by Pam Jenoff
Now we stand on the Northern Parterre of the palace, gazing out over the rolling lawn to the flowered gardens. Below sits a round fountain as big as a pond. Water arcs gaily from the elaborate sculpture at its center.
“A veterans’ transport,” he replies. “Soldiers being returned home.”
“You traveled among the French soldiers?” My tone is incredulous.
“Yes, they were quite friendly, actually, now that the war is over.” How ironic that on the streets of Paris, the hatred was as thick as ever, while among the wounded, friendship bloomed. Perhaps it was the commonality of the experiences they had endured.
I study Stefan out of the corner of my eye. He is standing on his own using two canes. Still, his limp is formidable. When we’d left the apartment earlier, he had stepped out heedlessly into the street. I grabbed him and pulled him back as a bus roared by, horn blaring. But he had seemed oblivious to the near crash. Despite being able to get around somewhat, there is a lack of awareness that makes him almost helpless. It is remarkable that he made it to Paris unscathed.
I contemplate the green lawns that fan out endlessly below. I carry a small basket of food we’d hoped to enjoy as a picnic dinner. But a half-dozen steps separate us from the nearest garden spot. “Let’s just picnic here,” I say, gesturing implausibly to the hard marble patio.
“Nonsense,” he says, shuffling toward the stairs and taking a tentative first step downward. I reach for his arm, but he shakes me off. “I can do it myself.” But then he stumbles and falls three steps to the landing below.
“Stefan!” I rush to him. He is not hurt but his face has crumpled, reflecting his wounded pride. Without speaking, he allows me to help him over to the lawn.
We are silent as I spread the blanket on the grass, warmed by the late-afternoon sun. I take out the sandwiches I’d packed and hand him one, swatting at the gnats that hover between us. I take a bite of my sandwich, then swallow hard. I cannot help but think of my evening picnic with Georg in the Jardin des Tuileries. Longing rises within me. How can things have changed this much in just a few days?
“It’s so good to see you,” Stefan says, his voice full and sincere. “All of these months waiting for you to return home...”
I search for the rebuke in his voice, but he is simply stating a fact. “I’m sorry about that. I wanted to come, but Papa had to come directly to Versailles.”
“I understand completely. I’d resigned myself to waiting to see you when the conference ended. But when I received word from Celia—”
“Celia?” I interrupt him.
“Your aunt sent a telegram inviting me to come,” he says, sounding pleased. “She thought it would be good for you to have me here.”
Bile rises in my throat. So it was Celia who had summoned Stefan. I should have known that Papa, for all of his concern, never would have interfered in such a way. But Tante Celia had become so vested in my marrying Stefan. She had worried about the scandal of my association with Georg and had taken matters into her own hands.
“I heard about your mother,” he offers, “the truth, I mean.”
“Papa told you?”
He nods. Stefan was there for the first funeral when we were children, the one that had been a lie. He has to know how much this hurts. “I’m very sorry.” I wait for him to offer something more, some insight from our shared history. But he does not. Georg, who had not known my mother at all, at the height of his own distress, had been better able to help me make sense of it all. The gulf between the two men has never seemed larger.
“I’m living back in the city now,” he says.
“Oh?”
“Yes, Father had the front steps modified and put a bedroom in where the study once was.” He watches me hopefully and I try to smile. But living on the ground floor of the Osters’ crowded house sounds unappealing, like life in a goldfish bowl. “It’s so much nicer than being at the convalescent center,” he adds.
“Of course,” I reply quickly, feeling like an ungrateful child. “So you’ve heard about the treaty?” I switch the conversation to a more neutral topic.
He nods. “We received word on the train just as it reached the French border.”
“There’s talk that the Americans aren’t even going to sign.” He does not respond. We never talked about politics, I realize now. Our conversations before the war had been about practical matters or light things like the cinema. Though we both loved to read and Stefan enjoyed listening to Papa discuss his work, there had never been debate or discussion of the issues like I had with Georg or Krysia, the spark of exchanging ideas I’d come to love since coming to Paris. And once he’d gone off to war, our letters had been brief and conversational. I’d written about Oxford and our life there, always keeping things very general and noncritical in case it was read by the censors. He’d been similarly vague, perhaps wanting to spare me the harsh realities of life at the front. Once I had not minded. Only now, after my months in Paris talking about these bigger ideas, can I appreciate how superficial and unsatisfying our conversations have been. How could Stefan care about me, without caring about my opinions and what I thought? But perhaps he hadn’t thought much about his own, either.
Maybe I am being unfair. After everything he has been through, it is understandable that he does not want to discuss the treaty. To him it represents all he had fought for—and failed. “So we’ll have to set a date for the wedding,” he says brightly.
I falter. We are married but, of course, there will need to be a ceremony to maintain the pretense that we waited with our families. “Let’s say September.”
“Why so long?” he presses. “Now that you’re coming back, I thought we should be married right away.”
Coming back. The words reverberate in my head. “We women need at least a few months to plan. For Celia to have her wedding,” I joke feebly. “Plus, the weather will be cooler and it will give you some time to heal.”
“Time to heal,” he repeats slowly, as if not believing the words. “Darling, what if it never gets any better than this?”
“It will,” I say.
But he shakes his head. “Don’t you see, Margot? This is my life now.” He gestures with frustration toward his canes. “I can’t join your family’s business. And likely I can’t even have children.”
I had not stopped to think about this possibility. As I had told Georg, I’d always wanted a large family. To Stefan, this is even more of a blow, because he would not be able to carry on his family name, which he needed to do as the only son. “There are other ways,” I persist. “We can adopt.” He shakes his head angrily, unwilling to be consoled.
Disillusioned, I begin to repack the picnic basket. When I’m finished, I stand. “Come,” I say with forced brightness, extending my hand down to him. Suddenly the prospect of another slow walk is less wearisome than further conversation. “There’s still time to see some of the fountains before nightfall.”
* * *
It is nearly eight o’clock when we return to the hotel. Exhausted now, he does not protest as I help him up the narrow flight of stairs to our apartment. Inside, the sitting room is still. “Papa must have gone to Celia’s,” I say. Stefan stares at the divan, now a makeshift bed. We are husband and wife, alone together, and I can see the hopeful light in his eyes for some affection, even if he is not capable of true intimacy. “I’m terribly tired,” I add, “and Papa might return.”
“Of course.” He recovers quickly. “Best to wait until after the wedding.” He turns away, trying to conceal his disappointment.
“Stefan, wait.” I walk to him and wrap my arms around him awkwardly. His body slumps into me as he drinks in the affection he has craved for so long. “It will be fine,” I say, but the words are more to convince me than him. Why can’t I help him? I’ve helped Georg in a sense, or so he said once. Perhaps I could be good for Stefan, too, and help him find hope. But to do that I would have to believe in us.
A moment later I break away from
his now too-tight grasp. “Good night,” I say, then walk to the door of my room and close it.
* * *
“So you’re leaving,” Krysia says the next afternoon, when I have finished my story. We are seated on the bench by the pond, watching Emilie and her friends, who have set up a game of croquet on a lush green patch not far from the water. When Krysia had not been at her apartment, I guessed where she had gone. I found her here, standing a bit closer today, out in the open, not obscured by the trees.
As she watches Emilie, I think of my own mother, a woman who did not care enough to stay, much less spy from afar to make sure I am well. Krysia abandoned her child just as mine had done. Should I be angry with her? No, Krysia had no choice and had done the best she could for the child. Even now she lingers, watching and worrying. Whereas my mother had every reason to stay but had chosen not to—she had gone and never looked back.
“Yes, the day after tomorrow.”
“I suppose the party had to end sometime.” I brace for her disappointment that I am returning to Berlin as is expected of me, failing to make a life of my own. But her voice is detached in the way of one who has seen much in a lifetime, worlds fallen and rebuilt, people lost and found and lost again. Her words reverberate through my mind. Paris, for all of the gaiety, had never seemed a party to me but a sojourn from who we were expected to be in our regular lives. Sojourns, like parties, had to end, too, didn’t they? Or the exception would become the rule. But what, I wonder as the memory of Georg’s touch makes me suddenly warm, would be so wrong about that?
“What about Ignatz? He’s still expecting me to deliver the documents.” I had not told her about the second map I’d gotten from Lieutenant Bouvier, the one I might have given to Ignatz but had not.
“He won’t know that you’ve gone until it’s too late.” Her mouth twists. “And I think the authorities will be showing some new interest in the backroom gaming activities at the bar. Sorting that out should keep him busy for the foreseeable future.”
I stare, bowled over by the audacity and brilliance of what she had done, reporting Ignatz as a means of deterring him. “Thank you.”
A croquet ball, hit too hard with a mallet, breaks loose and shoots in Krysia’s direction and Emilie runs toward her to retrieve it. Krysia freezes uncertainly, an animal trapped beyond the safety of her nest. Will she run? But she bends down and picks up the ball and hands it to the girl, their long, nearly identically shaped fingers brushing.
Krysia puts the ball into the girl’s hands and in that motion I imagine she is feeling all of the birthdays and triumphs she will not witness, the inevitable tears she will never dry. She presses so hard that for a moment I fear the girl will be alarmed by the intensity of the strange woman’s touch. But Emilie turns and runs away, unburdened by a sadness she does not know. Krysia stands with her arms still outstretched before her, reaching. I walk up behind her and take her hand. “Come. It’s time to go home.”
* * *
The midmorning sun warms the earth the next day as I tend to my garden plot one last time. I take a sprig of fern from the earth and place it in the tiny pot I’ve brought with me, no bigger than a teacup. Three days is all that is required to undo the life we’ve built here. I’ve taken charge of the packing, a rote, mindless task fit to occupy my hands if not my heart while Papa wraps up his work for the conference and Stefan tours the city with a hired driver and his copy of Baedeker’s Paris, avoiding the battlefields. I pat down the earth with my index finger, tucking the cutting into the tiny round bed. I’m going to plant it back home, if it survives the journey.
“Liebchen,” Papa calls from the garden gate. The car, loaded with our belongings, idles at the curb. Stefan is already seated in the rear, eyes fixed firmly on the road ahead. I stand, brushing the dirt from my hem. My eyes travel in the direction of the hotel. I have not seen Georg since the night Stefan arrived, not even glimpsed him coming or going, though I looked out my window for him constantly. I had half expected that he might call around to see Papa under pretense of finalizing business. But that would be too awkward, not at all his style. No, he had sequestered himself in the study undoubtedly, burying himself in what remained of his work as a way of shutting out the hurt.
After Stefan had retired last night, exhausted from his tour of the Louvre, I’d gazed down the street at the light in the library, worrying. The treaty had been such a blow, and now this on top of it. Had Georg eaten, slept? I debated briefly slipping from the flat and going to the hotel. To say what, exactly? There was no way to explain my betrayal. Georg stood for loyalty and honesty above all that. Through my actions, I epitomized the opposite.
I walk to the taxi and climb in, not meeting Papa’s eyes. We have not spoken again about my mother and the secrets he kept from me all of these years. They remain an open wound between us.
Out the back window of the taxi, I take a last glance at the hotel. The once-blossoming apple trees bow sadly now. As we drive from Versailles, I stare up at the palace, its darkened windows looking back like a hundred gaping eyes, reproaching me for all that we had tried to do at the conference and failed. Above the sky is gray and repentant. I imagined the signing we wouldn’t be here to see, Georg facing the inevitable reality he had tried so hard to change. “They say the Germans are going to shoot themselves at the signing,” I’d overheard a woman say on the metro when I’d gone to see Krysia, her voice hushed with excitement. My stomach turns. Could she possibly be right?
Forty-five minutes later, as we reach Gare de l’Est, I am surprised to find Krysia waiting by the door to the station. “You didn’t have to come. It’s so early.” But I am touched.
She holds out an arm to me. “Come.”
I follow her into the station while Papa and Stefan supervise the unloading of our luggage by two porters in red jackets. “You have time for a coffee,” she says, leading me through the arched station entrance to the kiosk and buying two cups. The food here is Germanic, beer and sauerkraut, as if prematurely signaling that we have somehow already left Paris.
I sit across from her at the counter, playing with my spoon. “You didn’t have to come,” I say again. She had told me once that she despised farewells.
“I had to see about tickets, anyway,” she announces. I tilt my head, curious. “We’re leaving, too.”
“Where will you go?”
“Home. For the first time in my life there’s a country called Poland again and I’m eager to see it.” I search her voice for the real reason for her finally assenting to leaving Emilie and going home as Marcin wanted. Could it possibly have to do with my departure? More likely, with the conference winding down and Elsa Maxwell and her kind setting sail for the next great city, the work for musicians here would be less plentiful and exciting by far.
“But your flat here in Paris. Marcin’s touring...”
“Travel is a younger person’s game,” Krysia replies wearily. “Now I just want to go home.” She pauses, sipping her coffee. “Marcin has a family home in the countryside outside Krakow where we can live. We can teach music at the university.” She smiles and I can tell that she is finally going to give herself a chance to be happy.
“What about Emilie?” It is the real question that I wanted to ask in the first place.
“You were right, about letting her go. It’s time for me to move on. Here,” Krysia says, clearing her throat. She sets down her cup and opens her bag. “I knitted this for you.” It is a scarf, flecks of something gold interwoven with deep purple wool. She must have been working on it for weeks. “To remember me by.”
I take the gift from her, touched. “Thank you.”
“We have beautiful mountains near Krakow,” she says. “Come visit and we’ll go hiking.”
I do not answer. Once I am back in Germany with Stefan, ensconced in family and wedding plans, traveling will be difficult. Neighboring Poland, a long train ride from Berlin over rail lines largely decimated by the war, might as well be another planet.
We look out at the sea of travelers crossing the station in all directions, not speaking. “You wanted to leave Paris,” she reminds me.
Once I did. If only I had known what that meant, how it would feel. “But what now?”
“You’ll find your way,” she says, so firmly that for a second I almost believe her. “Each does, in her own time. One door closes, another opens.” What will I do without her wisdom?
“At least now I’ll be done with Ignatz and the spying,” I say.
Before she can respond, an announcement crackles over the speakers, calling our train. “We should go.”
We walk to the platform where Papa is helping Stefan into one of the carriages. I turn to Krysia. “You should tell her,” I say abruptly, meaning Emilie. She looks at me helplessly as if to ask, How can you say that when I have just made my peace? “She should have the chance to know you.” Before it’s too late, I add silently, thinking of my own mother.
“Margot...” Papa calls from inside the carriage.
I hesitate, the moment I have been forestalling inevitably here. I glance over my shoulder, making sure Stefan is out of earshot. “Krysia, there’s one other thing. About Georg...” It nags at me that I did not get to say goodbye, that his last memory of me would be a moment of betrayal. “If you see him...” Then I falter. What can I tell her that would begin to convey my feelings in a way that is not wholly improper with my wounded husband just steps from us?
But Krysia nods, seeming to understand exactly what I mean without my having to say. “I will tell him.” For all her dislike of Georg, she will find a way to deliver my message of farewell and regret, finding the words that I cannot.
“Come see me,” I plead as I hug her goodbye.
She does not answer, unwilling to make promises she may not keep. Instead, she places her cheek against mine. “Godspeed.” I am unable to answer. There was no expectation of permanency to our friendship, two ships flagged by different nations, briefly stopping at the same port of call. Still, I shall miss her.