“Papa, what is Serbia?”
“It’s a country all the way over on the other side of Germany, Catkin. It’s very far away from us. Besides,” he says, turning toward Mildred, “what about The Great Illusion? Didn’t you find his argument convincing? Why on earth would France—”
“It isn’t France one needs to worry about. It is Germany.”
“Why would either of them get involved in a local conflict that has nothing to do with them when it would be bad for both?”
“Yes,” Clara says. “I read Mr. Angell’s book. I think he’s right: why would countries that trade with each other so much want to go to war? They will sort this problem out through diplomacy, I’m sure.”
“Oh yes, yes.” Mildred waved her newspaper dismissively. “Norman Angell is very convincing if you believe that people always act in their own best interests.”
“Well, people might not, but what about whole countries?” Mercedes asks.
“I don’t think,” Marion says, “that whole countries are any more enlightened than individual human beings. They get swept up by emotion, too, and behave very foolishly indeed.”
“What is it, Catkin?” Edward says.
“What does ‘enlightened’ mean?”
“It means that you have special wisdom and insight. It means seeing things clearly when other people might not.”
“Ahh, here are the goose liver and the cheeses. At last. Thank you, Louisa. Would you put some water on for tea when you go back inside?” Louisa nods. “Would anyone like some of this?”
Clara lifts the plates that Louisa has just set at her elbow, heavy with the solid wedges and squares of cream and yellow and white. They begin to circle the table, passed from hand to hand among the guests. People sit forward a little, waiting to receive the platters as they come around, and for a moment the conversation is set aside, supplanted by the immediate task of eating, murmurs of approval and thanks, the clinking of forks on plates. In the hush, Edward looks at his wife where she sits at the opposite end of the table.
She has turned to say something to Marion, who is seated beside her. They are speaking quietly so he cannot hear what it is. She seems to be in good spirits. There: she is smiling as she replies; now she laughs, throwing her head back softly, putting her palm to her chest as though to restrain her heart, to keep it tucked inside her.
And yet he can’t shake the feeling that something has upset her. Perhaps it is this worrying talk of war that is fraying her nerves. It is as though she has withdrawn some portion of herself from the world; pulled it back inside for safekeeping.
Today should be the last of his outings with Marion, he thinks; it is time to move on from sketching and begin working in earnest. In a sense, he feels they have already silently agreed to this with that last touch of their hands before they returned to the house. He is taken with the idea of working on autochromes all summer, with the pictures of her forming only the first in an extended series. He will see what he can do with color. As the world shifts through its modulations of deepening green toward gold and orange and finally gray, he can take it all in through his camera.
He will miss his morning drives with her, and this thought strikes him with a pang he had not anticipated. This week he has found himself stopping by in the afternoons to see what she is working on, has wanted to solicit her help and criticism. He looks forward to talking to her, to comparing notes, more than he does with Arthur now, though Arthur and he have critiqued each other’s paintings for years. It is Marion’s second opinion that he seeks out; it is she he goes looking for with his new batch of prints at the end of the day.
He is not inured to the underlying reasons for this. But he feels content, virtuous even, to divert his affection for her toward the platonic, and if there was an unmarked boundary that they approached today, they drew back from it just as quickly. He is pleased with his self-restraint and hers, the way that they have kept their attention on their work and not succumbed to the obvious temptation of each other. The time in his life when he felt compelled to turn everything into romance is over; to his great relief, he finds he has outgrown it. Though sometimes, especially on a day like this, when she is bathed in the gold and green summer light, he is caught off guard by a gesture of hers, an angle, and finds himself holding his breath, thinking involuntarily: exquisite, exquisite …
“You are too young to remember the last American war,” Mildred is saying. “But I was a little girl in Boston when the boys went marching off to save the union. Everyone turned out in the streets to cheer them on to victory. We had no idea how horrible it would be.”
“But this war won’t be like that,” Arthur puts in, his mouth still full of Brie and bread. “Not with all the new technology—the railroads and airplanes and motorcars—that the armies have now. That’s what all the newspapers are saying. This war will be different. Victory will happen in a matter of months.”
“That’s what people were saying in 1861, my dear,” Mildred says. “That’s what people always say at times like this.”
“Well, if it does come to war, the French will be ready to fight. They won’t let 1870 happen all over again.”
“I will fight for France,” Edward says, “if it is attacked.”
Louisa comes back with cups on a tray.
“Who wants tea?” Clara asks. Her voice sounds to Edward strangely light and aerial. An acrobat trying to create the illusion that the laws of gravity do not apply. “Who wants coffee?”
“Oh, me please, coffee,” says Arthur. “And the Russians—they’ll fight, too. They won’t let the Austrians just roll over the Serbs, so in return they’ll be invaded … Milk, please, no sugar.”
“Who else for coffee?”
“Yes, they’ll likely raze Petersburg and carry on to Moscow.” Arthur nods and frowns, reassuring everyone that this is not idle chatter; he means what he says.
“I think I’ll just go inside and help Louisa,” says Marion, standing up abruptly.
“No need to do that,” says Edward. “She can manage all right.”
“Really, I don’t mind at all.” And she sets off toward the house before anyone can try to dissuade her. Edward looks at Clara, inquisitively, who shrugs: she doesn’t understand this either. She finishes serving the tea and then quickly excuses herself, following in Marion’s path across the grass to the kitchen door.
MARION FINDS HERSELF confronted with Louisa’s bad-tempered manner of doing the dishes, picking each one off the pile and not so much washing it as spanking it with dish jelly and cloth, and then slamming it into the draining board on the other side. She feels suddenly sheepish, as though she will only get in the way. She stands for some moments with her back resting against the kitchen door. Even with Louisa boiling away at its center, the cool and relative quiet of the kitchen seem welcoming.
Eventually, she summons up the courage to interrupt.
“Can I help you?” she asks. “I’ll finish those if you like.” Louisa looks up, surprised, but not displeased.
“If you like,” she says. “It is necessary to rinse them in the very hot water, though.”
“I don’t mind. I’d like something mechanical to do right now.” Louisa shrugs and moves out of her way. Marion stands at the sink, scrubbing, rinsing, stacking, watching the balance shift steadily from one side of her to the other. She likes the simplicity of this task: it’s easy to measure cause and effect. Just now, it is the only thing in the world that seems to have this characteristic. Everything else has been thrown into confusion. There are so many forces pushing and pulling at her that she can’t separate them, one from another. Why had she stood up so suddenly and left the table in the middle of the meal? She isn’t sure she even knows why herself.
All this talk of war upsets her; she isn’t the kind of person who can continue happily immune to things like this. She is worried about her parents, who are still in Russia. And even if they are all right and she only reads about it in the paper, she will still f
eel the odd, blank upset of strangers suffering, her inability to feel what they are feeling, to truly understand what they are going through. And as if Mildred and her doomsaying wasn’t enough, Arthur seems to treat the prospect of a European war with something close to gleeful relish.
Yes, the idea of war, hovering over everything. Or is it, in fact, not that at all that has upset her? Is it instead the way that he had been looking at her from the far end of the table? With an expression that ran right through her like electricity, so intense she was convinced that everyone around them must see it suspended between her and him, a thread of light, though when she looked around, they seemed all to be stunningly oblivious. For after all, what is a look? It is not illegal; it is not forbidden by marriage vows. And he has always had that consuming way of examining the things around him—he is an artist, after all. What would one expect? Perhaps no one noticed because the way he looked at her was nothing out of the ordinary. That would be so much worse, because it would mean that she is making up all the strangeness between them, the way that they have become acutely aware of each other’s bodies in space, how her skin lit up when their fingers touched accidentally as he bent down to look at a new painting she had begun. That would mean she wants it to be this way …
And then as she was sitting there, trying to concentrate on her food, on the conversation at the table, Arthur had to start talking cavalierly about the Russians and the coming invasion as though it was a sure thing. She had felt a tightness come over her chest, and before she knew it she was on her feet, stuttering what she hoped were polite excuses and heading back to the house.
The kitchen door opens and Clara steps inside.
“He is awful, I know. So tactless. I’m sorry,” she says, and for a second Marion isn’t sure whom she is referring to. “He doesn’t think before he runs his mouth, just says whatever is on his mind without pause. He knows perfectly well that your parents are in Russia.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” Marion says. “I should know Arthur well enough to expect that from him. He doesn’t mean any harm by it.”
“Yes, but still, you’d think he could show a little sympathy.”
Marion sighs and puts down the dish she is in the middle of washing.
“You know, there is probably nothing to worry about. Probably nothing will happen: all this will be forgotten in six months.”
“I’m sure you are right.”
“And even if it does come to war, there will be plenty of warning. Foreigners traveling in Russia will have lots of time to leave before any fighting starts. It is a big country. Where are they now?”
“Petersburg. You are right; I’m sure they are quite safe. I’m silly to worry about them. I shouldn’t be anxious about something that probably won’t even occur.”
“That’s right.” Clara touches her shoulder and says: “There now; don’t worry about Arthur. What does he know about international diplomacy? Did someone make him ambassador to the czar of all the Russias when he woke up this morning? Remember last week he didn’t know the name of the Russian prince, Alexei, the poor little thing with the weak blood.”
Marion smiles, grateful for these ministrations. But when she looks over at her friend, whose eyes are wide with sympathy, she feels a sickening flare of guilt erupt in the pit of her stomach, a jagged shock that sizzles through her body and down into her limbs. How can she bear to stay here another minute with the thoughts she’s been having in these last few days? They aren’t even thoughts, really; they aren’t definite or clear enough for thoughts and yet they are too active and compelling for feelings. She read Dr. Freud’s book about dreams last year, and he has a word that seems apt but which she hates: drives. Like a machine. Involuntarily, she turns away from Clara, disgusted with herself.
Clara, mistaking it for a retreat into her former sadness, squeezes her hand harder: “There, there, dear. Don’t be upset. Come back outside when you are ready,” and Marion nods slowly.
“Thank you,” she manages. Clara goes out, and Marion looks around her at the room, which seems to have grown larger without either the table or Louisa’s palpable disapproval to occupy it. The two wooden benches look bereft and abandoned. She goes and sits down on one of them. Dr. Freud also says that in order to become civilized, we repress our drives or divert them, learn to delay their fulfillment, bury them. It is only when things go wrong that they rise up and make things awkward for us. Well, she could bury this; she would bury it. She can make herself forget about this day by the river, the strange feeling of him arranging her hair, an act of caring that seemed almost maternal, feminine in its carefulness. Most of the time she is doing fine, and all she needs is to put in a little more effort to stop it breaking through to the surface. Cut off a little more air and light. And eventually, she is sure, the feelings will die away.
WALKING ACROSS THE grass, Clara sees the tableau of guests at the table before she can hear their words clearly. There they are, all rushing to fill in whenever there is an opening in the conversation, all trying to talk at once, Mildred using her newspaper now to brandish like a sword. She catches words: Viviani, Jaurès, the socialists. They are talking about France. She alternately loves and hates their vitality, their willfulness and self-assurance. Sometimes she feels buoyed up by it, sometimes smothered.
At the head of the table, she sees that Edward is following her progress with his eyes. His face is anxious and questioning, waiting to see what hers will reveal. She feels suddenly a stab of jealousy: He is so concerned about her friend. Was he that concerned last month when she took to her bed for the day? Was he even that concerned when Kate hurt her ankle during a long walk just the previous week? He had said, Don’t fret: she’ll be all right. She’s a strong, growing girl, she’ll recover, and then he had gone back to work. Why is he always more interested in the troubles of others than in those of his own family? Why is he so especially concerned about Marion all the time now, so gentle and solicitous of her?
She stops herself. She will not let this go any further. She will not allow these doubts to surge up and overwhelm her. She has decided, simply, that she will shut them out, the chorus of voices that tell her how, underneath her, there are currents moving that she cannot control. She made this decision before they returned, this morning, later than usual from their drive. She will make it as many times as she has to. She trusts Marion. She is not like so many of the other women they know, who will allow themselves to be carried away by their romantic ideas, who are selfish and do not think of others. Marion is principled, thoughtful, and the trust of her that Clara feels is such a pleasure, such an amazing relief from her usual wariness. She needs that trust; she cannot imagine doing without it.
But then … she flinches, because she cannot bear to think about it. She cannot bring herself to name the possibilities that sprang into focus, sickeningly sudden, when she saw the looks on their faces as they pulled up to the house earlier. They had seemed tired, yes, but that wasn’t unusual: often they had to walk some distance to find the place they wanted to sketch. They had told her about climbing over fences, skirting around muddy meadows, picking their way along the paths through densely brambled woods. Today, though, they had no description for her. Edward said something vague about sitting beside a river, but both of them seemed distracted, flustered. Marion in particular was upset.
She is not a fool. She knows her husband’s capacities, his magnetic attachment to beauty. But she does not believe even he would bring this into their home. She will not think so little of him.
And so she makes this decision: It is better to act as though there is nothing wrong, no doubt in her mind or in her heart. It is better to be merry, to continue the motions and conventions of life, the waking, eating, dressing, the entertaining of guests, the raising of children. This goes for the rumbling about war as well. It is better to swim with the current and hope to be carried through to more placid waters. She will not worry. She will not linger over things, or rehearse the past. She will
simply carry on, and if she has a moment of doubt, she will remind herself that this is what she has chosen.
She approaches the table. She does not meet Edward’s searching gaze right away. First she takes her seat at the opposite end from him, settles herself and looks around at her guests. Is anyone lacking anything that they might want?
“Mercy, have you had enough to eat? Arthur, some more coffee?”
“Yes, please. I’d love another cup.” Arthur holds out his empty cup toward her, and she takes it and pours it full, a rope of black liquid descending gracefully from the swan-neck spout.
“Everyone else all right?”
“Yes, thank you, dear. You must sit and finish your meal,” Mildred says. “In your absence, we have moved on from expressing our baseless opinions about the international situation to expressing our baseless opinions on matters domestic.”
Only after all this has been accomplished does Clara look up and meet her husband’s eyes. For a minute they try to read each other’s faces and find such an alloy of emotion that neither of them can say for certain what the other one is thinking or feeling.
NINE
July 9, 1918
EACH NIGHT HE was in the hospital Marion would come to sit beside him. He’d see her walking along the line of beds as a swaying circle of light, momentarily illuminating pieces of the room: an arm drooping to the ground like a vine, a restless body twisting the blankets around it in its search for sleep. She’d put the lamp down on the small table beside his bed, where it threw caramel-colored light, cut by blue shadows, over their faces. Her hair was down: she’d removed her cap and unpinned it so that it fell over her shoulders. It was her gift to him, he realized; to be beautiful even in this place.
On the third night after his fever broke, she came as usual and sat in the chair next to the head of his bed.
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