The Invisible Bridge

by Julie Orringer

  "You look a good deal better than you did a few weeks ago."

  "It seems absurd to think about a haircut," he said, almost in a whisper.

  "What's absurd about it?"

  "I don't know. Everything. To begin with, I don't know if I can sit in a barber's chair and carry on a barbershop conversation."

  Andras stood beside Polaner at the mirror, regarding him in the glass. He himself looked neater than he had in weeks; Klara had given him a trim the night before, and had made him look something like a gentleman, though she liked his hair long.

  "Look," Andras said. "Suppose I were to ask a friend to come and cut your hair.

  Then you wouldn't have to sit in a barber's chair and trade stories with the barber."

  "What friend?" Polaner said, regarding Andras in the glass.

  "A rather close friend."

  Polaner turned from the mirror to look at Andras directly. "A lady friend?"

  "Exactement."

  "What lady friend, Andras? What's been going on while I've been lying in bed?"

  "I'm afraid this has been going on quite a while longer than that. Months, actually."

  Polaner gave Andras a fleet, shy smile; for that moment, and for the first time since the news of Lemarque's death, he seemed to have slipped back into his own skin. "I don't suppose you'd like to tell me all about it."

  "Now that I've mentioned it, I consider myself under an obligation."

  Polaner gestured toward a chair. "Tell," he said.

  ...

  The next night found Polaner seated on that same chair in the middle of the room, his shoulders draped in a tea towel, the mirror propped before him, while Klara Morgenstern ministered to him with scissors and comb and talked to him in her low hypnotic way. When Andras had spoken to her the night before, she had understood at once why she must do what he asked; she had cancelled her dinner plans to do it. Earlier that evening, on their way to Polaner's, she'd held Andras's hand with a kind of mute fervor as they crossed the Seine, her eyes downcast with what Andras imagined to be the memory of a similar grief. Now he stood near the fire and watched the locks of hair fall, silent with gratitude to this woman who understood the need to do this simple and intimate thing, to perform this act of restoration in an attic apartment on the boulevard Saint-Germain.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  In the Tuileries

  THAT SPRING, when he was not in class or tending Polaner or seeing Klara, Andras learned the design and construction of stage sets under the tutelage of Vincent Forestier. Monsieur Forestier had a studio on the rue des Gravilliers where he drafted designs and built his models; for months he had been desperately in need of a new apprentice to assist with the copying of plans, the detailed and painstaking work of model construction. Forestier was tall and heavy and mournful, with a perpetual haze of gray stubble and a habit of punctuating his utterances with shrugs of his broad shoulders, as if he himself didn't set much store by what he was saying. It turned out that he was also a quiet genius of design. With the strictest of financial constraints and the shortest of production times, he could produce palaces and city streets and shady glens in his own incomparable style. His stage sets often metamorphosed into one another: A fairy queen's bower might become a commandant's office in another theater on the other side of town, and then might serve a third tour of duty as a train compartment or a hermit's hut or a pasha's veil-draped bed. Andras's idea of making flats with interiors on one side and exteriors on the other was one of Forestier's lesser tricks. He made stage sets like puzzles, stage sets that could become three or four different interiors depending upon the order in which their panels were arranged; he was a master of optical illusion. He could make an actor seem to grow or shrink as he walked across a stage, could use a subtle shift of lighting to turn a nursery into a hall of horrors. Projections of hand-colored slides could suggest distant cities or mountains, ghostly presences, memories from a character's youth.

  A magic lantern made to spin by the heat of a candle could send flocks of birds rippling across a scrim. Any stage set might conceal trapdoors and rotating panels; every surface hid a mysterious interior that might hide another interior that might hide still another interior that bore a haunting resemblance to the exterior. Monsieur Forestier himself had a way of appearing and disappearing as if he were an actor within a set he'd designed; he would come in and assign Andras a task, and five minutes later he would have vanished as if into a wall, leaving Andras to puzzle through the difficulties of the design alone.

  After the tumult of the Sarah-Bernhardt, Andras found it solitary and at times lonely work. But at night, when he came home to his room, Klara might be waiting.

  He rushed home every night hoping she'd be there; most often it was her ghost he embraced in the dark, the shadow presence that remained in his room when the real Klara was absent. It nearly drove him mad when days would pass between her visits. He knew, but didn't want to be reminded, that while he was going to school and working and taking care of Polaner, Klara was conducting her own life. She gave dinner parties, went to the cinema and the theater, to jazz clubs and gallery openings. He conjured images of the people she met at her friends' parties or entertained at her own--choreographers and dancers from abroad, young composers, writers, actors, wealthy patrons of the arts--and felt certain that her attention would turn away from him. If for three nights she failed to appear at the rue des Ecoles, he would think, Well, it's happened, and spend the next day in a haze of despair. If he walked out alone he resented every couple he passed on the street; if he tried to distract himself with a film he cursed the jet-haired screen goddess who crept from her husband's train compartment to climb into her lover's moonlit couchette. If, at the end of such a night, he came home to the rue des Ecoles to find a light on in his windows, he would climb the stairs telling himself she had only come to break it off for good. Then he'd open the door and find her sitting beside the fire, reading a novel or stitching the hem of a practice dress or making tea, and she would get to her feet and put her arms around his neck, and he would be ashamed he'd doubted her.

  In mid-May, when the trees wore close-fitting green singlets and the breeze from the Seine was warm even at night, Klara appeared one Saturday evening in a new spring hat, a pale blue toque with a ribbon of darker blue. A new hat, that simple thing: It was nothing more than a scrap of fashion, a sign of the changing season. Surely she'd worn a variety of hats since the red bell of their first winter embraces; he could remember a camel-colored one with a black feather, and a green cap with some sort of leather tassel.

  But this decidedly vernal hat, this pale blue toque, reminded him, as the others hadn't, that time was passing for both of them, that he was still in school and she was still waiting for him, that what existed between them was an affair, gossamer and impermanent. He removed her dragonfly hatpin and hung the hat on the coat stand beside the door, then took both her hands and led her to the bed. She smiled and put her arms around him, saying his name into his ear, but he took her hands again and sat down with her.

  "What is it?" she said. "What's wrong?"

  He couldn't speak, couldn't begin to say what had made him melancholy. He couldn't find a way to tell her that her hat had reminded him that life was short and that he was no closer to being worthy of her than he'd ever been. So he took her into his arms and made love to her, and told himself he didn't care if there were never anything more between them than these late-night meetings, this circumscribed affair.

  The hours passed quickly; by the time they'd pried themselves from the warmth of the bed and dressed, it was nearly three o'clock. They descended the five flights of stairs to the street, then walked to the boulevard Saint-Michel to hail a cab. They always said their goodbyes on the same corner. He'd grown to hate that patch of pavement for taking her away from him night after night. During the day, when its power to strip him of her was cloaked beneath the love-ignoring clamor of everyday life, it seemed a different place; he could almost believe i
t was like any other street corner, a place of no particular significance. But now, at night, it was his nemesis. He didn't want to see it--not the bookstore across the street, nor the fenced limes, nor the pharmacy with its glowing green cross: none of it. He turned with her instead down another street and they walked toward the Seine.

  "Where are we going?" she said, smiling up at him.

  "I'm walking you home."

  "All right," she said. "It's a beautiful night." And it was. A May breeze came up the channel of the Seine as they crossed the bridges toward the Marais. The sidewalks were still full of men and women in evening clothes; no one seemed ready to give up the night. As they walked, Andras entertained the impossible fantasy that when they reached Klara's house they would climb the stairs together and move noiselessly down the hall to her bedroom, where they would fall asleep together in her white bed. But at Number 39

  they found the lights ablaze; Mrs. Apfel ran downstairs at the sound of Klara's key and told her that Elisabet had not yet been home.

  Klara's eyes widened with panic. "It's past three!"

  "I know," Mrs. Apfel said, twisting her apron. "I didn't know where to find you."

  "Oh, God, what could have happened? She's never been this late."

  "I've been all over the neighborhood looking for her, Madame."

  "And I've been out all this time! Oh, God. Three in the morning! She said she was just going to a dance with Marthe!"

  A panicked hour followed, during which Klara made a series of telephone calls and learned that Marthe hadn't seen Elisabet all night, that the hospitals had admitted no one by the name of Elisabet Morgenstern, and that the police had received no report of foul play involving a girl of Elisabet's description. When she'd hung up the phone, Klara walked up and down the parlor, her hands on her head. "I'll kill her," she said, and then burst into tears. "Where is she? It's nearly four o' clock!"

  It had occurred to Andras that Elisabet was most likely with her blond American, and that the reason for her absence was in all probability similar to the reason for Klara's late return. He'd sworn to keep her secret; he hesitated to speak his suspicions aloud. But he couldn't watch Klara torture herself. And besides that, it might be dangerous to hesitate. He imagined Elisabet in peril somewhere--drink-poisoned in the aftermath of one of Jozsef's parties, or alone in a distant arrondissement after a dance-hall night gone wrong--and he knew he had to speak.

  "Your daughter has a gentleman friend," he said. "I saw them together one night at a party. We might find out where he lives, and check there."

  Klara's eyes narrowed. "What gentleman friend? What party?"

  "She begged me not to tell you," Andras said. "I promised her I wouldn't."

  "When did this happen?"

  "Months ago," Andras said. "January."

  "January!" She put a hand against the sofa as if to keep herself upright. "Andras, you can't mean that."

  "I'm sorry. I should have told you sooner. I didn't want to betray Elisabet's trust."

  The look in her eyes was pure rage. "What is this person's name?"

  "I know his first. I don't know his last. But your nephew knows him. We can go to his place--I'll go up, and you can wait in the cab."

  She took up her light coat from the sofa, and a moment later they were running down the stairs. But when they opened the door they found Elisabet on the doorstep, holding a pair of evening shoes in one hand, a cone of spun-sugar candy in the other.

  Klara, standing in the doorway, took a long look at her, at the shoes, the cone of candy; it was clear she hadn't come from an innocent evening with Marthe. Elisabet, in turn, cast a long look at Andras. He couldn't hold her gaze, and in that instant she seemed to understand that he had betrayed her; she turned an expression of startled outrage upon him, then pushed past him and her mother and ran up the stairs. A few moments later they heard her bedroom door slam.

  "We'll talk later," Klara said, and left him standing in the entryway, having earned the furious contempt of both Morgensterns.

  "I think you ought to know what kind of woman my mother is," Elisabet said.

  She sat on a bench in the Tuileries and Andras stood before her; two days had passed since he'd last seen Klara, and no word had come from the rue de Sevigne. Then that afternoon, Elisabet had surprised him in the courtyard of the Ecole Speciale, causing Rosen and Ben Yakov to think she must be the mysterious woman he'd been seeing all that time--the woman they'd never met, whom he'd mentioned only in the vaguest terms during their conversations at the Blue Dove. When they emerged from studio and saw Elisabet standing in the courtyard, her cold eyes fixed upon Andras, her arms crossed over the bodice of her pale green dress, Rosen gave a whistle and Ben Yakov raised an eyebrow.

  "She's an Amazon," he whispered. "How do you scale her in bed?"

  Only Polaner knew this wasn't the woman Andras loved--Polaner, who, thanks to Andras's ministrations, and Klara's, and the unwavering friendship of Rosen and Ben Yakov, had returned to the Ecole Speciale and entered his classes again. Only Polaner was privy to the secret of Andras's relationship; though he had never met Elisabet, he knew as much about Klara's history and family as Andras did himself. So when this tall, powerful girl had appeared in the courtyard of the Ecole Speciale, shooting cold electric fire in Andras's direction, he guessed in an instant who she was. He distracted Rosen and Ben Yakov with a request for tea at the student cafe, seeing no other alternative but to leave Andras to his fate.

  At the gates of the school, Elisabet turned and led Andras down the boulevard Raspail without a word. All the way to the Tuileries she stayed two steps ahead of him.

  She had drawn her hair into a tight ponytail; it beat a rhythm against her back as she walked. He followed her down Raspail to Saint-Germain, and they crossed over the river and into the Tuileries. She led him down paths awash in gold and lilac and fuchsia, through the too-fragrant profusion of May flora, until they reached what must have been the park's only dismal corner: a black bench in need of repainting, a deflowered flowerbed. Behind them swept the rush of traffic on the rue de Rivoli. Elisabet sat down, crossed her arms again, and gave Andras a hate-laced stare.

  "This won't take long," she said. And then she told him he ought to know what kind of woman her mother was.

  "I know what kind of woman she is," Andras said.

  "You told her the truth about Paul and me. And now I'm going to tell you the truth about her."

  She was angry, he reminded himself. She would do whatever she could to hurt him, would tell whatever lies it suited her to tell. In a sense, he owed it to her to listen; he had betrayed her, after all.

  "All right," he said. "What do you want to tell me?"

  "I suppose you think you're my mother's first lover since my father."

  "I know she's led a complicated life," he said. "That's not news."

  Elisabet gave a short, hard laugh. "Complicated! I wouldn't say so. It's simple, once you know the pattern. I've seen pathetic men fawning over her for as long as I can remember. She's always known what she wanted from them, and what she was worth.

  How do you think she got the apartment and the studio? By dancing her heart out?"

  It was all he could do not to slap her. He dug his nails into the palms of his hands.

  "That's enough," he said. "I won't listen to this."

  "Someone has to tell you the truth."

  "Your mother doesn't take me for a fool, and neither should you."

  "But

  you

  are a fool, you stupid fool! She's playing a game with you, using you to make another man jealous. A real man, an adult, one with a job and money. You can read about it yourself." She produced a sheaf of envelopes from her leather schoolbag. A masculine hand; Klara's name. She took out another sheaf, and another. Stacks and stacks of letters. She peeled an envelope from the top of the pile, extracted the letter, and began to read.

  "'My dear Odette.' That's what he calls her, his Odette, after the swan-princess in the ba
llet. 'Since last night I've done nothing but think of you. Your taste is still in my mouth. My hands are full of you. Your scent is everywhere in my house.'"

  Andras took the letter from her hand. There were the lines she'd just read, in a familiar script; he turned it over to look for the signature. One initial: Z. The envelope bore a year-old postmark.

  "Who do you think it is?" Elisabet said, her eyes fixed on his own. "It's your Monsieur Novak. Z is for Zoltan. She's been his mistress for eleven years. And when things go sour, as they do now and then, she takes up with idiots like you to drive him mad. He always comes back. That's how it works. Now you know."

  A wave of hot needles rolled through him. He felt as though his lungs had been punctured, as though he couldn't draw a breath. "Are you finished?" he said.

  She got up and smoothed the skirt of her pale green dress. "It might seem hard to take," she said. "But I can assure you it's no harder than what she's doing to me, now that she knows about Paul." And she left him there in the Tuileries with Novak's letters.