Trains came from Paris and from other parts of the country more often, and men who’d been boys five years ago stepped down into the arms of women who’d been girls. And with as much of their hearts as they could put back together, they celebrated.
Amandine and Isolde put the house in order, planted the garden, washed the curtains, ironed the sheets. They waited. But it was on that day in May when the war ended that they stopped talking about Monsieur. Stopped altogether.
It is a Tuesday morning in September 1945 when Amandine opens the door from the dark hallway into the kitchen and finds him sitting there in his chair at the table with the white embroidered cloth, tearing bread into a bowl of wine. His face long and thin, his mustaches and beard as much white as brown, he looks up at her, squeezes his eyes as though the sight of her was too bright.
“Bonjour, monsieur.”
“Bonjour, Amandine.”
He stands to shake her offered hand, then touches her face. Something like the men who stepped from the trains, Catulle sees before him a young woman whom he’d left as a little girl. Amandine is fourteen years old. In a rose-colored dress above coltish legs, she is a long-stemmed flower. Her hair she’d never cut in all those years and, pulled tight off her face now, the thick black plait of it hangs to her waist, the high, broad bones of her cheeks showing and her blue-black eyes, where had he seen those eyes? Like the eyes of a deer.
Isolde has the water heating for his bath, the soup on the burner for his lunch, Amandine goes to school and, like the others in the village, like the others all over Europe, they set about to cure the misery and begin the rescue that each one must do for himself.
Though Isolde had asked immediately as he walked through the door that first morning while she was setting the table and though he’d answered her, plain and simple—no, no word—that was all Catulle said about his children. And then, in November, the telegram—cryptic, glorious—Dominique will be arriving in Paris from England in four days’ time.
DO NOT MEET TRAIN. WILL FIND MY WAY HOME. WAIT FOR ME.
“England. How did she manage …”
Sitting at the worktable peeling carrots and chewing anise seeds, Isolde pushes aside the chintz curtain that separates it from the kitchen. She swallows, says, “Let’s all go to Paris, we must be there …”
Catulle looks at her. “Yes, of course we will, but she doesn’t say—”
“We’ll meet every train arriving from the north on Friday, we’ll wait for every train, every last train—”
“And what if she finds her way here while we’re waiting for her there?”
“Then you go. Take Amandine and go to Paris and I’ll stay here—”
“Yes, perhaps that’s …”
Amandine has been watching one, then the other, silently listening.
“Shall we go to Paris to fetch Dominique on Friday?” Catulle asks her in a tone he might use to ask who will take tomorrow morning’s eggs.
Miming his reserve, “Yes, monsieur. We shall go to Paris to fetch Dominique on Friday.”
That same evening, when they walk to the bridge, Amandine is quiet while Catulle, his own reticence unbound, gushes forth nostalgia, tests the sound of dreams.
“Ah my darling girl, your big sister is coming home. My beautiful daughter, she’s safe and she’s coming back to us and …”
Catulle looks at her then, sees the rift in her cheer.
“What is it, my girl? Tell me.”
“I guess it’s, well, I can’t help but think about Madame Jouffroi. You know. Her beautiful daughter. Solange is not going home. I want to go to Madame Jouffroi. I want …”
“In time, in time …”
“It’s not so much that I want to go for myself. At least not as I thought I did all those years ago. But just because I’m, you know, I’m better now, that I feel better, well it doesn’t mean that I don’t miss Solange. Oh, monsieur, why aren’t they both coming home, why isn’t everyone coming home, why …”
“Please forgive me my … I hadn’t thought about …”
“No, no, it’s only that because Solange can’t go back to her mother, I must. Don’t you see that? I can tell her about Solange, about our life in the convent, about our journey. I can tell her my memories. Solange can’t tell her but I can. Sometimes I think it was my fault that Solange died. If she hadn’t come to the convent to take care of me, if she had stayed at home, if—”
“I’d noticed how lovely you are becoming, but I hadn’t noticed your conceit.”
“What?”
“Do you think you are so powerful? Powerful enough to have caused the death of Solange?”
“It’s not powerful that I feel but—”
“Guilty, is it?”
“Something like guilt.”
“You did not cause the death of Solange any more than you caused your parents to—”
“I used to think that must have been my fault. And my fault that Philippe died and that the abbess was cruel and the convent girls, too. When I was little I did think that way, but this is—”
“It’s quite the same thing. Don’t mistake this feeling of yours for something less. Now, look at me, answer me. Let me show you something of my own fear. Is it because you’d like to go to live with Madame Jouffroi that you wish to find her?”
“No. No, I want to find her for the reason I’ve already told you. I must find her for Solange. But there is another one. Another reason. Maybe she or Grand-mère Janka will tell me something. About who it was, about the lady who left my necklace with them. I don’t think I ever showed it to you, but it’s all I have that might have come from my mother, my family. It’s all I have.”
“Long ago I promised that when the war was over I would help you to find Madame Jouffroi, and so I shall. Meanwhile, please try to believe me when I tell you that all our lives are made of some epic search. Mostly we search for a thing or a person or feel a longing, unnamed, and what happens while we’re searching, while we’re longing, is that we lose the life we already have. Neither the beauty nor the pain of your life can depend upon your finding your mother, Amandine. I confirm what I told you all those years ago—”
“It’s she who must find you. I remember.”
“I dearly hope that you can go to Madame Jouffroi so that you can say the things you desire to say to her, spend time with her as you wish. But I, Madame Isolde and I, and Dominique, and someday, with the help of God, Pascal and Gilles, we would—”
“Like me to stay with you.”
“Yes. We would like that.”
“Have you decided which one of them you’re going to marry?”
“Which one what?”
“Isn’t it time that you chose?”
“Ah, Madame Isolde and Madame de Bazin. I believe that all three of us are past our game. I’ve decided to wait for you. That is if either Pascal or Gilles doesn’t beat me to it. How enchanted they shall be with you.”
CHAPTER XLI
THOUGH THE WAR HAS BEEN OVER FOR NEARLY SEVEN MONTHS, THE distinction among first-, second-, and third-class cars often still falls into confusion. Passengers take seats or compartments as they find them. Amandine and Catulle sit in an undesignated car, which they chose because it is the least crowded. Though they breakfasted well and their journey will be less than two hours—local stops and inevitable delays calculated—Isolde, in the same zinc pail she carries to Amandine at school, has packed a goûter for them. They sit now, unwrapping it.
It is perhaps half an hour before they are due to arrive in Paris when a man and a woman shepherding four children are ushered through the car where Amandine and Catulle sit, a conductor leading the way. Two people—likely servants—carry baggage and coats and follow close behind.
“Where are they going?”
“I would think to some more private place in the train.”
“She’s beautiful, don’t you think? That woman.”
“I didn’t notice her.”
“And what do you think o
f that woman across the way? Third row ahead on the left.”
“I can see only her chignon, which is nice enough but—”
“Do you think Madame de Bazin is beautiful?”
“She is of a certain type of beauty, I’ll say that. Yes, I think she is beautiful.”
“And Madame Isolde?”
“Yet another sort of beauty, but a beauty nevertheless.”
“As much as I am fond of Madame de Bazin, if you were to ask me who I thought you should marry, I would choose Madame Isolde.”
“Why must I marry at all? I want only for the children to come home and to be of some help to them as they resume their lives. I want that you and I and Madame Isolde live as we have lived and that—”
“But if you love her—”
“I never said that I loved her. Yet I suppose I do.”
“Well, then …?”
“Let us wait until the boys come home. And Dominique, you know she will be changed. I think more changed even than I.”
They are quiet then until Amandine says, “Do you know why I like trains, monsieur?”
“Have you had so much traffic in your life with trains?”
“When I was little, Solange would take me to the station in Montpellier so that I could watch the trains arriving and departing, and I loved that more than the ballet. I remember that when we boarded the train in Montpellier at the beginning of our journey to Avise, I never wanted that ride to end. I like trains for different reasons now.”
“Such as?”
“Into a dark tunnel, back out into the light. The cornfields slipping by—”
“Cornfields slipping by fast as life does? Is that it? I know how old I have grown …”
Amandine looks at him, shakes her head and smiles, turns to look out the window. Still looking away from him, she asks, “Where were you all the time when you were away? Are you ever going to tell me about that?”
“I don’t know if I can. Certainly I cannot now.”
Catulle wants a change of subject. “Your necklace, let me look at it more closely. Yes, it’s lovely.” He reaches to touch the pendant, runs his finger across the stone.
“It’s old, it looks to be very old. The one that Solange had kept for you?”
“Yes. The only other time I’ve worn it was on the day when I came to you.”
“And that jacket, what did you call it?”
“A kontusz. Madame de Bazin says the word differently, but it’s something like that.”
Catulle studies her. Under her coat of many colors, Amandine wears a black wool skirt and sweater, thick black stockings and ankle boots, black fingerless gloves. Her plait Isolde has tied with a black velvet ribbon like the one around her neck.
“I fear your mise is far too elegant for a day to be spent in the Gare du Nord but—”
“I wore the necklace and the coat for good luck.”
A long, piercing whistle sounds their approach to the station.
“Here we are then. Let me wrap the rest of the bread. Stay close so we are not separated.”
As the train slows Amandine stands, watches their entry into the station from the window of the empty seat across the aisle. She notices a tall man in chauffeur’s livery who walks along beside the slowing train. The man stops flush with one of its farther doors as the train shudders into its berth. The conductor heaves open that door, leaps to the ground, pulls down the metal steps, greets the chauffeur. The man and the woman and the children whom Amandine had seen escorted earlier through their car wait at that door to descend. The man, holding the hands of two young boys, is first in line, while an older boy, who looks to be about twelve or thirteen, stands behind him. Carrying a baby girl in her arms, the woman stands third in the family line. The chauffeur moves closer to the steps, bows smartly, offers his hand.
“Good evening, milord. And my young lords.”
“Ah, good evening, Vadim. Thank you, thank you.… Now you two, please stay right here with your brother while I help Mummy …”
Once on the ground and having settled his sons, the man turns to give his hand to the woman. “Watch your step now, darling. There we are.”
The woman stands at the top of the metal steps, moves her right wrist to and fro, adjusting the position of the cord of a black satin pouch. Wearing a short silver fox jacket, the sleeves of which seem rather too short on her long white arms—as though the jacket had been meant for a woman more petite than she—she looks down at the sleeping baby held in the crook of her other arm, kisses her. She raises her head then, pauses a half moment. Her smile is wide and sweet and directed somewhere beyond the man and the chauffeur and the others who await her on the ground. As though she has forgotten what to do next, she, looking out at the platform, hesitates. She looks down then, extends her hand to the waiting chauffeur. “Vadim, good evening.”
The chauffeur removes his hat. His bow is deep and slow. He rises to take her waiting hand, bends to brush his lips a centimeter above it, then guides her down the metal stairs, “Welcome home, Princess Andzelika.”
EPILOGUE
AS AMANDINE AND CATULLE PASS BY THE TRAIN DOOR FROM which the woman holding the sleeping baby girl is descending, Amandine looks up at the woman, smiles. Holding Catulle’s hand, Amandine lags so she might look longer at the woman. She lets go of Catulle’s hand and, turning so she nearly faces the woman, Amandine smiles again, and the woman smiles back. Amandine moves faster then to catch up with Catulle’s pace and, as she passes through a glint of morning sun, the stone in her necklace catches fire. The woman’s eyes are drawn to the bauble that swings about Amandine’s throat as she runs by.
Acknowledgments
For the comfort of her hand over a decade of my wandering the shoals of a writing life, I thank my agent, the splendid and beautiful Rosalie Siegel.
For her quiet, steady brilliance, her graceful ways, I feel humbly appreciative that Jillian Quint is my editor.
For being there, Erich Brandon Knox.
per Fernando Filiberto-Maria, sempre di più
l’amore mio
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
MARLENA DE BLASI lives in Italy with her Venetian husband. She is the author of four previous memoirs—That Summer in Sicily, A Thousand Days in Venice, A Thousand Days in Tuscany, and The Lady in the Palazzo—as well as three books on the foods of Italy.
Amandine is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2010 by Marlena de Blasi
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
BALLANTINE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
De Blasi, Marlena.
Amandine: a novel / Marlena de Blasi.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-345-52192-7
1. Nobility—Poland—Fiction. 2. Illegitimate children—Fiction. 3. Girls—Fiction. 4. Guardian and ward—Fiction. 5. Convents—Fiction. 6. Governesses—Fiction. 7. Birthmothers—Fiction. 8. World War, 1939–1945—France—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3604.E1225A43 2010
813′.6—dc22 2010000580
www.ballantinebooks.com
Title-page and part-title images courtesy of © iStockphoto.com
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