The Keeper of the Walls (45 page)

She sat down on her bed, and picked up the envelope. Her fingers tore it open, pulling out a single sheet of creamy vellum. Tears blurred her sight as she began to read, and she had to blink them down her cheeks in order to make out what Misha had written.

A
nd then she felt
, inside her body, that Misha had truly left her. In spite of his final words, she was sure that she and her children would never see him again.

T
he average Frenchman
had not been much surprised when Camille Chautemps, on March 10, 1938, had walked out of the Chamber of Deputies, and resigned as premier. Tired and even bored with the constant pendular swings between the Right and Left, this French Everyman had been more preoccupied with the advent of spring, signaled by the sudden blooms of anemones in the Bois de Boulogne.

It was a national habit to listen to the news broadcasts on the radio. And so, when Everyman turned on his radio on March 12, he was shocked to learn that Adolf Hitler had marched into Austria, to claim it as part of the German Reich. Chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg had resigned, as Hitler had demanded in return for maintaining the peace. But still, the German troops stationed at the border had come through, proclaiming the beginning of the
Anschluss,
or reintegration of Austria into what Hitler called “the Fatherland.”

Lily, huddled with her children near their small wireless set at the Pension Lord-Byron, heard the news with a dreadful sense of doom. She saw the same expression forming on Nicky's face as he asked, voicing aloud her fears: “And the Steiners? What's going to happen to them now that the Nazis have taken over Austria?”

“Why didn't they leave before?” Kira demanded.

“It isn't easy to convince old people to leave their homeland,” Lily answered softly. “Mina and Isaac didn't want to start anew, in a place they didn't know. And, of course, whatever Wolf had written us, you know that he and Maryse would never have left without their parents.”

Nevertheless, a month later, Maryse and Nanni arrived in Paris, alone. The Brasilovs hurried to the Ritz, to meet their friends in Jacques and Claire's suite. For now, with Maryse's parents in America, the Walters were the closest to family for her. While Nicky and Kira dragged Nanni into the bedroom, their eyes popping out with amazement that the three-year-old toddler whom they had so loved had turned, miraculously, into this blooming girl of eight, with her father's brown hair and her mother's beautiful blue eyes, the Walters and Lily surrounded Maryse to hear what was really happening in Austria.

“It's incredible,” Maryse said, her voice low but vibrant with anger. “Chamberlain and the French don't give a damn about the Jews. They just didn't want to intervene to help Austria stay independent: and now it's too late. The plebiscite showed more than ninety-nine percent in favor of the
Anschluss.
And all the anti-Semites have come out of the woodwork. They're only too happy to apply the laws of the Reich to their own Jews.”

“We hadn't heard it was that bad,” Jacques countered mildly.

“It's worse. Wolf and Papa had been active in the Social Democrat party, and now we're terribly afraid of reprisals. On April first, nine days before the plebiscite, the Nazis sent the first trainload of political prisoners to Dachau.”

“What's in Dachau?” Claire asked.

“They call it a ‘concentration camp.' We're really not sure what it is. Probably a kind of prison. And anyway, there are already thousands of Jews waiting to hear about their fates in the jails of the Gestapo. They're forcing some to emigrate, selling their businesses at a huge deficit. Wolf was able to sell some of our family holdings a while back, and when things got bad, he decided that I must leave, since I'm a French citizen and Nanni is my child. I've brought with me a sum totaling thousands of schillings, Jacques—you must please help me to put it away for us. Because though it's only a fraction of what we own, it was all I could possibly smuggle out.”

“But Wolf will be here soon, dear,” Claire said softly.

Maryse's blue eyes stayed on Claire's, with a steadfast, ardent quality to them that finally unnerved the older woman. Claire looked down then, and nervously began to twist the cord of her silk belt. An odd, pregnant silence filled the room like a wet mist that chilled the bones. And then the children came in, singing an old Viennese nursery rhyme that they had all sung five years before, at the Schwindgasse house.

“Do you know what the German Storm Troopers sing when they're marching?” Maryse asked, her voice kept down. “‘When Jewish blood comes spurting from the knife, then things go twice as well!'”

It was a strange summer for everyone. Once more, Claire took her villa in Cannes, and this time, everyone followed her: Lily and her two children, Maryse and Nanni. And although Nicky, Kira, and the small Austrian girl filled the house with noise and games, the adults didn't have their hearts in the vacation.

Since Misha had left, Lily had not heard from him. Once or twice Varvara Trubetskaya had come to see her. She'd told Lily that Misha had arrived in New York, and had found some work. But she didn't elaborate on what kind of work, and Lily didn't ask. It was still too raw and too sudden for her. She felt bewildered, out of kilter, as if she'd been hit by a blunt object while calmly walking down a peaceful street. She was overwhelmed with sadness, imagining Misha alone, struggling with his guilt. He'd made a decision, thinking to shield her and the children from additional pain and shame; but, she felt, he'd made the wrong decision. For, when she'd returned to him after Prince Ivan's death, she'd made the commitment to stand by him no matter what. He simply hadn't thought her strong enough for this.

The beginning had been a nightmare. When she'd left him because of Rirette, she'd felt outraged and betrayed. Now, however, she felt worse. She felt totally, completely alone. Immediately, Jacques had begun to pay her a stipend of a thousand francs per month, as before, in Austria. Varvara, too, had offered to help her out, but Lily had thanked her and explained that this was in no way necessary. Jacques had thought of buying a house, finally, so that they might all live together. But Lily had turned this down, too. She knew that though they both loved the children, communal living would be a difficult adjustment for Claire and her stepfather. She preferred to continue at the boardinghouse, and to venture out a few hours a day to give piano lessons to supplement her income.

She'd felt the most wrenching heartache of her life. She
needed
to teach these pupils, because only when strangers were around her was she forced not to dwell on her own misery. Nicky's bitter eyes, the hurt and understanding shining out, silently, haunted her wherever she went. No matter how often she had tried to make him see why Misha had decided to leave, Nicky's interpretation came out the same: His father had abandoned them out of cowardice and fear of facing the consequences of his trial. He never wished to set eyes on Misha again.

With Kira, it was a different manifestation, but one equally difficult to deal with. She
hadn
't understood—at all. She'd tried to pin the blame on everything and everyone else, to make her father seem the victim. And then, every night, when she said her prayers, came the inevitable plea: “Please, God, make my Papa come home. Make us a family again.”

Nicky had said: “Mama, I'm the man of the family now, and I'll protect you and Kira. Don't be afraid.” But
he
'
d
been afraid, uncertain what to do, uncertain how to help. Whenever Kira awakened, screaming, having dreamed of Misha, it was Nicky, rather than Lily, who rushed to hold and reassure her. In those moments, Kira needed to feel that there was still a man who cared, and she clung to her brother with a strange, pitiful desperation. No, she hadn't understood. And she, like Nicky, like Lily herself, lay outside the boundaries of help. No one could make it easier for any of them.

Just one time, Nicolas had declared, bitterly: “Well, if he doesn't write to us, then he truly does want us to forget him. And if that's what he wants . . . then I, for one, shall do my best to put him outside my heart.”

“How could you be so disloyal?” Kira had cried.

“Disloyal? He was disloyal,” Nicky had replied, and gone to sit quietly at the large desk. He'd opened a book and started to read, but Lily had noticed the tears on the edge of his curling black lashes. And she'd felt a sword running through her stomach, taking all her own courage away.

Now, in Cannes, they listened to Daladier, premier since April 10, and to news of the visit of the British king and queen, sealing the already strong bond between the two countries. It seemed, Jacques commented, that France, and particularly the timid Radicals, didn't know how to take a breath without the British showing them how to do it. Strange, distant rumors reached them about the Germans' fortification of their Siegfried Line, along the Rhine, to match the Maginot. And Wolf wrote, explaining his notion that airplanes and tanks were being built at increasing speed, in increasing quantities. But around Cannes, the vacationers didn't appear to care. They went to the casino and gambled gaily, and the ladies paraded down the Croisette, the handsome boardwalk by the beach, in loose caftans of gypsy design.

In the spring, Adolf Hitler had begun to make noises concerning the Sudetenland, a region in the northern part of Czechoslovakia whose three and a quarter million inhabitants spoke German. He had spoken of injustices and prejudice leveled at these “Germans,” and, during the royal visit to France, Lord Runciman had been delegated to Prague from Britain to mediate between the Czechs and Hitler. A plebiscite had been suggested, to decide the fate of the Sudeteners. In mid-September, the French radio spoke of fortifications in Paris against enemy aircraft. And then, Hitler declared that he refused the idea of the plebiscite, and that the Czechs must give him the Sudetenland. This news threw all the French into profound shock, and after that, fear. “If the Czechs refuse,” Jacques said, “there will be war.” For Czechoslovakia had signed a firm alliance with France.

Hurriedly, Claire and her entourage of friends and family packed their bags to move back into the capital. All at once, the pretense of being on holiday had dissipated. It was important to return home, and to stay close to the wireless for news.

Maryse had taken a smaller suite at the Ritz, near the Walters. She'd confided in Claire that she didn't want to move to the Riviera, when Wolf came to join her with his parents. Eliane had written to her repeatedly, begging her to come at once to the United States, where there was no anti-Semitism and psychiatrists were always welcome. But Maryse didn't want to leave Paris. She'd been reared there, and Nanni felt at home with Kira and Nicky—and besides, the United States seemed so remote that it was difficult to imagine what life would be like there for people as fundamentally European as she and Wolf and the two old Steiners.

As tensions mounted, it was Maryse who became the focal point of the group. Although Lily had lost her husband, the two women's situations were palpably different. Misha had left of his own free will, and was absolutely safe in the United States. Lily might mourn her marriage, but with or without Hitler's intervention, Misha's plans to go would have been the same. Maryse, on the other hand, had a husband who loved her, from whom she was estranged only by circumstance. War had already struck her and her family. And so, as afraid as the others might be, they realized that she, and she alone, had experienced this war; and she alone knew exactly who Hitler was and what he could do. The situation was much worse than anyone in France could possibly have conceived.

Wolf had written to her in May, explaining that Mina had caught pneumonia and that, because of this, they would not be able to join her as soon as they had planned. He begged her not to worry. But the tone of his letters betrayed the anguish he was living with, and so she'd begged him to tell her the truth. He'd sent her by the next mail a long missive that she had to share with Lily and her parents. It was too dreadful to bear alone.

In an afterthought, he had added: “We in the big cities have not yet been physically assaulted, and of course, as long as there is Jewish money, it will be possible to help along our situation. Our plight is therefore less pitiful than that of our poorer co-religionists.”

Maryse had cried: “And for how long will this Jewish money last, before they take him away like all those others?”

Horrified, Claire, Jacques, and Lily had stared at her, their lips parted. Nobody dared to ask where “all those others” had been taken, but they remembered what Maryse had told them about Dachau.

On September 24, under a sky of molten pewter, Daladier and President Lebrun ordered the immediate mobilization of the reserves, without relying on individual notification. Hitler responded by giving the Czech leader, Eduard BeneÅ¡, until October 1 to comply with his demands. It was the eve of Rosh Hashanah. France lay quiet, its ministers called to London. “Aren't we going to the synagogue, Mama?” Nanni asked.

“I don't know if I can summon up the right prayer,” Maryse sighed. “Where is the God of Israel, who must protect His people?”

Jacques looked down at the carpet, and Claire watched him, from lowered lids. She knew that at this moment, he was struggling with an enormous weight that she, above all, had placed on his shoulders when they had first met, ten years before. His religion had been kept a guarded secret, with only a few men knowing about it from the temple on the Rue de la Victoire. Eliane and David had known—but not Maryse. And Jacques, who had always been a devout Jew, had never again broached the subject of disclosure to his wife.

Together, they had lit the candles on the Sabbath; and, when possible, they had slipped out, Claire heavily veiled, to a smaller, less conspicuous synagogue than that of la Victoire. She felt a weighty guilt about all this, and now, with Misha gone from all their lives, and the imminent threat of Hitler, she longed to let the secret out. Placing her hand on her husband's, she murmured: “Tell her that she is not alone—that we are all with her.”