When she finally reached the rabbi’s office, she had trouble getting through to him. The rabbi, his secretary explained, was a busy man. In her rusty Spanish, Charlotte said she realized that but asked the woman to tell him that a friend of Dr. Julian Bauer’s was calling. The secretary told her to hold on for a moment. Charlotte knew from the change in the secretary’s voice that her instinct had been correct. A woman who worked for a rabbi would be accustomed to dealing with death. A woman with religious scruples, not to mention an old-fashioned sense of social shame, would have more trouble dealing with suicide.
The rabbi came on the line. His English was better than her Spanish.
She asked again if Dr. Bauer had been ill.
He had not.
She asked if there had been an accident.
There had not.
“Then what was the cause of death?”
“All I can tell you, Mrs. Foret, is that Dr. Bauer died peacefully. He was not a violent man, his tour of duty in the German army notwithstanding.”
“You mean he didn’t shoot himself?”
“Dr. Bauer died peacefully,” the rabbi repeated.
“Did he take pills? Did he get in a bathtub and cut his wrists?” She was shouting now. “How did he do it?”
“Dr. Bauer found the peace he was looking for,” the rabbi said, then the phone went dead.
The images haunted her. She saw him sitting on the side of a bed in a lonely room, counting out the pills, lining them up on the night table. She saw him go into a bathroom and return with a glass of water. Did he swallow handfuls or take them one by one? One by one, she thought. He was—correction, had been—a methodical man. She saw him taking off his shoes, stretching out his long thin body on the narrow bed, waiting for the peace the rabbi insisted he’d found.
Or had he chosen a more natural method? He could have gone to another town, Cartagena or some other place on the Caribbean or Pacific coast. She saw him checking in to a hotel. He’d carry a suitcase in order not to arouse suspicions. At sunset or sunrise, depending which way the coast faced—she had a feeling he would want to walk into the sun—he would go down to the beach. He’d be wearing a robe over his swimsuit. He was a proper as well as a deliberate man. She saw him taking off the robe, folding it, laying it carefully on the sand beside his shoes. His body would be older now and probably thinner than the one she’d known so intimately. He would turn and begin to walk into the long rays of the rising or setting sun, just as he’d come walking out of them the first time she’d seen him.
She began to cry, finally. The reaction was a relief but not an abandonment. At a little before five o’clock, she went into the bathroom, washed her face, and bathed her eyes. She did not want Vivi asking what was wrong. She had spent her cache of explanations.
* * *
One more envelope arrived from Bogotá. This one was oversized. She opened it carefully and warily. Inside was a large parchment document. She took it out and sat staring at it. The words Medical Faculty of the University of Heidelberg ran across the top. Julian Hans Bauer was written at the bottom. She ran her fingers over the elaborately scrolled name. It was ludicrous but somehow logical that she had never known his middle name.
There was a piece of stationery in the envelope as well. It was from the same synagogue.
Dear Mrs. Foret,
Dr. Bauer had few effects. He left his books to our synagogue. He asked that I forward his medical degree to you. He wanted you to remember him as a man who wished to first do no harm.
Yours truly,
Rabbi Sandor de Silva
This time she didn’t cry. The pain was numbing.
* * *
She’d thought the images would fade as the days passed, but at odd moments—reading the paper on the bus, editing a manuscript in the office, sitting across the table from Vivi at dinner—she saw him lying on that narrow bed waiting for death or walking into the ocean to meet it. And just as she wondered how he had done it, though it hardly mattered, she tried to decipher what she felt. Grief certainly. Guilt as well? Anger at her own hardheartedness? It didn’t seem fair that he had saved her and Vivi from the worst of the Occupation but hadn’t been able to salvage himself. Reason assured her nothing she could have done would have made a difference. Her conscience told her another story.
* * *
She wouldn’t be bothering anyone. Horace had driven to Connecticut to spend the weekend working on a manuscript with one of his writers. Hannah was at a conference in Boston, with young Federman, Charlotte was willing to bet. And when she’d moved into the apartment, both of them had told her to feel free to use the garden at any time. She rarely had, but on this Friday night, walking from empty room to empty room—Vivi was off at another slumber party—finding the ghost of Julian lurking in every shadow, she felt the need to escape. She pulled on a sweater, though the May night was mild, poured herself a glass of wine, and, because she didn’t want to spill it, took the elevator down to the ground floor.
The scent of lilacs assaulted her as soon as she stepped into the yard, except she wasn’t in the yard but back in the Luxembourg Gardens. Let me help you, he’d said, and she’d slapped away his hand. Where had she got the nerve to strike a Wehrmacht officer? Even then she must have known whom she was dealing with. That was why she’d got on her bike and pedaled away as if all hell were after her.
She made her way down the path and sat in one of the wrought-iron chairs arranged around a small table. The aroma of lilacs was even stronger here, part fragrant memory, part olfactory punishment. On either side of the yard, lighted windows made blank crossword puzzles of the neighboring brownstones. Farther afield, the illuminated windows of the taller apartment houses on Fifth and Park Avenues flamed in the darkness. The sound of passing cars hummed quietly in the distance. Occasionally a horn shattered the quiet.
She didn’t know how long she’d been sitting there when a light went on in the study and a beam spilled through the bay windows and down the path to her feet. She was only a shadow in the darkness, but if someone were looking out the window, the shadow would probably be visible.
The door to the garden opened, and Horace came out. He looked around as if to get his bearings, then started down the path to the wrought-iron table and chairs.
“I thought you were away for the weekend. Cutting and slashing Bullock’s new biography.”
“I was supposed to be, but the atmosphere was not conducive to editorial work. This afternoon when Bullock went out for his daily constitutional, Mrs. Bullock took the opportunity to go through his desk. She said she was looking for a stamp. What she found was bills and receipts for restaurants where she’d never eaten, hotel rooms where she’d never slept, and a Tiffany bauble she’d never got a chance to wear because it was dangling from some other woman’s neck, which, she was shouting as I arrived, she had every intention of wringing. I said I’d come back another time. Want company, or is this a solitary commune with nature?”
“I’m not particularly pleasant to be with.”
“My favorite kind of companion.”
They sat in silence for a while. A light went off in the house next door. A cat appeared on the wall between the yards, prowled along it, then disappeared into the night.
“Want to talk about it?” he asked finally.
“No.”
“I didn’t think so. Okay, we’ll just sit here and smell the lilacs.”
She felt the tears start again and turned her face away, but she was too late.
“Vivi again?”
“Vivi’s fine. It appears I’m even forgiven.”
“Then we should be celebrating. Another joyride around the premises. But you don’t appear to be much in the mood for that. In fact, you look as if you just lost your best friend.”
She didn’t say anything to that for a while. “Not best, but a friend,” she admitted finally.
“I’m sorry.”
“He committed suicide.”
“By he I
assume you mean the German doctor you knew in Paris.”
“My God, Horace. You’re a publisher. Your stock-in-trade is words. When did you start speaking in euphemisms? The German doctor I knew? And he wasn’t a doctor. Or rather he was a doctor. But he was also an officer in the German army.”
“That’s it, Charlie. Keep up the self-flagellation. All right, you did more than know him, unless we’re speaking in the biblical sense. And he wasn’t just a doctor. He was an officer in Hitler’s army. For all I know, he was a Nazi. An SS. A Gestapo.”
“He wasn’t any of those things,” she shouted, then stopped. “Why are you deliberately provoking me?”
“Because I’m tired of your either running away or strutting around in your hair shirt, which amount to the same thing. For years you couldn’t admit that anything had happened. Now all of a sudden you’re responsible for the whole damn Occupation.”
“I collaborated with it.”
“We’ve been through all that. Tell me one thing. Would you have admitted you loved him if he weren’t a German officer?”
“Of course.”
“Really? You wouldn’t have felt it was a betrayal of your dead husband? Or of Vivi? You wouldn’t have thought you didn’t have a right to love someone or to be loved because you were alive, your poor young husband was dead, and all around you people were suffering while you were managing to survive?”
“Now you sound like Hannah.”
“No one can be wrong all the time.”
“That was unkind.”
“Come on, Charlie, we both know how you feel about Hannah. How we both feel about Hannah. But I’ll tell you what is unkind. Throwing away life with both hands. It’s worse than unkind. It’s stupid and reckless and wasteful. You’re sitting out here wallowing in sorrow for that poor man, who I admit deserves it, and pity for yourself, who doesn’t, because you’re damn lucky. You’re sitting out here on a soft May night with a man who loves you. That’s a gift, Charlie. Take it!”
She thought about that for a moment. “I don’t know how to.”
“I have some idea.”
“I’ve already told you. I may dislike Hannah, but I don’t want to start disliking myself.”
“Let me tell you about Hannah and me. It has nothing to do with young Federman. He’s an effect, not a cause. It doesn’t even have to do with the war. It has to do with the fact that we misled each other. Or maybe we misled ourselves. The match was so appropriate, the surface so shiny, that neither of us bothered to lift the hood of this perfect pairing and look beneath it until it was too late. And now all that’s left is the surface, tarnished with wear and tear and mutual antipathy. So tell me, whom would we be hurting?”
She didn’t answer.
“All right, I’ll put it another way. Whom did you hurt with your German officer?”
She still didn’t answer.
“He didn’t take his life because of you. From what you’ve told me, from what I can imagine, he took it because he was a Jew serving a regime determined to destroy Jews. I’m not blaming him. I’m in no position to make moral judgments. But did it ever occur to you that he might have been in worse shape without you?”
She turned to him in surprise. “That’s what he said in his letter.”
“I rest my case. Don’t throw it away, Charlie. If not for your sake, then for mine.”
His face was coming closer now, his eyes violet in the darkness. Again she met him halfway.
Neither of them spoke going up in the elevator. She was too frightened. She couldn’t even look at him. Her eyes focused straight ahead, watching the floors as they passed. She’d told him his condition didn’t offend her. That was true when she was sitting across from him or even in his lap. But this would be … she didn’t know what this would be. That was the problem. Suddenly she remembered something. The conversation she’d overheard the night Vivi had lighted the menorah. He and Hannah had been arguing, and their voices had carried into the foyer.
“You may not be stupid,” Horace had shouted, “but you’re lousy at hiding disgust.”
“I was trying to help,” Hannah had replied.
Was she supposed to help? Or not help? And what did that mean? Was she supposed to avert her eyes? She’d loved looking at Laurent. Julian, too, though she’d never been able to admit it, even to herself. Was she supposed to pretend there was nothing out of the ordinary?
She was still staring straight ahead at the passing floors when she felt him take her hand.
“It’s going to be all right, Charlie. I promise.”
The elevator cab arrived at the fourth floor. He pushed open the doors. She stepped off. He followed her.
“There is one more problem,” she said as he closed the door to her apartment behind them. “I realize this isn’t exactly romantic—”
“Don’t worry about romance. I’ve got enough for two. And if you’re worried about precautions, remember my father’s advice. I come prepared. You see the effect you have on me. I’m a kid again.”
He followed her across the living room and down the hall to her bedroom, then closed the door behind them.
She was standing beside the bed. “I’m not sure what to do,” she admitted.
He wheeled over to her. “Just leave everything to me.”
He reached up and began unbuttoning her blouse. She started to help him, but he pushed her hands aside. “I don’t need help. I’ve been preparing for this for a long time.” He slid the blouse off her shoulders. She shivered.
“Cold?”
“That’s not from the cold.”
His hands moved around to her back. He unhooked her bra. She closed her eyes. Then suddenly his hands were gone. She opened her eyes. He was staring at her.
“I’m memorizing you,” he said, “in case you disappear.”
She leaned over, took his hands, and put them on her breasts. “I’m not going anywhere,” she murmured against his mouth.
Together they undid his tie and got him out of his jacket and shirt. She wasn’t helping. She was impatient.
“Now comes the acrobatic part.” He swung himself out of the chair and onto the bed. He was still watching her. “Thank you,” he said.
“For what?”
“For not averting your eyes. For not struggling to hide your distaste.”
She climbed on top of him, bent until their faces were almost touching, and moved her body against his. “Does this feel like distaste?”
Somehow they maneuvered out of the rest of their clothes, a joint effort of mutual unbuttoning and unzipping and tugging. When they were both naked, she climbed on top of him again. Then she was falling and he was rising, and they both forgot the awkwardness and the tragedy and the heartbreak of his condition, and then his condition itself, moving slowly at first, then faster, then more slowly until she thought she would howl with the pleasure, and finally, lost to herself, lost to him, her back arching in a frenzy she couldn’t control, his body bucking beneath her, she did howl. The shudder went through her like an earthquake. The aftershocks shook him a moment later.
He spent the night, though neither of them slept much. It wasn’t the narrow bed. It was the waking each other up, once to make love again, several times after that merely to touch in the darkness as if to make sure the other was there, then just before dawn to make love a third time.
The sun was coming up as she walked him to the elevator.
“I should be consumed with guilt,” she said. He stopped to look at her. “But I’m not.”
“I’m going to send out a press release. ‘For the first time in recent memory, Charlotte Foret is not consumed with guilt.’”
“But I have a feeling I will be.”
He shook his head. “What am I going to do about you? More to the point, what are we going to do about us?”
“Nothing.”
“Don’t say that.”
She leaned down to kiss him good-bye. “Aren’t you supposed to be the one who isn’t afrai
d of the truth?”
Eighteen
At first she refused to go. “I can’t leave Vivi.”
“Take Vivi with you. School will be out. It’ll be the best thing for her.”
“I can’t afford it.”
“The house is paying your expenses. I think we can swing a little extra for Vivi.”
“What will she do while I’m working?”
“Do I have to give you a guidebook? Notre Dame. The Eiffel Tower. The Louvre.”
“But she’ll be on her own. She’s only fifteen.”
“She’s a New York City kid. She knows how to navigate a metropolis. And what fifteen-year-old wouldn’t kill for a few hours a day on her own in Paris? But if you’re really worried, I know people there. So does Hannah. I bet you do, too.”
She sat looking at him across her desk. “Isn’t that the problem?”
“Times have changed. It’s been ten years since the end of the war. All is forgiven, thanks to the political acumen of your namesake Charlie de Gaulle.”
“It would be nice to think so, but I’m not so sure.”
“Go, Charlie. Vivi will see Paris, G&F will end up with some good foreign books for next year, and you’ll lay some demons to rest.”
“I doubt that.”
“Try.”
* * *
They sailed on the SS Independence. They could have flown—everyone was saying that in a few years no one would spend six days crossing the Atlantic when they could do it in less than one—but she needed the time at sea. It would take longer than a few hours to get ready to face her old persona.
Some of Vivi’s friends came down to the ship to see her off. They crowded the cramped stateroom, erupting in giggles and excitement and, from those who had already been to Europe, worldly advice.
Charlotte and Horace left them to it and went up on deck. The July sun was strong, but the salt breeze took the sizzle out of it. In the distance, the skyscrapers of the city pulsated in the heat. She found her dark glasses in her handbag and slipped them on. He took a pair from the breast pocket of his jacket.
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