Julie Orringer - The InvisibleBridge

“Worse,” Andras said, and smiled. “But I didn’t live at home, so my mother was spared.”

“I’ve threatened to send her to boarding school, but she knows I don’t have the heart. Nor the money, for that matter.”

“Well,” he said. “Chamonix. How long will she be there?”

“Ten days,” she said. “The longest she’s been gone from home.”

“Then I suppose it’ll be January before I see you again,” Andras said. He heard himself say it aloud-maga, the singular Hungarian you-but by that time it was too late, and in any case Madame Morgenstern hadn’t seemed to notice the slip. With the excuse that it was time for him to go to work, he got up to take his coat and hat from the rack at the top of the stairs. But she stopped him with a hand on his sleeve.

“You’re forgetting the Spectacle d’Hiver,” she said. “You’ll come, won’t you?”

Her students’ winter recital. He knew it was next week, of course. It was to take place at the Sarah-Bernhardt on Thursday evening; he was the one who had designed the posters. But he hadn’t expected to have any excuse to attend. He wasn’t scheduled to work that night, since The Mother would already have closed for the holidays. Now Madame Morgenstern was looking at him in quiet anticipation, her hand burning through the fabric of his coat. His mouth was a desert, his hands glacial with sweat. He told himself that the invitation meant nothing, that it fell perfectly within the bounds of their acquaintance: as a friend of the family, as a possible suitor of Elisabet, he might well be asked to come. He mustered a response in the affirmative, saying he’d be honored, and they executed their weekly parting ritual: the coat-rack, his things, the stairs, a chaste goodbye. But at the threshold she held his gaze a moment longer than usual. Her eyebrows came together, and she held her mouth in its pensive pose. Just as she seemed about to speak, a pair of red-jacketed schoolgirls ran down the sidewalk chasing a little white dog, and they had to move apart, and the moment passed. She raised a hand in farewell and stepped inside, closing the door behind her.

THAT YEAR, in her studio on the rue de Sévigné, Claire Morgenstern had taught some ninety-five girls between the ages of eight and fourteen, three of the oldest of whom would soon depart for professional training with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. She had been preparing the children for the Spectacle d’Hiver for two months now; the costumes were ready, the young dancers schooled in the ways of snowflakes, sugarplums, and swans, the winter-garden scenery in readiness. That week Andras’s advertising poster appeared all over town: a snowflake child in silhouette against a starry winter sky, one leg extended in an arabesque, the words Spectacle d’Hiver trailing the upraised right hand like a comet tail. Every time he saw it-on the way to school, on the wall opposite the Blue Dove, at the bakery-he heard Madame Morgenstern saying You’ll come, won’t you?

By Wednesday, the evening of the dress rehearsal, he felt he couldn’t wait another day to see her. He arrived at the Sarah-Bernhardt at his usual hour, carrying a large plum cake for the coffee table. The corridors backstage were thronged with girls in white and silver tulle; they surged around him, blizzardlike, as he slipped into the backstage corner where the coffee table was arranged. With his pocketknife he cut the plum cake into a raft of little pieces. A group of girls in snowflake costumes clustered at the edges of the curtain, waiting for their entrance. As they tiptoed in place, they cast interested glances at the coffee table and the cake. Andras could hear a stage manager calling for the next group of dancers. Madame Morgenstern-Klara, as Madame Gérard called her-was nowhere to be seen.

He watched from the wings as the little girls danced their snowflake dance. The girl whose father had come late was among that group of children; when she ran back into the wings after her dance, she called to Andras and showed him that she had a new pair of glasses, this one with flexible wire arms that curled around the backs of her ears. They wouldn’t fall off while she danced, she explained. As she kicked into a pirouette to demonstrate, he heard Madame Morgenstern’s laugh behind him.

“Ah,” she said. “The new glasses.”

Andras allowed himself a swift look at her. She was dressed in practice clothes, her dark hair twisted close against her head. “Ingenious,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady. “They don’t come off at all.”

“They come off when I want them to,” the girl said. “I take them off at night.”

“Of course,” Andras said. “I didn’t mean to suggest you wore them always.”

The girl rolled her eyes at Madame Morgenstern and raced to the coffee table, where the other snowflakes were devouring the plum cake.

“This is a surprise,” Madame Morgenstern said. “I didn’t expect to see you until tomorrow.”

“I have a job here, in case you’ve forgotten,” Andras said, and crossed his arms. “I’m responsible for the comfort and happiness of the performers.”

“That cake is your doing, I suppose?”

“The girls don’t seem to object.”

“I object. I don’t allow sweets backstage.” But she gave him a wink, and went to the table to take a piece of plum cake herself. The cake was dense and golden, its top studded with halved mirabelles. “Oh,” she said. “This is good. You shouldn’t have. Take some for yourself, at least.”

“I’m afraid it wouldn’t be professional.”

Madame Morgenstern laughed. “You’ve caught me at a rather busy time, I’m afraid. I’ve got to get the next group of girls onstage.” She brushed a snow of gold crumbs from her hands, and he found himself imagining the taste of plum on her fingers.

“I’m sorry I disturbed you,” he said. He was ready to say I’ll be off now, ready to leave her to the rehearsal, but then he thought of his empty room, and the long hours that lay between that night and the next, and the blank expanse of time that stretched into the future beyond Thursday-time when he’d have no excuse to see her. He raised his eyes to hers. “Have a drink with me tonight,” he said.

She gave a little jolt. “Oh, no,” she whispered. “I can’t.”

“Please, Klara,” he said. “I can’t bear it if you say no.”

She rubbed the tops of her arms as if she’d gotten a chill. “Andras-”

He mentioned a café, named a time. And before she could say no again, he turned and went down the backstage hallway and out into the white December evening.

…

The Café Bédouin was a dark place, its leather upholstery cracked, its blue velvet draperies lavendered with age. Behind the bar stood rows of dusty cut-glass bottles, relics of an earlier age of drinking. Andras arrived there an hour before the time he’d mentioned, already sick with impatience, disbelieving what he’d done. Had he really asked her to have a drink with him? Called her by her first name, in its intimate-seeming Hungarian form? Spoken to her as though his feelings might be acceptable, might even be returned? What did he expect would happen now? If she came, it would only be to confirm that he’d acted inappropriately, and perhaps to tell him she could no longer admit him to her house on Sunday afternoons. At the same time he was certain she’d known his feelings for weeks now, must have known since the day they’d gone skating in the Bois de Vincennes. It was time for them to be honest with each other; perhaps it was time for him to confess that he’d carried her mother’s letter from Hungary. He stared at the door as if to will it off its hinges. Each time a woman entered he leapt from his chair. He shook his father’s pocket watch to make sure nothing was loose, wound it again to make sure it was keeping time. Half an hour passed, then another. She was late. He looked into his empty whiskey glass and wondered how long he could sit in this bar without having to order a second drink. The waiters drifted by, throwing solicitous glances in his direction. He ordered another whiskey and drank it, hunched over his glass. He had never felt more desperate or more absurd. Then, finally, the door opened again and she was before him in her red hat and her close-fitting gray coat, out of breath, as if she’d run all the way from the theater. He leapt from his chair.