And: nowhere. He broke from the masses and trotted partway down the length of the arcades, staring into them, searching for the shawl, the ribbon. The rain fell harder. Someone pushed him from behind. A bell—a tram had disgorged its passengers, making quickly for the dry.
He followed them inside, through the main lobby, with its tall gas lamps flickering in their amber globes. Fluted pillars rose to the high ceiling; crowds streamed up and down the grand staircase that led up to the tracks. He was being carried toward the platforms and had to fight his way out of the current, turning, eyes trying to take in all the people moving past. The questions now unavoidable: why here and how, and why the remembrance ribbon, worn for someone dead or missing, unless she wore it for him?
A powdery odor drifted from the baskets of a pair of dried flower peddlers, who had taken defiant seats in their ample petticoats on the corner of the staircase steps.
Back through the crowds, and now out again to watch the shivering arrival of another tramcar, silvery in the rain.
And then again he saw her: blouse, gold ribbon, passing out of the arcades and hurrying along the path that flanked the train tracks, toward the underpass. Skirts swaying as she hurried, a familiar shift. High grass, dark wooded trails. Like that day she fled him, crying. He ran.
Past the ranks of sidewalk gardens, empty but for tree stumps. Weaving between the painted bollards, the travelers descending from another tram. The tunnel dark, a feathered shifting in its beams, the air heavy with the smell of wool and human breath. Back in the light he saw her on the far side of a traffic circle, still out of earshot, heading into an alley off the boulevard. His face was hot; he felt the weight of the months, the years, upon him, saw all that would be returned. She was tangible now, just a block away from him, and already he could feel what it would be like to hold her, to comfort and be comforted, to kiss her lips now wet with water, as once along the river’s bank.
He called, but his voice was lost beneath the whistle of a train. He hit a puddle, turned an ankle, stumbled, then was back upon his feet. He called for her again. But she was speaking to a man who leaned against an open doorway, and then she disappeared inside. Around him, Lucius had only a second to take in the flanking street crowded with crates and horse carts, the torn awnings of the shops and terraced balconies strung with dripping clothes. And then the man pushed off from the doorway and stepped out to meet his path.
White shirt, patched elbows, maroon vest frayed about the collar and the arms. Long, well-tended moustache, smooth dome of head. One eye frozen, the outlines of the iris melting in a milky blur. Accent unfamiliar. “What do you want?”
But Lucius was already looking past him to the figure inside.
In the safety of the doorway, she stood on the third step of a stairway, beneath a sconce that cast her shadow against the opposite wall. She had dropped her shawl, and now her hair hung wet about her neck in tangles. Faint steam came off her blouse; her chest was heaving.
It was easy to see how he’d made the mistake, with the high cheeks, that angle of gaze, that mouth.
The rain had relented; around him, the small street had begun to stir. From a window came the smell of cooking oil. A voice in an unfamiliar language was calling down. He looked back to the young woman, who had advanced to stand between the pair of twisting caryatids that flanked the doorway. She reached up to brush her hair back, ribbon sliding down her wrist.
A memory now, of the night he’d left Margarete, chasing the grey figure through the mist, the young peasant with her rifle in the glen. The shouts, the way she gripped the stock and aimed. A warning, he thought. Which he hadn’t heeded, now chasing ghosts again.
His hair was plastered to his face, and his coat was soaked; he could feel the rain running off his nape and down between his shoulder blades.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured, embarrassed now at how hopeful he had been. Again he looked at the girl, and as a man of science, he understood how it had happened—the rain, the ghost, the chemistries of memory, the magic way that crystals appeared out of solution, before dissolving once more into its haze.
He gave a little bow, as if in deference, as he had been taught once as a child to greet new acquaintances. It was absurd, given the circumstances. But it was the custom of his station, and he remained his mother’s son.
16.
This time it was Lucius who sought out his mother. Grimly, now determined to complete what she’d begun.
He found her in their sunroom, reading from a trade journal of the Mining Association, which she folded neatly before setting it down. She seemed genuinely pleased to see him. And how delightful that he had made his decision, she said, almost offhandedly, as if they both had known it was but a matter of time before he came around.
Within a day, she had set the dates and hours of the appointments. There would be a visit to the tailor first, of course, then to the barber, to take care of—she tapped her head to mirror his cowlick—this. Then they would start with four, so that he might compare his options; were he still unsatisfied, she would consider adjustments to accommodate his taste.
“Smile,” she told him. “You’re going to a matchmaking, not an exorcism.”
And he smiled thinly, inwardly marveling at her choice of words.
As expected, she joined him, and together they made their rounds.
Four meetings, on four Saturday afternoons, in four parlors brimming with gleaming marble statues, overstuffed sofas, and gaudy, tasteless family portraits that elicited such a haughty twitch of his mother’s nostrils, that he thought she might call off each meeting before it even began. They were daughters of industry all. Katherina Slovoda, Maria Rostoklovsky, Wilhelmine Schmidt, Krisztina Szűcs. Solitary daughters of a Czech smelt works owner, a Polish railcar manufacturer, a German-Austrian weapons concern, and the largest producer of Hungarian lignite. And pretty, all of them. Of course, said Madame Krzelewska: they all had pretty mothers who had married wealth.
They were also, as his mother had predicted, terrified of spinsterhood, and knew they faced a competitive field. But neither she nor Lucius had anticipated the degree of desperation. Katherina, perched between her mother and her father, was so nervous that her nose began to bleed, and Lucius was soon attending to her in a reclining chair, pinching her nostrils with a handkerchief. Maria, in a hat decorated with the feathered carnage of a dove, squeezed her lapdog so hard that it tried to bite her and fled beneath the Biedermeier chair. Krisztina asked their parents to leave them, exchanging a knowing glance with her mother as she left the room. When the door was closed, she leaned forward and told Lucius that he wouldn’t have to wait until their wedding night. For a moment, he didn’t understand. Her eyebrows rose up and down in insinuation. A nervous tic? But bilateral? Of the occipitofrontalis muscle? No… but… oh, he understood!
Even poor Wilhelmine, whose reading habits would have killed the archbishop with piety, wore a dress so low that his mother could not restrain herself from muttering to Lucius in Polish that someone needed to notify the girl of the invention of the brassiere. Patriotic medals flanked her décolletage. For ten minutes, as Frau Schmidt sang the praises of her daughter, Wilhelmine thrust out her chest, and Lucius forced himself to stare at the spray of rubies in her tiara. Misreading his inattention, the poor girl scooted even farther out on the sofa until Lucius’s mother, her lips pursed in an expression of supreme annoyance, motioned her back. “That’s quite enough. Your mother has apprised us of your assets, dear.”