Puffin Hedges stood on the other side of the Kastanianbaum, the great chestnut tree, where Claire was warily avoiding Fräulein Wintner and any bevy of Polizei she’d convinced that Claire was guilty.
Puffin offered her a cigarette in greeting, then lit his own with a shrug when she declined. “Quite a show,” he said. “Good for us, though, we got all the background we need. And all at the happy couple’s expense.”
“Yeah, I wish them luck.”
“Luck”—Puffin winked—“is something that comes and goes. Like the tide. The trick is,” he added, “to make one’s move when the luck is there.”
“Yeah, well. I wish them movement when the luck is there, then.”
He struck an angler’s pose. “I mean, good luck has more to do with restraint than action, don’t you think? Holding back and waiting for the right moment.”
“There’s no denying that,” she said, restraining herself from asking where Temple Fortune was. Instinct told her sidekicks spent too much time giving account of where their major partner was. Everyone liked to be enjoyed for themselves, after all. And Puffin was in a philosophical mood. Instead she asked for Cosimo. “I haven’t seen him anywhere. Have you? I thought he was going to play during the ceremony. I was looking forward to it.”
“As I know Cosimo, he does what he wants to do and when he wants to do it. He is not restricted by the confines of social behavior, is he?”
“No.”
“Got the best of both worlds, if you ask me. Everyone thinks he’s crackers, don’t they? But he’s got it made. He can do whatever he likes.”
“Yes, still, it can’t be easy, being so sensitive. And don’t forget, he’s just lost his father.”
“Pfh. If anything, that would please him. The old keeper of the Mill kept a tight ship, he did. Died just in time, if you ask me.”
His bitterness surprised her. “It’s very still,” she remarked.
“Rain any minute,” Puffin agreed.
“So where will you be off to next?” she asked.
“What, us? Well, let’s see. Home, for the editing—London. The San Sebastian Film Festival opens in Spain in September.” He chewed his poor thumbnail. “Of course we can’t make Cannes. That’s on now, and we can’t wait till next spring again. It’s too long.”
“Can’t you do both?”
“No. You can’t have both. If we enter San Sebastian, we are ineligible for Cannes”—his eyes twitched—“and we are married to this film. For better or for worse.”
And so she knew, all at once, that Temple Fortune must be frightened, maybe terrified. It was everything on the line here. All or nothing. Now or never.
“How come you never married, Puffin?” she changed the subject.
“Me?” He laughed with fond self-derision, then had a sneezing fit. “I can’t take the spring,” he wheezed.
“Oh, I know,” she sympathized. “My season’s the fall. I can’t go out at all.”
He found his handkerchief and finally mopped his bright red nose to a stop.
“Ah,” he sighed, glad to get back to the grand subject of himself. “No, not me. I never did. Had plenty of pets, Lord knows.” He shrugged. “No one ever really fit the bill, know what I mean? I guess it was Mum stopped me more often than not.”
Claire smiled obligingly, appreciating his cockney bit, then realized he wasn’t “doing” the cockney accent but, rather, falling back into it. It had never occurred to her that Puffin wasn’t the high-born fellow he pretended to be. Ah, well, where was the harm?
“It was a laugh, you know,” he talked away, hardly noticing her response anyway, “every time I brought some little girl home, Mum always would say just the right thing to put me off. It was like she would come and go and me ma would say, ‘Wasn’t she lovely,’ and ‘Such a nice young lady,’ and then she’d top it off with, ‘Isn’t it a shame about that mole on the tip of her nose? That’ll get nice and big now, the older she gets, you see if it doesn’t. Nice girl, though, isn’t she? Lovely. Why don’t you take her out more often?’ And you know, whenever I would look at that girl again, what was it I would see? Not a lovely girl as I had brought home to tea, but the mole at the tip of her nose. Heh. It was always the same, this one had ‘an awfully small head’ and that one had ‘such a nice pair of hands, wasn’t it a pity they were too big for her fine body.’ Funny, that.”
“Yes. Yes, it is.”
“Don’t go feeling sorry for me now.” He nicked her with his elbow.
“Good heavens! I wouldn’t think of it,” she lied. “You’ve clearly got one of the more desirous lives, haven’t you. I mean, look at you, making films, enjoying the good life. Going about the world, playing tennis and backgammon.”
“Yeah, that’s it,” he agreed with her, squinting suavely into the boisterous crowd. “Taking in the high life in Bavaria.”
“You know,” she said, “I have a feeling you’re a little bit like me. More an observer than a participant. We’re both in the visual-arts end, aren’t we?”
“Well, I’m a writer myself,” Puffin admitted.
“Are you now? Now, see, I never would have known that if you hadn’t told me. I thought you were assistant directing as well as producing.”
“Really?”
“Yes, you know, the way you set everything up. Well, I don’t know. I just thought…”
“My, no.” He laughed. “We’ll leave all that to the experts now, won’t we. No, no, I deal in publicity, then a little of this and a little of that. I write a column, you know, when I feel like it.”
“I didn’t know!”
“Oh, yeah, sure. When I have the time. Not your everyday stuff. More thoughtful pieces. Not like a gossip column or anything. I despise that sort of thing.”
So Claire knew that he never did write. She had so many friends who “could” write if they had the time. Her sister, Carmela, who was always busy, produced an unbelievably consistent supply of work. Poor Puffin. He was so brilliant, so shrewd and perceptive, she could imagine he despised himself most of all. He looked urgently at his magnificent watch as though that were the issue here, this time business. “I hope Temple gets back to see this.”
Claire turned to see Blacky smashing his fist into someone’s face. Someone else who’d gone, she supposed, too far with Isolde at last, and this time Blacky felt justified sticking it to him.
Blacky was a compact man. The other was the smaller, but Blacky was that much drunker, so it evened out fine. They were each giving the other a run for the money, swinging away. Claire couldn’t help worrying about Blacky’s fine caps. She remembered when he had them put in, with the new dentist on Prinzregentenplatz. Of course, they might have been replaced a few times since then. Blacky loved a good brawl, no hard feelings once it was over. As a matter of fact, he became quite good friends with everyone he’d ever had a go at, as far as she could recall.
The crowd let up in delighted horror as the other fellow landed a crasher in Blacky’s gut.
“Where on earth is Isolde?” Claire scanned the party with no luck. She ought to be here. She could stop this nonsense.
Blacky took a great sock in the jaw and went sprawling past Claire. The crowd on the side of the Mill sent up a cheer.
She stepped back into the shadow of the chestnut tree. “Well,” she said, “I hope everything works out. For you and Temple.”
“Temple will always make out.” He took a sip from his Birnenschnapps and perched the glass on a stump. He rocked back and forth on his very big feet. “Even as we speak…”
“I’m sorry?”
Puffin looked to the front room of the Mill, to the upstairs suite assigned to Temple. The curtains were shut. All the others around the second floor were open, as she had found them and left them.
Puffin smirked. “They often finish up a day of business with a friendly ‘chat.’”
She’d walked right past their room. “How good of you to share that with me,” she said, stung.
; He bowed. “Didn’t know you cared.”
“Oh, you knew very well.”
Puffin wobbled his head with lighthearted smugness.
“Just tell me one thing.” She steadied herself on the dipping branches. “Why did you make me think he hates her?”
“He does, love. He does.” He cocked one wispy eyebrow up. “Sometimes that makes it all the more exciting, eh? Hold on! What’s this? The coppers!”
Sure enough, two uniformed policemen shouldered their way through the throng.
Claire slipped urgently away. Puffin was still talking to her when she disappeared, retracing her steps across the meadow, where she felt the first drops of rain. She put her camera in her vest. This time she would go to the Rectory. No one would find her there. She could leave her traveler’s checks for Father Metz in his box. Sanctuary, that was what she needed. Damn, she would have thought knowing Temple and Mara were still intimate would throw a bucket of water on her feelings for him. They ought to have. She was too grown up for this sort of hysteria, these devastating paralyzations of emotion. It was too much. She ought to be glad for Temple that his relationship was in functioning order. Yet all it did was dismay her. Some perverse longing in her for him refused to believe he didn’t want her the same way, that they weren’t physically meant for each other. She wasn’t used to being a dreamer about men. This was a pipe dream. She would be better off getting away from this place entirely. For the first time in a long time she wanted a cigarette herself. Always, before, romantic love had been the beginning, but this, this left her wanting to drag the man into the bushes and tear his quiet subtlety violently off. It was so violent an attraction. And after all, even if it was fulfilled, it would only end in the gloomy pyre of self-retribution.
There was a pay phone on the road. She asked the operator to put in a collect call to Iris von Lillienfeld and told her the number in New York.
Iris picked up right away and accepted the charges.
“Iris, it’s Claire.”
“Claire! I’ve tried to reach you all yesterday afternoon!”
“Iris, there’s a time change. They don’t answer the phone here after eleven. It’s not that sort of place. They just shut the phone off.”
“I know the kind of place that is!” Iris said angrily, always upset at any indication of frailty on her part. “Let me talk!”
“I found a photograph of you, Iris. Here. When you were young.” Claire fumbled around in her bag to find the photograph.
“Ah, yes. Believe it or not, even I was young once. How did I look? Good?”
“Gorgeous!”
“Huh! You don’t have to tell me that. That’s one thing you don’t forget!”
“I thought I put it in my purse. One second. Damn. I’m so unorganized. Hang on. Ah, here it is. Saint Hildegard’s Mill is covered in snow. It’s all lit up with snow and sunshine. When I saw it, my first thought was that I should have come in winter, that’s how beautiful it makes everything look. Like a big vanilla cream cake. You know, the way it looks just after it’s snowed for days and then the sun comes out and it absolutely blazes with light. The photographer must have been as taken with the scene as well because there were two pages of the Mill in that snow scene. So anyway, there I am enjoying the Mill in days gone by and all of a sudden my eyes zoom in on who do you think?”
“Me?”
“Yes. I’m sure it’s you.” Not only had it looked like Iris, Claire had a feeling she’d even seen that hat Iris had had on. It was black and had a veil. She stood behind a woman on a sled, an old-fashioned, basket-like sled with swirled front runners.
Claire pressed against the telephone and held the photograph out into the weakening light. Against, in fact, the same view of the Mill today. Yes, it had to be Iris. The woman in the photograph was on the other side of the life spectrum, but those fierce eyebrows against white skin and delicate mouth were so peculiar to her.
And Iris, an old and lonely woman in a tattered velvet chair in New York, was suddenly transported to the exact moment Claire described so many years ago.
It was one of those storms that had gone on for days and days. Adam’s mother, ill for so long (ever since Iris herself had gotten well), finally felt strong enough to allow them to take her outdoors.
Iris felt doubly responsible for the old woman’s illness. She’d brought the influenza with her when she’d arrived at Saint Hildegard’s. Or perhaps she’d caught it there herself, she, so exhausted and devastated by what had happened to her family. Still, she had felt responsible at least for weakening the old woman with the strain of having a Jew under her roof. She’d heard Adam and the old woman arguing about her even as the old woman had lain ill. Iris had come with the bedpan but hesitated to enter with so personal an item, and then she was stuck because she heard it was she they were arguing about. Adam wouldn’t hear of Iris’s being sent away.
“Let her go to Paris,” the mother said. “They’re still giving the Jews visas to Paris. At least she will be safe there.”
“They let them go to Paris just to see how much money they’re trying to take out of the country, and then they arrest them,” Adam insisted. “And if she would get to Paris undeterred, they’d make her come back as soon as her visa was up. You know they would. And it’s just too dangerous to cross the border. Mutti. How good she has been to you since you have been ill! All through your fever she nursed you. No one will object to her staying on as your nurse.”
“Yes, they will, and they do.” Frau von Grünwald had banged her cane on the floor. “Just today I overheard the servants muttering about Iris taking work from the local girls. They called her an outsider, a stranger from another village, but all it takes is underlying animosity these days, Adam. You know what can happen. These are jealous and ignorant people. You must not forget that. I know that you love the villagers and you believe they love you because they have watched you grow and have been here your whole life, but you mark my words, they will betray you the moment it becomes advantageous to them. They don’t like her for her soft hands and cultivated accent. If they knew she was a Jew! Mein Gott!”
“Mutti, I’m not going to send her away. I shall go with her if you force me.”
“What? You say such a thing to me? You would let this girl drive a wedge between us, you and me?”
Iris had heard no more. Adam had certainly run and hushed his mother with one of his all-encompassing, affectionate hugs. He couldn’t bear to inflict pain on those he loved. And he loved his mother.
Saint Hildegard’s Mill stood hushed and still. Only the chimneys poked through. The voice of Adam, young and jubilant, crossed the years and the black-and-white picture as he adjusted the aperture of his 1913 Zeiss-Ikon camera.
Iris had wheeled his mother out of doors and put her on the sled. This was the first time she had been outside since she’d gotten ill. They blinked and pulled their hats down over their eyes in the blazing light. They’d been indoors so long, it was almost unbearably bright. So many things had been going on in Munich, unspeakable things; no one had wanted to go out. But this storm had stopped the world, somehow, and placed it in a time unrelated to the terrible present. After Adam’s crisp young voice, there was no sound. Only the clear white, untrod snow in every direction. A magpie on the fence was the only sharp dark place. There was a row of trees. The branches were so weighed down with snow, they arched and brushed the drifts along the ground. Frau von Grünwald smiled, coughed, smiled again. “Stop!” She waved at Adam with her mittened fist. “Wait until I’m at least ready!”
But Adam hardly heard. All he saw was the sweet face of Iris, who was standing alongside, patiently waiting for him to focus, patiently waiting for the moment he would look into her knowing eyes. It was difficult for both of them not to smile.
How beautiful she is, was all he could think.
How beautiful I feel when he looks at me, she thought, feeling the glistening moment so intently, she knew even then she would never forget it.
She lurched back to Claire and the present. “Claire, what’s going on? I got a copy of the Süddeutsche over in Ridgewood. It says Hans von Grünwald of Saint Hildegard’s Mill is dead! From a fall, it said.”
“Yes, it’s true, Iris. Just after I arrived. I didn’t want to upset you, but—”
“Listen to me, Claire. Don’t do that. Don’t protect me. Do you understand? I do not need protection from you, all right?” She was totally agitated. “I am worried for you …”
“All right, all right. Anyway, the reason I called … to be honest, I just don’t know where to start looking for the diamonds. I … I thought it would be easier. I don’t know, I thought I’d have some sort of clue, you know, make some sense out of the past once I got here, but it’s so confounding!”
It began to drizzle. She tried to fit herself under the telephone awning, but part of her stuck out. “The truth is, I’m afraid I’ll never find the darn treasure.”
“I know, dear.” Iris spoke more gently. “I know. That’s because there is none. At least not yet.”
“Iris, what are you talking about? What not yet?”
“I mean I will let you know what the treasure really is when you find it for yourself.”
“What the hell is this? What are you playing at?”
“There is no treasure, dear. At least not the kind you thought it would be.”
“Iris, I am standing here in the damp. It’s going to pour any minute. I’ve left my family to fend for themselves—”
“It’s about time they fended for themselves a bit, too. The way you spoil them! It’s offensive. I thought you were a suffragette!”
“You mean a feminist!” Claire shouted.
“Feminist,” Iris agreed.
“I am,” Claire choked. “I think I’m going to cry,” she whined, knowing that even now she couldn’t. She didn’t have it in her. If only she could.
“Oh, don’t cry. It’s fun. Aren’t you having fun?”
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