Along the Infinite Sea

by Beatriz Williams

  “Then you had many happy years together.”

  “Yes. We were very happy. She is holding our second child in that photograph. Marthe. She was four then; she is now fourteen and at school.”

  “And the others?”

  He was sitting in the armchair, several feet away. The coffee cup rested in his lap, and a single index finger curled around the handle. He looked not at the photograph, but at me. “Frederick, our oldest. He is fifteen. Then after Marthe came Klaus, who will be thirteen next month. And Frieda.” He paused. “My wife’s name was Frieda. We had not yet christened the baby when she died.”

  “I’m very sorry.”

  “Yes,” he said. “So was I. At the time, I thought I had accepted her death as God’s will, but looking back, I see how bitter I was, and how melancholy.”

  “Of course you were. You loved her very much.”

  His gaze shifted at last to the photograph. “It is impossible to describe how much.”

  The room was protected from the sunlight, as libraries are, and the glow that came from the half-shaded windows fell softly on his face. I had thought last summer that thirty-eight was a vast age, but as I looked at him now I thought thirty-eight was terribly young.

  I rose from my seat and went to the corner of the sofa, next to the chair in which he was sitting. His knee nearly touched my dress. It was massive and thick next to mine, the knee of a giant. I couldn’t quite comprehend his size; it was so out of scale to what I was used to. He was still wearing his boots and riding breeches. He had apologized earlier for not changing. I laid my hand on his knee, and the patella alone was so huge, my palm couldn’t quite cover it.

  “You must have been very lonely,” I said.

  He didn’t move, but his eyes met mine, quite steady. “No. It is impossible to be lonely when there are children about.”

  “Is that why Frieda still has her governess?”

  He removed the cup and saucer from his lap and set them down on the rug next to the chair, which seemed to me a reckless act of disorder. “You are very perceptive, Mademoiselle,” he said.

  “Please, it’s Annabelle. And it doesn’t take much perception to see that you’re lonely.”

  “If I am to call you Annabelle, then you must call me Johann.”

  I smiled. “I can’t. It’s far too casual a name to be flinging about in front of that uniform.”

  “We are at an impasse, then, Mademoiselle.”

  “So it would seem.”

  He lifted my hand from his knee and kissed the ends of my fingers. “My intentions are not dishonorable, you know.”

  “I didn’t think they were.”

  “Yes, you did, or you would not have taken so long to reply to my note.”

  I smiled. “All right. I did.”

  “Then why did you accept my offer?”

  His expression was grave and impermeable before me, as if he had staked his all on my reply. His hand still enclosed my fingers. “I suppose I was grateful for the flowers,” I said. “And I need the work.”

  “If you are short of money, Mademoiselle—”

  “No, no. I have exactly what I need. I will gladly accept payment for today’s lesson, however.”

  “Of course. But I am afraid I have forgotten to ask the fee.”

  “A hundred francs an hour. I hope you can afford it.”

  He studied me without speaking. His thumb moved slightly, sliding against the knuckle of my index finger. I thought, Here it is, this is the moment. Time to make good. But my limbs were like molasses, too thick to move. I imagined him kissing me, pushing me back on the sofa, pulling up my dress. I imagined his bristling hair under my fingers, his weight on my limbs, and the bristling hair turned dark and curling, and the body moving on mine belonged to Stefan.

  I said boldly, seeking out his gaze, “Lady Alice thinks you want me to be your mistress.”

  “Lady Alice should know that I don’t keep mistresses.”

  “And I don’t allow myself to be kept.” I lifted his hand and drew the warm fingers against the side of my breast, atop the sky-blue silk that Lady Alice had chosen for me. His bones were heavy and stiff. “But I don’t want to be lonely, either.”

  “Annabelle,” he said, without moving his hand, “this is not necessary.”

  “I think it is.”

  He looked utterly unmoved. But my thumb, pressed against his wrist, detected a bounding radial pulse, and his pupils were like drops of oil inside his pale irises. I thought, when his lips parted, that he would lean forward and kiss me, but instead he said gently, “Why, Annabelle? So that you can become a mosquito, like the others?”

  “A mosquito?”

  “Don’t you remember what you said to me on your garden wall, last summer? You could study the bugs without becoming a mosquito.”

  I couldn’t breathe. Before I even realized that my eyes had blurred, a tear dropped onto von Kleist’s hand, sliding between the knuckles, and then another. And I had never cried once since August; I had prided myself that I hadn’t shed a single tear.

  His hand moved from my breast to my chin, and his thumb wiped my cheek. “You don’t need to be a mosquito for me, Annabelle. I would rather prefer that you were not.”

  “I’m sorry. I’ve made a fool of myself, haven’t I?”

  “No.” He drew out a handkerchief from his pocket and put it in my hand. “Annabelle, if you want me to make love to you, I will make love to you. I don’t think I can resist you if you ask me. But let it not be because you are wishing I was another man.”

  “No.” I folded the handkerchief and gave it back to him. “You are far better than that.”

  “No, keep it. A souvenir of this first meeting.” He sat back in his chair and lowered his hand to retrieve his coffee cup, while I wrestled with my composure. “Do you ride, Mademoiselle?”

  “I used to, before we moved back to America.”

  “I ride every morning in the Bois de Boulogne. Perhaps you will allow me to mount you there, from time to time.” He finished the coffee in a final gulp, rose to his feet, and held out his hand to me. “But come. You must go now, Annabelle. I will drive you home myself.”

  12.

  When I burst through the doorway of my father’s apartment half an hour later, my hair was full of wind and sunshine and my arms were full of cello. I dropped the instrument in its place next to the sofa and looked about for Lady Alice.

  She wasn’t there, but the afternoon post lay on the table, a few notes only. One of them was postmarked in Paris and addressed to me. I opened it and read that Nick Greenwald had something important to communicate to me about a mutual friend, and would I meet him at my earliest convenience?

  I tore the notecard into small pieces and threw it in the wastebasket.

  13.

  Two days later, I went riding in the Bois de Boulogne with Johann von Kleist.

  We met at six o’clock outside my apartment, where Johann was waiting in his rumbling black Mercedes roadster. My eyes were hooded and sleepy, my hair bound back in a clumsy chignon. I had unearthed a set of my mother’s old riding clothes in a back closet of the apartment, but Mummy had been tall and they were too large. Yesterday in the market, I had found a pair of secondhand boots that nearly fit.

  “I will take those to my valet afterward,” said Johann, as we drove through the chill morning air, “and he will polish them properly for you.”

  Already my nerves were coming alive. Maybe it was the vibration of that enormous engine, the energy in the car’s swooping curves. I glanced at Johann, who sat rigidly in his seat, polished bright, as if he’d been up for hours. He wore his officer’s cap over his blond hair, and his eyes were fixed on the half-dark streets ahead. I had no idea how he packed those legs under the dash. He was so tall, he looked over the rim of the windshield rather than through it.

/>   We were met at the avenue Foch by Johann’s groom, who held two gleaming horses by the reins, one a large bay and the other a smaller chestnut mare with a wide and irregular white blaze down the length of her head. Around the rim of the trees ahead, the sky was a pale and expectant blue. The entire city of Paris lay between us and the sunrise. The groom stepped aside and Johann helped me mount. “Just like old times,” I said, gathering up the reins.

  “Like the bicycle, isn’t it?” said Johann, and when I looked down I saw that the sunrise was touching the top of his cap, and he was smiling.

  He was right about bicycles. My muscles remembered how to ride, though my legs didn’t appreciate the activity. We entered through the empty Porte Dauphine and angled left to the lakes, and Johann asked me how I felt and if I thought I should like to go faster. I said I would. When I nudged her, the chestnut moved willingly into a gentle trot, and I found the rhythm at once, the slight and steady up-down that still lingered in my bones, like a waltz I had danced long ago. Around us, the grass and trees were wet with dew, and a yellow-pink haze floated in the air. “It’s easier than I thought,” I said to Johann. “And the park is beautiful at this hour.”

  “Yes,” he said, looking at me.

  He wasn’t smiling, but his face was softer. He rode like a centaur, like he had come into the world on top of a horse. In the primeval mist, he might have been a thousand years old, dressed in leather and blue paint, riding across the steppes with an army of barbarians, except that he was manifestly not a barbarian. You could not imagine Johann von Kleist without his pressed uniform and his polished boots.

  We went off the gravel path and into a meadow, damp and fragrant with new grass, and as the ground opened up I realized how perfectly alone we were, how obviously he was courting me. He didn’t want to have an affair; he wanted more from me, and the possibility was too huge, the length and breadth of the opportunity too impossible to imagine. For an instant, I pictured myself a baroness at twenty, with a rich estate in Prussia and four stepchildren, with an apartment in Paris and a fine upstanding husband who would keep me in silks and jewels and never, ever stray.

  “You love riding, don’t you?” I said stupidly, because I had to say something.

  “Yes.”

  I thought of his expression a moment ago. I said in French, “You seem different somehow. A little softer, perhaps?”

  He chuckled, a relaxed sound. “Maybe so. It is the rhythm, I believe, and maybe the freedom, too. And the horse, naturally. The horse has none of the vices of humanity.” He reached down and patted the bay’s neck.

  “I see what you mean. You can be yourself with a horse, can’t you? You don’t have to pretend anything, like with people.” I had switched back to English.

  “Yes, exactly. And then one dismounts and goes home and to work, and puts the mask back on. So it goes.”

  “I suppose you wear a very stern mask at work. I shudder to think about it,” I said. “What does a military attaché do, exactly?”

  “Nothing very interesting, I’m afraid. A great deal of paperwork.”

  “But you must meet loads of important people.”

  “Annabelle,” he said, “unless you want me to put on my very stern mask again, we must change the subject.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.”

  “It is not you who should be sorry,” he said.

  “That’s a cryptic thing to say.”

  He nudged the bay faster. “Come along. Let us see how well you sit a canter.”

  14.

  At the lower lake we dismounted and watched the last of the mist float off the water. The horses stretched their necks to the grass and I sat on a rock, while Johann braced his booted foot next to me and took out a cigarette case. “I didn’t know you smoked,” I said.

  “On occasion.”

  “Is that even possible?”

  “If one is disciplined.” He leaned down and offered me the open case. I shook my head. He took one, a long white brand with which I was not familiar. He lit himself up with a gleaming silver lighter and smoked silently, watching the water. A bird cried softly from the trees. I felt his boot near my leg, the unending heat of his body.

  I broke the silence first. “Where did you learn to speak English so well?”

  “In England. My father died of peritonitis when I was six. My mother married an Englishman a few years later, and I lived at home with them until I was old enough for boarding school.”

  “But what happened during the war?”

  He put his hand in his pocket, fingering something there. His lighter, I thought. “I fought for Germany, of course. I was wounded twice but somehow escaped being killed. A miracle, I think. My stepfather was not so lucky. He was killed on the third day of the Somme.”

  “How horrible for your mother.”

  “She died not long after. I’m afraid I never saw her again, once the war began.” He lifted the cigarette, which was nearly finished, and inhaled slowly. “They had two children. My sister Margaret, who is nine years younger, and my brother Benedict, who was born a month after my stepfather died.” He dropped the cigarette in the grass and crushed it under his heel. “In another hour the lake will be full of boats. Would you like to go boating someday?”

  “Yes, but not here. It’s too public.”

  He took my hand to lift me to my feet. “I agree.”

  15.

  We finished where we started, near the Porte Dauphine, now crowded with people and morning light. The groom was waiting next to the black Mercedes. He jumped to attention when he saw us, like a marionette.

  “I will drive you home, of course,” said Johann.

  “Only if it won’t make you late for your work.”

  “Do not concern yourself with that.”

  “The lateness or the work?”

  “Either one.”

  It took much longer to drive home, because of the traffic. Paris was in full flow. The streets stank of fish and garbage and exhaust. “I would stop for breakfast,” said Johann, “but I’m afraid I do have an appointment.”

  We wound our way down the crowded avenues and narrow streets to my father’s apartment, in a massive silence met by the roaring undertone of the engine. Johann looked up dubiously to the building. “I hope it is safe, at least. Not so licentious as that damned villa last summer.”

  “Oh, very safe. Not all that warm in winter, but safe.”

  He dropped his gaze to my face and frowned. “I don’t like this for you, Annabelle.”

  “Do you have a better suggestion?”

  “Not at present.” He climbed out of the car and walked around to my side, next to the sidewalk, where he opened the door and grasped my hand to draw me out of the low-slung seat. He straightened my hat and tucked a piece of loosened hair behind my ear. “You are windblown and beautiful, Mademoiselle,” he said, kissing my hand. “I will come for you again on Saturday morning.”

  16.

  I lay for an hour afterward in a warm bath, staring at the ceiling and wondering what to do with him. Whether I wanted him for myself, or just to banish the memory of Stefan. Whether it was possible to inoculate yourself against future heartbreak. Whether one man could keep you safe from wanting another.

  Pepper

  COCOA BEACH • 1966

  1.

  On the ninth day after Annabelle’s departure, Pepper takes the Ford Thunderbird out of the garage and drives herself into town.

  Well, maybe “day” isn’t quite the right word for it, when you consider that the sun has already fallen and the sky is purple-black. Back home in New York City, there will be a hard frost overnight, and the last tenacious leaf will shiver to the ground. But here in Florida, the daytime temperature touched eighty degrees, and Pepper wandered up and down the beach in a too-short sundress borrowed from Annabelle’s closet (she has decided
not to trust the Breakers with her current address) while the dogs chased each other in large circles across the empty sand, until the shadows lengthened and the horizon turned pink, and Pepper thought, I’ve got to get out of here, I’ve got to do something.

  Itchy feet. They’ve gotten Pepper into trouble before, and they’ll do it again. Tonight she’s painted them both a fresh, crisp red at the tips and slipped them back into her sandals, and the one on the right is pressed against the accelerator, the faster the better. A tiny toe beats a tattoo into the wall of her abdomen, as if in sympathy, or maybe protest. Or else warning?

  Well, too late for that.

  Now her hair flutters in the draft, her lipstick is warm and sticky-red on her lips. She glances in the rearview mirror, and her skin glows back at her, reckless and pregnant. She’s not out to find a man, of course not. She just needs to know that she’s still beautiful. That her face, which has gotten her into so much trouble before, is yet capable of more.

  2.

  As usual, the trick is finding the right spot. There’s always a spot, and Pepper has a nose for them. She parks the car and reaches for her pocketbook on the empty passenger seat. She checks her lipstick in the mirror and slings her cardigan over her shoulders.

  Inside, the air is polished and classy and not too old. Pepper pauses in the doorway, just long enough for someone to catch sight of her, and then it passes in a familiar ripple through the room. Awareness. The electric pause, the drinks set down, the sidelong stares. There is the usual narrowed hostility from one of the women, the quick look away from the man who pretends he doesn’t give a damn, the shy glance into the whisky from the one who thinks he doesn’t stand a chance, the bold stare of the one who’s confident he does. The same old chain reaction, the same old Pepper.

  The thing about Pepper is she hasn’t actually slept with that many men, if you line them up end to end. There was the father of her baby, of course. Oopsy-daisy. There was a supremely eligible young man in New York, before she left, a friend of her cousin Nick Greenwald: a lawyer who wanted to marry her, a man she probably should have married if she knew what was good for her. Before that, a photographer who enchanted her, who was her lover for a year and a half, who called her his muse and took thousands of pictures of her; a man whom she actually thought she might marry, until he moved to Paris one afternoon with a seventeen-year-old fashion model, a change of heart she discovered two weeks later from a mutual friend. An older man, one summer on Long Island, on the sly. A boy in college who worshipped her. The man on the terrace, who sent her bouquet after bouquet, note after note, begging her to see him again, until even her parents took notice and registered disapproval.