by Joanna Scott
When the waiter arrives to fill water glasses, Armand recognizes him as the steward who showed him to his cabin earlier in the day. Now he is wearing thick spectacles that magnify his lazy eye and give him a strangely artificial appearance, as though he were staring out from behind a mask.
Armand sits quietly through the remainder of the meal, listening politely to the vicar’s wife complaining about her sore tooth and the banker from Virginia complaining about the plumbing on the ship. The first officer comes over to say hello, and the banker asks if he can send a cable. The officer apologizes and explains that they plan to have a telegraph installed on board next month.
After the officer moves on to another group of passengers, the vicar’s wife looks at the remnants of the roast chicken on her plate and declares that she is ready for dessert. Her husband signals to a stewardess, who clears the plates and then returns with the dessert cart. The conversation turns toward the potential merits of the various cakes and pies on display. Speaking in faltering English, the stewardess recommends the chocolate cake. The vicar’s wife, having noticed the same surnames on their name tags, asks the girl if she is related to the steward who has just taken their orders. The girl seems slightly nervous about admitting it, but yes, she says, Nico is her brother, confirming the woman’s suspicions that the whole Romanian crew belongs to the same family. “Did you notice that they all have brown eyes and black hair,” she says, smiling at the girl, who clearly doesn’t understand.
Armand resists pointing out that the steward, Nico, has green eyes. He declines dessert, and while the others make their choices, he sets his napkin on his plate and excuses himself, explaining that he must find the captain to speak with him about a business matter.
It isn’t exactly a lie: he usually makes a point of introducing himself to the captain, though he won’t on this voyage. Anyway, the captain has already left the dining room, and Armand feels no urge to seek him out. Instead, while most of the passengers are still finishing their meal, he goes up to the deck to enjoy the fresh air.
The wind, blowing from the west, is brisk and warm, and as he turns his face to it, he has the impression that the air is liquid, flowing with enough force to blow away memories and disperse the past to make room for the present. Backlit by the bright sun, the body of a gull flying alongside the Regele Carol is a dark silhouette, and its wings seem to move in slow motion, as though tied to strings.
It is pleasant on the upper deck, and Armand remains there until other passengers emerge from the dining room and settle into their chairs. He sees the vicar’s wife and decides to avoid her. Heading toward the stairs, he passes the Russian women he’d seen earlier in the day. They exchange polite nods, as though they were actually acquainted, and as Armand moves on, he finds himself thinking about how readily people assume a familiarity when they are away from home. Travel puts people at risk of losing their sense of identity, which is part of the thrill of it, in Armand’s mind. He welcomes the experience of being separated from the usual markers of familiar surroundings. He is known for his joke of pretending to be lost and threatening to keep the members of his party wandering the streets for hours. Really, though, they understand it to be a ruse. The travelers will only pretend to be worried, and he will only pretend to be lost. Ever since El Kef, he makes sure to have a map in his pocket and a plan in mind.
He is so obviously committed to his current plan that he feels as if he’s already rehearsed it. First of all, to return to his cabin he needs to descend one level to the first-class berths, as simple as that, so why he continues descending another flight, and another, until he finds himself on the narrow corridor outside the ship’s boiler room, he can’t explain. But there he is, and across from him, tucked against the wall, their mouths latched, their bodies melting together, are the Romanian steward with the lazy eye and the stewardess who had identified herself as his sister.
The boilers make such noise behind the closed metal door that the lovers don’t hear him and continue their fondling. They look innocent enough, but Armand is so instinctually appalled that he barges forward and pushes the two apart.
The young siblings are flustered. They have reason to be flustered! They have been caught in their deceit. The steward begs in French for the monsieur to excuse him, while the girl pleads in Romanian. Armand rises to the drama: “Mon Dieu,” he says in his most theatrical, booming voice, “didn’t you tell me he was your brother?”
“Non, non, monsieur—” are the only words the girl can muster right then.
The steward, in his furtive, hushed manner, communicates the truth to Armand: in French he explains that she isn’t really his sister, she is his fiancée, and they are going to get married, though it is a secret, it has to be a secret, for her family has already chosen her a husband, a hateful man who will kill her if he finds her. He mustn’t be allowed to find her, and the steward and stewardess would be forever grateful to Monsieur if he refrained from revealing their secret to anyone.
He is preparing to reply when a sudden banging of metal against metal erupts in the boiler room. The three of them watch the closed door, waiting for it to swing open. But it doesn’t open, and they remain alone in the corridor long enough for Armand to explain that he can help.
Helping, he surmises, should involve money. These two innocents will need more than each other. Yes, he will help the young lovers begin a new life together. Although they hadn’t been part of his original plan, the steward and stewardess seem to have been put there to test him. There is only one right thing for him to do. He unfolds his wallet and lifts out several five-franc notes, gesturing with the money toward the steward, who balks and withdraws a step.
“Take it,” Armand urges him in French. “You must take it.”
“Please keep your money, monsieur.”
“Take it, I insist!” He counts, showing them the bills. “Forty! Sixty! And more and more and more! How much do you want? I know what it feels like to be in love. I want to help you begin your new life!”
The steward and stewardess look on, their suspicion growing. Armand guesses that these youngsters think of themselves as familiar enough with the ways of the world to know better than to accept money for nothing. Nothing always comes with hidden strings attached. And here is a gentleman attempting to pay them for work they didn’t do. Surely he wants a favor in return; everyone wants something, if not now then later, which is why, after finally accepting the money, the steward addresses him coldly, explaining to Monsieur that they have to return to their posts immediately or their absence will draw notice, and the lovers hurry back up the stairs without even taking the trouble to thank him.
Cannes to Piraeus
THE FIRST LETTER from Armand, posted a week earlier in Constantinople, arrived two days after he disappeared at sea, though at that point Aimée was still unaware of his fate. She read it while sitting at the dining room table with Gertrude and Miss Plympton.
“Ma chérie, I regret to convey bothersome news, but yesterday I ran into difficulties in Constantinople and now am in need of your assistance. I left my satchel in my hotel room and the door unlocked for a few minutes while I met the Lidfords for tea, and the lovely pouch belt you gave me last Christmas was stolen. The maid has been questioned, to no avail. The thief could have been anyone in the vicinity. Unfortunately, besides two hundred francs that were in the wallet, the belt contained my passport and visa. As you know, without the documents I am not permitted to travel internally in Turkey and therefore am unable to accompany the party to Broussa.
“I have put Mr. Lidford in charge of the tickets and sent the party ahead without me. From Broussa they sail to Costanza and on the 14th will board the train to Bucharest. They are scheduled to arrive in Budapest on the 17th. I need you, dearest, to meet them there, at the Hotel Royal, and conduct the party through the Alpine portion of the tour. At your convenience you may secure a special passport for me from the consulate in Budapest and send it by messenger to Constantinople. I will l
eave directly upon receiving the passport and meet you at the Hotel Toblach in Toblach no later than Wednesday the 21st.
“I am sorry for the inconvenience, my beloved. I invite Gertie and Miss P. to join you for the excursion, at my expense. Your devoted husband, Armand.”
This was not at all what Aimée had been expecting to hear from her husband, and she sat staring at the open letter in silence while Miss Plympton and Gertrude watched her. Finally, she said that she had some business to take care of in Budapest and she would leave in a day or two. She insisted that Gertrude remain in Cannes to attend her French classes, but Miss Plympton—ever eager for adventure, though she’d barely survived their most recent trip—was welcome to accompany her.
Aimée waited nervously that day for the afternoon mail, but there was no additional letter from Armand. She wondered why one of the agency’s European associates couldn’t have handled the affair, but she went ahead and bought the tickets for their journey and set out the next day with Lucy Plympton.
The first leg of the train ride was uneventful, and they stayed over and rested in Zurich. On the sixteenth they traveled to Innsbruck, where Miss Plympton decided to remain for a few days while Aimée continued on the night train by herself. She reached Vienna early the next morning. She waited at the station and took the first train to Budapest, arriving in the heat of a muggy afternoon.
She pushed through numbing fatigue to meet with one of the members of the party, a young woman from Albany named Miss Maxwell. Aimée pretended to want to hear about Miss Maxwell’s experiences up to that point in the tour, asking her about her impressions of Naples and Athens and Constantinople even as she hoped for reassurance about her husband. But all Miss Maxwell said in reference to him was that Professor de Potter was the most learned man she’d ever met.
Aimée was able to resolve the issue of the passport and sent a courier to Armand in Constantinople. She remained anxious and stayed in her hotel room all day, trying to press on in the book she’d brought along but reading the same page over and over.
As Armand had requested, she took charge of the De Potter party, and the next day she led them from Budapest to the Austrian city of Klagenfurt. The following day she continued on with the group to the village of Toblach in the mountains of northern Italy. At times she convinced herself that she was comforted by the scenery, but she couldn’t stop thinking about Armand’s last letter. He’d said he had lost the proper documentation. Yet he had many friends in Turkey—why hadn’t he asked them for help in securing permission to travel through the country?
At the hotel in Toblach, she found several telegrams waiting for her. They weren’t from Armand, but they were about him. She saw that they were from the American consulate in Athens and the Piraeus police and had been sent to Aimée in Cannes. Gertrude must have forwarded them to Budapest, then they followed Aimée’s trail to Toblach.
Standing in the lobby of the hotel, she was so confused that she had to reread the set of telegrams three times before she grasped the central facts: her husband had boarded a ship named the Regele Carol in Constantinople; he had been the single occupant of Stateroom 17; when the passengers disembarked in Piraeus, he wasn’t among them; his current whereabouts were not known; his belongings were found in his room.
She clutched the counter to steady herself. One of the women in her party who was in a nearby chair looked up from her newspaper and asked her if she was ill. Moments later she would have no recollection of what she said in response. When she followed the group into the dining room, she felt a strange numbness that spared her temporarily from contemplating the import of the telegrams. She was no more capable of solving a simple math problem than processing the news of her husband’s disappearance. An intense weariness came over her, and she longed to sleep. Yet her years of experience showing tourists what they wanted to see served her well. She was able to appear calm and confident when she was dining with the group and even participated in a long conversation about the health benefits of mountain air.
No one in the party minded when she excused herself early from dinner. By then they were absorbed in a good-natured debate about the differences between the Italian waiters and the waiters they’d left behind in Budapest. They paused only to agree to meet the next morning for a hike, and to wish Madame de Potter good-night.
Back in her hotel room she reread the telegrams until she had memorized the details: the name of the ship, the name of its captain, the time of arrival in Piraeus. What was her husband doing on a ship bound for Piraeus? He was supposed to wait in Constantinople for the messenger to bring the copy of his passport and then to meet his wife in Toblach. But here she was in Toblach, reading the notice that he’d gone missing.
She tried to persuade herself that the Greek officials were misinformed. Wasn’t it possible that Armand had never boarded the SS Regele Carol for Piraeus? Where was he, then? It could be that he was still in Constantinople. But what about the trunk with his belongings that had been left behind in Room 17? Oh, the trunk must have been put on the wrong ship in the confusion at the port—mix-ups like that weren’t uncommon. Then how to explain that Armand had been listed on the manifest? That wasn’t Armand—it was the thief who had stolen Armand’s passport. Armand had received the duplicate passport and was on his way to meet his wife in Toblach. Or he was already back in Cannes, sound asleep in his comfortable new bed. Everything would be all right once the truth was sorted out. Or else a nightmare had begun that would last for the rest of Aimée’s life, and Armand de Potter was to blame.
She couldn’t help it; she was overcome by fury. Her husband was missing at sea. He had gone missing on purpose. She knew him too well and didn’t have to wait for more information to fill in the blanks. Her husband had always been a weak man, too easily hurt by snubs and gossip. His fate was as obvious as if she’d been there to witness it. But he had made sure she wasn’t there: the whole story of his missing passport had been a ruse to distract her. Everything about his life had been a ruse. The truth of his deception was as sharply outlined as the towering outcrops of the Dolomites outside her window, jagged silhouettes in the moonlight. He had married her to make her a widow. He who had authored his own impeccable reputation—he’d known all along that he wouldn’t be able to keep up the pretense forever, yet she would be required to do just that in his absence. Oh, how she hated him right then. She hated him for being as weak as he was clever. She hated him for tricking her into marrying him, for letting her get used to her happiness and then abandoning her and their child. She had never hated anyone before, and now she hated the man she loved most in the world.
* * *
She hated her husband until the next day, when two letters from Armand arrived with the afternoon mail. Aimée’s hand trembled as she accepted her mail from the desk clerk, but she had enough sense to return to her room rather than open the envelopes in the lobby.
The letters had been written on stationery of the Pera Palace Hotel and posted in Constantinople. One extended over several pages and the other was just half a page.
In the shorter of the two letters, Armand gave instructions on financial matters Aimée would need to attend to in his absence. The details were clear. She would find the key to his safe-deposit box in the upper right-hand drawer of his desk. Inside the box was his life insurance policy from Mutual Life, paid in full.
The longer letter confused her, and though she read it slowly, she was unable to comprehend its meaning.
“Ma chérie,” her husband wrote. “By the time you read this letter I will be gone to the Field of Amenti.” What was he saying—where was the Field of Amenti? Then came a declaration about the beauty of truth and an invocation to “Almighty, Everlasting God.” The letter was written in pencil. The words I beg you were crossed out, the sentence left unfinished. “Do not forget,” he wrote, “there is something to learn from every civilization.” For reasons he would never understand, he was never invited to join the Grand Loge. He hoped his son would
have more success. He declared that he was a good Christian who believed in the transmigration of the soul. He listed evils he had not committed in his life: adultery, betrayal, the murder of another human being. He had never pointed a gun at anything other than a painted bull’s-eye, even during his military service. He had never knowingly sowed discord. He wanted to make sure he said the appropriate prayers when the time came. He was writing to say goodbye to his sweet chérie. Oh, yes, she knew the meaning of goodbye. But what did palm wine, cinnamon, and myrrh have to do with anything? And who was “Prof. HH,” and what right did he have to call Armand a fraud? There had been a meeting in Constantinople. Armand didn’t say what had gone wrong. It didn’t matter, he insisted. He told her never to doubt his love for her and Victor. His conclusion made little sense and yet was presented as if it were a verdict reached through careful deliberation. He wrote, “Now that you have read to the end, you will understand why you must destroy this letter. You must destroy both letters immediately, for your own sake, and for the sake of our dear son.”
She would do anything for the sake of their son—but what was she supposed to understand? That Armand was never coming home? He loved her, that much was clear, and she loved him. Love was something she understood. She also understood that she was supposed to destroy the letters, and she would, as soon as she located the box of wooden matches she always carried in her purse. Where was that box? Here was her drawstring coin bag, her packet of calling cards, a pencil, her opera glasses, her train ticket and passport, and, at last, the matchbox. But the first match broke when she struck it, and though the second match lit, the flame sputtered out along the edge of the letter, and she needed a third match. Three matches it took to set the paper aflame, and then it took the second page to feed the flame, and then the second letter to keep it burning—three pages separated into smoke and a fine ash that smoldered in the basin of her sink and kept her mesmerized for just long enough that by the time she realized that she shouldn’t have burned the letters without rereading them one more time, it was too late.