Nothing Is Forgotten_A Novel

by Peter Golden

  * * *

  It was snowing as Yuli drove to Otvali. Her voice laced with a hesitancy I hadn’t heard before, she asked, “Do—do you still want to go home?”

  “To Paris.”

  “Papka won’t like it.”

  “I’m going to try and find out why my grandmother was murdered.”

  Gently Yuli said, “Sometimes there is no reason.”

  I knew she was trying to be kind, but the facts, I believed, were on my side. “Someone shot Emma, someone tried to shoot me—there is a reason.”

  Der was sitting at the kitchen table drinking tea, and Yuli was right about his reaction. When I told him that I was going to Paris, he shook his head. “Too dangerous.”

  “If it was some KGB agent who tried to kill me, I’ll be safer in Paris than here. And I’m not asking your permission. I can leave the Soviet Union whenever I want.”

  He gave me a hard look. “Maybe not. Taft—”

  I felt my anger rising. “All Taft did for me was get me shot at and a friend of mine killed. I am going.”

  “Then you will take Yuli with you. It will be safer. It could be a week before I can make your travel arrangements.”

  I looked at Yuli. Her face was blank.

  Der said to her, “You can travel on the American passport I brought you from Munich.”

  “Yes, Papka,” she said.

  Part VI

  23

  Paris, France

  January 26, 1965

  A late-afternoon drizzle dimpled the gray water of the Seine as the taxi exited onto Quai de Bercy. Yuli sat next to Michael in the back, trying to read A Moveable Feast in English while Michael chatted in French with the driver. Yuli was an ardent fan of Hemingway, starting when she had read For Whom the Bell Tolls in school, and after landing at Orly and exchanging a hundred dollars for francs, she had bought a copy of his Paris memoir and a map of the city because she wanted to go sightseeing. The memoir had recently been published, and Yuli was excited to read it, but she was having trouble concentrating because she was exhausted from the flights—Rostov-on-Don to Moscow and Moscow direct to Paris—and the anxiety of traveling under a false identity. Yuli relished having a family story in lieu of her eerie blankness—even if her biography had been concocted. Nonetheless, recalling the particulars that Papka had received from Taft Mifflin was difficult in her state of exhaustion. That her first name had remained Yulianna made it easier for her and Michael. Her surname, however, was Ukrainian, Timko, since her fictional self had been born in Odessa. Her father had been a garrulous steelworker, her mother a demure seamstress. In May 1941, a month before the Nazis invaded, the Timkos emigrated with their new baby to Parma, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland. After graduating from Parma Senior High in 1959, Yulianna Timko earned an economics degree from Ohio University, and by the time she began her job at the Commerce Department in Washington, D.C., her parents were conveniently nestled beside each other in St. Andrew’s Cemetery in Parma.

  Michael tapped her on the arm. “The driver says the address on Emma’s postcard is for a café.”

  “Maybe she uses it only for mail?”

  “I hope not,” Michael replied, then said to the driver, “Y a-t-il des appartements au-dessus du café?”

  Yuli didn’t speak French, so she couldn’t understand the conversation, but she turned toward Michael as if she were listening because she liked looking at him. More than liked. That sandy hair falling across his forehead and curling up at his collar. And those shoulders. Where did they build shoulders that broad in America? In Chicago, according to the Carl Sandburg poem that she and Pyotr had translated together in school. Except Chicago had big shoulders in the poem, Yuli recalled. Big, broad, who cared? She liked looking at them. And his face, which was both wise and boyish. And his eyes. Papka had called them “poet’s eyes,” and though Yuli did see a bohemian gleam in them and a touch of sadness, there was nothing dreamy about them. Quite the opposite. His eyes didn’t miss much, which unnerved her, and when Michael studied her, Yuli became angry at him, for it was as if his eyes were tempting her to tell him things that she preferred not to share. Lake Bereza, for instance. Yuli hadn’t planned to take Michael there, but he was looking at her across the table in Café Victory, and she felt compelled to do it, only managing to catch herself before telling him everything.

  And Yuli certainly had no plan to kiss Michael by the lake, but Michael was different from boys in Otvali. Grabby boys, unromantic boys in a hurry. As if they were on fire and it was her duty to douse the flames. So she did, without receiving any relief from her loneliness or the pain at the center of her, as though a spring were coiling there, tighter and tighter.

  Why did she do it, then? Guilt, for starters. Yuli felt guilty disappointing anyone. Guilt had been gnawing at her ever since she had escaped the Germans and her mother had not. That was the beginning. Then those children had been killed. And Dovid, right in front of her. Yet Yuli didn’t believe that guilt was the whole story. There was her loneliness, too. And maybe, she thought, the explanation was simply that she had been born a wild girl. Bashe had called her that, and beginning when Yuli was a teenager and started going out with boys, Papka appeared to hold the same opinion, sinking into an irritated silence when she left and scowling at her when she came home.

  Lately Yuli wondered if Papka considered her no better than a prostitute. In all her years acquiring goods by bribing longshoremen and the apparatchiks who paced the docks with their clipboards and whose greed would have shamed the tsars, Papka had never suggested that she give herself to a man in the interest of a deal. That had seemed to change last month when he instructed her to go skiing at Mount Elbrus. Somehow Papka had learned that the teenage physicist Kazimir Zolnerowich, the missile designer Yuli had photographed in Dnipropetrovsk, would be taking a holiday at an inn near the mountain. Yuli was to stay at the inn and befriend him.

  “And the purpose of this friendship?” she had asked.

  “To find out if Kazimir would like a change of scene. In the United States, for example.”

  The assignment sounded ridiculous to Yuli. “Why don’t I just ask him if he would like to defect?”

  “Do not be silly, girl. Ask him in private. On a walk or in his room.”

  “His room?”

  “He will invite you to his room. Surely you know you are difficult to resist. You have seen how Michael looks at you. And you at him. Try looking at Kazimir that way.”

  Yuli was dumbstruck by the suggestion and fumed at Papka while packing for her trip. At the inn, she encountered Kazimir in the salon, where he sat on a sofa reading the Russian translation of The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells. Yuli had read the British writer’s novel The Time Machine, and after sitting at the other end of the sofa, attempted to start a conversation with Kazimir, who glanced up, said that he was enjoying the book, and went back to reading. At the inn, several of Kazimir’s colleagues flirted with her, but as far as Kazimir was concerned, Yuli was invisible. Upon returning to Otvali she reported to Papka that the missile designer was more interested in science fiction than women. Papka let out a sigh of relief, and Yuli concluded she had misunderstood his suggestion.

  All the same, that Papka had noticed her interest in Michael made her uncomfortable. Yuli found her feelings for Michael unsettling, and on the drive to Mount Elbrus, she had told herself that he would be gone when she got back to Otvali, and because she had maintained a safe distance from him, she wouldn’t miss him so badly. Yet Michael was there when Yuli returned. And while her spirits rose upon seeing him, Yuli realized, with a sudden disconcerting clarity, how much she resented Michael for filling her with hope that her dearest dream was true, that life had more to offer her than its current dreariness, that tomorrow could be different from today. Perhaps that was the real explanation, concealed behind the gibberish of ideology, for why Soviet leaders were so hostile to America; it was easier to govern citizens who didn’t dream. They were more inclined to obey, to be satisfied
living like draft horses: eating, working, procreating, sleeping, and dying without ever considering what might have been.

  Then Papka had ordered her to go to Paris with Michael, later privately explaining to her what she must try to accomplish. Yuli barely listened to him. She thought coming to this city would lessen her resentment, but that wasn’t the case. Sitting in the back seat and looking out the window at the cozy yellow lights in the cafés and the limestone buildings with their colorfully painted doors and shutters, Yuli felt as if all this beauty, and the happiness that must go with it, would forever be beyond her reach.

  The taxi stopped outside a stone arcade on Place des Vosges with a grassy square, bordered by a pointy-tipped black iron fence and neat rows of trees on the other side. Michael said something to the driver, who pointed at the arcade and replied, “Café Hugo est très excellent.”

  “Are you hungry?” Michael asked Yuli.

  “Starved,” she said.

  24

  It was a lovely old café lit by an apricot glow from the glass globes suspended from the ceiling, and because of the stone walls and the arcade blocking the daylight from the windows, I had the feeling we were in a cave. We were sitting at a small table with our suitcases around us eating cheese omelets, salad with a mustard vinaigrette, crisp fried potatoes, and baguettes with fig jam, all of it washed down with the house Chardonnay.

  I said, “Did you see the apartments above the café?”

  “I did, but those postcards were from thirty years ago. Why do you think your grandmother has an apartment here?”

  “Because she came to Europe every summer. Always to Paris. And I had to start somewhere.” I took out my passport wallet and removed a color photo, laminated in plastic, which I’d taken of Emma with my Instamatic. She was standing behind the soda fountain and raising a finger to scold me because she disliked my taking her picture. I handed it to Yuli.

  “You look like her. She is so pretty.”

  “No prettier than you.”

  Her face flushed, though I couldn’t say whether it was from embarrassment or the wine. “If her apartment is here, how do we get in?”

  Our waiter was coming toward us. “I have a plan.”

  A half-squint and half-frown indicated that Yuli wasn’t overly confident in my skills as a detective. I scooped up the snapshot and showed it to the waiter. “Reconnaissez-vous cette femme? Elle a un appartement ici.”

  Ever since eighth grade, when we began taking foreign language in school, my French teachers had complimented my accent, but I didn’t impress the waiter, who answered in English.

  “I do not know her. I work here one month. Mademoiselle Blum, the owner of the building, comes for le goûter soon. I will say to her your question.”

  While we waited for the landlady to show up for the Parisian version of teatime, Yuli and I drank café crèmes. We were done with our coffee when a stick-thin young woman, with her hair cut short and wearing a minidress with the swirly pattern of a finger painting, came to our table.

  “Bonjour, I am Hélène Blum.”

  Standing up, I held out the photo, and before I could say anything, Hélène smiled. “This is Emma!”

  “My grandmother.”

  “You are Michael, oui? Emma speaks of you.”

  “Oui. And this is my friend, Yulianna Timko.”

  Hélène nodded hello to Yuli. “Since I am little, Emma brings Mother and I the fireball candy from America. She—” Hélène must’ve noticed my expression because she paused.

  I didn’t think mentioning the shooting was necessary. “Emma passed away.”

  “Oh, Michael. Je suis désolée. Mother, too. En novembre.”

  I told her that I was sorry for her loss, and that I had come to Paris to clean out Emma’s apartment, but I hadn’t been able to locate the key. Hélène waved her hand as if to brush away my concerns. “No hurry. Every summer Emma pays a year’s rent with a bank check.”

  That explained why I hadn’t seen any of the canceled checks when I went through her filing cabinet. What it didn’t explain was why she kept the apartment and was so intent on hiding it that she didn’t pay the rent with a personal check. Was she worried that my father, who did her taxes, would spot it on her checking statements? And if that was it, why didn’t she mention the apartment to me after my father died?

  “Let me take you upstairs,” Hélène said. “And I will give you a key.”

  * * *

  I felt as if I were on the verge of a breakthrough, yet my optimism evaporated after we climbed a flight of stairs and inspected the apartment.

  Two bedrooms were off a hallway—the bigger one with a double bed and an empty armoire and closet, and the smaller one with twin beds and no armoire or closet at all. I told Yuli to take the larger room, hoping that she would invite me to join her, but she went in and closed the door, so I tossed my suitcases on one of the twins, located the thermostat in the hall, and cranked up the heat. The kitchen was tiny, with the refrigerator, unplugged and wiped clean, under the counter, but in a cabinet above the stove I saw evidence that Emma had been here: a red-and-gold can of Martinson Coffee, the brand that Emma drank. I popped off the lid, saw that the can was three fourths full, and inhaled a memory of my grandmother until sadness replaced the pleasure of remembering.

  More evidence was in the bathroom: bottles of her favorites, Breck shampoo and Jean Naté after-bath splash. Oddly enough, because the old woman in Rostov-on-Don had claimed that Emma had lived in Paris with a painter, Alexander Gak, the walls were bare, but when I went into the salon and switched on the crystal sconces, I noticed nail holes and clean white rectangular spaces of various sizes on the walls. Gak’s paintings, I imagined, had hung here. Where were they now? Not in New Jersey. Emma had never brought back any art from Europe.

  “Find anything?” Yuli asked.

  I held up a paperback of Webster’s New Pocket Dictionary and a hardbound oversize book of Picasso’s work that had been on a wing chair, which was upholstered in the same wine-dark silk with sky-blue stripes as the settee, the only furniture in the salon.

  “Did your grandmother like art?”

  “She checked out library books about Picasso, Chagall, and Matisse, and liked to watch me sketch. But she never talked about art or a painter named Gak.”

  Yuli came over. “I’m going to have a bath and go to sleep. You should rest, and we can make a plan tomorrow.”

  “I’m going to read for a while.”

  Yuli kissed my lips. I held the kiss, but she stood back and said good night to me in Russian.

  I watched her disappear into the hall, then put the dictionary on the chair and stretched out on the settee, my feet dangling over one end. I stood the Picasso book up on my chest, reading about his life and perusing the color plates of his paintings. I heard Yuli running her bath and pictured her in the tub, her skin rosy from the steam, an image that, when added to my exhaustion, interfered with my reading.

  I closed my eyes, intending to rest for a second, and when I woke up, I discovered that Yuli had turned off the lights, covered me with a knitted blanket, removed my Weejuns, and set them on the herringbone floor next to the Picasso book. Dawn was scratching at the windows, and I checked my watch: it was five after six; I’d slept for eleven hours. Glancing at Emma’s Rolex, I wanted to talk to her about Yuli. After telling her that I’d never met anyone so resilient and brave and beautiful, I continued my silent recitation as I shaved and showered in the tub with the handheld nozzle, dried off and put on clean clothes, and then riffled through the pages again. I startled myself by asking aloud, “Emma, why were you reading this book?”

  Part of that answer, or clues to it, I believed, had been listed on the back flyleaf. I carefully tore out the page and waited for Yuli to wake up.

  25

  The morning was clear and cold as Yuli and I crossed the Pont au Double and saw barges cutting foamy trails in the Seine.

  “We don’t know what your grandmother meant b
y that list,” Yuli said.

  “That’s the plan. To find out.”

  “And how do we find out?”

  “We start with breakfast.”

  “Brilliant,” she replied.

  Yuli wanted to eat at the Closerie des Lilas, a café recommended by Hemingway in A Moveable Feast, and she had consulted her map to plot our route. It was a long walk from Place des Vosges, and I thought it would give me a chance to figure out why Emma had written in the back of that book. No luck. Just as disappointing, Yuli and I had run into Hélène Blum as we left the apartment, and when I asked her if she’d ever heard of Alexander Gak, she said no.

  On the Boulevard Saint-Michel, traffic was already heavy, and people were lined up at the kiosks for the newspapers. Students were streaming into the Place de la Sorbonne, and the tables on the terraces of the cafés were busy as orange-blue flames flickered in the mesh boxes of the tall steel gas heaters. We cut through the Luxembourg Gardens, walking along the gravel paths past the white statues and the pool and fountains. All around us the windows of the apartment buildings reflected the wintry light, and the bare branches of the elms and sycamores were black silhouettes in the silver sky.

  Her voice wistful, Yuli said, “Paris is supposed to be the loveliest city.”

  “It gets my vote.”

  “Being here, I understand how little I see at home, how tiny my world is.”

  “It’s no different in America.”

  Her wistful tone developed an edge. “Except you can go wherever you want on a real passport.”

  “There’s the Closerie des Lilas,” I said, changing the subject.

  The café was on the corner of Boulevard Montparnasse and Avenue de l’Observatoire, but Yuli stopped to stare at a bronze statue of a soldier in a plumed hat, coat with epaulets, high boots, and a sword raised in his right hand.