Echo House

by Ward Just

  After the war they returned to Echo House, Axel wasted, looking starved, ten years older than his age at least—degraded, Harold said. Axel was seen here and there between visits to Walter Reed, and in time did seem to improve. But Sylvia had virtually disappeared, "in seclusion," she said. Naturally the rumors multiplied and as usual Alice Grendall brought the news.

  I saw her car the other day, Alice said to Billie Peralta. She's visiting someone in Falls Church.

  Alice explained that she had had to drive her maid home and saw Sylvia's car, the dinky green MG with the right-hand drive, parked in front of a nasty little bungalow, shades drawn and a dog on a chain in the front yard. When Billie said she couldn't believe it, no one they knew lived in Falls Church, for heaven's sake, Alice replied that army sergeants lived in Falls Church. Her maid's husband was an army sergeant. So Mrs. Sylvia-more-mysterious-than-thou Behl had found herself an army sergeant.

  Billie was silent. The story was implausible.

  Of course you couldn't see in the house, Billie said.

  So it could be anything, she added.

  I suppose she thought no one would discover her in Falls Church.

  Still, Billie said. A sergeant?

  It was predictable, Alice said.

  To which Billie replied with an obscure remark about lambs lying down with lions.

  When Alice informed her husband that night at dinner, Harold Grendall sighed and muttered something complicated in German. He said, Wir müssen wissen; wir werden wissen. We must know, we will know. Their community was so tight and everyone knew each other so well. Curiosity was natural. And of course Sylvia had to drive a bottle-green MG with right-hand drive, a vehicle no less conspicuous than a fire engine, and had to park it on that specific street the day Alice drove by.

  What did you say? Alice said.

  Nothing. I'm thinking, Harold replied.

  About her? Alice said.

  Harold sighed again. The women had excellent instincts and a natural nose for scandal, not unsurprising, since most of them had volunteered for intelligence work during the war and were trained to be suspicious, working always on the sound assumption that nothing was as it seemed. They were quick to judge Sylvia because they sensed her otherness, her incongruity and appetite and independence, her refusal to play along. Poor, frustrated Sylvia; you would have expected her to pick the tosspot columnist who was always at Echo House for Sunday lunch or even the dissolute South American ambassador so deft with the tango.

  Yet Harold doubted that an army sergeant figured in Sylvia's afternoon disappearances. Sylvia lived by her own strange standards, but he could not imagine her driving to Falls Church for a liaison in a bungalow. Of course you never knew for a dead certainty; people's private lives were always mysterious and there were skeletons in every closet, his own included. Bad luck all around.

  I hope you keep quiet about it, Harold said. We don't need another scandal. There's very little of consequence that goes on in this city that Axel doesn't know about, so the odds are good that he knows about Sylvia and her sergeant, if that's who it is. Personally, I doubt it. I'd say it's another set of crockery altogether and that Axel has decided, for his own reasons, to do nothing about it. Say nothing and do nothing.

  They've had a hard time lately, Harold said at last. But they've been together a long time and there's every possibility that they'll fix things up. Stories get out and the fact that they're out changes things. The people involved look at the problem differently when they know it's common coin. Same thing in government. When the secret's out it's a different secret because it's no longer confidential. Daylight gives it a different shape and significance and it's hard to see the thing as it was originally, as a secret. So keep quiet. Axel and Sylvia are quality people and have to be given a chance to work things out themselves, with no interference from friends.

  Alice looked at him skeptically.

  That's what we do in Washington, Harold said with sudden emotion. We fix things up. We compromise; that's the essence of our society. We give a little and get a little and out of the chaos comes an order that we can live with. It isn't perfect. But it's what we do.

  As it happened, Axel knew everything; and Alice's lurid speculation was false, at least the part about the sergeant. On Thursday afternoons Sylvia drove across the river to Falls Church to see Mrs. Pfister, a clairvoyant whose uncanny observations were attracting an eclectic clientele. Sylvia first heard her name from Belle Aswell, who had heard it from her son-in-law. Belle did not approve of her son-in-law and cited the weird Mrs. Pfister as evidence of his unreliability. Axel had heard of her, too, the expression on his face bemused when he disclosed that she was in vogue with the wives of several Asian specialists at the State Department. The specialists sometimes went along to listen to the uncanny observations. She's odd, Axel said, indicating vaguely that she had come to the attention of intelligence officers.

  The usual concerns, Axel explained.

  I think I'll go see her, Sylvia said.

  We haven't figured out how she does it, Axel said. She predicts things. She predicted the Republican Congress in 'forty-six. She predicted Jimmy Byrnes. And she goes backward, too. She replayed a conversation between de Gaulle and Anthony Eden back in 'forty-one that was correct in every detail, and I should know because I was in the room. Mostly people go to her for personal things, their love life or their health or finances. She casts their horoscopes or investigates the zodiac or deals the cards or whatever it is that summons the spirit world. Apparently she has different techniques for different clients. She's not dumb; that much we know.

  Sylvia looked at him closely. We? She said, You seem to know quite a lot about her.

  Word gets around, Axel said.

  She nodded doubtfully, still looking at him.

  A strange woman, Axel said. She showed up from nowhere a few years back, theoretically a refugee. She's built up quite a practice. And it's growing every day. If you see her, be careful what you say.

  Isn't she discreet?

  She's discreet, Axel said. All the same, be circumspect.

  Sylvia smiled. It wouldn't make much sense to go to a clairvoyant and be circumspect; but Axel would not understand that.

  She said, I'll let you know what I discover.

  Do, Axel said thoughtfully. By all means, do.

  Mrs. Pfister sometimes used the tarot, sometimes ordinary playing cards. Often she went into a trance and spoke rapidly in tongues or voices not her own. She was young; Sylvia guessed in the vicinity of thirty-five. Her blond hair was her own and she had extraordinary skin and shiny gray eyes. Her voice was soft and vibrant as a cat's purr, with an accent that seemed to be Slavic in origin. Mrs. Pfister's manner was formal and so impersonal that she did not immediately inspire confidence. She always took her time, refusing to be hurried in any way.

  They sat at a plain metal bridge table, Mrs. Pfister fussing with the cards, shuffling slowly and then turning one card after another, watching the cards as she spoke. This was Sylvia's third visit and she had an idea it would be her last; little of value had been disclosed. Tell me why you are here really, Mrs. Pfister said after Sylvia was seated. Speak to me sincerely. Do not be afraid. Sylvia said she wanted to uncover the past so that she could observe the future, read the tea leaves, she said, smiling at Mrs. Pfister. She knew there was coherence, a thoughtful plan as in a poem, one line leading to the next as one card led to another. Sylvia paused, overcome suddenly by emotion. She said, Perhaps this is too much to ask. All desires cannot be fulfilled. I don't know what it is that I want to know, but I want to know it very badly because my heart is breaking and I believe I am the cause. She told Mrs. Pfister that her marriage was collapsing. She and her husband were not intimate, in the usual sense or any sense. He seemed to have—some virulent field of force surrounding him that she could not breach.

  Sylvia watched the woman across the table turn cards, searching her face for some sign. She did not know what to say next. She looked
at her hands and said she felt boxed in by her wretched and inglorious life in Washington, yet that was not the cause of her great unhappiness. Probably it was a symptom. She believed that the terrible difficulty between her and her husband lay elsewhere, years back, when he was at war and she was living—

  "In London," Mrs. Pfister said softly. "With your little boy. In a maisonette with a garden in the rear. Weren't roses climbing a trellis? An elderly couple lived on the top floor. Gardening, you wore a blue sweater that was out at the elbows. And your husband was away in France. He had an experience in France."

  "He was wounded badly," Sylvia said. "He was with a friend."

  "Not that," Mrs. Pfister said crisply. "This occurred before he was wounded. This happened before the accident."

  Sylvia made a helpless gesture. Perhaps this was a mistake after all. Axel had never told her how he was hurt, insisting that he remembered nothing. She was aware that Mrs. Pfister was watching her, awaiting some reply.

  "I don't know," she said.

  "There were many casualties."

  "No." Sylvia shook her head emphatically. There was no elderly couple on the top floor of the maisonette either. She said, "There was only Axel and his friend Fred Greene. Fred was killed."

  "Many dead," Mrs. Pfister repeated, "and one of them was a young woman, a Frenchwoman your husband cared for."

  Sylvia opened her mouth to say something, but no sound came. She was too astonished to speak. She watched Mrs. Pfister turn one card and then another, looking at them closely. They were anonymous cards, a six of clubs and a four of diamonds. And then a seven of clubs fell.

  Mrs. Pfister stared at the card a moment and sighed. "I think this young woman is the field of force you spoke about, the current that surrounds your husband." She paused again, staring intently at the seven of clubs. "They were not lovers," Mrs. Pfister said at last.

  "I don't believe that." Sylvia said.

  "I am certain of it," Mrs. Pfister said.

  "Does it matter whether they were or they weren't?"

  "It always matters," Mrs. Pfister said. "In this case—"

  "Not to me," Sylvia said. "Her 'current,' as you call it. Is what matters. They were lovers in every sense that matters, isn't that true?"

  "Perhaps not in this case," Mrs. Pfister amended. "Perhaps not in the way you mean."

  What way was that? Sylvia wondered to herself, watching Mrs. Pfister turn cards. She said, "Where did they meet?"

  "In France," Mrs. Pfister said.

  "Well, of course. But where? Under what circumstances?"

  "I can't say," Mrs. Pfister said. "My vision is blocked. I see a heavy stone wall."

  "Was she pretty?"

  "I see her standing beside a stone wall, leaning her bicycle against it, looking over her shoulder. She has an unfriendly expression on her face. She does not approve of your husband's friend, who has offended her in some way. She is quick to take offense, and she is looking at him in order to avoid looking at your husband. Yes, I suppose that men would consider her pretty."

  Sylvia said impatiently, "And how did this woman die? And does she have a name?"

  Mrs. Pfister did not reply immediately. She gathered the cards and commenced to shuffle them slowly seven times, concentrating on her fingers. She said, "There was confusion, gunfire, a skirmish of some kind."

  "A skirmish?"

  "Something of that sort," Mrs. Pfister said vaguely.

  "You don't see it clearly?"

  "Not very clearly," Mrs. Pfister said.

  Sylvia said, "Did Axel kill her?"

  Mrs. Pfister looked up in surprise.

  "Axel was present."

  "It would seem so. He and his friend."

  "He's capable of it," Sylvia said.

  "I have no doubt," Mrs. Pfister said.

  "He's capable of anything."

  "Yes, of course."

  "This is what the cards tell you?"

  Mrs. Pfister moved her head, yes and no.

  Sylvia was trying to get the events straight in her mind. She had never heard this story or anything like it. Axel never talked about the war, at least his part of it, and had always maintained that he had no memory of the day he was wounded. She had no idea how he and Fred had lived before August 1944, or whom they had lived with. They had worked under cover, after all. She assumed he had killed, and imagined that he had done it with the coldness and efficiency that he did everything else. Axel had been an invalid for so long and when he was himself again he avoided her questions, saying that those years were better left undisturbed; he knew nothing that he cared to tell. Not that she insisted; and he had not pressed her for details of wartime Britain except to ask if Alec had been frightened by the German bombs. She would have told him about her life if he had asked, but he never did. After the war years they were so divided in their emotions that questions would have been difficult and answers clumsy. The answers would have been incomplete. They had lived under wartime discipline that seemed practical at the time, though later they would understand how abnormal it was, and how strenuous.

  Sylvia said, "How strange it is to hear all this."

  Mrs. Pfister continued to turn cards until she found one that spoke. "I believe this Frenchwoman was married. Her husband was not with her. They were not together."

  But Sylvia was not interested in a husband, present or absent. "The skirmish," she began.

  "They were witnesses to it," Mrs. Pfister said.

  Sylvia waited.

  "I can see her falling," Mrs. Pfister said.

  "Where?" Sylvia said. "Where was this?"

  But Mrs. Pfister shook her head. She did not have that information.

  "It's all so unsettling," Sylvia said. "I feel you're describing an incident from my owr past, a memory I had mislaid or caused to cease to exist, but that's been with me always, at my elbow without my knowing i:. As you said, a current." She turned then to look at the pale stripes of light falling through the blinds. From far away she heard the high whine of a police siren. She had been sitting at the bridge table for an hour or more, asking questions and listening to the answers that came between long pauses, each answer more unnerving than the last. Yeats spoke of an existence between sleeping and waking, neither one nor the other but a shadow realm of high purpose and resolve. Yeats accepted the spirit world of the fairies, and accepted also the disciplines of astrology and magic. He believed that the borders of the mind were ever-shifting and that one mind could flow into another, and that memory worked in the same way. If Yeats were sitting at this bridge table with Madame Blavatsky—

  Yet Sylvia also knew, without the slightest doubt, that Mrs. Pfister had hold of something vital.

  She said, "There was no elderly couple on the top floor of the maisonette. A British army colonel and his mistress lived there."

  Mrs. Pfister nodded.

  "And my sweater was red, not blue."

  Mrs. Pfister continued to turn cards, frowning now.

  Sylvia said softly, "How did they meet? I mean where and under what circumstances. Under whose roof? Was she a résistante with a black beret and a bomb in her knickers? Did she work for him? Was she one of his people, who helped him derail troop trains and cause havoc in the countryside? Who was this Frenchwoman he cared for? And what was her name?"

  "I am not able to say," Mrs. Pfister said. Sylvia thought she detected a slight smile, not unkind or sarcastic. It was as if she had suddenly welcomed a new thought. Again Mrs. Pfister began to turn cards, and that was the only sound in the room, the snap of pasteboard. She remembered that Yeats had no use for cards, preferring the signs of the zodiac.

  Mrs. Pfister said, "It's possible she lived behind the stone wall where she parked her bicycle."

  Sylvia said irritably, "That was her home? Behind a stone wall?"

  Mrs. Pfister turned one card and another and a third, not looking up. Outside, a dog began to bark.

  "Once Axel mentioned a château."

  Mrs. Pfister nodded.<
br />
  "Where he and Fred Greene stayed for a night late in the war. A château with a vineyard. He said something about a count. Perhaps this woman he cared for belonged to the count."

  "Did he mention a town or a region?"

  "No."

  "Or what he was doing there?"

  "War business," Sylvia said.

  "Dirty business," Mrs. Pfister said.

  "He was on his way to join General Patton."

  "I would say this girl was a country girl," Mrs. Pfister said after a moment.

  "Not a girl from a château," Sylvia said.

  "It seems not."

  "And my husband's infatuation—"

  "Infatuation?"

  "Yes, my husband's infatuation."

  "That is not the word I would use, Mrs. Behl."

  "What word would you use, Mrs. Pfister?"

  "Not that word."

  "Well, then. Obsession?"

  Mrs. Pfister paused fractionally before she said, "Hope."

  "What does that mean?"

  "It means your unhappy husband found hope."

  But Axel had never lacked hope. His American optimism was well known. He had hope enough for a dozen men, and if he found himself bereft, he would never go looking for a woman. Sylvia tried to imagine the country girl, her size and coloring, her hair and the way she carried herself and the timbre of her voice, a woman quick to take offense, parking her bicycle and looking over her shoulder at Fred Greene. Surely it had been Fred who had made a lewd remark. Fred could not look at a woman without wanting to sleep with her. But Sylvia, trying to stare into the shadow realm, could not summon an image. The woman was as amorphous as the word Mrs. Pfister had used to describe her. Sylvia bent her head to look at the cards, face up on the bridge table; but the light was poor and she could not make out the numbers.

  "And then she was killed," Sylvia said.

  "She died," Mrs. Pfister corrected.