The Keeper of the Walls Read online

  “Mama’s beautiful, but who’s there to notice? Her dresses are old, and she’s too thin, and all her rich friends have forgotten her.”

  “Still, Nicky. And some say that she’s Jewish. I personally never cared to pry into the religion of others. Jews, Moslems, Catholics—who gives a damn? Yet today, Nicky, a lot of people do. They’ll brand others ‘Jews’ just to make sure nobody will brand them as ‘Jews.’ People want to save their own skins. And me too.”

  “But—who could have told you this?” he demanded, perplexed and horrified. “I thought nobody knew!”

  “Nobody ‘knows,’ exactly. But some suppose. Your step-grandfather is one, that’s for certain. People have looked into that. And so questions are being asked about your grandmother.”

  He decided not to press the issue, but his earlier resolve seemed shattered. Varvara Trubetskaya touched his hand in a sudden gesture of deep compassion. “It’s all right,” she said. “I told you: your mothers the Princess Brasilova. She’s still married to one of the world’s most vituperative anti-Semites. Misha’s hatred is her strongest shield, odd as this may seem. And you can’t blame your father. He came from an anti-Semitic father, and an anti-Semitic country. He only reflected the culture he was born into.”

  “So we may as well forgive the Nazis, too. They also are mere reflections of Hitler’s dictates and standards.”

  She smiled at his mordant tone. “I’ll write to Misha,” she declared. “I’m friends with enough influential people that the letter will be sure to leave posthaste, by diplomatic pouch to Vichy, and then by air to New York. And I’ll do better yet. I’ll provide you with an ausweis, to allow you to move from the Occupied to the Free Zone. I have a friend at the Kommandantur.”

  His lips parted, but she cut him off before he had a chance to answer her. “You may have to wait as long as a year in Nice, or Marseille, wherever you decide to go. Visas take time, you know.” She started to continue, then stopped, and abruptly decided to plunge in again. “You see,” she murmured, “how useful it can be not to offend the Germans?”

  And then, with a graceful movement of her tousled head, she gestured that the interview had come to an end. “I hope,” she said, “that you’ll try to work things out with Misha. He needs you, you know.”

  * * *

  In early December 1940, Nicky left Paris with two suitcases and a small bag, and the all-important ausweis from Varvara, which was needed to cross the border from Occupied to Free France. He carried in his wallet five thousand francs from Jacques, which were supposed to last him the year they surmised it would take to obtain his visa of entry into the United States. His train voyage was uneventful, and he arrived in Nice well rested and only a little saddened by his separation from his family. The way he looked at it, as soon as he was established in New York, he would send for all of them.

  The winter on the Riviera was mild, and he felt curiously free and adult, on his own in a strange city. He knew exactly what had to be done. First, he rented a small room in a boardinghouse, and then registered himself at the lycée. In the summer, he would be passing his final baccalauréat, and he felt that with this achievement to his name, life would be infinitely easier in the United States. The bac was well respected all over the world.

  Yet, as the December days wore on, a gloom set upon him. It hit him all at once that he was cut off from the whole world. Even the mockery of correspondence that was permitted between the two zones took ten days, and an ache formed in his chest for his mother and sister, whose cards he anxiously awaited. He knew absolutely no one in Nice, and even at the lycée, his companions had already formed and established friendships. They looked at him with a curiosity mingled with sympathy, and once in a while someone would invite him to lunch on a Thursday, and he would be forced to undergo yet another polite but unrelenting interrogatory concerning his family: Who were they? What did they do? Why was he alone? He longed then to escape once more to his small room, where at least he could dwell in peace without facing his fears.

  Because, of course, he was afraid. He wondered whether his father, that strange enigma of a man, would send him the affidavit.

  Did Nicky want to see his father again? Sometimes, closing his school-books, he would withdraw the ruby and gold cuff links from their box, and caress them tenderly. Yes, Misha had loved him; yet that hadn’t prevented him from deserting all of them. Nicky would feel the anger burn anew, his heart pressing upward and out with the swelling of bitter resentment. I hate the man, he’d think, shaken by the power of his own emotions. But he had no other choice. Sooner or later, the Gestapo would come after him to send him to Germany, and it made more sense to swallow his pride and go to Misha.

  Anyway, he’d think, covering his slender young body with the harsh, bleached sheet from the boardinghouse: I won’t have to stay with him. I’ll find a job, and take care of myself, and send for Kira, Mama, and my grandparents.

  How easy everything seemed, if he could only get to New York! The worst thing was the clawing loneliness. But at the end of December, the affidavit arrived, eclipsing the news of the moment in the highest circles of Vichy politics. Marshal Pétain, whose collaboration with the Germans had been one of resignation, had found himself once too often gainsaying Pierre Laval’s enthusiastic embrace of their Nazi victors, and had, on December 13, dismissed his vice-premier, whom he had never liked, going so far as to place him under house arrest in his property of Châteldon. But Hitler’s Ambassador Abetz had demanded Laval’s release, and had refused to acknowledge the new foreign minister, Pierre-Etienne Flandin . . . pointedly ignoring his presence in the Cabinet. For two weeks now, newspapers had revealed more than the customary censure had allowed, and France was speculating about Germany’s increased intervention in Vichy politics. But Nicky, normally the first to rush to the radio or to devour a tabloid, had still not digested this series of events. For him, an immense relief had lifted the tension with which he had been living: his father had not rejected him, and this was tantamount to having a foot on the gangplank to a vessel that would bear him safe and sound to a continent where he could stop being afraid.

  All that he needed was to go to the American Consulate in Nice, show his affidavit and his new passport, and sign the necessary papers to apply for a visa. Then he would have to wait. And so, one December morning, he took himself there instead of to school, and asked what he had to do. The consul was the son of Sholem Asch, the Polish-American writer who wrote in Yiddish. Nicky was surprised to see him in person, checking up on his employees. Here was a known Jew, just paces from the Nazis, operating as if he were merely going through the customary steps of his everyday work. Nicky was duly awed.

  A young woman with a bun pressed to the back of her skull said to him: “We’ll need your birth certificate, monsieur . . . Prince Brasilov. And then we can proceed, and forward these papers to the embassy in Vichy. Usually, for a French citizen, a visa takes three months, but the way things are right now . . .”

  Nicky nodded, still trying to follow the consul’s movements in a small room to the right of where he himself was standing. He felt himself color; it had been so long since anyone had called him “Prince” that the title felt uncomfortable on his shoulders. Then the sense of what she was telling him penetrated. His birth certificate?

  Nicky tried to itemize, in his head, all the things he had brought with him to Nice. Mechanically, he laid out his identification card, his French passport, and some extra photographs on the counter, but his heart was pounding erratically. “I don’t think my mother gave it to me,” he said. “In fact . . . the only time I’ve ever needed it was to obtain this passport, in Paris. We thought it would be sufficient.”

  The young woman’s mouth became a thin line. “We can’t proceed without the birth certificate,” she said brusquely. “Anyone can forge another person’s identification card, and even his passport. We need the authorization of both the French and the German governments in order to issue someone a visa.”
/>   All at once, as the bottom seemed to be falling out of the floor where he was standing, Nicky had a dizzying sensation of why Consul Asch was able to walk around fearlessly. The Americans were protected by an inviolable wall that separated them from the rest of the world. He understood then how it was that Wolf Steiner’s ship of immigrants had been casually turned away. Perhaps they, too, had left their birth certificates behind. A quick anger sweeping through him, he left the building, his feet making quick, clattering sounds on the outer steps.

  What to do? Because of the censored nature of communication between the two zones, he would not be able to ask his mother to send the document. Time was of the essence if he wanted to file his papers rapidly. He’d simply have to tempt fate and return to Paris—without the benefit of an ausweis. He’d come all this way for nothing!

  There was no other choice. Quickly, without warning anyone at the pension, he packed a few things into a small bag, and went to the train station. He was able to purchase a ticket for Châteauroux, near the border to the Occupied Zone, and took his seat in a stuffy third-class compartment. Across from him, a rotund, middle-aged man sat picking his teeth. “Morning,” he told Nicky cheerfully. “My name’s Bagnard—Jean-Marie to the ladies.”

  Politely, Nicky nodded. They were the only ones in the compartment, and he felt vaguely ill at ease under the scrutiny of this coarse man, whom under normal circumstances he might never have encountered. Bagnard persisted. “What’re you doing here, all alone? Where’re you going?”

  Briefly, Nicky looked up. “To Châteauroux,” he replied.

  “Me, I’m on my way to Paris. I’ve been gone long enough.”

  Nicky realized that he was being trapped into conversation. The man continued, winking: “I’ve been gone from my business too long. Boches or no Boches, a working man has his job to do and his earnings to collect.”

  Inwardly sighing, Nicky closed his book and laid it on his lap. “You’re not interested,” Bagnard inquired, “to find out what kind of work I’m in? But then, you’re such a refined sort, you might just thumb your nose at me.”

  “I hope I’ll never do that to any man,” Nicky countered, blushing.

  The man relaxed, lit a cigarette, and, sitting back on the hard wooden seat, shifted his weight and declared: “Well, then, that’s a good sign! I take care of girls.”

  Nicky blinked. “I’m sorry. I didn’t catch that.”

  “Perhaps you’re too young and too clean to understand me. I work a stable of girls in Clichy. Or at least, I used to. Got caught by the war in my mother’s house, on the coast. Only now, I’m getting hungry for the old life, for the hard sound of the coins against my hip pocket.”

  Nicky felt at a loss for words. Not unkindly, Bagnard asked: “Ever done it with a girl? Listen, if you’re in the mood, I’ll give you my card. And if ever you’re in Paris, come to see me. I’ll let you have a turn on the house.”

  All at once, Nicky burst into laughter. The tension that had been crippling his stomach since his visit to the United States Consulate gave way, and he found himself helplessly gasping for air. He’d left Paris with hardly a farewell to Trotti, the girl he’d cared for the most in his life, because too many essentials of survival had crowded his brain; he hadn’t allowed himself to think of her too much in the three weeks since he’d arrived in Nice, in order not to be distracted from his course of action by heart-tugging reminders of their romance. And now, in the midst of a clandestine voyage home, he was being offered a prostitute by a fellow traveler to whom he’d lied about his destination. The irony of his last month was hitting him fully.

  “Hey!” Bagnard was protesting. “My girls ain’t nothing to make jokes about!”

  For a reason he would never comprehend, Nicky turned to the small man and said, very gently: “I’m not laughing at you, Monsieur Bagnard. I’m laughing because I’m afraid, and can’t hold it in any longer.”

  The pimp stubbed his cigarette out and stared at the young man, a long and hard stare that took in his fine features, his dark eyes, his excellent posture. “Yes,” he murmured. “Of course you’d be scared. You’re going to Paris, too, aren’t you?”

  Nicky nodded. “I don’t have an ausweis.”

  “I’m not going to ask you why you’re going. But me too—I don’t have one, either. So I’ll tell you what: just before Châteauroux, when the train slows down, we’re going to jump out and find our own way across the border. Then we’ll just take the first train out of the station. The hitch will be to get around the frontier guards.”

  Somehow, it seemed less formidable a plan because there were two of them now, and because the middle-aged pimp was savvy in the ways of the underworld. Nicky was glad that he hadn’t shown his dismay, and that he’d blurted out his frightened confession. Bagnard was getting out a pack of cards, and saying: “Know how to play poker? It helps to pass the time away.”

  * * *

  As the train wound slowly northward, the third-class compartment began to fill, and Bagnard and Nicky, concentrating on endless poker games, tried to keep themselves apart from the noise and conversations that sprouted up around them. Nicky found that his companion possessed a smart street sense that he himself, from lack of experience, had never developed; and, though his profession was still a mind-stopper to the sixteen-year-old boy, Nicky had to admit that he liked Bagnard. The older man, without an excess of verbiage, had somehow conveyed his own self-confidence to Nicky.

  The train took three days before reaching the Department of Indre, of which the capital was Châteauroux, set inside a vast, well-tended forest. During stops for sandwiches and coffee, at various stations along the way, all of which looked the same to the young man, Bagnard extracted his family background from him. Nicky, reticent at first, had wanted to change the subject. But the little pimp had pressed. “Brasilov? Brasilov? That name’s familiar. It sure doesn’t sound French, though!”

  Nicky had been forced to tell him it was a Russian name, and then the surmises had started all over again. White Russian, or Red? Nicky had plunged in, explaining that he was going to New York to join his father, but that his mother and sister were in Paris. He felt a huge wave of relief when the stationmaster had announced the need to climb back on board. “You sure don’t like to talk about your people,” Bagnard had grumbled. “And mighty fine people they seem, from the little you’ve told me.”

  Then, steepling his long, slender fingers, Nicky had replied: “You’re a nice man, Jean-Marie. I don’t know what your girls think of you, but I like you. So you see, clichés can be wrong. If not all men of your profession are thieves and abusers, then maybe you can understand that having a title of nobility doesn’t always make a man noble.”

  “You’re speaking of your father?”

  All at once deeply ashamed to have betrayed his parent, Nicky shrugged impatiently. “Let’s just not discuss our family,” he told the other.

  After that, they played silently, and over their ersatz coffee, spoke of Pétain, Laval, and the sights and sounds of Paris. Bagnard adored Jeanne Dalbret, and his eyes protruded when Nicky mentioned knowing her. To make up for his earlier aloofness, the young man meticulously described her house, its decoration, and the sinuous, exotic Dragi. He did not tell Bagnard of his family’s connection to the comédienne.

  In the afternoon of the third day, the train passed into a thick, emerald-green forest, and Bagnard, drawing out his packet of Gauloises, held a cigarette out to his companion. “Well, Nicky boy,” he said, with his streetwise bravado: “Let’s take a breather in the corridor for a few smokes.”

  Too late, Nicolas realized that it was time to jump, and that his small bag was still on the ledge above his seat in the compartment. Bagnard was still offering him a cigarette. “One last drag?”

  “I don’t smoke, thanks.”

  Bagnard shrugged. Nicky felt incredibly young, naïve, and unworldly, but he had never learned to dissimulate in order to give himself a veneer of sophistication.

/>   “Now,” Bagnard was saying, tersely. “We’re getting ready to pull into Châteauroux, and the train’s going to slow down.”

  Without a word, Nicky followed him. Bagnard opened the door connecting two cars, and they stood in the whipping wind, watching the wheels below them turning with deafening noise. It seemed to Nicky as if the train was slowing down, but imperceptibly, so that he thought he was imagining it. But the small pimp looked at him, nodded, and suddenly hurled himself, curling into a small ball, to the side of the embankment. Nicky stood staring down at the turning wheels, paralyzed.

  Then, out of the nightmare, he heard the laughing voice of a woman. People were approaching in the corridor, perhaps seeking the dining car, and the imminence of their coming upon him now finally galvanized him into action. Drenched with perspiration, he jumped, remembering in the last instant to curl up like Bagnard so that he would hit the ground with his side. But the blow of the ground hitting up at him was blinding, and as he felt himself rolling down the small hill, his right shoulder and hip shot bolts of sheer agony through every layer of muscle and nerve.

  At long last he stopped rolling, and sat up, dazed. Gingerly, he touched his right side, wincing. He was at the foot of some shrubbery, in what appeared to be the forest of Châteauroux. He was, mercifully, still alive. But where was Bagnard?

  Nicky rose, unsteadily. He could walk, so nothing was broken. Or was it? Perhaps his damned shoulder. Rubbing its tenderness, he began to retrace his steps to where it seemed logical that the small pimp had jumped. But there was no sign of him. Discouraged, Nicky entered the forest, thinking to find a way to the border by himself . . . some way.

  Half an hour later, he had to admit that he was hopelessly lost. Exhausted, he sat down on the cold, winter ground. Above him, white branches laden with snow moved in the wind, dispersing some of the white powder on his head. Suddenly, he heard a voice.