“What does he want?” Emma said.
“Now?” Hannah replied, her mood light again. “Havana nightclubs. Palm trees. Girls. More girls. So now we go to Havana for a while and have fun. And then I come home to paint.”
“You’re really going there?” Emma said.
“No, no,” Hannah said. “They don’t want to go to Havana, just the nightclubs. It’s always the same nightclub. I went to Ciro’s. They have a long staircase there. You stop at the top when you enter, you stop at the top on your way out- two appearances, you see. All the producers go there. So they see my set and they say, yes, this is a nightclub. Wonderful. Hannah’s done it again. Maybe now I’ll have the Ciro’s touch.”
Connolly watched them as they smoked and talked, a quicksilver flow of gossip, and saw that for Emma it was like leafing through some colorful magazine of the outside world. Selznick’s divorce. The mad sets Dali designed for Spellbound, which Selznick was making because of his own psychoanalysis. Brecht, who never washed. Thomas Mann, who had recreated his Berlin apartment in Santa Monica. The difficulty of photographing Veronica Lake without making her look foreshortened. All messages from that world far from the mesa, where no one worked behind barbed wire and worried about algae in the water, where you could talk about anything. But what did she make of it? And as he watched her he realized, with a start, that she was watching him and that Hannah was aware of them both. They talked around him-he didn’t have to say a word-but Emma would glance over at him secretly, to see what he thought, his expression conversation enough. He became in some curious way their audience, without either of them addressing him directly. The talk was as ephemeral as column filler, and after a while he felt that neither of them was really paying attention, Emma because she was caught up in some disturbance he caused, Hannah because she was watching a drama play out. He felt like someone brought home to dinner on approval and wondered if Emma regretted bringing him, now that it was his approval she seemed to care about. When he lit a cigarette, she was alert to the sound of the match, and when he looked at her through the smoke, she flinched involuntarily, as if she felt him touching her. It was Hannah who rescued them.
“But enough of this foolishness,” she said, standing. “You must think I’m selfish, Mr. Connolly, talking only of myself like this. I’m afraid Emma’s to blame-she likes to listen to me, and you know, I can’t resist that. I don’t see many people. Now you must tell me about you.”
“He works up on the Hill,” Emma said protectively, before Connolly could answer. “Here, let me help you with the washing-up.”
“Ah, then I mustn’t ask any more. So all my chattering, it’s just as well. I know the rules. Emma told you maybe that some of your colleagues lived here at the beginning? With the scientists, no questions.”
Emma was collecting teacups and made no move to correct her, so Connolly said, “That must have been frustrating.”
“For me? Not at all,” Hannah said gaily. “I love secrets. And everyone was so charming. How is Professor Weissmann? Does he still play chess with Dr. Eisler? And that funny boy from New Jersey with the nice wife?”
“I never see them anymore,” Emma said. “Everyone’s scattered. Busy. I never see you anymore, come to that. It’s like people you meet on holiday and then lose touch.”
“Not you, my darling. Here you are, coming to see me off to Havana. And now you want to play hausfrau. Very well, here’s mine too. You wash up and go be nice to Hector, say nice things about me, and I’ll show your friend the ranch and say nice things about you.”
Emma glanced at her, disconcerted. “That won’t take long,” she said.
“That depends on how much he wants to know. You see that I’m a terrible gossip,” she said to Connolly. “Would you like that?”
“Very much,” he said, smiling.
Emma, holding a cup in each hand, gave a helpless shrug. “Do be back for supper.”
Surprisingly, Hannah leaned on his arm as they walked slowly toward the corral, not saying anything, an old couple. Even the silence seemed an unearned intimacy.
“She wants me to like you,” she said finally. They had reached the corral and stood at the fence, looking west toward the mountains.
“Do you?”
“Me? It doesn’t matter. She likes you.”
“Look, I don’t want you to think—”
“Ssh.” She put her finger to her lips. “It’s all right. Sometimes, you know, it’s easier to say something to a stranger. Do you mind if I say something to you?”
He looked at her expectantly.
“Be careful with her. I’ve been worried lately. I knew something was troubling her-now I see it was you.”
“You’re mistaken.”
“No. We can be honest with each other. Like strangers. I can see that you’re-well, ‘in love,’ what’s that? Something for the nightclubs, a fantasy, yes? Something for the children. No. Involved with her. That’s something too, you know. You can’t help it either, I see. You watch her all the time.”
“Do I?” Connolly said, trapped now in her premise, wanting to see where it would go.
She smiled. “Of course. That’s why I’m saying this to you. I think you can be good for her. At first I thought it was the boredom, something to do. The same way she studies those Indians. But now I see it’s more. With Emma, it’s always something more, you know? She can’t be casual. So you cannot be casual either, my friend. Don’t hurt her. She deserves to be happy.”
“Everyone deserves to be happy.”
“Do you think so? Such an American idea. No, not everyone. But this time, yes.” She patted his arm. “So make her happy.”
“She’s in love with her husband.”
“Ach,” she said, waving her hand dismissively. “Don’t be foolish. She’s in love with her own heroism. She got him out, that’s why she married him.”
“Out of Germany?”
“Yes, out of Germany, where else? She didn’t tell you? It was the only way he could leave-become a British citizen. She married him to save his life.”
“They’re still married.”
“Yes, it’s as I say. Never casual. She had an impulse, she does a wonderful thing for him. A favor. A political act, even. Except with Emma, everything is personal, not political. So then? Does she live with that for the rest of her life? Evidently. She follows him to America, to this camp. She plays hausfrau while he goes to the laboratory. She studies her Indians. Anasazi.” She pronounced each syllable of the word, a foreign-language joke. “Is that a life for her? So stubborn. This marriage-what is it? Some duty? I used to ask myself this. Now maybe you’ll give us the answer.”
He felt as if he had been pulled down a rabbit hole between past and future, his leg held in the grasp of her internal logic. To contradict her now seemed itself illogical. Like Alice, he began to doubt his own sense of things, and let go to follow his curiosity. She didn’t know what she was talking about; she might be right.
He must have been staring at her, because now she patted his arm again and said, “Yes, but not today, eh? Enough from this busybody, you think. But you don’t say. You are polite. Not angry, I hope?”
“Neither. I just don’t know what to say.”
She sighed. “Then that is the best answer.” They began to walk back toward the house. “You are right, of course. How can we know anything? We can only meet our destiny and then we know.”
“Do you really believe that?” he said, eager to change the subject.
“Oh yes, of course. I’m a great believer in destiny. All Germans are. Maybe that will make it easier for them when their destiny arrives, now that those idiots have destroyed them.”
“They don’t seem finished yet.”
“A death rattle, my friend. They are destroyed. There will be no Germany left at the end. Nothing. At least it will be the end of the gangsters too.” She tossed her head, as if to shake off her somber mood. “But that is what we’ve been working for, yes? You with your work, me with my palm trees. The end of the gangsters.”