The InvisibleBridge

by Julie Orringer

  The next night, when the play finally ended and Andras had finished his duties for the evening, he ran all the way home to the rue des Écoles. In his mind he could see the envelope glowing in the dark of the entryway, the cream-colored stationery, Madame Morgenstern’s neat, even handwriting, the same handwriting in which she’d made the inscriptions beneath the postcards in her album. From Marie in Morocco. From Marcel in Rome. Who was Marcel, Andras wondered, and what had he written from Rome?

  As he opened the tall red door with his skeleton key, he could already make out an envelope on the console table. He let the door swing behind him as he went for the letter. But it wasn’t the cream-colored lilac-scented envelope he’d hoped for; it was a wrinkled brown envelope addressed in the handwriting of his brother Mátyás. Unlike Tibor, Mátyás rarely wrote; when he did, the letters were thin and informational. This one was thick, requiring twice the usual amount of postage. His first thought was that something had happened to his parents-his father had been injured, his mother had caught influenza-and his second thought was of how ridiculous he’d been to expect a letter from Madame Morgenstern.

  Upstairs he lit one of his precious candles and sat down at the table. He slit the brown envelope carefully with his penknife. Inside was a creased sheaf of pages, five of them, the longest letter Mátyás had ever written to him. The handwriting was large and careless and peppered with inkblots. Andras scanned the first lines for bad news about his parents, but there wasn’t any. If there had been, Andras thought, Tibor would have wired him. This letter was about Mátyás himself. Mátyás had learned that Andras had arranged for Tibor to enter medical school in January. Congratulations to them both, to Andras for having successfully exploited his lofty connections, and to Tibor for getting to leave Hungary at last. Now he, Mátyás, would certainly have to remain behind, alone, heir by default to a rural lumberyard. Did Andras think it was easy, having to hear their parents talk about how exciting Andras’s studies were, how well he was doing in his classes, how wonderful it was that Tibor could now study to become a doctor, what a fine couple of sons they were? Had Andras forgotten that Mátyás, too, might have hopes for his own studies abroad? Had Andras forgotten everything Mátyás had said on the subject? Did Andras think Mátyás was going to give up on his own plans? If he did, he’d better reconsider. Mátyás was saving money. If he saved enough before he graduated, he wouldn’t bother with his bac. He would run away to America, to New York, and go on the stage. He’d find a way to get by. In America all you needed was determination and the willingness to work. And once he left Hungary, it would be up to Andras and Tibor to worry about the lumberyard and their parents, because he, Mátyás, would never return.

  At the end of the last page, written in a calmer hand-as if Mátyás had set the letter aside for a time, then come back to finish it once his anger had burned out-was a remorseful Hope you’re well. Andras gave a short, exhausted laugh. Hope you’re well! He might as well have written “Hope you die.”

  Andras took up a sheet of paper from the desk. Dear Mátyás, he wrote. If it makes you feel any better, I’ve been wretched a hundred times since I’ve been here. I’m wretched right now. Believe me when I tell you it hasn’t all been wonderful. As for you, I haven’t the slightest doubt that you will finish your bac and go to America, if that’s what you want (though I’d much rather you came here to Paris). I don’t expect you to take over for Apa, and neither does Apa himself. He wants you to finish your studies. But Mátyás was right to raise the question, right to be angry that there was no easy solution. He thought of Claire Morgenstern saying of her own mother, It’s been a long time since I’ve seen her, a very long time. How her expression had clouded, how her eyes had filled with a grief that seemed to echo the grief he’d witnessed in her mother’s features. What had parted them, and what had kept Madame Morgenstern away? With effort he turned his thoughts back to his letter. I hope you won’t be angry with me for long, Mátyáska, but your anger does you credit: It’s evidence of what a good son you are. When I finish my studies I’ll go back to Hungary, and may God keep Anya and Apa in health long enough for me to be of service to them then. In the meantime he would worry about them just as his brothers did. In the meantime I expect you to be brilliant and fearless in all things, as ever! With love, your ANDRAS.

  He posted the reply the next morning, hoping that the day would bring word from Madame Morgenstern. But there was no letter on the hall table that night when he returned from work. And why should he have expected her to write? he wondered. Their social exchange was complete. He had accepted Madame Morgenstern’s hospitality and had sent his thanks. If he’d imagined a connection with her, he had been mistaken. And in any case he was supposed to have made a connection with her daughter, not with Madame Morgenstern herself. That night he lay awake shivering and thinking of her and cursing himself for his ridiculous hope. In the morning he found a thin layer of ice in the washbasin; he broke it with the washcloth and splashed his face with a burning sheet of ice-cold water. Outside, a stiff wind blew loose shingles off the roof and shattered them in the street. At the bakery the woman gave him hot peasant loaves straight from the oven, charging him as if they were day-old bread. It was going to be one of the coldest winters ever, she told him. Andras knew he would need a warmer coat, a woolen scarf; his boots would need to be resoled. He didn’t have the money for any of it.

  All week the temperature kept falling. At school the radiators emitted a feeble dry heat; the fifth-year students took places close to them, and the first-years froze by the windows. Andras spent hopeless hours on his model of the Gare d’Orsay, a train station already drifting into obsolescence. Though it still served as the terminus for the railways of southwestern France, its platforms were too short for the long trains used now. Last time he’d gone there to take measurements, the station had looked derelict and unkempt, a few of its high windows broken, a stippling of mildew darkening its line of arches. It didn’t cheer him to think he was preserving its memory in cardboard; his model was a flimsy homage to a tatterdemalion relic. On Friday he walked home alone, too dispirited to join the others at the Blue Dove-and there on the entry table was a white envelope with his name on it, the response he’d waited for all week. He tore it open in the foyer. Andras, you’re very welcome. Please visit us again sometime. Regards, C. MORGENSTERN. Nothing more. Nothing certain. Please visit us again sometime: What did that mean? He sat down on the stairs and dropped his forehead against his knees. All week he’d waited for this! Regards. His heart went on drumming in his chest, as if something wonderful were still about to happen. He tasted shame like a hot fragment of metal on his tongue.

  After work that night he couldn’t bear the thought of going home to his tiny room, of lying down in the bed where he’d now spent five sleepless nights thinking about Claire Morgenstern. Instead he wandered toward the Marais, drawing his thin coat closer around him. It cheered him to take an unfamiliar path through the streets of the Right Bank; he liked losing his way and finding it again, discovering the strangely named alleyways and lanes-rue des Mauvais Garçons, rue des Guillemites, rue des Blancs-Manteaux. Tonight there was a smell of winter in the air, different from the Budapest smell of brown coal and approaching snow; the Paris smell was wetter and smokier and sweeter: chestnut leaves turning to mash in the gutters, the sugary brown scent of roasted nuts, the tang of gasoline from the boulevards. Everywhere there were posters advertising the ice-skating rinks, one in the Bois de Boulogne and another in the Bois de Vincennes. He hadn’t imagined that Paris would get cold enough for skating, but both sets of posters proclaimed that the ponds were frozen solid. One depicted a trio of spinning polar bears; the other showed a little girl in a short red skirt, her hands in a fur muff, one slender leg extended behind her.

  In the rue des Rosiers a man and a woman stood beside one of these posters and kissed unabashedly, their hands buried inside each other’s coats. Andras was reminded of a game the children used to play in Konyár: Be
hind the baker’s shop there was a wall of white stone that was always warm because the baker’s oven was on the other side, and in the wintertime the boys would meet there after school to kiss the baker’s daughter. The baker’s daughter had pale brown freckles scattered across her nose like sesame seeds. For ten fillér she would press you up against the wall and kiss you until you couldn’t breathe. For five fillér you could watch her do it to someone else. She was saving for a pair of ice skates. Her name was Orsolya, but they never called her that; instead they called her Korcsolya, the word for ice skates. Andras had kissed her once, had felt her tongue explore his own as she held him up against the warm wall. He couldn’t have been more than eight years old; Orsolya must have been ten. Three of his friends from school were watching, cheering him on. Halfway through the kiss he’d opened his eyes. Orsolya, too, was open-eyed, but absent, her mind fixed elsewhere-perhaps on the ice skates. He’d never forgotten the day he came out of the house to see her skating on the pond, the silver flash at her soles like a teasing wink, a steely goodbye-forever to paid kissing. That winter she’d nearly died of cold, skating in all weather. “That girl will go through the ice,” Andras’s mother had predicted, watching Orsolya tracing loops in an early March rain. But she hadn’t gone through the ice. She’d survived her winter on the millpond, and the next winter she was there again, and the one after that she’d gone away to secondary school. He could see her now, a red-skirted figure through a gray haze, untouchable and alone.

  Now he made his way though the grotto of medieval streets toward the rue de Sévigné, toward Madame Morgenstern’s building. He hadn’t decided to come here, but here he was; he stood on the sidewalk opposite and rocked on his heels. It was near midnight, and all the lights were out upstairs. But he crossed the street and looked over the demi-curtains into the darkened studio. There was the morning-glory horn of the phonograph, gleaming black and brutal in a corner; there was the piano with its flat toothy grimace. He shivered inside his coat and imagined the pink-clad forms of girls moving across the yellow plane of the studio floor. It was bitterly, blindingly cold. What was he doing out here on the street at midnight? There was only one explanation for his behavior: He’d gone mad. The pressure of his life here, of his single chance at making a man and an artist of himself, had proved too much for him. He put his head against the wall of the entryway, trying to slow his breathing; after a moment, he told himself, he would shake off this madness and find his way home. But then he raised his eyes and saw what he hadn’t known he’d been looking for: There in the entryway was a slim glass-fronted case of the kind used to post menus outside restaurants; instead of a menu, this one held a white rectangle of cardstock inscribed with the legend Horaire des Classes.

  The schedule, the pattern of her life. There it was, printed in her own neat hand. Her mornings were devoted to private lessons, the early afternoons to beginning classes, the later afternoons to intermediate and advanced. Wednesdays and Fridays she took the mornings off. On Sundays, the afternoons. Now, at least, he knew when he might look through this window and see her. Tomorrow wasn’t soon enough, but it would have to be.

  All the next day he tried to turn his thoughts away from her. He went to the studio, where everyone gathered on Saturdays to work; he built his model, joked with Rosen, heard about Ben Yakov’s continuing fascination with the beautiful Lucia, shared his peasant bread with Polaner. By noon he couldn’t wait any longer. He went down into the Métro at Raspail and rode to Châtelet. From there he ran all the way to the rue de Sévigné; by the time he arrived he was hot and panting in the winter chill. He looked over the demi-curtains of the studio. A crowd of little girls in dancing clothes were packing their ballet shoes into canvas satchels, holding their street shoes in their hands as they lined up at the door. The covered entrance to the studio was crowded with mothers and governesses, the mothers in furs, the governesses in woolen coats. A few little girls broke through the cluster of women and ran off toward a candy shop. He waited for the crowd at the door to clear, and then he saw her just inside the entryway: Madame Morgenstern, in a black practice skirt and a close-wrapped gray sweater, her hair gathered at the nape of her neck in a loose knot. When all the children but one had been collected, Madame Morgenstern emerged from the entryway holding the last girl’s hand. She stepped lightly on the sidewalk in her dancing shoes, as if she didn’t want to ruin their soles on the paving stones. Andras had a sudden urge to flee.

  But the little girl had seen him. She dropped Madame Morgenstern’s hand and took a few running steps toward him, squinting as if she couldn’t quite make him out. When she was close enough to touch his sleeve, she stopped short and turned back. Her shoulders rose and fell beneath the blue wool of her coat.

  “It’s not Papa after all,” she said.

  Madame Morgenstern raised her eyes in apology to the man who wasn’t Papa. When she saw it was Andras, she smiled and tugged the edge of her wrapped sweater straight, a gesture so girlish and self-conscious that it brought a rush of heat to Andras’s chest. He crossed the few squares of pavement between them. He didn’t dare to press her hand in greeting, could hardly look into her eyes. Instead he stared at the sidewalk and buried his hands in his pockets, where he discovered a ten-centime coin left over from his purchase of bread that morning. “Look what I found,” he said, kneeling to give the coin to the little girl.

  She took it and turned it over in her fingers. “You found this?” she said. “Maybe someone dropped it.”

  “I found it in my pocket,” he said. “It’s for you. When you go to the shops with your mother, you can buy candy or a new hair ribbon.”

  The girl sighed and tucked the coin into the side pocket of her satchel. “A hair ribbon,” she said. “I’m not allowed candy. It’s bad for the teeth.”

  Madame Morgenstern put a hand on the girl’s shoulder and drew her toward the door. “We can wait by the stove inside,” she said. “It’s warmer there.” She turned back to catch Andras’s eye, meaning to include him in the invitation. He followed her inside, toward the compact iron stove that stood in a corner of the studio. A fire hissed behind its isinglass window, and the little girl knelt to look at the flames.

  “This is a surprise,” Madame Morgenstern said, lifting her gray eyes to his own.

  “I was out for a ramble,” Andras said, too quickly. “Studying the quartier.”

  “Monsieur Lévi is a student of architecture,” Madame Morgenstern told the girl. “Someday he’ll design grand buildings.”

  “My father’s a doctor,” the girl said absently, not looking at either of them.

  Andras stood beside Madame Morgenstern and warmed his hands at the stove, his fingers inches from her own. He looked at her fingernails, the slim taper of her digits, the lines of the birdlike bones beneath the skin. She caught him looking, and he turned his face away. They warmed their hands in silence as they waited for the girl’s father, who materialized a few minutes later: a short mustachioed man with a monocle, carrying a doctor’s bag.

  “Sophie, where are your glasses?” he asked, pulling his mouth into a frown.

  The little girl fished a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles from her satchel.

  “Please, Madame,” he said. “If you can, be sure she wears them.”

  “I’ll try,” Madame Morgenstern said, and smiled.

  “They fall off when I dance,” the girl protested.

  “Say goodbye, Sophie,” the doctor said. “We’ll be late for dinner.”

  In the doorway, Sophie turned and waved. Then she and her father were gone, and Andras stood alone in the studio with Madame Morgenstern. She stepped away from the stove to gather a few things the children had left behind: a stray glove, a hairpin, a red scarf. She put all the things into a basket which she set beside the piano. Objets trouvés.

  “I wanted to thank you again,” Andras said, when the silence between them had stretched to an intolerable length. It came out more gruffly than he’d intended, and in Hungarian, a
low rural growl. He cleared his throat and repeated it in French.

  “Please, Andras,” she said in Hungarian, laughing. “You wrote such a lovely note. And there was no need to thank me in the first place. I’m certain it wasn’t the most pleasant afternoon for you.”

  He couldn’t tell her what the afternoon had been like for him, or what the past week had been like. He saw again in his mind the way she’d smiled and tugged at her sweater when she’d recognized him, that involuntary and self-conscious act. He crushed his cap in his hands, looking at the polished studio floor. There were heavy footsteps on the floor above, Elisabet’s, or Mrs. Apfel’s.

  “Have we put you off for good?” Madame Morgenstern asked. “Can you come again tomorrow? Elisabet will have a friend here for lunch, and maybe we’ll go skating in the Bois de Vincennes afterward.”

  “I don’t have skates,” he said, almost inaudibly.

  “Neither do we,” she said. “We always rent them. It’s lovely. You’ll enjoy it.”

  It’s lovely, you’ll enjoy it, as if it were really going to happen. And then he said yes, and it was.

  CHAPTER NINE. Bois de Vincennes

  THIS TIME, when he went to lunch on the rue de Sévigné, he didn’t wear a costume tie and he didn’t bring a bushel of wilting flowers; instead he wore an old favorite shirt and brought a bottle of wine and a pear tart from the bakery next door. As before, Mrs. Apfel laid out a feast: a layered egg-and-potato rakott krumpli, a tureen of carrot soup, a hash of red cabbage and apples with caraway, a dark peasant loaf, and three kinds of cheese. Madame Morgenstern was in a quiet mood; she seemed grateful for the presence of Elisabet’s friend, a stout heavy-browed girl in a brown woolen dress. This was the Marthe with whom Elisabet had gone to the movies the week before. She kept Elisabet talking about goings-on at school: who had made a fool of herself in geography class and who had won a choir solo and who was going to Switzerland to ski during the winter holidays. Every now and then Elisabet threw a glance at Andras, as if she wanted him to take note of the fact that the conversation excluded him. Outside, a light snow had begun to fall. Andras couldn’t wait to get out of the house. It was a relief when the pear tart was cut and eaten, when they could put their coats on and go.