The Keeper of the Walls Page 44

  It didn’t make any sense for him to care. She’d never been in love with him, as a young girl. She’d loved him, yes, but as a dear, close friend ... a relative, almost. But now . . . since Vienna, actually . . . she saw him differently. She noticed his compact, trim body, his proportioned arms and legs, his muscled torso. She learned how he blinked his eyes, how he smiled with a certain amused irony. And at night, she tossed restlessly in her narrow cot, seeing him in her mind’s eye.

  Nicky learned that Trotti and her family were in nearby Toussat, and he started to make daily trips there on his bicycle. Both had missed taking their baccalauréat examination in June, and, having compressed two years in one just for this, Nicky, especially, wanted to take the make-up that was being offered in Caen in July. Normally, there was always a make-up in September for those who had failed their orals in June. But, because so many people’s lives had been upset by the sudden disaster of Dunkirk, and by the German invasion, a special test was being set up for those who had studied in the region of Caen. Nicky and Trotti had heard about this from a friend who had remained in Saint-Aubin.

  Nicky therefore decided that come what may, he would find his way back there to take the exam, and to bring back the boxes that Lily and Sudarskaya had left in the attic of their house. Lily’s first reaction was one of pure horror. All the Normandy coast had been set off limits by the Germans, who were rearming for their attack on Britain. A person could not penetrate this region without special papers issued only by the Germans to those who possessed a connection with them.

  “How on earth do you intend to get through?” she’d asked.

  “I don’t know. I’ll have to invent something at the station in Nantes. But don’t worry, Mama. It’s not dangerous—just problematic. Who knows how long we’ll stay in Arès? I don’t want to fall behind. And besides . . . we need the things you left at the house.”

  She’d had no choice but to shrug in defeat. Mark told her, afterward: “He’ll never get past the line of demarcation. So don’t worry. He’ll be sent home, but at least he’ll have done his utmost to accomplish what he wants. This is so important to him!”

  Trotti at first seemed excited, wanting to go with him. But as time passed, she became afraid, probably discouraged by her parents. “I’m sure we’ll go back to Paris soon,” she said to Nicky. “And I’ll just take the bac in the fall.”

  “But we don’t know what Paris is like. At least, in Normandy, we know what to expect.” He swallowed his disappointment, then smiled crookedly: “Hey,” he told her. “It’s okay this way. I’ll be a bachelier and you’ll still be a green schoolgirl!”

  And so the month was progressing.

  But with Nicky so often at Trotti’s, the little house appeared that much more spacious. Lily and Mark ran into each other in corridors and the kitchen, or going in and out of the house, and without Nicky near Mark, acting as a buffer, their eyes met, more and more frequently. Like electric sparks—quick, magnetic, fiery—then gone.

  On June 20, Hitler and Mussolini met in Munich to discuss terms for the peace, and Bordeaux was bombed, killing nearly fifty people. The Germans were in Rennes, Niort, going toward Vichy. On Saturday the twenty-second, they had reached Clermont-Ferrand, and because of the frantic movement of the troops, all passenger trains were requisitioned. Germany let it be known that it would ask for the total neutralizing of the French armed forces, so that it might hurl itself at Great Britain without fear of French intervention. “Why doesn’t he ask for the colonies?” Jacques demanded, suspiciously. And that day, France signed the dreaded, shameful Armistice, and in the Walter household there was unrestrained weeping.

  June 23, the rumor spread that the Germans wanted eighty billion francs, and all the colonies. The British were furious at the French for capitulating, and in Arès, the English tourists had all packed up and left the territory. The next day, news came that the Germans planned to enter Arès at eleven. But they didn’t come.

  Kira had settled on the living room sofa, her knees tucked under her, and was reading a novel. Outside, a light rain was falling, and Nicky was staying in Toussat, where he’d bicycled over to have lunch with Trotti’s family. The young girl could hear her mother and Mark moving in the kitchen: talking, and perhaps preparing food. She set her book down and leaned back, suddenly alert.

  Mark. What was he doing here anyway, with her family? She could feel a wave of resentment building inside her, just thinking about it. Years ago, she’d liked him. He’d come to see the Steiners in Vienna, the year that they’d been separated from her father. Kira still didn’t understand about that year: why Lily had left Misha. So much had happened that no one had ever thought to explain to her.

  But now she was less confused. She knew, just knew, that if Mark continued to stay, her parents would never be able to put their life back together again. She had dreams of going to America, to her father—of all of them being together again. But Mark! He’d ruin everything.

  Lily came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a clean washcloth. She looked tired, but there was an unusual glow on her face that irritated Kira. Her mother was middle-aged, much too old for flirtation. And obviously, Mark had been flirting with her. Kira could feel the anger welling up, the tension.

  “What’s the matter, darling?” her mother was asking. “You look upset.”

  “It’s nothing.” And then, all at once, it tumbled out of her. “That’s a lie. I just don’t like it when you’re with Mark. I don’t like him! Mama, he acts as though he’s a part of this family—and he isn’t! I wish ... I wish you’d just tell him to go away.”

  Lily stood dumbfounded in front of her daughter. “But Kira, that’s so unfair! Mark’s been more attentive to Grandma and Grandpa than Uncle Claude ever was. We’ve all come to depend on him ... to need him.”

  “I don’t,” the young girl said, almost viciously. She could feel tears coming, and her heart ached again for her father, for their special times together. “I don’t think any of us needs Mark MacDonald! You just think you do, because he’s always following you around like a puppy. But Papa’s going to send for us, I know he will, and he’ll take care of us—not some stranger!”

  To Lily’s horror, she saw that Mark had come into the room, and was now standing quietly next to her. “You apologize, young lady,” she addressed Kira, her voice tight with anger. “You apologize at once to Mark! You had no right to speak this way!”

  Mark laid a hand over her forearm. “It’s okay, Lily. She voiced her feelings, that’s all. No harm done.”

  “She voices her feelings whenever she pleases, regardless of whom she hurts! That’s been Kira, all her life. And I won’t have her insulting you.”

  Kira stood up, her chin jutting out defiantly. “I’m not sorry. Mark’s a stranger. I didn’t say anything that wasn’t true!” And she ran from the room, slamming the front door behind her. They saw her running out into the street, under the rain, her long hair streaming dramatically behind her.

  Mark took Lily to the sofa, holding her to him, and then said: “She’s right, you know. She’s seen what you and I have tried not to see. That we want to be together. And she still sees you as a married woman . . . married to her father.”

  Lily raised her eyes to his, and answered: “But I am married. Whether or not we may want to be together . . . I’m still married to Misha.”

  He stood up, his face tightening. “And what do you intend to do about this . . . Princess Brasilova?”

  She took a deep breath, trying to deflect his irony and the pain in his voice. “I don’t know.”

  “But you don’t love him anymore, and you don’t want him back.”

  “We’re in the middle of a war, Mark. It’s not exactly the right time to decide whether or not to get a divorce. Soon the Germans will be swarming all over, and we’ll be scrounging for food. I’m not in the proper frame of mind to decide my future. A divorce is something over which one should deliberate with peace of mind.”

&nb
sp; “But we can’t give you that. So you have to decide what you’re going to do about your present—our present. You’re thirty-five. Stop trying to be perfectly fair to him, and start thinking a little of yourself ... of your youth, of your beauty, of your present. It seems to me you haven’t had any fun in many, many years. I’d love to promise you the world, Lily, but I can’t. As you yourself said . . . it’s not the right moment.”

  “What, then?”

  Her brown eyes had never seemed so nakedly appealing. She was dressed simply, in a beige cotton dress, and she had swept her hair up, more carelessly than usual, so that now, strands of the strong, vibrant tendrils were curling around her oval face. She rarely wore makeup. Now, in that clear, honest face, the only thing that he could read was her naked plea for him to decide for them both ... to spare her any future guilt over her own choice.

  “I want for us to be together,” he said, fervently, taking her hands in his and kissing her fingertips.

  He could see her face accepting this, like a new gospel. She was still so childlike, so innocent! The young girl who had run to the confessional, in need of reassurance, still sat before him, so little changed that something powerful stirred inside him. “God,” he said. “How I love you!”

  That evening, Kira avoided her mother. Both were ill at ease, and guarded. Jacques turned the radio on. It was Tuesday, the twenty-fifth. At 9:00 p.m., Marshal Henri-Philippe Pétain spoke. The conditions of the Armistice were: the country would be occupied from above Lyons, through Bourges, to the Spanish frontier; the three armies would be demobilized. Everyone was supposed to go home, and the French government would remain independent.

  “It’s a day of national mourning,” Claire said softly. Her face was wet with tears. In the small room, nobody spoke. Jacques moved to turn off the TSF program, his face long and lugubrious.

  Then Kira said: “Mama and I are the only genuine French here. Raïssa Markovna is Russian; Grandma was born Belgian; Grandpa’s Swiss, and Mark’s American.”

  “But this is more our country than any other,’ Sudarskaya replied. “We can weep for it, too.”

  “Let’s go to bed, Kira,” Lily said, holding out her hand as a peace offering to her daughter. Grudgingly, the girl took it. But her eyes flashed one second at Mark, and he could read in the bright green irises her triumph over him. She had scored a point because of her uncanny understanding of her mother’s vulnerability. And he, like the once proud French nation, had no choice but to capitulate.

  But I’m not going to, he thought angrily. Not this time.

  Nightmare days had begun. The next day, there were no news bulletins; all had been canceled, the station seized by the Germans. A few days later, a decree came that, in the near future, all pastry shops and sweetshops would be closed down. Bread would have to be made from five grains, including split pea and dried bean. It would be sold stale, and new food cards would specify how much a person, or a family, could buy.

  In the meantime, the Soviet Union made an ultimatum to Rumania, demanding Bessarabia and Bukovina, all its oil, and control of the mouth of the Danube River. “There’s going to be trouble all over the world,” Jacques remarked.

  But the newspaper Paris-Soir ran four pages on how well the Germans were behaving in Paris. Bakers would have the right to work on Saturdays and Sundays, and the radio would be French, after all.

  Lily and Kira saw one German soldier on a motorcycle, and a German officer in a kind of carriage with a swastika painted on its side. They were arriving in trucks to look for lodgings, evacuating from their homes some of the people that the Walters and Brasilovs had met in Arès.

  The German time was one hour ahead, and the French had to set their clocks in concordance to it.

  On the third, Great Britain gave an ultimatum to the French fleet in Oran, to go over to them; and when it refused, the British opened fire. Diplomatic relations with England were severed.

  Already, during the tenure of Paul Reynaud, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had asked that the fleet of their weakened French ally move to the security of some British ports. He’d feared that the Germans would conquer all of France, and demand its fleet as well—a fleet that the British might put to good use. Reynaud had refused. Churchill had repeated this request, via the proper diplomatic channels, to Marshal Pétain; but the latter had failed to be informed of this, and was therefore unaware that an answer was required. The British, of course, were insulted.

  Then, probably motivated by a certain degree of shame, the French had not immediately informed their British ally of the terms of the Armistice. Already on guard, and put out, Churchill assumed that the French had therefore made an arrangement with Germany involving their fleet. And these were the reasons that the disaster of the port of Mers-el-Kébir, near Oran, took place on the third of July. The fleet was sunk, more than a thousand French sailors were killed or reported missing, and hundreds were wounded. A wave of shock swept over France at what was deemed a British betrayal.

  Already, anti-British feelings in France had been almost as strong as the anti-Jewish sentiments that had slowly but surely spread over the last years before the Occupation. With the severing of relations between Great Britain and France, those like Vice-Premier Pierre Laval could set to work to actively undermine their former ally from across the Channel. For men like Laval, it seemed far safer for France to come to an agreement with Germany, than to do so with a nation that had traditionally been France’s fiercest enemy throughout the ages.

  And then, on the fourth of July, the Germans mysteriously disappeared from Arès. Rumors ran rife, that the Americans had threatened them with war; that they had passed over the Spanish frontier to fight the British; that they had left Bordeaux with Orleans as their next destination.

  On Wednesday, July 10, a unanimous vote was taken to revise the Constitution of 1875. And on Thursday, the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies convened in Vichy, where the French government had transferred its seat, now that Paris was occupied. On the eleventh, Marshal Pétain, who was eighty-four, was named chief of state, encompassing the duties of both the Premier and the President of the Republic. His powers stretched over a vast territory, like those of a monarch. His Cabinet was to be composed of twelve ministers, with Pierre Laval as his vice-premier. The Senate and the Chamber adjourned, and said their good-byes to Albert Lebrun.

  “Listen to this: one of Pétain’s new laws bars anyone who doesn’t have a French father from taking any administrative post.” Nicky seemed disgusted, and tossed the tabloid he’d been reading aside. “Now I wonder if there’s any use to pursuing a future in this country!”

  Kira took in her breath, appalled. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, that on Monday I have to retrace my steps, and start my journey back to Caen, to pass the exams on Thursday. And for what? Our father is Russian. It doesn’t matter that he abandoned us like stray dogs. He’ll still hold us back, in our careers. It’s only the beginning! Pétain may remove all other privileges from us, in time!”

  Kira could feel tears of fear and horror starting at the base of her skull. Nicky, the calmest of human beings, her security blanket, her love, her protector, was losing his hold on reality. Or was he? What if he were right? He was standing now, thoroughly agitated, his shirt soaked with undue perspiration. “Maybe Papa was right!” he cried out finally. “Maybe in the United States, there’s justice, and freedom. Those goddamned swastikas make my blood run cold. We’re Jewish, Kirotchka. And a demon, a madman from Austria, is going to try to annex this country, where you and I were born—the same way he did Austria, and Poland. We have to fight him, Kira! We have to.”

  “But . . . how, Nicky?”

  “General de Gaulle, in England, has started a movement of the Free French.”

  She was silent. Then, softly, she laid her hand on his arm. “Don’t talk like this,” she begged him. “You’ve got to be careful. I want you to succeed in your exams. And then, Nicky, we’ll need you with us. Mama
and I—you know we can’t manage alone. Grandpa’s too old to help.”

  “There’s always Mark.”

  She turned her head aside. “Don’t. Mark isn’t a member of our family. I wish you, and everybody else, wouldn’t treat him as such.”

  Surprised, Nicky examined his sister circumspectly. “Why don’t you like him?” he asked.

  “Because.” She bit down on her lower lip, then wheeled about, her prominent cheekbones bright red. “He’s in love with Mama.”

  For the first time, Nicolas smiled. “And? Doesn’t she deserve to be loved by a peaceful, kind, considerate man? Stop being so possessive of our mother, Kirotchka. She’s a woman first; and our mother second. And she’s had a dog’s life.”

  Kira said nothing. “But I won’t go to England,” he continued gently. “At least, not now that the French and the British are no longer on speaking terms, and now that the Germans are preparing their big offensive. I love my country, and I believe in De Gaulle. But I also want to save my skin, and I’m not prepared to lose it crossing the English Channel at this moment. You don’t have to worry.”

  “But I feel you . . . restless.”

  “Maybe so. I’m afraid, Kira. Really afraid. These new laws, I told you, are only the beginning.”

  “And nobody knows we’re Jewish,” she said hesitantly.

  His brown eyes narrowed. “It was wrong, what Grandma and Mama did. It was Papa’s fault. I wish they’d told us from the start, so we could have been what we are, proudly, openly. But now, perhaps this deception will save us. I worry much more about the Steiners, and Sudarskaya.”

  They stared at each other, both of them unsmiling. Then he shrugged, and smiled. “Hey,” he told her. “And what if I fail my bac? Will you still love me?”

  She wound her arms around his neck and laughed. “I’ll always love you.”