“Look how you’ve turned out,” she said, and touched his lapel. “A gentleman after all. Evening dress suits you. I may have a terrible fit of jealousy before the night is over.”
“It was kind of you to invite me,” Andras said. He heard the forced calm in his own voice, and he thought he saw the hint of a smile at the corner of Madame Gérard’s mouth.
“It was kind of you to indulge me on my birthday,” she said. And then, more pointedly: “You’ll enjoy the company, I believe. Our friend Monsieur Novak is here with his wife. Have you heard they’re to return to Hungary?” She tilted her head toward a corner of the room, where Novak and his wife stood talking to a silver-haired man in a cravat. “I must say, he reacted with some surprise when I told him you and Klara would be here. I imagine you must know all about…?”
“Yes, I know all about,” he said. “Though I’m sure you’d rather I hadn’t. It would have entertained you, wouldn’t it, to have been able to tell me yourself.”
“I’ve only ever looked out for your well-being,” Madame Gérard said. “I warned you about getting involved with Klara. I must say I was astonished to hear that things had become so serious between you. I was certain she viewed you as a kind of entertainment.”
Andras felt the heat rising beneath his skin. “And is this your idea of an entertainment?” he said. “To invite people to your house and then insult them?”
“Lower your voice, darling,” Madame Gérard said. “You attribute too much cleverness to me. How is one to keep straight everyone else’s romantic intrigues? If I’d invited only those of my friends whose connections were uncomplicated, I couldn’t have invited anyone at all!”
“I know you better than that,” Andras said. “I don’t think you do anything by mistake.”
“Well, I can see you’ve got me thoroughly romanticized,” she said, obviously pleased. “What a charming young man you are.”
“And when exactly does Monsieur Novak depart for Hungary?” he asked.
She gave her low dissonant laugh. “January,” she said. “I can’t imagine you’ll be sad to see him go. Though I’m not certain how Klara will take it. They were very close, you understand.” She handed him a glass of whiskey with ice, and turned her head toward Klara, who had taken a seat beside Novak on a low black sofa. “You mustn’t worry what people will say about the two of you, by the way-about your engagement, I mean. Everyone loves Klara’s eccentricities. I find the situation irresistible myself. It’s like a fairy tale! Look at you. She’s turned you from a frog into a prince.”
“If that’s all,” he said, “I’ll bring Klara a drink.”
“You’d better,” Madame Gérard said. “In another moment he’ll be obliged to get one for her.” She turned her gaze again to the low black sofa, where Novak was explaining something to Klara in urgent tones. Klara shook her head, smiling sadly; Novak seemed to press his point, and Klara lowered her eyes.
Andras got her a glass of wine and made his way through a cluster of dinner guests in evening dress; he brushed past Novak’s wife, Edith, a tall, dark-haired woman in a velvet gown, redolent of jasmine perfume. The last time he’d seen her, almost a year earlier at the Sarah-Bernhardt, she’d handed him her bag while she searched her pockets for a handkerchief. She’d given him no more regard than if he’d been a hook on the wall. Now she held her back rigid while another women leaned close to her ear; it was clear that the other woman was narrating the progression of Novak’s tête-à-tête with Klara. When Andras reached the sofa, Monsieur Novak got to his feet and held out a damp red hand for Andras to shake. His eyes were raw, his breathing labored. After his first words of greeting he seemed unable to introduce a subject of conversation.
“I understand you’re going home to Budapest,” Andras said.
Novak smiled with obvious effort. “Yes, indeed,” he said. “And what will I do this time for a lunchtime companion? Madame Novak prefers the dining car.”
“You’ll probably cheer up some young fool on his way from Paris to Budapest.”
“Fool indeed, if he’s young and heading back to Budapest.”
“ Budapest is a fine place for a young man,” Andras said.
“Perhaps you ought to have stayed there, then,” Novak said, leaning a shade too close to Andras; in an instant Andras knew he was drunk. By now Klara knew, too, of course; she stood and placed a hand on Novak’s sleeve. A flash of resentment kindled in Andras’s chest. If Novak was going to undo himself, Klara shouldn’t feel under an obligation to protect him. But she gave Andras a look that begged forbearance, and he had to relent. He couldn’t fault Novak. It had been only three months, after all, since his own bout of drunken howling at József Hász’s flat.
“Monsieur Novak was telling me about his new position with the Royal Hungarian Opera,” Klara said.
“Ah, yes. They’re lucky to have you,” Andras said.
“Well, Paris won’t miss me,” Novak said, looking pointedly at Klara. “That much is evident.”
Madame Gérard had crossed the room to join their group, and she took Novak’s hands in her own. “We shall all miss you terribly,” she said. “It’s a great loss to us. A great loss to me. What will I do without you? Who will preside at my dinner parties?”
“You will preside, as always,” Novak said.
“Not ‘as always,’” she said. “I used to be morbidly shy. You used to do all the talking for me. But perhaps you don’t remember that. Perhaps you don’t remember how you were forced to ply me with wine in your office, just to convince me to take Madame Villareal-Bloch’s role.”
“Ah, yes, poor Claudine,” Novak said, his voice rising in volume as he spoke. “She was brilliant, and she threw it all away for that boy. That press attaché from Brazil. She followed him to São Paolo, and then he dropped her for a young tart.” He turned a glare upon Andras. “And she was so certain he loved her. But he made a fool of her.” He drained his glass, then went toward the window and stared down into the street.
A wave of silence spread from Novak to the rest of the guests; conversation faltered in one small group after another. It seemed they’d all been watching the exchange between Andras and Klara and Novak; it was almost as though they’d been notified of the situation in advance, and advised to pay particular attention. At last an elderly woman in a black Mainbocher gown cleared her throat delicately, fortified herself with a sip of gin, and declared that she had just heard that the forty thousand railroad workers fired by Monsieur Reynaud would stage a protest, and that the only good that might come of it would be that Monsieur and Madame Novak’s departure might be delayed.
“Oh, but that would be terrible,” said Madame Novak. “Mother is giving a party to welcome us, and the invitations have already been sent.”
Madame Gérard laughed. “No one could ever accuse you of being a populist, Edith,” she said, and the conversation soon resumed its former pace.
At dinner, Andras found himself seated between Madame Novak and the elderly woman in the Mainbocher gown. Andras found Madame Novak’s jasmine perfume so overpowering that it seemed to lace the flavor of every dish set before him; he ate jasmine terrapin soup, jasmine sorbet, jasmine pheasant. Klara was seated beside Novak down the table to Andras’s right, where it was impossible for him to see her face. The talk at the table was at first of Madame Gérard: her career and her new apartment and her enduring beauty. Marcelle listened with poorly acted modesty, her mouth slipping into a self-satisfied smile. When she’d grown bored of basking in flattery she turned the conversation to Budapest, its charms and difficulties and how it had changed since the Hungarians among them had lived there in their youth. She kept beginning her sentences by saying, “When we were Monsieur Lévi’s age.” A Captain Something-von-Other seated across from Andras declared that Europe would be at war before long, and that Hungary must be involved, and that Budapest would undergo profound changes before the decade closed. Madame Novak voiced the hope that the park where she’d played as a child would not be altered, at least; that was where she intended for her own child to play.