The Keeper of the Walls Read online

  On the twenty-third of July, all but twenty customs officials of the Germans stationed in Arès, had departed.

  Lord Halifax and Churchill had harsh words for both the Germans and their former French allies.

  Later in the week, it was announced that several important Frenchmen had, in absentia, been deprived of their citizenship, for having left their country between May 30 and June 30. These included Édouard Daladier, Yvon Delbos, the directors of the Institute of Art and of the National Library. General de Gaulle was condemned to death; but, if anything, his insurgent movement in London only continued to flourish—as if the general were laughing at the Vichy leaders. Meanwhile, the French fleet was being reorganized.

  Kira received a postcard from her brother, from Saint-Aubin. He had reached La Rochelle on Monday night, Nantes on Tuesday, Caen on Wednesday . . . and had now returned to “their” small town with the other baccalauréat candidates. He planned to bring home the boxes Lily had left behind in their Saint-Aubin house.

  That day, it was declared that no more correspondence would be permitted between the Free and Occupied Zones.

  The second of August, Lily received a letter from her son that perhaps, the fifteenth of that month, the entire coastline would be opened up. He suggested that he attempt to return to Paris alone, and that the small group in Arès pack up and try to do the same from their end.

  “But Paris is chaos,” Claire countered. “There are no cars, not even bicycles . . . people are stranded in their homes.”

  “The subways are working,” Lily reassured her. “Slowly . . . but surely.”

  In Bordeaux, the bridge had been so full of troops going northward, that no civilian had been able to pass through. Then, on Sunday the fourth, a great movement of soldiers passed through Arès. People said that the Germans had tried, the previous week, to launch a tremendous offensive against Britain, but that the English had thrown tar into the sea, burning the rubber ship covers, and repelling the magnetic mines. Fifty thousand Germans had perished.

  Claire and Jacques found a neighbor, Madame Catti, who was planning to drive home to Paris at the end of the month. She had room to take three other people with her, but no more. So Mark decided that Sudarskaya and the Walters should travel with her, and that he, Lily, and Kira would leave in the middle of the month, by other means of transportation. Nicky had written that he would leave Normandy between the fifteenth and the twentieth.

  Madame Catti summed up their feelings accurately. “If we’re going to have to live under Nazi rule, we may as well be doing it at home,” she commented. Nicky had added in his note that Trotti’s family was also planning to return to their apartment on the Ile de la Cité, so that Trotti might attend the Sorbonne if she passed her baccalauréat.

  In those lingering last days, under the beating August sun, Lily felt that a period in her life was coming to a close. Her year in Normandy had helped her come to terms with the past. Always before, when she’d met Mark, Misha had clouded the issue in her mind. Now, she knew that he no longer did—that she had closed the chapter on their marriage. But the romance that had been flourishing between her and Mark, thwarted by her own fears and her daughter’s hostility, was coming to an end. Soon, they would all be once more in the capital. Would there be time to see him? Wouldn’t other problems take priority? For here, in Arès, they lived in the same house. In Paris, where transportation was so erratic, they wouldn’t be so close anymore.

  Almost as if he’d read her mind, Mark suggested that they take a walk through the nearby forest of Andernos. There, in the thick woods, she remembered their walk in Austria, through the shrubbery annexed to Hans von Bertelmann’s schloss. She’d run away from him then, to escape from her own guilt. And now she felt guilty, too. She’d put him off. Although, even if she hadn’t . . . where would they have gone? The house was too small for them to have arranged to be there alone at any time.

  The limbs on the tall trees of the forest bent toward each other to form a trellised pattern of strangely shaped leaves, throwing the moss-scaped ground into Chinese relief. Mark and Lily walked slowly, hand in hand, their heads bent down. “It’s so beautiful here,” she said softly. “Almost as if there were no war around us.”

  He made no reply. Instead, he stayed her arm with his hand, and turned her toward him. Once again, he was breathless before her pure beauty, her face with its extraordinary, wise eyes. He brought his arms around her, and simply held her to him.

  It was she who lifted her chin, whose parted lips encountered his like the silky wings of a butterfly brushing against his skin. Filled with the urge to possess all of her, he turned the tentative exploring of her lips into a hungry plunge, his hands moving simultaneously to unhook the back of her dress.

  She uttered one small, throaty cry of surprise, then gave herself up to the moment. They could hear children laughing, calling out to one another, in the far distance. But around them, only birds and squirrels chirped and fluttered, their sounds the emissaries of a benevolent god who wished them well.

  With fingers that only hesitated for a moment, he pulled the dress off her shoulders, letting it slip to the damp ground. She stepped out of it, and out of her sandals.

  She wanted to be with him, but she was afraid. A dreadful nervousness had taken hold of her. She felt his hands on her hips, and turned again to him. He was standing nude, waiting for her to take off the rest of her clothes. And he was looking at her, a serious expression in his eyes.

  “What if somebody catches us?” she whispered, clinging to him.

  “Do you suppose they’d put us in jail?” He said it with gentle mockery. But she shook her head, seriously.

  “Mark,” she reminded him. “I’m a married woman. This isn’t at all easy for me.”

  She could feel the strength of his erection, pushing against her stomach. And suddenly she pulled off her brassiere, rolled down her silk panties. She was recalling with a memory that seared her flesh how it had felt to be with a man, to merge and move together. Yes, years ago Wolf had been right: what she’d thought had been her need for Misha had, in reality, been her need to be possessed by a loving man. And Mark, in every way, was certainly loving.

  He pressed her then against a tree, to feel every part of her soft, long-limbed beauty. And he guided her hands over his muscled chest, over the small nipples, over his firm stomach. By then she wanted to feel all of him, and so they slid together to their carpet of emerald moss, and made full and complete love, until both were drenched with perspiration and their bodies trembled with release and exhaustion.

  Afterward, they sat together, covering each other with odd bits of clothing, her dress, his shirt, and they laughed, with that new intimacy of couples who have first possessed each other. He brushed strands of her hair over his neck, and said: “I don’t ever want to leave you, Lily.”

  “Nor I you. How I wish—”

  He placed his index finger over her lips, and shook his head. “You can wish the present, or the future. But never the past, my love. We each did what we had to do.”

  “But you? Why didn’t you ever marry anyone, Mark?”

  He let one shoulder rise and fall. “I couldn’t tell you. I loved writing. I didn’t particularly care about a family, so unless I found the magic girl, I didn’t see the point in forcing the issue of marriage. Don’t forget: I’d found her, once. But it was wrong then, for both of us. Because I understand now: you didn’t love me.”

  She nodded, sadly. “It’s true. I really was in love with my husband. But . . . it’s over now. I’m glad it happened. I have my children, and I learned to defend myself, to survive.”

  “I promised you never to clip your wings. Don’t you remember that, sweetness?”

  She smiled at him. But the years had slipped between them, eclipsing the shimmering beauty of today. And now they were both a little depressed, a little afraid for the future. She felt old. Then she thought about her two children, who had grown up well. She’d loved them like two
strong seedlings taking root and blooming.

  After that marvelous experience, they walked home, quietly through the woods. Jacques greeted them on the steps of the house, his face grave in the early evening. “Rumania’s a real part of the Axis powers,” he said to them. “And they’ve expelled all Jewish students from the student unions, and sent a large number of Jews to Bessarabia and Dobruja. They’ve divided their Jewish population into those whose families have been established there since 1800, since before 1914, and all the others.”

  Lily and Mark gazed at him, awestruck. “Like Austria, like Poland,” she finally murmured.

  “And here, another mockery of justice is about to take place. The Vichy government’s rounded up some of the ministers of the Third Republic who it feels were responsible for starting the war. Blum, Reynaud, Daladier, and many others have been interned in Riom to await special trials for their ‘war crimes.’”

  “But . . . it’s insanity!” Lily cried. “Pétain’s turned justice into a sick joke!”

  Jacques sighed, and held the front door open for them. Lily passed through, then Mark. They found themselves face-to-face with Claire, Sudarskaya, and Kira, all seated on the couch, their hands in their laps. Lily felt her daughter’s eyes burning holes into her, accusingly.

  “When are we going to leave?” the young girl finally asked, her small face white and taut. “There were Germans at the Hotel des Voyageurs, laughing over some beer steins. They’re on the roads . . . everywhere!”

  “I’m afraid you’ll find them just as much ‘around’ in Paris,” Mark replied gently. “But we can leave for Bordeaux on the sixteenth, and from there, the next day. It’s hard to tell how long we’ll take to get back.”

  “I want to go to my old school,” Kira said, nervously pulling on a hangnail. “I’m sick of being rootless—like a sack of wheat nobody wants!”

  Had it just been an hour ago that she and Mark had lain entwined together, their eyes full of hope and love? Lily wondered. In the small room, an undercurrent of impatience, discouragement, and irritation crackled, like a powder keg about to explode. For a mere second, she thought that all these people—her parents, her daughter, her old friend— knew, beyond a doubt, that she and Mark had made love together. They’d read it in their faces, in their shining eyes. And now, they were trying to ruin the magic, to break open the crystal ball in which she and Mark had taken refuge.

  But no. Of course it wasn’t so. There was just no time, that was all. No time left for lovers to love, for emotions to flourish and for bodies to stretch, twining and merging together. The war was all around, and she and Mark were needed by the older generation, which felt at loose ends, and by the restless young, unchanneled and afraid to meet their future.

  She was tired of having to act brave for everybody else. But now there was Mark. He’d entered her life, and she wasn’t about to let him go. With him she didn’t ever have to act. She could simply be herself, and know that he would never be disappointed.

  Lily’s eyes sought out the man who had, after seventeen years, become her lover. And quickly, just by looking at him, she told him that she loved him.

  Thursday, Assumption Day, the feast of the Virgin Mary, was usually a big holiday in France. Now, however, some of the offices were still functioning in Arès. It was the last day when the French people would be allowed to use their cars in the city, except, of course, for doctors, priests, and some commercial cars that would be permitted.

  Lily, Kira, and Mark took care of tying up all their loose ends. They packed their books, and mailed them to their Paris address from the post office. But the city hall was closed. In the evening, Kira went to the house of the adjunct to the mayor, and had him stamp their departure papers. All was now set for them to leave the next day.

  Their good-byes to the family were quick, because at seven, the bus for Bordeaux was departing promptly on schedule. Mark took a seat across the aisle from Lily and Kira, and they didn’t speak, watching the progression of small towns of the Guyenne passing by the side of the road: Andernos, Blagon, Saint-Jean d’Illac. They arrived in Bordeaux in midmorning, left their bags in a store across the way, and proceeded at once to the train station.

  Since the new regime had set up stricter rules, one no longer could simply get on the train of his choice, no matter how crowded it appeared to be. One had to go to the counter and buy a numbered ticket. The number helped the clerk to determine if the train of one’s preference was already full; if it was, then he could schedule the passenger on a later train. Lily and Kira stayed back, in the midst of other waiting people surrounded by baggage. And when Mark returned, it was with the news that they would not be able to get onto the Paris train until Sunday morning.

  Mark found them two rooms at the Hotel du Petit Poucet. In the elevator, posters outlined where to go in case of an air raid warning.

  When they’d traveled with Sudarskaya from Saint-Aubin to Arès, Lily had been forced to assume all the expenses, and to shoulder all the burdens. Now it was Mark who, with complete naturalness, was taking care of everything. Lily had a fleeting memory of the days when she’d known nothing of what was spent, only of what was bought. The days when she’d changed clothes three times a day, not out of vanity, but because her social schedule, set by her husband’s desires, had required her to do so. She didn’t, in fact, regret those days. She’d been a child then, playing the role of spoiled young princess. Now all she had left was the title. With it, or without it, the price of a train ticket stayed the same.

  She was exhausted, and excused herself to take a nap. Kira made as if to follow her, but Mark stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. “Let’s you and I have a snack at the Restaurant de la Térrasse,” he suggested. “I’m starved, and it would be more fun to go together.”

  They stood alone in the hallway, in front of Lily’s door. Kira’s green eyes gleamed impertinently at him. “What you’d consider fun would be to go with Mother,” she retorted acerbically.

  He smiled, fielding the barb. “Well? Shall we go?”

  Kira shrugged, and followed him.

  At the café, they ordered cake and hot chocolate. Kira pointedly avoided meeting his eyes, but she licked her fingers lustily, picking up the crumbs from her plate. “I’m sure in Paris you can’t find this kind of food anymore,” he remarked.

  “And in America?”

  He was jolted, wondering if she was trying to send him home, or finding an excuse to stir her father into the conversation. Whichever it was, however, was immaterial: he knew which way her mind was working.

  “Kira,” he said, gently. “I don’t want my presence to cause problems for you. I’m not trying to come between you and your mother. But you’ve got to be fair, too. I’ve known Lily half my life, even before you were born. I’ve always loved her. And while she was married, I never interfered in any way.”

  “Then why are you interfering now?”

  “Because,” he answered patiently, “now it’s no longer an interference. Your parents have separated, Kira.”

  “It’s not the first time it happened. And they mended things then.”

  He wasn’t sure how far he might push it ... how much she was ready for. “Kira,” he said, “I’ll do whatever your mother wants me to do. But it is her choice. Your mother is a decent, honest person. She’d never do anything dishonorable, or wrong, or unfair, if she could help it. She wanted your father to stay. But if circumstances forced him to have other ideas, it doesn’t mean that she can’t be allowed any new happiness. She’s your mother, Kira: but she’s still young. And what I’d like to offer her is my affection, and my care. And to you, too, and to your brother.”

  He sighed, looking deeply into her eyes, which were now silently fastened on his face. “I’m not trying to take Misha’s place. Not in her life, and not in yours. But I’d like to be your friend. Your trusted friend. And maybe,” he added, with a smile, “I need your friendship, too.”

  Kira’s face tightened into a vul
nerable mask of fear and pain. “It’s so easy for you to come up with all the right formulas,” she finally said. “But it’s . . . it’s . . .” Abruptly, she turned aside so that he wouldn’t catch her weeping.

  She felt his fingers pressing softly into the crook of her neck. “Just give things a chance, darling,” he murmured. “Your mother. Me. And yourself. We all want the same thing, Kira: to find a place where we can fit, where we can feel loved, fulfilled, wanted. Try to relax a little, will you?”

  She surprised him by suddenly laughing, although the sound was a little like a nervous sob.

  It was at least a beginning.

  Their train left Bordeaux on Sunday morning at eleven sixteen. Because of the numbered tickets, they were able to find a compartment with three seats together. They ate in the dining car when they approached Angoulême, and found the café au lait expensive at two francs twenty-five. Their fellow passengers engaged in a heated debate over the Germans and the Vichy government, and about De Gaulle and what he was doing in London. Kira joined in, vibrating emotion. “My brother says De Gaulle is the only real patriot left,” she said. “That Pétain sold us down the drain, and Laval gave back the payment.”

  Lily gazed at her, a strange thrill seizing her. “Nicky said that?”

  “Yes! And he’s right! If it hadn’t been for Vichy, there would never have had to be a Mers-el-Kébir!”

  She’d gone too far, and Mark had to rescue her. Personally, Lily applauded her, and knew that Mark did, too. But she allowed him to appease their fellow passengers, afraid of unpleasant consequences. These were not days when the young, or the old, were free to speak their minds.

  At eight forty-five, the train pulled into the Gare d’Austerlitz in Paris. They had some problems with the luggage, because the baggage room was refusing to take any bags. But at length, after many trips, they collected all that was theirs on the sidewalk outside. But the métro stopped functioning at ten fifteen, and it was now ten thirty. A man offered to help them carry everything to the small hotel across the street.