The Keeper of the Walls (61 page)

She was a living legend, besides being the most incredible woman Nicky had ever seen. “Well?” she pressed, smiling. “Admit it, Nicolas. It's grotesque. But I like it.”

And suddenly he could visualize his father here, too. There'd been in Misha Brasilov an untamed quality that he had seldom brought home, but that, in the right sort of atmosphere, might have flourished wildly.

Without waiting for his answer, she had curled into a lacquered armchair and draped her arm over its edge. “Yes,” she said, solemnly. “You're what I expected. Not at all like Misha, and exactly like your mother. You're a Frenchman.”

“These days, Madame, I'm not certain whether that's an advantage or not. Our poor country—”

She cut him off peremptorily. “Look, Nicolas, please understand me. It does no good to speak around the subject, over and over. Old Marshal Pétain's half lost his marbles, and Laval has persuaded half of France that the Nazis are less to be feared than the sons of
perfide Albion.
I became a naturalized citizen ten years ago, but you may have heard that all the naturalizations that were performed after ‘27 are now being looked into. I have no wish to offend the ruling Boche. My idea is to smile broadly at them, in the hope that they . . . and the Vichy government . . . will continue to allow me to live as I please.”

“In other words,” he shot back, anger suffusing his cheeks with crimson, “honor is of no matter to you—just expediency!”

She simply raised her brows.
“Honestly,
Nicolas. I was looking forward to this little meeting, but now . . . you disappoint me.” She held one nail up to the light, and peered at it. “A Brasilov shouldn't mouth clichés. Especially without knowing all the facts.” Suddenly she regarded him with a look that pierced right through him, and he saw a blue vein throb in her neck. “I lived through one revolution. I lost everything I had! And I had little then, compared to now. I was a wealthy Muscovite matron, but not a personality. Here, I don't have to depend on any man to keep me. I'm
Jeanne Dalbret!”
Her nostrils quivered slightly, and she took a deep gulp of air. “But even Jeanne Dalbret, without an audience, is
nothing.
And I can't survive being just another nothing.”

“My mother has a great talent, though no one knows about it and she's poor as a churchmouse. But she survives on her sense of loyalty and decency.”

“And who are you to tell me I've no decency?” She stood up now, powerful in her fury. He remembered her playing Electra, all rage and passion, and for a split second actually enjoyed this as her most exciting performance, just for his eyes.

Then he remembered why he'd come, and rose too. Conversations with Pierre, with Mark, who could no longer send his stories in because the Germans had censored all newspapers, reverberated through his head. He answered, evenly, keeping his own anger well controlled, the way his mother did: “Madame, I'm sorry I intruded. I meant no offense. I came because I had a personal problem, and thought you might be the single person in Paris to be able to help me.”

She held her hands up to the sides of her face, ran her fingers through her red curls, her face all at once lined and haggard. He saw despair in those small, sharp features, and stood stock still with surprise. He'd thought her the epitome of poise and savoir-faire, the kind of woman who would always be in control, never dominated by people or events. Now he saw a distraught woman of fifty-five who looked damned good for her age, but not the glamour queen he had encountered moments ago. He found himself liking her, and not yet understanding why.

“How
do you suppose I could help you?” she asked, a sarcastic bite to her voice. “Do you have dreams of becoming a
jeune premier?”

His brown eyes, almond-shaped like Lily's, rested on her with an intense, unabashed honesty. He wasn't going to play games with her. “Madame,” he said. “You are the only one who knows where to contact my father, in New York.”

It was her turn to blink back her amazement. “You want to find Misha?
Now?
Why, for God's sake? He's been gone three years!”

“Believe me, it's not because I miss him.” Now the brown eyes were unreadable, guarded. He's been badly wounded, she thought, and the scars are still hurting. “It's for a purely practical reason. The Nazis are beginning to take young men of seventeen into Germany, forcing them into labor camps to manufacture arms for the Reich. To put it bluntly,
I'd rather die.
I can't, like you, envisage a peaceful coexistence. And so, since my seventeenth birthday is next year . . . I've decided that the only way out is to go to the Free Zone, and from there, to the United States. I need my father to send an affidavit for my visa to the American Consulate in Nice.”

She breathed in and out, and wet her lips. “That's quite a plan. But tell me, my patriotic young Galahad: I thought most of your contemporaries were thinking of joining the Resistance, or De Gaulle directly—not of running as fast as their legs could carry them into another land.”

The blow had come full force but he withstood it. Again she noted, and was impressed by, the composure of his oval face. “If I could do so without implicating my family, I'd have left already,” he replied. “But . . . I'm Jewish. My father doesn't know this to this day. Most people don't know, and our family didn't register at the city hall. I don't want to run any risks that would later alert the Germans to my mother and sister. If I can leave, quietly, for Nice, and from there for the United States, the Boche won't even know I'm gone. In the Resistance, I'd be found out, sooner or later, and reprisals might occur.”

Very softly, she murmured: “I'd heard about it, Nicolas. There are some who like to speculate on the racial origins of illustrious people. Your mother, my dear, as poor as she may be, was in her youth a luminary, and much talked about. She's still the Princess Brasilova. And many envied her, and still do.”

“Envy my mother? She gives piano lessons to subsist, and leads a life a dog would spit on! Why would anyone envy her?”

“Because she was once a fairy princess, with seven servants and closets full of elegant clothes. And because she still is one of the most radiant beauties of Paris.”

“Mama's beautiful, but who's there to notice? Her dresses are old, and she's too thin, and all her rich friends have forgotten her.”

“Still, Nicky. And some say that she's Jewish. I personally never cared to pry into the religion of others. Jews, Moslems, Catholics—who gives a damn? Yet today, Nicky, a lot of people do. They'll brand others ‘Jews' just to make sure nobody will brand
them
as ‘Jews.' People want to save their own skins. And me too.”

“But—who could have told you this?” he demanded, perplexed and horrified. “I thought
nobody
knew!”

“Nobody ‘knows,' exactly. But some suppose. Your step-grandfather is one, that's for certain. People have looked into that. And so questions are being asked about your grandmother.”

He decided not to press the issue, but his earlier resolve seemed shattered. Varvara Trubetskaya touched his hand in a sudden gesture of deep compassion. “It's all right,” she said. “I told you: your mothers the Princess Brasilova. She's still married to one of the world's most vituperative anti-Semites. Misha's hatred is her strongest shield, odd as this may seem. And you can't blame your father. He came from an anti-Semitic father, and an anti-Semitic country. He only reflected the culture he was born into.”

“So we may as well forgive the Nazis, too. They also are mere reflections of Hitler's dictates and standards.”

She smiled at his mordant tone. “I'll write to Misha,” she declared. “I'm friends with enough influential people that the letter will be sure to leave posthaste, by diplomatic pouch to Vichy, and then by air to New York. And I'll do better yet. I'll provide you with an
ausweis,
to allow you to move from the Occupied to the Free Zone. I have a friend at the
Kommandantur.
”

His lips parted, but she cut him off before he had a chance to answer her. “You may have to wait as long as a year in Nice, or Marseille, wherever you decide to go. Visas take time, you know.” She started to continue, then stopped, and abruptly decided to plunge in again. “You see,” she murmured, “how useful it can be not to offend the Germans?”

And then, with a graceful movement of her tousled head, she gestured that the interview had come to an end. “I hope,” she said, “that you'll try to work things out with Misha. He needs you, you know.”

I
n early December 1940
, Nicky left Paris with two suitcases and a small bag, and the all-important
ausweis
from Varvara, which was needed to cross the border from Occupied to Free France. He carried in his wallet five thousand francs from Jacques, which were supposed to last him the year they surmised it would take to obtain his visa of entry into the United States. His train voyage was uneventful, and he arrived in Nice well rested and only a little saddened by his separation from his family. The way he looked at it, as soon as he was established in New York, he would send for all of them.

The winter on the Riviera was mild, and he felt curiously free and adult, on his own in a strange city. He knew exactly what had to be done. First, he rented a small room in a boardinghouse, and then registered himself at the lycée. In the summer, he would be passing his final
baccalauréat,
and he felt that with this achievement to his name, life would be infinitely easier in the United States. The
bac
was well respected all over the world.

Yet, as the December days wore on, a gloom set upon him. It hit him all at once that he was cut off from the whole world. Even the mockery of correspondence that was permitted between the two zones took ten days, and an ache formed in his chest for his mother and sister, whose cards he anxiously awaited. He knew absolutely no one in Nice, and even at the lycée, his companions had already formed and established friendships. They looked at him with a curiosity mingled with sympathy, and once in a while someone would invite him to lunch on a Thursday, and he would be forced to undergo yet another polite but unrelenting interrogatory concerning his family: Who were they? What did they do? Why was he alone? He longed then to escape once more to his small room, where at least he could dwell in peace without facing his fears.

Because, of course, he
was
afraid. He wondered whether his father, that strange enigma of a man, would send him the affidavit.

Did Nicky
want
to see his father again? Sometimes, closing his school-books, he would withdraw the ruby and gold cuff links from their box, and caress them tenderly. Yes, Misha had loved him; yet that hadn't prevented him from deserting all of them. Nicky would feel the anger burn anew, his heart pressing upward and out with the swelling of bitter resentment. I hate the man, he'd think, shaken by the power of his own emotions. But he had no other choice. Sooner or later, the Gestapo would come after him to send him to Germany, and it made more sense to swallow his pride and go to Misha.

Anyway, he'd think, covering his slender young body with the harsh, bleached sheet from the boardinghouse: I won't have to stay with him. I'll find a job, and take care of myself, and send for Kira, Mama, and my grandparents.

How easy everything seemed, if he could only get to New York! The worst thing was the clawing loneliness. But at the end of December, the affidavit arrived, eclipsing the news of the moment in the highest circles of Vichy politics. Marshal Pétain, whose collaboration with the Germans had been one of resignation, had found himself once too often gainsaying Pierre Laval's enthusiastic embrace of their Nazi victors, and had, on December 13, dismissed his vice-premier, whom he had never liked, going so far as to place him under house arrest in his property of Châteldon. But Hitler's Ambassador Abetz had demanded Laval's release, and had refused to acknowledge the new foreign minister, Pierre-Etienne Flandin . . . pointedly ignoring his presence in the Cabinet. For two weeks now, newspapers had revealed more than the customary censure had allowed, and France was speculating about Germany's increased intervention in Vichy politics. But Nicky, normally the first to rush to the radio or to devour a tabloid, had still not digested this series of events. For him, an immense relief had lifted the tension with which he had been living: his father had not rejected him, and this was tantamount to having a foot on the gangplank to a vessel that would bear him safe and sound to a continent where he could stop being afraid.

All that he needed was to go to the American Consulate in Nice, show his affidavit and his new passport, and sign the necessary papers to apply for a visa. Then he would have to wait. And so, one December morning, he took himself there instead of to school, and asked what he had to do. The consul was the son of Sholem Asch, the Polish-American writer who wrote in Yiddish. Nicky was surprised to see him in person, checking up on his employees. Here was a known Jew, just paces from the Nazis, operating as if he were merely going through the customary steps of his everyday work. Nicky was duly awed.

A young woman with a bun pressed to the back of her skull said to him: “We'll need your birth certificate, monsieur . . . Prince Brasilov. And then we can proceed, and forward these papers to the embassy in Vichy. Usually, for a French citizen, a visa takes three months, but the way things are right now . . .”

Nicky nodded, still trying to follow the consul's movements in a small room to the right of where he himself was standing. He felt himself color; it had been so long since anyone had called him “Prince” that the title felt uncomfortable on his shoulders. Then the sense of what she was telling him penetrated. His
birth certificate?