Early in July, in his old room in Berlin, Ramsay opened the letters that had been kept for his return. There was a letter from Katharine, written at the end of May, that must have arrived the day he departed for Switzerland. The great conductor’s widow wrote that now the rain had stopped. She had seen young Italians in spotless shirts hanging about waiting for the cinemas to open — their Sundays were sad. On the promenades, by the lake, in the towns, couples are strolling. The sky changes color; the girls’ white skirts are flattened against their legs. The lake is harsh-looking. The wind shakes the trees. Flower petals are strewn on the grass, and it is like the end of a season instead of the beginning. This was a letter written before she had ever met him. He felt buoyant and lightheaded tearing it to shreds. He was amazed at how simple it became. He was not sure if he had left Sabine, for example, or if she had rejected him. She had said, “Oh, I like you, but now is enough,” spitting grape seed into her palm; but Ramsay had his ticket to Switzerland, bought that very day. What his father would like would be to start again, to arrive at Bonaventure, but how can he? The station is no longer there. “Lamb of God, Sheep of God,” sings a woman, and the Sally Ann band is nearby. Very attractive, very nostalgic, he said to the remains of Katharine’s letter, but what about the pension and the smell of mediocrity? What about your cook in the kitchen, with frightened eyes? We drove slowly, crawling, because Katharine had seen a white orchis somewhere. Did anyone dare say this was a waste of time? The orchis was a straggly poor thing with sparse anemic flowers.… Surely he had passed a test safely and shown he was immune to the inherited blight?
Only afterward did he think that he might be mistaken, but that day, the day he arrived in Berlin, he was triumphant because he sat with his back to the window and did not know or care what the weather was like outside.
Virus X
I
A bunch of holly hanging upside down at the entrance to her hotel was the first thing Lottie Benz saw in all of Paris that seemed right to her. Even a word like “hotel” was subject to suspicion, since it was attached to a black façade in no way distinguished from the rest of the street. The people walking on the street did not look as if they had sisters or brothers or childhood friends, and their clothes and haircuts in no manner indicated to her a station in life. The New Look had spread from this place, but none of the women appeared to have given it a thought. As for the men, alike in their gray raincoats, only their self-absorbed but inquisitive faces kept them from seeming unemployed. Lottie, whose mother had made the dress she was wearing from a Vogue pattern, could have filled the back seat of her taxi with polka dots, the skirt was so wide. Stepping down, she shook order into the polka dots and her mother’s ankle-length Persian-lamb coat, lent for the voyage. That was when she saw the holly. Even as the taxi-driver plucked every bit of change from her outstretched hand, she turned to this one familiar thing. A city that knew about holly would know about Christmas, true winter, everything.
That day, which was Tuesday, December 9, 1952, was laid on with a light brush. The street had been cut out of charcoal-colored paper with extremely fine scissors. Lottie had come here out of a tempest of snow. She drew a breath of air that seemed mild — her first breath of Paris. It swept into her lungs and was immediately converted into iron. She withdrew her hand, relieved of its francs, and pressed it against her chest.
Two boys passed her, walking in step, without a glance at Lottie stranded, the taxi grinding out and away, or the bags the driver had dumped upon the curb. One boy said to the other, in an American accent, “If people depress you, why do you bother seeing them?” The iron weight shifted as she bent to pick up her suitcases. An old man in porter’s uniform watched Lottie through the frosted glass door. His eye appeared as part of the pattern of lilies etched on the glass, and then his nose. He consented to hold open the door. Lottie offered him a tip, which he pocketed. She had been advised to tip for consideration, however slight, no matter how discourteously shown. In a place where Americans were said to be hated because of the Korean War, she intended to put up a show for her own country, which was Canada. She smiled. The hotel, or France, personified by the woman at the desk with frizzy red hair, did not care. Lottie conveyed with a second smile that it was of no importance.
For the first time in her life she was compelled to put her name to a police questionnaire. Bending over the form, she wrote “Charlotte Maria,” and wanted to put “Lottie” in brackets, but there was no room. Her home address — the Princess Pat Apartments, in Winnipeg — also seemed to want explaining. She could have written reams of explanation about everything, had there been space. She imagined a policeman reading her answers attentively. Next to “Profession” she wrote “none yet.” The woman with frizzy hair made her cross this out and write “student” in its place. Lottie gave up the questionnaire, and with it her new blue passport.
Three messages awaited her. First, a letter from her mother, written four days before Lottie left home. Though sent with loving intention, so that Lottie would have news the instant she arrived, it contained no news. As for Kevin, he had cabled, “MISS YOU ALREADY LOVE,” a few hours after her plane took off. Supposing he discovered twenty hours later that he did not miss her at all? She examined the cable gravely. The last message was from a girl named Vera Rodna. It welcomed Lottie to Paris, and gave a telephone number. Upstairs, in her ice-cold, beige-colored hotel room, Lottie tore all three messages across, then found there was no wastebasket.
A sunbeam revealed dust on the window and dust on the floor but, curiously, none in the air. (Perhaps in this place they deliberately allowed dust to settle. Was this better? Better for Lottie — for her asthma, her chronic bronchitis, her fragile lungs?) The bed, the cupboard containing a washbasin, the wardrobe that contained one bent wire hanger were all clean. There were no pillows, window shades, towels, or drinking glass. There were any number of mirrors, however, evenly shaded with dust, and velvet curtains that she accepted as luxurious.
Wondering why she was noticing so much, checking herself lest she become introspective or moody, she remembered that this was the first time she had ever been anywhere alone. The notes she was taking mentally were for future letters — the first to Dr. Keller, her thesis director, the second most likely for Kevin. She unpacked her new cake of Palmolive, her toothbrush, her unworn dressing gown with rose-pink petal neckline. A hot bath, she learned, from a notice posted on the back of the door, would cost three hundred and sixty francs, which was more than a dollar. Lottie was to live on a Royal Society scholarship, supplied out of Canadian funds frozen abroad. Any baths from now on would be considered pampering. She intended to profit from this winter of opportunities, and was grateful to her country for having provided it, but in no sense did she desire to change or begin a new life.