Julie Orringer - The InvisibleBridge

He dragged his luggage and the massive box into the lift, and took it as high as it would go. At the top, he stepped out into a crush of men and women, of smoke and jazz; the entirety of the Latin Quarter, it seemed, had assembled at József Hász’s. Leaving his luggage in the hall, he stepped in through the open door of the apartment and repeated the question of Hász’s name to a series of drunken revelers. After a labyrinthine tour of high-ceilinged rooms he found himself standing on a balcony with Hász himself, a tall, loose-limbed young man in a velvet smoking jacket. Hász’s large gray eyes rested on Andras’s in an expression of champagne-tinged bemusement, and he asked a question in French and raised his glass.

Andras shook his head. “I’m afraid it’s got to be Hungarian for now,” he said.

József squinted at him. “And which Hungarian are you, exactly?”

“Andras Lévi. The Hungarian from your mother’s telegram.”

“What telegram?”

“Didn’t your mother send a telegram?”

“Oh, God, that’s right! Ingrid said there was a telegram.” József put a hand on Andras’s shoulder, then leaned in through the door of the balcony and shouted, “Ingrid!”

A blond girl in a spangled leotard pushed out onto the balcony and stood with one hand on her hip. A rapid French exchange ensued, after which Ingrid produced from her bosom a folded telegram envelope. József extracted the slip, read it, looked at Andras, read it again, and fell into a paroxysm of laughter.

“You poor man!” József said. “I was supposed to meet you at the station two hours ago!”

“Yes, that was the idea.”

“You must have wanted to kill me!”

“I might still,” Andras said. His head was throbbing in time with the music, his eyes watering, his insides twisting with hunger. It was clear to him he couldn’t stay at József Hász’s, but he could hardly imagine venturing out now to find another place to spend the night.

“Well, you’ve done well enough without me so far,” József said. “Here you are at my place, where there’s enough champagne to last us all night, and plenty of whatever else you like, if you take my meaning.”

“All I need is a quiet corner to sleep in. Give me a blanket and put me anywhere.”

“I’m afraid there’s no quiet corner here,” József said. “You’ll have to have a drink instead. Ingrid will get you one. Follow me.” He pulled Andras into the apartment and placed him under the care of Ingrid, who produced what must have been the last clean champagne flute in the building and poured Andras a tall sparkling glassful. The bottle sufficed for Ingrid herself; she toasted Andras, gave him a long smoky kiss, and pulled him into the front room, where the pianist was faking his way through “Downtown Uproar” and the partygoers had just started to dance.

In the morning he woke on a sofa beneath a window, his eyes draped in a silk chemise, his head a mass of cotton wool, his shirt unbuttoned, his jacket rolled beneath his head, his left arm stinging with pins and needles. Someone had put an eiderdown over him and opened the curtains; a block of sunlight fell across his chest. He stared up at the ceiling, where the floral froth of a plaster medallion curled around the fluted brass base of a light fixture. A knot of gold branches grew downward from the base, bearing small flame-shaped bulbs. Paris, he thought, and pushed himself up on his elbows. The room was littered with party detritus and smelled of spilled champagne and wilted roses. He had a vague recollection of a prolonged tête-à-tête with Ingrid, and then of a drinking contest with József and a broad-shouldered American; after that he could remember nothing at all. His luggage and the crate for József had been dragged inside and stacked beside the fireplace. Hász himself was nowhere to be seen. Andras rolled from the sofa and wandered down the hall to a white-tiled bathroom, where he shaved at the basin and bathed in a lion-footed tub that dispensed hot water directly from the tap. Afterward he dressed in his only clean shirt and trousers and jacket. As he was searching for his shoes in the main room, he heard a key in the lock. It was Hász, carrying a pastry-shop box and a newspaper. He tossed the box on a low table and said, “Up so soon?”

“What’s that?” Andras said, eyeing the ribbon-tied box.

“The cure for your hangover.”

Andras opened the box to find half a dozen warm pastries nestled in waxed paper. Until that moment he hadn’t allowed himself to realize how desperately hungry he was. He ate one chocolate croissant and was halfway through another before he thought to offer the box to his host, who refused, laughing.

“I’ve been up for hours,” József said. “I’ve already had my breakfast and read the news. Spain ’s a wreck. France still won’t send troops. But there are two new beauty queens competing for the title of Miss Europe: the dark and lovely Mademoiselle de Los Reyes of Spain, and the mysterious Mademoiselle Betoulinsky of Russia.” He tossed the newspaper to Andras. Two sleek ice-cold beauties in white evening gowns gazed from their photographs on the front page.

“I like de Los Reyes,” Andras said. “Those lips.”

“She looks like a Nationalist,” József said. “I like the other.” He loosened his orange silk scarf and sat back on the sofa, spreading his arms across its curving back. “Look at this place,” he said. “The maid doesn’t come until tomorrow morning. I’ll have to dine out today.”

“You ought to open that box. I’m sure your mother sent you something nice for dinner.”

“That box! I forgot all about it.” He brought it from across the room and pried open the top with a butter knife. Inside were a tin of almond cookies; a tin of rugelach; a tin into which an entire Linzer torte had been packed without a millimeter to spare; a supply of woolen underclothes for the coming winter; a box of stationery with the envelopes already addressed to his parents; a list of cousins upon whom he was supposed to call; a list of things he was supposed to procure for his mother, including certain intimate ladies’ garments; a new opera glass; and a pair of shoes made for him by his shoemaker on Váci utca, whose talents, he said, were unparalleled by those of any cobbler in Paris.

“My brother works at a shoe store on Váci utca,” Andras said, and mentioned the name of the shop.

“Not the same one, I’m afraid,” József said, a hint of condescension in his tone. He cut a slice of the Linzer torte, ate it, and pronounced it perfect. “You’re a good man, Lévi, dragging this cake across Europe. How can I repay the favor?”

“You might tell me how to set up a life here,” Andras said.

“Are you sure you want to take instruction from me?” József said. “I’m a wastrel and a libertine.”

“I’m afraid I’ve got no choice,” Andras said. “You’re the only person I know in Paris.”

“Ah! Lucky you, then,” József said. As they ate slices of Linzer torte from the tin, he recommended a Jewish boardinghouse and an art-supply store and a student dining club where Andras might get cheap meals. He didn’t dine there himself, of course-generally he had his meals sent up from a restaurant on the boulevard Saint-Germain-but he had friends who did, and found it tolerable. As for the fact that Andras was enrolled at the École Spéciale and not the Beaux-Arts, it was regrettable that they wouldn’t be schoolmates but probably just as well for Andras; József was a notoriously bad influence. And now that they had solved the problem of setting up Andras’s life in Paris, didn’t he want to come out to the balcony to have a smoke and look at his new city?

Andras allowed József to lead him through the bedroom and through the high French doors. The day was cold, and the previous night’s fog had settled into a fine drizzle; the sun was a silver coin behind a scrim of cloud.