Julie Orringer - The InvisibleBridge

“I’m not sure you’re qualified to enter this conversation,” Rosen said. “At least Polaner had a petite amie back home. His Krakovian bride-to-be, isn’t that right?” He pushed Polaner’s shoulder, and Polaner blushed again; he’d mentioned a few letters from the girl, the daughter of a woolens manufacturer whom his father expected him to marry. “He’s done it all before, whether he likes to talk about it or not,” Rosen said. “But you, Andras, you’ve never done it.”

“That’s a lie,” Andras said, though it was true.

“Paris is full of girls,” Rosen said. “We should arrange an assignation for you. One of a professional nature, I mean.”

“With whose money?” Ben Yakov said.

“Didn’t artists at one time have benefactors?” Rosen said. “Where are our benefactors?” He stood and repeated the question at full volume to the room at large. A few of the other patrons raised their glasses. But there was not a prospective benefactor among them; they were all students, with their pots of tea and two biscuits, their left-leaning newspapers, their threadbare coats.

“At least I have a job,” Andras said.

“Well, save up, save up!” Rosen said. “You can’t stay a virgin forever.”

At work he ran from one task to another like a sous-chef assisting in the preparation of a twelve-course meal, each task ending just as another was beginning, all of it under the mounting pressure of time. Claudel, the assistant stage manager, was Basque and had a temper that often expressed itself in the throwing of props, which would then have to be fixed before they were needed onstage. As a result the props-master had quit, and the props had fallen into disrepair. Claudel terrorized the prompters and the stagehands, the assistant director and the wardrobe mistress; he even terrorized his own superior, the stage manager himself, Monsieur d’Aubigné, who was too afraid of Claudel’s wrath to complain to Monsieur Novak. But particularly Claudel terrorized Andras, who made a point of being close at hand. Andras knew he didn’t mean any harm. Claudel was a perfectionist, and any perfectionist would have been driven mad by the confusion of the Bernhardt backstage. Messages got lost, the masterless props lay about at random, parts of costumes were misplaced; no one ever knew how long it was until curtain or the end of intermission. It seemed a miracle that the show could be performed at all. His first week there, Andras built pigeonholes for the exchange of notes between stage manager, assistant stage manager, director, cast, and crew; he bought two cheap wall clocks and hung them in the wings; he knocked together a few rough shelves, lined up the props upon them, and marked each spot with the act and scene in which the prop was to be used. Within a few days, a sense of tranquility began to emerge backstage. Whole acts would pass without an outburst from Claudel. The stagehands commented upon the change to the stage manager, who commented upon the change to Zoltán Novak, and Novak congratulated Andras. Emboldened by his success, Andras asked for and received seventy-five francs a week to stock a table with coffee and cream and chocolate biscuits and jam and bread for everyone backstage. Soon his mailbox was stuffed with notes of gratitude.

Madame Gérard in particular seemed to have taken a special interest in Andras. She began to call upon him not only to perform her errands, but also for his company. After the show, when the rest of the actors had gone, she liked to have him sit in her dressing room and talk to her while she removed her makeup. Her démaquillage took so long that Andras came to suspect that she dreaded going home. He knew she lived alone, though he didn’t know where; he imagined a rose-colored flat papered with old show posters. She spoke little about her own life, except to tell him that he’d guessed her origins correctly: She had been born in Budapest, and her mother had taught the young Marcelle to speak both French and Hungarian. But she required Andras to speak only French to her; practice was the best way to master the language, she said. She wanted to hear about Budapest, about the job at Past and Future, about his family; he told her about Mátyás’s penchant for dancing, and about Tibor’s impending departure for Modena.

“And does Tibor speak Italian?” she asked as she rubbed cold cream into her forehead. “Has he studied the language?”

“He’ll learn it faster than I learned French. In school he won the Latin prize three years running.”

“And is he eager to leave?”

“Quite eager,” Andras said. “But he can’t go until January.”

“And what else interests him besides medicine?”

“Politics. The state of the world.”

“Well, that’s excusable in a young man. And beyond that? What does he do in his spare time? Does he have a lady friend? Will he have to leave someone behind in Budapest?”

Andras shook his head. “He works night and day. There’s no spare time.”

“Indeed,” said Madame Gérard, swiping at her cheeks with a pink velvet sponge. She turned a look of bemused inquiry upon Andras, her eyebrows raised in their narrow twin arcs. “And what about you?” she said. “You must have a little friend.”

Andras blushed profoundly. He had never discussed the subject with any adult woman, not even his mother. “Not a trace of one,” he said.

“I see,” said Madame Gérard. “Then perhaps you won’t object to a lunch invitation from a friend of mine. A Hungarian woman I know, a talented instructress of ballet, has a daughter a few years younger than you. A very handsome girl by the name of Elisabet. She’s tall, blond, brilliant in school-gets high marks in mathematics. Won some sort of city-wide math competition, poor girl. I’m certain she must speak some Hungarian, though she’s emphatically French. She might introduce you to some of her friends.”

A tall blond girl, emphatically French, who spoke Hungarian and might show him another side of Paris: He could hardly say no to that. In the back of his mind he could hear Rosen telling him he couldn’t stay a virgin forever. He found himself saying he’d be delighted to accept the invitation to lunch at the home of Marcelle Gérard’s friend. Madame Gérard wrote the name and address on the back of her own calling card.

“Sunday at noon,” she said. “I can’t be there myself, I’m afraid. I’ve already accepted another invitation. But I assure you you’ve got nothing to fear from Elisabet or her mother.” She handed him the card. “They live not far from here, in the Marais.”

He glanced at the address, wondering if the house were in the part of the Marais he had visited with his history class; then he experienced a sharp mnemonic tug and had to look again. Morgenstern, Madame Gérard had written. 39 rue de Sévigné.

“Morgenstern,” he said aloud.

“Yes. The house is at the corner of the rue d’Ormesson.” And then she seemed to notice something strange about Andras’s expression. “Is there a problem, my dear?”

He had a momentary urge to tell her about his visit to the house on Benczúr utca, about the letter he’d carried to Paris, but he remembered Mrs. Hász’s plea for discretion and recovered quickly. “It’s nothing,” he said. “It’s been a while since I’ve had to appear in polite company, that’s all.”

“You’ll do splendidly,” said Madame Gérard. “You’re more of a gentleman than most gentlemen I know.” She stood and gave him her queenly smile, a kind of private performance of her own authority and elegance; then she drew her Chinese robe around her and retreated behind the gold-painted lindens of her dressing screen.

…

That night he sat on his bed and looked at the card, the address. He knew that the world of Hungarian expatriates in Paris was a finite one, and that Madame Gérard was well connected within it, but he felt nonetheless that this convergence must have some deeper meaning. He was certain his memory was correct; he hadn’t forgotten the name Morgenstern, nor the street name rue de Sévigné. It thrilled him to think he would find out if Tibor had been right when he’d guessed that the letter had been addressed to the elder Mrs. Hász’s former lover. When he arrived at the Morgensterns’, would he encounter a silver-haired gentleman-the father-in-law, perhaps, of Madame Morgenstern-who might be the mysterious C? How were the Hászes of Budapest connected with a ballet teacher in the Marais? And how would he refrain from mentioning any of this to József Hász the next time they met?