The Keeper of the Walls (17 page)

It was his right, now, to fight to keep what was his, what was dear. Lily was rising, coming toward him, and putting her arms around his neck. He buried his face in her hair.

M
aryse had met
Wolfgang Steiner in a library. True, one had to admit that it wasn't your run-of-the-mill sort of library, for Adrienne Monnier, the owner, enjoyed a certain renown among the literary avant-garde. She had sponsored the Rumanian Dadaist poet Tristan Tzara, and other young French poets such as Valéry Larbaud. She held informal readings in her shop in the Rue de l'Odéon, across the street from that other literary haven, Shakespeare and Company, the lending library for American and English expatriates run by Adrienne's friend Sylvia Beach.

Maryse had gone to Shakespeare and Company first, looking for
The Beautiful and Damned,
Scott Fitzgerald's latest book, which had come highly recommended by Mark. Actually, to be honest, she'd gone there in the hope of glimpsing the author in person. But the shop had been sadly vacant of intriguing activity, and Miss Beach had been out of
The Beautiful and Damned.
So Maryse had wandered across the street to see what might be happening there. She'd found a lovely old volume of the memoirs of Ninon de Lenclos, bound in decaying leather, the corners of the pages swollen out of shape—with the wonderful ancient way of printing s's like
f's.
But somebody else had been holding the book. She'd tried to squeeze herself between the bookshelf and this person, clothed in a camel's-hair coat and muffled in a hat and scarf, and had stolen a peek or two.

He'd looked at her then, and she'd seen spectacles and a trim brown beard and mustache, and intelligent brown eyes behind the spectacles. “You are interested in this, mademoiselle?” he'd said in a strange, somewhat clipped accent.

“No, really, I was just . . . passing by,” she'd answered, blushing and trying to shrug in an offhand fashion.

“It's all right. It's quite a charming old book. Allow me to purchase it for you, mademoiselle.”

He'd been so serious, and so courtly. A Frenchman would have been ironic. She hadn't been able to gauge his age, with all that clothing. On an impulse, touched by his sincere appreciation of her interest in Ninon, she had accepted the gift, and then, an
express
at the Café des Deux-Magots. He had removed his hat and muffler, and she'd seen a pleasant face with a slightly receding head of hair. He had told her he was Dr. Wolfgang Steiner, specialist in neuropsychiatry in Vienna. He was on his winter vacation, which he customarily took in Paris. His French was good and his English even better. He came from an old Viennese family of Jews who were somewhat lax in the upkeep of the old traditions, but who nevertheless were proud of their ancestry and treasured the teachings of the Torah. He was thirty-two years old and steadfastly single, and his passions were the symphony and the opera, and, yes, a good game of tennis on a warm day.

Maryse, who had never loved any man before, and who had wondered curiously what it was that had led so many of her friends into sometimes totally unexpected alliances, surprised everyone when she brought the young man home to meet her parents, and when she continued to see him every day and every evening of his vacation. At the end of February, two days before going back to his practice in Vienna, he proposed to her. And, to the astonishment of the dandified young Frenchmen who had tried in turn to bed her down or marry her, she accepted without a moment's hesitation. Her parents were delighted. Wolf was everything they'd always hoped for in a husband for their irrepressible, lively daughter: the perfect match as well as the perfect counterpart.

Now it was Wolf who was escorting Maryse and Lily to their fittings for the wedding. It was November, and very cold. Maryse had wanted a winter wedding, so that she could start her life in Vienna ice-skating and driving around in the snow. She'd wanted a wedding where the guests would warm themselves in front of her mother's fire at the luncheon—where the women could wear furs, and the gentlemen, elegant spats and dark overcoats trimmed in astrakhan. Lily was eight months pregnant, uncomfortable and enormous, and had hoped for something after Christmas, so she could have been slender and normal. She felt ashamed in front of Wolf, ashamed of her awkwardness and lack of elegance. But Wolf was so sweet—not like the men she knew, who reveled in their maleness and made a woman feel silly and childlike, or else taunted her with ill-concealed provocation—Wolf was so sweet, so serious and kind and
accepting.
He made one feel
good.
There was a sensation of being appreciated for inner qualities, of being accepted as a mental equal, that she could only remember having encountered in Mark MacDonald. “Feel not that you have lost your friend,” he said to her in his slightly stilted French, “but that you have gained a loving brother to watch over you.” She'd felt suffused with emotion, touched to the core. Wolfgang Steiner was almost a stranger, certainly a newcomer in her life—but already he had made inroads into her heart that Claude, her blood brother, never had and never would.

Maryse's wedding was one of the big events of the season, and, at the Maison Poiret Avenue d'Antin, the
premiere
was in a flurry, sending the girls for this and that to finish off Mademoiselle Robinson's veil, petticoat, and train. The gown was shimmering white silk with small seed pearls sewn into the skirt and bodice. Lily and Wolf stood to the side, he with his customary gentle, amused smile, she with an admiration tinged with sudden sadness. Maryse's wedding was exactly what she herself had wished and hoped for: the gown a perfection of froth, the guests warm and loving. But where would Liliane Bruisson have found such guests—people that had been coming for years to see Eliane and David and their children, intelligent, intellectual people, funny people, fashionable people? Her parents hadn't known anyone like the people who had sent in their acceptances to Maryse's wedding.

Maryse went into the fitting room, and Wolf helped Lily to sit down. She was wrapped in sable, he in his usual muffler and topcoat. The
première
said, “If Madame la Princesse can be patient for just a few minutes . . . we had to do an alteration on your dress, given the ... situation. . . .”

“It's perfectly all right.”

When they were alone, Lily turned to Wolf and said: “Before I had Nicky, I came here quite often. Now I feel strange. In almost two years I've had two pregnancies—and I haven't been wearing anything very wonderful.”

“But I like you very much the way you are today, my dear Lily.” She was wearing a mint-green maternity dress of the finest cashmere, and had opened the flaps of her coat because of the heat in the
maison de couture.

“I feel bad for Misha. I'm not very nice to look at, these days.”

“Misha is a man who wants children. He can only appreciate your condition.”

She thought: But I wonder if he does. And thought again of the day she'd learned of her first pregnancy. She'd made it a point from that day on never to ask where he had been, never to question his comings and goings. But for the past two months he hadn't asked her to come to him. He'd been the best of husbands—kind, generous, affectionate—but he hadn't touched her as a woman. She, who had been reared such a strict Catholic, who had always been discreet and private by nature, suddenly felt a tremendous urge to empty her mind to Wolf—a man, yes, but also a doctor, a doctor of people's feelings and secret longings.

An assistant had brought hot tea. Wolf had turned slightly, and half risen in his chair in polite deference to a woman who had just walked in. Lily thought there was something in this woman that would make any man take notice. She was older than Lily, but still young, and was of average height. Thick, softly curling hair of the palest red—almost a strawberry blond—aureoled her head beneath a tiny strip of black velvet topped by a single mauve feather. She wore her dark mink coat open, revealing a simple sweater set, English style, over a fitted skirt. Pearls came down to her waist, knotted over her breast. And the legs were long, strong, sensual in their silk stockings. She nodded to Lily and Wolf, and sat down on the small sofa to the right of their armchairs. She opened an alligator bag and extracted a gold cigarette case, and took from it a long, thin cigarette. For a split second in time, while Lily and Wolf watched her, mesmerized, she waited, cigarette poised—and then Wolf was lighting it for her while she smiled.

I've been saved, Lily thought, somewhat regretfully, by this strange woman. Otherwise, God knows what stupidities I might have confided in Wolf. But she knew that she would never again have the courage to begin such an intimate conversation with anyone.

“Madame la Princesse, we'll just be another minute ...a thousand apologies ...” The
premiere,
confused, was back again. “Would you feel ready, in five minutes, for a quick
essayage?”

“Certainly.”

“I'll send Henriette to model the gown, so you can get an idea of what it's like from all sides again. But, of course, we had to pad her a little. . . .”

Lily didn't remember which of the models was called Henriette. She smiled—and the redhead, near them, started to laugh. She laughed with mirth, with unsuppressed lack of restraint. The
premiere
turned to her, embarrassed. “I'm so sorry, Madame. I've been so preoccupied with the gown for the Princess, who's been so patient and kind. I—”

“—didn't notice I was there. Believe me, it happens all the time.”

For some reason, they both started to laugh, and Lily and Wolf looked at them, bewildered. The
premiere
turned to them, smiling: “Isn't that something for Madame to say! Of all people . . .”

So the woman was a personality. But no one she'd met. No. If Lily had been introduced to her, she would never have forgotten her. This wasn't somebody that she or Misha knew. So she wasn't a member of the Sert group, nor of that aristocratic enclave that socialized with the Murats.

The model was coming, decked out like a pregnant woman in the most sumptuous dress of purple velvet, with fluid lines that softened the stomach. Lily stared, fascinated. Then her gaze traveled upward, and she started. The model was the same impertinent girl who had been short with her at the Palace of Elegance some months before. But that shouldn't have been such a surprise. After all, she was an employee of the Maison Poiret.

The woman with red hair, smoking her cigarette, raised her thin, arched brows and commented: “My, my. Quite a different look for you, my dear Rirette.” The model smiled, once, coolly ironic.

“We'll fit you when you're ready, Princess,” the
premiere
stated.

Lily felt overcome with self-consciousness. It was as if the
première,
the model, and the strange, alluring woman near her were all in on some secret that excluded her. The model, perfectly adept, was turning on her toes, her back slim and arched almost unnaturally. Everyone was looking at her. Lily thought: they are all more worldly than I. And she thought, almost jealously, of Maryse's impending wedding: Wolf was the sort of man who would want his wife to understand all, to absorb, to question, to accept or reject in conclusion. Misha was less liberal by a long shot.

And then there was a small commotion, and Maryse appeared, a cloud of white tulle and silk, holding up her skirt and bursting with uncontrolled exuberance: “Look! I'm a vision of nubile grace, don't you think?”

“Aphrodite in miniature,” Wolf said, with a smile.

Maryse clapped a hand over her mouth: “Oh, my God! You aren't supposed to see me in this until the wedding. I forgot!”

Wolf said, gently: “Don't worry about it. You know me, I'm a scientist. I don't believe in superstitions.”

Maryse giggled, then turned to Lily and the
premiere.
All at once, her eyes fell upon the elegant redhead sitting on the side, looking at her with an indulgent smile. She stayed rooted in place, her face paling. Automatically she nodded back, then made a quick motion for Wolf to join her in the opposite corner.

“What's wrong?” he demanded, when they could speak away from curious ears. “Are you all right?”

“I'm fine. But that woman over there is Misha's ex-wife. You've got to get Lily away from her, as fast as you can.”

“I'll do my best.”

“Then I'll go change, at once, so we can all leave.”

She left him pondering the issue. Maryse had already darted back toward the fitting room. Wolf, striding back toward Lily, overheard the
premiere
whispering sotto voce: “They say it's going to be the wedding of the season among the Israelites,” and the model's ironic retort: “She'll be Queen for a Day in the golden ghetto.” A quick anger threaded through him, which he shoved aside, concentrating instead on Lily, looking at him in some bewilderment.

Gently, Wolf circled her shoulders and drew her aside. “Maryse recognized the redhead,” he murmured. “It's your husband's first wife. Do you want—”

But Lily had stopped listening. Her lips stood slightly parted on an intake of breath, and he felt rather than saw her dark eyes suddenly drawn to the seated woman, like magnets to steel. Lily's entire body had gone rigid, then had started to tremble in small waves of shock. Amused, the woman who had once been married to Misha, who had shared his life, his bed, turned aside with a small, good-natured nod. Then she rose and gathered up her wrap, and began a conversation with the
premiere,
who gracefully maneuvered her out of the sitting room. Their voices, raised in pleasant small talk in the hallway beyond, trailed behind them. “. . . more of a physical drain to have my own revue. And the Gaîté-Lyrique isn't always properly heated backstage. . . .” Lily shivered once, then looked into Wolf's quiet, concerned face, and tried to smile.

The model, Henriette, still stood in the room, staring at her. Lily brought a hand to her throat, suffused with embarrassment. Wolf half turned, and saw the strange, pointed look on the other woman's face. It unnerved him. “Thank you, mademoiselle,' he said to her. “The Princess has approved her outfit. But she prefers to try it on another day.”