The Keeper of the Walls Read online

  “You all right?” a stranger was asking.

  Nicky looked up, and saw a tramp. He blinked, amazed. But truly, the variety of man staring back at him could best have been found lying on a bench along the banks of the Seine, or on the cobbled sidewalk under its ancient bridges, an empty bottle of wine dangling from his hand. He could hardly have ventured to guess at the tramp’s age. Dressed like a scarecrow in dark pants and a tattered dark overcoat, his unshaved face and brilliant dark eyes reminded Nicky of a disheveled, modern-day Christ. “My God,” he said softly. “Where am I? And—who are you?”

  “Arnaud. Arnaud de la Tour du Bellay. But that’s a little beside the point, isn’t it now? Etiquette is for better days. You’re the pimp’s friend?”

  Still in shock, his shoulder hurting badly, Nicky nodded, scrambling to his feet. “I didn’t think I’d ever find him again,” he said. “I jumped too late.”

  “Well, we’re going to cross together: you, me, the pimp, and Richard. Richard’s an escaped soldier from the Vichy army. And Bagnard says you want to get to the other side as badly as we do.”

  “How did you find him?” Nicky asked.

  The tramp shrugged. “It was easy. We saw him trying to get across the border, over there, a quarter of a mile west of here, and we went to warn him about the soldier stationed under the tall birch tree. We’ve been waiting for the changing of the guard to slip ourselves between the wiring. We’ll have a better chance at night.”

  And so it was that when nighttime fell, Nicolas Brasilov crossed the border between the Free and the Occupied Zones with a pimp, a tramp from the Paris sewers, and a defecting soldier from the Vichy army. It turned out that Arnaud and Richard had been turned away by a border guard somewhere else in the area, and had decided that this particular stretch of land was the least well guarded, particularly during the change of shifts among the guards.

  The next morning, the four boarded a train to Paris, and played four-handed poker for the rest of the journey. By nighttime, they’d reached the Gare de Lyons, and Nicky parted from his newfound friends with genuine warmth. Bagnard pressed a card on him, reminding him that if he wanted, there’d always be a girl on the house for him.

  He took the métro, grateful for its logical, familiar route, letting his head rest on the back of his seat. His mother thought that he was safe in Nice, and would not be expecting him, particularly in this shape, his shoulder swollen and his hip bruised. A slight rustling noise near him roused him, and, before he could properly react, he saw, as the train eased to a stop, a thin man in a nondescript raincoat hurrying through the car and then out the door and onto the platform. The man was holding a worn black wallet. Then a surge of people boarding eclipsed him from Nicky’s sight, and the next moment, the train began to move again.

  His heart thundering, Nicky felt for the bulge in his trouser pocket, and realized that his fears were well founded. The thin man had, effortlessly, lifted his wallet while he’d been dozing. Nicky sat down again. After all that had happened, he almost didn’t care anymore. New York loomed like a mirage in the far distance, unattainable and dim. Now all he wanted was to lie down in a real bed, and to eat something warm and thick.

  When he rapped on the door of the Pension Lord-Byron, he’d even forgotten about the food and bed. The cold, icy streets had frozen the soles of his feet, and his ungloved fingers were red and blistered. He couldn’t tell which female voice greeted him, nor whose arms supported him into the hallway and onto a cot, or a couch. Fingers pressed at his shoulder, massaged his face. With blessed relief, he sank into unconsciousness, letting slip the single thing he’d kept with him from his travel: Bagnard’s card, printed in garish red, with his own scrawled, uneducated writing: The plumpest, the juiciest, the most depraved—you want it, I’ve got it for you, little buddy.

  * * *

  Lily never asked about the card, and Nicky’s vivid account of his travels edited the part about Bagnard’s profession. But he found himself telling a respectful audience composed of his mother, his sister, and Trotti Voizon about the tramp, the escaped soldier, the barbed-wire border, and his own mad jump, over and over until he had tired of repeating himself to answer their multiple questions.

  Then Lily and Kira left him alone with Trotti, and she sat close to him, holding his hand. Her lovely dark eyes shone with her affection, and he felt himself being drawn into them, with the concurrent surge of excitement that pumped through his body whenever she was near him. He was sixteen, she a year older. And so she said, her voice plaintive and eloquent: “I’d hoped you’d come back. But it isn’t for long, is it?”

  The excitement bubbled and broke, like champagne bubbles reaching the edge of a glass. He could feel it seeping away, minute by minute. Her eyes were so beautiful, like his mother’s, and her heavy breasts lay pressed against his arm, and he could smell her own clean yet special scent, like wild lemons on the tree. Yet the wild, animal passion had dwindled of its own, and as he looked at her, he felt sorrow—for her, for him, for both of them.

  “No,” he answered gently. “I’m going back as soon as I can get my new ausweis. I have to get the paperwork started for my visa, in Nice.”

  “Madame Dalbret?” she asked, her voice husky.

  Turning slightly from those probing eyes, he replied, somewhat crisply: “Mama went to her. I almost wish she hadn’t. I ... I don’t want us to owe her for another favor.”

  “Oh, Nicky,” she cried. “You always take everything so seriously! People can help each other, can’t they, without having to draw up lists? Madame Dalbret was simply being nice. Can’t you just accept this, and let it be?”

  He smiled, ruefully. “I suppose you’re right. But then, I’ve always had a hard time taking things lightly ...all sorts of things.”

  “Don’t I know it.”

  Their eyes met. “I wish you’d ask me to wait for you,” she said impulsively.

  He sighed. “Oh, Trotti. I don’t know what to say. But ... it wouldn’t be fair. We’re both much too young to know what we want . . . or who we’ll turn into. You might decide that Nicky at twenty-two is not at all the Nicky you’d envisioned. It wouldn’t make sense to tie you down.”

  “You’re saying that because of the religion.”

  “No. I’m saying that because I just don’t know anything at all about the future.”

  “But Pierre and Kira—they made a commitment. And she’s much younger than I am.”

  He looked at her. She looked back, intensely. “Trotti, I want us to remember how beautiful it was, and that we loved each other. Please understand . . .”

  “. . . that I’m really ‘not the one’?”

  “I wouldn’t want to change you. We each are who we are. If I wanted you different, I’d have loved someone else—not asked you to change.”

  She stared at him, uncomprehending. “So . . . you’re telling me you love me, but it can’t work?”

  Unexpectedly, he hugged her close to him, letting her thick hair form a soft curtain over the back of his head. And he thought: Let me always remember this, let me always cherish what there was. When he pulled away, he saw that tears had gathered on the edge of her lashes, and he could feel his own, way back, behind his eyeballs.

  “Damn it,” he said. “I wish we didn’t have to say good-bye.”

  Chapter 22

  In the spring of 1941, Maryse Steiner sat her husband down in their opulent suite at the Ritz and, wringing her delicate, small-boned hands, pleaded with him to leave the country. She was thirty-six, he twelve years her senior; and Mina Steiner was seventy-five, a shadow of her former ebullient self.

  “You haven’t worked since you arrived here,” Maryse reproved him. “And Mama wrote that in New York, there are many psychiatrists . . . many Jewish refugees, who’ve set up good practices. We could try to emigrate, like Nicky, from Nice or Marseilles.”

  Maryse had last heard from her parents days before the French Armistice, when all transatlantic mail had effectively been
blocked. David and Eliane Robinson had informed their daughter of their move to cosmopolitan New York, where, it appeared, a market for fine French biscuits was thriving. They’d renewed their acquaintanceship with many old friends, such as the Baronesses Lucy and Yvonne de Gunzburg, living in grand style at the Carlyle. The Robinsons had purchased a penthouse on Central Park West, in the best part of Manhattan.

  This news, however, was stale by now after eighteen months.

  “If you want to go there, through the Free Zone, you can try,” Wolf told her, his patient voice edging slightly. “But you’ll find it a problem to leave Paris, first of all. And then—”

  “You know I won’t leave you!” Perspiration sprang out under her arms and over her brow, beading out over her upper lip.

  “It’s not so simple,” he said. “Look at the problems Nicky is having. And he’s not known to be a Jew. The Germans will probably give the American Consulate permission for his visa. But what about us? Who would give us an ausweis? And with a large, red J on our Austrian passports, would they allow us even so far as Nice?”

  His logic stilled her, with its irrefutable base of truth. Effectively, they were trapped in Occupied France. A wave of hopelessness enveloped her, and she started to cry. Small sobs racked her shoulders and she slumped, a diminutive figure of defeat.

  In former times, Wolf would have bridged the gap between them in half a second, to hold and comfort her and breathe quiet confidence into her. In Vienna, he’d protected her, his immense strength like a rampart against any outside evil. Yet here she wept, alone, while he gazed at her, immobile. Since his presence on the ship that had floated, unwanted by any free land, almost two years before—since his witnessing of the man Chaim’s jump overboard into Cuba’s hostile waters—he’d lost the ability to react. Part of him seemed paralyzed into inaction.

  In front of him lay an old Torah, and a red pencil. He was quietly reading, as was his wont now, oblivious to the presence of his wife and even of his child when she was home, as he underscored passages that appealed to him. He had completely abstracted himself from reality in the here and now of Paris, 1941.

  Mina appeared, her back stooped. “Where is Nanni?” she asked.

  Without shame, Maryse raised her tear-filled eyes to her mother-in-law. “She went to visit Lily and Kira. I don’t want her around, Mama. We don’t have a family life anymore, and she can’t bear to see Wolf like this!”

  Mina smiled. “Perhaps Isaac will have a talk with him, dear,” she answered softly. “Wolf always listens to his father.”

  Maryse’s lips parted, her face paled. In complete desperation, she turned her back and went into her bedroom, and lay down fully clothed on the bed. There were no tears left to spill.

  * * *

  When the rap on the door came, the Steiners were having breakfast. Even at the Ritz, rations were in effect, and food was scant and unappetizing. Maryse went to open, her pink satin robe flowing around her like a regal train, its delicate lace trim emphasizing her tiny elegance. She stepped back, shock piercing to the marrow of her bones, deadening even her fear. In front of her stood two Gestapo officers, their hair closely cropped under their neat caps, their backs ramrod straight.

  “Madame Steiner?”

  Maryse nodded, speechless.

  “We’ve come for your husband,” one of them said. She wasn’t sure which one, because her vision had blurred and they appeared like mirror images of each other.

  Wolf was standing up, pushing back his chair, a questioning look on his sad, intelligent face. “Yes?” he asked softly.

  “You are Wolfgang Steiner?”

  “I am Dr. Steiner, yes. What do you want?”

  “We have been ordered to take you. You are an Austrian citizen?”

  Nanni, who was eleven, jumped up, spilling some precious milk over the lace tablecloth. She was ready for school, in her trim uniform, her hair neatly plaited. At eleven, she was two inches shorter than her mother, but she gave an impression of sturdiness that was more Steiner than Robinson. Clutching her mother’s robe, she pressed against her. “Why do you want my papa?”

  “It’s not your business, little girl.”

  “I won’t go if you don’t tell us why,” Wolf said mildly.

  “You have no choice. We’ve been ordered to round up all foreign Jewish lawyers.”

  “But my husband isn’t a lawyer, he’s a psychiatrist,” Maryse explained, relief flooding her. “Surely, you’ve made a mistake!”

  “The Gestapo never makes mistakes,” one of the officers countered, sarcasm cutting the air. They had been speaking German, and now the other added: “In 1930, was your husband not awarded an honorary law degree from the University of Heidelberg?” A thin smile creased his face, but his eyes were cold.

  Maryse started to say something, outrage and terror blocking each other in her mind and body. She was trembling like a leaf. “You can’t take my papa!” Nanni was crying. Maryse tried to restrain her, tightening her fingers around the little girl’s arm, but Nanni refused to stay put, and jumped forward, thrusting herself between Wolf and the officers. “You can’t! He hasn’t done anything!”

  “He is a Jew,” the first declared, with a smug satisfaction that stopped even Nanni.

  And then, Wolf stepped forward, calmly, his overcoat over his arm. “I’m ready,” he stated. There was a quiet dignity about him that made Maryse remember her husband in Vienna, when their love had been complete and their understanding, total. She was frozen in place, overwhelmed by the unexpected sequence of events, yet also moved to the core of her being by the simplicity of his manhood, which, even faced by the Gestapo, remained undaunted. Why, why hadn’t he reacted when she’d told him to flee? They could have been in Nice, in Spain . . . anywhere but here on this cold spring morning of 1941.

  He bent down to touch her forehead with his warm lips, and she threw her arms around his neck, hysteria pulsing through her veins until she screamed his name, blinded by tears, and felt the Gestapo officers pulling them brutally apart. She was conscious of Nanni darting out from her side, following the small group, hurling herself down the staircase of the Ritz, her voice a shriek that curdled the blood. Mina was dragging Maryse away from the door, to the window, and she saw her husband being thrown into a car, just as the little girl arrived on the pavement, arms outstretched toward the departing vehicle bearing her father. “Papa! Papa!” she was yelling, and Mina whispered to Maryse: “We have to bring her upstairs, dear. There’s a crowd out there, watching. And I can’t find Isaac.”

  The stillness of the room surrounded them, shrouding them. Maryse’s hysteria had died down completely, and she could feel a dreadful calm imposing itself on her. To act. She had to act. Thinking could come later.

  “Mama,” she ordered, “you go downstairs to pick up Nanni. And then we’re getting out of here, as fast as we can!”

  In the minutes that followed, Maryse threw open two large suitcases, and opened all the closets and cabinets. Then, pell-mell, she tossed, unfolded, all the clothes that would fit in. She pulled jewelry boxes out of drawers, emptied their contents haphazardly into the open luggage, and when there was no space left, she zipped the two valises up and dragged them to the threshold of the suite.

  Nanni and Mina, hand in hand, their faces set with the pall of loss, were coming up the stairs, staring at her. “Come on!” Maryse cried, her arms and legs taut and twitching with nervous energy. “Help me with these bags!”

  Without a word, Mina and Nanni took the second suitcase between them, dogging her to the elevator. The beribboned operator stared at them, his mustache wobbling over parted lips. They hurried past amazed hotel guests into the street, and Maryse jumped forward, sidestepping the horrified doorman, into the first taxi that presented itself. “Where are we going, Mama?” Nanni ventured to ask, in a hushed voice.

  The driver was waiting, and she gave them the Walters’ address in the Boulevard Exelmans. “We’re going to Aunt Claire’s?” Nanni asked. “W
hy?”

  “Because,” her mother replied fiercely, “from now on we’re not safe! They’ve taken Wolf, and the next time, they’ll come for all of us!”

  It was only then that she realized that she was still dressed in her satin bathrobe, and that she understood why all these strangers, unaware of her plight, had been staring at her uncomprehendingly.

  Maryse Steiner began to shiver, while silent tears glistened in her blue eyes.

  * * *

  “Princess Brasilova.”

  Lily, crossing the street toward the boardinghouse, stopped, the chill of recognition going like lead into the pit of her stomach. She was coming home after a long day, teaching piano in different parts of the city, an ache of exhaustion pervading her limbs. Already the sky over the Champs-Élysées had darkened, and when she looked in the direction of the voice, the man’s aquiline features had taken on the sinister shadows of evening. Baron Charles de Chaynisart, inclining his head, stood smiling at her, his bowler lifted in a gesture of courtliness.

  “Monsieur de Chaynisart.”

  She could feel his blue eyes piercing through the worn suit she was wearing, which had seen smarter days. “Lovely spring weather, don’t you think?” he remarked, immediately taking her elbow and guiding her safely to the opposite side of the wide, tree-lined avenue.

  “Very pleasant, yes,” she murmured. What did he want? She felt an acute embarrassment, thinking of herself running from his car after the improper proposal he had made her in 1934. She’d seen him just once after that, on the Croisette in Cannes. He’d implied such dreadful things about Jacques, that just thinking of it made her suddenly afraid. “My daughter is waiting for me,” she murmured, smiling apologetically. “I’m afraid I don’t have time to stay and chat.”

  “Herbert von Karajan will be conducting the Berlin Opera in Tristan et Ysolde, at our Opera, on the twenty-second. I should like you to be my guest at the performance. To hear Wagner’s music of love and sacrifice being interpreted through the baton of a genius like von Karajan, could only be topped by sitting near the most beautiful woman in Paris, enjoying the experience together.”