierre had gathered from neighboring villas. The girl felt sudden pleasure and embarrassment when her brother asked her to join them.

  One afternoon, when Nicky had accompanied his mother and grandmother into town for groceries, Pierre found Kira alone on the beach, kicking the soft, round pebbles with the stub of her naked toe. “Bored?” he asked, edging toward her, and picking up a shell.

  “Sort of. Everybody’s gone.”

  She didn’t dare to look at him, and was oddly conscious of a flush going through her body. Keeping her eyes resolutely averted from him, she said: “Don’t you find us a strange group? I mean, Uncle Wolf and Aunt Mina, with the queer looks they sometimes exchange when they think no one else is looking. And Raïssa Markovna, who eats like a starved piglet. And then, my mother. She always looks so sad, and you know the story, about my father’s leaving.”

  He shrugged, grinning. “I like it here. I used to get bored a lot, with my sister, doing nothing on the beach. But now it’s fun with you and Nicky here.”

  She laughed, and for the first time, dared to look at him. Her brilliant green eyes seemed to touch him deep inside. His smile faded, and he stood watching her, his own eyes strangely expressive in the golden afternoon sunlight. Then Kira abruptly turned away and sprinted back toward the house, leaving him, baffled, staring after her.

  It was the start of the month of July, and in the evening, the men hovered near the radio. The question of rights to the Free City of Danzig was starting to come up more and more frequently, and Great Britain was starting to growl back at the encroaching fingers of the Reich. Kira stood behind her brother, and listened to the tense words of the broadcaster without really hearing them. She was glancing down at the back of Pierre Rublon’s head, remembering their brief moment together, alone, on the beach. And she hoped that war wouldn’t come, so that they might all stay here, in Saint-Aubin, until the end of September.

  On July 4, the voice of the broadcaster was lifted in hope. Germany, he reported, was being quiet, reacting to Britain’s anger. And so the small group began to relax. Wolf’s face remained the only dark, tense one. “One can never underest
imate Hitler,” he said, and then Kira was afraid. She walked alone on the edge of the water, wondering what a war could be about, and remembering all that she had heard from Wolf and his mother, and even Maryse.

  When Nicky and Pierre came to join her, it was already dusk, and the sky over the seawall was a soft coral hue lined with threads of orange gold. She knew that the adults hadn’t meant to be overheard, but now she said to her brother: “They send the Jews away to horrible places. And—we’re—” The sentence died in her throat, as she remembered that Pierre was there, and that her grandparents hadn’t wanted anyone to know that they were part Jewish.

  “It’s all right,” Pierre said gently. “Nicky already told me. You’re Jews.”

  “On my mother’s side. We’re only one-quarter Jewish, really,” she added defensively.

  “Don’t worry about it, Kira. I don’t care about what you are—or Nicky. I like you both. You’re my friends.”

  “But if your parents knew, they wouldn’t let you stay with us,” she accused him.

  He regarded her blankly. “My parents aren’t like that,” he said, a twinge of hurt creeping into his voice.

  “Oh.” She fumbled with the sash of her sun dress. Suddenly she cried: “My father hates the Jews! Maybe that’s why he went away! Because we’re Jews, too!”

  For a moment the two young boys stood staring at her, and then Nicky turned away, striding off toward the house. “You’ve made him angry,” Pierre chided her. “He doesn’t like to speak endlessly about your father, and why he might or might not have left. How can you know, Kira? People act strangely sometimes, and we don’t know why.”

  Her young face crumpled, and she said: “But I can’t help it! There are moments when I hate the memory of Papa. But other times ... I wish he’d send for me, so I could be with him again. You don’t know! You don’t know how he loved me! He didn’t love Nicky in the same way, and so it’s easier for him to hate him. But nobody’s ever going to love me the way my father did.”