“Where are we going?” she said, smiling up at him.
“I’m walking you home.”
“All right,” she said. “It’s a beautiful night.” And it was. A May breeze came up the channel of the Seine as they crossed the bridges toward the Marais. The sidewalks were still full of men and women in evening clothes; no one seemed ready to give up the night. As they walked, Andras entertained the impossible fantasy that when they reached Klara’s house they would climb the stairs together and move noiselessly down the hall to her bedroom, where they would fall asleep together in her white bed. But at Number 39 they found the lights ablaze; Mrs. Apfel ran downstairs at the sound of Klara’s key and told her that Elisabet had not yet been home.
Klara’s eyes widened with panic. “It’s past three!”
“I know,” Mrs. Apfel said, twisting her apron. “I didn’t know where to find you.”
“Oh, God, what could have happened? She’s never been this late.”
“I’ve been all over the neighborhood looking for her, Madame.”
“And I’ve been out all this time! Oh, God. Three in the morning! She said she was just going to a dance with Marthe!”
A panicked hour followed, during which Klara made a series of telephone calls and learned that Marthe hadn’t seen Elisabet all night, that the hospitals had admitted no one by the name of Elisabet Morgenstern, and that the police had received no report of foul play involving a girl of Elisabet’s description. When she’d hung up the phone, Klara walked up and down the parlor, her hands on her head. “I’ll kill her,” she said, and then burst into tears. “Where is she? It’s nearly four o’ clock!”
It had occurred to Andras that Elisabet was most likely with her blond American, and that the reason for her absence was in all probability similar to the reason for Klara’s late return. He’d sworn to keep her secret; he hesitated to speak his suspicions aloud. But he couldn’t watch Klara torture herself. And besides that, it might be dangerous to hesitate. He imagined Elisabet in peril somewhere-drink-poisoned in the aftermath of one of József’s parties, or alone in a distant arrondissement after a dance-hall night gone wrong-and he knew he had to speak.
“Your daughter has a gentleman friend,” he said. “I saw them together one night at a party. We might find out where he lives, and check there.”
Klara’s eyes narrowed. “What gentleman friend? What party?”
“She begged me not to tell you,” Andras said. “I promised her I wouldn’t.”
“When did this happen?”
“Months ago,” Andras said. “January.”
“January!” She put a hand against the sofa as if to keep herself upright. “Andras, you can’t mean that.”
“I’m sorry. I should have told you sooner. I didn’t want to betray Elisabet’s trust.”
The look in her eyes was pure rage. “What is this person’s name?”
“I know his first. I don’t know his last. But your nephew knows him. We can go to his place-I’ll go up, and you can wait in the cab.”
She took up her light coat from the sofa, and a moment later they were running down the stairs. But when they opened the door they found Elisabet on the doorstep, holding a pair of evening shoes in one hand, a cone of spun-sugar candy in the other. Klara, standing in the doorway, took a long look at her, at the shoes, the cone of candy; it was clear she hadn’t come from an innocent evening with Marthe. Elisabet, in turn, cast a long look at Andras. He couldn’t hold her gaze, and in that instant she seemed to understand that he had betrayed her; she turned an expression of startled outrage upon him, then pushed past him and her mother and ran up the stairs. A few moments later they heard her bedroom door slam.
“We’ll talk later,” Klara said, and left him standing in the entryway, having earned the furious contempt of both Morgensterns.
“I think you ought to know what kind of woman my mother is,” Elisabet said.
She sat on a bench in the Tuileries and Andras stood before her; two days had passed since he’d last seen Klara, and no word had come from the rue de Sévigné. Then that afternoon, Elisabet had surprised him in the courtyard of the École Spéciale, causing Rosen and Ben Yakov to think she must be the mysterious woman he’d been seeing all that time-the woman they’d never met, whom he’d mentioned only in the vaguest terms during their conversations at the Blue Dove. When they emerged from studio and saw Elisabet standing in the courtyard, her cold eyes fixed upon Andras, her arms crossed over the bodice of her pale green dress, Rosen gave a whistle and Ben Yakov raised an eyebrow.
“She’s an Amazon,” he whispered. “How do you scale her in bed?”
Only Polaner knew this wasn’t the woman Andras loved-Polaner, who, thanks to Andras’s ministrations, and Klara’s, and the unwavering friendship of Rosen and Ben Yakov, had returned to the École Spéciale and entered his classes again. Only Polaner was privy to the secret of Andras’s relationship; though he had never met Elisabet, he knew as much about Klara’s history and family as Andras did himself. So when this tall, powerful girl had appeared in the courtyard of the École Spéciale, shooting cold electric fire in Andras’s direction, he guessed in an instant who she was. He distracted Rosen and Ben Yakov with a request for tea at the student café, seeing no other alternative but to leave Andras to his fate.
At the gates of the school, Elisabet turned and led Andras down the boulevard Raspail without a word. All the way to the Tuileries she stayed two steps ahead of him. She had drawn her hair into a tight ponytail; it beat a rhythm against her back as she walked. He followed her down Raspail to Saint-Germain, and they crossed over the river and into the Tuileries. She led him down paths awash in gold and lilac and fuchsia, through the too-fragrant profusion of May flora, until they reached what must have been the park’s only dismal corner: a black bench in need of repainting, a deflowered flowerbed. Behind them swept the rush of traffic on the rue de Rivoli. Elisabet sat down, crossed her arms again, and gave Andras a hate-laced stare.
“This won’t take long,” she said. And then she told him he ought to know what kind of woman her mother was.
“I know what kind of woman she is,” Andras said.
“You told her the truth about Paul and me. And now I’m going to tell you the truth about her.”
She was angry, he reminded himself. She would do whatever she could to hurt him, would tell whatever lies it suited her to tell. In a sense, he owed it to her to listen; he had betrayed her, after all.
“All right,” he said. “What do you want to tell me?”
“I suppose you think you’re my mother’s first lover since my father.”
“I know she’s led a complicated life,” he said. “That’s not news.”
Elisabet gave a short, hard laugh. “Complicated! I wouldn’t say so. It’s simple, once you know the pattern. I’ve seen pathetic men fawning over her for as long as I can remember. She’s always known what she wanted from them, and what she was worth. How do you think she got the apartment and the studio? By dancing her heart out?”
It was all he could do not to slap her. He dug his nails into the palms of his hands. “That’s enough,” he said. “I won’t listen to this.”
“Someone has to tell you the truth.”
“Your mother doesn’t take me for a fool, and neither should you.”
“But you are a fool, you stupid fool! She’s playing a game with you, using you to make another man jealous. A real man, an adult, one with a job and money. You can read about it yourself.” She produced a sheaf of envelopes from her leather schoolbag. A masculine hand; Klara’s name. She took out another sheaf, and another. Stacks and stacks of letters. She peeled an envelope from the top of the pile, extracted the letter, and began to read.