Along the Infinite Sea (9 page)

He reached into his inside jacket pocket and drew out his cigarette case. “So I've been lying here, day after day, and wondering why. Why you would do such a thing.”

“You might just have asked me.”

“I was afraid of your answer.”

I watched him light the cigarette and replace the case and the lighter in his pocket. The smoke hovered in the still air. Stefan waved it away, observing me, waiting for me to reply.

“There's nothing to be afraid of,” I said. “It's simple. My brother asked me to.”

“You trust your brother like that?”

“Yes. He would never ask me to do something dishonorable.”

He muttered something in German and swung himself upright.

“You should use your crutches,” I said.

“I am sick of fucking crutches,” he said, and then, quickly, “I beg your pardon. I find I am out of sorts tonight.”

I gripped the rail as he limped toward me. “I suppose I am, too.”

“Ah. Now, this is a curious thing, a very interesting thing. Why, Annabelle? Tell me.”

“Surely you know already.”

“I know very well why
I
am out of sorts. I am desperate to know why
you
are out of sorts.”

The water slapped against the side of the ship. I counted the glittering waves, the seconds that passed. I pressed my thumbs together and said: “I don't know. Just restless, I suppose. I've been cooped up for so long. I'm used to exercise.”

He leaned his elbow on the railing, a foot or so from mine. I felt his breath as he spoke. “You are bored.”

“Not bored.”

“Yes, you are. Admit it. You have had nothing to do except fetch and carry for a grumpy patient who does not even thank you as you deserve.”

I laughed. “Yes, that's it exactly.”

“There is an easy cure for your boredom. Do something unexpected.”

“Such as?”

“Anything. You must have some special talent, besides nursing. Show it to me.” He transferred his cigarette to his other hand and reached into his pocket. “Do you draw? I have a pen.”

“I don't have any paper.”

“Draw on the deck, if you like.”

“I'm not going to ruin your deck. Anyway, I'm hopeless at drawing.”

“A poem, then. Write me a poem.”

I was laughing, “I don't write, either. I play the cello, quite well actually, but my cello is back at the Villa Vanilla.”

“The Villa Vanilla?”

“My father's house.”

Stefan began to laugh, too, a handsome and hearty laugh that shivered his chest beneath his dinner jacket. “Annabelle. Am I just supposed to let you slip away?”

“Yes, you are.” His hand, broad and familiar, had worked close to
mine on the railing, until our fingers were almost touching. I drew my arm to my side and said, “I do have one talent.”

“Then do it. Show me, Annabelle.”

I reached for the sash of my dressing gown. Stefan's astonished eyes slid downward.

The bow untied easily. I let the gown slip from my shoulders and bent down to grasp the hem of my nightgown.

“Annabelle—”

I knotted the nightgown between my legs and turned to brace my hands on the railing. “Watch,” I said, and I hoisted myself upward to balance the balls of my feet on the slim metal rod while the moonlight washed my skin.

“My God,” Stefan said, reaching for my legs, but I was already launching myself into the free air, tucking myself into a single perfect roll, uncurling myself just in time to slice into the water beneath a silent splash.

9.

“You are quite right,” called Stefan, when my head bobbed at last above the surface. “That is an immense talent.”

“I was club champion four years running.” The water slid against my limbs, sleek and delicious.

He pointed to the side of the ship. “The ladder is over there, Mademoiselle.”

“So it is.”

But I didn't swim toward the ladder. I turned around and kicked my strong legs and stroked my strong arms, toward the shore of the Île Sainte-Marguerite, waiting quietly in the moonlight.

10.

I lay in the rough sand without moving, soaking up the faint warmth of yesterday's sun into my bones. I thought I had never felt so magnificent, so utterly exhausted and filled with the intense pleasurable relief that follows exhaustion. The water dried slowly on my legs and arms; my nightgown stiffened against my back. I inhaled the green briny scent of the beach, the trace of metal, the hint of eucalyptus from the island forest, and I thought, Someone should bottle this, it's too good to be true.

I didn't count the passing of minutes. I had no idea how much time had passed before I heard the rhythmic splash of oars in the water behind me.

“There you are, Mademoiselle,” said Stefan. “I had some trouble to find you in the darkness.”

I sat up. “You haven't rowed all the way over here!”

“Of course. What else am I to do, when Annabelle dives off my ship and swims away into the night?”

I rose to my unsteady feet and took the rope from his hand. “Let me do that.”

“I assure you, I can manage.”

“If your wound opens—”

“Don't be stupid.” He pulled on the rope and the boat slid up the sand. I took a few steps away and sat down again. My legs were still a little wobbly, my skin still cool after the long submersion in the sea. Stefan reached into the boat and drew out the silver bucket and a pair of glasses.

“You've brought champagne?”

“What's this? Did you think I would forget the refreshment?” He sank into the gravelly sand next to me and braced the bottle between his hands. His thumbs worked expertly at the cork until it slid out with a whisper of a pop.

“You are quite mad.”

“No, only a little. A little mad, especially when I saw Annabelle's body lying there like a ghost in the moonlight, without moving.” He handed me a foaming glass. “And then I thought, No, my Annabelle would never swim so far through the water and then give up when she had reached the shore. But here.” He set down his own glass in the sand and shrugged his dinner jacket from his arms. “You must take this.”

“I'm not that cold, really. Nearly dry.”

“And how would I answer to God if Annabelle caught a chill while I still wore my jacket?” He placed it over my shoulders, picked up his glass, and clinked it against mine. “Now drink. Champagne should always be drunk ice-cold on a beach at dawn.”

“Is it dawn already?”

“We are close enough.”

I bent my head and sipped the champagne, and it was perfect, just as Stefan said, falling like snow into my belly. Next to me, Stefan tilted back his head and drank thirstily, and the beach was so still and flawless that I thought I could feel his throat move, his eyelids close in bliss.

“That woman,” I said. “The blond woman, the one who came to visit you. Is she your mistress?”

“Yes,” he said simply, readily, as if there couldn't possibly exist any prevarication between us.

“She's very beautiful.”

“That is the way of it, I'm afraid. Only the rich deserve the fair.”

I laughed. “I thought it was the brave. Only the brave deserve the fair.”

“A silly romantic notion. When have you ever seen a beautiful woman with a poor man? An ugly man perhaps, or a timid one, or a stupid one, or even an unpleasant one. But never a poor one.”

“Do you love her?”

“Only so much as is absolutely necessary.”

I swallowed the rest of my champagne and set the glass in the sand between us. My vision swam. “I don't quite know what you mean.”

“No,” he said. “Of course you don't.”

He lay back in the sand, and after a moment I lay back, too, a few inches away, listening to the sound of his breath. The beach was coarse, not like the sand on my father's beach; the little rocks poked into my back. Stefan's jacket brushed my jaw, enclosing me in an intimate atmosphere of tobacco and shaving soap. The moon had slipped below the horizon, and we were lit only by the stars, just as we had on the first night as we rushed through the water toward the safety of Stefan's yacht. I had known almost nothing about him then, and ten days later, having lived next to him, having spent hours at his side, having talked at endless length about an endless variety of subjects, I didn't know much more.

“I love your library,” I said. “You have so many lovely books.”

“Yes, it is the family library, collected over many generations.”

“Your
family
library? Don't you think that's risky? Keeping it all on a ship?”

“No more risky than keeping it in our house in Germany, in times like this. When a Jew is no longer even really a citizen.”

I lifted my head. “You're a Jew?”

“Yes. You didn't know that?”

“I never thought about it.” I laid my head back down and studied the stars. Stefan's fingers brushed my hand, and I brushed them back, and a complex and breathless moment later we were holding hands, studying the stars together.

“Tell me, Annabelle,” he said. “Why have you never asked me how I came to be shot in the leg, one fine summer night on the peaceful coast of France?”

“I thought you'd tell me when you trusted me. I didn't want to ask and have you tell me it was none of my business.”

“Of course it is your business. I will tell you now. The men who shot me, they were agents of the Gestapo. You know what this is?”

“Yes, I think so. A sort of secret police, isn't it? The Nazi police.”

“Yes. They rather resent me, you see, because instead of waiting
quietly for the next law to be passed, the next column to be kicked out from under me, I am seeking to defend the country that I love, the real Germany, the one for which my father lost his eye and his jaw twenty years ago.”

“I see.”

“I will not bore you with the details of what I was doing that night. But you are in no danger from the French authorities. I want you to know that, that I have not made you some sort of fugitive. But it was necessary, you see, that the man who shot me didn't know what became of me, or who had helped me to safety.”

“My brother.”

“Yes, de Créouville and his friends. And you.” He lifted my hand and brought it to his lips, which were warm and soft and damp with champagne.

My heart was jumping from my chest. I felt my ribs strain, trying to contain it. I opened my mouth to say something, and my tongue was so dry I could hardly shape the words.

“I'm glad,” I said, “I am
proud
of my brother, that he was helping you.”

“Yes, he is a good man.”

“I suppose”—I swallowed—“I suppose you'll go on doing these things, whatever they are. You will go on putting yourself in this danger.”

He didn't speak. We lay there in darkness, shoulders touching, hips touching, hand wound around hand. I might have drifted to sleep for a moment, because I opened my eyes to find that the stars had disappeared, and the sky had turned a shade of violet so deep it was almost charcoal. Next to me, Stefan lay so still I thought he must be asleep. I didn't move. I was afraid to wake him.

I thought, I will remember this always, the smell of him, cigarettes and champagne and salt warmth; the strength of his hand around mine, the rhythm of his breath, the rough texture of sand beneath my head.

“It's almost dawn,” he said softly.

“I thought you were asleep.”

“I was.”

The water slapped against the sand. A perimeter of color grew around the horizon, and Stefan sat up, still holding my hand. “The sun will be up soon,” he said. “We can't see it yet, because of the cliffs to the east. In Venice, it is fully light.”

“I haven't been to Venice.”

“It is beautiful, a kind of dreamy beauty, like a painting of someone's memory. Except it smells like the devil, sometimes.” He nodded at the faint violet outline of the Fort Royal, just visible above the trees. “I have been staring at that building through my porthole, every day. Thinking about the men who were imprisoned there.”

“Yes, I noticed that book, when I brought it from the library. The Dumas, the one about the Man in the Iron Mask.”

“Except it wasn't really an iron mask. It was velvet black, according to those who saw him. Voltaire was the one who turned it into iron, for dramatic purposes, or so one supposes.”

“Have you ever been inside?”

“No.” He paused and smiled. “Would you like to go now?”

“What, now? But it isn't open yet.”

“Even better. We will have the place to ourselves.” He swung to his feet, a little awkwardly, and pulled me up with him. “A good thing, since you are only wearing a nightgown and my dinner jacket.”

“What about your leg?” I said breathlessly.

He shrugged. “Don't worry about my leg anymore, Nurse. You are off duty, remember?”

11.

We walked slowly, because of my bare feet and Stefan's leg, and because the world around us seemed so sacred and primeval, like
Eden, filling with pale new light, fragrant with pine and eucalyptus. There was a long straight
allée
leading directly to the fort, and we saw nobody else the entire way. “There are fisherman in the village,” Stefan said. “They are probably setting out in their boats. And there will be a lot of tourists later in the morning and the afternoon.”

“I'd rather wake up early and spend time with the fishermen. I'd rather see the place as it really is, as it used to be lived.”

“Yes, the tourists are a nuisance. Have you been to Pompeii?”

“No. I've never been to Italy at all.”

“We must go there someday. You would like it very much. It is as if you have walked into an ordinary old village, except you begin to walk down the street and you see how ancient it is. There are shards of old pottery littering the ground. You can pick one up and take it with you.”