by Kate Quinn
“Is she a wicked stepmother, your Mrs. Anna? Poison apples, makes you sleep in the cinders?”
Jordan smiled. “No, she’s wonderful.”
“Too bad, I always liked stories about wicked stepmothers. My Hungarian grandmother told me ghoulish tales growing up, the kind where the wicked stepmother wins in the end, not Cinderella. The farther east from the Rhine, the darker the fairy tales.”
“Hungarian now—really, how many languages do you speak?”
“Six or seven. Eight?” Tony shrugged. “My mother’s parents were a Hungarian and a Pole, and my father’s parents were a Romanian and a Kraut, and everybody came to Queens for a grab at the American dream. That’s a lot of languages going back and forth over a dinner table when you’re growing up.”
“And you just picked it all up?”
“There are two ways to learn a language fast, and one of them is when you’re under ten and have a pliable young brain.”
“What’s the other?”
He grinned. “Over a pillow.”
Jordan slanted him a look. He doffed an imaginary hat in apology. “I apologize. Es tut mir leid. Je suis désolé. Sajnálom. Imi pare rau. Przepraszam—”
Jordan stopped, transfixed, assessing him.
He left off his multilingual flood of apologies. “Normally when a girl stares at my lips I think she wants a kiss. You’re mentally composing a camera shot, aren’t you?”
She raised her Leica. “An Interpreter at Work.” A close-up shot of that smiling mouth midspeech, with the gesturing hand to frame . . .
Tony groaned, tugging her along into the Public Garden, where trees threw dappled shade over crisscrossing paths. “You cruel dasher of hopes, shooting me instead of kissing me . . .”
“I need a motion shot, so talk!” Jordan picked a bench near the entrance, some distance from the swan boats, where the tourists would be crowded. “Tell me something about yourself. Anything.”
“I’d rather talk about you.” He rested an elbow on the back of the bench. “When did you first pick up a camera?”
“I was nine, transfixed by winter trees and a little Kodak.” He smiled, and she clicked three shots off, already knowing this would be a good roll. Tony Rodomovsky wasn’t handsome, but he had a face that photographed well: dark coloring, bold nose, the kind of ink-dark lashes that were absolutely wasted on men who never had to pick up a mascara brush. “When did you join the army?”
“The day after Pearl Harbor. A walking cliché at seventeen, winking at the recruiter. Yes, sir, I’m of age! Then I got to war and found out that it was just as boring as high school. It was if you got stuck with interpreter duty, anyway. What was your war?”
“Scrap metal drives and emergency drills about what to do if the Japs invaded, as if the Japs were going to invade Boston, for God’s sake.” A shot of Tony listening; click. He listened very intently, backs of his fingers brushing her arm now and then. “Mostly, my war was daydreaming. I devoured stories about the women journalists and photographers going overseas—Margaret Bourke-White got torpedoed and had to ship off in a lifeboat, and I nearly died of envy. I absolutely longed to get torpedoed.”
“As long as you got away with some good shots of it?”
“Which would then make the cover of LIFE, yes. That’s exactly how the fantasy went. Then maybe I’d marry Ernest Hemingway and live a life of action and glamour.” Jordan paused, as a connection drifted into place. The journalists and photographers she’d idolized, all dash and danger and war zones, the names she could rattle off like her friends rattled off movie stars. Capa and Taro, Martha Gellhorn and Slim Aarons and . . . “Graham. Is your English friend the Ian Graham?”
Tony looked amused. “In the flesh.”
“And he offered to teach my little sister her scales?” Jordan shook her head. “I used to read his column during the war, after it was syndicated!”
“I’m going to be jealous, if you keep gushing about my boss.”
“Why, can’t a girl get a crush on an older man?” Jordan teased. “Especially a tall good-looking one with a devastating accent, who’s been all the places she’s ever wanted to go?”
“He’s married, and besides, I’d rather you got a crush on me.”
“So charm me. Tell me about being an interpreter at a documentation center.” Lifting the Leica again.
“Not a life of action and glamour. A flood of refugees poured through Vienna—they told their stories to Ian, through me.”
“Was he writing articles, or—”
“No, he says he’s done with writing. Gave it up for practical refugee work and hasn’t penned an article since the Nuremberg Trials.”
“I can see it might wear your soul away,” Jordan said, thoughtful. “Year after year, seeing human suffering and turning it into newspaper fodder. Was it like that for you, translating? Hearing war stories day in and day out, when the rest of the world only wants to leave the war behind?”
“No.” Tony linked his hands between his knees, smile fading to something more pensive. “An interpreter tries to work a step removed. You’re not really there, in a way. You’re like a set of interphones; you make it possible for the two people on either side to hear each other. And that’s everything, when you come down to it. That’s it, in a nutshell: if people would just hear each other—”
Tony stopped. “They’d what?” Jordan asked quietly.
He gave a small, crooked smile. “Likely go right on killing each other in swaths.”
Click. That’s the shot, Jordan thought. Bitter cynicism from a mobile mouth, that same mouth curled in a smile that was still touched with hope even after all it had looked on. “It’s not so different being a photographer,” she found herself saying. “I’m no professional, not yet, but I’ve had a similar feeling to the one you’re describing. The lens removes me from the scene I’m recording, in a sense. I’m a witness to it, but I’m not part of it.”
“People think it makes you heartless. It doesn’t.” A boy walking a beagle on a leash went past; Tony stretched out a hand to the beagle, who lapped his fingers happily before moving on. “It makes you a better set of interphones.”
“Or a better lens.” Jordan tilted her head at Tony. Unexpected depths to her charming clerk—who would have guessed? “You were at war since Pearl Harbor, and then you stayed and did refugee work when everyone else went home. Why?”
“You know what my war was?” Tony smiled thinly. “Nothing. Four years of it. I never fired a shot in anger, never so much as got my boots wet. My entire war was spent in various tents and offices, translating acronyms between high brass of various armies who didn’t speak each other’s lingo.”
“So you stayed on for a chance to do more,” Jordan said. “Why come home this year? It doesn’t sound to me like you’re tired of it.”
He took a long time answering, as if parsing out what to say. “I’m not tired of it,” he said at last. “But I wouldn’t mind doing something—different. Ian’s an avenger, scales of justice in one hand and sword in the other. I want to do more.”
“Like what?” A group of shopping-laden housewives fussed past, but Jordan ignored them.
“I don’t know.” Tony ruffled a hand through his hair. “Make a repository for all those stories, maybe? So they aren’t forgotten and lost. No one likes to talk about their war, after it’s fought. They want to forget. And what happens when they die, and they’ve taken all their memories with them? We’ve lost it all. And we can’t.”
You should talk to my stepmother, Jordan almost said. Another refugee who only wants to forget. But it was Anneliese’s right, surely? Because her story wasn’t just pain and loss, it was shame—the shame of the SS connection, what her father had been. “I’m an American now,” she always said firmly if asked about her past.
“You know why I prefer pictures to words?” Jordan asked Tony instead. “People can’t ignore them. Most find it easier to forget the things they read than the things they see. What’s caug
ht on film is there, it’s what is. That’s what makes pictures so wonderful, and so devastating. Catch someone or something at the right moment, you can learn everything about them. That’s why I want to record everything I see. The beautiful, the ugly. The horrors, the dreams. All of it, as much as I can get a lens in front of.”
“And how long have you known that’s what you wanted?” Tony asked. “I’m guessing when you heard that little Kodak go click for the first time.”
Jordan smiled. “How did you know?”
“Drive—you’ve got it in spades.” His eyes went over her. “I don’t have any, so I notice it when I see it.”
Jordan returned his gaze, letting her eyes go over him just as frankly. “You’re amusing when you flirt, Tony,” she said at last. “But when you’re being serious, you’re downright riveting.”
“That’s too bad. I can’t sustain serious for more than ten minutes.”
“Maybe you should practice. You might get up to fifteen.”
“My record is twelve. Who’s going to kiss who?” he asked.
“Who said there’s going to be kissing?”
“You’re thinking it. I’m thinking it.” His black eyes danced. “Who goes first? I’d hate to bump noses.”
“Why do I need to kiss you? I just took half a roll of film of your mouth as you talked. By the time I’m done cropping and filtering the image, I’ll know everything there is to know about it, without kissing you once.”
“But what a waste that would be.”
“Time in the darkroom is never wasted.”
“That depends entirely on what you’re doing down there.”
“Working. And don’t you dare say that all work and no play makes Jordan a dull girl,” Jordan added. “I hate that saying. Mostly people use it because they want me doing things for them, not for myself.”
“Besides which, they’re wrong. Work doesn’t make you a dull girl. Work makes you an absolutely fascinating girl.” He lifted her hand from the camera and kissed the pad of her index finger, the one that spent most of its time lying against the Leica’s button.
Click, went something in Jordan’s middle.
“Swan boats?” he said eventually. “Or is paddling around on a pond too boring for you, Jordan McBride? I could be persuaded to waive my fee.”
You just broke off a long engagement, a voice inside Jordan chided. You shouldn’t move too fast! But she told that voice to hush, hooking her finger at the neck of Tony’s shirt and tugging him toward her. “Maybe an alternative form of payment?”
A long, lazy, open kiss under the beating sun, Jordan’s fingertips resting against his warm throat, his thumb stroking along the line of her cheekbone. He kissed with slow, shattering thoroughness, like he could do this all day and not get tired of it, like it could take him a year if that was what she wanted. Right now, she wanted.
“Is there anywhere you have to be?” Tony said eventually, kissing along the line of her jaw toward her ear. “Or can we do this all day?”
Oh, yes, please. Jordan cleared her throat, looking down at her watch to give her breath a chance to slow. Dammit, Anneliese would be packing by now for Concord and New York, rushed off her feet. “I promised I’d help at home. Then it’s the darkroom for me—work.”
Tony dropped a last kiss below her ear, then pulled back. “All right.” No arguing that work could wait. Just assent, and that unwavering dark gaze. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Ruth’s lesson. Maybe we could go to the movies after.”
“Yes,” Jordan said without hesitation. How pleasant it was just to enjoy a man’s company, his attention, his kisses without feeling the weight of expectation from parents and neighbors. When are you going to settle down, Jordan? When will you two make it official, Jordan?
How pleasant to enjoy a man who was not official, not in the slightest.
Chapter 40
Ian
July 1950
Boston
Ian was surprised how much he enjoyed showing Ruth how to handle her half-size instrument. Perhaps because she was so voracious, so desperate for everything he could show her. Weren’t most children her age playing with dolls rather than begging to play scales? She hung rapt as he took her through positioning and stance, the basics. “Always tune to an A,” Ian said, and Ruth sang a perfect A unprompted. “Very good. Remember that Saint-Saëns I was playing, how that began?” She hummed the opening in G major. Ian glanced at Jordan McBride, sitting behind the shop counter with a cup of tea. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she has perfect pitch, Miss McBride.”
Ruth’s sister beamed. She’d brought the little girl into the shop just as Ian was hanging up his battered fedora on an antique umbrella stand and Tony was flipping the sign around to read Closed. Ian had been feeling a touch impatient with himself for making this offer when there was already so much to do, but Ruth’s face had turned on the violin so eagerly and Jordan McBride’s gaze followed her with such happiness, his misgivings faded into a wry smile. “Take your instrument, and dear God, do not drop it. To destroy a Mayr, even a replica, would be a crime against art.” Jordan puttered about preparing tea in Minton cups, and Tony leaned on the counter watching her do it.
“Enough for now,” Ian said at last, after his pupil had wobbled through her first one-octave scales. Ruth begged “More, please!” but Jordan reached over the counter to take the violin.
“You’d keep us here all night, cricket, and Mr. Graham has other obligations. I’ll bring you back tomorrow to practice.”
Ruth sighed, watching the instrument go back behind glass. When her sister prompted, “What do you say to Mr. Graham now?,” she fixed Ian with a direct stare and said, “When can you teach me more?”
“That wasn’t what I meant,” Jordan protested.
“When can you teach me more, sir?” Ruth amended.
Ian laughed out loud.
“You don’t have to do this again,” Jordan told him. “I don’t wish to impose.”
Ian opened his mouth to take the way out she’d given him. “I don’t mind,” he heard himself saying instead, and looked at Ruth. “Will Thursday do, cricket?”
Both McBride sisters burst into smiles like small suns. Goddammit, Ian thought. He liked them, and it made him wish he hadn’t met them under slightly false pretenses.
“I hope I’m not too forward in asking.” It burst out of Jordan like a dam breaking. “You were in Spain with Gerda Taro, Mr. Graham—she’s such a hero of mine, you can’t imagine. What was she like?”
“Gerda?” Ian recalled. “They used to call her la paquena rubena—the little red fox. She had a good deal of swagger as well as nerve.” Jordan had stars in her eyes, and behind her Tony smiled. He’d warned Ian in advance that she’d recognized his name, and that surprised Ian as much as Ruth’s passion for scales. Didn’t young women gush over film stars, not journalists?
“You were at the liberation of Paris,” Jordan was saying now. “I remember one of your columns—”
“Yes, I got my first draft down in the bar of the Hôtel Scribe, jammed in between a woman writing a piece for the New Yorker—Janet Flanner, I think it was—and John, who looked like he had the worst hangover in France.”
“John who?” Jordan asked.
“Steinbeck.” Ian saw Jordan’s impressed expression, and hastened to add, “It wasn’t as glamorous as it sounds. A roomful of exhausted press corps nursing blisters and griping about their deadlines.”
She didn’t look like she believed that. “And afterward?”
Ian leaned on the counter, drawn into the past despite himself. “There was a poker game played in the bed of a truck as we headed out of Paris . . .” He ended up telling one story and then another, through a second cup of tea as Jordan pressed him with questions.
“You tell these stories, and I can see everything unfold like I was there,” she exclaimed. “But Tony says you’ve given up writing.”
Ian shrugged. “See enough horrors, the words run out.”
Jordan looked like she wanted to push a pen into his hands anyway, but Tony interjected. “Princess Ruth is getting restless.” He nodded at Ruth, who sat drumming her heels. “And we’ve got a date, McBride.”
That surprised Ian. “I thought you said she didn’t know anything else useful about Kolb,” he said when Jordan disappeared into the back room to put the teacups away.
“This isn’t for work.” Tony shrugged. “Nina has Kolb’s tail until dawn, and it’s too late to make more telephone calls. There’s absolutely nothing else chase related I can turn my hand to, so I’m going to take a pretty girl to the movies.”
“If you want a pretty girl to take out, wouldn’t it be less complicated to pick one who isn’t wrapped up in our chase?” Ian said mildly. “One you don’t have to keep fibbing to?”
“I like her, that’s all.” Tony hesitated, looking unusually thoughtful. “She wants things, big things. I like that. She makes me think about wanting bigger things too. Not just coasting along on your train.”
Ian tried to resist the gibe, but failed. “Has it entirely escaped you that you’re falling for a witness?” he said straight-faced.
Tony shot him a dirty look. “This is not like you getting moony over our resident Soviet assassin—”
“Which is an absurd idea, and you can drop it—”
“—Jordan makes me laugh, that’s all. I make her laugh. It’s a bit of fun on both sides. What’s the harm?”
“Is she going to laugh when she learns you had ulterior motives for asking her on a date to begin with?” Ian lifted an eyebrow. “I may not know everything there is to know about women, but I know they don’t like to be deceived.”
Jordan swept out of the back room. “I hope you don’t mind Ruth coming to the movies, Tony? My stepmother’s out of town.”
“I can cover three tickets.” Tony smiled at the tall blond girl in her yellow summer dress, she smiled at him, and Ian could see the heat there, plain as day.
Something about this chase, he thought. It’s throwing us all off-balance. He went back disquieted, to take over the dawn watch on Kolb from Nina, then attack their list of telephone calls. But by the following afternoon when Tony came home from his shift at the antiques shop, disquiet was forgotten.