The Keeper of the Walls (52 page)

A
fter a few days
, Lily discovered that they hadn't brought enough heavy clothing, and she decided, come what may, to take the train back to Paris and pack up some things. Besides, she had to make storage arrangements with Madame Antiquet. Reaching the capital after a trip of starts and stops, in a train filled with people who were returning to Paris after an initial hesitation, she discovered that, although the city was certainly in turmoil, the butcher had greatly exaggerated his description of the situation. Most of the stores had reopened, and transportation could be obtained. But, on the train, they'd crossed another train full of soldiers, and had seen more soldiers with horses at the station in Cagny. She'd even seen what appeared to be airplanes in camouflage after the city of Evreux. There could be no mistake: France was at war.

After a short visit to her mother, Lily went to the boardinghouse. Madame Antiquet helped her to look through her things, and together, they put together warm clothing, topcoats, and some books. The
pension
looked like a blind replica of itself, with bands of paper covering all the windows, and sacks blocking all the air vents. The two women ate cabbage and rice, and then Lily went upstairs to sleep.

At one thirty, she was awakened by sounds of aircraft, but when she went to the window, she saw nothing. At four twenty, an air-raid siren began to shrill, and she quickly dressed in the dark and joined Madame Antiquet and the young maid, Leone, in the cellar. They sat in total obscurity and talked, their words reassuring against their fear, and at five twenty the siren signaled the end of the raid. Quickly the young maid heated a pot of coffee, and they had breakfast. Then the two women helped Lily with her baggage, and she took the subway to the Gare Saint-Lazare, from which she intended to take the six twenty-five train. This would take her to the city of Caen, from which she would have to board a smaller train to Saint-Aubin. The trip was supposed to take less than six hours, but with the crowds and the air raids in Paris, it was difficult to tell when she would finally arrive.

After purchasing her ticket, Lily frayed a passage for herself and her luggage, and settled down on the platform among thousands of wives whose husbands had already been called to arms. She sat down on a battered leather suitcase, exhausted. All at once she saw a man pushing through the crowd, head forward, and she realized with a start that it was Mark MacDonald. She stood up, called out to him, raising her arm above the heads of the people. She saw him stop, lift his head, catch a glimpse of her . . . and then proceed at a faster pace. She felt a tremendous joy when he reached her side, a great relief that in this sea of strange faces, she'd found a friend.

“You came here just to find me?” she asked him, incredulous. “But you might have missed me entirely, if I'd been glancing the other way and hadn't spotted you first. It's ghastly here.”

“But I had to try. I never did say good-bye to you, Lily, when you left for the summer. And I wanted to see you.” He added, in a less personal tone of voice, “Who knows, anyway, when you will be back? Maybe you're right to keep the children out of Paris.”

“I experienced my first air-raid warning last night,” she said. “Have there been many?”

“Several times a day.”

“And . . . you aren't going to try to return to the States?”

“Not for the moment. I'd never be able to arrange it, anyway. I guess I'll just stay put where I am. I might resume my writing for the
Clarion,
now that war's on. The folks back home will be crazy for news of wartime Paris. There's nothing like a safe, faraway disaster to make some people salivate.” He gave her a lopsided, ironic half smile.

Impulsively, she said, looking into his eyes: “And if you feel like it, do come and see us. We have a huge house, and we'd love it if you came. If you want a semblance of peace, that is. Or a place to write your novel.”

He smiled. “It's a charming invitation in the midst of all this pandemonium. I'll keep it in mind, fair lady. But I don't imagine either one of us will be traveling around much over the next few months.” He added, his hazel eyes serious and earnest in the gray dawn: “That's really why I wanted to say good-bye to you now. You'll be okay there, won't you?”

She nodded, trying for lightness. “Thank you for caring, Mark. Keep up with my parents, will you please? It would relieve my mind to know that should they need something, you'd be nearby.”

“Of course.”

For a moment they were awkwardly silent, pressed together by the hordes of waiting passengers. She could feel his thigh against hers, his hand poised on her arm, his breath warm against the cold air. Oh, God, she suddenly wondered, and when will I see him again? When will I see my parents, Maryse and Wolf—all the people I'm leaving behind? And, with an absurd juxtaposition of memory, she saw him turn again in the black of night, illumined by the garden lights of the house on the Schwindgasse— turn and look up into her bedroom, discovering her watching him, in her nightgown. The remembrance suddenly shamed her, and she turned her face so that he wouldn't see the mounting color in her cheeks.

The shrill of a train whistle startled them both, and, very quickly, almost without looking at her, he kissed her on the neck. “Take care,” he murmured, and then, as she bent down to pick up her packages, they were separated by a fat young woman and two children, moving forward. She tried to hold her ground, to turn back to catch a glimpse of him. But in the sea of faces that pressed in on her, she realized she'd lost him.

Afterward, in the corridor of the train, sitting on her suitcase, she thought of what she'd said to Kira in the kitchen in Saint-Aubin. War did turn people's lives upside down. What would happen to Mark MacDonald, who had loved her as a young girl, and who had, in a tenuous fashion, remained connected to her life for nearly sixteen years?

And she was conscious that she hadn't thought at all about Misha, not for the last part of the summer. Dear Mark, she thought, with a stirring of her heart. Throughout the years, how carelessly I often forgot you. But you never once forgot me, did you?

Life was inexplicable. One man had given her two children, lived with her for more than ten years, and left her without even saying good-bye. And another, who had never been her husband, nor even an intimate part of her life, had come through a war-clogged city at six in the morning
just
to say good-bye. How, then, was she supposed to explain this life, with all its unexpected twists and turns, to the two adolescents who looked to her for answers?

I have no answers, Lily thought. And she felt a terrible aloneness descend upon her, and she was afraid.

S
ome Paris institutions
,
afraid, had transferred their personnel and offices to the southwest. Some had come as far as Bordeaux; others had stopped on the way to set down temporary roots. Still others, uncertain as to the future, had remained in Paris.

Saint-Aubin and its neighboring beach resorts, Langrune and Luc-sur-Mer, had, during the summer of 1939, seen many vacationing employees who, that September, hadn't known what to do. The mail was still working, in spite of common sense, which would have predicted a total stop in postal communications. But for most of these people, a trip to Paris just to check out the situation had seemed too expensive. If their office stayed open, they would be expected back; on the other hand, if it was moving, they would have no way of learning where to—and would therefore be better off staying put and renewing the lease on their summer rooms. The atmosphere was pervaded with anguish and anxiety.

Lily had not had to worry. Jacques had sent her a sum of money to last her a few months, in case the mail was suddenly stopped and she was left stranded without funds. But another problem faced her. Nicolas was due to enter the tenth form, Kira the ninth. Other parents wondered if the lycées of Paris would continue to function, in the dire eventuality that the capital was invaded. And if they
didn't:
wouldn't it be better to stay in Saint-Aubin? Many people shared Lily's concern for her children's education. Those resolving to stay were afraid that their young people would lose a whole school year.

And suddenly, word came that a referendum would be held to determine how many children would thus be left over at the end of summer. If a school was opened on the coast, would the parents be willing to send their children there, however makeshift this operation turned out to be? The results were striking: all the families that had resolved to stay put, answered in the affirmative. All along the littoral, which stretched from Villabella to Arromanches, the total of young people in need of schools numbered over two thousand.

It was decided that five lycées would be formed. They would draw their teachers from all the ones who had not reintegrated their own communities, but who had, like the vacationing parents, stayed behind in fear of the Germans. In the Brasilovs' area, the large hotel in Langrune, now closed for the off-season, donated its dining room and restaurant. There wouldn't be any heating; but then, no one was expecting miracles in a summer resort during a wartime winter.

It took time to set up desks and chairs and to send for books and notebooks, and there wasn't sufficient space to hold all the students at the same time; and so the boys were thrown in with the girls, in the American fashion; and the older students worked from nine to noon, the younger ones from two to five. And to replace a certain lack of hours, classes were also held on Thursdays, which, until then, had always been France's free day for students.

All the young people of Saint-Aubin would gather together at the tail end of the village, and walked as a group the two kilometers to the hotel in neighboring Langrune. Lily, watching them sometimes, was reminded of a marching regiment, and her skin would rise up in gooseflesh.

One didn't really feel the war. But friendships that otherwise might not have flourished among the restrained, reserved French, developed over the fences of the summer cottages. Normandy, that fall, was gray, smelling of salt that clung to the skin. Lily and Sudarskaya gave some piano lessons, and stayed for warm mugs of coffee and radio bulletins in their students' homes. And while Poland was being savagely defeated, the women knitted to ward off the bitter chill—and people laughed, to hear the echo of their own voices raised in joy: to ward off worry and fear.

Almost from the beginning, Nicky and Kira brought their friends home to study with them. Lily, who had so seldom been permitted, as a child, to bring anybody home, never pointed out that food was expensive, and that, at noon, there were most often extra places to set. Raïssa Sudarskaya loved young people. She played the piano for them and told them outrageous stories of her youth in Russia, thrusting out her pigeon breast and proudly recounting tales of former glory. They laughed, but with, not at her. She was the village eccentric, and it took several months before some conservative parents stopped thinking of her as a flaming Red. Lily had made a point to let it be known that they were French—all of them; but still, people referred to them as ‘the Russians,' because of the sonority of their names, and were at first diffident about befriending them. Like Misha, Sudarskaya had never changed her citizenship; but Lily felt it would do no good to let people know this.

Nicky spoke perfect German, and had been promoted to a higher level in this course. His teacher was a middle-aged man called Gauthier Voizon, whom Lily had only perceived from afar. In the group of students that walked to and from school together, there was a young girl a little older than Nicolas, who sometimes stopped in for a bite, or to study with him. Her name was, absurdly, Trotti. Nicky had explained to his mother that she was the daughter of his German teacher, and that her real name was Raymonde. As a toddler, she'd trotted everywhere: hence the odd nickname. She was tall, somewhat large of frame, and her nose was just a little too long, her mouth a little too generous, for her to have been pretty. But she possessed a cascading mane of luxuriant black hair, beautiful dark eyes, straight white teeth, and a clear, healthy complexion. “She's very smart, Nicky told Lily. “She's first in the eleventh form, and we're tied for first place in German. Her dad's especially tough on her—so I think that in Paris, she would have beaten me out.” But he said it with a rather happy smile.

Trotti's manners were nothing if not excellent. At the beginning she was hardly a regular visitor, and Lily paid little attention to her. And then, slowly but surely, she began to make her presence felt. She would sit at the large kitchen table and help Kira with her algebra. Or she and Nicky would take their German books into the living room, and work together by the small oil lamp. Sudarskaya said one day: “I made rice pudding today, and Trotti didn't come for a snack. What happened?” And it was then that Lily came to with a jolt: Trotti Voizon had, imperceptibly, fit herself into all their lives. She wondered if this was for the good, or a questionable situation.

She had never met Trotti's mother, but had seen her several mornings at the market. She'd recognized her by the little dog with long yellow hair that Nicky had described. Trotti was an only child. Sometime in November, Madame Voizon smiled at her and tilted her head: undoubtedly, Trotti had described
her
too. But the families' socializing stopped at that. Afterward, Lily and Trotti's mother always exchanged smiles—but nothing further.

Nicky and Trotti were together for a large portion of every day, and for almost every evening. More often than not, he would go to her house after supper, some books under his arm. “Do you think he loves her?” Kira asked, her green eyes suddenly intense.
“She
loves
him
—you can tell immediately!”

Lily blinked. Was it then so obvious that even a little sister could perceive it? But, strangely enough, Kira was way ahead of her brother in the matter of the opposite sex. Lily thought, with poignancy, of the letters Pierre Rublon had carefully sent to them
all:
letters that inquired about his best friend, Nicky, about his best friend's mother, even about Sudarskaya. Then, somewhere in the middle, a specific question directed at Kira.

Nicky would read the letters aloud, then leave them on the table, casually. And Kira, cleaning up the dishes, would remove the onionskin papers with quick, deft fingers, then disappear for forty-five minutes in the bathroom. Sometimes she emerged with red-rimmed eyes; but she never spoke about it. She had her father's secretiveness, and also, Lily suspected, his wounding vulnerability.

Nicky, turning fifteen, looked older, but was still an innocent. Like Lily, he was a much more trusting nature. Shortly before the winter vacation, he seemed troubled. When they were alone at the kitchen table, he glanced down at his hands, cleared his throat, and asked: “Mama ... do you think I can kiss Trotti? Or would she be angry?”

The open naïveté of the question took her breath away. She felt certain that Pierre had already kissed her daughter, and that
she
hadn't thought to confer with her mother about it. But she answered, in an even voice: “Darling, you must know this better than I. I'm not sure where you two are in your relationship at this moment. Maybe she's expecting a kiss —or perhaps it
would
affront her. It's up to you to figure this out, and to feel if the right moment has come.”

The next day, he came into the house, his face alight with pleasure. “Mama!” he cried, somewhat breathlessly. “I kissed her!” Shyly, he turned slightly aside and added: “And she was happy.”

The winter of 1939-40 proved uneventful on the western front. The war still appeared to be acted out in the dim distance. It was difficult to summon excitement over the fate of the distant Finns, invaded by the Soviet Union. Sudarskaya, still a Russian citizen in spite of Lily's assurances to the contrary, had to be fingerprinted again at the police station. Édouard Daladier was forced to resign in favor of the economist Paul Reynaud, over his failure to send help to Helsinki. But still, he remained in the Cabinet as defense minister. Old Marshal Henri Pétain was given the post of vice-premier.

In April, the improvised force sent by the French and British to help the Norwegians defend themselves against Hitler, was roundly defeated. Chamberlain was unseated, but Reynaud remained. Nicky said to his mother: “The French don't care. All this is still too far away.”

From the start of the school year, Nicolas had amazed all his teachers with the agility of his mind, his gift for languages, and his astounding memory. Then, toward Christmas, he spoke to Lily. “With the war on, I want to make sure I get as far as I can with my studies,” he explained. “Who knows how long I'll have the luxury of being a student?”

“Don't
Nicky.”

“But we have to face reality. Mama, I already had a discussion with our principal. He's going to let me accelerate, so I can take my first
baccalauréat
exam this June, instead of next.”

For the students, the
bac's
were a trial by fire. They lived in dread of them all through their high school years, and many brilliant students failed them unexpectedly. Lily considered Nicky's age: at fifteen, he wanted to forge ahead, taking on a monstrous load. But he was right. She didn't want to think that he might eventually be drafted. She preferred to imagine that they might have to flee from Saint-Aubin in the middle of an important semester. Had it been Kira, she would have vetoed the acceleration. But she knew that Nicky could handle this strain, and even thrive under it. And besides . . . now he would be thrown in with Trotti Voizon all the time.

“If this is what you feel you can do, it's all right with me,” she told him, smiling.

Maryse had written that in Paris, it was becoming more and more difficult to admit to being a Jew. Left and right, their Jewish friends were running away, to the United States and to Britain. Yet the quotas were so tight that many of them were being turned away. Wolf didn't want to move. “It's as if his experience in Vienna has emptied him out,” she wrote to Lily, honestly adding: “He's changed so much that half the time, I don't recognize my husband, always so vibrantly alive, in this still, frozen shell of a man . . . suddenly so old.”

It was then that Lily's mind captured the thought, holding it like a palpable object, that she hadn't been with a man in over two years. And the image that came to her was, strange as it may seem, a remembrance of Mark walking through the garden of the Schwindgasse, one hot night in Vienna. How long ago had this moment been?
Six years ago.
She'd been lonely then, too, without the warmth of a man's body in the night, without the thrill of a man's fingers running trails over the languorous softness of her skin. All at once, thinking about this aroused her. Filled with an unaccustomed bitterness, she sat down, momentarily defeated. Years ago . . . sixteen, to be exact . . . she'd unburdened herself at confession of her physical desire for a man. Now, she thought, she'd hardly know what to say anymore to a Catholic priest. She'd let her old religion fall like a relic by the wayside . . . like a broken object for which she had no further use. She could recite all the Jewish prayers, like delectable incantations. But she couldn't put feeling into the Pater Noster nor the Ave Maria. And she didn't feel guilty now about wanting to be touched, wanting to be loved, wanting to love a man with all her body and soul.

Later in the spring, Nicky and Trotti had their first serious disagreement. Some of their friends had planned a bicycling outing to the city of Caen. “We'll go, too, with picnic lunches,” the young girl said.

“I can't. I have to prepare for the physics exam.”

“But we'll study together, on Saturday!
Everyone's
going to go ... and it's time we spent a day together, without our parents around.”

Her black eyes, insistent, bored into him. She placed a hand on his arm. “Come on, Nicky.”

He was aware that her insistence was over more than just a trip to the big city. He could feel her strength, her
femaleness,
so close to him, and it caused strange stirrings inside him. Part of him was suddenly, mystically excited; but the other part, the mental one, seemed to fight back. Trotti wanted to do things her own way. She was older. And he didn't intend to let himself be manipulated. Suddenly, the fact that her breasts were only inches away from his elbow, was a reason to withdraw, instead of responding. “Look,” he told her, his voice tight, “I've got two years to do in one. It