The Ambassador's Daughter (14 page)

Stefan was dead. I had imagined it secretly in the places so dark I could scarcely acknowledge them. Had I brought it on him? Even through my sadness, I knew that such things were not possible, that the universe did not operate according to the whims of my mind.

In the days that followed, my sadness mixed with new ideas. I could remain in England and take classes, or perhaps travel farther abroad as a governess. Surely in my grief and my search for a new direction, I’d be allowed more than the usual latitude.

Word that Stefan was alive did not come for nearly six weeks. “Found in a hospital in Belgium. But, darling, he’s been quite badly wounded. His legs have been hurt, there may possibly be other injuries, as well. You must prepare yourself.”

I was silent for several minutes, overwhelmed by a combination of shock and relief and, to my shame, a tinge of disappointment. “Will he make it?”

“I believe so. He’s very strong of will, according to Walter.” My uncle had been using his contacts at the ministry to procure information. “It must be the thought of coming back to you that kept him alive.”

“That’s wonderful news.” But my voice was flat and without meaning. I had come to accept Stefan’s death in recent weeks. I’d been sad for him, of course. But freed from the expectations of marrying him, I’d begun to make plans. Now he was back and the visions of a life for myself crumbled to dust and blew away with the breeze, as if they’d never been there at all. The old world began to tighten around me like a noose.

“Do you believe in God?” Georg asks, drawing me from my memories. I tilt my head at the sudden shift in conversation.His tone is philosophical now. “You’re a Jewess, aren’t you?”

“Yes.” His words strike me as somehow abrupt, just short of rude.

“Are you religious?”

“I suppose.” Mine is the naive and childlike sort of belief that comes from things taught rather than deeply considered. Religion isn’t something I ever questioned; it was just something that we did, part of the expectation of who I was to be. But it was not something I thought about on a deeper level. “You?”

“I stopped believing, really, the day I saw my brother swallowed into the sea.” He is asking whether my faith was shaken, as well, by losing someone I loved.

“The men were awful to the Jewish sailors, I’m afraid,” Georg says. “They hazed them, beat them, took their food. Once there was a particularly grievous assault of an, ahem, sexual nature.” He is clearly uncomfortable but unwilling to shield me from the truth.

“Oh!” Stefan’s letters had given no hint. There had been only cheer in his writing, bright talk of the future we would have, building a house. It was as if he had to doggedly persist in his belief that he would return unscathed—a belief that was shattered nevertheless at the Marne.

My guilt rises. After all Stefan has been through, he deserves a life full of joy, a hero’s welcome or at least a woman who wants to be by his side.

“It was a horrible thing, the way they treated the Jewish lads,” Georg says. “That’s why Palestine is so important.”

“Oh?” I flare. “You want to ship all the Jews off to the desert?”

“No, of course not. But a home of their own, a safe haven.”

“Germany is our home,” I persist. My family came to Prussia in the seventeenth century, when only a few Jews were allowed in, and stayed, our lives interwoven with the fabric of the non-Jewish Germans who were our neighbors and friends. I cannot identify with some strange Semitic land I’ve never seen.

Georg sits, staring wordlessly over my shoulder. “And you?” I find myself emboldened to ask, pushed by the need to change the subject. “Do you have a fiancée?” He shakes his head. “I’ve never been involved with a woman,” he confesses. “I noticed them, of course, like any young man would, but there was work and my studies. And they always seemed interested in the most superficial things. I’ve never found one I could speak to as I do you.” This last comment, too intimate for the short time we have known each other, catches me off guard. Yet I feel exactly the same.

“I thought there would be time. And then well, war changes a person. Have you ever been to a carnival, one of those with the merry-go-round that spins so very fast that afterward when you lie in bed at night you feel like you are still spinning?” I nod, trying to follow the story without letting images of Georg in bed intrude. “I lay awake at night and I hear the cannon fire against the ship and the screams of the men around us as they sank to a cold watery death while we stood hopelessly by.”

He buries his head in his hands and I start toward him, seized by the urge to comfort him with more than just words, to wrap him in my arms and rock him like a child. But as I near he stands and takes a step back. “And that is why I will never marry or be of any good to any woman.” His eyes are steely, as though he regrets having let down his guard and confided in me. “Good evening, Margot.” He gets up and walks into the bedroom. I stare at the now-closed door, stunned.

I take my coat and start for the hallway. “Margot, wait...” I turn back as the bedroom door opens again. I wait for him to apologize for his outburst. “We won’t be able to work tomorrow,” he says instead. I wonder if I have done something wrong, whether my work is not pleasing to him. “The dinner party,” he explains. I recall the gathering in Paris that both he and Papa are dreading.

“Of course. If you’d like, I can keep working on my own.”

“It’s not that. Rather, I was wondering...” He is gazing at me squarely now. “Would you like to accompany me?” It takes me several seconds to comprehend he is asking me to go as his date. “Perhaps if I ask your father...”

“No!” I say, too vehemently. Papa will never approve and then he will tell Georg the truth about Stefan. “That is, I told Papa I would go with him.” It is a lie. “I will meet you there.” Better, too, to avoid the many questions from Papa that Georg’s invitation would provoke.

I walk from the hotel hurriedly. The feelings Georg stirs in me are unlike any I have ever known. But until now, at least I could take comfort in the fact that they were one-sided, a pretense that has been shattered by his invitation. How is it possible that someone as attractive and worldly as Georg could be interested in me?

A few minutes later, I barrel into the flat. “I should like to join you for the dinner party, if you don’t mind,” I say before Papa can look up. Papa does not respond, but his eyebrows lift. For so long I have tried to avoid the social obligations of the conference.

“I hadn’t thought you would want to.” He had mentioned the dinner party previously only to ask my forbearance in missing our usual Sabbath meal together, not with any serious thought that I would want to go.

“I’d enjoy an evening in the city.”

“I’d love you to join me.” He smiles at the prospect of my escorting him. Celia’s lack of any official status and the quiet nature of their relationship makes it impossible for her to attend such functions with him and so he often goes alone. Then a light dawns in his eyes, as if he suddenly understands my newfound interest in the occasion. His brow furrows with consternation. “Margot,
liebchen
. About Captain Richwalder...”

“I’m helping him with the translation, that’s all. It’s good for my language skills.” He dips his chin in that way that signals he isn’t convinced by what I’ve said. “You don’t like him,” I observe, trying to hide my disappointment.

“He fights for a living. He must be at least ten years older than you.”

“Five only,” I counter.
Technically six
.

“And he’s odd,” Papa continues, undeterred.

“It’s the combat, Papa, that’s all. The things that he saw and he heard...” I stop, realizing that my words are revealing the extent of our conversation, an intimacy that goes well beyond just work.

“That may be the case,” he concedes. “The war changed people in so many ways and we all have to live with who we are now. But Georg’s not Jewish.” Finally, we are getting to the heart of the issue. Why, I wonder, thinking of Krysia and Marcin, should that matter? We have become so assimilated. Papa doesn’t even wear a yarmulke anymore. There are some things, though, that are still sacrosanct. Intermarriage would mean children that might not be raised Jewish. But I cannot engage in this debate with Papa without admitting to him that there is something to his question.

“Of course not,” I say quickly, avoiding the confrontation any other answer would bring. I swallow over the lump that has formed in my throat. “Anyway, I’m engaged to Stefan.” The explanation hangs hollowly and without conviction.

His brow wrinkles. “Maybe we should get away for a bit when the conference is over.” He fears that he has been neglecting me and that I’ve gravitated toward Georg out of loneliness. “Perhaps this summer we should rent a villa on the coast.” Does he expect us to be here that long?

Not waiting for a response, he turns back to his papers, our conversation apparently over. I walk uneasily toward my room, then stop, turning back. There is no one in the world to whom I feel closer than Papa. Yet despite our deep affection, there are vast areas of darkness, things unsaid, parts of ourselves that we cannot share. Once upon a time the idea of keeping secrets from Papa was unfathomable. There was the unspoken between us—the fact that he and Celia were
together—but that was not quite a lie. Our trust is a thread that, once pulled at, is swiftly unraveling.

Later that night I lay awake thinking about Georg. Why hadn’t I told him the truth about Stefan, the fact that he is still alive and waiting for me back home? It would have been the natural response, but now it is too late. Georg is a man of principle and ethics. I feared that if he knew I am not by Stefan’s side, he would judge me less than honorable. But it is not his judgment I am feeling—it is my own shame.

I remember Georg, standing too close behind me. Warmth rises from my legs and I bring my hand low, trying to silence the feeling, but this only increases my longing for him. I have no business thinking such things. I know so little of matters between men and women. With Stefan there had been a few innocent gropes. I’ve heard whispers of the other girls at school and learned a bit from novels, the ones I did not let Papa see. But the rest is a gaping hole in my comprehension, a curtain I cannot pull back. My secret thoughts have always been nameless and faceless until now. I press harder and my desire crests, then ebbs. Finally, I turn and close my eyes, still seeing Georg’s face in my mind.

Chapter 7

“Are you ready?” Papa stands at the door to my room, waiting patiently.

“Just another minute, please.” As he retreats, I pull back a lock of hair for what feels like the hundredth time, but it breaks free once more. I throw down the pin, frustrated. I have never been any good at dressing and polishing and I always wind up looking as unkempt as before I started. It seems a waste trying. “The lack of a mother’s touch,” I heard Tante Celia remark once when she thought I wasn’t listening. She tries to help in her own clumsy way, buying me lipstick and powder for my nose, but they reflect her own taste, stiff and heavily scented. I imagine my mother here, smoothing my hair, giving some advice on what I should and should not say at dinner. A rare and unexpected wave of longing for her shoots through me.

I take a final glance in the mirror, patting with resignation the tangle of curls that have ceded into a tight ball from the dampness and fog. My eyes peer out, too large for my face, making me appear something of an owl.

An hour later, we arrive at the Swiss ambassador’s residence, a Le Marais town house double the usual width with carved wrought-iron balconies. The drawing room where drinks are being served is a staid affair, with plain beige drapes and a hardwood floor that shows its scuffs through the polish. In contrast to the wild galas I’ve attended previously, the mood is quiet, even somber. The German delegates cluster on the opposite side of the room from their hosts, like adolescent boys and girls at a dance back home, too shy to mingle.

As Papa hands our coats to the butler, I scan the room but do not see Georg. Perhaps, since I’d declined his invitation to come as his guest, he has decided to defy expectations and remain at the hotel working. I am seized with the urge to flee back to Versailles and do the same.

A moment later I sense him, lifting my head as his square frame fills the doorway that separates the foyer from the great room. It is the first time I have ever seen him in his dress uniform, resplendent with the rich blue fabric that contours to the gold-braided shoulders. Medals of valor adorn the broad expanse of his chest. Suddenly it is as if the air has been sucked from the room, making it impossible to breathe.

All female eyes turn toward him. A handsome man, even an enemy soldier, is an oasis in the desert that was left behind by those who went to the front and never returned or who came home broken like Stefan. The room shrinks around Georg as he surveys the room, his expression grim. He was late intentionally, I decide, wanting to spend as little time here as possible. His steely eyes take in the gathering. There is a seriousness to him, a wisdom and worldliness beyond his years. The things he has seen have worn grooves in him, like driftwood pounded by the water, making him fascinating in a way that other men simply are not.

His head turns then in my direction and as our eyes meet, a light dawns within him. I hold his gaze, mindful that I am staring but unable to look away. His face breaks wide open then with the vulnerability of a young child. The people and sound fade, leaving just Georg and me and then endless space between us. In that moment, the walls crumble, revealing the attraction that should not exist, but nonetheless does.

Papa is at my side now, but my ears buzz with such a din that I cannot hear what he is saying. I pretend to listen, still watching Georg out of the corner of my eye as he crosses the room. I am filled with shame at the way my pulse quickens. But the daughter of a British viscount whom I’ve encountered at a few social functions intercepts Georg and takes his arm. She leads him to the fireplace, a ravenous dog about to devour a steak dinner. My heart sinks. Leigh Arrington is an alabaster beauty, with a tall, willowy grace I could never hope to match. I feel silly and childlike by comparison. How I wish we were back in the drafty study at the hotel, just the two of us.