“What a dreadful birthday you’ve had,” she said.
“Not at all,” he said, stroking her hair. “I’ve been with you all day.”
“There’s something for you in the dance studio,” she said. “A birthday present.”
“I don’t need a present,” he said.
“Nonetheless.”
“You can give it to me another time.”
“No,” she said. “You should have it on your birthday, as long as we’re back anyway. I’ll come down with you.” She got out of bed and took his hand. Together they went down the stairs and into the dance studio. Standing against one wall was a sheet-draped object the size and shape of an upright piano.
“My God,” he said. “What is it?”
“Take a look,” she said.
“I don’t know if I dare.”
“Dare.”
He lifted the sheet by the corner and tugged it free. There, with its polished wooden drawing surface tilted toward the window, its steel base engraved with the name of a famous cabinetmaker, was a handmade drafting table as handsome and professional as Pierre Vago’s. At the bottom of the drawing surface was a perfect groove for pencils; on the right side, a deep inkwell. A drafting stool stood beneath the table, its seat and brass wheels gleaming. His throat closed.
“You don’t like it,” she said.
He waited until he knew he could speak. “It’s too good,” he said. “It’s an architect’s table. Not something for a student.”
“You’ll still have it when you’re an architect. But I wanted you to have it now.”
“Keep it for me,” he said. He turned to her and put a hand against her cheek. “If you decide we’re going to be together, I’ll take it home.”
The color faded from her lips and she closed her eyes. “Please,” she said. “I want you to take it now. It comes apart in two pieces. Take it in the car.”
“I can’t,” he said. “Not now.”
“Please, Andras.”
“Keep it for me. Once you’ve had some time to think, you’ll let me know if I should take it or not. But I won’t take it as a memento of you. Do you understand? I won’t have it instead of you.”
She nodded, her gray eyes downcast.
“It’s the best gift I’ve ever gotten in my life,” he said.
And their holiday was at an end. September was coming. He could feel it as he walked home along the Pont Marie, carrying his bag with twelve days’ worth of clothes. September was sending its first cool streamers into Paris, its red tinge of burning. The scent of it blew through the channel of the Seine like the perfume of a girl on the threshold of a party. Her foot in its satin shoe had not yet crossed the sill, but everyone knew she was there. In another moment she would enter. All of Paris seemed to hold its breath, waiting.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. Synagogue de la Victoire
HE WOULD HAVE given anything to spend Rosh Hashanah in Konyár that year-to go to synagogue with his father and Mátyás, to eat honey cake at his mother’s table, to stand in the orchard and put a hand on the trunk of his favorite apple tree, the crown of which had always been his refuge when he was frightened or lonely or depressed. Instead he found himself in his attic on the rue des Écoles, nearing the end of his first year in Paris, waiting for Polaner to meet him so they could go to synagogue together on the rue de la Victoire. Four weeks had passed since he’d last spoken to Klara. And as the Jewish year drew to a close, all of Europe seemed to hang from a filament above an abyss. As soon as he had returned to consciousness after Nice, as soon as he’d read the letters waiting for him and made his way through the usual sheaf of newspapers, he’d been reminded that there were worse things happening in Europe than the refusal of Klara Morgenstern to reveal the essential secrets of her history. Hitler, who had flouted the Versailles treaty with his annexation of Austria that past spring, now wanted Czechoslovakia’s border region, the mountain barrier of the Sudetenland, with its military fortifications, its armament plants, its textile factories and mines. What do you think of the chancellor’s newest mania? Tibor had written from Modena. Does he really believe Britain and France will stand idly by while he strips Central Europe’s last democracy of all her defenses? It would be the end of free Czechoslovakia, we can be certain of that.
From Mátyás there was a different note of indignation, a schoolboy’s protest against Hitler’s geographic revisionism: How can he demand the “return” of the Sudetenland when it never belonged to Germany in the first place? Who does he think he’s fooling? Every second-former knows that Czechoslovakia belonged to Austria-Hungary before the Great War. To that, Andras had written back that the Hungarian government itself was likely implicated in Hitler’s plans, since Hungary would stand to regain its own lost territory if Germany took the Sudetenland; the word return was an incitement to anyone who felt that his country had been shortchanged at Versailles. But at least you’ve been paying attention in school, he wrote. Maybe you’ll get your baccalaureate after all.
The Paris papers revealed more as the situation unfolded: On the twelfth of September, in his closing speech at the Nazi party rally in Nuremberg, Hitler brutalized the air with a fist and demanded justice for the millions of ethnic Germans living in the Sudetenland; he refused to stand idly by and see them oppressed by the Czech president Beneš and his government. A few days later, Chamberlain, who had never before set foot on an airplane, flew to Hitler’s mountain retreat in Berchtesgaden to discuss what everyone was now calling the Sudeten crisis.
“He should never have gone,” Polaner said, over a glass of whiskey at the Blue Dove. “It’s a humiliation, don’t you see? This old man who’s never been on a plane before, made to travel to the remotest corner of Germany for a meeting with the Führer. It’s a show of force on Hitler’s part. The fact that Chamberlain went means he’s frightened. I promise you, Hitler will see his advantage and take it.”
“If anyone’s making a show of force, it’s Chamberlain,” Andras said. “He went to Berchtesgaden to make a point: If Hitler attacks Czechoslovakia, Britain and France will go to any length to bring him down. That’s what this is about.”
But soon it became clear that Andras was wrong. The papers reported that Chamberlain had come out of the meeting with a list of demands from Hitler, and was now determined to persuade his own government, and France’s, to meet the Führer’s conditions in short order. French editorials argued in favor of the sacrifice of the Sudetenland if it meant preserving the peace that had been won at such staggering cost in the Great War; the opposing view seemed to belong to a few fringe communist and socialist commentators. A few days later, envoys from the French and British governments presented President Beneš with a proposal to strip the republic of its border regions, and demanded that the Czech government accept the plan without delay. Andras found himself spending all day combing the papers and listening to the red Bakelite wireless at Forestier’s set-design studio, as if his constant attention might turn events in a different direction. Even Forestier put aside his design tools and mulled over the news with Andras. In response to the Anglo-French proposal, President Beneš had submitted a measured and scholarly memorandum reminding France that it had sworn to defend Czechoslovakia if it were threatened; a few hours after the memo was transmitted, the British and French foreign ministers in Prague pulled Beneš out of bed to insist he accept the proposal at once. Otherwise he would find himself facing Germany alone. The next day Andras and Monsieur Forestier listened in incredulous dismay as a commentator announced Beneš’s acceptance of the Anglo-French plan. The entire Czech cabinet had just resigned in protest. Chamberlain would meet with Hitler again on the twenty-second of September, this time in Bad Godesberg, to arrange the transfer of the Sudetenland.