The Keeper of the Walls (53 page)

won't be enough for me to study on Saturday. I skipped a grade so I could pass my
bac,
and to me, that's the most important thing in the world.”

She folded her arms over her chest, and said, sarcastically: “How pretentious, Nicky! And . . . how unromantic. I thought you'd be sweet enough to spare my feelings, and at
least pretend
that
I'm
the most important thing in your life!”

Turning red, he replied: “You're not a ‘thing,' anyway, Trotti. You're a person, and you know I like you. But I'm not going to let you bully me into an outing when I know I'd be risking a poor grade in physics. It's my worst subject.”

“We never do
anything,
” she shot back at him. “All the others go places and have fun, and we just study. Don't you know that they make fun of us at school?”

His brown eyes met hers, calm and steady. He was not about to show her how her stinging words had hurt him. Instead, he sighed. “Look, Trotti. I know you're disappointed. I'll try to make it up to you sometime when I'm not swamped with work. But—” Suddenly, his control broke.
“You can't
understand!
I
have
to pass my
bac,
I have to start my life, because I'm the only one who can do anything for my family! You've
got
a father. Mine abandoned us! That's the reason I wanted to rush through my studies ...so I can start earning some money for Mother and Kira.”

But Trotti merely shrugged, still sullen. And then, seeing that his concerns, his
life,
seemed less important to her than an afternoon with her friends, he turned his back on her and strode into his house, feeling an ache so deep that for a moment, tears burned on the edges of his lashes.

In the weeks that ensued, Nicky's habitual evenings at the Voizons' were not resumed. Madame Voizon, for the first time, stepped out of the line for fresh bread, and walked up to Lily and Sudarskaya, who were waiting for a pound of dry beans. “I'm not sure what's happened,” she said, and Lily noted how cultured her voice was, and how soft-spoken. Trotti's was harsher, somehow: she didn't possess her mother's refinement. “We miss Nicky. My mother had taken to him, and used to play a game of dominoes with him every night. And then ... he was so considerate. To save us all from the humid nocturnal air, he made it his job to walk the dog before going home.”

Lily was surprised. If Trotti had inserted herself into the Brasilov household, how much more, it seemed, had Nicky into the Voizons'! Trotti was sixteen, Nicky a year younger. She wondered then how hard her son must be taking the separation. Her heart contracted for him.

That noon, when he returned home from school, his face was pale, drawn, with unnatural circles beneath his eyes. She waited for him to confide in her; when he didn't, she remained tactfully silent. For the next few days, she watched him circumspectly. He was eating very little, and appearing distracted and, she thought, distressed. Was it all over this headstrong young girl? Lily asked herself.

That evening, she took her daughter aside, and asked: “Do you have any idea what's been upsetting your brother? Was it something at school?”

Kira shook her head. “He had an argument with Trotti. Now she won't even speak to him. But he hasn't told me why.”

“Then, do me a favor,” Lily said, on an impulse. “Ask her to come by the house tomorrow afternoon. I'll send Nicky on an errand, and she and I will talk-”

Lily wondered if she was doing the right thing. Nicky was fifteen, and might resent her unbidden interference. Yet she also knew that her son's unhappiness could only be resolved by an adult's getting to the heart of the matter. She wasn't sure Trotti would come, and she wasn't even sure she liked the girl. But she knew that adolescent pain could sometimes run deeper than the situation warranted.

The next afternoon, she sent Sudarskaya out with both her children, in the hope that Trotti would come. And she did, promptly and politely. Lily took her jacket and drew her into the kitchen, where she'd set up teacups and a brewing pot. “Kira said it was important, Madame,” she said, a bit awkwardly. It was the first time that the two of them were alone, speaking one-on-one.

“You and Nicky have quarreled,” Lily stated. “And now he's brokenhearted. I just wondered, Trotti, if there was any way I could help.”

The girl appeared surprised. “Help? But how? Nicky just doesn't want to do
anything
fun. I like him, really I do—but I'd also like to go out sometimes, with our friends. He's so ... intent ... so
obsessive,
about his studies.”

“Perhaps the fault is mine. Nicky's taken on more than his share of responsibilities. But he's
always
been ambitious, Trotti. He's so conscientious. He knows that the only sort of man who can succeed in a career is the one who'll work diligently to achieve it.”

“He says it's because he has no father.”

Lily was shocked. Trotti's face had set into lines that were almost ugly. It was, Lily realized, as if she'd just accused
her
of putting too much on Nicky's shoulders. And maybe she was right. “It's been difficult for all of us,” she answered, her voice trembling. “But hardest of all, I suspect, on Nicky. He's such a fine young man, Trotti! He wants to take care of us ... even of the old piano teacher, Raïssa Markovna. You have to admire him for this, not criticize him. He doesn't give up where most adults would have, months ago. And this business of two grades in one has been a big burden.”

“Then . . . why d'you let him go ahead with it?”

“Because,” Lily replied quietly, “he's old enough to make some important decisions on his own.”

She poured them each a new cup of tea, then eyed the girl levelly. “You and Nicky had such a nice, open friendship. I suggest that you make up your disagreement, instead of letting it ruin the rest of the year for both of you. And, Trotti—don't make him the focal point of your free time. Enjoy yourself. You have other friends. If Nicky has studying to do, there's no reason you shouldn't be out with Diane Boucher, or Charles, or Émile. You're a nice group that's always doing things together.”

“But excursions aren't the same when he's not with us.”

“Each of us has to do what's right for himself. Don't ruin a perfectly good relationship over such a small matter. You're older than he is, Trotti: it's up to you to be the wise one.”

Lily smiled then, and Trotti, shrugging, had to smile back.

I
n the days that followed
, slowly but surely Trotti and Nicky began to put back the jigsaw pieces of their friendship. And, two weeks later, what his mother had hoped for took place: once more, after dinner, Nicky went to play dominoes with the old grandmother, and Trotti stopped by to borrow his German grammar book because she'd left hers at school.

The friendship had resumed, although of course not with its initial trusting freshness. On May 10, 1940, Hitler made a clean sweep through the Netherlands and Belgium, and on through the Maginot Line. It seemed inevitable now, given the paucity of resistance the Germans had encountered, that they would eventually penetrate to Paris. Now the war was felt, and everybody quaked. But Nicky and Trotti were busy preparing for their
baccalauréat
examinations, and almost as busy with each other. Lily saw their heads touching, their hands linked together. It might no longer have been the intense emotional communion they had shared in the beginning: but now, the two young people appeared to have gained a new physical awareness of each other. A new phase of the relationship had opened up.

One night, Lily felt compelled to have a talk with her son. ‘I'm worried,” she said, wetting her upper lip and feeling for the right words. “You and Trotti have become ... so
attached.
And there's a war on. Who knows where you'll end up—and where she will. Before you choose a bride, there will be many other Trottis, Nicky. Don't fall too hard: cushion yourself by withdrawing now, just a little. She's a compelling girl—a very strong, willful girl, who can turn a boy's head and make him forget his common sense, his hopes for the future.”

Brown eyes encountered their match, silent and expressive. “You don't like her,” he remarked finally.

“I have no reason not to like her. She comes from a good family, with good values. It's you I'm worried about. You're younger than she is. If you let yourself become carried away . . .”

“You don't have to be worried, Mama,” he countered gently. “It's not that way between me and Trotti.” Seeing her relax, he looked thoughtful, then said, “And . . . there's something else. Ever since I found out about Grandma, I've felt . . . differently about religion. I've been reading about the Jewish faith . . . and I like it. It makes sense to me. I think, Mama, that when the war ends, I'll try to learn more about it. Catholicism was always too . . . well, mystical for me. Judaism's more down-to-earth.”

Lily nodded, speechless. “Trotti's a devout Catholic. I don't think I could be happy with a wife who put such faith into being granted absolution by a priest. She and I have discussed it, many times. To me, priests are just men, and I think that whole ritual is a bit ridiculous. One day, I'll meet someone who's going to share more than just a snack by the oceanfront. It isn't just the bit with the priest . . . it's all that it tells me about Trotti. She needs someone who'll understand her ways, and I need . . .”

Laughing, he shook his head in self-mockery. “I need to finish my homework.”

T
hat night
, Lily lay in bed thinking of her children. How different they were! Nicky had a deep understanding of human nature, but, like all young people, he tended to go to extremes. He soared in his beliefs, in his altruism . . . even in his newly formed religious convictions. She, at eighteen, as sure as she'd felt about her unshakable faith, hadn't thought to exclude either Mark or Misha as a possible husband, though one had been Protestant and the other, Russian Orthodox. But in Catholicism, as long as one promised to rear the children in the faith, it wasn't so important that one marry within it. Among Jews, there tended to be more of a community feeling . . . Wolf had called it the sense of “the unbroken chain.” And her son had become imbued with this feeling. In spite of his conditioning, in spite of her own efforts to the contrary—in spite, even, of his father's ardent anti-Semitism—the essential spirit in his family's ancestral archetypes had pierced triumphantly through aversion, deception, and even religious education. He had
known
who and what he was.

Kira was a different matter. She would love according to her flights of fancy, and according to the call of the flesh. She would never, like Nicky, be able to “cushion her fall.” Even now, at fourteen and a half, she still clung, fiercely, to the memory of Pierre Rublon—and Lily knew that unless Pierre deceived her, broke her illusions, or otherwise forgot her, she would pledge her heart and soul to him. Unless, of course, somebody else came out of the blue yonder to completely captivate her, canceling out each and every previous emotion. Kira was like Misha: vulnerable through the tender parts of her being, parts that so few people even knew existed, seeing only the hard carapace that covered them.

At least, Lily thought, beginning to drift off to sleep, she wouldn't have to worry about Nicky and Trotti—or not as much as she'd been doing.