by Liza Wieland
Elizabeth nearly spits out her mouthful of tea. She cannot look at Louise. Clara remains perfectly composed.
René, Mademoiselle Indira says, as if Clara needs prompting.
Do you? Clara says.
Or I know of him, I should say. He’s just married the premier’s daughter.
She’s quite delightful, Clara says. And the apple of her father’s eye.
Comtesse, Mademoiselle Indira begins. You have an international perspective. Do you think there will be a war?
The question makes a small explosion. Teacups chatter in their saucers, though the girls have hardly moved. They seem to know they are not being looked at in the usual way. Still, it must be familiar to them, the way Mademoiselle Indira attracts the attention to herself and to any man in the room, as if they have been hit by a spotlight. One girl, possibly the youngest, rolls her eyes. Elizabeth tries not to smile, and the girl sees this. Elizabeth wishes they could go somewhere else to talk.
I’m concerned, Clara replies. Though the French and English don’t seem to have an appetite for war. Still, there are countless small acts of subversion everywhere, carried out by private citizens.
I’m afraid we are completely unprepared anyway, Mademoiselle Indira says. No ammunition. We might as well be children having a snowball fight.
Germany will not be reasoned with, Clara says.
But you can hear it coming, Mademoiselle Indira says. A kind of rustling in the leaves.
How poetic, Louise says.
You Americans have your heads in the clouds, Mademoiselle Indira says. Only you’ll find soon enough that the clouds are really a ceiling, and you can’t sleep up there forever. You can’t protect yourselves.
Dreaming Americans. In their armored cars of dreams.
I don’t think we’re that bad, Clara says.
Look around you! Mademoiselle Indira is nearly shouting. Look at my girls! They are the ones who will be crushed by your dreaming!
Louise glances at Elizabeth. Her expression seems to be asking, Is this really happening? But also, You’ll be a dear while I fall in love with Indira, won’t you?
Mademoiselle Indira’s girls know how to diffuse tension. It’s their second calling. The youngest, the eye roller, turns to Clara.
Madame? she says in heavily accented English. Would you like to see my room?
We all would, Louise says, rising quickly from her chair.
Simone is the girl’s name. She is small, maybe a whisper taller than Elizabeth. Her hair is black and thick, cut to hang just below her shoulders, and there’s a wave to it, a kink. Elizabeth wonders if she is Jewish—the question sits in her brain like a stone—the prominent nose, the dark eyes. The muscles of Simone’s calves flex and relax rhythmically as she climbs the stairs, like a heartbeat. There is something about her men would find attractive: a forthright gaze, willingness, curiosity, intelligence. These are terrible abstractions. So: those shapely calves, the curve of her backside, the arch of her eyebrow. Also an oceanic calm. Vast. A calm that seems to extend outward, infinitely.
Simone’s bedroom is at the top of the stairs, the first on this hallway. Elizabeth wonders what this must signify. Popularity? Discretion? Simone turns the handle, opens the door, and inside they see what might be a girl’s bedroom in a country home. A rough-cast iron bedstead, a pieced quilt in blues, yellows, and browns, lace-edged pillow shams, an armchair covered in chintz, a needlepoint rug that covers the entire floor.
That must have taken centuries to make, Louise whispers.
The large dresser seems to stagger under the weight of a gigantic mirror framed by winged cherubs the size of grapefruits and the lesser weights of a vase of dark purple gladiolas and three photographs—an older couple, then a young boy, then four teenaged girls, one of whom might be Simone herself. Reflected in the mirror, Elizabeth sees the detail she missed (how could she?): resting on the pillows is a row of dolls wearing dresses clearly sewn by hand.
Oh! Elizabeth believes her heart will break. The whole room swirls as if she’s stood up too fast, then stills itself, resolves back to someone else’s childhood, this one in which they stand now. She wonders: When there is a guest in this room, does Simone gather the dolls tenderly and set them in the chair? Or do they tumble in sideways and upside down, faces pressed into the chintz, grateful and fortunate in their empty porcelain heads?
I am worried for Simone, Mademoiselle Indira whispers to Elizabeth and Louise on the way downstairs. Her parents sent her from Warsaw. It’s a miracle she got to me. At the moment, her accent is attractive, but I worry that will not last very long.
As they are preparing to leave, Clara takes Mademoiselle Indira’s hands in hers. You are doing necessary work, she says. I should like to put you in touch with someone I know. Natalie Barney. She’s an American, too, but you mustn’t berate her as you have me. Her views are extraordinarily . . . open. If she believes a cause is just, she doesn’t care who it offends.
Clara turns to Elizabeth and continues. Miss Barney holds a salon on Fridays at her pavilion on rue Jacob. She appears to be quite fond of writers, especially women. I could send a letter of introduction if you’d like.
Thank you, Elizabeth says. But I don’t know if I’m enough of a writer yet.
Well, Clara says briskly. Natalie Barney will be able to tell you.
Louise, too, has heard about Le Boeuf sur le Toit.
Boeuf meaning ox in this case, she says. Ox on the roof. It’s named for a ballet, a plotless thing, really an homage to Brazilian music, from ten years ago.
The place is supposed to be jam-packed with writers, Louise says. Painters, too. Musicians.
It sounds like it may be too much, Elizabeth says. I’d rather stay home.
But just think of all those sorts of people in one place, Louise says.
Exactly, Elizabeth says. Doesn’t that scare you to death?
Let’s just see if we can find it. In daylight. Think of it as a dress rehearsal.
The next morning, they cross the river at the Pont d’Iéna and walk north past the Palais de Chaillot, crowded with carpenters and stonemasons hammering though last-minute work on the exposition pavilions. Despite the commotion, Elizabeth notices, there is no excitement, only grim purpose, a great deal of shouting by a few men whose hands, she sees, are almost always empty. No one looks at them, not even at Louise, who is observed and admired everywhere in Paris. Here instead, she’s greeted with disdain and vaguely threatening glances.
I’m not sure we’re welcome here, Louise says. They must wonder why we aren’t at work.
I hope that’s all they wonder, Elizabeth says. I’m going to dash across to that shop for writing paper. I’ll catch up.
Elizabeth starts to turn away, and then she sees what will happen a moment before it does. Two men carrying a load of lumber appear around the corner of rue Benjamin Franklin. The man in front watches his shoes as he steps off the curb, then glances up suddenly at Louise, who is walking a bit ahead on the narrow stretch of pavement. She turns and gives him an apologetic smile and a wave. She glances across the street at Elizabeth, and the man follows her gaze. His brow creases and his eyes narrow. They are exactly like boats on a collision course, and so, Elizabeth believes, the man will certainly realize this, and bear a little to the right. But he doesn’t, and then a horrible rage comes over his face. Louise is not watching, half turned back toward Elizabeth, calling out that they must walk a bit farther north. So she does not see that the front left corner of the boards is aimed right at her head. The man spits tobacco on the ground and quickens his pace, causing his partner to stumble, lose his balance and his grip on the lumber. The man in front realizes their load is falling and that he must get out from under it. He glares at Louise and shifts the boards off his shoulder, slinging them to his left, so that they will certainly strike Louise square in the chest. Elizabeth rushes back and grabs a fistful of Louise’s coat, pulls her out of the way. The boards fall at her feet, tumble onto her shoes.
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The man begins to scream in German. Elizabeth pulls on Louise’s coat. Let’s go this way, she says.
Louise seems frozen in place. The fallen boards block both the sidewalk and the street. The screaming man seems as though he doesn’t need to breathe. Louise begins to apologize, and the man steps forward, over the boards. His boots are enormous. His gloved hands are black mallets at the ends of his arms. His voice sounds like the popping of a toy gun, low-pitched, staccato.
Dogs, he is saying. Both of you.
Another man breaks from the crowd, calling in French. Though slightly built, he is a foot taller than the screaming German, and Elizabeth relaxes her grip on Louise’s coat. When he is close enough, the German steps forward and lands a blow to the taller man’s throat, knocking him off his feet. Louise turns, finally, and they run back the way they’ve come, toward the Place d’Iéna. At the river’s edge, they stop. No one has followed them.
What did I do? Louise asks, over and over. What was he yelling? What did he want?
Elizabeth says nothing. She wonders instead what he saw, and she tries to banish the thought. Two women. That’s all.
I keep seeing those boards on the sidewalk, Louise says. That would have killed me. I keep seeing those boards.
I do, too, Elizabeth says.
They were floorboards, she is beginning to realize, honey-colored grain. Tourists will walk over these boards, back and forth, scuffing but also polishing them with the sandy dirt off their shoes. But now the boards are lying in the street, like they would have been fifty years before, boards across the muddy streets of the city, a civility so women wouldn’t ruin their skirts in one day, a courtesy.
* * *
An hour later, they are standing outside Le Boeuf sur le Toit.
Why did we come here today? Elizabeth asks.
I thought it would make you less afraid to come at night, Louise says.
I’m almost ready to believe at night might be safer, Elizabeth says.
They circle back to the Luxembourg Gardens. Elizabeth watches a child play with a mechanical toy, a horse with a dancer on his back. The child is trying to make the toy go, but he cannot. She watches as the child’s interest turns to frustration and then to rage. His mother (or is she a nursemaid?) occupies a nearby bench, oblivious or unmoved, turning the pages of a book too quickly to be reading the words. She seems troubled, too, undone by something beyond her reading. So she does not notice when the child flings the toy into the grass. He sits quite still then, apparently subdued by his own gesture. The little horse and rider land close to the path, so Elizabeth can see the detail, the flowers on the dancer’s costume, the large key in the horse’s belly, the pole that pierces both horse and dancer. It must be painful, to be run through that way, even so neatly. Though after a while you might get used to it. The toy seems violent and dangerous, lying there sideways in the grass. A child should never be allowed to see such a thing, let alone touch it.
At Le Boeuf, Elizabeth and Louise stand just inside the doorway and peer through the cigarette smoke, looking for Sigrid. She seems to take shape out of the haze and noise and leads them to vom Rath’s table. Vom Rath stands, kisses them on both cheeks, calls for more champagne. Sigrid introduces them to three men who work at the embassy. Elizabeth knows she will never be able to remember their names. When they are seated, Sigrid whispers about the young man beside vom Rath. His shirt is white linen, almost blinding. Expensive.
A gypsy or Polish boy, Sigrid tells them. A Jew.
He’s quite attractive, Louise says. And that shirt.
He is sometimes mistaken for one of the waiters, Sigrid says. I’ve heard his shirts are stolen from a mortuary, off corpses.
Elizabeth observes a languorous, brooding, sleepy-eyed way about this boy, as if he’s just come from bed. The impression of rumpled sheets, the smell of sweat and wine. He drinks champagne and does not say a word, except to whisper across the table to Elizabeth that his name is Hermann. She finds him interesting to look at, something incendiary about him. He watches vom Rath with violent attention. When vom Rath leaves the table, Hermann does, too, like a shadow, only darker. When they return, fifteen minutes later, vom Rath motions to the empty chair beside Elizabeth, and Hermann sits obediently.
Hermann knows Yiddish poetry, vom Rath says. He would be pleased to recite for you.
Undzer shtetl brent, Hermann begins.
Sigrid translates: Our town is burning . . .
Hermann has a low, clear voice. Elizabeth leans closer, but really she has no trouble hearing him below the din of Le Boeuf. Though she can’t know what the rest of the words mean, she hears music and feeling, imagines the words making a slow sad march from right to left, the Hebrew letters running below the lines like tears down the white face of the page.
Vom Rath eases himself gracefully out of another conversation, a hand on the man’s sleeve as he looks away, and leans in to listen to Hermann, his expression at once ravenous and pitying and terrifying: I will eat you alive but only after I say a little prayer over your pretty white body. When the recitation is done, vom Rath applauds. Then he blinks quickly, as if awaking from a nap. J’aime le cinéma, he says, et la flânerie, then he closes his eyes again. For half a minute, he appears asleep or dead upright, or listening to music no one else can hear.
Vom Rath’s eyes open, and his gaze slides sideways—Elizabeth watches this happen—as if he’s counting or waiting. He has, in fact, Sigrid says, waited a week for Hitler to occupy the upstairs rooms at the embassy, but now it appears this honor will not be bestowed. He looks like a jilted suitor, and Elizabeth almost wants to take hold of his beautiful pale manicured hands, give them a squeeze. She realizes then that he is looking at the young men passing by their table.
Hermann finds this prolonged silence intolerable. The champagne glass in his right hand begins to tremble. Elizabeth glances away at Sigrid, then at Louise, to see if either has noticed, and in that instant, Hermann drops or throws the glass against the table, and it shatters into a thousand tiny pieces that land and shine like sequins on their clothes.
Le Boeuf falls silent around them, though patrons seated at tables at the edge of the room continue to talk. It’s like being underwater, Elizabeth thinks, the light dim and wavering. A moment later, a woman nearby screams and then stands abruptly, knocking over the drinks on her table. Other voices, male and female, shout in languages Elizabeth does not recognize. The sound of glass breaking seems to move through the room like a giant wave. Vom Rath grasps Hermann’s arms, lifting him out of his chair. They move quickly past the bar and disappear.
Fifteen months later, on Kristallnacht, the memory of this evening will again frighten Elizabeth deeply.
* * *
Sigrid puts them into a taxi on avenue Pierre Ier de Serbie. I’m sorry the evening was spoiled, she says. My colleague is going to get us all in trouble.
Come with us, Elizabeth says to Sigrid. I don’t like the thought of you out alone tonight.
Or any night, Louise says.
I’ll be all right, Sigrid says. Ann and Marie will be expecting me. And your friend arrives tomorrow.
That’s true, Elizabeth says. But you will want to meet her.
I don’t think so, Sigrid says.
She closes the taxi door, speaks to the driver, pushes a handful of franc notes into his hand.
I think we will have a different kind of fun once Margaret gets here, Louise says. At least I hope so.
Elizabeth does not realize this is the last view of Sigrid she will have for some time, though she does take note of the sad smile, the long arm raised to wave goodbye, Sigrid’s red hair glowing like flames around her face, the beam of lamplight out of which she disappears. Elizabeth is thinking of Margaret, their reunion tomorrow, Margaret’s laugh, the comfort of her presence. Then Louise will hire the car and they will all three drive south, through Sens and Tonnerre to Dijon. I’ll ride in the back seat, Elizabeth decides, like the child behind the parents. So I
can lean forward between them to talk. So Margaret won’t have to miss anything along the way.
We must have more churches, Margaret says, to balance our life of pleasure. In five days, you’ve made me into a heathen!
Margaret would want churches anyway, for the art and for the open empty spaces above, for relics and chalices and cruets. Altar cloths, tapestries, candles, salvers, all those Catholic trappings, which when separate are just housewares and decoration. Years later, she will organize an exhibition of collages for the Museum of Modern Art in New York, because she loves the modulation and connection of objects that by themselves have less meaning.
For Elizabeth, it’s a relief to escape all the talk of war, and the work, work, work of all the writers in Paris, which makes her feel stuck and lazy. All those writers writing—it’s as if she can hear them, the purr and tap of their brains and machines. They’re sleek and coiffed, sharp as if they have a fine edge. Refined. They seem to drink in moderation. They all know one another. She recalls Clara’s comment about Natalie Barney, that Miss Barney would be able to say whether or not Elizabeth was enough of a writer. She pushes the thought from her mind.
* * *
In the rented car, they drive southeast from Paris to Sens, where they meet their English-speaking guide at Saint-Étienne. He tells them this is the oldest Gothic cathedral in France.
All Americans, he says, want to see the robes of Thomas Becket. They are shocked when they see no bloodstains.
Only Americans? Louise says.
Yes, the guide tells her. History eludes them.
Becket’s robes do in fact appear too clean, floating there behind the glass. They resemble, Elizabeth thinks, a giant purple stingray, hung up by its nose, alive and waiting.
What if, Elizabeth says, things could know what will happen to them? If that robe could know the future when Becket was inside it.
If only they could speak, the guide says.