The House of Dreams (28 page)

“Thank God, Beamish. The cops have been at the office looking for you. I thought they might have got you, too.”

“Do they have an arrest warrant?”

Varian nodded. “They were looking for ‘the one who calls himself Hermant.'” Beamish squatted down and rubbed the dog's ears. “I told them you had resigned some weeks ago and I had no idea where you are.”

“Thank you.”

“How was Banyuls?”

“Good. Everything is running smoothly at the border.”

Varian got to his feet. “We had a bit of a blow while you were away. Little Bill Freier has been picked up.”

“Damn. Really?”

“Someone must have ratted on him. The cops walked in and found him surrounded by all the paraphernalia of his forging operation.” Varian blinked quickly. “I daren't think what will happen to him.” He noticed the look on Beamish's face suddenly. “What is it? Something's wrong.”

“Not really, considering the cops are after me. I've, well, I've had some news. A post has come up for me at the University of California at Berkeley.”

“I didn't know you'd applied.”

“I hadn't. An old professor of mine arranged it through the Rockefeller Foundation.” Beamish lowered his eyes. “He's a good fellow. I think he looks on me as something of a wayward child. He knew I'd made it through the fighting in Spain. I think he's worried my luck might run out.”

“You? Never.”

“He may have a point. I've had a good run.”

“Congratulations.” Varian shook his hand. “Of course, you must take the job.”

“But what about our work here?”

“You think you're irreplaceable?” Varian couldn't hold on to his smile. “It's not safe for you anymore, my friend.”

“Was it ever?”

“Damn, we had some times, didn't we?”

“The best of times.”

“And you, my friend … you are the best of all of them.” He cleared his throat. “It's probably just as well you are leaving now the cops have you in their sights. When will you go?”

“Tonight.”

“So soon?” Varian felt like a mountain climber watching his rope snake free from its anchor.

“I won't risk going back to the hotel for my things, but I'll take whatever you need me to, from here, papers and so on.” Both men felt the charged atmosphere. “I'll head straight back down and on through Spain and Portugal, then to New York.”

Fry reached for his briefcase and sorted through the papers. From an envelope he pulled a torn slip of colored paper. “There, this matches up with the half our people have at the border. They know you, of course, but we may as well keep the sequence and take the next slip they are expecting.”

“Of course.”

“I can't imagine you'll have any difficulties. They've helped nearly a hundred people over the mountain routes in just six months. You can stay in their rooms for as long as you need, and work with them in the vineyards near the border until it is safe for you to cross over.”

“Won't people be suspicious?”

Varian shook his head. “If anyone notices, they always say our clients are friends who have been unable to
rejoindre leurs foyers
. I do love that phrase, the idea of returning to your hearth, your home.…” He fell silent. “You have your visas and passport ready?”

“You know me, I'm always
en règle
.”

“I've never seen a man with so many IDs.” Varian poured them two drinks. The bottle was almost empty, and he finished it off between them. On the nightstand he saw Eileen's latest letter. The words
much love—if you're interested
leapt out at him. Beneath it, he glimpsed the dog-eared corner of the telegram from the committee in New York:
Replacement arriving. Return to US soonest
. He knew another fitful night's sleep lay ahead. Every night was the same—he awoke at four
A.M.
, worrying about the refugees, his marriage, his health. Now, it no longer helped to go to bed half-cut. He always woke stone-cold sober at four, unable to rest and sleep, succumbing finally just before his alarm went off.
I was never qualified for this job,
he thought.
I only volunteered because there was no one else. It was only supposed to be a few weeks. I've been demanding New York send over someone with experience of a situation like this for months, but now …
Varian's heart stilled as he realized nobody had experienced anything like this before. There was no precedent, no one better qualified for the job than him. He had no option but to stay to the end, whatever that meant. These people needed him. He blinked quickly. “We're going to miss you around here.” He turned and smiled, handed his dearest friend in Marseille a drink. “To Buster and Beamish,” he said, chinking the glasses.

“May we always be one step ahead of them,” Beamish said, and downed his Armagnac. “Right, what can I take out with me?”

Varian took his copy of Virgil from the bed and slipped out a couple of thin sheets of onionskin paper, filled with tiny writing. “I've been waiting for the next client to leave, but you may as well take these.”

Beamish reached for the tube of toothpaste by the basin and squeezed some out until it was half-empty.

“I don't suppose you have a condom?” Varian said, rolling the papers tightly. Beamish flashed him a quick smile and reached into his pocket. He slipped the documents inside the condom and slid them into the opened end of the tube. He refilled the toothpaste and rolled down the end.

“What will you do now?” Beamish said, wiping his hands. “Will you leave for New York?”

“How can I? Someone has to hold this place together.” He glanced at Beamish, a faltering smile on his lips. “I sent them a telegram. Do you know what their response was? The committee has stopped my salary.”

“They're trying to force you out?”

“And Headline won't keep my editing job open any longer.”

“What does your wife say?”

“Eileen wants me on the next boat out of here.” Varian laughed. “But I never did like being told what to do. I think I might move back into town for a while. I'll take a room at the Hotel Beauvau. Like I say, with you gone, we need someone on hand in town.” Varian shivered. “It is kind of cold here, too.”

“I didn't want to say anything, but this place is like an icebox.”

Varian's stomach gurgled. “Don't say that, you'll make me think of food. I dream of steak and ice cream.”

“When I get to America, I shall eat a steak in your honor.”

“Are you sure you won't wait and come by the office in the morning?”

“I don't think so,” he said, unable to look Varian in the eye. “I'm not good at long good-byes.”

“Me neither.” Varian offered Beamish his hand. “Take care, old boy.”

Beamish glanced up at him. “I'll see you soon, in New York?”

“Do I always say that? It seems to give them confidence.”

“Like I said, maybe it is you who needs reassuring.”

Varian's throat was tight. “You take care, you hear? And I will see you soon, in New York, or California, Dr. Hermant, or whatever your real name is.”

“Hirschman,” Beamish said, slipping his hat onto his head. “Albert O. Hirschman, but don't tell a soul.” He gazed out the window toward the sea in silence for a moment, and Varian saw him smile one last time in his reflection in the dark window, before he turned and was gone.

 

THIRTY-SIX

F
LYING
P
OINT
, L
ONG
I
SLAND

2000

G
ABRIEL

“Is it true,” Sophie says to me, “that everyone was making love like crazy during the war?”

“What?” I stop and lean over, my hands resting on my thighs. “Jeez, woman. Is that all you kids think about? Everything was different then. Normal rules didn't apply. People changed their partners, their lives, their names. Wartime … peacetime … we're all making it up as we go along.”

“I kind of admire people who have the guts to invent their own lives,” she says. My head hangs down as I try to catch my breath, but I can see her legs up ahead.

“You're nuts if you think you're going swimming. You'll freeze your ass off.”

“I just want to put my feet in the water, wash off the blood on my leg,” she says. She peers back at me over her shoulder as she peels off her stockings, her hair blowing long and wild in the wind. I can't make out her face, just those blue, blue eyes looking at me defiantly. Blue? I could swear they were green earlier. Must be the light. “Come on, Gabriel, live a little.”

“Not so much of your cheek, missy. I told you ‘Mr. Lambert' will do just fine.”

“Stop avoiding the question,
Mr.
Lambert,” she says, tossing her stockings down on the sand like a shed skin.

“You young people think you invented sex,” I say. “The thing is, when death's all around you it gives living an edge, makes you take risks you wouldn't otherwise.”

“Is that how it was with Annie?”

“None of your damn business.” God, I hate journalists. All these years poking and prying like the fame of my public work gives them rights to my private life. I haven't spoken to any of them since 1970-something, and this was a mistake, today. I'd never have agreed if the girl's mother, Paige, hadn't called my son. My head snaps up and I've a good mind to tell her to get lost, but she's run off down ahead into the shimmering water, and there's such a grace and lightness to her that I'm lost for words. “Annie was a good girl,” I yell after her, my words snatched away by the wind.

*   *   *

Annie, Annie, Annie … As I close my eyes, I think of that first time. I'd spent the day helping Varian and the boys move the ARC into bigger offices at 18, boulevard Garibaldi. The place they were taking over had been a hairdresser's salon. I guess they had split in a hurry because they had left all their equipment—mirrors and brushes, bottles of potions, all kinds of junk.

“Is that the last of the boxes?” Varian asked, looking up from his desk. “Thanks for your help, Gabriel.”

“What do you want us to do with all this?” Gussie said, pointing at the pile of hairdresser's equipment.

“Chuck it out, would you? We need all the space we can get in here.” He gazed over to where the team were unpacking files from brown boxes. Roses bloomed across the wallpaper behind Lena's desk, framing a small white marble fireplace. He seemed miles away, in some kind of detached reverie. Varian had seemed distant for the last week or so, ever since Beamish had left.

“Here,” I said to Gussie, “let me help you.” I grabbed one end of a big mirror and helped him out the back door to the alleyway and the bins.

“It's good of you to help,” Gussie said.

“The least I can do,” I said. “I wish I could do more.” The truth is, I felt like a fraud. The guilt's as fresh now as then. Oh sure, some people are pathological liars—untruths are as natural to them as breathing—but not me. I just wanted to do any little thing that was good, and true, to help them. We carried box after box of junk out into the alleyway, making a great pile. “What do you think will happen to this stuff?”

“It won't last long out here,” Gussie said. “We're probably being watched as it is. You wait and see, as soon as it's dark someone will be down here and away with the best of it to sell it on.”

I thought of Annie. “Say, do you think it would be okay to take a couple of things for my girl?”

“Sure,” Gussie said, pulling the door closed behind him. “Take whatever you want.”

*   *   *

I headed out to La Pomme that afternoon with my pockets stuffed with hairbrushes, clips, shampoo. On my lap I balanced a little gilt-framed mirror. It made me think of Snow White: Who is the fairest of them all?

Annie and I had grown bolder—the confrontation with her parents had brought everything to a head, and now I had figured out how to sneak up the back stairs of the Bouchards' house through the old hay barn and along the roofline to her bedroom window. If we weren't allowed to see each other in public, then we would do it under their noses.

Annie opened the French windows of her room. They swung back from the wrought-iron balcony, and she stood aside, waiting for me to jump in. She had been working on the loom by the window, and she held a hank of blue silk in her hand.

“Wait,” I said, “let me pass this to you.”

“What on earth have you got there?” She put down the thread and took the mirror from me.

“It's a present,” I said, vaulting over the balcony. I closed the window after me, drawing the drapes.

“I swear you were a cat in a past life,” she said, kissing me on the cheek. She was like the heroines of courtly love to me, worthy and chaste. Devastatingly chaste. “You never make a sound.”

“Are they here?”

Annie nodded. “
Maman
is in the kitchen, and Papa is asleep in front of the fire downstairs. I said I had a headache, so I've gone to bed.”

“Poor darling,” I said, pulling her to me. “Let's see if we can do something to help.” She let the mirror fall back on the bed and wrapped her arms around my neck.

“I missed you,” she said, taking first my lower lip and then the top one between hers. I felt her tongue glide against mine, quick as a fish among the reeds. Oh, those afternoons were an exquisite torture, the silence, the fear of being discovered. They were the most erotic hours of my life, without doubt.

Her hands slid beneath my coat. “What have you got in here?” she said, reaching into my pockets. “Have you held up a beauty salon?”

“Not exactly.” I emptied my coat of brushes and bottles, setting them down on the kidney-shaped glass-top dressing table. Annie's bedroom was the only properly furnished room in the house, it seemed. The chintz drapes on the dressing table were faded but good quality, and her bed had a wonderful, deep down quilt that I longed to curl up under every time I saw it. Now, with children of my own, I can see that Annie was the Bouchards' world. They wanted her to have everything they did not. Then it seemed only right that someone so beautiful should have the best of everything.