Liza watched as they placed the suitcases beside them in the back of the taxi, rather than in the front beside the driver. She watched the taxi pull away.
“Suitcases, suitcases,” she thought, as her teeth chattered. “I must get dressed. I must leave. Wherever are my stockings?”
A feeling of anxiety made everything swim before her eyes. Her hands blindly groped at the divan.
“Where are my stockings? I can’t go bare-legged.”
She finally found the stockings and put on her dress and coat that were still draped over the armchair.
She was leaving. She needed only her shoes and hat.
All she had to do was run down the stairs, open the front door and she would be saved, she would be free.
She needed only a minute, just one minute more.
She dashed out of her room and ran downstairs. Her footsteps echoed loudly amid the silence. They didn’t sound like her footsteps: they sounded like someone else’s. Like those belonging to someone who was running after her, trying to get at her.
She glanced over her shoulder as she ran. There was nobody there; it was deserted all around. But she saw out of the corner of her eye a shadow on the white wall opposite the window—swaying black tree branches. They looked just like someone’s hands. Just like Nikolai’s hands. They were reaching out towards her, trying to get at her, trying to grab her throat, trying to strangle her.
She cried out, squeezed her eyes shut and ran on.
Her fleeting reflection flashed in the dark mirror in the hallway.
If only those hands didn’t get at her. If only she had the strength to open the door. If only she didn’t trip up.
Fear had made her heart almost stop. It was no longer beating, just barely whispering: “Run, run. If you trip, it will all be over.” She couldn’t catch her breath. “If I trip here, I’ll die here.”
She grasped the door handle.
“I know it. I won’t be able to get out.”
But the door opened easily.
Liza found herself on the porch. The sun shone brightly in her eyes. She descended the steps into the garden.
The garden gate creaked as it always did.
“Never in my life shall I set foot in this house again, never,” Liza said out loud.
“Where am I going now? Who shall I go to? Odette is in Bordeaux. Who else is there?” she pondered. “Bunny!” The name suddenly popped into her head. “He’s a kind-hearted soul. He’ll help me.”
She found two francs in the pocket of her coat. As she headed to the metro, she thought: “Bunny will help me.”
It was a long journey. Bunny didn’t live at the Claridge any more, but in a small pension on the boulevard Saint-Michel.
“Monsieur Rochlin is not at home,” the owner announced from behind his desk.
“May I wait for him?”
He looked her over.
“You may.”
Liza perched gingerly on the edge of the chair.
She didn’t have to wait long. Soon enough Bunny came bounding towards her—plump, glowing and looking years younger. He had a cigar in his mouth and wore his bowler hat at a jaunty angle. His bulging, blue porcelain eyes glittered boldly behind his pince-nez.
He stopped in front of her and his lips drew into a smile.
“Liza darling?” He held a stumpy arm out to her and squeezed her hand in his. “Hello, Liza darling.” He wasn’t in the least surprised, as if they had seen each other only yesterday.
“Bunny, Bunny!” Liza squeezed his hand in hers. “Help me, Bunny.”
He nodded.
“Of course, of course, I’ll help,” he said, pushing the bowler farther to the back of his head. “Here’s what we’ll do. You come with me—I’ve got a taxi waiting. You can tell me all about it on the way.”
And with that, he turned back to the exit, without even going up to his room.
“Well, what’s happened? Is it Natasha?”
Liza shook her head.
“No. Natasha is in Monte Carlo. Bunny, I’ve left home and I can never go back there, never.”
The taxi cruised slowly along the embankment. Liza turned her face to the window and stared vacantly out at the Seine.
Bunny didn’t ask any questions. He stroked her hand gently.
“Don’t upset yourself, Liza darling. Things have a way of working out.”
“Help me, Bunny. I don’t have anyone in the whole world apart from you. I can never go back there.”
“Of course, Liza darling. I’ll help you. You were kind to me that day, do you remember? It was a terrifying day for me. I nearly died. I’ve made it through now, but back then… How could I forget? You were quite right to turn to me for help.”
He paused to think for a moment.
“I’m leaving for Berlin today. I’m moving to Germany. I’ll take you with me. You can be my daughter, Liza darling.”
He embraced her and his eyes welled up with tears of joy.
“You’ll be my daughter, Liza darling. My poor little orphan.”
She leant against him.
“Will you really take me with you, Bunny?”
“We’ll leave today. You’ve never been to Berlin? Everything’s so neat and tidy there, you’ll see. I’ll take you to the zoo. You’ll attend a German boarding school.”
His talk grew faster and faster, inspired by his own benevolence.
Liza smiled as she listened to him.
“Will you really?”
“I’ll make out a will in your favour.”
Liza laughed.
“Bunny dear, you’re too funny! Why the will?” She kissed him on the cheek. “You’re so wonderful! Thank you. I’m so fond of you. I’ve always been fond of you. You know, once we were having lunch at Prunier’s—and when they brought out my lobster, it looked just like you. It was looking up at us from its dish, just the way you always look at us from a taxi window. I couldn’t eat it. I felt so sorry for it, as if it were you I would have had to eat.”
Bunny joined in her laughter.
“Oh, Liza darling, we’re going to live the life, just you wait and see!”
He looked at his watch and his face suddenly grew concerned.
“It’s half past three already. There’s one more place I must go. Liza darling, you can wait for me in a café and I’ll come back to collect you.”
He asked the driver to pull over and dived into a small café by the side of the road. Liza walked with him, holding his hand.
“You won’t be long, will you, Bunny? I’d much rather go with you. I don’t want to be on my own.”
He turned to her. The look in his eyes was vague and cold again.
“No, you can’t,” he said sharply.
He sat her down by a window and, without asking her, ordered her a bock.
“I’ll pay for it now, so you won’t have to worry while you wait. I shan’t be long. Have fun now.”
He waved goodbye to her, and Liza was left all alone.
Was everything really going to turn out all right? Was she really going to live in Berlin with the kind, lovely Bunny?
She tried to picture Berlin in her mind’s eye—broad straight streets with regular tall buildings on either side.
“Will Bunny’s wife love me? Of course she will,” she reassured herself. “I’ll be as good as gold. She won’t be able to help loving me. I’m so hungry. It would have been better if Bunny had ordered me a sandwich and a coffee rather than a beer. Never mind. He’ll be back soon and he can get me something to eat then.”
It grew dark. The street lamps came on. The clocks struck five, then six. Without thinking of anything in particular, Liza just watched the motor cars drive past.
“Bunny will be back any minute now.”
But he didn’t come.
The waiter studied the girl sitting in front of a full glass of beer with some curiosity.
Finally, he approached her.
“Are you waiting for someone, mademoiselle?”
“Yes, the gentleman who dropped me off here.”
“I doubt he’ll come now.”
Liza raised her eyebrows in surprise.
“What do you mean, he won’t come?”
“He must have forgotten, or perhaps something has prevented him…”
She shook her head resolutely.
“No, that’s impossible. He’ll be here any minute now.”
When the clock struck seven, Liza got up.
“Where is your telephone?”
She found the number of Bunny’s pension in the telephone directory.
“Monsieur Rochlin no longer lives here,” she heard an accented voice say. “He and his wife left for Berlin an hour ago.”
Liza hung up and slowly walked through the café towards the exit.
“What about the phone call?” a waitress behind the zinc bar shouted after her.
Liza put her last franc on the bar counter, before heading out into the street.
“What am I to do now? Where am I to go?”
She didn’t spare Bunny a moment’s thought. Bunny—just like everything that had happened on the previous day and overnight and that morning—vanished from her mind.
“What am I to do now?”
She stopped.
“What am I to do now?”
Vehicles drove up and down the streets. Pedestrians hurried home.
Home. All of them had homes to go to. But Liza had nowhere. She was homeless.
She looked around her. Was this really Paris? Paris, where she’d lived for so many years. No, it wasn’t Paris. It was a strange, unfamiliar, unreal city.
People were walking down a wide street that was flanked by black leafless trees on either side. With each passing moment, there were fewer and fewer people. Their faces were pale and downcast, and their voices deadened. The dark, blind houses with their doors and windows tightly shut seemed lifeless. Street lamps shone dimly in the heavy blue light.
With each passing moment, there were fewer and fewer people, their voices grew quieter and the street lamps were extinguished one by one. Life left the city along with the noise and light. It soared up to the sky, animating it with stars and a large, blindingly bright moon that rolled over the clouds triumphantly.
The city seemed like a phantom. As did the people. Yes, these people were phantoms. They were only pretending to be in a hurry. They weren’t alive—they were phantoms. If she were to walk up to one and say, “I’m hungry, please help me,” the phantom wouldn’t even turn to look at her. It wouldn’t hear her. It would just smile absently and dissolve into the night.
She was alone in this enormous ghostly city. She had nowhere to go.
She was cold. She thrust her hands deep into the pockets of her coat. Her fingers felt something sharp.
“What’s this?”
She extracted a visiting card.
“Leslie Grey, Hotel Majestic,” she read under a street lamp.
Leslie Grey was the man who came yesterday. His name was Leslie Grey. She hadn’t even known that.
“Leslie Grey,” she said aloud, and suddenly, all became quite clear in her mind. She had to find this Leslie Grey. There was nobody else.
He had said to her: “When can I see you again? Promise that you’ll write to me. I’m in love with you already.” His eyes had shone. Yes, she could go to him.
The Hotel Majestic was on avenue Kléber, near the Étoile. How was she going to make her way there on foot, across the length and breadth of Paris?
Her feet grew heavy, her head ached and she had a horrible metallic taste in her mouth. She swallowed her saliva. “It’s the hunger,” she thought. “I haven’t eaten anything today.”
The streets seemed never-ending. She walked on and on. It felt as though she had been walking for days. She could hardly move her feet. She mustn’t lose her way.
As she crossed a road that had been dug up for repairs, she tripped and fell. She could have stayed there on the ground, but she had to get up. Slowly, she got to her feet, rubbed her knee and carried on walking. She wiped her face: her cheeks were moist. That was when she realized that she was crying. She was crying, but she wasn’t in pain. She wasn’t in pain. There was no pain.
“That’s enough of that. It’ll pass,” she reassured herself. She wasn’t sure what exactly would “pass”—the grazed knee, herself or everything else.
At the Étoile, she was almost run over by a little motorcycle. She started running and came to a stop only when she had reached a large building with a terrace and spherical lamps outside. Palm trees and soft armchairs were arranged on the other side of large glass windows.
“This must be the Majestic.”
A doorman set the revolving door in motion for her.
“Leslie Grey, please,” she said to him.
The doorman called over another man.
“Mister Grey?”
“Number eighteen, on the first floor.”
Liza followed him. In the lift, she felt as if she were suffocating. But it was over in a flash. Now she found herself walking down a broad corridor, scrutinizing the numbers on the doors. She arrived at number eighteen.
She knocked.
“Come in.”
Leslie Grey was standing before a full-length mirror, wearing a white waistcoat and carefully doing up a white tie.
“Just put the jacket on the bed,” he said without turning to look. “Thank you.”
Liza leant against the wall. The mirror suddenly stretched out into a long gallery in front of her, with Leslie Grey somewhere at the end of it. Electric light bulbs rained fire down from the ceiling, right onto Liza.
“I’ve come to you,” she struggled to utter, fighting back the weariness engulfing her, as a drowning man tries to fight off the waves. “I have nowhere else to go.”
Part Four
I
LIZA WAS living in Normandy, in a hunting lodge.
Leslie Grey had taken her there the very next morning.
The lodge stood in the middle of vast park grounds. That spring was wet and windy.
Liza would wake up early and put on a light-blue dress that had been bought off the peg in Rouen. She would brush her hair; it had grown so long again here in the countryside, where there was nowhere she could go to have it cut. Then she would go through to the dining room for breakfast. Leslie was sure to be there, sitting at the table in his shooting jacket.
He would get up and kiss her on the cheek.
“Did you sleep well, Betsy?”
“Thank you, yes. And you?”
She would pour him some tea. He ate kippers, fried eggs, porridge and orange marmalade.
“Please, help yourself,” he would say. “You really must put on some weight. It’s no good being so thin.”
Looking at him made her feel a little disgusted. The sight of the fish-head on the patterned plate and the smell of fried fat turned her stomach.
“Will you join me on the shoot today?”
“No, no,” she would hurriedly refuse.
At that, he would laugh.
“Of course not, I knew it! When will you finally agree? You’ll see how much fun it is to shoot hares. Yesterday, I came across a wild goat. I’d love to have some goat for dinner!”
He would get up and take his gun off the wall. The dogs would come running to him from the hallway, barking and whining with excitement.
Liza would stroke them and give them lumps of sugar to eat. She would then throw a cloak over her shoulders and walk Leslie to the park gates. That was the point at which she would turn back.
“Goodbye, Leslie. Happy shooting.”
“Goodbye, Betsy. Don’t miss me too much.”
The sound of his cheerful whistling and the barking of the dogs carried to her for a while, but then Liza would be left in silence.
“Don’t miss me.” She didn’t. She didn’t miss anything. She didn’t feel bored. Slowly, she would make her way back, along the sweeping avenue. A row of tall, ere
ct linden trees flanked both sides. Narrow, shiny leaves were starting to cut through on the slender black branches. Liza imagined that someone could have painted them on. Over the pale-grey sky, clouds drifted past like plumes of smoke. Smoke rose up above the lodge like clouds. White doves sat on the roof. None of it seemed real. The park and the lodge might have been a stage set. Even the pale sun in the cloudy sky resembled a cut-out moon more than it did an actual sun. It was all so fresh, translucent, pale and quiet. Too pale, too translucent. It was all theatrically tender, theatrically sentimental—devoid of the burdens and hardships of life.
Liza raised her hand to the bright green leaves and caressed them. Somewhere far away, a gunshot rang out like a sigh. A fine mist was rising off the pond and up into the empty sky.
No, Liza was not bored. She regretted nothing, desired nothing, remembered nothing. She felt as if her soul were soaring up into the empty sky, like the smoke, over the trees, over the lodge. And this is why she could breathe so freely.
Geese swam in the pond. A frog croaked gently. In a pine forest, she came across a glade. The grass here was new and fresh. Nobody had walked on it until now. There was nobody to walk here, other than Liza.
“This is where the angels come down at dawn,” thought Liza, vaguely recollecting her dream.
No, angels don’t come down to earth. Why should they have to do that? They have their own business to take care of, up there in the heavens.
Liza turned off onto a path. A puppy came bolting towards her from the lodge.
“Toby! Toby!” she called out to him.
The puppy was only little. He was longhaired and ginger. She picked him up.
“How did you manage to come all this way? You must be tired!”
The puppy licked her hand and settled in her arms. She kissed him and pressed him to her breast.
“My little puppy, dear little puppy,” she sang quietly. “My little puppy, dear little puppy.”
She sat down on a bench. Tears were streaming down her face. She was crying and she didn’t know why. She was neither sad nor bored. But there was an emptiness in her breast, as if her soul had left her body, like white smoke, to drift across the empty sky in clouds of white.
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