Julie Orringer - The InvisibleBridge

“Must art be practical?”

The man laughed. “No, indeed.” And then: “Do you go to the theater?”

“Not often enough.”

“You’ll have to come to the Sarah-Bernhardt, then. Present my card at the box office and tell them I sent you. Say you’re a compatriote of mine.” He extracted a card from a gold case and handed it to Andras. NOVAK Zoltán, metteur en scène, Théâtre Sarah-Bernhardt.

Andras had heard of Sarah Bernhardt but knew little about her. “Did Madame Bernhardt perform there?” he asked. “Or”-more hesitantly-“does she still?”

The man folded the paper wrapper of his pretzel. “She did,” he said. “For many years. Back then it was called Théâtre de la Ville. But that was before my time. Madame Bernhardt is long dead, I’m afraid.”

“I’m an ignoramus,” Andras said.

“Not at all. You remind me of myself as a young man, off to Paris for the first time. You’ll be fine. You come from a fine family. I saw the way your brother looked out for you. Keep my card, in any case. Zoltán Novak.”

“Andras Lévi.” They shook hands, then returned to their railway cars-Novak to the first-class wagon-lit, Andras to the lesser comforts of third class.

It took him another two days to get to Paris, two days during which he had to travel through Germany, into the source of the growing dread that radiated across Europe. In Stuttgart there was a delay, a mechanical problem that had to be fixed before the train could go on. Andras was dizzy with hunger. He had no choice but to exchange a few francs for reichsmarks and find something to eat. At the exchange counter, a gap-toothed matron in a gray tunic made him sign a document affirming that he would spend all the exchanged money within the borders of Germany. He tried to enter a café near the station to buy a sandwich, but on the door there was a small sign, hand-lettered in Gothic characters, that read Jews Not Wanted. He looked through the glass door at a young girl reading a comic book behind the pastry counter. She must have been fifteen or sixteen, a white kerchief on her head, a thin gold chain at her throat. She raised her eyes and smiled at Andras. He took a step back and glanced down at the reichsmark coins in his hand-on one side an eagle with a wreathed swastika in its claws, on the other the mustachioed profile of Paul von Hindenburg-then back over his shoulder at the girl in the shop. The reichsmarks were nothing more than a few drops of blood in the country’s vast economic circulatory system, but suddenly he felt desperate to be rid of them; he didn’t want to eat the food they could buy him, even if he found a shop where Juden were not unerwünscht. Quickly, making sure no one saw what he was doing, he knelt and dropped the coins into the echoing mouth of a storm drain. Then he returned to the train without having eaten anything, and rode hungry through the final hundred kilometers of Germany. From the platform of every small-town German station, Nazi flags fluttered in the slipstream of the train. The red flag spilled from the topmost story of buildings, decorated the awnings of houses, appeared in miniature in the hands of a group of children marching in the courtyard of a school beside the tracks. By the time they crossed the border into France, Andras felt as though he’d been holding his breath for hours.

They passed through the rolling countryside and the little half-timbered villages and the interminable flat suburbs and finally the outer arrondissements of Paris itself. It was eleven o’clock at night before they reached the station. Struggling with his leather satchel, his overcoat, his portfolio, Andras made his way down the aisle of the train and out onto the platform. On the wall opposite, a mural fifty feet high showed serious young soldiers, their eyes hooded with determination, leaving to fight the Great War. On another wall hung a series of cloth banners that depicted a more recent battle-a Spanish one, Andras guessed from the soldiers’ uniforms. The overhead loudspeakers crackled with French; among the travelers on the platform, the low buzz of French and the lilt of Italian crossed the harsher cadences of German and Polish and Czech. Andras scanned the crowd for a young man in an expensive overcoat who seemed to be looking for someone. He hadn’t asked for a description or a photograph of József. It hadn’t occurred to him that they might have trouble finding each other. But an increasing number of passengers filled the platform, and Parisians ran to greet them, and József failed to appear. Amid the crush Andras caught a glimpse of Zoltán Novak; a woman in a smart hat and a fur-collared coat threw her arms around him. Novak kissed the woman and led her away from the train, and porters followed with his luggage.

Andras retrieved his own suitcase and the enormous box for József. He stood and waited as the crowd became even more dense and then began to dissipate. Still no brisk-looking young man stepped forward to conduct him into a life in Paris. He sat down on the wooden crate, suddenly lightheaded. He needed a place to sleep. He needed to eat. In a few days’ time he was supposed to appear at the École Spéciale, ready to begin his studies. He looked toward the row of doors marked SORTIE, at the lights of cars passing on the street outside. A quarter of an hour rolled by, and then another, without any sign of József Hász.

He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out the heavy card on which the elder Mrs. Hász had written her grandson’s address. This was all the direction he had. For six francs Andras recruited a walrus-faced porter to help him load his luggage and József’s enormous box into a taxi. He gave the driver József’s address and they rushed off in the direction of the Quartier Latin. As they sped along, the taxi driver kept up a steady stream of jocose French, of which Andras understood not a word.

He was hardly aware of what they passed on the way to József Hász’s. Fog tumbled in billows through the light of the streetlamps, and wet leaves blew against the windows of the cab. The gold-lit buildings spun by in a rush; the streets were full of Saturday night revelers, men and women with their arms slung loosely around each other. The cab sped over a river that must have been the Seine, and for an instant Andras allowed himself to imagine that they were passing over the Danube, that he was back in Budapest, and that in a short time he’d find himself home at the apartment on Hársfa utca, where he could climb the stairs and crawl into bed with Tibor. But then the taxi stopped in front of a gray stone building and the driver climbed out to unload Andras’s luggage. Andras fumbled in his pocket for more money. The driver tipped his hat, took the francs Andras offered, and said something that sounded like the Hungarian word bocsánat, I’m sorry, but which Andras later understood to be bon chance. Then the cab pulled away, leaving Andras alone on a sidewalk of the Quartier Latin.

JÓZSEF HÁSZ’S BUILDING was of sharp-edged sandstone, six stories with tall casements and ornate cast-iron balconies. From the top floor came a blast of hot jazz, cornet and piano and saxophone dueling just beyond the blazing windows. Andras went to the door to ring the bell, but the door had been propped open; in the vestibule a cluster of girls in close-fitting silk dresses stood drinking champagne and smoking violet-scented cigarettes. They gave him hardly a glance as he dragged his luggage inside and pushed it against the wall. With his heart in his throat he stepped forward to touch one of the girls on the sleeve, and she turned a coy eye toward him and raised a painted brow.

“József Hász?” he said.

The girl raised one finger and pointed toward the very top of the oval staircase. “Là-bas,” she said. “En haut.”