The Keeper of the Walls Read online

  The food lines took up her entire morning, and after that, she gave a few piano lessons around town to augment her income. Then, around four each afternoon, she hooked by the apartment Boulevard Exelmans to check up on her parents. The young maid who worked for them bought them their rations, but Lily liked to assure herself personally that all was properly taken care of for Claire and Jacques. More and more, she felt anxious about their thin disguise as Monsieur and Madame Jacques Walton, reminding herself of how secure the Steiners had felt in Vienna until the very moment of the Anschluss.

  The Steiners gave her more concern than anyone. She met Maryse frequently in town, and, braving her own dark, secret fear, tried to go to the Ritz once a week to visit Wolf. Yet, try as she might, every time she went, her heart would hammer inside her chest, and her tongue would go curiously dry. It was as though Wolf, who was more a brother to her than Claude had ever been, was attempting to bait the Nazis with his presence in Paris’s most luxurious hotel. She found excuses to postpone her visits, for, every time a German officer’s admiring glance casually fell over her tall figure on the street, she wondered if he was reading “Jewess” into her almond-shaped brown eyes and her light copper complexion.

  During these strange days of the Nazi occupation, Lily had come to feel self-conscious about her appearance. She walked with her head hung forward, averting her eyes from those around her. Jews were like skunks to the average pro-Vichy Frenchman: they emitted their own disgusting odor. She was terrified of being found out, while, at the same time, her innate sense of honor made her ashamed of her continued efforts at dissimulation.

  All around her, everything was changed. Even the young people existed on tenterhooks, their nerves rubbed raw. Nicky had renewed his friendship with Pierre Rublon, who, before, had been in the class ahead of his and now was in the same one. The Rublons lived in an enclave of protected vine-covered houses behind a wrought-iron gate that faced onto the small, neat Rue de la Pompe. Pierre’s sister Jacqueline was in Kira’s class at the Lycée de Jeunes Filles, and so it had seemed perfectly normal for the four young people to be thrown together frequently. But now, in the fall, Pierre became less reserved and began to walk Kira home from school, and to appear at the Pension Lord-Byron even when he knew that Nicky would be absent.

  Because of the rationing of food, he never stayed to dinner. But frequently, when Lily returned from the Boulevard Exelmans, she would find a note from her daughter that she and Pierre had gone out for a walk. She knew, then, not to expect her home till dark. Kira had never been a willing student, and now she was neglecting her books to spend time with Pierre. Yet Lily hesitated to reproach her. Her heart pinched at the image of the two young people, ambling through the streets of Paris with nowhere to go, their hearts and minds on fire, with each other and with the events around them.

  Pierre spoke to Kira at length about De Gaulle, just as Nicky had in Arès. They would sit, hand in hand, on the parapet that lined the Seine, and watch it idle by them in lazy splendor. Her green eyes burned into his pleasant, freckled face, and she would breathe his words into her soul, accepting them for being heroic and grand. “If there hadn’t been a war,” she asked him one day, “would you still have wanted to be with me?”

  He reached for her cleft chin, and ran his fingers over her cheeks. “You’re the only girl I’ve ever loved,” he answered simply.

  And then the intensity grew too strong, and they both had to look away, afraid of each other and of themselves. “What will your father say when you go to London?” she asked, abruptly changing the subject.

  “He’s never encouraged me to go, but he’ll be glad. In his heart, he’s all for what De Gaulle is doing.”

  “But he hasn’t the courage to face his own feelings.”

  They sat staring at each other, understanding all. “He’s like my grandmother,” she remarked softly. “All her life, she was afraid to admit she was a Jew. And now . . . it’s too late.”

  “Thank God she never did,” he said with uncommon bitterness. And then they rose, as in common accord, and laced their arms around each other. She wondered how much longer he would be here to spend time with, yet in the same moment, understood that he had to do what his conscience dictated.

  She felt strangely adult, loving a man. Because in her mind, the muscular, blond Pierre, now seventeen, was without doubt a man. He was going to find a way to England, to join the Free French movement. None of her friends at school could boast of such a love. She wanted it to last and last between them . . . but also, willed him to leave quickly, that he might come back a hero all the sooner.

  She rarely expressed her feelings to her family. They knew. Nobody pried, and Lily was unusually understanding about Kira’s lack of discipline in her schoolwork. She was so different from Nicky, who, even now, spent all his evenings poring over textbooks in readiness to pass his final bac at the end of the school year. Pierre was, like her, a casual student. He thought only of De Gaulle and of freeing his country.

  “Will you tell them when you leave?” she asked him one evening.

  “My parents? I’ll tell them when everything’s set, just before I go. But I’ll tell you in plenty of time.”

  “And . . . before you go . . .” The words hovered in the cool breeze between them. He found her so beautiful, so exquisitely, extraordinarily beautiful, that it did not matter that she wasn’t yet fifteen, two months younger than his sister. He laced his fingers through hers, playing with them. “Don’t you want to, Pierre?”

  He smiled, gently. “I do and I don’t. I love you, Kira. I don’t want to do something that might not be right.”

  “What do you want to do about us?” she persisted.

  “I want to go to England, and help win France back for the French. And when I come back, I want to marry you.”

  It was the first time she had heard him mouth the words. She took them into her body like an electric shock that startled and quickened her. Then she threw her arms around his neck, burying her face against his neck. “Oh, Pierre, Pierre!”

  His hand caressing the silken strands of her hair soothed her, calmed her. “We’re both a little crazy,” he said softly.

  “But I’ll wait for you. And ... I want . . .”

  He drew away, regarding her seriously. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he told her. “And if we make love, it will hurt us both so much more when we’re apart.”

  “And Trotti and Nicky? I wonder if they kiss each other,” Kira asked.

  “Nicky’s discreet, and so am I. We’ve never discussed it. But I’m sure his plans don’t include her.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because Nicky’s a serious fellow. He’s got his own plans brewing, which have nothing whatsoever to do with any girl.” Suddenly he turned away, hiding his shame. Without meaning to, prodded on by this quixotic, thrilling girl, he’d spilled his best friend’s confidences, revealing a whole Pandora’s box of problems he’d had no right to disclose.

  She was staring at him, her wide eyes full of questioning, fearful light. “What plans, Pierre?”

  “Oh, his studies and all. You know . . . ‘man talk.’” He smiled self-deprecatingly, shrugging lightly. He felt deeply sorry for what he had said.

  “You’re lying. Pierre: Nicky’s going with you, isn’t he? To London?”

  Now he was able to answer truthfully. “No. Don’t forget, Kira. One Jewish grandparent is enough to get a person labeled a Jew. Who knows who might give him away? It wouldn’t do for him to try to get across the Channel. If caught, he’d probably be tortured. And he’s a year younger than I am. The Free French wouldn’t accept him.”

  She felt oddly reassured. It was one thing for Pierre to go—Pierre who was well connected and strong, whom she would one day marry, who would always be there to protect her—and quite another for her brother to go. It might be romantic to have a lover in the resistance movement, but a brother was something different. A brother couldn’t always stand alone. Her thoughts we
re confused, and she felt a point of acute misery.

  “Come on,” he whispered, “your mother will be getting worried. It’s time to go home.”

  The boy stood, irresolute, looking beyond the arched passage into the well-groomed victory garden where once, trim rose bushes had drooped themselves around slender poles. The white granite mansion loomed enormous to him, like the palace it had been built to be. Yet he had come on a mission, and he had to plunge forward.

  He crossed to the immense black door, and rang the bell. His heart fluttered inside him. He wondered briefly about the victory garden. Everybody knew that she was a collabo, a detested German collaborator. He could feel revulsion passing through him, and also naked fear. The collabos turned in more Jews than the Gestapo these days. Since it had become patently obvious that the Germans had failed in their attempt to break the British through their repeated bombings, the occupants had seemed infinitely less placid. Vicious stories were propagated about new atrocities each day, and it was well known that some of the best German agents were Russian citizens working for the Soviet Consulate.

  The door swung silently open, and the young man found himself nose to nose with a slender black man whose gray head had been tightly wrapped in a turban of cloth of gold. “Yes?” he asked, in an unctuous, whispering tone.

  “I’d like to see Madame Dalbret. My name is Nicolas Brasilov.”

  The dark man raised one thin, arched brow, and smiled. “Prince Mikhail’s . . . son?”

  Nicky felt himself color. “Yes. Madame Dalbret has never met me, but it’s important that I talk with her. I won’t take up much of her time.”

  “Do come in.” Nicky stepped into the oddest decor he had ever encountered, or dreamed of encountering, in France. A cloying scent of incense pervaded the air, and he was stopped by a life-size Buddha exhaling water into a scalloped shell filled with goldfish. He was elaborately ushered into a Chinese living room three steps below the entrance hall, and as he raised his head, a dazzling composition of tiny fitted mirrors blinded him. The entire ceiling, dome-shaped like a church cupola, was encrusted with these mirrors where he saw himself, lean and long and conservative in his slightly frayed brown suit, reflected behind the black manservant.

  “Madame will be with you in a moment,” he was told, and then he was alone in the strange room, on a low settee adorned with at least twelve small velvet cushions, each of a different bright color. Coromandel screens faced him, and paintings on shimmering silks in lacquered frames. He wondered if he’d made a big mistake, coming here, and puzzled once again over his father’s past. He couldn’t for the life of him picture his mother in a house like this.

  So engrossed was he in his own thoughts that he failed to hear the tiny footsteps on the thick, plush Persian carpet. But the rich, throaty voice roused him blushing to his feet. “Hello there,” she said. “Welcome to my humble home. And tell me if you like the effect. Grotesque, isn’t it?”

  He’d seen her on stage several times, but had never realized that she was much shorter than he. Her face was like Kira’s, heart-shaped, and round blue eyes like aquamarines dominated it. Her mouth was sensual and bright red, matching a cap of curls that surrounded that elfin face, rendering it unexpectedly vulnerable. She was wearing an Indian sari of turquoise woven with silver, and a huge silver and turquoise pendant drooped into her cleavage. The hand she extended was tiny and delicate, its Chinese-red nails perfectly tended into squared-off ovals.

  Intensely embarrassed, he took the hand and brought it to his lips. He’d already forgotten his fears and his disgust at her reputation as a collabo. He was finding himself in the same position as all the men who had ever met Varvara Trubetskaya. Young, middle-aged, or old, they had inevitably felt the adrenaline begin to pump furiously through their systems.

  She was a living legend, besides being the most incredible woman Nicky had ever seen. “Well?” she pressed, smiling. “Admit it, Nicolas. It’s grotesque. But I like it.”

  And suddenly he could visualize his father here, too. There’d been in Misha Brasilov an untamed quality that he had seldom brought home, but that, in the right sort of atmosphere, might have flourished wildly.

  Without waiting for his answer, she had curled into a lacquered armchair and draped her arm over its edge. “Yes,” she said, solemnly. “You’re what I expected. Not at all like Misha, and exactly like your mother. You’re a Frenchman.”

  “These days, Madame, I’m not certain whether that’s an advantage or not. Our poor country—”

  She cut him off peremptorily. “Look, Nicolas, please understand me. It does no good to speak around the subject, over and over. Old Marshal Pétain’s half lost his marbles, and Laval has persuaded half of France that the Nazis are less to be feared than the sons of perfide Albion. I became a naturalized citizen ten years ago, but you may have heard that all the naturalizations that were performed after ‘27 are now being looked into. I have no wish to offend the ruling Boche. My idea is to smile broadly at them, in the hope that they . . . and the Vichy government . . . will continue to allow me to live as I please.”

  “In other words,” he shot back, anger suffusing his cheeks with crimson, “honor is of no matter to you—just expediency!”

  She simply raised her brows. “Honestly, Nicolas. I was looking forward to this little meeting, but now . . . you disappoint me.” She held one nail up to the light, and peered at it. “A Brasilov shouldn’t mouth clichés. Especially without knowing all the facts.” Suddenly she regarded him with a look that pierced right through him, and he saw a blue vein throb in her neck. “I lived through one revolution. I lost everything I had! And I had little then, compared to now. I was a wealthy Muscovite matron, but not a personality. Here, I don’t have to depend on any man to keep me. I’m Jeanne Dalbret!” Her nostrils quivered slightly, and she took a deep gulp of air. “But even Jeanne Dalbret, without an audience, is nothing. And I can’t survive being just another nothing.”

  “My mother has a great talent, though no one knows about it and she’s poor as a churchmouse. But she survives on her sense of loyalty and decency.”

  “And who are you to tell me I’ve no decency?” She stood up now, powerful in her fury. He remembered her playing Electra, all rage and passion, and for a split second actually enjoyed this as her most exciting performance, just for his eyes.

  Then he remembered why he’d come, and rose too. Conversations with Pierre, with Mark, who could no longer send his stories in because the Germans had censored all newspapers, reverberated through his head. He answered, evenly, keeping his own anger well controlled, the way his mother did: “Madame, I’m sorry I intruded. I meant no offense. I came because I had a personal problem, and thought you might be the single person in Paris to be able to help me.”

  She held her hands up to the sides of her face, ran her fingers through her red curls, her face all at once lined and haggard. He saw despair in those small, sharp features, and stood stock still with surprise. He’d thought her the epitome of poise and savoir-faire, the kind of woman who would always be in control, never dominated by people or events. Now he saw a distraught woman of fifty-five who looked damned good for her age, but not the glamour queen he had encountered moments ago. He found himself liking her, and not yet understanding why.

  “How do you suppose I could help you?” she asked, a sarcastic bite to her voice. “Do you have dreams of becoming a jeune premier?”

  His brown eyes, almond-shaped like Lily’s, rested on her with an intense, unabashed honesty. He wasn’t going to play games with her. “Madame,” he said. “You are the only one who knows where to contact my father, in New York.”

  It was her turn to blink back her amazement. “You want to find Misha? Now? Why, for God’s sake? He’s been gone three years!”

  “Believe me, it’s not because I miss him.” Now the brown eyes were unreadable, guarded. He’s been badly wounded, she thought, and the scars are still hurting. “It’s for a purely practical reason. The
Nazis are beginning to take young men of seventeen into Germany, forcing them into labor camps to manufacture arms for the Reich. To put it bluntly, I’d rather die. I can’t, like you, envisage a peaceful coexistence. And so, since my seventeenth birthday is next year . . . I’ve decided that the only way out is to go to the Free Zone, and from there, to the United States. I need my father to send an affidavit for my visa to the American Consulate in Nice.”

  She breathed in and out, and wet her lips. “That’s quite a plan. But tell me, my patriotic young Galahad: I thought most of your contemporaries were thinking of joining the Resistance, or De Gaulle directly—not of running as fast as their legs could carry them into another land.”

  The blow had come full force but he withstood it. Again she noted, and was impressed by, the composure of his oval face. “If I could do so without implicating my family, I’d have left already,” he replied. “But . . . I’m Jewish. My father doesn’t know this to this day. Most people don’t know, and our family didn’t register at the city hall. I don’t want to run any risks that would later alert the Germans to my mother and sister. If I can leave, quietly, for Nice, and from there for the United States, the Boche won’t even know I’m gone. In the Resistance, I’d be found out, sooner or later, and reprisals might occur.”

  Very softly, she murmured: “I’d heard about it, Nicolas. There are some who like to speculate on the racial origins of illustrious people. Your mother, my dear, as poor as she may be, was in her youth a luminary, and much talked about. She’s still the Princess Brasilova. And many envied her, and still do.”

  “Envy my mother? She gives piano lessons to subsist, and leads a life a dog would spit on! Why would anyone envy her?”

  “Because she was once a fairy princess, with seven servants and closets full of elegant clothes. And because she still is one of the most radiant beauties of Paris.”