The Keeper of the Walls (33 page)

S
he's worked
for the Maison Poiret, as a model. We'll send you photographs when they come, and you'll be able to see for yourself what she looks like: rather exotic, I believe. Claude seems to adore her, and after all, that's the only thing that matters, isn't it?

Her name's Henriette, and there's another piece of news you will deduce from the photograph. The new Madame Bruisson is well on the way to having a baby! Life has a number of surprises in store for all of us. I'd never thought Claude could ever have fallen in love as hard as he seems to. She isn't my dream for a daughter-in-law, especially given the differences in background between them—and her age. But if Claude has chosen her, I shall welcome her with a full heart, and expect that you will also.

M
aryse sat staring at Lily
. “Come on,” she said. “An elopement is an elopement. Old Claude's done it after all—who'd have expected it? But it's no reason to look as if you'd seen a ghost!”

Lily had jumped up and run from the room, leaving a bewildered Maryse still holding Claire's letter. Later, when Wolf had come home, she'd told him what had happened, and shown it to him. He hadn't hesitated for a moment. “I'll be right back,” he'd murmured. “I have to go find Lily.”

He'd found her in her room, immobile, staring at the wall. When she saw who it was, she'd started to speak. “She's passing Misha's child off as my brother's,” she'd said, her voice dull and thick.

Wolf sat down on her bed, and took her hand. “Misha never wanted to marry this woman,” he remarked. “Probably, when she came to him after you'd left, he sent her packing. I suppose your brother fell in love with her and was willing to accept the child as his own.”

Lily said, tears streaming down her face: “History has a strange way of repeating itself. Now this horrible person is going to be in my family forever, and her child will always remind me of...of everything. . . . Why?
Why
does it have to be this way, Wolf?”

He'd put an arm around her, and held her.
“You
don't have to live with her, Lily. You and your brother have always led separate lives. Maybe you should tell Claire the truth—and Maryse.”

She'd shaken free, and said: “No. There's been enough mess, enough dirt as it is. Let Claude believe what he wants to believe. It isn't the first time a woman's lied to him.”

“At some point, you have to make complete peace with your mother.”

“I thought I had.”

They stayed silent after that, listening to strains of Kira's playing, on the baby grand piano in the sitting room. Then he'd said to her: “At least there seems to be some good news these last few days. In Germany, all is going quietly and smoothly, after the scare of Chancellor von Papen's resignation. It looks as though Hindenburg's seeing Hitler, but people are inclined to believe there's little chance that he'll give him the cabinet to compose.”

“And . . . what do
you
think?”

“Hitler may not be the warmonger everybody expected. But I, for one, feel somewhat relieved. If all stays quiet in Germany, then nothing will be changed for the rest of us. We'll just continue our lives and make fun of his toothbrush mustache, and he'll become a parlor joke.”

Lily had smiled at him. He was so kind to her and the children; she thought of him as a benevolent brother, much closer to her than Claude had ever been. But she somehow couldn't relate to the problems in Germany—not on this day that she had learned the disastrous news about Henriette Rivière. She'd felt a little guilty, watching Wolf light a cigar and make herself comfortable in the parlor, afterward. She'd needed him, and he'd given her the support that she'd been craving; but now, what she wanted was peace, not a political discussion.

And so, kissing him on the cheek, she'd closed the conversation, saying to him: “Maryse said she received a letter from Leon Blum, and that he thought after the recent elections that Hitler is now excluded from all hope of power. So I suppose you must be right, and we can all relax again.”

Wolf had stayed for a few more minutes, talking of “Uncle Léon,” and of his prediction. The French, he said, were more removed than the Austrians from the German question. And they'd finally signed the nonaggression pact with Russia. They were the strongest country in Europe: their line of defensive forts, designed by Andre Maginot, and the kind treatment that Briand had shown toward Germany, seemed to protect them from fearing the monster with the toothbrush mustache. Wolf finished his cigar, and stood up, sighing. “So if Uncle Leon has made this bold statement, it looks as if we shall remain a safe nation.”

She'd asked: “You mean, you Austrians?”

And he had regarded her pointedly, and shaken his head. “No,” he'd responded. “I meant we the Jews.”

The New Year had come. And then, to Wolf's profound surprise, Adolf Hitler had become Chancellor of Germany on the thirtieth of January. This was how 1933 had started off. In February, the household had been upset, reading in the news about a terrible snowstorm in England, which had buried alive some motorcyclists, while eighty children in a bus had completely disappeared. Mr. Dizengoff, the mayor of Tel Aviv, had come for a short visit, and Lily and the children had been included when the Steiners had feted the dignitary by going to hear Arthur Rubinstein playing Vivaldi. Then, on Tuesday, February 28, while Lily, Mina and Maryse had been making masks for the three children to wear for the feast of Purim, Herr Steiner had walked in on them and announced that the Communists had set fire to the Reichstag in Berlin, and that one hundred thirty of them had been arrested and a plot uncovered. At dinnertime, Wolf had argued with his father that no one knew for sure the Communists were responsible, and that, if a plot existed, he was inclined to suspect Hitler of inventing an excuse to blame his opposition and jail the members.

On the first of March, Claire cabled that a son had been born to Claude and Henriette, and that he would be baptized Alain Paul Bruisson. Lily sat alone in her room, holding the telegram—thinking of the child she'd wanted for her father, Misha's last child, which had been taken before its birth. She cried, moaning aloud and hugging her sides. Now Misha
had
a third child, and it wasn't hers; and it had been given her father's name, but she had not been the one to do it for him. Life was so cruel, so mocking. All her dreams, all her plans—all her
life!
—had come to nothing, while the woman who had shattered all was lying comfortably in her bed, holding the child she, Lily, would have given everything to hold. And the supreme irony was that Lily's mother, and Lily's stepfather, were probably at her side, making cooing noises to a baby that wasn't their grandchild, but which had been granted the right to live, and to live within Lily's own family—when it, and its mother, were the ones responsible for her pain and her children's.

On March 7, one year to the day after Aristide Briand's death, Maryse and Lily had sat listening to the disturbing news of the suspension of the Austrian parliament; Dolfuss had just assumed semi-dictatorial powers, and all, it seemed, as part of the general wave of Nazi feeling in Germany. Then, on March 10, they'd read about the possibility of a war in Poland, over the Free City of Danzig, which Hitler wanted. And Herr Steiner had said to the two young Frenchwomen: “If there's a war, France will have to march.”

Mina Steiner had asked, in a hushed voice: “Then, Isaac, shall we have to leave Vienna?”

There had ensued a horrible pause in which Maryse, Lily, and Wolf's mother had scrutinized the faces of the two men sitting in utmost seriousness on either side of the china bowl of
Mehlspeise
pudding. Then Wolf had said: “Don't you think we're all overdramatizing a bit? Danzig is very far away.”

And the women had sighed with relief, and Nicky had eaten two helpings of the thick rice pudding, and Kira had consumed five apple fritters with jam.

The next day, they heard of a devastating earthquake in Hollywood, California. “Where they make moving pictures?” Kira had demanded.

“In all of Los Angeles, darling,” Wolf had answered.

“Did many people die?” Nicky had asked.

“There were twenty-three tremors, and yes, many people were killed. The city suffered much destruction.”

“Uncle Wolf,” Kira had piped up, “does that mean there won't be movies anymore? We won't get to see Spinelly and Noël-Noël?”

“But those are French actors,” Mina Steiner had replied indulgently.

And now, in the middle of the month, the world in revolt seemed to have calmed down. Yesterday, for Purim, the children had dressed up, and Kira, in her long brown dress with ribbons of rope in her hair, had disappeared for three hours, returning with a button missing and a dirty face, and had stuck a match in the lock of the front door, which had become jammed. She'd cried angrily, when Lily had spanked her: “But it's stupid to wear the same costume for eight days! I'm not even Jewish!”

Lily had stepped back, staring at the vivacious green eyes: Misha's arrogant eyes, and his cleft chin. She could hear again, like an echo, her answer to her rebellious daughter: “In a sense we are all Jews, Kira. Don't forget that Jesus Christ was a Jew, and that he was proud of it.”

“But if there's a war, I heard the man say on the radio that it was the fault of the dirty Jews!”

Lily, holding now the brown dress, recalled vividly her sense of shock and fear. She'd looked carefully at her child, and seen a small spoiled Russian princess. She'd reached over and touched Kira, but the child had resisted. “That man you heard must have forgotten that if he is a Christian, he has to be a Jew, too. The Jews began all Western religions, my darling.”

Now Lily set the dress aside and closed her eyes, suddenly weary. Everything had calmed down—even Kira. But everywhere, in every country, people whispered about the possibility of war, and munitions were being transported. She wondered if she should take her children back to France, to remove them a step farther from Hitler. But then she decided that this was stupid. With acknowledged cowardice, she thought: Nobody knows we're Jews, anyway. Only Wolf, and he would never tell.

And immediately, she was ashamed, thinking of her best friends, of this family that had become her own, that had saved her from disaster. She thought: I'm glad that there is Jewish blood in our veins—we're in fine company.

M
isha sat
in the anteroom of the Baron Philippe de Chaynisart's offices on the ground floor of the Hotel Rovaro, 44, Rue Brunei. Around him glistened Lalique sculptures on low tables of glass and wood, splendid in the starkness of their simplicity. He glanced at his watch, perspiration beading his hairline. It was already two twenty; when he had been running Brasilov Enterprises from the Rue de Berri, he'd never kept anyone waiting: neither employee nor prospective client, neither the attaché of a minister nor a simple petitioner come to ask for a reprieve in paying a debt. But De Chaynisart had kept him waiting since a quarter to two.

He looked down at his suit. It had held up well, but in another two or three months it would need refurbishing. He couldn't see going to London to be fitted at Savile Row; the expense would not be justified. But the shoes, of Italian leather, had done better. He remembered how he'd gone through shoes all his life, every six months. He'd had to learn how to preserve his clothes. It had been only one of the things he'd had to learn, over the past year.

Had it been a year since Lily and the children had left? He laid his face in his hands, feeling a new wave of despair. Why was it that everything he touched seemed to spoil and rot? Lily. He'd been so happy with her, and she'd tried so hard, being exactly what he'd needed and desired. Why then hadn't he had the strength to stay faithful? He'd vowed to do this for her, when he'd proposed. But somehow, his resolve had wavered.