Julie Orringer - The InvisibleBridge

“Different in what way?”

“Less confident, perhaps. Less mature. Maybe even less intelligent, which should indicate to you how small-minded I’ve become. I consider myself a Jew, with my occasional observances, but I think of truly observant Jews as old-fashioned and myopic. Evidence of my ignorance, I suppose.”

“And Ben Yakov? Has he been here?”

“He spent most of Shabbos with us,” Klara said. “He’s been terribly kind and respectful, if a bit anxious. This morning he brought the rabbi to meet her, and they made all the plans for the wedding. Afterward, privately, he begged me to tell him if she seemed at all unhappy.”

“And what did you say?”

Klara arranged the teacups and saucers on a blue tray. “I told him she seemed fine, given the circumstances. I know she misses her parents. She showed me their photograph and wept. But I don’t think she regrets what she’s done.” She measured the tea into a strainer and lowered it into the pot. “Of course, Elisabet has been difficult. She’s suffering from jealousy. I’m terrified she’ll run off at any moment to marry her American. But this morning she told me she wanted to make the cake, which is something.” She shook her head and gave him a wry half smile. “And what about your brother? Is he well? I worried when you didn’t come yesterday.”

Andras paused before he spoke, running his hand along the edge of the tea tray. “He’s exhausted from overwork. And he’s been ill, but not dangerously so. He’s been sleeping almost constantly, and when he’s awake he burns through my handkerchiefs like wildfire.” He raised his eyes to Klara. “He’s concerned about our situation. I told him everything yesterday.”

She lowered her eyes. “Is he sorry we’re engaged?”

“Oh, no. He’s sorry about what happened to you. And he’s sorry you can’t go home to your family.” He touched the handle of one of the fragile cups and noticed for the first time that the pattern of her china was almost identical to her mother’s. “Of course, he’s worried about how our parents will take the news. But he doesn’t oppose our engagement. He knows what I feel for you.”

She put her arms around him and sighed. “I didn’t want to bring you this unhappiness.”

“Stop that at once,” he said, and kissed her bruise-colored eyelids.

When they returned to the sitting room they found Elisabet making a list of cake ingredients at her mother’s desk while Tibor sat on the sofa beside Signorina di Sabato, speaking to her in rapid Italian. He leaned toward her, his eyes steady upon hers, his hands trembling on his knees as he spoke. Signorina di Sabato shook her head, then shook it again more emphatically as she bent over her sewing. Finally she fixed her needle in the ivory silk and looked up at Tibor with something like dismay.

“Mi dispiace,” she said. “Mi dispiace molto.”

Tibor sat back and scrubbed his face with both hands. He glanced at the tea tray, at the clock on the mantel, and finally at Andras. “What time are you expected at studio?” he asked.

Andras wasn’t expected at any particular time, and Tibor knew it; this was Sunday, and he was going in simply because he needed to work. But Tibor was looking at him with such fixed concentration that Andras knew he had to respond with some concrete projection of their remaining time at Klara’s.

“Half an hour from now,” he said. “Polaner will be waiting.”

“Half an hour!” Klara said. “You should have told me. There’s no time for tea.”

“Yes, we should be off, I’m afraid,” Tibor said. He thanked Klara for her kindness and voiced the hope that he would see her again soon. As they put on their coats in the hallway, Andras wondered if Signorina di Sabato would let them leave without offering a word of farewell. But just before they went down, she appeared in the hallway with a hand on her chest as though she were trying to mute her heartbeat. She paused before Tibor and spoke a few sentences in such warm insistent Italian that Andras thought she might burst into tears. Tibor made an unintelligible reply and went down the stairs.

“What was that about?” Andras asked once they were out on the street. “What did she say?”

“She thanked me for the book,” Tibor said, and refused to speak another word all the way to the École Spéciale.

Ben Yakov married his Florentine bride on the coldest day of the year. A fine frozen mist was falling outside the Synagogue de la Victoire; Signorina di Sabato, in her white silk gown and icy veil, seemed dressed in a coalescence of winter air. But inside the synagogue it was hot and close, and Andras could feel the warmth emanating from the bride’s body as she entered the wedding canopy. Her features were hidden beneath the layers of the veil, but he could see her hands trembling as she circled Ben Yakov seven times. Andras exchanged a look with Rosen, who held another of the wedding canopy poles, and with Polaner, who held a third; the fourth canopy-bearer was Tibor himself. Ben Yakov was resplendent in his groom’s cloak; like the tallis, the kittel was pure white to serve as a reminder of death. The cloak was meant to be used someday as his shroud. After the rabbi had said a blessing over the wine, Ben Yakov placed a ring on Ilana’s finger and declared that she was consecrated to him according to the laws of Moses and Israel. In accordance with the custom, she remained silent beneath her veil and would not give Ben Yakov a ring of his own until after the ceremony. Ben Yakov’s uncles and grandfathers were called to the wedding canopy to recite the Seven Blessings. Andras could feel tension gathering in the sanctuary as they spoke, could sense it like a rise in barometric pressure; beneath the solemnity of the Hebrew words he felt the congregation’s awareness that this was an elopement, an act of rebellion on the part of the bride. And there was another sensation, too, a darker sense of anticipation: Before them stood a virgin who would not be a virgin for long.

When the uncles and grands-pères had taken their turns, and the wine had been blessed again, Ben Yakov broke the wedding cup beneath his heel. The bride lifted her veil at last as if she’d been startled by the sound, and the small party of guests sang siman tov u’mazal tov. And then everyone went to the rue de Sévigné for the bridal luncheon.

In the dining room there was a filet of roasted salmon, a wedding challah, steaming dishes of red potatoes and sweet golden noodles; there was costly white asparagus from Morocco, a bowl of oranges from Spain, and, on its own side table, the astonishing cake Elisabet had baked: a splendid three-tiered confection decorated with sugar beads and silver candy leaves. In the bedroom just on the other side of the dining-room wall, Madame and Monsieur Ben Yakov were spending their half hour of ritual seclusion. A violinist and a clarinet player entertained some of the guests in the sitting room, and others stood drinking white wine and admiring the luncheon dishes.

In the kitchen, Tibor had concerned himself with the care of a child who had slipped on a patch of ice outside. Andras helped him bandage the girl’s cut knee and clean the abrasions on her palms. She was a small cousin of Ben Yakov’s, dark-eyed and somber in a blue velvet dress; she seemed to relish the close attention of two such finely dressed young men, and when they had finished applying the bandages she instructed them to stay with her until she was better. She began a game with Tibor in which she would point to an object in the kitchen and call out the French word, to which Tibor would respond with the corresponding word in Hungarian; she seemed to find every Hungarian word hilarious. Andras was grateful for the distraction. He had begun to suspect that something momentous and unspeakable had passed between Tibor and Signorina di Sabato on the train from Florence. Andras and Tibor had spent the past week in what should have been enjoyable pursuits-they’d gone to the cinema and to a jazz show in Montmartre; they’d had a night of drinking with Rosen and Polaner and Ben Yakov to mark the end of the groom’s bachelorhood; they had accompanied Ben Yakov to the tailor to pick up his wedding suit, and had helped to lay in supplies at the couple’s apartment-but Tibor had been distant and abstracted through all of it, often receding into silence when Ilana’s name arose in conversation. Today he had been in a black mood, cursing his shoelace when it broke, railing at the chill of the water in the basin, nearly shouting at Andras when Andras had hurried him along toward Klara’s after the ceremony. But his attendence upon the little girl had calmed him; he seemed more like himself now, playing the game she’d invented.