Julie Orringer - The InvisibleBridge

“I was afraid I’d miss you,” she said, and gave a sigh of relief. She took off her hat and slid onto the banquette across from him. She wore a snug gabardine jacket, closed at the collar with a neat silver pin in the shape of a harp.

“You’re late,” Andras said, feeling the whiskey in his head like a swarm of bees.

“The rehearsal finished ten minutes ago! You ran out before I could tell you what time I could come.”

“I was afraid you’d say you wouldn’t see me at all.”

“You’re quite right. I shouldn’t be here.”

“Why did you come, then?” He reached across the table for her hand. Her fingers were freezing cold, but she wouldn’t let him warm them. She slid her hand away, blushing into the collar of her jacket.

The waiter arrived to ask for their orders, hopeful that the young man would spend more money now that his friend had arrived. “I’ve been drinking whiskey,” he said. “Have a whiskey with me. It’s the drink of American movie stars.”

“I’m not in the mood,” she said. Instead she ordered a Brunelle and a glass of water. “I can’t stay,” she said, once the waiter had gone. “One drink, and then I’ll go.”

“I have something to tell you,” Andras said. “That’s why I wanted you to come.”

“What is it?” she said.

“In Budapest, before I left, I met a woman named Elza Hász.”

Madame Morgenstern’s face drained of color. “Yes?” she said.

“I went to her house on Benczúr utca. She’d seen me exchanging pengő for francs at the bank, and wanted to send a box to her son in Paris. There was another woman there, an older woman, who asked me to carry something else. A letter to a certain C. Morgenstern on the rue de Sévigné. About whom I must not inquire.”

Madame Morgenstern had gone so pale that Andras thought she might faint. When the waiter arrived a moment later with their drinks, she took up her Brunelle and emptied half the glass.

“I think you’re Klara Hász,” he said, lowering his voice. “Or you were. And the woman I met was your mother.”

Her mouth trembled, and she glanced toward the door. For a moment she looked as if she might flee. Then she sank back into her seat, a tense stillness coming over her body. “All right,” she said. “Tell me what you know, and what you want.” Her voice had thinned to a whisper; she sounded, more than anything, afraid.

“I don’t know anything,” he said, reaching for her hand again. “I don’t want anything. I just wanted to tell you what happened. What a strange coincidence it was. And I wanted you to know I’d met your mother. I know you haven’t seen her in years.”

“And you carried a box for my nephew József?” she said. “Have you spoken to him about this? About me?”

“No, not a word.”

“Thank God,” she said. “You can’t, do you understand?”

“No,” he said. “I don’t understand. I don’t know what any of this means. Your mother begged me not to speak to anyone about that letter, and I haven’t. No one knows. Or almost no one-I did show it to my brother when I came home from your mother’s house. He thought it must be a love letter.”

Klara gave a sad laugh. “A love letter! I suppose it was, in a way.”

“I wish you’d tell me what this is all about.”

“It’s a private matter. I’m sorry you had to be involved. I can’t make direct contact with my family in Budapest, and they can’t send anything directly to me. József can’t know I’m here. You’re certain you haven’t told him anything?”

“Nothing at all,” Andras said. “Your mother mentioned that specifically.”

“I’m sorry to make such a drama of it. But it’s very important that you understand. Some terrible things happened in Budapest when I was a girl. I’m safe now, but only as long as no one knows I’m here, or who I was before I came here.”

Andras repeated his vow. If his silence would protect her, he would keep silent. If she had asked him to sign his pledge in blood upon the gray marble of the café table, he would have taken a knife to his hand and done it. Instead she finished her drink, not speaking, not meeting his eyes. He watched the silver harp tremble at her throat.

“What did my mother look like?” she asked finally. “Has her hair gone gray?”

“It’s shot with gray,” Andras said. “She wore a black dress. She’s a tiny person, like you.” He told her a few things about the visit-what the house had looked like, what her sister-in-law had said. He didn’t tell her about her mother’s grief, about the expression of entrenched mourning he had remembered all this time; what good could it have done? But he told her a few things about József Hász-how he’d given Andras a place to stay when he’d first come to town, and had advised him about life in the Latin Quarter.

“And what about György?” she asked. “József’s father?”

“Your brother.”

“That’s right,” she said, quietly. “Did you see him, too?”

“No,” Andras said. “I was there only for an hour or so, in the middle of the day. He must have been at work. From the look of the house, though, I’d say he’s doing fine.”

Klara put a hand to her temple. “It’s rather difficult to take this in. I think this is enough for now,” she said, and then, “I think I’d better go.” But when she stood to put on her coat, she swayed and caught the edge of the table with her hand.

“You haven’t eaten, have you?” Andras said.

“I need to be someplace quiet.”

“There’s a restaurant-”

“Not a restaurant.”

“I live a few blocks from here. Come have a cup of tea. Then I’ll take you home.”

And so they went to his garret, climbing the bare wooden stairs to the top of 34 rue des Écoles, all the way to his drafty and barren room. He offered her the desk chair, but she didn’t want to sit. She stood at the window and looked down into the street, at the Collège de France across the way, where the clochards always sat on the steps at night, even in the coldest weather. One of them was playing a harmonica; the music made Andras think of the vast open grasslands he’d seen in American movies at the tiny cinema in Konyár. As Klara listened, he lit a fire in the grate, toasted a few slices of bread, and heated water for tea. He had only one glass-the jam jar he’d been using ever since his first morning at the apartment. But he had some sugar cubes, pilfered from the bowl at the Blue Dove. He handed the glass to Klara and she stirred sugar into her tea with his one spoon. He wished she would speak, wished she would reveal the terrible secret of her past, whatever it was. He couldn’t guess the details of her story, though he suspected it must have had something to do with Elisabet: an accidental pregnancy, a jealous lover, angry relatives, some unspeakable shame.

A draft came through the ill-fitting casement, and Klara shivered. She handed him the glass of tea. “You have some too,” she said. “Before it gets cold.”

His throat closed with a spasm of emotion. For the first time, she’d addressed him with the familiar te instead of the formal maga. “No,” he said. “I made it for you.” For you: te. He offered it to her again, and she closed her hands around his own. The tea trembled between them in its glass. She took it and set it down on the windowsill. Then she moved toward him, put her arms around his waist, tucked her dark head under his chin. He raised a hand to stroke her back, disbelieving his luck, worrying that this closeness was ill-gotten, the product of his revelation and her stirred emotions. But as she shivered against him he forgot to care what had brought them to that moment. He let his hand move along the curve of her back, allowed himself to trace the architecture of her spine. She was so close he could feel the jolt of her ribcage as she pulled a sharp breath; an instant later she moved away from him, shaking her head.