All day, and all through the week that followed, he worked ceaselessly, opening new files, rewriting old plans, reassuring the refugees who’d been scheduled to leave along the Martinique route that transatlantic shipping couldn’t remain shut down forever. He wished to God that Miriam were there, wished Mary Jayne would come out from wherever she was hiding; he needed them both, needed them just as much as he had at the beginning. He needed Bingham, too, desperately. And he needed Grant, needed him here in this office, needed him when it was time to retreat for a moment from the crush and press of his clients’ demands, needed him on the tram ride home to Air Bel. He found himself unable to think, much less to sleep, in the room he’d shared with Grant. Instead he retreated to Breton and Jacqueline’s old quarters, where he lay awake all night staring at the mobiles Aube had made from twigs and beetle carapaces and shells. The harpsichord sat silent downstairs. Theo and Danny kept their own counsel, worrying late into the night over their little son; Jean Gemähling, mourning the recent departure of Consuelo de Saint-Exupéry, lay in his own room, pining. Every night, beset on all sides by silence, Varian imagined that he might hear Grant’s step in the driveway, imagined that he might hear the kitchen door opening and Grant’s tread on the stairs. But each day he awoke alone, no closer to clarity or insight; and when he wrote to Grant, no answer came.
* * *
________
One morning, after he’d sent the usual plea to the Beauvau by messenger, Lucie Heymann appeared at his office door to announce a call from Edwin Blount. My new boyfriend, he might have said to Grant, had Grant been there. He nodded his thanks to Lucie and picked up the phone. On the line he could hear the usual series of clicks, and Blount’s low, slow breathing; he fancied he could hear the faint crash of waves in the distance, at the bottom of the cliff that overlooked the sea.
“Anyone there?” Blount said. “Hello?”
“Yes, I’m here,” Varian said.
“Ah, good. Well, Fry. Your colleague, Mr. Bénédite, is free, as I understand.”
“Yes. He’ll still need to stand trial, but his lawyer believes he’ll come out on top. And we’ve got you to thank for it, Mr. Blount. You’ve rendered a heroic service to the cause of freedom.”
Blount made a noise of demurral. He had not, Varian imagined, often been called heroic. “Well,” he said, finally. “An Eagle Scout always helps his brother scout.”
“That’s right. And I suppose you’re calling now to see if I’m holding up my end of the bargain.”
“I’m calling to tell you, Mr. Fry, that we’ve just received a wire about you from Vichy.”
“Oh, yes, I’m sure there’ll be many.”
“I consider it my duty to inform you of Vichy’s intent.”
“And what might that be?”
Blount cleared his throat. “Well—here’s how it stands. You’re to be arrested without delay. The Gestapo has been pressuring Vichy to that end.”
“The Gestapo! Haven’t they got anything better to do?”
“If I were you, I wouldn’t consider this a laughing matter.”
“Pardon me, Mr. Blount, but I don’t see the point of being dour when there’s nothing at all I can do about it. I don’t suppose you’re going to rush to my aid, are you?”
“According to our agreement, yours and mine—”
“I’m to give myself over willingly, am I?”
“Now, I didn’t say—”
“I did mention that I didn’t care to go to a concentration camp, didn’t I? Isn’t it still your job to help me stay out of one?”
“I’m doing you the courtesy, Mr. Fry, of informing you of Vichy’s intent. I didn’t have to do it. But as an Eagle Scout—”
“Listen,” Varian said, biting the end of his pencil in contemplation. “We did have an agreement. I can see, under the circumstances, why you’d make no attempt to dissuade Vichy. But would you consider me in the wrong—un-scoutly, if you will—if I asked if that’s really the best you can do?”
“You’re the one who broke the law, Fry. Vichy knows it, and we know it.”
“No one can prove that.”
“We’re not the sovereign power here. We can’t keep Vichy from arresting you, if that’s what they mean to do. I wanted to inform you, that’s all—merely inform you. No one likes a surprise.” A moment of oceanic throat-clearing, followed by the sound of a cigarette lighter scraping repeatedly; Blount’s muttered curse informed Varian that he had either run out of fluid or blunted his flint.
“If you don’t mind my asking, Mr. Blount, what’s the point of telling me they’re coming for me? What’s the point, if you don’t mean to do anything about it?”
“I have nothing more to say on the subject,” the vice-consul said. “I just felt you ought to know. Give you time to put your affairs in order, et cetera.”
“Well, that’s splendid, Edwin. Splendid. I consider myself lucky to have been informed.”
“Yes, well. Glad to be of service.”
“I suppose you’ll get your bonus from Fullerton whether I’m sent to prison or not, as long as I vacate my job and close down the Centre.”
“I can’t comment further,” Blount said.
“I see,” Varian said. “Well, Edwin, thanks ever so much.” He replaced the receiver in its cradle and sat for a long moment looking out the window, at the white sun falling against the hot stones of the building opposite. Vichy could move quickly when it wanted to; it could move like a hawk on the hunt. He contemplated trying to catch a train to somewhere in the countryside that moment, contemplated going into hiding at some out-of-the-way hotel on the coast. He could run home to Air Bel, pack a few things, and be gone. But the thought of leaving Marseille while Grant was still there seemed impossible, insupportable. That was what he was thinking when, a few minutes later, Lucie came to the door with a note summoning him to an audience with Maurice Anne Marie de Rodellec du Porzic, Chief of the Préfecture of the Bouches du Rhône. He was, she said, to appear at du Porzic’s offices unaccompanied at eleven o’clock that morning; failure to comply would result in his immediate arrest.
* * *
________
He couldn’t delay any longer. He had to speak to Grant. He had to speak to him now, this morning, before his meeting with du Porzic, or he would lose his mind. He got up from his desk and straightened his tie. Without a word to Danny or Theo or Jean, he made his way through the crowd of clients, down the stairs, and out onto the street. As he walked the familiar path to the Hôtel Beauvau, a thrum of panic beat in his temples. What if, when he arrived, the beleaguered clerk informed him that Dr. Grant had departed that morning, leaving no forwarding address? What if, on the other hand, Grant consented to see him? What would he say, what would he do in Grant’s presence? At the easiest of times, the stakes with Grant seemed unbearably high; now they seemed crushing, stunning.
The birthmarked clerk wasn’t behind the desk when Varian arrived, nor did the manager appear through his secret mirrored door. Instead, in the seat of power, guarding access to the clientele of the Beauvau, was a fierce-eyed girl with high coiled blond braids, a Gallic version of a Valkyrie. Apparently she’d gotten the message that Monsieur Grant was to be insulated from Monsieur Fry at all costs. When he begged her to telephone Grant’s room and announce him, she told him in no uncertain terms that her manager had instructed her to notify the police if he showed his face at the Beauvau.
“What am I supposed to do?” he said. He hadn’t meant to speak the words aloud, certainly not in that tight and desperate tone; his reflection, in the infinite curving tunnel of mirrors, portrayed a man at the executioner’s door.
“I must ask you to leave at once,” the Valkyrie said.
“I’ll die,” he said, and it felt like the truth.
The Valkyrie’s penciled eyebrows drew together. She seemed, he thought, to b
e assessing the sincerity of the claim he’d just made. He himself didn’t doubt it; he would rather have thrown himself into the port and sunk to the bottom, become part of the general detritus of rusted chains and rotted wood and gangster bones, than been arrested without hope of seeing Grant again. He removed the watch from his wrist, a tonneau-shaped Patek Philippe that had been his grandfather’s. On its dull gold face, skeleton hands of blued steel indicated the hour and minute; a smaller dial sat at 6, ticking the seconds infinitely. Eileen had always talked of giving it to their hypothetical son when he went off to college, a proposition that had elicited in Varian a sense of horrified claustrophobia, as if his life were a narrow path to the grave. He flattened the band of the watch against the countertop and met the young woman’s eyes.
“Well,” she said finally. “I suppose I can’t prevent you from sitting in the bar.”
His gut clenched excruciatingly. “Will you let Dr. Grant know I’m here?”
She gave a curt nod and was about to remove the watch from the countertop when the elevator arrived with a bell-like clang. The girl withdrew her hand as if she’d been burned, and Grant himself stepped from between the mirrored doors of the lift. In four steps he’d crossed the lobby; he took one look at the watch on the counter and apprehended the transaction. With a magician’s swiftness, he swept the watch into his own hand and slipped it into Varian’s trouser pocket, his fingers brushing Varian’s thigh for a burning instant.
“Bonjour, Marie,” he said to the girl, who had flushed a painful crimson. “Any messages for me this morning?”
The Valkyrie opened her mouth and shook her head.
“Well, thanks anyhow,” he said, and turned to Varian. “As it happens, I was just on my way to see you.”
Varian could only nod and clutch the watch in his pocket, a slurry of terror and relief boiling through him. What would he say, what could he say?
“Since you’re here, Tommie, why don’t we go sit in the bar.”
Varian gave another silent nod, then followed Grant across the mirrored lobby and into the hotel brasserie. The place was nautical in theme, floored in yellow wood like a ship’s deck; on the walls hung framed lithographs of three-masted schooners and brave sleek ketches, their spinnakers taut with wind. The gem of the room: a giant glossy sailfish mounted on mahogany, arced in frozen struggle above the fireplace. Through a long bank of windows, patrons could watch the moored boats sashaying on the port. Grant requested a table in the corner of the room, where the windows stood open, admitting a draft that smelled of salt and seaweed.
Varian sat down in a cane-backed chair. His head pulsed with sudden pain; in his midsection, the usual fire. Across from him Grant sat cool as ever, dressed in a linen jacket and a loosely knotted tie of gray silk twill. In the past eight days his color had returned; he had ceased, it seemed, to curl his shoulders around his chest. With his usual languid ease, he flagged the waiter and ordered two Pernods and water. Varian could only look at him in silence, rendered mute by the conundrum in his mind: Grant was all he cared for in the world; Grant had lied to him horribly, for months on end.
“You can’t go waving antique watches around, Tommie,” Grant said, his voice low, admonishing. “In most instances, plain old cash will do.”
“I tried that,” Varian said, his throat full of sand. “Tried everything.” He coughed, but the frictive sensation persisted; he seemed unable to draw a full breath. “The staff here led me to believe you never wanted to see me again.”
“I did give strict orders,” Grant said, a flicker of humor at the corner of his mouth. “That handsome boy, the one with the birthmark, thought me rather cruel for refusing to see my patient. He pleaded more than once on your behalf.”
So Grant knew he’d come here again and again. “You look—a little better. More like yourself, I think. Has the actual doctor…?”
“Oh, I’m all right, for the most part. Kind of you to spare me a trip to the office, though. I still can’t walk far without running out of breath.” His voice was cool, measured; it seemed to hold something, the most vital thing, at a distance.
“But you were coming to meet me,” Varian said. “I’m glad to hear that.”
“Are you? I wasn’t sure you would be.”
“Yes, I’ve been—” What? Lying awake at night, wishing he could reverse the clock? Wishing he’d never made the accusations he’d made? Wishing he’d never come to France? Wishing Grant had gone to conservatory instead of Harvard, or that he, Varian, had never been born? “Thinking about things,” he said, though it was a lie; for the most part he’d been trying not to think about any of it.
“And what have you concluded?”
“Nothing, to be honest. Frankly, I’ve been busy getting Danny out of jail. Danny was in jail—did you know that? And the Martinique route’s broken down. And a new slate of anti-Jewish laws just passed. And Portugal’s stopped issuing transit visas—shall I go on?”
Grant shifted slightly in his chair. “If you want,” he said.
“The Gestapo wants me out of France,” Varian said. “That’s today’s news. Bingham can’t help me anymore. He’s been thrown out too, posted to Lisbon. The guy who took his place loathes me as much as Fullerton does. I’ve been called to see Captain du Porzic this morning, in fact. That’s why I’ve come. I don’t think I can last here much longer.”
Grant’s face remained impassive. “And if you go, what’s to become of the Centre Américain?”
“Danny will take over until he can get his own visas. Then Jean will take the reins. They’re more than capable, both of them. I suppose I’ve been training them for months.”
“So you’ve come to say goodbye, then.”
Varian looked down at the collection of meaningless things on the tabletop: a linen napkin, a silver salt cellar, his own glass of Pernod, untouched. “Yes, I suppose.”
“Well, your timing’s opportune. I was just on my way to say goodbye to you. I leave for Lisbon tomorrow at nine. On Thursday next I’ll fly home on the Yankee Clipper.”
The news entered Varian like a blade. Leaving for Lisbon, the Yankee Clipper: these dire decisions made without his knowledge, when for months they’d scarcely breathed without consulting each other. But then he remembered: “Portugal isn’t issuing transit visas anymore.”
“I’ve already got them.” Grant produced his passport and handed it to Varian, who found all the necessary stamps and visas in order, good for another six days. He held that passport, turning it over in his hands; beside him was the open window, and below it the undulating port.
Grant followed the line of his sight. “No, you don’t, Tom,” he said, with the merest ghost of a smile, and took the passport back.
Skiff, I’ve been horribly mistaken, he wanted to say, but did not. Instead they sat for a protracted moment in silence. And what now? What were they to do?
“I’ve got to meet du Porzic in twenty minutes,” he said.
“That hardly leaves us time to drink ourselves to oblivion,” Grant said. Beneath the linen-draped table he slid his leg along Varian’s, and Varian’s heart nearly broke the cage of his chest.
“I want you to understand,” Grant said. “I’m going home because I have to. I’ve been called to a meeting at Columbia. With Butler, the deans of faculty and academics, and my department chair.”
“Oh, Grant.”
“There’s no telling how it’ll turn out. But I feel pretty sure I’m not being promoted.” He drew an envelope from his jacket pocket and handed it across the table to Varian. Inside was a letter from the dean of faculty, on thick paper stamped with the university seal. In lumine tuo videbimus lumen: in your light we will see light. The letter was terse and evasive, little more than a summons.
“They didn’t waste any time about it, did they?” Varian said.
“Not much.”
�
��I wish I could be there,” he said. “In New York with you, when you have to do that. I wish I could be in that room. Shame them into treating you decently.”
Grant raised his eyes to Varian’s. “That would be rich, wouldn’t it? ‘Yes, it’s true, sirs, I’m a Negro! And, while we’re at it, won’t you say hello to my boyfriend, Varian Fry? Yes, that Fry. The one who’s been saving degenerate artists in Marseille, and running afoul of the French government.’ ”
“Oh, Grant.” Varian covered his mouth with his hand; a harsh sound escaped him, a laugh or a sob. “Should I appear in drag? Fully painted, to enhance the effect?”
“Oh, yes. You’ll be Mademoiselle Vaurien. And sit on my lap throughout.”
“I’ll do it, Grant. I will. I swear to God.”
“Oh,” Grant said. He put a hand over his mouth, and his shoulders shook. “Oh, Tommie. Thank you. Now I can carry that with me when I walk into that room.” He looked up at Varian, his eyes clear, intimate, as if nothing could divide them and never had. “Well. And you looked so grave when I came in. I thought you were bringing me bad news.”
“I was,” Varian said. “It’s been nothing but bad news lately.”
“Danny’s out of jail, at least.”
“For now. But I’m in trouble, Grant. My mission here’s in trouble. I fear I’m going to be sent packing. And now I don’t know where I’ll go, now that you and I—”
Grant looked out toward the port, its light catching the planes of his face, and a recognition seemed to settle on his features, a grim resignation. Nothing had changed, in fact; the distance between them still existed, and was still uncrossable. Varian had still said the things he’d said to Grant, and Grant, having denied them once, seemed to have nothing more to say on the subject.
“Well,” Grant said. “Perhaps you can go underground.”
“That’s what I’ve been thinking. In any case, I won’t see you for some time. Months, most likely.”
Grant nodded. “Maybe that’s for the best,” he said. “Maybe, with a little more time to think about things, you’ll find a way to reconceive me as an honest man.”
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