The Keeper of the Walls Read online

  Claire wore a fur coat of gray astrakhan trimmed with mink, and, in the box that Misha had rented, she had slipped the coat off, revealing a gown of soft beige silk, with wide sleeves and a high collar. He’d been looking forward to spending the evening with her, for she was a witty conversationalist: and so he’d been disappointed by her unusual reserve. But the girl was a dream. Her long hair had been swept into a topknot, but rebellious tendrils escaped charmingly over her ears and neck. She wore a tubular gown of white chiffon and a stole of white mink, with pearls on her ears and around her neck. She wasn’t wearing makeup.

  He watched her rapt attention, the small tongue that protruded between her parted lips—her wonder. It was painfully obvious that she wasn’t used to going out. He felt protective, compassionate. All his life he’d given in to the need to protect the weak and the suffering. Just as easily he’d come to be known as ruthless because when he saw corruption, he sought to crush it without thought to his victims. In a game played outside the rules, Misha always won, for when someone played a dirty trick, he didn’t realize that Misha could be dirtier.

  At intermission, Claire excused herself to go to the powder room, and for the first time Misha found himself alone with Lily. She was embarrassed. She didn’t dare to look at him. And so he said, gently, “Do I frighten you?”

  She looked at him then, and smiled, coloring. “You’re of a different world, Prince Mikhail. You’re older, and you’re foreign. I’m afraid my conversation is dull for you.”

  “On the contrary. I see in you one of the most beautiful women in Paris. And you possess a rare talent: imagination. You’re intelligent. It’s fashionable to be shallow but you are not. You are worth spending time with—much time, mademoiselle.”

  She looked down at her hands, pensive. It seemed incredible: the most beautiful woman in Paris. Only seven months ago she’d left the convent, where humility was considered the first quality to live by: to give up one’s dreams to serve other people. The teachings of Christ. Self-abnegation. Was she destined to put aside her fancies in a supreme effort at helping others to fulfill theirs? Part of Lily rebelled against this. Another part accepted it as her fate, the way she’d always accepted the dicta of the Church, and its punishments for her sinful mind.

  Claire was reappearing, and Misha stood up, politely. The play was starting again.

  But this time, Lily hardly watched. Misha, observing her, wondered how much woman she was already. Lily sat with her head bowed, absorbed. Then, at one point, he caught her looking at his legs, at his hands as they lay clasped over his knees. She was staring at them as if in a trance, fascinated. He was suddenly touched: she was a woman, aware perhaps of her first man, and taken with the strangeness of the man-woman “thing,” for which she had no name yet.

  The next day, he sent her a dozen red roses, with his compliments.

  His father had told him to clean up his life. Misha remembered an episode from his youth, in Moscow. He’d been an ace at billiards. But in this great city the billiard halls were set up in the most downtrodden, ne’er-do-well neighborhoods, and so Prince Ivan, who so rarely interfered in his son’s life, had said to him: “I can’t allow you to return there again.”

  The game, however, was stronger for Misha than his father’s reprimand. Like metal to a magnet, he’d felt himself drawn irresistibly to the pool halls. One evening he was so absorbed in his game, winning against clever opponents, that it was morning before he lifted his eyes from the felt table. And then his gaze had encountered a most unusual sight. Among the thieves and low-lives stood his father, in his top hat and tails, fresh from a formal dinner and ball, standing erect and incongruous, looking at his son. Misha had felt himself change color, and had dropped his cue and followed Prince Ivan out the door.

  They’d never exchanged a single word about the episode. But Prince Ivan had made his point.

  It wasn’t the game, however, that had caused the most trouble in Misha’s life. It had been women. As careful and meticulous as he was in his work, he couldn’t handle his women. His private life was messy and disordered, overflowing with women of various ages and all sorts. It had always been this way.

  In Moscow he’d been involved with a married woman, Varvara Trubetskaya, older than he by five exciting years. She’d been a society woman, the wife of a general. But she’d loved Misha so! She’d thrown her reputation to the winds in the hope that he would ask her to leave her husband and marry him. But that hadn’t been in his plans.

  And then the Bolsheviks had moved nearer, and the Brasilovs had pushed on to Kiev, to the safety of their refineries. As he had never actually broken with Varvara, she’d found a way to convince her husband to go to Kiev too. And they’d met each other.

  Misha remembered the scandal. Even in those troubled times, when everyone had had only his own safety on his mind, when the rich were rich no longer and were afraid for their lives, the remnant of the upper crust had discussed Misha’s shameful behavior with the general’s wife.

  The Bolsheviks had been coming closer and closer. The Brasilovs had fled. In the Crimea, by chance this time, he’d run into Varvara and her husband, on their way to Constantinople, too. He hadn’t resisted the insistence of his married mistress, and they’d started all over again, practically under her husband’s nose. And yet . . . for all their sexual exhilaration, he didn’t think he’d ever loved Varvara. He’d never loved any woman.

  He entered the quiet apartment, where Arkhippe had left two hall lights on to greet him. He loosened his tie, unbuttoned his crisp evening shirt. He was very tired. It had been one of those pleasant evenings at Cécile Sorel’s. The actress had gathered to her Quai Voltaire Palace the cream of Parisian society. He’d enjoyed her guests, but at the end, as usual, they had bored him and pressed on his nerves. Now he poured himself an Armagnac and went to the silver mail tray.

  It hit his eye and, a minute later, his stomach. The pale blue paper, lightly scented with Chanel No. 5. He’d introduced her to it. By an odd coincidence it was the perfume that Lily used, too. He’d have to change that. Misha tore the envelope open with suddenly clumsy fingers, and held the letter to the light.

  She’d written, in her strange, angular scrawl:

  You won’t be able to forget me. You keep trying. But I’m still your wife, and I won’t sign the papers, no matter what you do. I don’t need your money. Remember that I work, too, to support myself. You can’t buy me.

  She’d signed it, simply, “V.”

  * * *

  His father had said: “Clean up your life, my boy.” But how would he be able to do it with this new hitch? He’d all but pushed the consciousness of her existence out of his mind. The hasty wedding in Biarritz, during the “Russian season.” A wedding that had been a lark, a joke, because the gods had burned away his motherland; because, in the midst of despair, you had to be a clown, you had to spit at Fate. He’d regretted it as soon as he’d done it, and told her so. “We’ll have to live in separate residences. You can stay my wife, because I never intend to marry again. But we won’t make it public.”

  Strangely enough, she’d accepted it, nodding with her proud head, tossing the mink stole over her shoulder in a sign of bravado—for she was a reckless adventurer like him, one who gambled on life, and lost well. He’d admired her for it, and because of this he’d treated her well. He’d let her live her life, but he’d gone to her in moments of tension, to drink from her the courage to continue, to persevere against all odds. She’d never asked for help, and had gone on to learn a whole new career, one of which he disapproved, but who was he to make a criticism? They were no longer in Moscow, where appearances mattered. They were in Paris during the Roaring Twenties, when women did far worse than to become dancers in a revue. She’d banked on the loveliness of her legs and on her hours of practice with her private ballet master from the Bolshoi—her hobby as a wealthy Muscovite matron.

  But what had seemed irresistible in Moscow, and even in the Crimea, one step ahe
ad of the Bolsheviks, had all at once lost its luster in Paris. He’d seen the chinks in the armor: her small wrinkles, her tired jokes. She’d lived too much, lost too much, ever to be fresh again for him. The five years yawned between them. He was, pure and simple, out of his spell. The young women of Paris were more alluring, new, different. The Russia that she brought to his mind was not the Russia he wished to remember.

  He’d asked for a divorce, to make it clean between them. She’d accepted. They’d signed the preliminary papers together, a year ago. He had seen her maybe three times since then, amicable, distant moments. She was hurt by his desire to break completely—he’d felt this, and experienced a short instant of guilt. But she’d always known he hadn’t loved her. If she’d accepted things on his terms, he couldn’t really blame himself.

  Varvara. Her husband had died so quickly after they’d reached Paris! Had she even mourned him? She was a hard, violent woman, a street urchin reared like a princess. He needed a real princess. Lily Bruisson was like a fairy princess, like his mother, the restrained, tactful Princess Maria.

  It was impossible to think Varvara was refusing now, at the last moment, to sign the papers. Why? Could love survive the humiliations he’d put her through—the rejections? He’d offered to maintain her for three years at five thousand francs a month. She’d be able to resign from her job. Why, now, was she suddenly being proud?

  If Lily learned of her existence, he’d lose her. Misha knew that he couldn’t let it happen.

  There had to be a hitch. Wasn’t there one?

  He remembered now. She’d decided to shed her Russian image, to become French. She’d called herself “Jeanne Dalbret.” A simple name. Hadn’t she also signed the marriage certificate that way, to add to the fun? Had they recorded her as Varvara, or Jeanne? His attorney had the license, and it hadn’t mattered before, because the officials had known her true identity. They’d never be able to involve her in a fraud. He’d married her, there could be no denying it.

  So he’d have to make her change her mind.

  Mark had never felt so relaxed in his entire life. He was in Paris, fulfilling the dream of a lifetime—a dream that for many years had lain nameless in the back of his mind: to travel, to acquire a cosmopolitan polish. And, of course, to write what he wanted. He paid the rent on his small mansard apartment on the Boulevard Saint-Germain with money from the articles he sent to the Charlotte Clarion: bright bits of gossip on the Americans he’d met: Gertrude and Leo Stein, Natalie Barney, the Fitzgeralds and the Murphys. But this took up very little of his time. The rest was his own, to do with as he pleased. In a sense, then, the newspaper provided him with a sinecure—a stipend to develop his own writing.

  Since he’d met Lily, he’d started serious work on his novel. He didn’t talk about it to anyone except her. He wasn’t quite sure why he’d chosen to open his heart to this young middle-class girl who’d so obviously only just left the strictures of a provincial convent school. Maryse, better educated, more sophisticated, and as Parisian as the Arch of Triumph, possessed a mind better disposed to help him. She read English, too. But Mark saw her as a little sister not to be taken seriously. Lily was different. She was already a woman, even if Maryse was more liberated. And she could quietly listen to his ideas without interrupting him with her own.

  She asked questions. Why did Mark feel that every American who came to Paris had to be running away from his own past? Why were the young American protagonists so self-destructive? Why couldn’t Mark put more of himself into the main character? He tried, as best he could, to reply to her satisfaction. “I had all I wanted in Charlotte,” he explained. “But I prefer being less spoiled in this big city than to have everything handed to me on a silver platter in my hometown.”

  “Your life’s been much like mine,” she commented, sitting down next to him. They were in the overcrowded Empire sitting room in the Villa Persane, where he often came to visit.

  “In which way?”

  “Parochial. Money, but not travel, not independence.”

  “There’s a small difference, Lily. As a young woman, you’ve been sheltered. I was a man. My family made no effort to keep me in a cocoon. Perhaps it was I who kept myself there for so long.”

  He showed her the ten new pages he had finished, and translated them as best he could for her. She sat back, occasionally passing her tongue over her full red lips. “I’ve never read anything like that before,” she said.

  “Does that mean you like it?”

  “I do. I feel so bad for Theresa. She’s going to fall in love with Trevor, and then—I fear for her.”

  “But falling in love can be wonderful.”

  She said, not looking at him: “It’s frightening. What if the love isn’t returned? We live in such a strange society!”

  “Maybe so. But you have to take risks, Lily, to feel alive.”

  “I know that’s what your Theresa believes. She’ll try anything to prove to herself she isn’t just a doll.”

  They fell silent. He cleared his throat. “Lily,” he asked. “Would you play something for me?”

  “Something sad, or something happy?”

  “Whatever you feel like playing.”

  She stood up, went to the shining black Pleyel. She sat down and hesitated, her fingers poised above the keys. Then she plunged in, and he closed his eyes to listen to the joyful notes of Chopin. After a few moments, he opened them again and looked at her. She was playing like a virtuoso, moving her torso slightly to the rhythm. When she finished, he clapped. She closed the lid over the keyboard and rose, and he was conscious of her twin breasts as she breathed, of the color in her cheeks as she smiled with what resembled triumph.

  “Have you found the right teacher yet?” he asked her.

  “Yes, I have. Her name is Sudarskaya—a garrulous Russian woman who was a concert pianist in the days of the czar. Mama’s agreed to hire her, three times a week. But we haven’t dared to broach the subject to Father.”

  “Is your father, then, such an ogre?”

  “If he thought that I could find a husband more easily if I perfected my playing, he’d pay double the price of Sudarskaya. Otherwise he’d consider it a waste of his money. I don’t think he’s ever gone to the symphony.” She laughed. “Of course, he’s gone to the Moulin Rouge. I saw some tickets once lying on his dresser. He turned beet red and told me they were Claude’s.”

  She turned serious then, and he could decipher pain on her features. All at once, taking his courage in his hands, he said: “Lily. Do you think you could be happy living with me for the rest of your life?”

  She wheeled about; her eyes widened. “You mean—”

  “Yes. I want to marry you, Lily. As soon as you’ll have me. I’ll never hurt you. I’ll treasure you always.”

  She sat down on the first available chair, a heavy bergère of gilt wood and velvet. “Mark,” she said. “I—” But she couldn’t finish. She’d known he cared, but she’d thought he was taking his time, giving her time. She’d thought that the proposal would come a year from now—or would recede into the folds of friendship.

  “You don’t have to answer immediately.”

  “I really must think about it, my dear.”

  “I realize that. I shouldn’t have been so abrupt.”

  Suddenly there was a wall of awkwardness between them, where before there had been ease and comfort and pleasure. She looked at him, noting the regularity of his features, the adorable curls that made him look like Cupid. But Cupid had been a baby. No woman could have fallen in love with Cupid. She wasn’t in love with Mark. She loved him, but she wasn’t in love. She never awakened in a sweat from a dream of him, of them together.

  Maybe she was like Mark’s heroine, Theresa, who wished for cataclysms and fireworks, and wouldn’t settle for anything less. Maybe, Lily thought, she was a fool.

  Mark had never asked a girl to marry him before. He was nearly twenty-five, and now he was ready. But he’d frightened her—he kne
w that. What a fool he’d been! He was consumed with embarrassment, and wanted to leave her alone as soon as possible. There was nothing he could do to retract his words. And, furthermore, he’d meant them. So he took her hand and pressed it, and before she could react, he walked out the door, closing it behind him.

  He stood in the vestibule, his bearings lost. He put on his camel’s-hair coat and his muffler, to ward off the cold. Who could he talk to?

  Maryse. He’d talk to her. But no, he couldn’t. Maryse would feel caught in the middle. He had no one else who was a close friend. Rirette and Nini? They were just amusing people to spend an evening with. They didn’t even believe in marriage.

  At that moment he heard the hall door opening, and Claire Bruisson walked into the vestibule, wrapped in furs. She seemed surprised to see him, and held out her hands. “Mark! I didn’t realize you were here. You’re leaving?”

  “And you, Madame?”

  “I’m on my way to the dentist’s office. Dreary, don’t you think? Why don’t you let the chauffeur drive us both?”

  On an impulse, he accepted. He always came in a taxi, and had no car of his own. He felt beaten, miserable. In the large Citroën, he was silent. Claire asked: “What’s wrong? You can tell me, Mark. I’m a mother—I might understand.”

  He looked at her, at her beautiful cameo profile. She jarred with the atmosphere of the Villa Persane as much as Lily. He began to feel resentful, thinking of Lily. In Charlotte there were any of half a dozen girls of better family than Liliane Bruisson who would gladly marry him. And the girl he’d dated when he’d been at Princeton—Judy, the girl from Wellesley. . . . Claire was staring at him with a strange insistency, and so he said: “I asked Lily to marry me. It was an idiotic thing to do—I hadn’t planned any of it. . . .”

  “Young men seldom do,” Claire remarked softly. And then she laid a soft gloved hand on his arm. Her eyes shone large and sad. “Of course, she didn’t answer?”