Julie Orringer - The InvisibleBridge

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Julie Orringer's astonishing first novel – eagerly awaited since the publication of her heralded best-selling short-story collection, How to Breathe Underwater ('Fiercely beautiful' – The New York Times) – is a grand love story and an epic tale of three brothers whose lives are torn apart by war.
Paris, 1937. Andras Lévi, a Hungarian Jewish architecture student, arrives from Budapest with a scholarship, a single suitcase, and a mysterious letter he has promised to deliver to C. Morgenstern on the rue de Sévigné. As he becomes involved with the letter's recipient, his elder brother takes up medical studies in Modena, their younger brother leaves school for the stage – and Europe 's unfolding tragedy sends each of their lives into terrifying uncertainty. From the Hungarian village of Konyár to the grand opera houses of Budapest and Paris, from the lonely chill of Andras's garret to the enduring passion he discovers on the rue de Sévigné, from the despair of a Carpathian winter to an unimaginable life in forced labor camps and beyond, The Invisible Bridge tells the unforgettable story of brothers bound by history and love, of a marriage tested by disaster, of a Jewish family's struggle against annihilation, and of the dangerous power of art in a time of war.

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None of it was news to Andras. For the past month, Ilana had been living under Klara’s roof again, occupying the other half of Klara’s bed. Klara had offered to take care of her while she recovered; Ilana had gone to the rue de Sévigné when she’d left the hospital, and hadn’t gone home since. She was miserable, she told Klara; she’d come to understand that Ben Yakov didn’t love her, at least not as he once had. She understood that he felt caged by their marriage. She’d long suspected that he was seeing someone else. When Ben Yakov went to visit her at Klara’s, they would sit together in the front room, scarcely saying a word; what was there to say? She was often inconsolable with grief over the baby, a grief Ben Yakov was surprised to find he shared; he grieved, too, Klara said, for the loss of a certain idea of himself. And then there was the unanswerable question of what might be next for Ilana. On the other side of her recovery was a blank page. There was nothing to keep her in Paris now, but she didn’t know how her parents would receive her if she went home. Her letters to them had gone unanswered.

Andras hadn’t mentioned Ilana’s situation in his own letters to Tibor. He hadn’t wanted to worry his brother, nor, on the other hand, to raise Tibor’s hopes. But a week earlier, Ben Yakov and Ilana had met at Klara’s to discuss how they might extract themselves from their marriage. Ilana told Ben Yakov they might be granted a divorce if the doctor would attest that she could no longer bear children. It was uncertain whether that was really true, but the doctor might be persuaded to say so. Ben Yakov had agreed to pursue that avenue. Once they’d made the decision they both seemed to feel some relief. Ilana’s health began to improve, and Ben Yakov went back to the studio to make up the work he’d missed that spring. But now that the first meeting with the rabbi was approaching, Ben Yakov had broken down. The possibility of divorce would soon become reality, evidence of what a disaster he’d made of Ilana’s life, and his own.

As the four of them drank together, Ben Yakov laid himself bare without shame. Not only had his marriage with Ilana fallen apart; the beautiful Lucia, tired of waiting, had left him too. She was spending the summer under the tutelage of a master architect in New York, and there were rumors that the architect had fallen in love with her and that she might be leaving the École Spéciale for a design school in Rhode Island. The rumors had arrived through a string of mutual friends. Lucia herself hadn’t written to Ben Yakov since she’d left Paris.

At the end of the evening, after they’d spilled onto the sidewalk outside the Blue Dove, Andras volunteered to take Ben Yakov home. Rosen and Polaner clapped Ben Yakov on the back and expressed the hope that he’d feel better in the morning.

“Oh, I’ll feel grand,” Ben Yakov said, and the next moment he bent over beside a lamppost and sent a stream of vomit into the gutter.

Andras gave him a handkerchief and helped him clean himself; then he put an arm around Ben Yakov’s shoulders and led him home. At the door there was some fumbling for a key, and as Ben Yakov searched he came dangerously close to crying. At last he located the key in his shirt pocket, and Andras helped him upstairs. The place looked exactly as Andras had imagined: as though the person responsible for making it habitable had departed weeks before. Dirty plates choked the sink, the geraniums on the windowsill had died, newspapers and books lay everywhere, and on the unmade bed there were croissant flakes and piles of discarded clothes. Andras made Ben Yakov sit in the chair beside the bed while he stripped the linens and replaced them with fresh ones. He made Ben Yakov take off his soiled shirt. That was as much as he could manage; the rest of the place saddened and daunted him. Worst of all was the little table with its empty teacups and its crust of bread: Andras recognized a tablecloth edged with forget-me-nots, Klara’s wedding gift to the bride.

Ben Yakov crawled into bed and turned off the light, and Andras picked his way to the door. The ancient lock confounded him. He bent to it and fiddled with a rusted latch.

“Lévi,” Ben Yakov said. “Are you still there?”

“I’m here,” Andras said.

“Listen,” he said. “Write to your brother.”

Andras paused with his hand on the doorknob.

“I’m not an idiot,” Ben Yakov said. “I know what happened between the two of them. I know what happened on the train.”

“What do you mean?” Andras said.

“Please, don’t-don’t try to shield me, or whatever it is you’re doing. It’s insulting.”

“How do you know what happened on the train?”

“I know. I could tell something was wrong when they got here. And she confessed, one night when I’d said some cruel things to her. But it was already obvious. She tried-to fight it, I mean. She’s a good girl. But she fell in love with him. That’s all. I’m not the sort of man he is, Andras, you ought to know that.” He stopped and said, “Oh, God-,” and then pulled the chamber pot from beneath the bed and threw up into it. He stumbled to the bathroom in the hallway and returned, wiping his face with a towel. “Write him,” he said. “Tell him to come see her. But don’t tell me what happens, all right? I don’t want to know. And I can’t see you for a while. I’m sorry, really. I know it’s not your fault.” He got into bed, turned over to face the wall. “Go home now, Lévi.” His voice was muffled against the pillow. “Good of you to look after me. I’d have done the same for you.”

“I know you would have,” Andras said. He tried the stubborn latch again; this time the door opened. He went home to the rue des Écoles, took out a notebook, and began to draft a letter to his brother.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR. The S.S. Île de France

ELISABET’S ELOPEMENT was not really an elopement in the true sense of the word; by the time it happened, Klara had known of her impending departure for months. Paul Camden came to lunch nearly every Sunday afternoon in his quest to earn her trust and favor. In his slow French with its flattened vowels, he told Klara about his family home in Connecticut, where his mother raised and trained show horses; about his father’s position as the vice president of an energy conglomerate in New York; about his sisters, who were both in school at Radcliffe and who would love Elisabet. But the problem remained of what Camden père and mère would think of their son’s returning home with a moneyless Jewish girl of obscure parentage. The best solution, Paul thought, was for the wedding to take place before they left for New York. It would be simpler to travel as husband and wife; once they reached America, the fait accompli of their marriage would make everything clear to his parents, whatever their objections. Paul believed they would welcome Elisabet once they’d gotten to know her. But Klara begged that they wait to get married until after they’d arrived, until Paul had revealed everything and had a chance to bring them around to the idea. If he married Elisabet without consulting them first, Klara was certain they’d react by cutting off their son. In any case, as a safeguard against that eventuality, Paul had begun saving half of the astonishing sum his father’s accountant sent him each month. He had moved to a smaller apartment and begun to take his meals at a student dining club, rather than having them sent in by restaurants; he had stopped adding to his wardrobe and had bought used books for his classes. He had learned these economies from Andras, who had found him to be profoundly ignorant of the most basic principles of frugality. He had never heard of buying day-old bread, for example, and had never polished his own shoes nor washed his own shirts; he was amazed that a man might have his hat reblocked rather than buy a new one.

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