The Keeper of the Walls Page 55

  “The Robinsons . . .”

  “Mark MacDonald. He’s good, and he’s kind, and he made Mama very happy, those last years. I only hope he had the sense to get out, after Pearl Harbor. If she and Kira had to stay, at least he should have had a chance to escape.”

  “It’s perfectly legal for a United States citizen to leave any country he pleases.”

  “As long as he isn’t interned by a hostile power.”

  Brown eyes met green, the brown ones defiant, the green luminous and filled with a naked pain that made Nicky suddenly flinch, and look down at his hands.

  He abruptly rose, his heart pounding frantically, and he declared quickly: “I’m late. Charley’s alone at the shop. See you, Father.”

  As he walked rapidly across the room, he could feel the tears pushing at his eyes, and he bent his head low, in case they showed around the rims. He didn’t want to see his father’s face, that vulnerable ache, preeminent on his memory. It made him want to give in, to forgive, and to accept the hand being offered to him.

  I’ll change my name, he thought, in four years, when I become a citizen. I’ll drop the ridiculous title, and take my mother’s maiden name ... or my grandmother’s.

  And in the vast, sumptuous dining room of the St. Regis, Prince Mikhail Brasilov bowed his head and wept, unashamed.

  Chapter 24

  The young blond sergeant of the Free French army sat down at a small table in the dusty café, and removed his cap. In front of him, a typical Algiers afternoon was unfurling its endless resource of attractions, which were acted out with all the rehearsed choreography of a medieval passion play in front of his amused eye. A turbaned carpet seller had set up “shop” in one corner of the street, and bejeweled, dark women with Moslem veils were stopping by, fingering the wool and exchanging quick, sometimes loud words. Street urchins darted between the carpet vendor and an old man offering up baskets of fresh fruits set on a tiny, overloaded stand, a monkey playing at his side. The young man ordered Turkish coffee and a strange, syrupy cake, and watched, fascinated.

  “You’re Pierre, aren’t you?”

  The question, spoken in the flawless French of those who had learned it as educated, meticulous adults, jarred him. Since he’d left Paris almost three years ago, he’d heard this tone and accent many times: in London, where he’d been stationed, working in Intelligence and coordinating the efforts of the Resistance underground in Occupied France, most of his British contacts had talked like this; and here, he’d run into many Americans and English, too, especially since the Allied victory in North Africa. But the familiarity of this voice penetrated through him like a hot liquid on an empty stomach, producing shock. He looked up, slowly, squinting. In front of him, standing, was a medium-size middle-aged civilian, his shirt sleeves rolled up, his handsome face tanned under a crop of white-gray curls.

  “Mr. . . . MacDonald?”

  The older man smiled. “May I join you?”

  “Of course.” Pierre remembered this man more from Kira’s words than from his actual memory of him, for they had only met occasionally, and then, for brief moments as one of them had come and the other gone from the pension. But Kira had resented him, her dislike thinly veiled, while Nicky, on the contrary, had been all “for” him.

  The journalist didn’t seem at all surprised to see him here, and Pierre felt puzzled. He said, “I’d never have expected to run into you. What’s brought you to North Africa?”

  Mark sighed. “I’m a war correspondent for the Associated Press. Before that, I was investigating the spy rings in Spain and Portugal. But for six months, I’ve been in these parts, following the action. And a few days ago, I heard your name mentioned at an officers’ meeting I attended. It seems you’ve made yourself noticed. Your reports have been appreciated by the brass.” He smiled. “And so I’ve had you on my mind. The sergeant on duty at headquarters told me I might be able to find you here.”

  Pierre leaned forward, nerves tingling like electric wires. “Mr. Mac-Donald,” he said, “have you heard anything about . . . the situation in Paris?”

  The journalist recognized the signs. He himself had gone through all this . . . was still, in fact, going through this. “I wish to God I could give you news of them,” he replied. “As far as I know, they’re all right, in Chaumontel. I’ve gone the rounds, trying to find a way to get them both out . . . Lily and Kira. I’ve spoken to consuls and ambassadors, and powerful businessmen and members of the Free French military. But there are two problems. The first is that someone there would have to smuggle them out—and I don’t know who’d do this, with the Krauts swarming the city.”

  “So you’re telling me that there’s nothing either of us can do?”

  Mark didn’t answer. But his face had set into hard, grim lines. “I’m not going to give up trying,” he finally stated. Then, to change the painful subject, he asked: “You fought here, in North Africa?”

  “At first I spent time in London, and then, last year, they shipped me out to help beat back Rommel. But now that we’ve won, I’m at headquarters.”

  The thin, amber-colored waiter deposited a cup of the thick, aromatic Turkish coffee in front of Mark. “With Italy’s surrender, can the Reich last much longer?” he demanded. “There’s word from on high that there’s to be a massive Allied landing in France, later this year.”

  “I’ve heard rumors.”

  “But of course, you won’t tell a reporter.” Mark smiled, giving his face a sudden, boyish look that appealed to Pierre.

  Then his face hardened again. “Things are really getting bad, in France,” he said tightly. “The general hunger can only be compared to the terror the French have to live through, under the rule of a regime that knows its days are numbered. Even poor old Pétain is being hustled from castle to castle, and his government has lost all pretense of ruling the country. The Germans, and the last of the collaborationists, have grown so vicious that they remind me of wounded lions and tigers, intent on lashing out all around them, to cause the most harm until the moment when, inevitably, they will be slain.”

  Pierre Rublon didn’t answer. His blunt, strong fingers were playing with his cap. So young, so beautiful, his girl. She had to be spared. He’d done all this for her, for them. “You really love her, don’t you?” the journalist was asking, his voice soft, yet incisive.

  The young man looked into that tanned, weathered yet boyish face, and felt as if at last he had found a companion with whom to be open. He nodded. “We made promises to each other. Maybe it was foolish—she wasn’t yet sixteen—but we talked of marriage, of a future together.”

  Mark MacDonald’s eyes were distant, their pupils like pinpoints in the hazel irises. “So did we,” he finally said, the words tight, hard, and infinitely pained.

  Then the two men drank the sweet, dark coffee, bound by their shared hopes, fears, and daily remembrances.

  * * *

  As soon as the Germans, losing ground at Stalingrad in the fall of 1942, and giving way to the Allies in North Africa, had invaded Vichy and taken the existing reins of control from the weakened old marshal, Aunt Marthe Bertholet packed her bags and moved to the capital. Nantes, she told Claire, was no longer bearable; she needed her family around her, and besides, she was eighty-three and suffered from four debilitating illnesses. She had her furniture sent from Nantes to a vast apartment Claire had found for her at 33, Rue de la Tour, in the same Passy area where Prince Ivan Brasilov had lived, years ago; and she hired a maid, Rosine.

  All her life, Aunt Marthe had adored the accoutrements of the First Empire; her crates unwrapped the inlaid, overwrought consoles, cabinets, bed, and other furniture of the epoch, as well as paintings, chandeliers, knickknacks, and dishware of Napoleon’s style. The house in the Rue de la Tour had a narrow façade, and only two rooms stood at the front; but the courtyard in back was large and airy, and the seven rooms that bordered it were agreeable. The kitchen lay at the tail end, near the service staircase; it had two windows,
and at its center, a table four yards long; an electric stove, an enormous sink, and an icebox seemed lost among all the cupboards, sideboards, armoires, and small pieces that lined the walls. One could have lived in this large room alone.

  Aunt Marthe had furnished the room adjoining the kitchen for Rosine, and had converted all but the master bedroom into storage rooms where all her bric-à-brac lay piled together, from the much vaster space of the Nantes house. Boxes and trunks were heaped pell-mell on top of each other. The old woman was pleased not to have had to rent space from a professional storage company, and was content to live in her ornate bedroom, most often under piles of blankets in her gilt four-poster bed.

  Now that Mark was gone, Lily tried to squeeze Aunt Marthe into her tight schedule whenever she came to Paris. She sometimes shopped for her too when she stood in line for her own allotment of sugar, salami, gasoline, and matches, for it seemed that Rosine was forever “forgetting” important purchases. She now brought carrots, leeks, and onions for the old woman as well as for her parents and Maryse, from Chaumontel. Lily found her old relative egotistical and demanding, but forced herself to visit Aunt Marthe to save her mother from coming every day. And, every time she came, the sick woman pressed butter cookies and port wine on her, from a seemingly endless supply that she had brought from Nantes in tins and crates. The sweet wine would remain on Lily’s stomach, nauseating her all the way home; but to refuse Aunt Marthe would have been futile; she was a domineering old woman whose chief pleasure consisted in imposing her will on the few people with whom she still had contact.

  Early in May 1944, Lily decided not to go to Paris for the Thursday visit. She’d been suffering from influenza, and, though for the most part recovered, didn’t wish to take chances with a two-hour train ride. The previous June, Kira had passed her second baccalauréat and in September, had started taking some courses at a child-care center in Paris. She was going into town three times a week, to learn to become a nursery-school teacher. Like her mother, she was careful not to be on the street after eight o’clock, and carried an identification card that listed her religion as Catholic. And so, when Lily couldn’t leave Chaumontel on Thursday, Kira decided that, when her classes finished the next day, she would stop by Aunt Marthe’s apartment with the fresh vegetables.

  Kira was eighteen. She’d grown to five feet seven inches, and had a full, supple figure. But otherwise, she still bore a striking resemblance to her father. Her green eyes, unmixed with any other hue, were like emerald flames, their shape exotic, tilted at the corners. She walked like Misha, too, in a bold stride, and usually disliked her itinerary when she left Chaumontel; for, on the slowed-down subways, and out on the open streets, her arresting figure often drew the admirative catcalls of men of all ages, and of German soldiers. When stopped by one of them, she would respond politely, but with the cold hauteur that had been characteristic of her father. So far, she had encountered no special trouble. Her identification card, though bearing her Russian surname, also listed her as being a French national.

  After school, she wrapped her books together in some twine, and took the subway to her old aunt’s neighborhood. She was dressed in the blue and white uniform of the child-care school, her hair braided around her head, and also carried a fishnet bag full of the fresh vegetables from her village. She too found Aunt Marthe a horrid old witch, but had had less contact with her through the ages than Lily. She was able to find the house with no trouble, and went up to the second story.

  Rosine opened the door. “I’m Kira Brasilova, Princess Liliane’s daughter,” the young woman said.

  “Come in, mademoiselle. Madame Bertholet is with Madame Bruisson, in the bedroom.”

  Kira felt her heart beat faster. Mixed feelings assailed her. Madame Bruisson had to be Uncle Claude’s wife, Henriette, whom she hadn’t seen since that single encounter in the lobby of the Carlton, when her father had managed the old hotel. She’d been . . . how old? Ten? And the lady had smiled so beautifully, at her, alone. And what about the lovebirds? Yet a dark secret had kept Claude Bruisson’s family segregated from the Brasilovs, and her uncle had been a collabo, and a member of the reactionary, anti-Semitic Legion of French Volunteers.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t disturb them,” she murmured. “Perhaps you could just give Aunt Marthe these vegetables—”

  “Who are you?”

  Kira found herself staring beyond the lobby, into the eyes of a ten- or eleven-year-old child, with her own black hair, triangular face, and piercing, almond-shaped eyes. She blinked, her mouth dry, her lips falling open. The sensation of staring in the mirror was so great that she laid a steadying hand on an inlaid sideboard.

  “My name is Kira Brasilova,” she said. “And you?”

  “Alain. Alain Paul Bruisson. I’m Aunt Marthe’s great-nephew.”

  Of course. The boy. She’d barely noticed him, that time eight or nine years ago when she’d seen Claude and Henriette with him, in the Carlton lobby. Kira’s throat hurt from a tremendous lump, and she could feel tears coming. “I’m your cousin, then,” she said. “My Mama and your Papa were sister and brother.”

  “I come every Friday,” he declared. “Come on. They’ve got cookies in the bedroom. It stinks in there, from her, the old horror—but the cookies are super!”

  She found herself following, while Rosine took the string bag into the kitchen. He was striding through the corridor, his young body already tall and well defined, and she watched him, hypnotically. At the door, he pushed it open and, suddenly gallant, smiled, inclined his head, and made a mock courtly gesture to let her pass first. She would have laughed, had this joking flourish not hit her in the stomach with the poignancy of a remembered dream.

  “Mama, Auntie!” he was calling out. “Look who I’ve found! A cousin!”

  The master bedroom was like a mausoleum. The immense four-poster dominated the scene, its brocade drapes matching the covers of the seats of the bergères and the ottoman. Tables perched everywhere: a large one, set with a heavy silver tea tray, and four or five scattered occasional stands, all inlaid with mother-of-pearl. From the bed, old Marthe Bertholet, propped against an impressive array of cushions, stared at her from her half-closed eyes, her potato nose twitching.

  Her stomach queasy, Kira tried to speak, overwhelmed by the room, the ugly old woman, and the boy. “Hello, Kira,” a resonant, attractive female voice intoned, and she turned. On the opposite side of the tea table sat Alain’s mother, her slender face perfectly made up, the amber eyes still arresting beneath jet black hair pulled into a topknot that frizzed in permanented curls onto her forehead. The woman was probably fifty, but, like all rich women, had known how to protect herself from the onset of age. She was elegant, unusual, and, Kira found herself guessing, vibrating sensuality.

  “Well, come in, don’t stand there like an overgrown oaf,” Aunt Marthe called. “Your mother didn’t come yesterday.”

  “Mama’s been ill,” Kira responded, deciding that she, too, hated the petulant old relative. But she forced herself to walk to the bed, and to kiss the withered cheek. It allowed her to compose herself for the other. When she made her way to the seated woman, she was smiling politely. “Madame,” she said, extending her hand.

  “I’m your Aunt Henriette. Don’t you remember? We met when you were younger than Alain, at the Carlton. And I thought then that you were the most exquisite little girl I’d ever seen. You’ve turned into a stunning woman.”

  Not knowing what to say, Kira smiled again, her mouth twitching in a nervous spasm. Why was this woman being so pleasant? She’d always wondered about the feud, but now pushed the whole business resolutely away, with sudden frenzy. She wished that she might exit immediately, to avoid any further complications. Still, her heart thumped erratically, and she was grateful for the cup of steaming tea that Claude’s widow was proffering her.

  Aunt Marthe then entered into a series of complaints, followed by ceaseless questioning. All the time that she was answering, Kira felt
Henriette’s eyes upon her. Kira wished that Nicky were with her, for she knew that he, loyal to the bone, would have found a graceful exit line. At length, she noticed that the old woman’s head had fallen forward, wobbling like a large marble on the end of a stick, and that snores were escaping her lips. “Aunt Marthe has this habit of falling asleep in the middle of a sentence,” Henriette remarked sotto voce. “Come. I’d like a chance to talk with you, Kira. We’ll go to the kitchen.”

  There was no way to refuse, short of being rude. Alain darted ahead of them, calling Rosine, and disappeared into the young maid’s room. “Good,” Henriette stated. “That way, we’ll be alone. The kitchen’s comfortable, like a parlor furnished by Frankenstein . . . but we can sit there, a bit.”

  Kira, feeling like a puppet without a will of its own, nodded. She wanted to escape, for myriad reasons . . . yet, now that she was trapped, her old curiosity about this woman flared up. Henriette took a seat by the large table, and she sat kitty-corner, her hands folded in front of her.

  “So now you know,” Henriette began. The amber eyes stayed on Kira’s face, not letting go.

  Kira blushed. “I—”

  “I could see it painted on your beautiful, expressive, Russian face. You saw Alain. Another might have ignored the facts, but you couldn’t. Because you saw your own face in his face: your own face, so exactly like his face . . . your father’s face.”

  Kira’s throat was parched, her temples beating. “But—”

  “I was his mistress for many years. He was my lifeblood. When he rejected me, I married your uncle. The only thing Claude asked was that Misha not be told he was Alain’s real father.”

  Trembling, the young girl said: “But—Papa was married to my mother then. Wasn’t he?”