Julie Orringer - The InvisibleBridge

“So?” he said. “What’s the news, then?”

“Elisabet’s been confined to her room,” Andras said. “Her mother won’t let her out until she apologizes to me.”

“For what?”

“Never mind. It’s complicated. The thing is, Elisabet won’t apologize. She’d rather die.”

“Why is that?”

“Well, I’m afraid I’m the one who blew the whistle on the two of you. When Elisabet was out late the other night, her mother was frantic. I had to tell her Elisabet might be with you. Now it’s all out in the open. And her mother didn’t take kindly to the idea of her having a gentleman friend.”

Paul took a long draw of his cigarette and blew a gray cloud into the courtyard. “I’m relieved, to tell you the truth,” he said. “The secrecy was getting a little stifling. I’m wild about the girl, and I hate”-he seemed to search his mind for the French phrase-“sneaking around. I like to be the guy in the white cowboy hat. Do you understand me? Are you a fan of the American western?”

“I’ve seen a few,” Andras said. “Dubbed in Hungarian, though.”

Paul laughed. “I didn’t know they did that.”

“They do.”

“So you’re here on a peace mission? You want to help us, now that you’ve mucked everything up?”

“Something like that. I’d like to act as a go-between. To earn Elisabet’s trust again, if you will. I can’t have her hate me forever. Not if her mother and I are going to keep seeing each other.”

“What’s the plan, then?”

“You can’t pay a visit to Elisabet, but I can. I’m sure she’d want to hear from you. I thought you might want to send a note.”

“What if her mother finds out?”

“I plan to tell her,” Andras said. “I predict she’ll come around to you eventually.”

Paul took a long American drag on his cigarette, seeming to consider the proposition. Then he said, “Listen to me, Lévi. I’m serious about this girl. She’s like no one else I know. I hope this isn’t just going to make things worse.”

“At the moment, I’m not sure they could get much worse.”

Paul stubbed his cigarette against the marble step, then kicked it down into the dirt. “All right,” he said. “Wait here. I’ll go write a note.” He got to his feet and offered Andras a hand up. Andras stood and waited, watching a pair of finches browse for seeds in a clump of lavender. He looked over his shoulder to make sure no one saw him, took out his pocketknife, and cut a sheaf of stems. A length of cotton string torn from the strap of his canvas satchel served to tie them. A few minutes later, Paul came downstairs with a kraft envelope in his hand.

“There’s a note,” Paul said, and handed it to him. “Good luck to us both.”

“Here goes nothing,” Andras said. His sole English phrase.

When he arrived the next day at noon, Klara was teaching a private student. It was Mrs. Apfel who opened the door. Her white apron was stained with purple juice, and she had a pair of bruised-looking moons under her eyes, as though she hadn’t slept in days. She gave Andras a tired frown; she seemed to expect nothing from him but more trouble.

“I’m here to see Elisabet,” Andras said.

Mrs. Apfel shook her head. “You’d better go home.”

“I’d like to speak to her,” he said. “Her mother knows why I’m here.”

“Elisabet won’t see you. She’s locked herself in her room. She won’t come out. Won’t even eat.”

“Let me try,” Andras said. “It’s important.”

She knit her ginger-colored eyebrows. “Believe me, you don’t want to try.”

“Give me a tray for her. I’ll take it in.”

“You won’t have any better luck than the rest of us,” she said, but she turned and led him up the stairs. He followed her into the kitchen, where a fallen blueberry cake stood cooling on an iron rack. He stood over it and breathed its scent as Mrs. Apfel made an omelet for Elisabet. She cut a fat slice of the cake and set it on a plate with a square of butter.

“She hasn’t eaten a thing in two days,” Mrs. Apfel said. “We’re going to have to get the doctor here before long.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Andras said. He took the tray and went down the hall to Elisabet’s room, where he knocked the corner of the tray twice against the closed door. From within, silence.

“Elisabet,” he said. “It’s Andras. I brought your lunch.”

Silence.

He set the tray down in the hall, took Paul’s envelope from his bag, pressed it flat, and slipped it under Elisabet’s door. For a long while he heard nothing. Then a faint scraping, as though she were drawing the note closer. He listened for the rustle of paper. There it was. More silence followed. Finally she opened the door, and he stepped in and set the tray on her little desk. She gave the food a contemptuous glance but wouldn’t look at Andras at all. Her hair was a dun-colored tangle, her face raw and damp. She wore a wrinkled nightgown and red socks with holes in the toes.

“Close the door,” she said.

He closed the door.

“How did you get that letter?”

“I went to see Paul. I thought he’d want to know what had happened to you. I thought he might want to send you a note.”

She gave a shuddering sigh and sat down on the bed. “What does it matter?” she said. “My mother’s never going to let me leave the house again. It’s all over with Paul.” When she raised her eyes to him there was a look he’d never seen in them before: grim, exhausted defeat.

Andras shook his head. “Paul doesn’t think it’s all over. He wants to meet your mother.”

Elisabet’s eyes filled with tears. “She’ll never meet him,” she said.

She was exactly Mátyás’s age, Andras thought. She would have cut her teeth when he’d cut his teeth, walked at the same time, learned to write during the same school year. But she was no one’s sister. She had no age-mate in that house, no one she could think of as an ally. She had no one with whom to divide the intensity of her mother’s scrutiny and love.

“He wants to know you’re all right,” Andras said. “If you write back to him, I’ll take the note.”

“Why would you?” she demanded. “I’ve been so hateful to you!” And she put her head against her knees and cried-not from remorse, it seemed to him, but from sheer exhaustion. He sat down in the desk chair beside the bed, looking out the window into the street below, where one set of posters touted the Jardin des Plantes and another set advertised Abel Gance’s J’accuse, which had just opened at the Grand Rex. He would wait as long as she wanted to cry. He sat beside her in silence until she was finished, until she’d wiped her nose on her sleeve and pushed her hair back with a damp hand. Then he asked, as gently as possible, “Don’t you think it’s time to eat something?”

“Not hungry,” she said.

“Yes, you are.” He turned to the tray of food on the desk and spread the butter on the blueberry cake, took the napkin and laid it on Elisabet’s knees, set the tray before her on the bed. A quiet moment passed; from below they could hear the triple-beat lilt of a waltz, and Klara’s voice as she counted out the steps for her private student. Elisabet picked up her fork. She didn’t set it down again until she’d eaten everything on the tray. Afterward she put the tray on the floor and took a piece of notepaper from the desk. While Andras waited, she scribbled something on a page of her school notebook with a blunt pencil. She tore it out, folded it in half, and thrust it into his hand.

“There’s your apology,” she said. “I apologized to you and to my mother, and to Mrs. Apfel for being so awful to her these past few days. You can leave it on my mother’s writing desk in the sitting room.”