Crossing on the Paris (30 page)

Nikolai had been so sweet for most of the evening; his compliments and pet names, his protectiveness, his fiery kisses . . . his innocent smile when it was over. His desire for her had made him weak. But why had he been so rough? Was that passion? It felt like she'd taken a beating.

Swallowing hard, she remembered Chantal, a neighbor in Saint François who had given birth to a fatherless baby. Everyone had called her such terrible things! Julie lay in her bunk completely still, hearing those names—tart, slut, pig, whore—virtuously spit out with violence. Then, with decision, Julie concentrated on Nikolai's last words.

“He loves me,” she whispered to herself.

Vera lay on her bed, imagining that the roll of the ship were a flying trapeze. The view from her window was black—it couldn't be more than five o'clock—but the seas were clearly raging. From this perspective—a first-class suite on the uppermost deck—it was almost pleasant. What a contrast to her first hearty sea adventures, when the waves came crashing over the rails, soaking your skin and nearly flinging you off the boat. Snug in bed, Bibi at her side, she was smiling, assured there was no real danger, when she heard a crash.

She bolted up and groped for the lamp, then peered around the room for the source of the noise. Relieved to find the window intact, she was nonetheless disgruntled to see her portrait lying facedown on the floor.

A chill on her skin and an ache in her bones, she slowly eased herself out of bed, navigating the tilting floor. She grasped the picture with both hands, then swiftly returned to the warmth of the blankets.

Vera held the drawing in front of her, this portrait dating back to her prime. In it, her long hair was loosely gathered under a
broad-brim hat, a hint of veil covering her face. A youthful thirty-seven, she playfully eyes the artist from the side, a cocky smile captured.

The glass was cracked on the face of her former likeness, giving it some of her current wrinkles. Could this bring bad luck, like breaking a mirror? But no, this image was so old, she had already lived through its seven years of misfortune: the war, her disease, a diversity of unpleasantness.

Vera was studying the drawing, the self-assured lines, the surprising color choices (she'd always relished that touch of sea green in her hair), when she realized that this was roughly what she'd looked like when she met Laszlo Richter. This was the face he had fallen in love with. What had he admired about her? It probably had more to do with her spirit than her looks. Again she thought back on their first dinner together; describing the most elemental details of his life in Budapest—his high-level post at an international bank, his old-fashioned house with a view of the Danube, his hounds and horses—his wife had not been included. Had this face bewitched him?

She reached for her journals and pen on the nightstand. She turned to an empty page in the back (with a weak smile for the soaring balloon) and tried to draw Laszlo's face. The visit the day before with young Max—who boasted some of his grandfather's features in miniature—had helped jog her memory. After making a moderately successful outline of his middle-aged face, she proceeded to age it. She let his jaw sag, she lined his brow, thinned out his hair. Would his ears have grown long and hairy? His eyebrows uncontrollably bushy? Would he have lost his teeth? She continued adding the pitfalls of old age to the drawing, until finally it resembled a ghoul. She chuckled sadly at the sketch, thinking that, indeed, they would have made a good match, here at the end.

Vera screwed the top back on her pen and laid it on the nightstand, next to the old bank. Last night, listening to Max's bubbly
laughter as he fed the dog coins, she had already decided to give it to him. She would send Emma Richter a note. Perhaps she wouldn't mind bringing the boy round for tea?

Vera closed the book on the caricature and began to browse the alphabet memoirs, the first book she'd written. She flipped through the pages until she came to
L,
convinced that, although Laszlo had made an accidental, detached father, he would have doted on his charming grandson.

Love

I have been told that love, the most celebrated of sentiments, is generally experienced—first and foremost—within one's Family: parents and siblings and, on rare occasions, one's more far-fetched relations, such as grandparents, aunties, or cousins. These ties of childhood are then succeeded by the newfound family of one's Maturity: a spouse and offspring. However, my rather singular and solitary case did not offer me many opportunities to learn about Domestic Love. Indeed, perhaps my knowledge in this matter is rather too scarce to compose these lines.

Despite the fact my parents were eminent members of the community and had a reputation for their sociability, I barely knew them. For my education and amusement, my grandmother, the matriarch of the family and my personal guardian, provided me with a series of governesses. For the most part, these young ladies merely inspired indifference in me. A rare few I condescended to despise. One, I loved.

Miss Daphne was a refined young lady from Savannah. Although Sherman's March to the Sea had left her family impoverished, when the war ended, they sent their only daughter North, in search of a future. My grandmother engaged her and she became my companion during my
seventh year. She was not sparing with affection and kindness like the other adults I had known, and I flourished under her attentions. Unfortunately, Daphne also taught me the frail and fleeting nature of love. After only ten months had passed, she left her position, leaving me brokenhearted and alone.

Vera's first taste of love had come not from a family member but an outsider, a girl with a lolling stride and a peculiar accent. How stricken she was when, after an academic year, Daphne had abandoned her to marry. After her first experience with love (so long overdue), Vera already learned to be wary of it.

Skimming down the sequence of thwarted sentimental endeavors, she came to her husband. Odd to find him here, she sighed, in a chapter about love.

I first saw Warren Harris at a club social. Telling a tall tale, whiskey in hand, he had the undivided attention of at least a dozen people. A brawny man down from the wilds of Canada, he was in New York visiting relations. In that tired, staid drawing room, he radiated excitement. I observed him. His pleasing face displayed the lines of experience; I estimated his age at Thirty-five. His carriage was self-possessed, his expression wry. His amusing anecdote, too loudly narrated for polite society, concerned frozen rivers and beaver traps. His finger bore no ring. I was immediately attracted to him, recognizing him at once as an extremely promising vehicle to carry me away from the confines of my Grandmother's house. I had just turned eighteen.

Marrying Warren Harris provided Vera with a legitimate means of escape. The marriage itself, which lasted a full five years, had many moments of reckless diversion, but none resembling the
deep tenderness purported to be found in love. When it became clear that Vera could not have children, the festivities came to a complete stop. Not only did he crave a son, but for him, her flaw gave his infidelities just cause. Warren was the one who ultimately petitioned for divorce; when it was finalized, Vera, though tainted with the label of divorcée, was free at last.

If Laszlo had truly been devoted to her, she thought crossly, he too could have gone to the courts to dissolve his marriage. Feeling her overly warm brow, she wondered, for the first time, whether one of his unopened letters might have contained such a proposal. In that case, would she have agreed to . . . what? Love was not her strong suit. She thumbed through the rest of the journal entry dedicated to the subject. After her short-lived marriage, the remaining pages discussed not her lovers but her friends. Charles Wood figured prominently.

She closed her eyes for a moment to feel the swell of the sea. Though not unduly short, her life had been rather bereft in romantic love, despite her numerous affairs. Would she have been able to enjoy a long, devoted marriage? Or would she have soon panicked like a caged animal? She heard her pen roll off the nightstand; if anything, the storm was becoming more violent. Opening her eyes, she turned back to the unflattering illustration of a decrepit Laszlo Richter, wishing that old man were there at her side.

Constance awoke to confusing bumps and rolls. She turned on the lamp and located the sound: in the large fruit bowl, the three remaining apples were sliding from one side to the other. She stood up to investigate and felt the pitch of the ship. Stumbling over to the porthole, she looked outside and saw the dark skies and the turbulent sea. She fell into the chair to watch the unexpected spectacle: a tempest.

On the way over with Gladys Pelham and her talkative friends,
it had all been “smooth sailing,” the idea of a perilous sea inconceivable. Now, staring out at the peaked waves, a shiver rippled down her back; the
Lusitania,
the luxury liner that went down in 1915, immediately came to mind. That ship, with four funnels, was even larger than the
Paris.
The fastest ship of its day, it was able to sink, to be underwater, in just eighteen minutes. Suddenly nervous, she felt the ocean liner's smallness within the immensity of the Atlantic.

When she'd heard of the
Lusitania
tragedy—not caused by a storm, of course, but by a German submarine—she had been holding her newborn. Little Elizabeth was only a month old and Constance, still getting used to motherhood, was exceptionally sensitive and weepy. George had come in and casually told her the news:

“Did you hear about that steamer? The
Lusitania
? A U-boat sunk it off the coast of Ireland. There are over a thousand dead—men, women, and children. The millionaire Alfred Vanderbilt was on board and he's drowned as well. I bet President Wilson will declare war on Germany now!”

Constance looked down into the perfect face of her sleeping baby, clutched her tightly in her arms, and began to cry.

“What's the matter?” George asked, his eyebrows arched in surprise. “Did you know someone traveling on the
Lusitania
?”

He hadn't understood that she was crying for all children, and even more, for all mothers; they would never be able to fully protect their sons and daughters. A mother's love could not solve their problems and, despite her finest efforts, they would still face danger: illness, accident, unhappiness. She had sobbed all morning, gazing at her child, wondering at the futile task at hand.

Some weeks later, a song had come out called “When the
Lusitania
Went Down!” It was a popular tune at dances, festivals, and fairs, and some of her friends bought the phonograph record. It seemed everyone was singing it that summer, the men removing their hats, showing respect for the victims. It had made her teary-eyed every time she heard it.

Looking out the porthole, Constance hummed the chorus, hearing the warbling tenor in her mind: