The Attempt

by Magdaléna Platzová

  “Will you stay the night with me and Mimi?” he asked.

  “I need to get home,” said Louise.

  “That’s no problem. You can go back tomorrow by train or boat.”

  Nancy shook her head. “Louise is coming with us. Aren’t you, Louise darling?”

  “I can’t leave her alone with him,” said Louise.

  “Oh, thank you.” Nancy gave her a hug.

  “Nancy, dear, how long do you plan to put up with this? Don’t you see how he’s humiliating you?”

  “He just has these fits.”

  “But they’re practically every day.”

  “Then tell me,” said Nancy. “Tell me what to do. I love Jack. You too, darling Louise. You’re my . . . pillar. Pleasure to meet you,” Nancy said, letting go of Louise to give Andrei a hug. “We’ll see each other soon. We’ll bring Louise for you again, won’t we, Louise? But for now, we have to take her with us. Good-bye.” She turned to Mimi. “What was your name again?”

  “Emma Stein,” said Mimi, who had finally managed to wrench herself free from Jack. “My name is Emma Stein.” Then, at last, they were gone.

  ANDREI AND MIMI WALK HOME the rest of the way. Andrei doesn’t want to go to bed yet, so he sits in the yard and smokes, watching the brightening sky.

  “She bought Louise a house,” he says, thinking out loud. “She must be extremely grateful to her. He’s a real monster, though. As for her, she’s got too much money. Other than that, she’s quite nice, don’t you think?”

  No answer.

  “Mimi?”

  He hears a sob from the bedroom.

  Sighing, Andrei extinguishes his cigarette, gets up, and walks into the dark bedroom. He sits down on the edge of the bed and finds Mimi’s smooth, round face with his hand. She jerks away from him.

  “What is wrong with you, Mimi? I thought you got over your jealousy and left the green-eyed monster behind in Berlin. Now it lives comfortably on its pension, visiting the zoo with its grandchildren, and has no reason to bother Mimi anymore, does it?”

  “Stop,” Mimi blurts. “Everything’s ruined.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “Yes, it is. Now she’s here and she’s going to want you back for herself, you’ll see. I don’t think I can take it.”

  “Of course you can.”

  “You don’t love me.”

  “I do.”

  “Then marry me.”

  “Mimi, come on. We’ve been through this before. I thought you understood why I don’t believe in marriage.”

  “You and your principles!”

  “I don’t have any principles. I just don’t want anyone interfering in our private matters. At least when it comes to this. Mimi, let’s keep it just between us, all right?”

  “But I want to be your wife. I want Louise to have to accept it. And my family, too.”

  “That’s all that matters to you.”

  “I love you,” says Mimi. “You’re my first and only love.”

  He strokes her hair, wet with sweat and tears. “Poor Mimi.”

  9

  IT TOOK LOUISE TWO YEARS TO WRITE her memoirs. Two stormy years, in the course of which Mimi began to have stomach problems and Andrei developed a painful boil on his chest that refused to heal.

  As Louise finished each chapter, she would send it through the mail to Andrei, who would revise and rewrite, and once he had accumulated a large enough number of them, he would personally deliver them to Louise. He would always end up spending a few days in Saint-Tropez, during which he had to leave Mimi on her own. It made no sense to take her with him, not to mention that Louise was paying for the ticket. It was purely a business trip, and most of the time it wasn’t even that nice, with Louise fighting him over each and every word. His insistence on accuracy irritated her no end.

  “These are my personal memoirs,” she yelled at him, “not the annals of anarchism!”

  Andrei disagreed. “They’re both. That’s why the book is so important. Write whatever you want about your lovers, but the facts have to be correct. Otherwise they’ll tear you apart. And as far as style goes, try to describe things a little bit more from the outside, instead of just as you see them.”

  “Are you saying I’m egocentric?” “Don’t take everything so personally, Louise.”

  She did take it personally, and even though in the end they always parted as friends, she couldn’t forgive him. Andrei would leave her home completely drained. Not only that, but he did the last revisions for next to nothing, since the money Louise had rounded up to support herself while she was writing was running out. That meant he, in turn, had to scrape together even more translation and editing work, but he felt responsible for Louise’s memoirs.

  There was a constant stream of guests through the house in Saint-Tropez, mostly old friends from America, who for one reason or another were now living in France, and of course they wanted to get together with both Louise and Andrei. Gone was the peace and quiet of their first summer, and the little household in Saint-Laurent grew gloomier by the day.

  “Why don’t you come with me?” Andrei said when Mimi reproached him for leaving her alone again.

  “None of your friends like me.”

  “That’s because you mope around like a sourpuss all the time. And besides, that’s not true.”

  “Yes, it is. I can tell. Louise thinks I’m stupid.”

  “Certainly not. She just thinks you shouldn’t be so jealous. Especially when it comes to her.”

  “Do the two of you talk about me?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “I can’t stand the way you talk to Nancy and all those other women. The way your friends look right through me.” Mimi was crying. “Would you rather be with someone else?”

  “No.”

  “Then why do you leave me alone all the time?”

  “Because you don’t want to go anywhere.”

  Their landlady lived upstairs with her husband. She couldn’t understand their arguments, so she could only guess at why she heard crying and screaming from downstairs so often. She assumed it was jealousy. Probably the old Jew jealous of his young girlfriend.

  Andrei and Mimi would argue late into the night, and when Mimi’s screaming got too loud, the landlady would call the police. Not that she needed to, but it gave her the chance to get a peek inside the anarchist household.

  LOUISE’S MEMOIRS WERE PUBLISHED as a two-volume work, and the reviews were surprisingly positive, even from outlets that were traditionally hostile. The only ones who tore her apart were the Communists. Andrei said that could mean only one thing: Louise was no longer dangerous to America. The country’s war on anarchists had ended with their deportation. Not that they would take her back, but like every high-profile enemy whose day had passed, Louise became a national mascot nearly overnight. Her publisher secured a visa for her so she could go on a book tour, and it was a major success. Louise ignited the same spark in her listeners as she had in her youth, and even though she was officially prohibited from speaking about anything not directly connected to her memoirs, wherever she appeared, it turned into a spontaneous demonstration of anarchism. After a long period of doubt, she once again felt she had made the right choice in her life and that her ideals had meaning not only for her.

  She wrote about it to Andrei, who replied:

  Yes, it is precisely that need to have an ideal to fight for, which every member of the human species shares in common, that I see as our only hope. The fact that it has usually been a bad ideal of no benefit to anyone—be it religion, nation, or personal honor—is another matter. But if humanity could get behind an ideal that was good, we could enjoy the greatest prosperity in our history. I have lost hope in the ability of enlightened individuals to bring about change directly. Enlightened individuals are always in the minority and can’t achieve anything except through the intermediary of a state apparatus. We saw how that turned out in Russia.

  As to your question of whether or
not I would like to try to get a visa to America, the answer is no. Thank you for the offer of help, but believe me, I’m being honest when I say I have lost interest. Or, to be more accurate, my interest in America is spent.

  The next letter from Louise brought more news: She was in Chicago. And she was in love.

  10

  MARTIN BRUNSCHWIG HAD BEEN BLIND since childhood. With his right eye, he could make out light, dark, and shapes; with his left, he saw nothing at all. With his mother reading to him, he was able to study law and become a lawyer, a profession in which blindness was no obstacle. Whereas before, his mother had accompanied him everywhere, now he looked out at the world through the eyes of his young wife, who viewed her service to him as her mission in life. Together, they helped people who couldn’t afford other lawyers, going to court on behalf of abandoned mothers, widows, war veterans, immigrants, and the unemployed.

  Martin was intrigued by anarchism—in his opinion, the only social theory based on human goodness. Having read Kropotkin and loved Tolstoy, he was thrilled when he heard that Louise would be giving a public presentation on her book. His wife had read long passages of it to him, and he had been taken by the strange flickering between the lines.

  Louise was the embodiment of his ideal, he told his wife: passionate, wise, unfettered by convention, a woman who could uplift a man and liberate him from the banality of the everyday.

  They sat down in the front row, so his wife could describe Louise to him.

  “Shorter than me, full-figured, with gray hair pulled up in a bun. She’s wearing round wire-rimmed glasses, and a light blouse with a round collar and a beige skirt.”

  When it came time for questions, Martin raised his hand. “You have such a rich, interesting life.” (He said have, not had, Louise noticed.) “Are you happy?”

  There was a long silence before she spoke. “I’m happy that I’m here. When I see and hear your support, the enthusiasm young people have for an ideal for which I sacrificed my life. But when this meeting is over and I go back to my hotel room, alone again, with nobody waiting for me, it isn’t exactly . . .” Her voice trailed off into silence.

  When the talk was over, Martin asked his wife to take him up to see Louise.

  “I shouldn’t have asked you such a personal question,” he said. “I apologize for embarrassing you. The truth is, I’m blind, so I forgot it wasn’t just the two of us and there were hundreds of other people in the room, listening as closely as I was. I hope you understand.” He quickly added, “I would gladly wait for you in that room, if you would let me.”

  Louise remained silent.

  “Do you think I’m ridiculous?” Martin asked.

  “No.”

  “Then would you be willing to make some time for me? May I speak with you in private?”

  She glanced at Martin’s wife, who looked like a child still. A slim, pretty blonde with a friendly face, she nodded and gave Louise a pleading look, as if she were the one asking for an audience, not her husband.

  “I’m busy today, but why don’t you come by for tea tomorrow afternoon? With your wife, of course.” She smiled at the girl.

  “No,” Martin said. “I’ll come alone. Could you write down the address, please?”

  She dictated the address of her hotel to Martin’s wife, shook hands with both of them, and moved on to the next in the long line of readers waiting for her.

  LOUISE WAS IN HER SIXTIES. Martin was half her age. After what she had been through with Lars, she stayed away from younger men. She didn’t have the strength to go through all that again. Letting herself be talked into the impossible, only to watch the look in his eyes change as the romantic fantasy inevitably faded away into everyday life. No longer did he see before him the legendary Louise G., but an aging woman, entertaining for a night on the town perhaps, debating politics over a glass of whiskey and cigarettes, but best left to her own bed.

  The worst part was, on the inside, Louise didn’t feel any different. Andrei had confided in her that his sexual needs had diminished with age. “It must be disappointing for a young woman like Mimi,” he said. “It’s true she didn’t have any experience before me, so she has nothing to compare to. Not like those women who insist on giving a man a test run first. Still, her patience, and the fact that she doesn’t complain, are further evidence of a selflessness I find moving.”

  Instead of relief, aging brought Louise only fewer opportunities. In the summer she suffered the most. Rolling around on her bed in heat, cursing nature for punishing women. No wonder the Jews had invented Eve and her sin, she thought. How else to explain the injustice!

  After two meetings (one drinking tea together, the next strolling in the park), it was obvious that Martin expected something from her. After Boston she was headed to Chicago, where her plan was to relax in a house borrowed from friends and work on a long article a newspaper in New York had commissioned from her. Before they said their good-byes, he asked whether he might come to Chicago to see her. He had never traveled alone by train, but he was sure he could manage if she met him at the station.

  She refused; he insisted. He had to meet her again.

  She said she would think about it.

  Happily, Martin gave her a hug and kissed her on the lips. She held his blond-haired head in her hands, thinking about the fact that he couldn’t see her.

  When Lars left her, she had vowed to herself never again to love a younger man. Even if a thousand serpents of Paradise seduced her, she never wanted to experience that feeling of despair and ingratitude again. That unsparing look directed at her by all her young lovers, sooner or later. No night was dark enough to disguise it.

  At least there’s no risk of that with him, Louise thought, stroking Martin’s hair. She was hungry for love, for the intimate words and caresses.

  AFTER THREE DAYS IN CHICAGO, Louise still couldn’t make up her mind whether or not to invite Martin. In two weeks her visa would expire, and she would have to return to Canada and apply for a new one. On the morning of the fourth day, a letter arrived in the mail. Written to her in tiny, neat lettering by Martin’s wife.

  “Dear Madam,” it said, “you may not realize what a deep impression you have made on my husband. He needs you, to be near you and your influence. You cannot imagine how he suffers. Please let him come see you. I have no feeling of ownership toward Martin the way other wives do toward their husbands. He is an extraordinary person, with both extraordinary abilities and extraordinary needs. If he feels that he can learn something important from you, I have no right to stand in his way. Whatever he experiences, I experience, too. We have no secrets between us, no boundaries it is forbidden to cross. Perhaps you, of all people, may understand that our trust in each other is founded on absolute freedom. Martin asked me to write you, as it occurred to him that even such an enlightened being as yourself may hesitate out of considerations which in our case are truly secondary. Please, Madam Louise, assuming you don’t find my husband disagreeable, let him come. You will be enriching not only his life, but mine.”

  Martin added just four words: “May I come now?”

  She waited for him at the station and took him home.

  Martin wanted to wash up and change clothes after the long journey, and being in a strange environment, he needed help. This offered a natural route to physical intimacy. As Louise tended to him, he reciprocated her caresses. He knew what she looked like, but that wasn’t important to him; he had never cared for surfaces. There was so much joy in Louise’s love! Over and over he told her how he felt no difference in age between them.

  Louise had to hold herself back to keep from going out of her mind. The more she stuck to her daily routine, the easier it would be to cope with the inevitable loss. Every afternoon she set aside at least a few hours for writing; the rest of the day they spent together. It was so good, there was no need to think about it. She accepted the ten days as a reward for her long years of solitude, recognizing their exceptional beauty more acutely than
she would have in her youth.

  Before she left, they vowed to each other to meet again soon. As soon as she renewed her visa, she would return to America and they would go on a trip together. Louise would take Martin with her on a lecture tour. Show him California, where he had never been. Introduce him to the southern sun and the Pacific Ocean. He didn’t have to see it, she said. It was enough just to hear the roar and pound of the waves, to feel the freezing spray on your face and breathe in the fresh salty smell.

  But the U.S. Immigration Service had other plans for Louise, and this time even a guarantee from the publisher didn’t help. The reports from the police who had monitored her lectures were unequivocal: Louise G. had failed to comply with the conditions stated in her visa and had used her appearances as a pretext for political agitation. Her continued presence in the United States was undesirable.

  “The dream is over,” Louise wrote to Andrei. “Martin is asking if he can come see me in Canada or Saint-Tropez, but for obvious reasons, I can’t allow it.”

  11

  VISITORS FROM AMERICA CAME AND WENT, pledging to help, but Louise’s visa applications were repeatedly rejected. She refused to accept that she would never see home again. Home for her was New York. First the apartment on the Bowery, then the small house in Harlem with the magazine offices on the ground floor, where Andrei had lived when he got out of prison.

  Andrei didn’t share her feelings. Postwar America no longer held any interest for him and he didn’t feel at home anywhere. He had never owned anything, never settled in anywhere. He answered to a higher calling and lived where necessary.

  Despite the official harassment, in France at least he was still connected to Russia. He could collect aid for political prisoners and their families from a distance and edit the newsletter, which reported on the ideas and fates of imprisoned anarchists. That was the best he could do at the moment, he felt. He wouldn’t allow the imprisoned and executed anarchists to be forgotten; he wouldn’t allow their sacrifice to be in vain. It was up to him to preserve the evidence of how the Bolsheviks had stolen the revolution, leaving Russia under the control of a band of opportunists, who not only didn’t care about ideals but quietly sought to get rid of the true idealists as quickly as possible.