Julie Orringer - The InvisibleBridge

He could see it: She’d been overtaken by something that was like a disease, something that shook her frame and brought a pallor to her skin. He saw it in the way she huddled beneath the blankets in the cottage, the way she stared flat-eyed at the wall. She was serious about going home; she wanted to leave in the morning. For an hour he lay in bed with her, wide awake, until he heard her breath slide into the rhythm of sleep. He didn’t have the heart to be angry at her anymore. If she wanted to go home, he’d take her home. He could gather their things that night and be ready to leave at dawn. Careful not to wake her, he crawled out of bed and began to pack their suitcases. It was good to have something concrete and finite to do. He folded her little things: the cotton dresses, her stockings, her underclothes, her black maillot; he replaced her necklaces and earrings in the satin envelope from which he’d seen her remove them. He tucked her ballet shoes into each other and folded her practice skirts and leotards. Afterward, he put on a jacket and sat alone in the garden. In the weeds beside the driveway, crickets sang a French tune; the song his crickets sang in Konyár had had different high notes, a different rhythm. But the stars overhead were the same. There was the damsel stretched on her rock, and the little bear, and the dragon. He had pointed them out to Klara a few nights earlier; she’d made him repeat them each night until she knew them as well as he did.

They drove back to Paris the next morning. He had helped her get up and dress in the blue morning light; she had wept when she saw he’d packed all their things. “I’ve ruined this holiday for you,” she said. “And today’s your birthday.”

“I don’t care about that,” he said. “Let’s get home. It’s a long drive.”

While she waited in the car he locked the cottage and restored the key to the bird’s nest above the door. For the last time he drove down the winding road toward Nice; the sea glittered as sun began to spill across its pailletted surface. He wasn’t frightened on the road, not after the lessons she’d given him. He drove toward Paris as she sat silently and watched the fields and farms. By the time they’d reached the tangle of streets outside the city, she’d fallen asleep and he had to try to remember how they’d come. The streets had their own ideas; he lost an hour trying to find his way through the suburbs before a policeman directed him to the Porte d’Italie. At last he found his way across the Seine and up the familiar boulevards to the rue de Sévigné. By that time the sun was low in the sky; the dance studio lay in shadow, and the stairs were dark. Klara woke and rubbed her face with her hands. He helped her upstairs and got her into the nightgown she’d forgotten on the bed. She lay on her back and let the tears roll down her temples and onto the pillow.

“What can I do for you?” he asked, sitting beside her. “What do you need?”

“Just to be alone,” she said. “Just to sleep for a while.”

Her tone was strangely flat. This pale woman in the embroidered gown was the ghostly sister of the Klara he knew, the woman who’d raced from her house a week earlier in a duster and driving goggles. It seemed impossible to go home. He didn’t intend to leave her in this fog. Instead he carried her things upstairs from the car, then made her a cup of the linden tea she drank when she had a headache. When he brought it in, she sat up in bed and extended a hand to him. He came to the bed and sat down beside her. She held his eyes with her eyes; a pink flush had spread across her chest. She laid her head on his shoulder and put her arms around his waist. He felt the rise and fall of her chest against his own.

“What a dreadful birthday you’ve had,” she said.

“Not at all,” he said, stroking her hair. “I’ve been with you all day.”

“There’s something for you in the dance studio,” she said. “A birthday present.”

“I don’t need a present,” he said.

“Nonetheless.”

“You can give it to me another time.”

“No,” she said. “You should have it on your birthday, as long as we’re back anyway. I’ll come down with you.” She got out of bed and took his hand. Together they went down the stairs and into the dance studio. Standing against one wall was a sheet-draped object the size and shape of an upright piano.

“My God,” he said. “What is it?”

“Take a look,” she said.

“I don’t know if I dare.”

“Dare.”

He lifted the sheet by the corner and tugged it free. There, with its polished wooden drawing surface tilted toward the window, its steel base engraved with the name of a famous cabinetmaker, was a handmade drafting table as handsome and professional as Pierre Vago’s. At the bottom of the drawing surface was a perfect groove for pencils; on the right side, a deep inkwell. A drafting stool stood beneath the table, its seat and brass wheels gleaming. His throat closed.

“You don’t like it,” she said.

He waited until he knew he could speak. “It’s too good,” he said. “It’s an architect’s table. Not something for a student.”

“You’ll still have it when you’re an architect. But I wanted you to have it now.”

“Keep it for me,” he said. He turned to her and put a hand against her cheek. “If you decide we’re going to be together, I’ll take it home.”

The color faded from her lips and she closed her eyes. “Please,” she said. “I want you to take it now. It comes apart in two pieces. Take it in the car.”

“I can’t,” he said. “Not now.”

“Please, Andras.”

“Keep it for me. Once you’ve had some time to think, you’ll let me know if I should take it or not. But I won’t take it as a memento of you. Do you understand? I won’t have it instead of you.”

She nodded, her gray eyes downcast.

“It’s the best gift I’ve ever gotten in my life,” he said.

And their holiday was at an end. September was coming. He could feel it as he walked home along the Pont Marie, carrying his bag with twelve days’ worth of clothes. September was sending its first cool streamers into Paris, its red tinge of burning. The scent of it blew through the channel of the Seine like the perfume of a girl on the threshold of a party. Her foot in its satin shoe had not yet crossed the sill, but everyone knew she was there. In another moment she would enter. All of Paris seemed to hold its breath, waiting.

HE WOULD HAVE given anything to spend Rosh Hashanah in Konyár that year-to go to synagogue with his father and Mátyás, to eat honey cake at his mother’s table, to stand in the orchard and put a hand on the trunk of his favorite apple tree, the crown of which had always been his refuge when he was frightened or lonely or depressed. Instead he found himself in his attic on the rue des Écoles, nearing the end of his first year in Paris, waiting for Polaner to meet him so they could go to synagogue together on the rue de la Victoire. Four weeks had passed since he’d last spoken to Klara. And as the Jewish year drew to a close, all of Europe seemed to hang from a filament above an abyss. As soon as he had returned to consciousness after Nice, as soon as he’d read the letters waiting for him and made his way through the usual sheaf of newspapers, he’d been reminded that there were worse things happening in Europe than the refusal of Klara Morgenstern to reveal the essential secrets of her history. Hitler, who had flouted the Versailles treaty with his annexation of Austria that past spring, now wanted Czechoslovakia’s border region, the mountain barrier of the Sudetenland, with its military fortifications, its armament plants, its textile factories and mines. What do you think of the chancellor’s newest mania? Tibor had written from Modena. Does he really believe Britain and France will stand idly by while he strips Central Europe’s last democracy of all her defenses? It would be the end of free Czechoslovakia, we can be certain of that.