The Keeper of the Walls (41 page)

M
isha sat in his office
, his eyes bloodshot, the pulse in his throat hurting with its intensity. In front of him lay sheaves of invoices, which he now pushed aside with an almost listless gesture of hopelessness. This morning, while he'd been having breakfast in the dining room, with Philippe de Chaynisart, a strange, yet now familiar figure had approached their table, unceremoniously. Strange, because he'd never laid eyes on this particular messenger of fate, and familiar, because he'd come to recognize the telltale signs of their ominous presence every time one of them had come up to him: the ubiquitous bill collectors sent to confront him and humiliate him like scum at their feet. He'd seen this one before Philippe, and had straightened up, his face a mask of imperious hauteur, hiding the fear that gripped his stomach.

“Mikhail Brasilov?” the small, rotund man had demanded.

“Yes, it is I.”

“I have an order to repossess your furniture for nonpayment of debts.”

“Nonpayment to whom?”

“To the Bouleaud Funeral Services.”

Misha had registered this with a small inward shock. So they were planning to collect on his father's casket, and embalmment. But this was natural: funerals, after all, were part of business. He had sighed once, shortly, and then said: “But I have no furniture.”

“Then, unless you possess other valuables, I shall be obliged to put a lien on your earnings, to attach a part of your salary until the debt is cleared.”

Philippe de Chaynisart's bright blue eyes had rapidly gone from the
huissier
to Misha, then back to the
huissier
in embarrassment. His baby face had turned a shade of pink. Clearly, he'd been in sympathy ... or
had
he? It was always more difficult to read Philippe than the cunning snake who was his brother.

Misha had rapidly considered the alternatives. If they attached his salary, Lily and the children would suffer every day. On the other hand . . . Lily still owned a few pieces of jewelry. She'd kept the tear-shaped diamond flanked by two emeralds, the Cartier ring he had given her for their engagement. To give away this piece, which wasn't his to give, while she was in Cannes, had seemed abhorrent to him. Yet less abhorrent than to force his family to live on half of nothing for the next half year. And so he'd gone upstairs and relinquished the ring.

He was now sitting in the comfortable Louis XIV
bergère,
thinking. The situation had gone from bad to worse. And still, no contract. He wondered about this, again. Philippe had always appeared to be on his side. Yet men like him were first and foremost businessmen . . . like the
huissier.
They might like you, they might spend time with you, but when business was bad, they forgot about you so rapidly that you wondered what chair had been seized from under you when you landed with a thump on your rear end.

He'd spent every spare penny fortifying the Jeunesses Patriotes, whose ranks had swelled to almost one hundred thousand members. But to what avail? France now needed Russia, for the French stood on weak, scared legs in the shadow of Great Britain, which made all the two countries' joint decisions. The decisions of cowards, always afraid to speak out against the affronts of Hitler and Mussolini. And in the meantime, Leon Blum sounded off about a forty-hour workweek and collective contracts. Misha had spent his money ...his family's money ... to fight against a Blum takeover, and now he felt pangs of dismay and shame. He'd never told Lily he'd done this, because she'd needed the cash. He'd thought he'd been doing something altruistic, sacrificing the comfort of his family . . . for nothing. To reach this point.

There was a knock on the door, and almost immediately it swung open. Philippe was standing in the doorway, his shoulders inside his immaculate jacket of beige raw silk looking oddly hunched, his face drawn—a tired cherub with bloodless lips. “Is something wrong?” Misha asked, rising. “You look ill.”

Philippe stilled him with a wave of his hand. “No, no. Just a bit of the heat, probably. But I'm going home to rest. I've been thinking . . . about this morning.”

He edged into the room, and passed a monogrammed linen handkerchief over his brow. “Misha, your problems have touched me. Of course, you must understand why Charles and I didn't feel it was right to renew your original contract. The restaurant hasn't done as well as you'd led us to expect. But we have every hope that come September, you will work wonders for us. Really—our confidence is still high; I want you to know that.”

Misha said, his voice hard and low: “But you still owe me money from the first year.”

Philippe sighed. “Yes. And that's why I decided to stop in this afternoon. Charles and I just made an enormous profit on a property we sold in Auvergne. It's time you collected the money we owe you. And while the cash flow is good, I'd like you to take an extra ten thousand francs, as an advance and a show of confidence on our part.”

Misha said, without smiling: “Thank you, Philippe.”

His hand on the doorknob, the Baron added: “From the hotel safe, of course, Misha. Use your keys, as always, and leave an invoice on my desk.”

When he had left, Misha organized the papers in his office, locked the door behind him, and went to the small alcove in the basement where the hotel safe reposed behind two heavy steel panels. Only three people possessed keys to unlock it: the two De Chaynisart brothers, and he himself. Now he looked carefully behind him, saw that no one was there, and unlocked the first panel. He then inserted a second, serrated key into the lock of the second panel. The safe stood open before him, revealing sheaves of paper money neatly arranged in numbered piles.

Misha counted out the eighteen thousand francs that was owed to him, and the additional ten thousand that Philippe had told him to take. He was trembling inside, with a cold, dark anger. Philippe had let him give Lily's ring to the
huissier,
without lifting a finger. Only afterward had he felt a twinge of personal guilt. Damn it, Misha thought, I should have insisted for back pay when the bill collector appeared before us. It was my right, as much as it was that funeral parlor's, to collect on what was owed to me. But he hadn't done this. He had remained, as always, the prince, the gentleman, just as Philippe had expected him to. Another might have turned the tables and humiliated De Chaynisart—but not he.

Philippe, under this guise of kindness and comprehension, had merely paid him hush money not to make a scandal. But also, Misha realized, he'd always known that the Brasilovs were now totally destitute, and therefore totally dependent on Misha's position as manager of the Hotel Rovaro. Misha, who had always worked for the pleasure of making money, now worked because he had a family to feed. For even if the De Chaynisarts were lax in their payments, they did provide the Brasilovs free rooming. And in the eyes of Paris society, Prince Mikhail was a hotel manager, which, whatever way one looked at it, was still an honorable profession.

They'll bleed me to death because they know I can't cry out, he thought angrily, putting the bills in his pocket and locking the safe doors.

I
n the morning
, as he was shaving, there was an urgent knocking at the door, and when he went to open it, his face full of lather, he saw Merpert, Philippe's balding young office clerk, his eyes nearly popping out of their sockets. “Your Excellency,” Merpert said, his teeth beginning to chatter. “Monsieur Philippe is dead.”

Misha stepped back, unbelieving. “Dead? But—how?”

“He died of a massive heart attack in the middle of the night. His
maître d'hôtel
had to call Monsieur Charles, at the Hotel Majestic in Cannes. . . .”

“Charles is in Cannes?” Misha said. It seemed to him an unhappy coincidence. With this new development, he'd have to call Lily and the children back too. He needed their warm presence around him. With Charles, the going wouldn't be easy. He said to the young clerk: “Go downstairs, Merpert, and act like a man. This is the first order of business. It's our job, yours and mine, to keep the hotel going smoothly. The guests are not to be alarmed, do you hear?”

But as he watched the retreating form of Merpert's back, he wondered why, suddenly, he felt so uneasy. Philippe hadn't exactly been a friend, but he'd been among the more trustworthy business relations he had had to deal with over the past few years. Not a bad man, fundamentally. He felt sad. He'd never really come to know the man, to see him in his intimate surroundings—but he had to admit that he'd liked him. They'd liked each other. Without Philippe, what would happen to the Rovaro? Charles wouldn't want to keep it, Misha supposed, finishing his shaving and smoothing talcum powder over his jaw and chin. Or would he?

And once again, the sensation of discomfort returned, like a dark cloud.

“
I
'm so
sorry for Philippe,” Lily said, picking up her cup of tea. “He was young, like my father. But, Misha—I don't really want to stay here if there's just Charles. I don't like him.”

Misha smiled, wryly. “Neither do I. I wonder if anyone does, actually. But look here: I've had an offer to renovate the Hotel Carlton, on the Champs-Élysées. They especially need to do something about the café. Do you remember which hotel this is?”

She nodded. “On the Champs-Élysées, near the Étoile. On the shady side of the avenue. Are you sure they really want you, Misha?”

He stared at her, confounded. But she hadn't meant to belittle him with her remark. She'd merely wished to be reassured that he was speaking about a concrete offer, and not just a dim possibility. He glanced at the fingers of her right hand, singularly naked and tanned from the Cannes sun, and felt a moment of terrible shame that he had given her ring to the
huissier.
But she'd stilled his remorse when he had admitted this, upon her return. “The wedding ring is all I need,” she'd said quietly, and where another woman might have said the words to make a good impression, he knew she'd been sincere.

“When will you tell Charles that we're going?” she asked softly, her dark, liquid eyes on his face.

“As soon as I can. He's been going over all the invoices, all the books.”

Lily sighed with relief. In all probability, life would begin to take a brighter color once they made the move. She wondered again what kind of man Charles really was, remembering the time she'd jumped from his car, and that other time, so recently, when she'd encountered him on the Croisette at Cannes.

And then, with true horror, she asked herself whether he might know, through some fluke of fate, that she was half-Jewish. Things were so good now between her and Misha. And then, just as she was musing about the closeness between them since Prince Ivan's death, she sat up with sudden horror. “Misha,” she whispered. “Mama told me, a few weeks ago, that Claude and Rirette had sold their apartment, and had decided to live in a hotel. Mama said they had chosen the Carlton. And you know how badly we all get along. . . .”

He shifted his eyes from her face to the tea tray at her side, then back again to her direct, brown eyes, filled with mute appeal. Very gently, he said: “Lily, a job's a job. We have no other choice now, do we?”

“No other choice at all, in all of Paris?”

He said, harshly: “I told you: no choice at all. So I will have to become manager of the Carlton. But I'll find you and the children some other place to live. Though on the tiny salary they're offering, I wonder how the hell I'll be able to afford it!”