The House of Dreams (10 page)

“I'm sure that made them feel better, but it hardly helps us.”

“We took a gamble.”

“And lost.” Varian slumped in the chair at his desk. “Where are the rest of the refugees? Mehring is in my hotel room and refusing to budge.”

“Back in hiding,” Beamish said.

“And Bernhard?”

“He's safe for now. We have him and his wife hiding out in a
maison de passe
. The owner believes they are a middle-aged couple having an affair.”

“Good. Getting him out of Marseille as quickly as possible is our priority. We could try the F route.…”

“I agree, Spain is the best plan, but not quite yet.”

Miriam knocked on the door and looked in. “
Quel pagaille,
it was crazy out there today. Are you going to lock up—” Her voice broke off into a hacking cough.

“I wish you'd get that looked at,” Varian said.

“Me? Oh, I'm just tickety-boo,” she said, catching her breath. “Varian, I've written to the Bretons to say the ARC is going to help them, and asked them to come to Marseille.”

“Excellent. I'll make a note to chase up Peggy Guggenheim about helping them with their passage to New York.”

“Say, Mary Jayne and I are going house hunting tomorrow. Any of you want to come?”

“You're still going ahead with that harebrained plan?” Varian rolled his sleeves up.

“I just think it would be a good idea for a few of us to find a little cottage somewhere, out in the country.”

“This isn't a vacation, Miriam,” Beamish said.

“You think I don't know that?” She folded her arms. “Everyone's exhausted, that's all. It would do us good to get out of the city, and I want to get out of my fleabag hotel.”

“Hey, it's not so bad,” Gussie said as he sidled past loaded down with client files and dumped them on Fry's desk. “Anyway, you gave me the best room. Oh, the view from that garret.”

Miriam burst out laughing and dug him in the ribs. “At least the bedbugs can't be bothered to walk up all those flights of stairs.” She scratched vaguely at her wrist. “Are you working late?” she said to Varian.

“There are a couple of things to sort out.”

“Don't do anything I wouldn't do. See you in the morning.” The lightness of her tone belied her shrewd expression.

Once the door closed behind her, Varian beckoned to Beamish. They spoke quietly, heads close together, as the other men chatted. “We need more funds, urgently.”

“I'll go and see Kourillo. He always has a few associates who need to shift their francs out of the country.”

“That hood? Can we trust him?” Varian frowned as he thought of the White Russian. Five feet tall at a stretch and with a handshake that always reminded him of an empty glove, he made Varian's skin crawl.

“Do you have any better ideas?”

*   *   *

Varian unplugged the phone cord after his final call of the day to Harry Bingham at the U.S. consulate and poured a large brandy. You couldn't be too careful. If they were connected all the time, their conversations could be listened in to.
That was something I hadn't bargained on adding to my résumé,
Varian thought.
Classicist, journalist, editor, spy.
His task seemed Herculean sometimes. For each person, each family, they helped, several more appeared who were equally deserving. Varian ran through the usual litany of paperwork that each client needed: Passport. Transit visa from Vichy. French exit visa. Entry visa for Spain. Transit visa for Spain. Travel visa for Portugal. Transit visa from Portugal. Travel visa for any other country. The list went on and on. Then they needed a ticket paid in full and a firm sailing date. Varian knocked back his drink. Even his dreams were filled with an endless paper chase.

“Are you ready?” Beamish buttoned up his jacket, and Varian scooped up the papers for the last cable of the day to New York with the list of clients' names they had taken on that day for the ERC to request visas from the State Department. The names of any clients too high profile to risk sending by telegram would be concealed in tubes of toothpaste and smuggled out by escaping refugees to send on to New York.

They talked in low voices as they walked along the dark rue des Dominicaines, their footsteps echoing down the empty street.

“What's the latest with Bernhard?” Varian said.

“I sent a message to our people on the French border today.”

“Good.” They paused as the blue lamps of the police station came into view. A large rat scuttled along the damp pavement into the gloom of the alleyway. “It seemed so easy a couple of months ago. I just assumed it would go on like that. Those boobs in New York have no idea what we are up against.”

“We had a few lucky breaks. We've managed to get several groups out over the mountain passes.”

“Not counting poor Walter Benjamin.”

“None of us knew he'd kill himself rather than risk arrest on the other side.” Beamish paused and listened for footsteps, signaled Varian to walk on.

“Christ, it's unbearable,” Varian said. “Any one of the names on my list is a man or a woman who can change the whole course of human history for the better.”

“We'll get them out. The rules will change again, you watch. The Nazis have everyone right where they want them. France is the biggest man-trap in history.”

“As long as they believe all we are doing is giving refugees pin money to live on, and helping them to obtain official visas…” Varian paused as a car swept past the end of the road. “We've just got to do what we can in the time we have. I'm glad that you suggested we take on ordinary relief cases.”

Beamish laughed softly. “Ordinary people, ordinary soldiers, ordinary Jews?”

“You know what I mean.”

They had the
visa de télégramme
stamped and took the cable to the post office near the stock exchange. Varian filled out the cable address—Emerescue for New York. He thought of it as the answering echo to their “Amesecours” in Marseille, two tin cans on a very long string.

It's not Hercules I feel like,
Varian thought as he walked in weary silence at his friend's side toward his hotel.
I feel more like Sisyphus. Each day we push the boulder up the mountain, and each day it rolls back down again.
Beamish pointed ahead. “There you go, home safely.”

“Thanks, Beamish.” Varian shook his hand. “You know you don't have to walk me home every night. I feel like a blushing girl.”

Beamish shrugged. “It's safer if there are two of us.” He glanced over Varian's shoulder and pulled him into the shadows of the side street. Varian turned to see a dark Mercedes pulling up outside his hotel and a group of five Nazi officers climbing out, the blue streetlights gleaming on the insignia on their caps. “Give them time to get inside and to their rooms before you go in.”

Varian felt his stomach drop with fear. He remembered a conversation with Charlie:

Say, Varian …

Yes, Charlie?

I'm scared as hell all the time.

So am I.

Had they come for him or someone else this time? A knock on your hotel door had always meant room service to him. Now he knew it could mean the end of the world. “I think perhaps Miriam is right,” he said. “It's time to find a new place to stay.”

 

TWELVE

F
LYING
P
OINT
, L
ONG
I
SLAND

2000

G
ABRIEL

“Mr. Lambert? Tell me about the photographs.” The girl won't give up. I have to be ready for her. Dragging myself back from the past to the present, to her unflinching gaze, feels like swimming against the tide.

“Look,” I say. “I've never seen these pictures before.” But of course I have. Quimby took them just before he left the Languedoc in the summer of 1940. I thought I'd destroyed the only copies in Marseille. Trust Quimby to have more tucked away somewhere, the blackmailing son of a bitch. “Where did you find them?”

“It was luck, really. A friend of Dad's in London knew about my family connection to Vita, and he spotted them in an archive among Quimby's papers.”

“He stole them, for you?”

“Borrowed, Mr. Lambert,” she says firmly.

Nonsense, I know those places, you can't turn a page without a pair of white gloves. As if they'd let this girl bring them halfway around the world. Christ, all this time, these photos have been floating around? “It was just a—well, it was a shock to see Vita's face again after all this time. I can't help you.…”

“But you must!” The color rises in her cheeks, a gorgeous bloom. “I'm going ahead with the story whether you like it or not.”

“Not.”

“Please, Mr. Lambert.” She tries to control her frustration. “For me it is about family, as much as anything else. You're the only one who was there with Vita—” She stumbles, realizes what she's said.

“I'm the only one alive, you mean?”

“I don't mean to be tactless.” She's too young to know how to handle this. “It must have been a terrible time for you. Everyone knows…” She chooses her words carefully now. “Everyone has heard how you lost your son, and Vita. I just hoped you'd be able to help me find the truth.”

I close my eyes for a moment and rub the bridge of my nose. The afternoon sun has burned a vivid red-and-gold corona behind my lids. The truth? I don't even know what this is anymore. Vita, Vita, Vita … Christ. Days go by now, weeks, even, when I don't think of that name.

“I can't help you.”

“Can't or won't?”

Damn, she's cocky. “Why don't you just clear off back to the city?”

Good, I've shocked her. “That's not very nice.”

“Nice?” I rail on her, then lower my voice. “Who the hell said artists were supposed to be
nice
?” Look at Varian, at everything he did for the artists whose work he loved. How did they repay him? Sure, there was the odd exception—like Lipchitz, he was the best of the lot and a good friend to Varian—but most of them turned their back on him once they didn't need him. Lipchitz never forgot what Fry did for him, but Chagall wouldn't even sign the print Varian practically had to beg him to put into the
Flight
portfolio. After all Varian had done for him. I stare at the girl, and she flinches. Maybe there's still something in my gaze after all. I've rattled her. “Let's take a walk.”

I usher her on around the house toward the beach. I follow the trail of pine needles to the lean-to where we stack split logs every autumn and the boys have left the Christmas tree. Her high heels are sinking in the sand, and as she pauses to slip them off, I see their red soles flash like a warning. My chest is tight, and once she's walked on ahead, I search in my pocket for my inhaler. I've left it in the studio. I start to panic, but Annie's voice comes to me:
Easy, Gabe. That's it, try and relax. Easy now. Breathe.
Once my lungs have eased, I catch up with the girl and she turns. “It's beautiful here,” she says. “I can see why you love it.”

I hesitate. She can't sweet-talk me, oh no. “You came out here alone?” What I want to say is:
Who knows you're here?

“I'm a big girl.” She takes a deep breath of cold sea air, guileless, and shrugs off her jacket. “When I heard you had a cottage down here on the beach, I was expecting something…” Her voice trails off, aware that she's said the wrong thing again.

“Something grander?”

“I just meant,” she says carefully, “something different, what with your success, and reputation.”

“It's not much, but Annie and I built this place ourselves the summer we moved out here, 1951.” I run my fingertips along the flaking white clapboard as we skirt around the side to the beach path. Every time we had a few bucks, or a new baby, we added on a room. It's higgledy-piggledy, as Vita used to say, but we love it. Now, the house and I have both seen better days. I glance up at the terrace where Annie, my Annie, sits gazing out at the sea, a smile on her lips. Our home, the place we chose to plant our flag. Gabe and Annie, a couple of kids playing house. I always expected at some point it would feel like we were grown-ups, but it never did. Still doesn't. Sometimes it still surprises me to look in my shaving mirror and see an old guy staring back. My hip twinges as I climb gingerly down the wooden steps and shuffle onto the beach. I pick up the stick I turned one winter from its place beside the steps, and we walk down toward the hard-packed shore, where it's easier walking. “We lost everything in France. Once that's happened to you, you realize how little things matter. We never needed anything more than one another.” I wave my stick at the sea. “Than this.”

“How many kids do you have?”

“Kids?” I laugh. “Our babies are old crones now. My youngest grandson Harry's about your age.” Come to think of it, this girl would be just his type. He likes these city girls, tough and polished as hazelnuts, sweet and yielding inside. Maybe I'll get him to drive her back to the station, work his magic. Maybe a distraction will make her forget she hasn't found out what she came here for.

“Harry?” She sounds wistful. Perhaps luck's on my side and she's alone or lonely. “You're lucky, having family nearby. Are they all painters too?”

“My kids? No, they took after their mother, far too sensible. I didn't care as long as they did something vaguely creative. I couldn't have borne it if they'd become bankers and lawyers.” I throw her a bone. “My grandson's a painter, though.” I know you shouldn't have favorites, but I love that kid. He looks just like me at that age. All our children turned out blond and fair, just like Annie, but he has my olive skin and dark hair.