Along the Infinite Sea

by Beatriz Williams

Suddenly I was tired of all the flirting, all the charming innuendo that meant nothing at all. I braced my hands on the arms of the deck chair and lifted myself away.

  “Where are you going?” asked Stefan.

  “To get some air.”

  The air at the Isolde’s prow was no fresher than the air twenty feet away in the center of the deck—and we both knew it—but I spread my hands out anyway and drew in a deep and briny breath. The breeze was picking up with the setting of the sun. My dress wound softly around my legs. I wasn’t wearing shoes; shoes seemed pointless on the well-scrubbed deck of a yacht like this. The bow pointed west, toward the dying red sun, and to my left the water washed against the shore of the Île Saint-Honorat, a few hundred yards away.

  I thought, It’s time to go, Annabelle. You’re falling in love.

  Because how could you not fall in love with Stefan, when he was so handsome and dark-haired, so well read and well spoken and ridden with mysterious midnight bullets—the highwayman, and you the landlord’s dark-eyed daughter!—and you were nursing him back to health on a yacht moored off the southern coast of France? When you had spent so many long hours on the deck of his beautiful ship, in a perfect exchange of amity, while the sun glowed above you and then fell lazily away. And it was August, and you were nineteen and had never been kissed. This thing was inevitable, it was impossible that I shouldn’t fall in love with him.

  For God’s sake, what had my brother been thinking? Did he imagine I still wore pigtails? I thought of the woman who had visited Stefan that first day, who had held Stefan’s hand in hers, tall and lithe and glittering. She hadn’t returned—women like her had little to do with sickrooms—but she would. How could you not return to a man like Stefan?

  Time to go home, Annabelle. Wherever that was.

  I closed my eyes to the last of the sun. When I turned around, Stefan’s deck chair was empty.

  7.

  I didn’t have much to pack, and when I finished it was time to bring Stefan his dinner, which I had formed the habit of doing myself. He wasn’t in his room, however. After several minutes of fruitless searching, I found him in the library, with his leg propped up on the sofa.

  He waved to the desk. “You can put it there.”

  “Oh, yes, my lord and master.” I set the tray down with a little more crash than necessary.

  Stefan looked up. “What was that?”

  I put my hands behind my back. “I’m leaving tomorrow morning. The wound is healing well, and you’re well out of danger of infection. You don’t need me.”

  He placed his finger in the crease of the book and closed it. “What makes you think that?”

  “Because the flesh has knit well, there’s no sign of redness or suppuration—”

  “No, I mean thinking that I don’t need you.”

  I screwed my hands together. “I’m going to miss this flirting of yours.”

  “I am not flirting, Annabelle.”

  His face was serious. A Stefan without a smile could look very severe indeed; there was a spare quality to all those bones and angles, a minimum of fuss. My hands were damp; I wiped them carefully on the back of my dress, so he wouldn’t see. “I’ve already packed,” I said. “It’s for the best.”

  He went on looking at me in his steady way, as if he were waiting for me to change my mind. Or maybe not: Maybe he was eager for me to leave, so his mistress could return. Nurse out; mistress in. The patient’s progress. For everyone’s good health and serenity, really.

  “Well,” I said. “Good night, then.”

  “Good night, Mademoiselle de Créouville,” he said softly, and I turned and left the room before I could cry.

  8.

  I woke up suddenly at three o’clock in the morning and couldn’t go back to sleep. The wind had changed direction, drawing the yacht around on her mooring; you started to notice these things when you’d been living on a ship for a week and a half, the subtle tugs and pulls on the architecture around you, the various qualities of the air. My legs twitched restlessly. I rose from my bed and went out on deck.

  The night was clear and dry and unnaturally warm. I had been right about the change in wind: the familiar shape of the Île Sainte-Marguerite now rose up to port, lit by a buoyant white moon. I made my way down the deck, and I had nearly reached the railing when I realized that Stefan’s deck chair was still out, and Stefan was in it.

  I spun around, expecting his voice to reach me, some comment rich with entendre. But he lay still, overflowing the chair, and in the pale glow of the moon it seemed as if his eyes were closed. I thought, I should go back to my cabin right now.

  But my cabin was hot and stuffy, and while it was hot outside, here in the still Mediterranean night, at least there was moving air. I stepped carefully to the rail, making as little noise as possible, and stared down at the inviting ripples of cool water, the narrow silver path of moonlight daring me toward the jagged shore of the island.

  If I were still a girl on Cape Cod, I thought, I would take that dare. If I hadn’t spent seven years at a convent, learning to subdue myself, I would dive right off this ship and swim two hundred yards around the rocks and cliffs and the treacherous Pointe du Dragon to stagger ashore on the Île Sainte-Marguerite, where France’s most notorious prisoner spent a decade of his life, dreaming over the sea. I had been like that, once; I had taken dares. I had swum fearlessly into the surf. When had I evaporated into this sapless young lady, observing life, living wholly on the inside, waiting for everything to happen to me? When had I decided the risk wasn’t worth the effort?

  I looked back over my shoulder, at Stefan’s quiet body. He wasn’t wearing his pajamas, I realized. He was wearing something else, a suit, a dinner jacket. As if he were waiting to meet someone, at three o’clock in the morning, on the deck of his yacht; as if he had a glamorous appointment of some kind, and the lady was late. The blood splintered down my veins, making me dizzy, the kind of drunkenness that comes from a succession of dry martinis swallowed too quickly.

  You should wake him, I thought. You should do it. You have to be kissed by someone, sometime. Why not him? Why not here and now, in the moonlight, by somebody familiar with the practice of kissing?

  “Good evening,” he said.

  I nearly flipped over the railing, backward into the sea. “I didn’t realize you were here.”

  “I’m here most nights. The cabin’s too stuffy for me.” He sat up and swung his left foot down to the deck, next to a silver bucket, glinting in the moonlight. “Join me. I have champagne.”

  “At this hour?”

  “Can you think of a better one?”

  “I don’t drink on duty.”

  “But you’re not on duty, are you? You have tendered your resignation to me, and rather coldly at that, considering what we have shared.” He rested his elbow on his left knee and considered me. I was wearing my nightgown and my dressing gown belted over it, like a Victorian maiden afraid of ravishment. My hair was loose and just touched my shoulders. “Is something the matter?” he said.

  “No.”

  “There must be something the matter. It’s not even dawn yet, and here you are, out on deck, looking as if you mean to do something dramatic.”

  I laughed. “Do I? I can’t imagine what. I don’t do dramatic things.”

  “Oh, no. You only wrap tourniquets around the legs of dying men—”

  “You weren’t dying, not quite, and anyway, I wasn’t the one who put the tourniquet on you.”

  He waved his hand. “You carry him in a boat across the sea—”

  “Across a harbor, a very still and familiar harbor.”

  “Toward an unknown destination, a yacht, and you nurse him back to health. All without knowing who he is, and why he’s there, and why he’s been shot through the leg and nearly killed. Whether you’ve just committed an illegal act and are now w
anted by a dozen different branches of the police.”

  “Am I?”

  “I doubt it. Not in France, in any case.”

  “Well, that’s a relief.”

  He reached into his inside jacket pocket and drew out his cigarette case. “So I’ve been lying here, day after day, and wondering why. Why you would do such a thing.”

  “You might just have asked me.”

  “I was afraid of your answer.”

  I watched him light the cigarette and replace the case and the lighter in his pocket. The smoke hovered in the still air. Stefan waved it away, observing me, waiting for me to reply.

  “There’s nothing to be afraid of,” I said. “It’s simple. My brother asked me to.”

  “You trust your brother like that?”

  “Yes. He would never ask me to do something dishonorable.”

  He muttered something in German and swung himself upright.

  “You should use your crutches,” I said.

  “I am sick of fucking crutches,” he said, and then, quickly, “I beg your pardon. I find I am out of sorts tonight.”

  I gripped the rail as he limped toward me. “I suppose I am, too.”

  “Ah. Now, this is a curious thing, a very interesting thing. Why, Annabelle? Tell me.”

  “Surely you know already.”

  “I know very well why I am out of sorts. I am desperate to know why you are out of sorts.”

  The water slapped against the side of the ship. I counted the glittering waves, the seconds that passed. I pressed my thumbs together and said: “I don’t know. Just restless, I suppose. I’ve been cooped up for so long. I’m used to exercise.”

  He leaned his elbow on the railing, a foot or so from mine. I felt his breath as he spoke. “You are bored.”

  “Not bored.”

  “Yes, you are. Admit it. You have had nothing to do except fetch and carry for a grumpy patient who does not even thank you as you deserve.”

  I laughed. “Yes, that’s it exactly.”

  “There is an easy cure for your boredom. Do something unexpected.”

  “Such as?”

  “Anything. You must have some special talent, besides nursing. Show it to me.” He transferred his cigarette to his other hand and reached into his pocket. “Do you draw? I have a pen.”

  “I don’t have any paper.”

  “Draw on the deck, if you like.”

  “I’m not going to ruin your deck. Anyway, I’m hopeless at drawing.”

  “A poem, then. Write me a poem.”

  I was laughing, “I don’t write, either. I play the cello, quite well actually, but my cello is back at the Villa Vanilla.”

  “The Villa Vanilla?”

  “My father’s house.”

  Stefan began to laugh, too, a handsome and hearty laugh that shivered his chest beneath his dinner jacket. “Annabelle. Am I just supposed to let you slip away?”

  “Yes, you are.” His hand, broad and familiar, had worked close to mine on the railing, until our fingers were almost touching. I drew my arm to my side and said, “I do have one talent.”

  “Then do it. Show me, Annabelle.”

  I reached for the sash of my dressing gown. Stefan’s astonished eyes slid downward.

  The bow untied easily. I let the gown slip from my shoulders and bent down to grasp the hem of my nightgown.

  “Annabelle—”

  I knotted the nightgown between my legs and turned to brace my hands on the railing. “Watch,” I said, and I hoisted myself upward to balance the balls of my feet on the slim metal rod while the moonlight washed my skin.

  “My God,” Stefan said, reaching for my legs, but I was already launching myself into the free air, tucking myself into a single perfect roll, uncurling myself just in time to slice into the water beneath a silent splash.

  9.

  “You are quite right,” called Stefan, when my head bobbed at last above the surface. “That is an immense talent.”

  “I was club champion four years running.” The water slid against my limbs, sleek and delicious.

  He pointed to the side of the ship. “The ladder is over there, Mademoiselle.”

  “So it is.”

  But I didn’t swim toward the ladder. I turned around and kicked my strong legs and stroked my strong arms, toward the shore of the Île Sainte-Marguerite, waiting quietly in the moonlight.

  10.

  I lay in the rough sand without moving, soaking up the faint warmth of yesterday’s sun into my bones. I thought I had never felt so magnificent, so utterly exhausted and filled with the intense pleasurable relief that follows exhaustion. The water dried slowly on my legs and arms; my nightgown stiffened against my back. I inhaled the green briny scent of the beach, the trace of metal, the hint of eucalyptus from the island forest, and I thought, Someone should bottle this, it’s too good to be true.

  I didn’t count the passing of minutes. I had no idea how much time had passed before I heard the rhythmic splash of oars in the water behind me.

  “There you are, Mademoiselle,” said Stefan. “I had some trouble to find you in the darkness.”

  I sat up. “You haven’t rowed all the way over here!”

  “Of course. What else am I to do, when Annabelle dives off my ship and swims away into the night?”

  I rose to my unsteady feet and took the rope from his hand. “Let me do that.”

  “I assure you, I can manage.”

  “If your wound opens—”

  “Don’t be stupid.” He pulled on the rope and the boat slid up the sand. I took a few steps away and sat down again. My legs were still a little wobbly, my skin still cool after the long submersion in the sea. Stefan reached into the boat and drew out the silver bucket and a pair of glasses.

  “You’ve brought champagne?”

  “What’s this? Did you think I would forget the refreshment?” He sank into the gravelly sand next to me and braced the bottle between his hands. His thumbs worked expertly at the cork until it slid out with a whisper of a pop.

  “You are quite mad.”

  “No, only a little. A little mad, especially when I saw Annabelle’s body lying there like a ghost in the moonlight, without moving.” He handed me a foaming glass. “And then I thought, No, my Annabelle would never swim so far through the water and then give up when she had reached the shore. But here.” He set down his own glass in the sand and shrugged his dinner jacket from his arms. “You must take this.”

  “I’m not that cold, really. Nearly dry.”

  “And how would I answer to God if Annabelle caught a chill while I still wore my jacket?” He placed it over my shoulders, picked up his glass, and clinked it against mine. “Now drink. Champagne should always be drunk ice-cold on a beach at dawn.”

  “Is it dawn already?”

  “We are close enough.”

  I bent my head and sipped the champagne, and it was perfect, just as Stefan said, falling like snow into my belly. Next to me, Stefan tilted back his head and drank thirstily, and the beach was so still and flawless that I thought I could feel his throat move, his eyelids close in bliss.

  “That woman,” I said. “The blond woman, the one who came to visit you. Is she your mistress?”

  “Yes,” he said simply, readily, as if there couldn’t possibly exist any prevarication between us.

  “She’s very beautiful.”

  “That is the way of it, I’m afraid. Only the rich deserve the fair.”

  I laughed. “I thought it was the brave. Only the brave deserve the fair.”

  “A silly romantic notion. When have you ever seen a beautiful woman with a poor man? An ugly man perhaps, or a timid one, or a stupid one, or even an unpleasant one. But never a poor one.”

  “Do you love her?”

  “Only
so much as is absolutely necessary.”

  I swallowed the rest of my champagne and set the glass in the sand between us. My vision swam. “I don’t quite know what you mean.”

  “No,” he said. “Of course you don’t.”

  He lay back in the sand, and after a moment I lay back, too, a few inches away, listening to the sound of his breath. The beach was coarse, not like the sand on my father’s beach; the little rocks poked into my back. Stefan’s jacket brushed my jaw, enclosing me in an intimate atmosphere of tobacco and shaving soap. The moon had slipped below the horizon, and we were lit only by the stars, just as we had on the first night as we rushed through the water toward the safety of Stefan’s yacht. I had known almost nothing about him then, and ten days later, having lived next to him, having spent hours at his side, having talked at endless length about an endless variety of subjects, I didn’t know much more.

  “I love your library,” I said. “You have so many lovely books.”

  “Yes, it is the family library, collected over many generations.”

  “Your family library? Don’t you think that’s risky? Keeping it all on a ship?”

  “No more risky than keeping it in our house in Germany, in times like this. When a Jew is no longer even really a citizen.”

  I lifted my head. “You’re a Jew?”

  “Yes. You didn’t know that?”

  “I never thought about it.” I laid my head back down and studied the stars. Stefan’s fingers brushed my hand, and I brushed them back, and a complex and breathless moment later we were holding hands, studying the stars together.

  “Tell me, Annabelle,” he said. “Why have you never asked me how I came to be shot in the leg, one fine summer night on the peaceful coast of France?”

  “I thought you’d tell me when you trusted me. I didn’t want to ask and have you tell me it was none of my business.”

  “Of course it is your business. I will tell you now. The men who shot me, they were agents of the Gestapo. You know what this is?”

  “Yes, I think so. A sort of secret police, isn’t it? The Nazi police.”

  “Yes. They rather resent me, you see, because instead of waiting quietly for the next law to be passed, the next column to be kicked out from under me, I am seeking to defend the country that I love, the real Germany, the one for which my father lost his eye and his jaw twenty years ago.”