The Flight Portfolio

by Julie Orringer

  He caught the streetcar on the Canebière and rode it west, then south; he was going to visit Harry Bingham at the visa division of the American Consulate, in a white villa in the cliffside suburb of Montredon. The division was located at an inconvenient distance from the center of town, up a linden-lined drive that was hell to climb in any weather and nearly always cross-blown by a seaward wind that pulled one’s clothes sideways, made a wild nest of one’s hair, and stung one’s eyes with salt and dust and whatever else happened to be flying through the atmosphere that day. It took nearly an hour to get there; per usual, he arrived at the doors of the visa division in a state of disarray, resenting the consulate in general, the visa division in particular, and whomever he might encounter first beyond its stout oak doors. Today it was the tall American guard whose incongruously excellent French must have given false hope to the applicants. Varian gave his name and told the guard he had an appointment to see Bingham. The guard thumbed him into the usual waiting room, where Varian stood at the window and watched the palm trees flip their headdresses toward the bay.

  He had a vivid memory of his first meeting with Bingham—not here in Marseille, but years ago, at Harvard. One afternoon, as he’d been riding home on his bicycle in the rain, he’d veered onto Bow Street, slipped on the uneven cobbles, and skidded onto his side. Bruised and stunned, he lay facing a fleet of oncoming cars. A young man in glasses and a Burberry coat flung his books to the wet curb and rushed to Varian, stopping traffic with an upraised hand. He hauled Varian to his feet, brushed him off, straightened his jacket, and restored his fallen bag to his shoulder.

  “Okay now?” he’d asked, curtly.

  “Okay,” Varian said, his insides knotted; but something about the young man’s uplifted face, his angled chin, made Varian feel he had to take hold of himself and be okay. The man looked like the dashing sea captain in a book Varian had loved as a child, The Adventures of the Tramontana: a picture of a storm-canted ship on the cover, young Captain Daunt straining against the wheel.

  “Who do I have to thank?” Varian asked, and coughed. “Whom?”

  The young man offered his name card, then touched his cap and went off down Bow Street. Varian glanced at the card. Hiram Bingham IV. Son of the famous Yale professor who’d discovered Machu Picchu. Varian wanted to call after him, wanted to ask what it felt like to have been born with an identity intact, into a family whose scions might expect to live lives of grand adventure.

  Now here was Hiram Bingham IV again at Varian’s service, appearing at the door of his office, ushering Varian inside. Harry still wore the same small round glasses, still had the same sharp-cut jaw, the same uptilted expression; he managed always to give his interlocutor the impression of absolute unbroken attention. His office must have once been an extravagant library: the polished oak shelves, nearly empty now, had obviously been intended for a large leatherbound collection of French classics, and the bow window behind the desk deluged the room with reading light. Varian took his usual seat. Bingham settled himself behind the desk in a high-backed chair, flanked by the American flag on one side and the consular banner on the other.

  “You’re looking well, Varian. Like you got some sun.”

  “You too, Harry. And how’s Golo?” Thomas Mann’s son, who’d been liberated from the concentration camp at Les Milles, had by now been hiding out at Bingham’s villa for a month.

  “Better. Eager to get off the continent. And what’s the news from your side?”

  Varian lowered his voice. Bingham had assured him that the office wasn’t bugged—he checked it himself every morning—but one couldn’t be overcautious. “Another group got away without a hitch,” he said. “My friend Leon Ball has a route over the foothills and around the Spanish checkpoint.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard. But don’t you think we’d better try to get the Manns through on the train?”

  “Of course. But if we can’t, there’s a back door.”

  “And what about the passport situation?”

  “We’ve got a couple of new connections, thanks to Hirschman.”

  “That’s good news. I know those fake Czech passports couldn’t have held out long.”

  “And the American visas for the Werfels?”

  “All in place now,” Bingham said. “Not that they were easy to come by. Fullerton is no help whatsoever. And he’s none too fond of you, either. You’ll have to keep your operation quiet if you don’t want to get any farther on his bad side.”

  “Listen, Harry. He didn’t happen to mention a German visa applicant by the name of Katznelson, did he?”

  Bingham’s eyebrows came together. “I don’t think so. Why?”

  “A friend of mine came here earlier—last week, I believe—inquiring on his behalf. I spoke to the client himself yesterday. It’s an interesting case.”

  “Haven’t heard of it. What’s the story?”

  Varian explained, and Bingham laced his hands, tilting his chin toward the flag. “How badly does Columbia want this fellow back?”

  “I don’t know. He’s rather well regarded in his field.”

  “Fullerton’s a friend of Nick Butler, president at Columbia. I don’t know why Nick would tolerate Fullerton at his dinner table, but he does, with some regularity, if Hugh is to be believed—anyway, his name came up a time or two among Hugh’s social boasts. If Butler put a little pressure on him, Fullerton might grant the visa.”

  “There’s another complication, I’m afraid. Katznelson used to edit a communist rag in Berlin. Long time ago, student days.”

  “Bad luck for him. But not insurmountable.”

  “All right, Harry. Thanks. I’ll cable Butler this afternoon.”

  “Good. What else does the client need? Funds?”

  “He’s got plenty of his own, it would seem. A French exit visa might be nice, if I could get one without worrying that I’ll be tipping off Vichy to his whereabouts.”

  “There’s an inspector at the Préfecture, Robinet—maybe I mentioned him to you before. I had a drink with him last night. He’s the man you want. French patriot of the old school, horrified by Pétain. He’ll put you in touch with the right person in the visa office. As for the Spanish visas, the consulate may or may not be granting them today. And the border guard may or may not honor them once your man gets there.”

  “Yes. And then we’d have to rely on the mountain route.”

  “Well, at the moment, the border’s rather permeable. If you can get an answer from Butler with some speed, and if the Préfecture cooperates, you might be able to get your professor out within the next few weeks.”

  Varian nodded. “You don’t think—could we make it happen in time to append him to the Werfels and the Manns?”

  “Send them all through Cerbère together? Why not? That way you’d be there if anything went wrong.”

  The plan had always been for Varian to accompany the sensitive group; he had to go to Lisbon anyway, to send uncensored mail and cultivate a few contacts there. It hadn’t occurred to him until that moment that he might be able to get Katznelson out among those clients, that he himself might accompany Katznelson and Grant on the train. The thought of being able to bring that piece of news to Grant gave him an unreasonable thrill.

  “And what about the Chagalls?” Bingham asked now. “Did you see them at Gordes?”

  “God, yes,” he said. How had it not been foremost on his mind? “They won’t hear of my making an official appeal on their behalf. But perhaps, if you can do it under the radar, you could make a few inquiries. Or if you’re inclined, drop them a note. They could use some convincing. Maybe a gentle scare. They’re under the impression that Chagall’s reputation will get them through anything.”

  Bingham sighed. “How many others are thinking the same thing? You can’t blame them, of course. Not that long ago, France was to them what America is to all th
ese others.” He gestured toward the window, through which they could see a segment of the queue of refugees as it made its way down the linden-lined drive. “I’ll do my worst,” he said. “And in the meantime, let’s hope they come to their senses.”

  * * *

  _______

  Varian dispatched the cable to Butler that afternoon: PROFESSOR G KATZNELSON IN VISA TROUBLE IN FRANCE STOP. CABLE FULLERTON AMERICAN CONSULATE MARSEILLE EVIDENCE OF KATZNELSON’S EMPLOYMENT. CONFIRM COLUMBIA FULL SPONSORSHIP STOP. THANKS FRY EMERGENCY RESCUE COMMITTEE MARSEILLE. Then he walked at speed back to the hotel and went upstairs—not to his own room, where Lena and Hirschman were interviewing clients, but to another down the hall, the one that now housed the poet Walter Mehring.

  His knock at the door brought not Mehring but Miriam, businesslike and high-spirited, in librarianesque gray slacks and a correct little sweater that might have been prudish if not for the keyhole at its neckline. She stood with one foot against the doorframe, clipboard in hand, having just taken down a list of Mehring’s immediate needs. Mehring himself lay in bed in his pajamas, his hair an electrified cloud. Around him lay a tumult of items: intimate articles of men’s clothing, chewed-looking notebooks, a pearl-backed hairbrush missing half its bristles, the remains of breakfast on a Splendide tray, and, divided neatly into its various sections, the European edition of The New York Times. He held the front page in his hands, regarding it with dismay.

  “Oh, Mr. Fry, here you are,” he said, and rustled the paper at Varian. “Look at this. Nazis Demand Fifty-Eight Percent of Agricultural Yield of France. Fifty-eight! Already there’s nothing to eat in this country. And then there’s this.” He turned a few pages. “The U.S. can’t seem to locate a hundred and thirty bombers it loaned to France before the Armistice. They’ve been searching for them since June. You can be sure the French aren’t giving them up, wherever they are.”

  “Mr. Mehring,” Varian said. “You’re looking well this morning. Sleeping better now, I hope?”

  Mehring seemed really to see Varian for the first time; he laid his section of the paper down and scrutinized him from head to toe. Then he glanced toward the door of his hotel room, beyond which the voices of refugees made an anxious percussive music.

  “I thought I heard Nazi officers in the corridor last night,” he said. “Am I losing my mind?”

  “Not at all. There are a few officers here—just down the hall, I believe.”

  Mehring turned a shade paler and looked at Miriam. “You didn’t mention that, Miss Davenport. You said it was safe here.”

  Miriam shrugged. “There were Nazis at the Royale, too, but I never mentioned that to you either. What would have been the point?”

  “To keep me properly afraid! Fear is my food. It keeps me alive.”

  “And too much of it can make you sick.”

  “Ah, well said, Miss Davenport. Now, won’t you sit down, Mr. Fry, and talk to me a little about my escape plans? I’m eager to get out, as you may imagine.” As Varian pulled a desk chair to the bedside, Mehring tore open a pack of Reines and selected a half-crushed smoke.

  “Your escape is going to be something of a challenge,” Varian said, lacing his fingers over his knee. “I understand you’d like to travel under an assumed name, and that you have a false Czech passport already.”

  “Yes. Do you think it’ll do?”

  “Hard to say. I think we’ve used too many of those Czech passports lately.”

  “But they’ve worked, have they not?”

  “Yes, but you never know whether they’ll work the next time. We have some new Polish passports now, real ones. It wouldn’t take me more than a few weeks to get the necessary stamps, perhaps less time if we can find a certain forger who’s been doing brilliant work for refugees around town.”

  “I don’t have a few weeks, not with German officers walking the hotel corridors. I must leave at once.”

  “I don’t advise it, Walter. Not when we can send you out more safely if we wait a little longer. Why don’t you let Miss Davenport pay a visit to our friend Bingham at the consulate? He’ll do what he can to help.”

  “And what do you suggest I do in the meantime?”

  “Gather your strength. Don’t read the paper too much. Write, if you can.” He paused, looked at Mehring. “Can you, under these circumstances?”

  “With Gestapo officers walking the halls? I’m not sure. A handle of gin might help.”

  Without a moment’s hesitation, Varian picked up the phone and ordered Mehring a bottle of the best gin, charging it to his own room.

  “You’re too kind, Mr. Fry.”

  “The Committee is at your service,” Varian said. And he nodded to Mehring and Miriam, got to his feet, and slipped out.

  * * *

  ________

  The client list was a real thing, not a memorized phantom. It was typed in triplicate on near-transparent paper, the carbons safe in a filing cabinet on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. On his way to Marseille, Varian had carried his own copy in the lining of his valise—not in the lid, where anyone might think to look, but in the suitcase bottom, beneath layers of crisply folded clothes, between the fabric lining and the reinforced leather of the exterior. The list. Those names, assembled in late-night sessions over port and cigarettes at Ingrid Warburg’s apartment behind the Museum of Modern Art: they came from letters, from memos, from cocktail-napkin jottings, from phone conversations, from idle rumors, from the badger-holes of memory. Alfred Barr, who had thrown famous parties at Harvard and who had basically invented the Museum of Modern Art, which he now directed, hand-delivered the names of contemporary artists in trouble: Duchamp, Lam, Chagall, Lipchitz, Zilberman, Ernst, Masson. Thomas Mann, writing from California, sent lists of German poets and writers: Mehring, Hertha Pauli, Lion Feuchtwanger, Friedrich Wolf. Jules Romains and Jacques Maritain sent volumes of French literary names. Jan Masaryk, the exiled Czech foreign minister and a personal hero of Varian’s, insisted that Franz Werfel make the top of the list, but then the New York Post had reported Werfel dead, shot by the Gestapo in Paris. The list was a lacework, many of its artists and writers untraceable. The arguments over its two-hundred-something names had been deafening and vitriolic; the outcome, everyone knew, was a matter of life and death. As he walked home from those sessions, the disputed names ringing in his head, Varian had to remind himself that these were not merely political ciphers, nor scrawled signatures, nor ghostly photographic images; they were human beings, real men and women whose genius placed them at risk, who were in peril, in concentration camps, in hiding, or, worse, living in plain view, ignorant of the threat to their own lives.

  Now, when he returned to Room 307, he found himself face-to-face with Werfel himself, who was not, in fact, dead, not having been shot in Paris; on the day the article appeared, Werfel had been sheltering at Lourdes, where he’d landed after a convoluted flight through Biarritz, Bayonne, Hendaye, and St. Jean-de-Luz. He sat now in Varian’s spindly chair at the desk, tapping one foot on the carpet. He was compact, wire-haired, clear-eyed, vaguely old-fashioned-looking in his high-collared jacket; grave and calm, he sat holding the hand of his wife, the composer Alma Mahler Gropius Werfel, who perched at the edge of the ottoman in a spotless white suit. They were obviously waiting for Varian, and the look about Werfel’s eyes was fierce.

  “Well, Franz!” Varian said. “And Mrs. Werfel. A pleasure to see you, though I wasn’t expecting you.” Varian glanced at Hirschman for information, but Hirschman only widened his eyes and shrugged.

  “Is there somewhere we might speak in private, Mr. Fry?”

  Varian smiled, glancing around the room. “I’m afraid there’s not much privacy to be had around here.”

  “I must insist,” Werfel said, putting a hand to his chest. “I must discuss with you a personal matter. One that concerns our…er…day in the country.” That
was the term he used for their imminent escape attempt, always pronounced, to Varian’s continual chagrin, with a clipped emphasis and at heightened volume; no one overhearing them could have failed to understand it as anything but code for an illegal emigration.

  “Well, it’s nearly lunchtime,” Varian said. “If you don’t mind my ordering something for us from the room service menu—though, you know, the fare is rather limited here—I can have it delivered and clear the room for a little while.”

  “Yes, that will suit us,” Werfel said.

  Varian performed the feat he’d promised, releasing Lena and Hirschman from their duties for an hour. Then he telephoned the café, and the usual grim boy in his too-big jacket delivered a pyramid of sandwiches on day-old baguette, accompanied by a carafe of white Languedoc. Varian distributed the fare and invited Werfel once again to tell him why he was there.