Nothing That Meets the Eye (40 page)

But Richard slipped out the door when the last group of people were leaving, and Esther heard him say to her over his shoulder, “I'm going to drive a few people home, Esther. See you in a little while.”

Frieda was among the people, Esther saw. Over an hour later, Richard had still not come home, and Esther knew he would say to her, “Oh, I stopped in the Schwarzwälder for a final drink with the Bernsdorfs,” which would be most unlikely considering the way he had dispensed the brandy tonight. With satisfaction, Esther saw that it was a quarter to one. The woman Frieda shared her apartment with should be getting home now, and Esther hoped grimly that she might catch Frieda and Richard in an embarrassing position. But on the other hand, the woman might know of it already, Esther thought, and, being the same kind of woman as Frieda, might even condone it. That was much more likely.

Richard came in just after one and closed the front door stealthily, as if he thought she might be already asleep upstairs. When he saw her in the living room, he looked surprised.

“Why are you so late?” Esther asked. It was not at all how she had planned to begin.

“Oh, the Bernsdorfs suggested we have another drink. We stopped in a funny little bar called Die Spinne.”

“I don't believe you. I think you were with Frieda at her house.” Richard's face looked as blank and astonished as if he had just realized she had clairvoyant powers. “You don't have to lie, Richard. I know it now. I would like it much better if you just admitted it, and also that you see her nearly every afternoon after work. Do you think I'm so stupid I can't find out when your office really closes?”

Richard had a small guilty smile on his thin lips. He rubbed his mustache self-consciously. “Well . . . yes, Esther. It's true. If you insist on my telling you.” He smiled wider.

“And what do you expect me to do?” Esther asked. She was shaking, though somewhere inside herself, she felt firm and hard as stone.

“Why . . .”—he opened his bony hands—“do whatever you like, of course, my dear,” he said almost tenderly, but in those words Esther heard his unconcern whether she suffered now or not, whether she stayed with him or not, and she hated him. He was like a strange machine rather than a human being, a machine that had gone back to its old movements and was blind and deaf to her, as if their years in London had never been. Esther knew suddenly she would not want to talk with him, would not want to touch him or even see him ever again. He started to say something to her, and she said she did not want to talk anymore. Then Richard went upstairs.

Esther called the maid, and had her make up a bed for her on the sofa. She did not even want to sleep in one of the guest beds upstairs. She lay without sleeping for several hours, thinking of London and of her friends there. She imagined the Campbells and Tom Bradley and Edna welcoming her back, and all of them having dinner together in the restaurant in the King's Road again. She imagined getting her old job back, and the routine of her London life, marketing for the little she needed on the way home from work, buying tea biscuits at the shop off the Strand. No matter how poor she would be in England, she would be happy there. It seemed to Esther that the greatest happiness in the world would be to have her own little job back, and her own money in her pocket, and to be able to do what she wanted to do in the evenings. Esther could hear English voices around her, the clipped shouts of Cockneys in Shaftesbury Avenue near her office. She saw a man step courteously aside to let her go first into the big red bus at Hyde Park Corner, where she always changed, and then she fell asleep.

Esther left for England two days later. She had wired to Tom Bradley she was coming, and he had wired back he would meet her at the air terminus. Richard maintained a shrugging attitude to the last, mitigated somewhat by a pretense of believing that she would surely change her mind and come back soon. Esther did not even reply to this suggestion. But she was smiling as she said good-bye to him at the airport. She was so happy to be free!

“Good-bye,” Richard said, trying to make his tone and his look say everything he was too lazy or too selfish to say to her.

Esther shook his hand and said, “Good-bye, Richard,” but she looked right through him, and his bony hand might have been so much dust.

NOTHING THAT MEETS THE EYE

T
here was nothing unusual about Helene that met the eye. She was a little taller than most women, five feet seven and a half, and perhaps more attractive, but not remarkably so. She had eyes that looked sometimes blue, sometimes gray. Her hair was a dark reddish brown, parted in the middle and drawn back in a small knot that was tidy only for five minutes after she did it in the morning and after her predinner bath. Her lips were somewhat thin, and when she smiled, the smile seemed brighter because of the sharp upward corners of her mouth. Her nose was slim and straight until the tip, which turned suddenly up. Helene thought her nose comical, and her worst feature. She was neither thin nor plump, and she walked a little stiffly, as she was inclined to be knock-kneed. She was forty-five.

There was nothing unusual about her appearance as she came into the Hotel Waldhaus in Alpenbach on a Wednesday afternoon in January, wearing stretch ski pants and black boots lined with white fur, a green Tyrolean jacket, and stood at the hotel desk to register, yet—after her first brief, approving glance around the simple green and white lobby, her head back, a smile of satisfaction and recognition on her face—everyone's eyes seemed drawn to her. The hair bun was untidy, and her lipstick had worn off during the sleigh ride from the station. There were little wrinkles under her eyes, and two horizontal ones across her forehead. She looked not nearly so glamorous as most women who entered the Waldhaus, yet the bellboys—two lads in Austrian green hovering expectantly at the end of the desk—the tall porter in long green overcoat with double row of silver buttons down the front, the manager in wing-collar and cutaway, and two men guests and the wife of one who were then crossing the lobby, all turned their heads to look at Helene, and their eyes inexplicably lingered.

“Sorry! I made a mistake,” Helene said in English with a Viennese accent, laughing.

“Your hands are cold. It's a cold day.” The manager was practicing his English, though he knew she came from Munich. The hotel and most of its guests spoke German by preference, but French, Italian, and English or a mixture of all was frequently heard and was the rule rather than the exception.

Helene corrected her blotch of the date, and followed the small boy who was carrying her worn antelope suitcase. The boy kept glancing up at her as they rose to the third floor in the lift. “Lots of people here now?” asked Helene. The boy was hardly older than her son Klaus.

“Oh—enough,” replied the boy. Then, gulping, “Will you stay long?” He asked it like a question he should not have asked.

“A few days,” said Helene, smiling at him as she stepped out of the lift.

Her room was large, square, and white-walled, decorated with a green carpet and green curtains embroidered in red. The windows looked out on a snowy slope on which a few distant skiers glided. She tipped the boy with a ten-schilling note, which he glanced at before his eyes returned to Helene, and he backed out of the room, murmuring his thanks.

Helene hung up a few of her clothes, and rang for a half bottle of champagne. She sipped a glass as she gazed out the window. The world looked wonderfully pure. She opened the window and leaned on the sill, and wriggled her toes inside her heavy socks. Her toes were warm now. She was pleased with the place she had chosen—Alpenbach. Once she had been here with her husband and another couple from Vienna, but so many years ago, her memory of the town was vague. She remembered only that it was rather pretty. That was what she wanted, something rather pretty and with no strong memories attached.

She put on her boots again, and the loden Walkjanke, a ski hood, and went out for a walk. The road led down to the village half a mile away. Helene hesitated, then turned and took the path on the other side of the hotel, which climbed.

“Guten Tag . . . Bon jour,” she replied to the greetings of returning skiers whom she passed.

She did not realize that they turned to look at her, and then asked each other, “Who is she?”

The wind had blown the sandlike snow from the larger rocks of the mountain, exposing tiny flowers that grew in the rocks' shelter. Many had intricate blossoms of blue petals, some were pink, some yellow, some white. Together, they looked like the patterns of a kaleidoscope. Others, isolated, suggested miniatures of blossoms under the glass of Victorian paperweights. Helene bent low over a few of them, wondering at their delicate color against the frozen whiteness of the snow around them. The little flowers were prepared for the snow by long experience and by old adaptation, she thought. At the proper time, they opened their minuscule blossoms with a gentle and cheerful defiance, as easily as a magician creates a miracle with a turn of the wrist. Helene heard a soft crunch of footfalls behind her, and saw a blond young man in a fur-lined jacket trudging toward her.

“Good afternoon! You're walking all the way up?” he asked in ­German.

Helene looked up at the mountain in front of her, then back at the young man. “I don't know. I doubt it.” She was annoyed at being joined, but only briefly annoyed. What did it matter?

They fell into step together, as the path was just wide enough for two.

“My name is Gert von Boechlein,” the young man said. “You've just arrived today, haven't you?”

His face was open and smiling, he was no more than twenty, and he did not look the kind of boy who would speak to a middle-aged woman without being introduced, Helene thought.

“I arrived about an hour ago,” Helene said, brushing some strands of hair back from her face. “Whew! I'm not sure I care to go all the way up there.”

“I shouldn't think so! Do you know it's eight kilometers to the top?” He laughed. “However . . .”

“However?”

“We might go a little farther. There's a very pretty view from that rock.” He pointed to a great black rock a quarter of a mile up.

They climbed on, he glancing at her every few steps. “You're from Vienna?”

“Yes. But I've lived in Munich for years.”

“But you have the Viennese style.” He waved airily a hand encased in a thick sheepskin mitten. “My mother and sister are here at the hotel. You must meet them. I mean, they must meet you, if you'd like.” A blush made his cheeks pinker. “Would you think me impolite if I asked your name?”

“Helene Sacher-Hartmann,” she replied. She bent to look at another tiny patchwork of flowers, plucked a pink one and pulled its stem through a buttonhole of her jacket. “It's so small, it's lost on me,” she said.

“Oh, no. No, it isn't at all.”

They looked at the town from the height of the rock. The boy pointed out where the best Konditorei was, just around a curve past the church spire, where a sleigh with two horses was then turning. He said his mother and sister Hedwig, who was fourteen, had hot chocolate and cake there every afternoon at four.

“Don't you go with them?” Helene asked.

Gert blushed again. “Not—not today.”

As they were descending the hill, Helene slipped and Gert caught her hand swiftly and just as swiftly released it, as if he had burnt himself. “Pardon!” he said. Then, a few seconds later, “I didn't go today with my mother and sister because I saw you come into the hotel and I—I wanted to meet you.”

“That's very nice,” said Helene, smiling, but she spoke absently, because she was not listening. She was conscious of the pure cold air in her lungs, delicious as cool water when one is thirsty.

The boy chattered on about his school now. He was studying in Graz to be a hydraulic engineer. At the hotel, he spoke with a frantic undertone in his voice. Could she possibly, would she possibly join him and his mother and sister in the bar of the hotel at seven-thirty for an aperitif?

Helene looked at her wristwatch and saw without thought of any kind that it was thirty-five minutes past five. “Yes, why not? Thank you.” Then she left him to go to her room.

Helene was early for her appointment in the bar, and in fact she had half forgotten it. At seven, after a hot bath and a change into a dark green woolen suit with a wide fringed scarf of the same material draped around her neck, she entered the bar, which was already full of people. A leaping fire crackled in a white fireplace. Ordinarily, Helene would have been uncomfortable entering a room like this, for she was somewhat shy, and it gave her pleasure to realize that she did not feel shy or unsure now, not for an instant. She glanced around quickly, remembering Gert, and, not seeing him, continued toward the bar's counter, where as it happened every stool was taken. But a man slid off his stool and offered it to her.

“Permettez-moi, madame.”

“Oh, thank you. I only want to order something,” Helene said in French, smiling at him.

“But do sit down. You see there isn't a free table.”

“Thank you.” Helene ordered a Kirschwasser.

The Frenchman insisted on paying for it with some money he had on the counter. He was about forty-five with dark hair, a small mustache, and heavy black eyebrows. He asked her if she had been to Alpenbach before, how long she was staying, and other usual questions, and the man seated on the other side of the Frenchman, who was now standing, listened and watched as if he knew the Frenchman, though the Frenchman did not introduce him.

“Do you know Paris?” asked the Frenchman with a sudden tenderness in his voice.

A few moments later, he asked if she would join him at his table at dinner. Helene had suddenly realized that one of his gray eyes was of glass. He had slender, restless hands. He had said he was a cellist in an orchestra in Paris. Helene accepted his invitation, but said she was to meet some people in the bar at seven-thirty.

“I don't know why I wear this watch anymore,” she said, glancing at her wristwatch. “I never pay attention to it. I'm early.”

“If you had come at seven-thirty, I might not have been able to meet you,” said the Frenchman. “My name is André Lemaitre.—But yes,” he added with a frown, smiling. “I would have met you somehow.”

When Gert and his party of two arrived, she left the Frenchman and her empty glass, and sat at a small table which Gert had reserved. His mother, fine-featured and blond, seemed a bit cool at first, which did not bother Helene in the least, but after five minutes the mother warmed up, and they were all laughing and talking as if they had known each other a long while. The subject was the cross-eyed and possibly half-witted stationmaster at Alpenbach who had today misdirected a mountain of Alpenbach luggage which had barely escaped being sent on to Vienna. Gert's sister Hedwig wore a touch of rouge on her lips and was beginning to bloom with adolescence. She stared at Helene with a pleasant, dreamy expression, but said little. Gert was the man of the table, making sure the drinks were attended to, and behaving with an air of pride and possession toward Helene, as if she were a captured prize, which amused her. When they got up to go to dinner, it seemed understood that Helene would join them, and Helene had forgotten the Frenchman until he pursued her down the hall to the dining room.

“Madame!—Pardon, madame, you have not forgotten that you—”

“Oh!” Helene touched her forehead like one gone mad, but she laughed at herself. “Will you forgive me, Frau von Boechlein—and Gert—but I did promise this gentleman I would dine with him.”

“You what?” Gert burst out, then controlled himself. “Yes. Well—if you did, I am certainly very sorry. Very.” He looked absolutely grief-stricken.

“There is tomorrow, Gert.”

“Tomorrow,” Gert said firmly. “For lunch? If you are not out ­skiing.”

His mother gave him a glance which he did not notice.

“Yes, tomorrow luncheon if you like,” said Helene, including all the three in her look. “Thank you for the aperitif. It was a pleasure to meet you.”

“A pleasure,” Frau von Boechlein said kindly.

At their table, which was a table at which four could sit, they were joined by the man who had been on the other side of André in the bar. André did not seem pleased about this, but he introduced him to Helene as his “skiing friend,” and within a few minutes André seemed to have forgotten his annoyance. Each of the two men talked with Helene as if the other man did not exist.