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IN 1931, AFTER ANOTHER UNSUCCESSFUL ATTEMPT at being friends, Louise had written to Mimi Stein:
I would like to take your hand and lead you to a bigger world, more beautiful and more free than any you can imagine. But you refuse. Not because you lack intelligence. But because you cling to the values with which you were raised.
You are wrong, Mimi. I have nothing against your living with Andrei. I have long been accustomed to my lovers leaving me for other women. Often these same women have come to me for advice and I have become their confidante.
What distanced you from me, and from Andrei’s friends for good, was your limited, petit bourgeois world, your jealousy of anything you thought might take Andrei away from you.
She wrote the letter after Mimi’s last visit to Saint-Tropez, when during dinner someone had whispered in Mimi’s ear, “Ah, vous avez un ménage à trois, alors?” Mimi had turned red in the face and fled from the table.
Andrei later teased her that it was just a joke. After all, everyone knew he and Louise hadn’t slept together in thirty years. That was the last time Mimi went to Saint-Tropez with him. She preferred to stay behind in Saint-Laurent, even if it meant having to contend with the amorous advances of the landlord and fend off the gendarmes who were assigned to keep an eye on the anarchist household and always managed to peek in at just the right moment.
“Alone again?” one of them started in. “If I had a young woman like you, I wouldn’t leave her alone at night.”
“The gentleman must be quite sure of himself,” said the other.
“Or just the opposite.” The first one laughed, trying to slip his arm around Mimi’s shoulders. “Maybe he’s thinking, I’ll give my young friend some freedom. What the eyes don’t see, the heart won’t grieve.”
“True, let her enjoy herself with the younger men.”
“Communists share everything, don’t they?” the first one said, ogling Mimi’s breasts.
Mimi spent her nights alone crying, howling like an abandoned dog. But it was still better than going to Saint-Tropez, enduring Louise’s comments and watching all those women smile and pout their lips at Andrei, hoping for a kiss.
When Mimi followed Andrei to France, she was twenty-four years old and in love for the first time. She wanted to get married and have a child. Andrei’s friends frightened her, especially the women. They talked loudly about sex, drank too much wine, and smoked, and there was a bottomless sadness in their eyes. The only one she liked was Nestor’s wife. She had wanted to like Louise at first. She even took her flowers the first time they went to visit.
Louise coldly kissed her on both cheeks. “I don’t feel old enough yet for young women to be bringing me flowers,” she said. “You can wait till I’m in my grave for that.”
Andrei just stood there, pretending not to hear.
On the way home, Mimi cried. The two of them had a quarrel. One of the first, at that time still restrained, of the arguments that were to continue over the course of the next ten years, with their tears, threats, and nighttime walkouts.
Andrei was touched by Mimi’s wholehearted devotion. As her first lover, he felt responsible. Louise’s freedom wasn’t for him. He was afraid of loneliness. But the arguments were draining. He would storm out of the house at night, slamming the door as he shouted he was never coming back. Then he would walk until he reached the coast, where the thundering waves crested and broke against the rocky outcrops. Finally, he could take a breath, calm down, straighten things out in his head. But the emptiness he felt, the overwhelming meaninglessness, was so upsetting, he ended up going straight back home. Anything was better than being alone. Even the stifling darkness. Even the bed soaked with the tears of the human being huddled beside him, a human being who loved him, maybe selfishly and childishly, but who could complain about that? Did anyone have the right to dictate how they should be loved?
AFTER ANDREI’S DEATH, LOUISE LET MIMI move in with her in Saint-Tropez. They lasted two weeks together. As the loss sunk in, Mimi spent most of her time splayed, weeping, on the colorful blanket in Andrei’s room, or squatting on the doorstep, staring mutely down at the bay’s sparkling surface.
The south coast was deserted. Nancy had left Jack and moved to Venice. She no longer kept in touch with Louise. But when word reached her of Andrei’s death, she sent a note of condolence, with a P.S.: “It goes without saying that the house is yours. Do with it as you see fit.”
Louise didn’t like the thought of giving up the only property she had ever had, but it no longer made sense to stay on the Côte d’Azur. She sold the villa and left for Spain. She was sorry the civil war hadn’t broken out sooner, convinced that if Andrei had seen it, he wouldn’t have killed himself. He would have overcome the pain and marshaled all his strength, as he had once before, long ago, when the crackdown on anarchists in San Francisco had shaken him out of his lethargy after he got out of prison.
From Spain she went to London, and after that to Canada, where she ended up staying. When the weather was nice, she could see the shores of America on the far side of Lake Ontario. It was almost like being home.
MlMI REFUSED TO GO BACK TO HER PARENTS. She stayed another few months in Saint-Laurent, organizing Andrei’s estate. Then she moved to Paris, where she found a position as a secretary with a Viennese marble dealer who had fled Hitler.
But her stomach troubles continued to get worse. The doctor recommended surgery, and she eventually underwent several operations. The last year of her life she spent in a hospital. She died two years after Andrei, at the age of thirty-six.
EPILOGUE
I WAIT BENEATH THE SICKLY TREE the protesters call “sacred.” It’s stopped raining and the General Assembly at the upper end of the square is going on indefinitely. That direct democracy of theirs works slowly. Somewhere in the crowd are Marius and Mia, and Daniel, too, who came over from England to support his young friends and ended up staying.
The five minutes that Marius promised have long since passed, but I stay where I am. There’s nowhere for me to go anyway.
I’m sure they’ll ask me about Ilana. She finished her Ph.D. and left New York six months after I did. I saw her once. She came to visit me in Prague from Berlin, where she’d landed a job as a research assistant at the university. Her son and her ex-husband lived in Hamburg. That was the main reason she’d moved to Germany.
We talked mostly about New York and how much we missed it. And also about my book. I still hadn’t finished it. I had to earn a living when I returned to Prague, so I went back to teaching and writing for newspapers, which didn’t leave me any time to devote to Josef’s notebook. We made love once. I didn’t hear from her again until a few months later. She invited me to friend her on Facebook, but I declined. It’s too frustrating to communicate that way. I couldn’t imagine getting any satisfaction out of reading Ilana’s mass posts.
Marius still hasn’t turned up, but I don’t feel like texting him again. I gather up a few more pieces of cardboard that aren’t drenched yet and pull my sleeping bag from my backpack. The sky is totally clear now. I’ve always liked the way the weather changes so fast in New York. Heat or rain, either way, it never lasts more than two days.
It’s almost silent except for the distant sound of chanting. Every now and then a siren whoops, a horn honks, then peace and quiet settle back in. Manhattan opens up like a palm extended to the stars.
When I first heard about the encampment, I wasn’t optimistic. I didn’t believe the young protesters had enough courage and determination to stick it out through the first cold night. But I was wrong. Their numbers increased with each cold night and with every police crackdown. I had to see it for myself!
The police cordon isn’t here for nothing. That much is clear. Sooner or later, they’ll shut down the camp. Lock up the more hardened protesters, dump the tents on a trash heap. The police are well aware that the movement is lost without a base. It isn’t strong enough yet to expand elsewhere with
out losing its foothold.
Space is key. A place where people can stay, day after day, night after night, sleeping, thinking, eating, creating something. A place that can’t be erased with a click of the mouse, that can last as a source of irritation even after it’s all over, after the police empty out and seal off the square and its current inhabitants, once again homeless, revert back from being inspiring bearers of change to a ragtag bunch of misfits trying in vain to make people listen.
Even I get annoyed by the nonstop warriors for justice, with their vehement attitudes and furrowed brows. I understand what they want, but I don’t see how they plan to achieve it. If I remember correctly, Daniel didn’t talk about anything that could be influenced by elections or votes of Congress.
“There is no way to live in accordance with our conscience,” Josef had scrawled on the cover of his blue notebook. That was his message to me, the letter he left behind.
The people in the camp here were trying to prove the opposite.
How naïve, I think, this hope for the inner transformation of man. Destined to failure every time.
And yet I feel it, too.
The soggy cardboard digs into my back. How long has it been since I slept under the stars? Ten years, twenty?
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