The LeBaron Secret (32 page)

And why are Sari's eyes suddenly misting? She shakes the letter, and reads on.

…
The LeBarons' traveling companion, Mrs. Brown, was an altogether different sort, who struck me as a shy, solitary, almost moody young woman who seemed to prefer her own company to that of others. I recall that almost every afternoon, in every weather, Mrs. Brown would take a walk around the lake, alone, a distance of 8.5 kilometers. The threesome would frequently gather in the bar at cocktail time, and there would be lively conversation, but it was always my impression that it was Mrs. LeBaron who “sparked” conversation, who tried to keep things gay and interesting, while Mrs. Brown played a more withdrawn and passive role in their social intercourse. I remember, too, that for all the LeBaron party's outward impression of gaiety and ease and friendship, they also somehow conveyed an impression of inner sadness, some infinite sadness seemed to burden them. I don't know why I say this, because there was no outward evidence of this, and yet I remember that many of the staff noticed this, and commented on it, and speculated about it. There was speculation, in light of the fact that no Mr. Brown was traveling with Mrs. Brown, that she might have been recently divorced, and that this might have been the cause of Mrs. Brown's apparent disaffection and dégagé air. It was suggested that Mr. and Mrs. LeBaron might have accompanied Mrs. Brown on this long holiday to divert her mind and raise her spirits after a recent bereavement. And yet neither explanation entirely satisfied the gossips among the staff. American divorcees, we have noticed, often style themselves by taking a maiden name as a first name
—
Mrs. Vanderbilt Brown, for instance. While American widows customarily retain their husbands' first names
—
i.e., Mrs. Thomas Brown. But Mrs. Brown styled her nomenclature “Mrs. Mary Brown,” which did not lend itself to either explanation, divorce or widowhood. But that it must have been one or the other became clear as the weeks went by, and Mrs. Brown's condition became apparent. Her condition also helped explain the undercurrent of what I call sadness that seemed to pervade the LeBaron party
.

Because, you see, it was not your relative Mrs. LeBaron who was pregnant during her stay here, and gave birth to a child four months or so after arriving. It was Mrs. Brown. I know I am correct in this because of an incident that happened. We had learned that Mr. LeBaron's family were, or had been, in the wine business in California. There are still a number of vineyards here in the Engadine, some of them very old, and at one point Mr. LeBaron expressed an interest in visiting one of these. But here in the Old World the art of wine making is surrounded by superstitions and old wives' tales. It is said, for example, that wine must not be bottled during the dark of the moon. It is said that bottling done while a north wind is blowing will turn the wine cloudy, and that there must not be rain or cloudy skies. Even today there are cellar men who will turn pale with fear if a woman passes by their casks at certain times of the moon, and at any time at all if she is great with child. It is all very silly, of course, but our Old World vineyardists believe these factors will doom their harvest. It fell to my father to explain, as tactfully as possible, to Mr. LeBaron that while Mr. LeBaron and his wife would be perfectly welcome to visit one of our local vineyards
—
provided the phase of the moon were checked on first, of course!
—
it would be quite unwise for them to include Mrs. Brown in their company. This was explained to him simply to spare Mrs. Brown any embarrassment and discomfort. I remember this because I know that when Mr. and Mrs. LeBaron toured the vineyards, they toured alone. I am certain of this because I was selected as their guide to accompany them on their tour. I remember that when the tour was over Mr. LeBaron offered me a very generous pourboire of a hundred francs. As the son of the hotelier, I quite naturally would not accept this
.

I remember that Mrs. Brown's baby was born during one of the winter months
—
December or January of 1926–1927. I remember because there were heavy snows, and there was a great deal of excitement surrounding the event. It is not every day that a baby is born at The Palace! I remember that it was a very difficult birth. If I recall, the baby was about to make a breech presentation, and our old hotel doctor
—
whose speciality was mending bones broken on the ski slopes!
—
felt he could no longer handle the situation, and Mrs. Brown was rushed to hospital in a sleigh. A sleigh had to be used because motor vehicles could no longer pass through the streets, due to the snows. At the hospital, we heard that surgery had been required
—
a caesarian section, I presume
—
and I remember that we at the Hotel were able to help by contacting the Red Cross and obtaining many demilitres of blood. Later, I remember hearing that both mother and child were very nearly lost. I wish I could tell you the sex of the child, but I cannot. I had no interest in it. To a young man of twelve years old, a baby is simply that
—
a baby!

I wish that there were more that I could tell you about Mr. and Mrs. LeBaron and Mrs. Brown. Our records show that they arrived at the Hotel on 17 August 1926, and departed on 1 March 1927, whether to return to America or for further European travel I do not know. In our Guest Registry we note any special preferences or requirements that our guests may have, in order that these may be attended to on future visits. I note that Mrs. LeBaron had a special preference for one hotel maid, Annelinde. I note that Mr. and Mrs. LeBaron liked a Continental breakfast
—
orange juice, croissant, and coffee
—
served in their suite at 7
A
.
M
., and often came down for a fuller breakfast in the dining room around 9. I note that Mr. LeBaron wanted the Paris
Herald Tribune
delivered with his Continental breakfast, and that he liked his shirts laundered without starch. The only notation I find on Mrs. Brown's card is that she liked her breakfast eggs cooked exactly three and one-half minutes
.

I note that Mr. and Mrs. LeBaron's address in the Registry is given as 1023 California Street, San Francisco. Mrs. Brown's is given as Bitterroot Ranch, Lakeside, Montana
.

I hope, dear Miss LeBaron, that all of this will be of some assistance to you in your search for lost relatives, and in your project of constructing a “family tree,” and if I can be of any further help to you please do not hesitate to call on my eager service
.

Meanwhile, my staff joins me in wishing you amities and felicitations
.

Sincerely yours
,

Andrea Badrutt

“Well, Thomas,” Sari says, putting down the letter, removing her glasses, and rubbing her eyes. “What should we do with this? Give it to her or burn it up?”

“You're asking my opinion, Madam?”

“Yes, of course I am.”

“I think, under the present circumstances, you should give it to her.”

“Here,” she says, handing him the letter. “Seal it up. Put it on her mail tray in the morning. This will mean telling her the truth, of course.”

“Yes, Madam. I see what you mean. Yes.”

“But what if—?”

“I know what you're thinking, Madam. But you've got to take that chance. Considering the present circumstances, considering what Mr. Eric is threatening to do, I don't see that you have any choice. If she knows the truth, there'll be at least a fifty-fifty chance that she'll vote her shares in your favor, and at least a fifty-fifty chance that you'll win. If she isn't told the truth, there's no way you'll be able to win at all. Your pie charts tell you that.”

She sighs. “You don't think I should speak to the lawyers first?”

“Under the circumstances, I don't think the lawyers would advise you to do differently, if you're going to win. Look at the pie charts. Besides, this isn't just a legal problem, is it, Madam? It's a human problem, too.”

“I could still lose.”

“Isn't a fifty-fifty chance of winning better than no chance at all?”

“You're right. Of course. As always. I've always said that you could have become the president of General Motors if you hadn't decided to take up buttling.”

“I think I'd rather be a butler, Madam,” he says. “It's much more interesting.”

PART THREE

The Takeover

Nine

Sari and Peter had spent the first three full summers of their marriage—the summers of 1927, 1928, and 1929—at Bitterroot Ranch in northwestern Montana with their little girl. The property consisted of three thousand wooded acres in Lake County, overlooking Flathead Lake, and with snowcapped mountains on both horizons, which Julius LeBaron had bought for a song—ten dollars an acre—before the war, when land in the Rockies was considered next to worthless. Now, the U.S. government would like to purchase Bitterroot for a National Forest, but Sari and Julius's other heirs have been holding out. The figure the government has offered is $500,000. Private developers have also shown an interest.

Bitterroot was, and is, in timber country, but it had been Peter's idea to clear the valley of trees for sheep ranching—Australian merinos were what he had in mind. And he had also planned to experiment with a new breed of beef cattle that had been developed in Texas, called Santa Gertrudis, noted for their hardiness in all kinds of weather and their thrifty growth on grass feeding. That, at least, had been his plan.

The main building at Bitterroot was a comfortable, ten-room log house, all on one level, set on an open hillside above the lake. There were several other outbuildings—sheds, toolhouses, and a cottage where the ranch superintendent, Mr. Hanratty, lived with his wife. Every morning, after a breakfast cooked for them by Mrs. Hanratty, Peter would set off to fell his daily quota of trees. Each tree felled was logged in a little notebook he kept in a pocket of his denim work pants, and each evening at dinnertime he would announce his tally. “Twenty-five today” … “Thirty-one today,” and so on, and at the end of each of those three summers the daily tallies would be totaled. The totals were impressive—forty-five hundred trees one summer, forty-nine hundred the next, and so on, and so on, and clearing the forest seemed to have become almost an obsession with him, and Assaria often wondered about it. It seemed his only interest and yet it did not seem possible to her that he could ever succeed in clearing the acreage he had in mind in a lifetime of summers, particularly since he refused any outside assistance in his labors—even Mr. Hanratty's, when it was offered. He insisted that he was going to do it all himself. “Then,” he would say, “we're going to retire here, and raise Australian merinos and try Santa Gertrudis cattle. It won't be too lonely, will it?”

“It's the most beautiful country in the world,” she said. “But by then there may be more children—grandchildren, perhaps.”

To this he would say nothing.

How does one treat a lover who isn't? How does one try to make him happy? One tries kindness, one tries congratulation. “Forty trees today! That's a record, isn't it? How wonderful!” How does one try to enter his remoteness, his solitary and brooding landscape, the discouragement and disappointment and determination to do nothing but wield an ax? She had felt this settling over them—felt it, but tried to dismiss it—even before they were married, and she had felt it in Switzerland, and tried to make a joke of it. Sadness, Andrea Badrutt had called it, and that was as good a word for it as any. Infinite sadness, impenetrable sadness, but what he had not detected was that it was Peter's sadness that had somehow become encapsulated within Peter's heart and in his mind, and that Sari, for all her attempts at gaiety, could not reach through to touch. “You don't regret this, do you, Peter?” she would say to him. “We did the right thing, didn't we?” “Oh, yes, of course,” he would say. And then, at times despite herself, she would lose patience with him. “You agreed to this!” she would cry. “This was what you said you wanted us to do!” “Oh, yes,” he would say. “Yes, I know.” And she would find herself asking herself:
Is love important? Is it important to be in love?
Perhaps not, and perhaps love is nothing more than watching the man you love, the lover who isn't one, cutting down trees, and cheering when he recites the daily totals. Come back, she had wanted to say to him. Come back to the place we had once, to where we made love, and where you told me I was so lovely, and that you loved me. Come back, come back. But he wouldn't come back and, instead, she would watch him, shirtless, in his slowly diminishing pine forest with his ax, and the small brown mole in the fine hairs just above his belly button would fill her with more longing and sadness than could be satisfied in even the most soaring and mountainous landscape of love, much less love at its most banal. Why is the shower bath not draining properly? she would ask herself, and with her fingers she would stoop and scoop out a small dark wad of his hair, and her eyes would fill with tears.

“Ours is not a conventional marriage,” he would sometimes say to her.

“But does that mean we couldn't try to make it one? I thought that was what we were going to try.”

“Well …” he would say, and turn away.

“Make a life of your own,” Joanna would say. “Hard work. That's the answer. Organization. Organize something.”

And so that is what she had tried to do.

Sometimes, those summers at Bitterroot, she would come with him and watch him as he worked, stripped to the waist and sweating while she sat wrapped in a scarf or sweater against the chilly mountain air. The sun glistened on the muscles of his back and shoulders as he swung his ax, the splinters flying into the air, the sounds of his chopping echoing in the hills. It was also this hard physical exercise that kept him in such splendid physical shape, but vanity had nothing to do with what it was that drove him.