The Flight Portfolio

by Julie Orringer

  “Look at that,” Theo said. “Pamiers.”

  “Of course. It’s the closest station to Vernet.”

  “Why on earth would he go there?”

  “I believe he’s looking for someone,” Varian said.

  “Well, but one can’t simply walk into Vernet.”

  “Yes, you know that, and so do I. But Mr. Grant swore to protect this person. And perhaps he feels invulnerable, like many Americans abroad.”

  Theo gave her mercury-quick smile. “But he’d just learned we’d all been arrested.”

  “Mr. Grant considers himself cleverer than most people. And, in some cases, naturally exempt from the common fate.”

  “You believe he’d go to Vernet and demand to see the commandant?”

  “I wouldn’t put it past him.” He looked at the timetable. Grant had penciled his dot next to an early-morning train, but that was two days ago. Who knew where he might be now?

  “You’re not thinking of going yourself, Varian.”

  “I am. And maybe of taking someone else with me. I don’t believe the commandant would be particularly pleased to see me.”

  “You don’t mean Mary Jayne.”

  “Yes, precisely.”

  Theo’s look darkened. “You wouldn’t ask her to compromise herself again.”

  “She’s already shown her willingness. She convinced the commandant to let Hans Tittel and Bogler and the others out, even if they ended up back in. The point is, we all have to do what we can.”

  “No one is asking you to do that.”

  “All right, Theo. I see the philosophical argument. But I need her help. I can ask, at least. She’s free to say no.”

  “She took a bath and dressed for dinner. I believe she said she’d go down to the greenhouse to see Monsieur Zilberman.” Without meeting his eye, she turned back to Peterkin, who climbed into her lap. Varian wished she would have looked at him; he thought of her as a kind of moral magnetic north, and he disliked the idea that she’d condemn him for using all means available. Virtue, after all, might be construed in many ways; a woman as intelligent as Theo must know it. He put the note into his pocket and went to the kitchen door. Then he stepped out into the chilly afternoon and crossed the driveway to the greenhouse, where, behind the clouded wall, he could see the moving shape of Zilberman at work.

  He knocked on the greenhouse door, and Mary Jayne opened it, drink in hand, dressed in a persimmon-colored jersey and ivory slacks. She might have just come from lunch at Maxim’s.

  “Come in,” she said. “Zilberman’s had a marvelous idea. Take a look.”

  Varian had little patience for any idea save one that concerned going after Grant; but Zilberman was bent over the long worktable intently, and before him lay an array of images so arresting Varian had to step closer. Some were drawings that had collected in the corners of the house since their arrival: one of Jacques Hérold’s from an after-dinner game, depicting a headless boy running full-bore through a burning forest; another of Masson’s, of a pink Messerschmitt discharging a payload of snakes. And here was a new one, unmistakably Chagall’s: pale lines crosshatching a coal-black sky, the image they’d seen from Gare de Noailles during the air raid. Beneath these drawings lay many others, a ragged-edged stack of them.

  “What do you propose to do with these?” Varian said.

  Zilberman raised his cap to smooth back his hair. “Liberate them from France. Get them to the States. The artists have agreed already to donate the work. Chagall has many friends in New York, and my wife has contacts in Boston. Let us transport these works to America, stage a series of exhibitions. Show everyone what’s at risk. What may be lost. Do you not think money can be raised, Monsieur Fry? Perhaps we can make lithographs, a set. The Flight Portfolio, we could call it.”

  Of course: a set of drawings could travel, could do work that a single person could not. And then he thought of the Sinaïa, of the secret closet in the captain’s rooms.

  “Listen,” he said. “What if you were to take the drawings yourself?”

  Zilberman looked up from the long table. “That is what I most wish.”

  “We don’t have your U.S. visa yet. But as soon as we can get it, there may be a way.” And he explained what the captain had shown him.

  Zilberman glanced down at the drawings. “I have a fear of small spaces. What you describe sounds like a coffin.”

  “It’s a closet, vented on all sides. And you wouldn’t have to stay in it for long. It’s just a place to hide in case the ship’s inspected. It’s a way to get aboard the ship, and for the ship to get out of port, without your having to be on a passenger list. It’s a way to avert the need for French exit visas.”

  “I’ll do what I must,” Zilberman said. “How long before I can get a U.S. visa, do you think?”

  “Perhaps two or three months.”

  “So much time?”

  “Yes, and we can’t get our hopes up,” Varian said. “So many plans involving boats have failed.”

  “Must I have papers at all, if I can stow away?”

  “You’ve got to be able to get into the States on the other side.”

  “Perhaps we should just send the drawings.”

  “I love the drawings,” Varian said. “I admire your plan. But my aim is to save human beings. I want to get you and the work to the States. When that happens, I’ll make sure Alfred Barr stages a show everyone will see. Your presence will make it all the more effective. Then I’ll get you to the best printmaker in New York and muster ERC funds for the printing. We can raise thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands. It’s a brilliant idea, Lev. The perfect idea.”

  Zilberman glanced down. “Mademoiselle Gold has been helping me arrange it.”

  “Mademoiselle Gold has an eye,” Varian said. “But I’m afraid I must steal her away for a moment.”

  “I’ll resign myself,” said Zilberman. He raised a hand to his cap, then turned his attention back to the work.

  * * *

  ________

  “No,” said Mary Jayne. “No, and no. I’m certainly not going to chase Grant to Vernet tonight. Not just minutes after I’ve stepped off a prison ship. And neither should you, Varian. You’re exhausted, you’re hungry, and frankly you’re in need of a bath.”

  They were standing in the living room in front of a hot, quick-burning fire. Mary Jayne had finished her drink and mixed another; Varian refused to take one. “We’ve got to go now,” he said. “Lives may be at stake.”

  “Lives are always at stake,” Mary Jayne said. “They’ll be at stake tomorrow.”

  “I’ll go on my own if I have to.”

  Mary Jayne squinted at him. “Do you think Grant’s in some kind of trouble?”

  “I don’t know. That’s my point.”

  “There’s got to be a train tomorrow morning.”

  “There’s one at ten. But how can I wait another night?” He’d said the words aloud; there was no retracting them. It was a kind of admission, a confirmation, though she must have known for some time now. They’d practically discussed it on the ship. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to look at her as she stood impassively before the fire, the drink glowing in her hand.

  “There’s a right way to do things and a wrong,” she said. “One must not always rush in. Where would Grant be, if he were in Pamiers? He would be staying at Les Platanes, the only decent hotel in the area. The place where I was supposed to meet the commandant, the last time I paid a visit to that wretched town.” She frowned at the memory. “Why don’t you go to the office and ring the hotel? If he’s registered, leave a message. Tell him you’ll take the ten o’clock train tomorrow. Then maybe you’ll be able to sleep.”

  He could have kissed her. “I’ll do it at once,” he said.

  “I wish you didn’t have to. You’re exhausted.
You haven’t slept properly for days. But I understand, Varian.” She met his eyes. “I do.”

  “Thank you,” he said, and meant it.

  “And maybe I’ll go to Pamiers with you. Even though Killer won’t like it.”

  “Thank you, Mary Jayne. With all my heart.”

  * * *

  ________

  The long-distance operator had one of those Camarguesque accents that rendered her French almost unintelligible. She was not, Varian finally made out, able to reach any number on the Pamiers exchange due to a service interruption in the area; the telephone wires, he understood, had suffered severe damage in a recent bombing. Urgent messages could be sent by telegram. So he went to send a wire, buttoning his overcoat against the wind.

  He had come to hate the telegraph office on the Canebière, with its pale green walls and high counters, its brass grates separating senders from operators like penitents from their confessors. So often he found himself in the position of a supplicant, asking someone in New York for more time or money, or begging his wife for patience. He hated the narrow little counters where messages were composed; he hated the too-blunt pencils and the too-small spaces on the forms. He hated waiting in line with all the other senders, their faces tight with uncertainty, each with his own private urgency. This afternoon he hated his mission even more than usual. He was guilty of persistent interest in his own matters in the midst of a war, guilty of invasive thinking about a single person when so many hundreds needed his attention. How not to sound desperate, how to compose an appropriate message? LIBERATED FROM SINAÏA. (Mere fact.) CAN HELP YOUR ENDEAVOR. (No further elucidation possible.) SEND WORD AIR BEL. Neat and clean, though what he wanted was to send a cry of fear and longing and explicit desire such as had never crossed a telegraph wire, such as would melt the wire on contact. He presented the message to the priest/confessor behind the grate, paid his four and a half francs, and made it back to the tram line and onto the last tram back to La Pomme, his mind near-blank, his sensations dulled, the darkening scene outside the window a welcome blur. Walking from the tram stop to Air Bel, he was half-aware, as if in the moment between sleep and waking, of passing through the tunnel beneath the tramway as if through a cave in some fairy story, a yawning aperture of chance that could consume or reconfigure. The plane trees along the lane were the legs of giants, Titans left over from the Roman occupation; the garden, silver-green in the wet Mediterranean winter, presented a forbidding tangle of vines. But here was the house at last, here was the kitchen door. How grateful he was for the quiet of Air Bel, the kitchen clean and silent, the salon abandoned, the library darkened, the hallways empty, only a few lights burning behind closed bedroom doors. In his room, that whitewashed cell that gave onto the moonlit garden, Madame Nouguet had left a covered dish; he didn’t care that the cassoulet was cold, nor that it was made with potatoes and turnips instead of sausage, nor that the hunk of bread at its side had ossified; he ate everything and drank the glass of Bordeaux. Blind with exhaustion, he went into the bathroom, stripped off his clothes, bathed; then, already dreaming, he staggered to bed and slept.

  * * *

  ________

  It was seven a.m. when the messenger’s bell woke him. He half-fell out of bed in his haste to get to the window. There was Gussie on his green Motobécane, making his way up the drive. Gussie went to the kitchen door and rang; a moment later, Varian could hear Madame Nouguet scolding him for making so much noise at that hour. By the time Varian made it to the kitchen, wearing only his dressing gown and slippers, Gussie had disappeared. Madame Nouguet regarded Varian’s ensemble and blushed to the roots of her hair as she held out the telegram. She excused herself hastily, claiming duties in the laundry. Varian stood at the window and tore open the envelope.

  THANK GOD YOU ARE SAFE. FEARED YOUR DEPORTATION POINTS WEST. ARRIVED PAMIERS MONDAY. PROGRESS UNCERTAIN. AID WELCOME. TD. GRANT.

  TD: their old double entendre. Te desideravi. I’ve missed you, I’ve wanted you. How it stopped his heart to see it on the page. He might as well go down to the bazaar and have it tattooed upon his chest; it was, in abridged form, the story of his last twelve years. He stood for a long moment looking down into the fog-choked valley, where ravens wheeled in and out of low shreds of cloud.

  There was only one course of action now: get to Pamiers as soon as possible, and Mary Jayne with him. She had intimated it, he thought as he ran up the stairs; she had intimated that she might reward his patience. In his room he filled a small suitcase with pressed shirts and folded slacks and neatly squared-off underclothes. He went downstairs and found a crust of bread and some cheese for breakfast, and washed it down with weak war-coffee. He had scarcely managed the last sip when Mary Jayne herself came down in a navy-blue Robert Piguet traveling suit, a trim leather suitcase in her hand. A single look revealed that she’d been crying.

  “What’s happened, Mary Jayne?”

  She ignored the question. “Why are you sitting here drinking that swill? Don’t we have a train to catch?”

  “You’re joining me, then!”

  “Yes. Only because my dance card happens to be clear today.”

  “I don’t know how to thank you.”

  “Don’t. Thank Killer. Do you know what he’s taken it into his head to do? Desert the Legionnaires. Toss away his false papers. Devote himself full-time to the black market. As if he won’t end up straight in prison.”

  Varian looked up warily. “It sounds like you’ve quarreled.”

  “Oh, most awfully.”

  “I’ve had enough of that kid, Mary Jayne. I won’t have him in this house any longer. I want you to tell him to get out, as soon as possible.”

  “Well, now, let’s not exaggerate, as Lena would say. I do find him useful every now and again.”

  “Well, I wish you wouldn’t!”

  “I’m afraid there’s nothing to be done about it. And we don’t exactly have time to argue. That train leaves in an hour.”

  * * *

  ________

  They caught the ten o’clock local to Pamiers just as it was leaving the station; they chased it halfway down the platform and leapt onto the step of a passenger car. The conductor assumed their haste to be of a romantic nature, and led them down to an enclosed compartment. Once they’d caught their breath and lost it again, smoking a series of Mary Jayne’s gold-tipped cigarettes, they began to speak about Zilberman’s idea, the traveling portfolio of threatened artists’ work. Mary Jayne was of the opinion that Ingrid Warburg and Alfred Barr, well connected though they were, represented too small a scope for the Flight Portfolio. “We have to recruit Peg,” she said, meaning Peggy Guggenheim, who had already pledged two hundred thousand francs to the Centre Américain de Secours, thanks to Mary Jayne’s influence. “She’ll soon be closing her museum at Grenoble, and she’ll want a new pet project.”

  “But Peggy’s not likely to return to the States anytime soon,” Varian said. “What we need is someone on the ground, someone who can champion the cause. Not just at the higher level, like Ingrid and Alfred, but in the trenches.”

  “What about your wife?” Mary Jayne said. “Who could better understand how dire the situation is? Do you think she’d have the inclination?”

  Varian turned to the scene at the window: sheer hills, green winter shoots pushing through the gold lion fur of late fall. “I’m afraid Eileen’s lost patience with my work,” he said. “She’d just ask why I don’t come home and raise the money myself. The ERC has someone they’re planning to send to replace me, she says. She hopes I’ll capitulate. She tells me she believes I can do just as much good, if not more, from our offices on Forty-Second Street. But I’d rather stay and join the Foreign Legion than go home to prattle around a watercooler with those shortsighted nincompoops.”

  “Well, they are still paying your salary,” Mary Jayne said, and laughed. “But I can’t bl
ame you. It’s good to be doing something. I’ve always lived a little at a distance from my life—I don’t know how to explain it any other way. But now there’s no distance.”

  It was just what he’d felt: that here in France, the distance between what he believed and what he did had vanished to nothing. And out of that gravitational collapse had come a new life. Impossible to go home and be the same person. But who would he be, if he ever went home? He put his head against the windowpane and closed his eyes, letting the noise of the train drown the clamor of that question.

  What seemed like moments later they arrived at the foot of Pamiers, a medieval fortress on a slope; in the distance, beneath a string of lenticular clouds, the toothy blue-white ridge of the Pyrenees. And here was the station, with its striped awnings and its rosemary in terra-cotta pots, its vendor’s cart with magazines and cigarettes and apples. They stepped onto the platform and walked down into a little plaza, where a café spread its bug-legged tables across a span of cobblestones. The tables were nearly full. He had to admire a national character that mandated attendance at cafés even in the absence of coffee or pastries. The patrons appeared to be drinking wine (diluted), eating scant rations of bread with oily margarine, and reading news (likely bad) or novels (who knew?). Mary Jayne threw a longing glance toward that familiar scene.

  “We’ve got to get to the hotel,” Varian said.

  “Oh, all right, I suppose we’d better, after rushing here.”

  * * *

  ________

  At the reception desk of the Hôtel Platanes, a clerk in a crisp blue hat informed them that Monsieur Grant was out now, but had left a message for Monsieur Fry: he could be found at the bookshop on the rue de la République, or at the café across the street. Perhaps Mademoiselle and Monsieur would like to ascend to their rooms and make themselves comfortable? The entrance to the hotel restaurant was located in the courtyard, if Mademoiselle and Monsieur required refreshment.