The Keeper of the Walls (27 page)

In his lifetime, many women he'd known had had abortions, carrying his children. He hadn't felt the least shame for this, as he hadn't loved them, and had promised them nothing. With Lily, it wasn't the same. He loved her; she was his wife. And
maybe
she was also innocent.

An abortion would profoundly scar her, he realized. She was such a devout Catholic. But what other solution
was
there, after all? He refused to bring up another man's son or daughter as his own, granting him or her the same privileges as Kira and Nicky. It was unthinkable.

Maybe I could forget, he thought. Maybe I could force my mind to reject what I heard tonight, and what I saw. And then this child could be born like the others, and it would be
ours,
like the others.

A memory was nagging at him. He remembered now. He'd had a good friend, Grisha Orlov, in Moscow. A law student a few years older than himself. Grisha had been married to a beautiful woman called Katya. Misha had known them both well, and felt welcome in their home. He remembered how deeply they had loved each other.

And then, one day, the delicate fabric of harmony had come undone. Grisha had received a letter. Anonymous, the way they always were. It said: “Your wife doesn't love you.” Just those words. And after that, everything between Grisha and Katya had fallen apart.

She'd denied the implication, laughed it off and then become hysterical in her outrage that he might have believed it. She'd been pregnant. Misha had advised his friend to believe his wife, rather than the nonsense of an anonymous letter. Katya was beautiful: any jealous man might have written this, out of wishful thinking. And Grisha had agreed.

When the child was born, Katya had believed that finally her husband had forgotten about that abominable, faceless letter, and she'd tried to plunge ahead as a wife and mother. The child had been a splendid little girl, and Grisha had seemed proud to be her father. Until the day that he had sliced her head off, and then hanged himself from the beamed ceiling of his bedroom. Katya had lost her mind, and been institutionalized, and Misha had lost touch with her completely.

No, he thought: where doubt exists, it can never be forgotten. The child had to go—for everyone's sake, even its own. Better to end its life now, before it was begun, than the way Katya's daughter had ended hers, her head severed from her body at the age of two.

He would have to ask his God to forgive him for this. But there was no other alternative. Just as, he knew, his marriage to Lily would never be the same. He didn't trust her anymore, and would always remember how she had touched Mark MacDonald's face. Like a woman in love, carrying that man's baby.

God had paid him back in spades for his fun with Varvara, and with Rirette, and with the others who had never mattered. He'd
loved
Lily, in spite of them. And she'd turned out to have held the cards to destroy him in the most vulnerable part of his being.

L
ily sat in bed
, the sheet cool and crisp around her breasts, feeling nothing, her eyes wide open. Dawn was rising in its rose-petal colors, washing into her room through the half-parted curtains. Absently, she pressed the fingers of one hand over her smooth, flat belly. She couldn't feel the child, and nobody could see it. And tomorrow—today!—it would be gone.

It would never see its own apricot dawn, nor feel cool sheets against its tender skin. It would never be mourned, except by her. For only she, Mark, and Misha knew that it had even been conceived. Others would simply continue to see her stomach, hard and flat, and assume ... assume . . .

Tears welled up, which she brushed off with the silk sleeve of her nightgown. She began a formless prayer, like a moan issuing from visceral parts of her. “Dear God, you must understand, you must forgive me! I
can't
give up my children, the children whom I have already brought to life!” A terrible fear clutched at her, numbing her insides. Misha could be a person's worst enemy when he was crossed. He could be as ruthless as she had seen him being kind, to her, to his children. And she knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that if she didn't sacrifice this baby, he would ruin everyone's life: Kira's, Nicky's, Mark's, not to speak of hers, and, incidentally, her mother's. He would destroy them all, and in so doing, destroy himself—all because of his doubt as to the paternity of this child.

A tremendous hardness set upon her, and anger so deep that she could feel no bottom to it. Very well. She'd have the abortion. She'd become an accomplice in this mortal sin, punishable by eternal Hell according to the teachings of her catechism. But he'd have to pay, too. She would live with him henceforth in name only—for the sake of Nicky and Kira, that was all.

And in this instant of decision, Lily Brasilova realized that she was capable of hate.

L
ily couldn't sleep
.
She put down
Night Flight,
by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry—a book that moved her, with superb passages. This night of May 2, 1932, she had stayed up with Misha to hear the results of the Chamber elections. They'd stayed by the radio in the study, and Misha had called the servants to come and listen too. Together they had heard the returns: out of 615 deputies, 387 had been elected, and the rest had to be settled through a second-ballot vote. And it looked as though the Chamber was once again tilting to the Left.

She listened to the silence in the house. She'd spent the afternoon playing the piano with the children, and listening to their lessons. Two autumns ago, Misha hadn't objected to putting Nicky in the Lycée Janson, a first-rate institution. But this was Kira's first year at the Lycée des Jeunes Filles nearby. He hadn't wanted to allow her—a girl—to attend a public school; but Lily had quietly insisted that what Kira most needed was to be with other children. She needed to learn to share, to yield—and to listen to an authority that wasn't, in the final analysis, answerable to Mama and Papa. After seven months, Lily wondered how it was all going to turn out. Kira was still as difficult, as capricious, and as headstrong as ever.

Nicky was an extraordinary child. He was an excellent student. His marks were the highest in the form, and he had even begun to learn Russian from his father and grandfather. He was well liked, always a diplomat, always kind and considerate. If there was a boy left out by the other pupils, Nicky would make it a point to befriend him; and because they respected Nicky, the others would soon make overtures to include the outsider. Sudarskaya found him dexterous at the piano. He was a favorite with the servants, for he never forgot to be polite. And with his parents, he was loving and obedient.

Kira, however, had been a problem since infancy, when she had steadfastly refused to eat and to sleep. She was a spectacularly beautiful child, with her green eyes and jet-black hair—and she was aware of her impact on people when they first saw her. Misha had never spoiled Nicky; but with Kira, he couldn't resist. She would climb on his lap and cajole him, like a little woman—and he usually acquiesced to what she wanted, even against Lily's wishes. “You're turning her into a little princess before she can know what it means,” she had told her husband.

“That's all right; she
is
one, isn't she?” Misha had retorted with a certain cold asperity that had taken Lily by surprise.

She'd felt . . . left out. Misha and Kira were setting up camp together, in a land that they had barricaded against her. And after that, whenever she'd related Kira's misdemeanors to Misha, Lily had expected to be supported only on the surface. Behind her back, he would rescind the punishments that she and Zelle had set—and make retribution for her punishment by slipping his daughter spending money or sweets.

So many things had happened that year, to mark off a period of her life—of their life. They'd spent the Russian New Year's Eve dancing at the Grand Cercle Moscovite, where, once again, she'd felt a foreigner. They'd gone to the cinema to see
Marius.
They'd gone to the Salle Gaveau to hear the Ravel festival. Nights of richness of all sorts, to remember forever. And, binding them all together, a restlessness, an empty, floating feeling, as if she'd been disconnected from the whole world, and most particularly from her intimate family. A feeling that had taken several years to build up, but that, now that both children were in school and she had extra time to analyze it, had crystallized over the past few months.

Sometimes, like now, she perceived her whole body trembling, inside and out. She could feel the quaking, and her heart beating more rapidly. She remembered that this sensation had first come upon her four years before—after the abortion. She'd thought she'd done such a fine job of putting out the fire of her revolt, of accepting that she had to make this sacrifice to preserve her marriage. She'd tried not to think at all about it. And every time that the tears would mount, that she would touch her stomach or remember planning for this new child, she'd forced herself to do something else—not to analyze the pain, not to indulge it.

He'd treated her with the cool detachment of a haughty, slightly disdainful stranger, and she'd wanted to scream out her anger and her pain, to excoriate him. Instead, she'd held her tongue. He'd gone about his business, cold, absent—and she'd started to tremble, almost all the time. She'd become involved in five charitable organizations—not to think about herself, about them.

One day, Claire had said to her: “Mark was here last night, and asked how you were feeling. For some reason, he seemed to think you were
expecting.
”

She'd smiled. “Oh? Maybe, the day I ran into him near the Galeries, I looked a bit bloated. But men are funny, aren't they? They believe a woman should be ‘heavy with child' at least every two years!”

But her heart had knocked within her, frighteningly.

She hadn't seen him since that afternoon—and she hadn't spoken to her mother about any of it. Claire had gone to the South of France and quietly married Jacques Walter. They lived together in his suite at the Ritz, went to the theater, traveled to the waters during the summer. Lily had scrutinized Jacques, at the beginning; he was such a kind, Old World gentleman, no different from any other refined, well-to-do retired businessman. She felt close to him—and glad for Claire. But, at the same time, he was part of the reason Misha had forced her to have the abortion, and she could never forgive him—nor her mother. If she hadn't been discussing Claire and Jacques with Mark, that day in ‘28... She had paid for everything, from Claire's lies to her present marriage. Misha had never spoken one word to her about the abortion, nor about Mark; but she felt that this was his silent recognition that they'd struck a bargain: his pretense that nothing was changed, against her having the child taken care of. She'd been Job, proving her devotion beyond the point of human expectation—or perhaps Patient Griselda, loving in spite of perfidious treachery.

That first week, as soon as she'd been well, she'd gone to church. She'd knelt on her side of the confessional, and murmured: “Father, I have come here to obtain absolution. I have just committed a terrible crime.”

“How long has it been since your last confession?”

“Ten days.”

“Tell me how you have sinned, my child.”

The tears welling up, beginning to stream through the fingers she held as a shield before her eyes, she'd whispered: “I . . . allowed my baby to be taken from me.”

“How did you do that?”

“I . . .” Overcome by anguish and shame, she'd tried to get the words out, knowing that God would not turn His back on her, and that, at last, she would find peace. “Father, I let my husband take me to a woman—”

“You are married, then, my child?”

“Yes, Father. I let the woman . . . take the child.”

Confusion behind the grillwork. “But—how?”

“With a knife, Father. She took the child from inside me.”

She hadn't expected the total silence, nor, when it broke, the cold wrath in the priest's words. “You have committed a mortal sin for which there is no absolution.”

“But Father—our Savior, Jesus Christ, forgave all the sinners.”

“The Catholic Church excommunicates those who have sinned as you have.”

“But
I was not responsible!”

“God granted man free choice, that he might know right from wrong. I cannot give you absolution for what you have done.”

She'd stumbled out of the confessional, blinded by tears, choked by sobs. Now, four years later, she recalled it all so vividly. Her last time in church. After that, she'd stayed away, the words
excommunicated
and
mortal sin
reverberating hollowly in her consciousness.

She'd tried to kneel and pray, time and again, but the words hadn't come, had stayed in her throat, stifling her. She'd felt cold, alone. God had rejected her. It was something she never, in her life, could have imagined possible. Her kind, loving God, the Father, had shut her out. Her Church had excommunicated her, banished her forever.

Tonight, she refused to think about it again, slamming the book down on the bedside table—trembling again. She thought, wildly, that if she could just have spoken to Wolf, he might have explained to her what had happened inside her, to make her feel this way. When God had shut her out—when the Church had refused her—she'd grown cold inside.

She turned out the light, lay in bed, listening to night sounds outside. Cars, on the street. People
feeling,
loving, hurting. And she? Tears pushed against the back of her eyes, and she swallowed them down, the way she always did.

Something had stopped inside her heart; a clock had stopped ticking. She lay on the smooth sheets like a starving person, dying from lack of food. Only she was well fed, in all aspects but one. Her soul was being starved. God had withheld absolution and turned her out into the street—like the worst of Dante's sinners, consigned to the Ninth Circle of Hell.

How was it possible, then, that life was continuing all around her, that people were living and dying, that they laughed with all their heart, that they could weep?

“
S
omething is wrong here
,” Misha declared. He passed a sheaf of papers to his father, and scratched his chin. “I have a sick feeling in my stomach.”

“But these estimates ring fair,” Prince Ivan countered.

“I have to go to the Aisne Department and see for myself. Verlon says the materials are defective.”

“How is this possible?”

Misha filled his lungs with air, then let it out. His green eyes fastened on his father. “When we first examined the plans and layouts for the new sugar refinery, I consulted the rules register, and found out that we would have to go to Germany again to get building materials. This seemed simple enough. I spoke to Claude, and he made the trip. When he returned with the estimates, he told me that he had found a new supplier—a small firm called Rabinovitch and Son. German Jews. He showed me the prices they wanted for bricks, for the ironwork frame, the wood, and the windowpanes—and they concorded with those of first-quality materials. And now —our manager, Verlon, has cabled me that the materials that have arrived appear less than adequate.”

Prince Ivan fingered his Vandyke beard, and sat down opposite his son, who remained standing, a brooding giant behind his desk. “Have you spoken to Claude?” he asked.

Misha shook his head. “I wanted to speak with you first.”

“How did Claude find these people?”

“He has connections. I've never interfered with his area of expertise—after all, you and I aren't contractors. But Rabinovitch was paid
before
delivery.”

“How did you permit this?”

“It was in the contract. Claude explained to me that they're a very small firm, and need to have their expenses fully covered. He said the old man was afraid of Hitler—that he might take power away from Hindenburg, and squeeze the Jews out.”

“But Hindenburg's just proved his strength last month: he won with nineteen million votes, and Hitler had only thirteen.”

“I don't really care about the German problem,” Misha cut in impatiently. “But I have to verify what exactly's taken place in the Aisne. And I'm going to take Claude with me. We're dependent on quick construction of the refinery, or we won't be ready on time for the plantation—and then we'll lose all our revenues from the harvest.”

“And it seems to me that we're already late. There's no way to recuperate this time. How much do we stand to lose if we don't have a harvest?”

Misha said, his face dead white: “Millions of francs.” He sat down at the desk and ran his fingers abstractedly through his hair. Then he picked up the telephone, and dialed a number.

“Lily?” he said. “Pack a bag for me, please. I have to leave tonight for one of our building sites.”