Anio Szado (32 page)

“Poor you,” I said flatly. “Did you drag me in here to see if I have tricks for removing oil stains?”

He laughed. “I hope you’re not planning to offer to darn my socks, too.”

“I’m not expecting a proposal. I’m not that dumb.”

His face fell. “There is no need to be harsh.”

“No? I just think we should be perfectly clear about what we are to each other.”

“I thought you would be happy. You have the salon; you got your way. Why such concern about us all of a sudden? Has something changed?”

“Everything. I’ve just quit Atelier Fiche. I have no income and no career. You can’t come work at the studio anymore. I have no studio.”

“Oh, Mignonne.” He drew me into a tight hug. “The studio
isn’t important. You have followed your heart. I am sure you have made the right decision.”

My whole body felt tight and unbending, but he stroked my back and my hair until the tightness in my neck loosened and my head rested against his chest. I put my arms around him, savoring the closeness of his body against mine.

He said, “I was watching for you. I want to show you something.”

“A submarine?”

“Something much better. Come.” He took my hand and walked me to an adjoining room.

I stopped short in the doorway.

Antoine’s bedroom. There was his bed, large and rumpled. His robe tossed over a chair. His slippers. Somehow, this all seemed a hundred times more intimate and serious than being with him at the studio. Already I had crossed a threshold today. Now another faced me. I was about to step into his bedroom. I would lie with him in his bed. I would know him as a wife knows a husband. Suddenly I wasn’t sure if I wanted this. He would take me and own me fully; there would be no going back.

Already I could feel the role settling within me: the missing him, the jealousy, the wanting him always at my side.

He let go and continued into the room, oblivious to my hesitation. “Here it is.” He grinned as he crouched beside the bed. “Do you like it? It cost hundreds of dollars, but it was worth every penny. Shall we try it out?”

Tears welled in my eyes. This was how Antoine would take me, with a
Here’s my bed, come and get it
? I leaned into the doorframe, letting my tears fall.

Antoine was there in an instant. “What did I say? I am trying to cheer you up, not make you cry. Come on.” He pulled me into the room and made me sit on the edge of the bed. “You don’t have to do anything; just listen. You’ll feel better. I promise.”

He returned to the bedside, where—I now saw—a boxy
brown device sat on a small table. “I bought it on 57th Street, near the art school, with Lamotte. I went in to buy a great big church organ. Can you imagine me thinking I could fit a twenty-foot organ in here? As it turns out, this is very much better. You see—you never know what will come of obstacles. There is silver and gold in clouds.”

He moved a switch. Within the box, a disc began to turn. He hurried back to sit with me. “Listen now,” he said, the words thick with excitement.

Then his voice was coming from the machine: a whole group of voices, all of them Antoine’s, chanting in near unison. It moved into a spritely song of
voyageur
canoe paddlers—
“V’la l’bon vent
,
”
“Go, good wind”—then a poem that grew in dissonance as it overlapped rhythms and tones. After some minutes, the stream of sound evolved to a chorus of babble, a tumbling brook of nonsense words spilling over each other in delight, interspersed with laughter and the faint ringing of bells. Then the layering fell away, and one voice carried on, singing a suite of French folk songs, each one softer and more heartfelt than the last. A lump grew in my throat and refused to subside.

“Is it not magical?” asked Antoine. He began to sing along in a voice so hushed that it barely reached my ears.

I couldn’t answer. I didn’t want the music to stop. I didn’t want to leave this room or this man. I wanted him to remain a boy forever, to stay with me like this, Antoine whispering the songs of my childhood, his eyes dancing as he clutched my hand.

Regret: that was the strange little ache Consuelo felt. She went to the door and peered down the empty hall.

Damn Mignonne! The girl had walked out on Consuelo, not only on Véra Fiche. Rejected her. Ignored her! Not only ignored but deprived her, sentenced her to tedium and mediocrity. Consuelo could never again wear something as sensual as the ribbon dress or as memorable as the rose. All she could wear from now on would be Studio Consuelo—and Studio Consuelo was just her and this dry, old bat.

Consuelo glared at Véra. “There’s no need to wait out the trial period. I’ve seen all I need to see.”

“Very good. Perhaps we should arrange a small celebration, after all.”

“The partnership is dissolved.”

“
Pardon
?”

“I will ask the concierge to call you a cab.”

“What are you saying,
Comtesse
Consuelo? We have not yet even begun!”

“I’ll have your boxes and judy moved to the mail room. It’s really no trouble. Just try to have the last of the things picked up within the week.”

Véra hissed. “Rot in hell!”

In the airplane, Consuelo coughs. Her head scarf has slipped down to block her eyes. She’s hot, her breath tastes caustic, and she has lost a shoe under the too-high seat.

What was she just thinking about?

Véra. Hell.

There was a time when hell hadn’t worried her. In those days, she could have tricked Satan into turning down the heat.

Antoine and I had left his apartment; now we sat on a bench deep in Central Park. The talk had turned to his frustrations—the acquaintances who passed judgment based on rumors, the accusations that refused to succumb to truth.

He dismissed my suggestion that the gossip sprang from jealousy. “We lost our country in an instant. They are like parents who have lost a child and are desperate for someone to accuse. I would accept their blame if I thought it would help them, but I cannot bear that they make me the symbol of what pits them against each other.”

“They never were a tight group, not even before the war. My father really struggled to bring them together. He used to tell them constantly, ‘We are all France.’ ”

“We will be one again—but not until the Americans set France free.”

“And you think they will.”

“They will, and I will be their witness.”

My spirits sank. “You don’t have to go with them.”

“They will need my knowledge. They have little experience of the North African terrain that must be their staging ground.”

“They’ve asked you to join them?”

“Not as of yet.”

“Then stay.”

“I am not staying.”

“You’d rather die anonymously there than face criticism in the spotlight here.”

“You need not criticize anonymity; it is noble enough.”

“Not for someone like you, who can do so much with his name. You’re running away from your problems. Look what you’ll leave in your wake. Your wife has nothing but your reputation; you’ll leave it in shambles. Your publishers set you up like a king here. You can’t run out on them in the middle of things. And I …” I faltered. “Would you stay in New York if you could make a difference here?”

“There is no way to make a difference here.” He plucked a tubular red bloom from a firecracker plant and spun it like a propeller. “I should have been a gardener.”

I pictured the Little Prince carefully deploying his watering can. He was so alive to me. I could almost feel the water’s diminishing weight in his hand, and the coolness of the stray droplets that clung to his shins. Who but a true gardener could create such exquisite life? Who but Antoine and his stories could plant such love in the heart?

And was that not a way to make all the difference in the world?

The fine hairs on my arms rose in goose bumps.

The Little Prince was like France itself, a child loved and lost, who finds a way to return to life and love again. All that was needed was for Antoine to finish the story and see it published. The story itself could unite the community. And surely, with all rallying behind him, Antoine could be convinced to stay.

I said, “I don’t think you realize what
The Little Prince
is going to achieve.”

“It will fail, as all writing must. With luck, I will not be here to witness it.”

“You wouldn’t leave before it’s published!”

“My responsibilities to Reynal & Hitchcock do not take precedence over my duty to my people.”

He placed the flower in my palm and closed my fingers over it. “I know you mean well, Mignonne. But
The Little Prince
will not be in bookstores until just before Christmas. You expect me
to do nothing until then? The world as we know it may have already disappeared.”

My mind was churning. The only puzzles I was good at involved shapely pieces of paper and bolts of cloth. Antoine was the mathematician who created number problems so diabolical that they had stumped his pilot colleagues for days on end. He was the inventor who had patented solutions before others had even begun to see problems. He was the writer with a lifetime’s experience in helping characters overcome obstacles and find means to an end. It wasn’t fair that I was left to figure out this conundrum on my own.

How could he insist that the only possible solution was for him to leave? I thought of what had driven me from New York to Montreal: despair over the failure of my portfolio, the withering of my dreams, the shame of believing myself unwanted. Is this what he was feeling? Was his insecurity about his forthcoming book driving his need to escape? Was it possible that, in this country where he was lauded as
“the French author with authority and élan
,
”
he could yet feel unloved? Maybe a writer who so respected his native tongue as to forever consider himself a neophyte in its use could not be satisfied by the praise of those who read his work in translation while he was excoriated by those whose language he shared.

I thought of the heroes of his earlier books. The pilots who survived had done so through obdurate will and the whims of fortune—and despite the fact that engines failed. They had the blind drive and forgiving bodies of tireless youth, whereas Antoine …

I pulled him to a stop. “When you go overseas with the Americans, will you be flying newer planes?”

His irritated expression disappeared. “Very much newer. Much more reliable! I should have told you that before. You’ll have no reason at all to worry about me. Planes today are entirely different.”

“And will you be wearing a parachute in these new planes?”

He smiled indulgently. “I should think so.” He took my hand in his right hand, kissed it, and held it to his heart.

“And what if your plane is hit?”

“I shall float softly like the Little Prince—or like you, a butterfly—down from the sky.”

I didn’t smile. “And how will you get out of the plane in midair?”

His voice dampened. “How?”

“You have to open something, don’t you? A hatch or a door? Where is the lever or the pull cord? Which hand would you use?”

Reluctantly, he turned up his left.

“Show me how you would bail out of a burning plane.”

His expression became grim. He began reaching up as though attempting to access a handle. His arm froze at a low pitch. His left shoulder was long seized, damaged with his broken collarbone. He couldn’t bail out. He probably couldn’t maneuver into a parachute. I asked, “Can you even manage to pull your flight suit over your clothes?”

He spoke through gritted teeth. “I have the mechanic help me dress.”

My hand released the propeller blossom, a pulp of red.

If I could only believe some good might come of him leaving. If I could only hold on to hope that he would save not only his country but also himself. I would let him go, for the sake of his spirit, if I thought his body capable of safeguarding his soul. But who would protect him if he refused to protect himself? Who would keep him alive, if not me, if not now?

I said, “Maybe you don’t want to change your plans for my sake.” My voice caught. “And maybe the French here don’t seem deserving of your help. I know they’re not starving. But imagine how empty and bereft they must feel in their souls. Isn’t that worth your concern? The French line in America will grow from these seeds. You said you wanted to be a gardener.”