Julie Orringer - The InvisibleBridge

BY THE NEXT MORNING he was dizzy with fever. Heat poured out of him and soaked the bed; then he was shaking with chills beneath his blanket and his jacket and his overcoat and three wool sweaters. He couldn’t eat, couldn’t get up for work, couldn’t go to school. When he got thirsty he drank the cold remains of tea straight from the kettle. When he had to piss he used the chamber pot beneath the bed. On the morning of the second day, when Polaner came looking for him, he didn’t have the strength to tell him to leave, though all he wanted was to be alone. Now it was Polaner who stepped into the role of nurse; he did it as though he’d done it all his life. He made Andras get out of bed and wash himself. He emptied the chamber pot, changed Andras’s sheets. He boiled water and brewed strong tea; he sent the concierge for soup and made Andras eat it. When Andras was clean and dressed and lying exhausted on the freshly made bed, Polaner made him tell him exactly what had happened. He took it all in with careful attention, and judged the situation grave, though not hopeless. The important thing now, he said, was for Andras to get well. There were two projects to be finished for studio. If he couldn’t get out of bed and get back to work, Polaner would suffer for it: They were team projects, and he and Andras were the team. Then there were exams to prepare for: statics and history of architecture. They would be given in ten days’ time. If Andras failed, he would lose his scholarship and be sent home. There was also the small matter of Andras’s job. For two days he’d sent no word to Monsieur Forestier.

Polaner said he would gather their things from the studio-Andras was too depleted from the fever to make the trip to the boulevard Raspail-and they would work on their projects all day. In the afternoon Polaner would go to the set-design studio with a note from Andras begging Monsieur Forestier’s pardon. Polaner would offer to do Andras’s copy work that night. In the meantime Andras would lay out a plan of study for the statics and the history exams.

He had never had a friend like Polaner, and would never have a better one as long as he lived. By the next day his job was secure, his final projects on their way to completion. They had to draw plans for a single-use building, a modern concert hall, and there were still problems to solve in the design: They had chosen a cylindrical shape for the exterior, and had to design a ceiling inside that would send the sound toward the audience without echo or distortion. When they were finished with the plans they would have to build a model. Arranging and rearranging cardboard forms consumed an entire day and night. Polaner didn’t mention going home; he slept on the floor, and was there when Andras woke in the morning.

At half past ten, just as Polaner was getting ready to go home, they heard a rising tread on the stairs. It seemed to Andras as if someone were climbing his very spine, toward the black and painful cavern of his heart. They heard a key in the lock, and the door edged open; it was Klara, her eyes dark beneath the brim of her spring hat.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know you had company.”

“Monsieur Polaner is on his way home,” Polaner said. “Monsieur Lévi has had enough of me for now. I taxed his brain with architecture all night, though he was still recovering from a fever.”

“A fever?” Klara said. “Has the doctor been here?”

“Polaner’s been taking care of me,” Andras said.

“I’ve been a poor doctor,” Polaner said. “He looks like he’s lost weight. I’ll be off before I do any further damage.” He put on his own spring hat, of such a fashionable shape and color that you could miss the place where he’d resewn the brim to the crown, and he slipped into the hall, closing the door quietly behind him.

“A fever,” Klara said. “Are you feeling better now?”

He didn’t answer. She sat down in the wooden chair and touched the cardboard walls of the concert hall. “I should have told you about Zoltán,” she said. “This was a terrible way for you to find out. And there might have been worse ways. You worked together. Marcelle knew.”

He hated to think of it, of Madame Gérard knowing all and seeing all. “It was a bad enough way to find out,” he said.

“I want you to know it’s over,” Klara said. “I didn’t see him two weeks ago, and I won’t if he asks again.”

“I’m sure you’ve said that every time.”

“You have to believe me, Andras.”

“You’re still tied to him. You live in the house he bought you.”

“He made the down payment for me,” Klara said. “But I paid for the rest. Elisabet doesn’t know the details of our finances. Perhaps she doesn’t want to believe I support us. That would make it difficult for her to justify the way she behaves toward me.”

“But you did love him,” Andras said. “You still do. You took up with me to make him jealous, just as you did with those others. Marcel. And that writer, Édouard.”

“It’s true that when Zoltán turned away from me, I didn’t sit home alone. Not for long, in any case. When he claimed to be moving on with his life, I moved on with mine. But I didn’t care for Marcel or Édouard the way I cared for him, so I went back.”

“So it’s true, then,” Andras said. “You do love him.”

She sighed. “I don’t know. Zoltán and I are very close, or we were, once. But we didn’t give ourselves to each other. He couldn’t, because of what he felt for Edith; and I didn’t, also because of that. In the end I decided I didn’t want to be someone’s mistress for the rest of my life. And he decided we couldn’t keep on with it if he and Edith were to have a child.”

“And now?”

“I haven’t seen him since we made those decisions. Since November.”

“Do you miss him?”

“Sometimes,” she said, and folded her hands between her knees. “He was a dear friend, and he’s been a great help with Elisabet. She’s fond of him, too, or was. He’s the closest thing she’s had to a father. When we decided to end it, she felt as though he’d left both of us. She blamed me for it. I think she hoped I was seeing him again, those nights when I was with you.”

“And what now? What if he asks you again? You were together for eleven years, nearly a third of your life.”

“It’s finished, Andras. You’re in my life now.”

“Am I?” he said. “I thought you were finished with me. I didn’t know if you could forgive me for keeping Elisabet’s business from you.”

“I don’t know if I can,” she said, without a hint of humor. “Elisabet had no right to put you in that position, but once she did, you should have told me immediately. The man is five years older than she is-a rich American, studying painting at the Beaux-Arts on a lark. Not someone who’s likely to treat her kindly, or take her seriously. And worse than that, he knows my nephew.”

“You can hardly hold that against him,” Andras said. “I believe your nephew knows everyone between the ages of sixteen and thirty in the Quartier Latin.”

“In any case, it’s got to stop. I don’t intend to let that young man prove himself dishonorable.”

“And what about what Elisabet wants?”

“I’m afraid that’s beside the point.”

“But Elisabet won’t see it that way. If you oppose her, she’ll only become more resolved.”

Klara shook her head. “Don’t try to tell me how to raise that child, Andras.”

“I don’t claim to know how. But I do know how I felt at sixteen.”

“I told myself that was why you’d kept her secret,” Klara said. “I knew you felt a certain empathy with her, and I think it’s rather sweet of you, actually. But you’ve got to imagine my position, too.”