The Invisible Bridge

by Julie Orringer

  "Tu etais quoi?"

  "J'etais coince," Polaner said, and repeated it until Andras could understand.

  They'd caught him in a trap. Tricked him. In a whisper: "Asked me to meet him here last night. And then came with three others."

  "Meet him here at night?" Andras said. "To work on those plans?"

  "No." Polaner turned his blackened and swollen eyes on him. "Not to work."

  Feygele.

  It took him a moment to understand. Meet at night: an assignation. So this, and not the girl back in Poland, the would-be fiancee who had written him those letters, was what had prevented him from showing interest in women here in Paris.

  "Oh, God," Andras said. "I'll kill him. I'll knock his teeth down his throat."

  Vago came through the door of the men's room with a first-aid box. A cluster of students crowded into the doorway behind him. "Go away," he shouted back over his shoulder, but the students didn't move. Vago's brows came together into a tight V.

  "Now!" he cried, and the students backed away, murmuring to each other. The door slammed. Vago knelt on the floor beside Andras and put a hand on Polaner's shoulder.

  "An ambulance is coming," he said. "You'll be all right."

  Polaner coughed, spat blood. He tried to hold his shirt closed with one hand, but the effort was beyond him; his arm fell against the concrete floor.

  "Tell him," Andras said.

  "Tell me what?" said Vago.

  "Who did this."

  "Another student?" Vago said. "We'll bring him before the disciplinary council.

  He'll be expelled. We'll press criminal charges."

  "No, no," Polaner said. "If my parents knew--"

  Now Vago saw the word inked across Polaner's chest. He rocked back onto his heels and put a hand to his mouth. For a long time he didn't speak or move. "All right," he said, finally. "All right." He moved the shreds of Polaner's shirt aside to get a better look at his injuries; Polaner's chest and abdomen were black with bruises. Andras could hardly bear to look. Nausea plowed through him, and he had to put his head against one of the porcelain sinks. Vago pulled off his own jacket and draped it over Polaner's chest. "All right," he said. "You'll go to the hospital and they'll take care of you. We'll worry about the rest of this later."

  "Our plans," Polaner said, touching the crumpled sheets of drafting paper.

  "Don't think about that," Vago said. "We'll fix them." He picked up the plans and handed them carefully to Andras, as though there were any chance they could be salvaged. Then, hearing the ambulance bell outside, he ran to direct the attendants to the men's room. Two men in white uniforms brought a stretcher in; when they lifted Polaner onto it, he fainted from the pain. Andras held the door open as they carried him into the courtyard. A crowd had gathered outside. The word had spread as the students arrived for morning classes. The attendants had to push their way through the crowd as they carried Polaner down the flagstone path.

  "There's nothing to see," Vago shouted. "Go to your classes." But there were no classes yet; it was only a quarter to eight. Not a single person turned away until the attendants had gotten Polaner into the ambulance. Andras stood at the courtyard door, holding Polaner's plans like the broken body of an animal. Vago put a hand on his shoulder.

  "Come to my office," he said.

  Andras turned to follow him. He knew this was the same courtyard he'd crossed earlier that morning, with the same frosted grass and green benches, the same paths bright-wet in the sun. He knew it, but now he couldn't see what he had seen before. It astonished him to think the world could trade that beauty for this ugliness, all in the space of a quarter hour.

  In his office, Vago told Andras about the other cases. Last February someone had stenciled the German words for filth and swine onto the final projects of a group of Jewish fifth-year students, and later that spring a student from Cote d'Ivoire had been dragged from the studio at night and beaten in the cemetery behind the school. That student, too, had had an insult painted on his chest, a racial slur. But not one of the perpetrators had been identified. If Andras had any information to volunteer, he would be helping everyone.

  Andras hesitated. He sat on his usual stool, rubbing his father's pocket watch with his thumb. "What will happen if they're caught?"

  "They'll be questioned. We'll take disciplinary and legal action."

  "And then their friends will do something worse. They'll know Polaner told."

  "And if we do nothing?" Vago said.

  Andras let the watch drop into the hollow of his pocket. He considered what his father would tell him to do in a situation like this. He considered what Tibor would tell him to do. There was no question: They would both think him a coward for hesitating.

  "Polaner mentioned Lemarque," he said. It came out as a whisper at first, and he repeated the name, louder. "Lemarque and some others. I don't know who else."

  "Fernand

  Lemarque?"

  "That's what Polaner said." And he told Vago everything he knew.

  "All right," said Vago. "I'm going to talk to Perret. In the meantime"--he opened his architectural vocabulary book to the page that depicted the inner structures of roofs, with their vertical poincons, their buttressing contre-fiches, their riblike arbaletriers--

  "stay here and study," he said, and left Andras alone in the office.

  Andras couldn't study, of course; he couldn't keep the image of Polaner from his mind. Again and again he saw Polaner on the floor, the word inscribed on his chest in black ink, the plans crumpled beside him. Andras understood desperation and loneliness; he knew how it felt to be thousands of miles from home; he knew how it felt to carry a secret. But to what depths of misery would Polaner have had to descend in order to imagine Lemarque as a lover? As a person with whom he might share a moment of intimacy in the men's room at night?

  Not five minutes passed before Rosen burst into Vago's office, cap in hand. Ben Yakov stood behind him, abashed, as though he'd tried and failed to prevent Rosen from tearing upstairs.

  "Where's that little bastard?" Rosen shouted. "Where is that weasel? If they're hiding him up here, I swear to God I'll kill them all!"

  Vago ran down the hall from Perret's office. "Lower your voice," he said. "This isn't a beer hall. Where's who?"

  "You know who," Rosen said. "Fernand Lemarque. He's the one who whispers sale Juif. The one who put up those posters for that Front de la Jeunesse. You saw them: Meet and Unite, Youth of France, and all that rubbish, at the Salle des Societes Savantes, of all places. They're anti-parliament, anti-Semitic, anti-everything. He's one of their little stooges. There's a whole group of them. Third-years, fifth-years. From here, from the Beaux-Arts, from other schools all over the city. I know. I've been to their meetings. I've heard what they want to do to us."

  "All right," Vago said. "Suppose you tell me about it after studio."

  "After studio!" Rosen spat on the floor. "Right now! I want the police."

  "We've already contacted the police."

  "Bullshit! You haven't called anyone. You don't want a scandal."

  Now Perret himself came down the hall, his gray cape rolling behind him.

  "Enough," he said. "We're handling this. Go to your studio."

  "I won't," Rosen said. "I'm going to find that little bastard myself."

  "Young man," Perret said. "There are elements of this situation that you don't understand. You're not a cowboy. This is not the Wild West. This country has a system of justice, which we've already put into play. If you don't lower your voice and conduct yourself like a gentleman, I'm going to have you removed from this school."

  Rosen turned and went down the stairs, cursing under his breath. Andras and Ben Yakov followed him to the studio, where Vago met them ten minutes later. At nine o'clock they continued with the previous day's lesson, as if designing the perfect maison particulier were the only thing that mattered in the world.

  At the hospital that afternoon, Andras and Rosen and Ben Yakov found Pola
ner in a long narrow ward filled with winter light. He lay in a high bed, his legs propped on pillows, his nose set with a plaster bridge, deep purple bruises ringing his eyes. Three broken ribs. A broken nose. Extensive contusions on the upper body and legs. Signs of internal bleeding--abdominal swelling, unstable pulse and temperature, blood pooling beneath the skin. Symptoms of shock. Aftereffects of hypothermia. That was what the doctor told them. A chart at the foot of Polaner's bed showed temperature and pulse and blood-pressure readings taken every quarter hour. As they crowded around the bed, he opened his swollen eyes, called them by unfamiliar Polish names, and lost consciousness.

  A nurse came down the ward with two hot-water bottles, which she tucked beneath Polaner's sheets. She took his pulse and blood pressure and temperature and recorded the numbers on his chart.

  "How is he?" Rosen asked, getting to his feet.

  "We don't know yet," the nurse said.

  "Don't know? Is this a hospital? Are you a nurse? Isn't it your job to know?"

  "All right, Rosen," Ben Yakov said. "It's not her fault."

  "I want to speak to that doctor again," Rosen said.

  "I'm afraid he's making his rounds at the moment."

  "For God's sake! This is our friend. I just want to know exactly how bad it is."

  "I wish I could tell you myself," the nurse said.

  Rosen sat down again and put his head in his hands. He waited until the nurse had gone off down the ward. "I swear to God," he said. "I swear to God, if I catch those bastards! I don't care what happens to me. I don't care if I do get kicked out of school. I'll go to jail if I have to. I want to make them regret they were born." He looked up at Andras and Ben Yakov. "You'll help me find them, won't you?"

  "Why?" Ben Yakov said. "So we can bash their skulls in?"

  "Oh, pardon me," Rosen said. "I suppose you wouldn't want to risk having your own pretty nose broken."

  Ben Yakov got up from his chair and took Rosen by the shirtfront. "You think I like seeing him like this?" he said. "You think I don't want to kill them myself?"

  Rosen twisted his shirt out of Ben Yakov's grasp. "This isn't just about him. The people who did this to him would do it to us." He took up his coat and slung it over his arm. "I don't care if you come with me or not. I'm going to look for them, and when I find them they're going to answer for what they did." He jammed his cap onto his head and went off down the ward.

  Ben Yakov put a hand to the back of his neck and stood looking at Polaner. Then he sighed and sat down again beside Andras. "Look at him. God, why did he have to meet Lemarque at night? What was he thinking? He can't be--what they said."

  Andras watched Polaner's chest rise and fall, a faint disturbance beneath the sheets. "And what if he were?" he said.

  Ben Yakov shook his head. "Do you believe it?"

  "It's not impossible."

  Ben Yakov set his chin on his fist and stared at the railing of the bed. He had ceased for the moment to resemble Pierre Fresnay. His eyes were hooded and damp, his mouth drawn into a crumpled line. "There was one time," he said, slowly. "One day when we were going to meet you and Rosen at the cafe, he said something about Lemarque. He said he thought Lemarque wasn't really an anti-Semite--that he hated himself, not Jews.

  That he had to put on a show so people wouldn't see him for what he was."

  "What did you say?"

  "I said Lemarque could go stuff himself."

  "That's what I would have said."

  "No," Ben Yakov said. "You would have listened. You'd have had something intelligent to say in return. You would have asked what made him think so."

  "He's a private person," Andras said. "He might not have said more if you'd asked."

  "But I knew something was wrong. You must have noticed it too. You were working on that project with him. Anyone could tell he hadn't been sleeping, and he was so quiet when Lemarque was around--quieter than usual."

  Andras didn't know what to say. He'd been consumed with thoughts of Klara, with his anticipation of Tibor's visit, with his own work. He was aware of Polaner as a constant presence in his life, knew him to be guarded and circumspect, even knew him to brood at times; but he hadn't considered that Polaner might possess private woes as monumental as his own. If the affair with Klara had been difficult, how much harder might it have been for Polaner to nurse a secret attraction to Lemarque? He had spent little time imagining what it might be like to be a man who favored men. There were plenty of girlish men and boyish women in Paris, of course, and everyone knew the famous clubs and balls where they went to meet: Magic-City, the Monocle, the Bal de la Montagne-Sainte-Genevieve; but that world seemed remote from Andras's life. What hint of it had there been in his own experience? Things had gone on at gimnazium--boys cultivated friendships that seemed romantic in their intrigues and betrayals; and then there were those times when he and his classmates would stand in a row, their shorts around their ankles, bringing themselves off together in the semidark. There was one boy at school whom everyone said loved boys--Willi Mandl, a lanky blond boy who played piano, wore white embroidered socks, and had been glimpsed one afternoon in a secondhand store dreamily fondling a blue silk reticule. But that was all part of the fog of childhood, nothing that seemed to bear upon his current life.

  Now Polaner opened his eyes and looked at Andras. Andras touched Ben Yakov's sleeve. "Polaner," Andras said. "Can you hear me?"

  "Are they here?" Polaner said, almost unintelligibly.

  "We're here," Andras said. "Go to sleep. We're not going to leave you."

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Visitor

  ANDRAS HADN'T BEEN back to the Gare du Nord since he'd arrived from Budapest in September. Now, in late January, as he stood on the platform waiting for Tibor's train, it amazed him to consider the bulk of ignorance he'd hauled to Paris those few months ago. He'd known almost nothing about architecture. Nothing about the city.

  Less than nothing about love. He had never touched a woman's naked body. Hadn't known French. Those SORTIE signs above the exits might as well have said YOUIDIOT!

  The past days' events had only served to remind him how little he still knew of the world.

  He felt he was just beginning to sense the scope of his own inexperience, his own benightedness; he had scarcely begun to allay it. He'd hoped that by the time he saw his brother again he might feel more like a man, like someone conversant with the wider world. But there was nothing more he could do about that now. Tibor would have to take him as he was.

  At a quarter past five the Western Europe Express pulled into the station, filling that glass-and-iron cavern with the screech of brakes. Porters lowered the steps and climbed down; passengers poured forth, men and women haggard from traveling all night. Young men his age, sleepless and uncertain-looking in the wintry light of the station, squinted at the signs and searched for their baggage. Andras scanned the faces of the passengers. As more and more of them passed without a sign of Tibor, he had a moment of fear that his brother had decided not to come after all. And then someone put a hand on his shoulder, and he turned, and there was Tibor Levi on the platform of the Gare du Nord.

  "Fancy meeting you here," Tibor said, and pulled Andras close.

  A carbonated joy rose up in Andras's chest, a dreamlike sense of relief. He held his brother at arm's length. Tibor scrutinized Andras from head to toe, his gaze coming to rest on Andras's hole-ridden shoes.

  "It's a good thing you have a brother who's a shoe clerk," he said. "Or was one.

  Those filthy oxfords wouldn't have lasted you another week."

  They retrieved Tibor's bags and took a cab to the Latin Quarter, a trip Andras found surprisingly brief and direct, and he grasped how pro-foundry his first Parisian cab driver had cheated him. The streets flashed past almost too quickly; he wanted to show Tibor everything at once. They flew down the boulevard de Sebastopol and over the Ile de la Cite, and were turning onto the rue des Ecoles in what felt like an instant. The Latin Quarter crouched ben
eath a haze of rain, its sidewalks crowded with umbrellas. They rushed Tibor's bags through the drizzle and dragged them upstairs. When they reached Andras's garret, Tibor stood in the doorway and laughed.

  "What?" Andras said. He was proud of his shabby room.

  "It's exactly as I imagined," Tibor said. "Down to the last detail."

  Under his gaze the Paris apartment seemed to come fully into Andras's possession perhaps for the first time, as if his seeing it made it continuous with the places Andras had lived before, with the life he had led before he climbed onto a train at Nyugati Station in September. "Come in," Andras said. "Take off your coat. Let me make a fire."

  Tibor took off his coat, but he wouldn't let Andras make the fire. It couldn't have mattered less that this was Andras's apartment, nor that Tibor had been traveling for three days. This was how it had always been between them: The older took care of the younger. If this had been Matyas's apartment and Andras had been there to visit, Andras would have been the one cracking the kindling and piling the paper beneath the logs. In a few minutes Tibor had conjured a steady blaze. Only then would he take off his shoes and crawl into Andras's bed.