The Keeper of the Walls (56 page)

Lily was aware that she'd been standing there, not moving, for several minutes. Ask, then, she thought. Ask about Mark, who came all the way from Paris to save your parents from trouble. Ask about Mark ... because you've thought about him a lot lately. You've thought about him
all the time.
But her throat felt strangled, and her feet couldn't move.

“Hello, Lily,” he said then, framing the doorway, and when she turned to face him, her face coloring, she noted at once that he had changed. He'd aged. He was as old as the century: forty years old. And his curled, sandy hair had turned salt and pepper above his ears. He was more attractive than he'd been as a perfectly chiseled young man of twenty-four, when they'd first met in the living room of the Robinson family homestead.

“Hello, Mark,” she answered, holding out her hands and walking gingerly toward him. She felt the tears burning the rims of her eyes, all the tears of exhaustion and frustration that she'd kept inside all through this dreadful week of tribulation.

When she felt him seize her hands and draw her to him, Lily saw the room begin to tilt to one side, and when he caught her going down, it had become a revolving arena of red and golden stars afire in her head. But it would be all right ...all right . . . because she could feel his hands under her arms, his virile strength holding her.

“
B
ut you're not a Frenchman
,”
Lily said to Mark.

They were standing together in the grocery store, listening to the radio. It was Monday, the seventeenth of June. That morning, Nicky had finally arrived on his bicycle, and they had left him at home with his sister and grandparents.

The news, blared over the store, had brought all the shoppers to a halt. “That's Marshal Pétain's voice, unmistakably,” someone had whispered. And then they'd heard him say that France could no longer continue to fight, and demanded peace.

Mark had moved closer to Lily, encircling her shoulders with one arm. She'd burst into tears. And then, tremulously, the owner of the grocery store had started to intone the
Marseillaise.
And all the assembled patrons, one by one, had joined in—Lily's voice, tremulous but clear, for three rounds of the same patriotic hymn. His own cheeks had been wet, his own throat knotted, his own voice merging with all of theirs.

“I'm a human being, and a free man,” he now answered softly. “And I've been living on French soil for seventeen years.”

She felt herself melting with affection for him. “Look,” he told her. “Maybe it's just a German station. It could be a false bulletin.”

She shook her head, despondent. They paid for their groceries and left. Outside, it was drizzling in a suffocating heat. The seashore loomed green-gray, and turbulent. They walked home in silence, weighed down by the news and by the weather.

Over the next few days, news bulletins followed one another, bringing confusing and contradictory news. Jacques stationed himself in the small
salon,
near their wireless. It was cramped in the little villa. The three women slept in the guest room, Mark and Nicolas in sleeping bags in the
salon.
There was never any place for a moment of privacy. And yet, the feeling of being all together, as a family, was overwhelmingly appreciated. How strange, Lily thought: Sudarskaya's become a fixture among us. And Mark . . . Mark was like a big brother for Nicky, a companion, old enough to be his father but never making this age gap felt. And the Walters treated him with such casual familiarity, as if his presence were a natural fact of their own lives, that everyone else simply had to follow suit.

Yes, she admitted: in Austria, we were awkward around each other. I was in a transitional stage of life, and neither one of us knew what I wanted. I
had
to try again with Misha. If his father hadn't been killed, something else would surely have come up to give our marriage another chance. But now . . . he'll never come back, and if he did ... I wouldn't be the same woman, the same wife. I probably would not be prepared to accept him.

And yet there
was
an awkwardness. As long as there were other people around, Mark and Lily could extend their fondness for the group in a more or less natural fashion to each other. But when they were alone, electric sparks were in the air, which were hard to ignore. Yet they did try to ignore them. If their fingers touched by mistake, they tried to avoid each other's eyes. It was the eye contact that was the most deadly. She made an effort to look at his nose, at his hairline ... at anything but the hazel eyes that revealed her own self, as he saw her. My God, she thought, deeply perturbed: he still cares.

It didn't make any sense for him to care. She'd never been in love with him, as a young girl. She'd loved him, yes, but as a dear, close friend ... a relative, almost. But now . . . since Vienna, actually . . . she saw him differently. She noticed his compact, trim body, his proportioned arms and legs, his muscled torso. She learned how he blinked his eyes, how he smiled with a certain amused irony. And at night, she tossed restlessly in her narrow cot, seeing him in her mind's eye.

Nicky learned that Trotti and her family were in nearby Toussat, and he started to make daily trips there on his bicycle. Both had missed taking their
baccalauréat
examination in June, and, having compressed two years in one just for this, Nicky, especially, wanted to take the make-up that was being offered in Caen in July. Normally, there was always a make-up in September for those who had failed their orals in June. But, because so many people's lives had been upset by the sudden disaster of Dunkirk, and by the German invasion, a special test was being set up for those who had studied in the region of Caen. Nicky and Trotti had heard about this from a friend who had remained in Saint-Aubin.

Nicky therefore decided that come what may, he would find his way back there to take the exam, and to bring back the boxes that Lily and Sudarskaya had left in the attic of their house. Lily's first reaction was one of pure horror. All the Normandy coast had been set off limits by the Germans, who were rearming for their attack on Britain. A person could not penetrate this region without special papers issued only by the Germans to those who possessed a connection with them.

“How on earth do you intend to get through?” she'd asked.

“I don't know. I'll have to invent something at the station in Nantes. But don't worry, Mama. It's not dangerous—just problematic. Who knows how long we'll stay in Arès? I don't want to fall behind. And besides . . . we need the things you left at the house.”

She'd had no choice but to shrug in defeat. Mark told her, afterward: “He'll never get past the line of demarcation. So don't worry. He'll be sent home, but at least he'll have done his utmost to accomplish what he wants. This is so important to him!”

Trotti at first seemed excited, wanting to go with him. But as time passed, she became afraid, probably discouraged by her parents. “I'm sure we'll go back to Paris soon,” she said to Nicky. “And I'll just take the
bac
in the fall.”

“But we don't know what Paris is like. At least, in Normandy, we
know
what to expect.” He swallowed his disappointment, then smiled crookedly: “Hey,” he told her. “It's okay this way. I'll be a
bachelier
and you'll still be a green schoolgirl!”

And so the month was progressing.

But with Nicky so often at Trotti's, the little house appeared that much more spacious. Lily and Mark ran into each other in corridors and the kitchen, or going in and out of the house, and without Nicky near Mark, acting as a buffer, their eyes met, more and more frequently. Like electric sparks—quick, magnetic, fiery—then gone.

On June 20, Hitler and Mussolini met in Munich to discuss terms for the peace, and Bordeaux was bombed, killing nearly fifty people. The Germans were in Rennes, Niort, going toward Vichy. On Saturday the twenty-second, they had reached Clermont-Ferrand, and because of the frantic movement of the troops, all passenger trains were requisitioned. Germany let it be known that it would ask for the total neutralizing of the French armed forces, so that it might hurl itself at Great Britain without fear of French intervention. “Why doesn't he ask for the colonies?” Jacques demanded, suspiciously. And that day, France signed the dreaded, shameful Armistice, and in the Walter household there was unrestrained weeping.

June 23, the rumor spread that the Germans wanted eighty billion francs, and all the colonies. The British were furious at the French for capitulating, and in Arès, the English tourists had all packed up and left the territory. The next day, news came that the Germans planned to enter Arès at eleven. But they didn't come.

Kira had settled on the living room sofa, her knees tucked under her, and was reading a novel. Outside, a light rain was falling, and Nicky was staying in Toussat, where he'd bicycled over to have lunch with Trotti's family. The young girl could hear her mother and Mark moving in the kitchen: talking, and perhaps preparing food. She set her book down and leaned back, suddenly alert.

Mark.
What was he doing here anyway, with her family? She could feel a wave of resentment building inside her, just thinking about it. Years ago, she'd liked him. He'd come to see the Steiners in Vienna, the year that they'd been separated from her father. Kira still didn't understand about that year: why Lily had left Misha. So much had happened that no one had ever thought to explain to her.

But now she was less confused. She
knew,
just
knew,
that if Mark continued to stay, her parents would never be able to put their life back together again. She had dreams of going to America, to her father—of all of them being together again. But Mark! He'd ruin everything.

Lily came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a clean washcloth. She looked tired, but there was an unusual glow on her face that irritated Kira. Her mother was middle-aged, much too old for flirtation. And obviously, Mark had been flirting with her. Kira could feel the anger welling up, the tension.

“What's the matter, darling?” her mother was asking. “You look upset.”

“It's nothing.” And then, all at once, it tumbled out of her. “That's a lie. I just don't like it when you're with Mark. I don't like
him!
Mama, he acts as though he's a part of this family—and he
isn't!
I wish ... I wish you'd just tell him to go away.”

Lily stood dumbfounded in front of her daughter. “But Kira, that's so unfair! Mark's been more attentive to Grandma and Grandpa than Uncle Claude ever was. We've all come to depend on him ... to need him.”

“
I
don't,” the young girl said, almost viciously. She could feel tears coming, and her heart ached again for her father, for their special times together. “I don't think any of us needs Mark MacDonald! You just think you do, because he's always following you around like a puppy. But Papa's going to send for us, I know he will, and
he'll
take care of us—not some
stranger!”

To Lily's horror, she saw that Mark had come into the room, and was now standing quietly next to her. “You apologize, young lady,” she addressed Kira, her voice tight with anger. “You apologize at once to Mark! You had no right to speak this way!”

Mark laid a hand over her forearm. “It's okay, Lily. She voiced her feelings, that's all. No harm done.”

“She voices her feelings whenever she pleases, regardless of whom she hurts! That's been Kira, all her life. And I won't have her insulting you.”

Kira stood up, her chin jutting out defiantly. “I'm
not
sorry. Mark's a stranger. I didn't say anything that wasn't true!” And she ran from the room, slamming the front door behind her. They saw her running out into the street, under the rain, her long hair streaming dramatically behind her.

Mark took Lily to the sofa, holding her to him, and then said: “She's right, you know. She's seen what you and I have tried not to see. That we want to be together. And she still sees you as a married woman . . . married to her father.”

Lily raised her eyes to his, and answered: “But I
am
married. Whether or not we may want to be together . . . I'm still married to Misha.”

He stood up, his face tightening. “And what do you intend to do about this . . . Princess Brasilova?”

She took a deep breath, trying to deflect his irony and the pain in his voice. “I don't know.”

“But you don't love him anymore, and you don't want him back.”

“We're in the middle of a war, Mark. It's not exactly the right time to decide whether or not to get a divorce. Soon the Germans will be swarming all over, and we'll be scrounging for food. I'm not in the proper frame of mind to decide my future. A divorce is something over which one should deliberate with peace of mind.”

“But we can't give you that. So you have to decide what you're going to do about your present—our present. You're thirty-five. Stop trying to be perfectly fair to him, and start thinking a little of yourself ... of your youth, of your beauty, of your
present.
It seems to me you haven't had any fun in many, many years. I'd love to promise you the world, Lily, but I can't. As you yourself said . . . it's not the right moment.”

“What, then?”

Her brown eyes had never seemed so nakedly appealing. She was dressed simply, in a beige cotton dress, and she had swept her hair up, more carelessly than usual, so that now, strands of the strong, vibrant tendrils were curling around her oval face. She rarely wore makeup. Now, in that clear, honest face, the only thing that he could read was her naked plea for him to decide for them both ... to spare her any future guilt over her own choice.

“I want for us to be together,” he said, fervently, taking her hands in his and kissing her fingertips.

He could see her face accepting this, like a new gospel. She was still so childlike, so innocent! The young girl who had run to the confessional, in need of reassurance, still sat before him, so little changed that something powerful stirred inside him. “God,” he said. “How I love you!”

That evening, Kira avoided her mother. Both were ill at ease, and guarded. Jacques turned the radio on. It was Tuesday, the twenty-fifth. At 9:00
p.m.,
Marshal Henri-Philippe Pétain spoke. The conditions of the Armistice were: the country would be occupied from above Lyons, through Bourges, to the Spanish frontier; the three armies would be demobilized. Everyone was supposed to go home, and the French government would remain independent.

“It's a day of national mourning,” Claire said softly. Her face was wet with tears. In the small room, nobody spoke. Jacques moved to turn off the TSF program, his face long and lugubrious.

Then Kira said: “Mama and I are the only genuine French here. Raïssa Markovna is Russian; Grandma was born Belgian; Grandpa's Swiss, and Mark's American.”

“But this is more our country than any other,' Sudarskaya replied. “We can weep for it, too.”

“Let's go to bed, Kira,” Lily said, holding out her hand as a peace offering to her daughter. Grudgingly, the girl took it. But her eyes flashed one second at Mark, and he could read in the bright green irises her triumph over him. She had scored a point because of her uncanny understanding of her mother's vulnerability. And he, like the once proud French nation, had no choice but to capitulate.