The Keeper of the Walls (69 page)

For a moment, it seemed as though the human skeleton, who looked a hundred years old, was searching through the crowd. But the eyes were vacant, glazed. And then he fell. Many others had tripped, but this man, Wolfgang Steiner, merely keeled over like a door falling off its hinges. Maryse screamed. But the man on the platform remained down, and it was only after all the others, every last one, had been shepherded inside the ominous, dark railway cars that two SS officers returned to the fallen human vestige, and seized him under the arms and at the ankles. He was the last to be thrown aboard. Then the Germans descended, and the engine sounded, and the cars departed, like consecutive hearses.

“I couldn't help it, I couldn't
help
myself.” Maryse was sobbing, holding on to Lily with the tenacity of a drowning woman to her savior.

“It's all right,” her friend replied, her voice low and strangely devoid of tonality. “He wouldn't have seen you, just as he didn't hear Nanni and me.”

With a sudden hope painted on her small face, Maryse asked: “Do you think he'll die on the way . . . today?”

Nanni cried out: “
Mama!
How can you
say
this?”

“Because,” Maryse replied, all at once calm and forceful. “If he dies, and I pray he does, then he won't have to suffer through the rest!” She turned to Lily, and asked, her voice hard but steady: “Will you sit shiva with us? It's only supposed to be the family, but you were so close to him! And will Jacques say the kaddish for him?”

“Papa's still alive,” Nanni countered, outraged.

Lily put an arm around both their shoulders, and stated: “We'll pick up Jacques, and Mama, and go to the synagogue today . . . spies or no spies. And Rabbi Weill will lead the prayers.”

N
ew York
, this fall of 1942, was a strangely populated metropolis, for all the young men had gone to war, and the immigrants thronged the streets and the coffee shops. Nicky looked one last time at his reflection in the mirror, and scrutinized the shadow of the beard he had just finished shaving around his jawline and chin, and the trim brown mustache, which he'd let grow to give himself more countenance, at seventeen. He felt pleased with the poise of his face ...just the right poise for an encounter with his father.

Nicky pulled on the lapels of his square-shouldered blazer, and checked to see if his round-toed shoes were well polished, and his cuffless slacks pressed on the bias. Then he glanced around the small apartment that he shared with Charley Blum, a young Belgian Jew whom he had met shortly after his arrival, nine months ago. Charley was handsome, secure, and a ladies' man, which meant that the dapper apartment in the Oliver Cromwell Building, between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue, was often Nicky's alone. Charley was older and more sophisticated, and, had he been less honest and a “good guy,” Nicky would have compared him to a younger version of his father. But he liked his roommate too much to hazard this comparison.

The beds were made, the dishes stacked in the strainer on the small kitchen counter. Nicky closed the front door and locked it, went down the elevator, and walked out into a hazy sunshine.

He liked this teeming monster of a city, so different from his native Paris that at first he had felt sure that he would hate it here. Paris was cultivated, elegant, and old; New York was unchecked, young, and bursting with energy. Nicky had been surprised at how fast he had grown to enjoy it, to find its challenge exactly what he needed.

And he also didn't miss his schooling. As soon as he'd arrived, Misha had declared that he would enroll him in a top Ivy League men's college in the fall, giving him a semester at the French Lycée to pass his
bac.
Nicky had felt a quick anger rising. He hadn't wanted Misha's help, hadn't wanted the advantages that his father could easily have offered him. For Prince Mikhail Brasilov, now a United States citizen, had passed the New York bar examination and now practiced law in a small but elegant office on Wall Street. The profession he had prepared for but never exercised, in his early youth, had, ironically, opened up for him in this new country. And, slowly but surely, the glamour of his name as well as his quick, adaptable mind, had generated a small but steady clientele.

Nicky stepped onto a bus, and let the scenes change as the driver took them from 72nd Street to 56th. There, he stepped down, and took the crosstown bus a short way to Fifth Avenue. Even with wartime shortages, this most elegant part of New York still reeked of an unheard of luxury, comparable, Nicky thought, only to the Faubourg Saint-Honoré or the Rue Royale, in Paris. One day, he thought, Kira and my mother will come, and I shall put them up at the Plaza, or the St. Regis.

It was at the St. Regis Hotel, on Fifth Avenue, that he was due to meet his father. Any coffee shop or Horn & Hardart self-service cafeteria would have been fine, Nicky thought—but Misha was still trying to impress his son with his success, and woo him back with offers of the same, if the young man reentered the fold. But Nicky would never do that. He would make his own success, and he felt certain that he would do so.

His first disappointment had been with the Free French army, which had rejected him because of the discovery of a small heart murmur. Later, the United States Army Recruiting Office had sent him away with a 4-F classification, for the same reason. He knew that his father had been relieved; but he had wished to fight, and had felt humiliated at this double rejection. He hadn't come to New York to be a coward.

He and Charley had talked, when they'd first met, at a party. With both Belgium and the Netherlands out of commission, a great need now existed in New York for diamond cutters. They had decided to become partners, twenty-year-old Blum and seventeen-year-old Nicky, and they had each paid three hundred dollars to an old timer on 42nd Street, to teach them the business. Nicky had been forced to accept at least this much financial aid from his father. They had gone to work in a large gem-cutting workshop for three months, then had felt confident to open their own, tiny shop—again, with a minimum of financial help from Mikhail Brasilov.

But now, earning the incredible amount of two hundred to two hundred twenty-five dollars a week, Nicky had a check in his pocket to reimburse part of this debt. He had called Misha to arrange the encounter, and Misha had told him to meet him for breakfast at the main dining room of the stately old hotel.

Nicky had mixed emotions about this meeting. It would be the first time he and his father would actually share a meal together since his first days in the United States. Until now, the young man had refused to have the slightest social contact with Misha. They'd met in his father's office, because Nicky hadn't wanted any intimacy to permeate their relationship. He'd pushed Misha out of his thoughts, not wanting to feel anything but the old anger, the old hatred that had replaced the love and trust he had felt as a boy for this magnetic, controversial man who was his parent. But now, too, there was the grim satisfaction of one-upmanship: he'd be meeting Misha to pay his debt, and to show him, once and for all, how unimportant he had become in his grown son's existence. It was a victory of sorts, and one that the young man was not above savoring, like an old battle scar to prove that the old soldier had fought in, and survived, the war.

His father, a snap-brim felt hat on his gray head, walked in two minutes after Nicky, and waved, his leonine face suddenly creased in smiles. Nicky stood up, formally, and let the older man embrace him. He could sense a slight, though numb, pain, feeling the strong arms, and the scent of his father's cologne. “You look good, Nicolas,” Misha said.

The waiter came to bring menus. Nicky waited, then answered: “Thank you, Father.”

Misha's suit of Saxony tweed was cut perfectly over a Brooks Brothers shirt, and a silk tie adorned its front. For some reason, this latest business fashion looked remarkably good on the tall, broad Russian, and Nicky felt a familiar, gnawing resentment. His father's success irked him, angered him, as he thought of Lily and Kira standing in line at five each morning, in Paris.

They ordered, and made polite conversation until their steaming scrambled eggs and sausage were delivered with a flourish, with freshly pressed orange juice and aromatic coffee. Nicky was ashamed, eating this way during a war. But he was also very hungry. Neither he nor Charley was a good cook, and the places where they went for dinner were usually inexpensive and served
ersatz,
tasteless meals. This was an unaccustomed treat.

It was only over his second coffee that Nicky withdrew his billfold, and laid the thousand-dollar check in front of his father. “I told you I'd have it before the New Year,' he said proudly.

“And I told you, Nicky, that it wasn't necessary ever to repay me.”

An awkwardness permeated the air between them. “I'm not a charity case,” the young man said tightly, only too well aware that he was mouthing the worst of clichés, like a bombastic teenager.

“I'm your father.” Misha's face, his still gleaming green eyes expressive and magnetic, appeared to wince, and, leaning forward, he said, gently: “I know why you hate me. But adults should learn to forgive their parents, Nicky. If you want to be a man, then you must forgive like one, too.”

“Like Jesus Christ?” Nicky snapped, sarcastically. How he detested himself for falling into the trap, and becoming mean and churlish, like a peckish boy! But where Misha was concerned, a raw nerve always lay at the edge of his skin, ready to be touched off.

“Why not? Have you anything against Him, son?”

Nicky breathed in, and touched his mustache. “I'm not a Christian, Father, and you know it,” he said at length.

If Misha felt the blow, his face did not reveal it. “So you've been telling me over and over again, these past nine months,” he replied. “But you
know
I didn't know Lily was half Jewish. I had to learn it from you, when you came here.” Then, regarding his son, he forced himself to add: “At your age, I had chosen my way. I wouldn't try to influence you.”

“You wouldn't succeed! I might only have toyed with Judaism, had it not been for this war! But the Occupation forced me to define my choice. I wouldn't be surprised if Kira, too, didn't adopt our grandmother's religion.”

He had planned to shock his father with his last words. And this time, Misha did drawback, his face a silent wound. “You left us,” Nicky murmured, his voice insistent and low, like a gentle yet pressing hum. “And when you left us, the three of us had to grow up ... my mother, too. We each made our own way.”

Misha closed his eyes and bowed his head. Then, looking once more at his son, he said, fervently: “I've told you how my letters were returned, how I tried to find out where you had moved to. More than anything, I hoped to get you all out here, away from the carnage. I
wanted
us to be together again.”

“Madame Dalbret always knew where we were.”

“But
my letters were returned!
You know how Vichy has seen fit to interfere with all mail. You're not being fair, Nicky. What else could I have done? Besides,” he added, “Varvara had her own skin to save. I couldn't have asked her for more than what she did.”

Nicky's anger surfaced again. “She helped plenty. But if you'd
never left in the first place
. . . we'd have stayed a family, and my mother and sister would be safe and protected! You thought only of your own wounded pride, and left Mother the bad debts and hardly any means of support.”

“Don't you suppose I had the money to send her? But I couldn't locate you! And you know yourself that we can't send money to Occupied France!”

Nicky read the desperation on his father's face. Suddenly, he felt very young and helpless. “Look,” he declared, “leave Mother and Kira to me from now on. Kira's in love with Pierre Rublon, my best friend . . . and if he survives this war, I'm sure they'll get married. But you may as well forget about Mama. She's your wife in name only. Your claims to her ended the day you walked out, without so much as a farewell. I want Mama to come, too: but to be with me ... and with the others here, who love her.”

“The Robinsons . . .”

“Mark MacDonald. He's good, and he's kind, and he made Mama very happy, those last years. I only hope he had the sense to get out, after Pearl Harbor. If she and Kira had to stay, at least
he
should have had a chance to escape.”

“It's perfectly legal for a United States citizen to leave any country he pleases.”

“As long as he isn't interned by a hostile power.”

Brown eyes met green, the brown ones defiant, the green luminous and filled with a naked pain that made Nicky suddenly flinch, and look down at his hands.

He abruptly rose, his heart pounding frantically, and he declared quickly: “I'm late. Charley's alone at the shop. See you, Father.”

As he walked rapidly across the room, he could feel the tears pushing at his eyes, and he bent his head low, in case they showed around the rims. He didn't want to see his father's face, that vulnerable ache, preeminent on his memory. It made him want to give in, to forgive, and to accept the hand being offered to him.

I'll change my name, he thought, in four years, when I become a citizen. I'll drop the ridiculous title, and take my mother's maiden name ... or my grandmother's.

And in the vast, sumptuous dining room of the St. Regis, Prince Mikhail Brasilov bowed his head and wept, unashamed.

T
he young
blond
sergeant of the Free French army sat down at a small table in the dusty café, and removed his cap. In front of him, a typical Algiers afternoon was unfurling its endless resource of attractions, which were acted out with all the rehearsed choreography of a medieval passion play in front of his amused eye. A turbaned carpet seller had set up “shop” in one corner of the street, and bejeweled, dark women with Moslem veils were stopping by, fingering the wool and exchanging quick, sometimes loud words. Street urchins darted between the carpet vendor and an old man offering up baskets of fresh fruits set on a tiny, overloaded stand, a monkey playing at his side. The young man ordered Turkish coffee and a strange, syrupy cake, and watched, fascinated.

“You're Pierre, aren't you?”

The question, spoken in the flawless French of those who had learned it as educated, meticulous adults, jarred him. Since he'd left Paris almost three years ago, he'd heard this tone and accent many times: in London, where he'd been stationed, working in Intelligence and coordinating the efforts of the Resistance underground in Occupied France, most of his British contacts had talked like this; and here, he'd run into many Americans and English, too, especially since the Allied victory in North Africa. But the familiarity of this voice penetrated through him like a hot liquid on an empty stomach, producing shock. He looked up, slowly, squinting. In front of him, standing, was a medium-size middle-aged civilian, his shirt sleeves rolled up, his handsome face tanned under a crop of white-gray curls.

“Mr. . . . MacDonald?”

The older man smiled. “May I join you?”

“Of course.” Pierre remembered this man more from Kira's words than from his actual memory of him, for they had only met occasionally, and then, for brief moments as one of them had come and the other gone from the
pension.
But Kira had resented him, her dislike thinly veiled, while Nicky, on the contrary, had been all “for” him.

The journalist didn't seem at all surprised to see him here, and Pierre felt puzzled. He said, “I'd never have expected to run into you. What's brought you to North Africa?”

Mark sighed. “I'm a war correspondent for the Associated Press. Before that, I was investigating the spy rings in Spain and Portugal. But for six months, I've been in these parts, following the action. And a few days ago, I heard your name mentioned at an officers' meeting I attended. It seems you've made yourself noticed. Your reports have been appreciated by the brass.” He smiled. “And so I've had you on my mind. The sergeant on duty at headquarters told me I might be able to find you here.”

Pierre leaned forward, nerves tingling like electric wires. “Mr. Mac-Donald,” he said, “have you heard
anything
about . . . the situation in Paris?”

The journalist recognized the signs. He himself had gone through all this . . . was still, in fact, going through this. “I wish to God I could give you news of them,” he replied. “As far as I know, they're all right, in Chaumontel. I've gone the rounds, trying to find a way to get them both out . . . Lily and Kira. I've spoken to consuls and ambassadors, and powerful businessmen and members of the Free French military. But there are two problems. The first is that someone
there
would have to smuggle them out—and I don't know who'd do this, with the Krauts swarming the city.”

“So you're telling me that there's nothing either of us can do?”

Mark didn't answer. But his face had set into hard, grim lines. “I'm not going to give up trying,” he finally stated. Then, to change the painful subject, he asked: “You fought here, in North Africa?”

“At first I spent time in London, and then, last year, they shipped me out to help beat back Rommel. But now that we've won, I'm at headquarters.”

The thin, amber-colored waiter deposited a cup of the thick, aromatic Turkish coffee in front of Mark. “With Italy's surrender, can the Reich last much longer?” he demanded. “There's word from on high that there's to be a massive Allied landing in France, later this year.”

“I've heard rumors.”

“But of course, you won't tell a reporter.” Mark smiled, giving his face a sudden, boyish look that appealed to Pierre.

Then his face hardened again. “Things are really getting bad, in France,” he said tightly. “The general hunger can only be compared to the terror the French have to live through, under the rule of a regime that knows its days are numbered. Even poor old Pétain is being hustled from castle to castle, and his government has lost all pretense of ruling the country. The Germans, and the last of the collaborationists, have grown so vicious that they remind me of wounded lions and tigers, intent on lashing out all around them, to cause the most harm until the moment when, inevitably, they will be slain.”

Pierre Rublon didn't answer. His blunt, strong fingers were playing with his cap. So young, so beautiful, his girl. She had to be spared. He'd done all this for
her,
for
them.
“You really love her, don't you?” the journalist was asking, his voice soft, yet incisive.

The young man looked into that tanned, weathered yet boyish face, and felt as if at last he had found a companion with whom to be open. He nodded. “We made promises to each other. Maybe it was foolish—she wasn't yet sixteen—but we talked of marriage, of a future together.”

Mark MacDonald's eyes were distant, their pupils like pinpoints in the hazel irises. “So did we,” he finally said, the words tight, hard, and infinitely pained.

Then the two men drank the sweet, dark coffee, bound by their shared hopes, fears, and daily remembrances.

A
s soon as the Germans
, losing ground at Stalingrad in the fall of 1942, and giving way to the Allies in North Africa, had invaded Vichy and taken the existing reins of control from the weakened old marshal, Aunt Marthe Bertholet packed her bags and moved to the capital. Nantes, she told Claire, was no longer bearable; she needed her family around her, and besides, she was eighty-three and suffered from four debilitating illnesses. She had her furniture sent from Nantes to a vast apartment Claire had found for her at 33, Rue de la Tour, in the same Passy area where Prince Ivan Brasilov had lived, years ago; and she hired a maid, Rosine.

All her life, Aunt Marthe had adored the accoutrements of the First Empire; her crates unwrapped the inlaid, overwrought consoles, cabinets, bed, and other furniture of the epoch, as well as paintings, chandeliers, knickknacks, and dishware of Napoleon's style. The house in the Rue de la Tour had a narrow façade, and only two rooms stood at the front; but the courtyard in back was large and airy, and the seven rooms that bordered it were agreeable. The kitchen lay at the tail end, near the service staircase; it had two windows, and at its center, a table four yards long; an electric stove, an enormous sink, and an icebox seemed lost among all the cupboards, sideboards, armoires, and small pieces that lined the walls. One could have lived in this large room alone.

Aunt Marthe had furnished the room adjoining the kitchen for Rosine, and had converted all but the master bedroom into storage rooms where all her bric-à-brac lay piled together, from the much vaster space of the Nantes house. Boxes and trunks were heaped pell-mell on top of each other. The old woman was pleased not to have had to rent space from a professional storage company, and was content to live in her ornate bedroom, most often under piles of blankets in her gilt four-poster bed.

Now that Mark was gone, Lily tried to squeeze Aunt Marthe into her tight schedule whenever she came to Paris. She sometimes shopped for her too when she stood in line for her own allotment of sugar, salami, gasoline, and matches, for it seemed that Rosine was forever “forgetting” important purchases. She now brought carrots, leeks, and onions for the old woman as well as for her parents and Maryse, from Chaumontel. Lily found her old relative egotistical and demanding, but forced herself to visit Aunt Marthe to save her mother from coming every day. And, every time she came, the sick woman pressed butter cookies and port wine on her, from a seemingly endless supply that she had brought from Nantes in tins and crates. The sweet wine would remain on Lily's stomach, nauseating her all the way home; but to refuse Aunt Marthe would have been futile; she was a domineering old woman whose chief pleasure consisted in imposing her will on the few people with whom she still had contact.

Early in May 1944, Lily decided not to go to Paris for the Thursday visit. She'd been suffering from influenza, and, though for the most part recovered, didn't wish to take chances with a two-hour train ride. The previous June, Kira had passed her second
baccalauréat
and in September, had started taking some courses at a child-care center in Paris. She was going into town three times a week, to learn to become a nursery-school teacher. Like her mother, she was careful not to be on the street after eight o'clock, and carried an identification card that listed her religion as Catholic. And so, when Lily couldn't leave Chaumontel on Thursday, Kira decided that, when her classes finished the next day, she would stop by Aunt Marthe's apartment with the fresh vegetables.

Kira was eighteen. She'd grown to five feet seven inches, and had a full, supple figure. But otherwise, she still bore a striking resemblance to her father. Her green eyes, unmixed with any other hue, were like emerald flames, their shape exotic, tilted at the corners. She walked like Misha, too, in a bold stride, and usually disliked her itinerary when she left Chaumontel; for, on the slowed-down subways, and out on the open streets, her arresting figure often drew the admirative catcalls of men of all ages, and of German soldiers. When stopped by one of them, she would respond politely, but with the cold hauteur that had been characteristic of her father. So far, she had encountered no special trouble. Her identification card, though bearing her Russian surname, also listed her as being a French national.

After school, she wrapped her books together in some twine, and took the subway to her old aunt's neighborhood. She was dressed in the blue and white uniform of the child-care school, her hair braided around her head, and also carried a fishnet bag full of the fresh vegetables from her village. She too found Aunt Marthe a horrid old witch, but had had less contact with her through the ages than Lily. She was able to find the house with no trouble, and went up to the second story.

Rosine opened the door. “I'm Kira Brasilova, Princess Liliane's daughter,” the young woman said.

“Come in, mademoiselle. Madame Bertholet is with Madame Bruisson, in the bedroom.”

Kira felt her heart beat faster. Mixed feelings assailed her. Madame Bruisson had to be Uncle Claude's wife, Henriette, whom she hadn't seen since that single encounter in the lobby of the Carlton, when her father had managed the old hotel. She'd been . . . how old? Ten? And the lady had smiled so beautifully, at
her,
alone. And what about the lovebirds? Yet a dark secret had kept Claude Bruisson's family segregated from the Brasilovs, and her uncle had been a
collabo,
and a member of the reactionary, anti-Semitic Legion of French Volunteers.

“Maybe I shouldn't disturb them,” she murmured. “Perhaps you could just give Aunt Marthe these vegetables—”

“Who are you?”

Kira found herself staring beyond the lobby, into the eyes of a ten- or eleven-year-old child, with her own black hair, triangular face, and piercing, almond-shaped eyes. She blinked, her mouth dry, her lips falling open. The sensation of staring in the mirror was so great that she laid a steadying hand on an inlaid sideboard.

“My name is Kira Brasilova,” she said. “And you?”

“Alain. Alain Paul Bruisson. I'm Aunt Marthe's great-nephew.”

Of course. The boy. She'd barely noticed him, that time eight or nine years ago when she'd seen Claude and Henriette with him, in the Carlton lobby. Kira's throat hurt from a tremendous lump, and she could feel tears coming. “I'm your cousin, then,” she said. “My Mama and your Papa were sister and brother.”

“I come every Friday,” he declared. “Come on. They've got cookies in the bedroom. It stinks in there, from
her,
the old horror—but the cookies are super!”

She found herself following, while Rosine took the string bag into the kitchen. He was striding through the corridor, his young body already tall and well defined, and she watched him, hypnotically. At the door, he pushed it open and, suddenly gallant, smiled, inclined his head, and made a mock courtly gesture to let her pass first. She would have laughed, had this joking flourish not hit her in the stomach with the poignancy of a remembered dream.

“Mama, Auntie!” he was calling out. “Look who I've found! A
cousin!”

The master bedroom was like a mausoleum. The immense four-poster dominated the scene, its brocade drapes matching the covers of the seats of the
bergères
and the ottoman. Tables perched everywhere: a large one, set with a heavy silver tea tray, and four or five scattered occasional stands, all inlaid with mother-of-pearl. From the bed, old Marthe Bertholet, propped against an impressive array of cushions, stared at her from her half-closed eyes, her potato nose twitching.

Her stomach queasy, Kira tried to speak, overwhelmed by the room, the ugly old woman, and the boy. “Hello, Kira,” a resonant, attractive female voice intoned, and she turned. On the opposite side of the tea table sat Alain's mother, her slender face perfectly made up, the amber eyes still arresting beneath jet black hair pulled into a topknot that frizzed in permanented curls onto her forehead. The woman was probably fifty, but, like all rich women, had known how to protect herself from the onset of age. She was elegant, unusual, and, Kira found herself guessing, vibrating sensuality.