by Pam Jenoff
I hesitate. Walk away, a voice inside me says. The kiss last night, spontaneous and unplanned, seems somehow less culpable than a planned deception. “How can we possibly spare a night of work?”
He considers the question, torn between wanting to take me out and needing to press forward. “Dinner first, then we can come back and work late.”
My stomach flutters. “That would be fine,” I say in spite of myself.
“You’ll go out with me, then, a proper date?” He repeats the question, not quite believing my response the first time.
“Yes.” I shouldn’t, but I will.
His face brightens, hopeful as a boy’s. “Shall I pick you up at seven?”
An older man appears behind him suddenly in the door frame then. “Captain Richwalder, I apologize, but we really must...” He stops midsentence, noticing Georg’s hand on my arm.
But Georg does not pull away, and in that moment, everything between us is out in daylight, exposed. The man clears his throat and disappears back into the room.
“Tonight, then,” Georg whispers. Then he steps away and closes the door between us, leaving me alone in the hallway, shaking.
Chapter 13
That night at seven I stand before the mirror putting the final touches on my outfit, a dress of simple blue satin, adorned only by my mother’s necklace and the bracelet Georg had given me. I study my reflection, fretting. Georg had remarked once that he disliked the stiffer, more ruffled fashions, but perhaps my choice is too plain for a Saturday evening in Paris. If only I had something a bit more womanly to wear, or perhaps some more of the things Celia always tried to press on me, such as a pencil to darken my brows or a bit of rouge.
The doorbell rings and I press the buzzer. “Come in,” I say when Georg reaches the landing. He wears the same dress uniform as the night of the dinner party, epaulets at the shoulder, three gold bands around the jacket forearms.
But he stands awkwardly inside the doorway. Though we have been alone any number of times at the hotel, it is somehow different here and he is reluctant to enter. “Your father isn’t here,” he observes. I cannot tell if he is disappointed or relieved.
I notice an envelope lying on the table by the door. It is a letter I received earlier from Stefan and I had opened it hurriedly, barely scanning the scrawl. It sits now just inches from where Georg stands, the photograph Stefan had included facing upward on top. I hold my breath, waiting for Georg to ask about the man in the picture, to come to the realizations I will not be able to deny. A brother, I imagine claiming, if he asks. A cousin. Then I stop, mortified. How far will my lies go?
But he does not look down, instead staring only at me. “Shall we?” I ask. He clears his throat, nods.
The sky is still bright forty-five minutes later, as the car winds its way into Paris, the late-day sun lingering like the patrons drinking coffee at the sidewalk cafés. Georg stares out the window eagerly in spite of the disinterest he’d professed when we first spoke. He has only been into the city once since arriving, I realize, and that was the night he collapsed at the dinner. The car pulls to a stop by the river, just beneath the Louvre. “Do you feel like walking for a bit?” Georg asks after he had come around to offer me his arm. There is an air of formality about him not present the other times we’ve been together.
We stroll along the quay, past the slanted carts where merchants sell used books and other wares. The waters of the Seine high and brackish. At the base of a bridge, a group of small children hide, pretending to shoot one another with imaginary guns. Georg shakes his head. “How can they still play at war after all that has happened?”
A few minutes later we turn from the river and climb toward the Champs-Élysées. As we pass one of the hotels, lively music seeps out through the open window. Inside, couples glide elegantly across the floor. The Saturday night dances have become something of an institution in the city, persisting even through the darkest days of the war. I’ve always been curious about the waltzes and other more modern steps, the way that the couples move so easily in tandem. I imagine then Georg taking me in his arms and leading me across the floor. “Not much of a dancer, I’m afraid,” he says, noticing my interest.
“Me, either,” I reply quickly, wanting to put him at ease. It is not just the dancing that is off-putting to him. The parties are sponsored by the British and he would not be welcome there.
We continue, navigating the sidewalks crowded with other pedestrians enjoying the summer evening stroll. Several women in fashionable dresses give Georg sidelong looks, but he does not seem to notice. A few minutes later, he stops before Maxim’s. “I thought we’d eat here,” he says. It is a mistake, I decide instantly as we pass beneath the red-and-gold awning through the double oak doors. Georg has not spent enough time in the city to realize that the once-elegant restaurant has changed since the deluge of foreigners arrived. But I do not want to hurt his feelings.
Inside, the front room is packed thick. A group of American officers stands by one of the high tables, enjoying a champagne dinner, great quantities of alcohol and not much else. They are bantering loudly with two women at the bar, who with their heavy makeup and skimpy outfits make no effort to conceal the fact that they are prostitutes. Through another doorway, dance music blares and bodies press together, twirling as gaily as though it were midnight. Something is different from the few other times I’ve been. Though the conference continues apace, there is a sense of it all ending. In days or weeks, the treaty will be announced and then the conference will be over. There is an intensity to the revelers, as though they need to drink it all in before it is gone.
“Perhaps somewhere quieter,” Georg frets as we squeeze between tables in the bar, inching toward the restaurant seating. “One of my colleagues recommended it, only...”
“It’s fine,” I reassure. He has put much thought into the evening and I don’t want to disappoint him.
He wrinkles his nose as a plume of smoke drifts up from one of the tables. “Does it bother you?” I ask.
“Living in such tight quarters on the ship, I inhaled enough of others’ smoke for a lifetime.” He raises his voice slightly to be heard above the din. “Not a major matter. But it’s funny, isn’t it, the way that living somewhere else can change you? For example, the officers’ quarters on the ship were quite nice, but the food ran scarce and once when we were stranded and unable to make it in to port the only thing we had to eat for two weeks were turnips. I’ve not been able to swallow one since.”
I laugh knowingly. Living abroad had changed me, too, not as profoundly as the war had Georg, but in a dozen more subtle ways. Across the room, the banter has picked up, the soldiers now openly catcalling to the women at the bar. Georg scowls. “This is most improper. I’m so sorry.”
“Not at all.”
Georg takes my arm without asking and draws me close. As he scans above the crowd for the maître d’, a large-bellied man jostles into him. “Excuse me,” Georg says reflexively, though the fault is not at all is.
“No excuse, you peacock. Your uniform,” the man jeers drunkenly. “It is a relic.” I picture then the stares Georg attracted on the street. Perhaps it was not admiration at all, but anger at his audacity for openly identifying himself as a German soldier.
“We are at peace, sir,” Georg responds stiffly, his cheeks flushing as though he has been slapped.
“It is still an offense,” the man retorts. Georg winces. To him, the uniform is second skin, the only thing he has known. What future has he without it? He cannot—will not—deny who he is to appease the social and political sensibilities of the day. Without provocation, the man spits in Georg’s direction. I can feel Georg’s arm tightening in anger and I press on it, willing him not to respond, and pull him toward the exit.
“I’m sorry that you had to see that,” he says when we’ve reached the street, wiping the spittle from his lapel.
“Does it happen often?”
“Quite, I’m afraid.”
<
br /> “Have you ever thought about not wearing the uniform?”
“To avoid trouble, you mean?” I nod. “I considered it in the beginning. But I’m an officer of the German navy. It is a question of honor.”
Honor. Everything Georg does is about honor. Not stubbornness, but something born of a deeper, more principled place. And me? I’ve lied to him about Stefan, deceived him by taking the document. No, I’m the furthest thing from honorable. “I’m sorry,” he says again.
“Perhaps we should just return to Versailles.” His eyes betray his disappointment as he looks out across the river where a ribbon of pink sky sits atop the roofs like icing on a cake.
I shake my head, set upon saving our evening in Paris. “I have an idea. Come.” It is my turn to lead now, taking his hand and retracing the route toward the nearby neighborhood where our hotel had been. I stop in front of a crémerie. “Wait here.” A few minutes later I emerge with a basket. “We’re not done,” I say playfully, and dutifully he follows me farther down the road to the bike shop I frequented when we lived here. I pay the shopkeeper for the bicycle rentals and wheel them out onto the pavement.
“Bicycle riding?” he asks in disbelief as I push one in his direction. “That hardly seems...”
I fasten the basket to the handlebars. “You don’t ride?”
“Well, perhaps a few times as a boy. And horses, of course.”
“It’s not that different.” Then I stop. He seems so well and happy now, it is easy to forget that just a few days earlier he had been gravely ill. “Perhaps the strain will be too much.”
“I’m fine.” He squares his shoulders, rising to the challenge.
I mount my bike. “Then catch me if you can.” I navigate carefully down the street in the direction of the park.
“Margot...” Georg’s voice has grown fainter as he falls behind in the distance. I glance over my shoulder, smiling at the sight of him wobbling uncertainly on his bike, shaky as a newborn calf. When we reach the entrance to the park, I pedal faster. I’ve not ridden since our move to Versailles and I savor the familiar burning in my legs.
Georg is beside me then, grabbing the handlebar of my bike to slow me. “Mercy!” He laughs and topples his bike sideways to the grass, falling with mock dramatics, more playful than I’ve ever seen him.
Reluctantly, I set mine down beside him. “We’d best pull farther off the path, so we’re not made to leave at dusk.” We turn the bikes into a clearing set apart by tall bushes. Suddenly it feels as though we are miles away from the city.
“That’s better,” he says. He means the two of us alone, freed from the congestion of the restaurant and the streets. Alone together is the only place this seems to work. “Though we should have a blanket.” He frowns. “Your dress will get soiled.”
I run my hand along the soft, dry patch of moss beneath us. “Nonsense.” I pull from the basket the food I purchased. “Just an assortment of cheese and some pâté. I hope you like them.”
“I’ll eat anything as long as it’s not pickled. I had enough of the canned and the salted on the ship to last me a lifetime.”
“And turnips,” I tease, “don’t forget those.” Hungry after the bike ride, I spread some chèvre, thick and salted, on a piece of baguette and take a bite. As I chew, I peer through the trees. Though I cannot see it from here, I know that just on the other side of the brush sits the pond where I saw Krysia watching the children that first day.
“What?” I am suddenly aware of George’s eyes upon me.
“You eat with such gusto,” he remarks, and I can feel myself blush. My failure to be ladylike coming back yet again to haunt me. “I mean that as a good thing. You just seem to grab life and shake it like a tree, finding all that falls from it.”
I laugh and for a moment it is as if we are any other young couple, in love and carefree, shed of all the secrets and unspoken things that stand between us and the future. “So have you had the chance to look through any more of the Leimer file?” I ask as I pull the bottle of chardonnay from the basket and hand it to him to uncork.
“I went through it last night,” he replies as he deftly inserts the corkscrew and turns.
“I left so late it must have been this morning, really.”
“Perhaps. Anyway, it’s fascinating. Leimer’s ideas about how to synchronize the strengths of the various militaries could be very useful and...” He breaks midsentence and smiles sheepishly. “I promised not to talk about work tonight.”
“I don’t mind,” I reply. It is the truth. Work is so much a part of who we are together. We. “I’m the one who brought it up.”
I lift a glass for him to fill. But when I raise the second glass, Georg shakes his head. “I’ve decided to stop drinking for a time.”
It must be a very recent decision, I think, remembering the wine on his breath a few nights earlier. “Because of your illness?”
“Because of a lot of things. It just gets too easy at sea—beer when the water is fetid, wine with dinner, brandy after.” Though his tone remains even, there is a scratch to the underside, like a phonograph record played too many times. “The evening before the battle was something of a celebration.” Though he does not specify, I know he means Jutland. There is a care to his voice, a thoughtfulness to the way he forms the words, that tells me he has not shared this story before. “There had been word of a victory, which was becoming increasingly rare. We’d opened the last of the meat stores and the better champagne. I drank more than usual and had retired. If I hadn’t I might have heeded the warning signs, seen the way the British ships were amassing. By the time I’d awoken, the Pommern had already been hit.” He blames himself for not being able to stop the battle that had taken his brother’s life.
“Georg, there was nothing you could have done. Even if you’d sensed it...”
But he shakes his head, unwilling to accept any account that does not accord with the narrative he has told himself for so long. “Perhaps I could have signaled for some reinforcements or perhaps repositioned the fleet.” What is it about ourselves that makes us believe we can change great events with our thoughts and deeds? It feels a kind of hubris. “And then they made me into some kind of hero. I protested, tried to tell them the truth, but they said it was needed for the morale of the men. It was a lie.”
It was the dishonesty, perhaps more so than anything else, that Georg found impossible to bear. I understand so much more about him now, his solitary nature, the way part of him always seems to be elsewhere. What would he say if he knew the truth about me and the things I have done?
He looks up as though he has forgotten I was there. “You must think me a terrible coward.”
“Not at all.” I reach out and take his hand, not caring now about the propriety as I try to wash away his self-loathing. It takes courage, I want to tell him, to speak the truth. I am the coward here.
“I’d like to leave,” Georg says. For a minute, thinking he means our date, I am hurt. Did I say something to offend him? “Head south perhaps, to the Mediterranean.” He is referring to the conference and the city. But he seems so intent and driven by the work he is doing here. I nod, recognizing his desire to flee the stifling confines of the city. “Let’s do it,” he says. “There are places, you know, located by the mountains as well as the sea. Places we could both love.” He’s serious.
“Georg, what about the conference? And your work?” And my father and my husband and a dozen other reasons I cannot say.
“Perhaps when the conference is over and we are both back in Germany...” he begins, trying again. I do not respond. Berlin means Stefan and the future that inevitably awaits me, the end of all of this. Then he breaks off. “Of course, I’m not presuming that you would want to be with me.” He has mistaken my hesitation for demurral. I take his hand, uncertain what to say. Paris is something of a vacuum, so many people brought together in this odd little whirlwind where none of the rules apply. Back home life is stratified, divided, and Georg and
I come from different worlds, religions, politically and socially. Even without Stefan, our lives in Germany would be so disparate. But I would transcend all of that for the chance to be with him. Could every day be exactly like this, glorious and sparkling? An image comes into my mind then of Georg as an old man, sharing a cup of tea in our parlor, long after the children have grown and left. I stop, struck by the vision. It is so different from the life I usually envision for myself and yet in that moment I know it is exactly what I want. We could be this good every single day, waking up side by side laughing and talking.
“Margot,” he says, squeezing my hand. “We can be together. Why do you resist?” He does not know, as I do, that our days are numbered, that each passing night brings us closer to the fated end.
What will you do after the war? Krysia’s words echo in my mind. The answer is so different now. I’m not just running from Stefan but to Georg and yet at the same time there’s an inevitability to the fact that it must end. Is that what makes it so good, the knowledge that these few moments we have together are stolen? No, I decide, looking across at Georg. There’s a connection between us, a spark that would burn through the decades, through the everyday, and all of the great hurts and triumphs. I imagine a child then, a boy, with Georg’s strong features. My stomach jumps.
“Shh.” I lean in, desperate to silence the questions, to stop my head from whirling like a carousel. This time I kiss him, my lips mashing clumsily against his. I wait for him to pull away and tell me it isn’t proper. But he presses into me, meeting the intensity of my mouth, probing, upping the stakes. The voices of wrong and right fade in my mind, drowned out by a low moan that sounds foreign escaping my lips as he presses me back toward the ground.