Along the Infinite Sea

by Beatriz Williams

  A small black fly had found its way to the edge of my plate. The hairlike legs climbed in the direction of the sandwiches, delicately uncertain, hardly daring to hope. I didn’t have the heart to brush it away. I listened to the gentle clink of china around me, the patter of conversation, and thought, I am the greatest fool alive.

  “My dear girl,” said Lady Alice, “are you quite all right? You look as if you might be sick.”

  I said that I was all right, thank you.

  She continued. “When he comes back, you mustn’t let him off the hook. You’ve got to ask him very specific questions. I know it’s terribly romantic to have a love affair—it’s your first, isn’t it? I was the same way—but they’re like worms, you know, they’ll try to find a way to wiggle off, any way they can. What has he told you about himself?”

  What, indeed? “Not a great deal,” I said, and I realized how true it was. We had talked for hours, we had spent long days together, and in my newfound wisdom I thought I knew him. I knew the shape of his face and the color of his eyes. I knew that his skin tanned easily. I knew that he was handsome in pajamas and dinner jackets and especially nothing at all, except when he was in a grim mood; I knew that he was about six feet tall and quite lean, that he was made of neat, well-packed muscle, though he wasn’t bulky by nature. I knew that he could sail, that he preferred tennis to golf; that he had gone to boarding school in England and university in Berlin, though I didn’t know which ones he attended and I couldn’t have said what he studied. I knew that he disliked excessive displays of emotion, though he felt deeply. I knew that he preferred martinis before dinner and brandy after it, that he tolerated whisky only if it was served neat at room temperature. I knew he smoked strong Turkish cigarettes that he had delivered from a tobacconist in Paris. I knew that he spoke German, English, and French with great fluency, that he had a smattering of Spanish and Italian, that he read Virgil in the original Latin. I knew that he had a high tolerance for pain and a low tolerance for nonsense. I knew that he liked women. I knew that women liked him. I knew the way his face grew heavy when he wanted me, the way his eyes filled with smoke. I knew the way his body shuddered when he achieved his petite mort. I knew the way he sank upon me afterward, the sensation of his weight, the distribution of his limbs. I knew the smell of his skin.

  But I didn’t know his father’s name. I didn’t know the town where he lived. I didn’t know what business his family was in, shipping or textiles or banking. I didn’t know what, exactly, he was doing the night he fell bleeding into my life; I didn’t know if his parents were alive, or if he had any siblings, or if he had any close friends other than my brother. I didn’t know his age. I knew exactly where he existed in my heart; I had no idea where he existed in the universe.

  I didn’t know he had a wife.

  “The truth is, they’re all beasts,” Lady Alice was saying. “Every man alive, even dear old Peter, would happily get his leg up on another woman if he could, and if he thought he could get away with it. You mustn’t let it destroy you, darling. Enjoy him, by all means. Fall in love with him, if you like. I suppose you already have. But for heaven’s sake, enjoy him with your eyes open.”

  I looked up. “Do they have children together?”

  She frowned thoughtfully. “I think there’s a son. He doesn’t say a word about him, however. I’ve always thought he isn’t fond of children; you know how careful he is.”

  “Careful?”

  “Yes, always.” She paused and leaned forward. Her beautiful green eyes turned round under the pencil-thin lines of her eyebrows. “My dear girl. You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?”

  “Of course I know.”

  “No, you don’t. Oh, the rat. The dirty little rat. I say, he really had better come up to scratch, or he’ll hear from me about it. You’re how old?”

  “Nearly twenty.”

  “Nineteen. The horror. It doesn’t bear thinking about. Well, we’ll cross our fingers, won’t we? Peter! There you are. I’m afraid there’s been another change of plans.”

  I swiped my thumbs at the corners of my stunned eyes and looked up at Peter’s weary face. He was holding a straw basket in one hand and a bottle in the other.

  “Another one?” he said.

  Lady Alice took the bottle from Peter’s limp hand and examined the label. “Yes. Poor Annabelle here has had a dreadful shock. This will do for a start. Would you mind fetching us a pair of glasses? There’s a dear chap.”

  Peter slunk obediently off to the bar. Lady Alice returned her attention to me. Her smile was bright and large and white-toothed, almost American.

  “Don’t worry about a single little thing, my dear. Alice knows exactly what to do.”

  Second Movement

  “Paris is always a good idea.”

  AUDREY HEPBURN

  Annabelle

  PARIS • 1935

  1.

  I hadn’t planned on marrying anyone, let alone the Baron von Kleist. I didn’t want to sleep with anyone, ever again, though Lady Alice said it was like falling off a horse: you should climb back on right away, or you would develop a complex. Lady Alice was big on complexes. She was devoted to modern psychoanalysis. She had explained everything to me on the night train to Paris: I had gone to bed with Stefan because my father was a philanderer, and my mother was dead, and my brother paid no attention to me. I had all sorts of unresolved desires that I had gathered up and transferred onto Stefan’s person, like the decorations on a Christmas tree. All quite natural, she had said breezily, and nothing to be ashamed of. There were worse ways to lose your virginity. One day, she would tell me how she lost hers, but not yet. The story was not for the young at heart.

  By then we were already bosom friends. I had told her my history over that first bottle of wine, and I don’t remember what I said over the second. We had left for Paris that night, without even composing the customary note of vicious explanation. I wanted the break to be quick and clean; I wanted to flummox Stefan as thoroughly as he had flummoxed me. I wanted to leave no sign that our connection had even taken place, except for the precious Amati cello and the ten thousand francs, both of which I had left behind in the room Stefan had paid for in advance—two months’ accommodation, Madame Silverman. Are you quite sure you wish to depart so soon? asked the astonished clerk—along with the scribbled name and the address in Paris.

  I hadn’t wanted the temptation. I hadn’t wanted a single thread to dangle near my hand, asking to be pulled.

  At dawn, the wagon-lit from Nice had deposited us like so much refuse into the greasy morning stink of the Gare de Lyon, and we shared a taxi to the rue de Berri and the shabbily grand apartment of my astonished father. It was the last day of August, and Paris was rubbing its eyes and waking up to the rising autumn. And that is how I came to become intimate with Johann von Kleist.

  2.

  It wasn’t Carnegie Hall, or the Paris Opéra. But the music room in my father’s apartment was large and beautiful, and the end of it contained only me; in the rest of the space crammed my father’s friends, cheek by jowl with Lady Alice’s companions in debauchery. An atmosphere of hushed reverence coated the furniture. The lights were hot on my skin. At the front of the threadbare orchestra, the conductor’s baton angled in the air, and the conductor’s eyes found mine.

  In that instant of anticipation—as my mind skimmed across the bars of music ahead, encompassing thousands of notes into a single three-dimensional model, a living thing built of sound—I almost forgot Stefan.

  3.

  We held a party afterward in the drawing room. The long balcony doors were thrown open to the syrupy air of early October. Papa brought out champagne and Lady Alice brought out her friends. “You were smashing!” she shouted in my ear, and she handed me a glass of champagne and stood on a chair. She was wearing a ravishing violet dress, a glittering V neckline that ended just abov
e her navel. Nobody but Lady Alice could have pulled it off so elegantly. She raised her glass and her voice. “Bonsoir, mesdames et messieurs!” she called out, and everybody hushed, because it was Lady Alice.

  “Thank you all for joining us tonight, to celebrate the musical debut of my precious talented friend, Annabelle de Créouville.” She held out her hand to me and hauled me up on the neighboring chair. There was a roar. I wore black, because I was a Serious Musician, and my neckline was actually that: a line halfway up my neck, separating black from porcelain white. But the material was a lovely lithe satin that clung to my breasts and waist and hips, all the way down to a magnificent fishtail below, wide enough to accommodate a cello between my knees—like a tiny beautiful black mermaid, Lady Alice said, except for the scales—and I knew I was just as ravissement as she was. She went on, enjoying herself thoroughly: “I plucked this flower from the dry soil of the Mediterranean a month ago, ladies and gentleman, and just look how the darling thing has bloomed. Drink your champagne, love.” (I drank.) “And I hope all of you drink loads of champagne and get terribly drunk, so the real fun can begin.” Another roar. “Now enjoy yourselves, darlings, and remember to thank Annabelle’s father for all the marvelous bubbles.”

  She jumped down and I jumped after her, and someone took me by the neck and kissed my cheek. I pulled away, laughing, and set my empty champagne glass on the table. A full one was placed in my hand. Charles came up and embraced me and told me I was wonderful. He had brought several friends with him, and they all lined up and explained how moved they had been by my performance. One of them was American, extremely tall, wearing the kind of canine open grin that was all over the States and so rare over here, though his eyes were serious and European. He was holding a glass of champagne in one hand and a newly lit cigarette in the other. He transferred the champagne skillfully into the grip of his cigarette fingers and held out his hand.

  “That was wonderful, Mademoiselle de Créouville,” he said, in an endearing American accent that made me want to fall on his chest.

  “It’s Annabelle,” I said, taking his hand.

  “I especially enjoyed the Dvořák. My mother used to play that one on her old Victrola when I was a kid. Really took me back, and it’s a lovely piece of music to begin with. I won’t exactly admit you brought a tear to my eye, but that doesn’t mean you didn’t.” He winked.

  “Well, thank you very much, Mr. . . . ?” I lifted the last word inquisitively.

  “Greenwald,” he said. “Nick Greenwald.”

  “Mr. Greenwald. Thank you for coming, and especially for your very extravagant praise.”

  “It’s Nick, and I don’t think I was being extravagant at all.” He leaned forward. His eyes had softened a bit, and though I couldn’t see their color beneath Papa’s aging chandeliers, I liked their shape, and the trustworthy way the skin crinkled around them when he smiled, which he was doing now. “Actually, we’ve met already. I guess you don’t remember. In a certain boathouse, at the beginning of August? I lost my dinner jacket that night.”

  The champagne caught in my throat. He waited patiently while I coughed. When I raised my head again, he was still smiling. “I’m a little insulted you didn’t recognize me, actually,” he said, “but I guess you had plenty of distraction.”

  “Yes.”

  “I hear you stitched the old man right up, though, and sent him happily on his way.”

  “I wasn’t the one who stitched him up.”

  He shrugged a pair of wide American shoulders. “Close enough. Did he ever tell you anything about what happened that night?”

  “No, as a matter of fact. He didn’t tell me much at all.”

  “I see.” He swirled the champagne in his glass, as if he wanted to say something else and didn’t know how.

  My throat hurt. I needed to take Nick Greenwald by the arm and ask him a thousand questions: how he knew Stefan, and what Stefan was doing now, and did he know Stefan’s wife, and what was she like? Had Stefan returned to the Hôtel du Cap to find me, and what had he done when I wasn’t there? But I had spent the last several weeks ignoring those questions when they scored along my brain, on the street and in the café and in my bed at night, and I wasn’t going to start reopening the wound now, when it had finally begun to knit.

  “Well,” I said, tilting my glass toward him, “all’s well that ends well.”

  Nick Greenwald touched his glass to mine, but his face wasn’t in it. He bent his head a little closer to me, and his lower eyelids squinted upward in concentration. “Yes. All’s well that ends well, right?”

  “As far as I know. The last I heard, Stefan Silverman was heading back to his wife and son in Germany.”

  “Daughter,” said Nick.

  I smiled. “Daughter. I must have misheard. But I haven’t heard from him since. Your information is much better than mine.”

  “Actually, I haven’t heard from him since the end of August.”

  “Well, then. He must be very happy indeed,” I said.

  Nick lifted his cigarette thoughtfully. “So you haven’t heard anything at all?”

  “No. Should I have?”

  Maybe I said it too eagerly, because Nick Greenwald removed the cigarette from his lips and leaned so close, I could smell the champagne on his breath. “Because I got a note from him, just before he left, that there was a girl who might need help. And I had a hunch just now, watching you play . . .” He trailed off expectantly, and I thought, It’s him, my God, the friend in Paris.

  I knit my other hand around my glass, so it wouldn’t shake. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I don’t need any help.”

  “Listen, I’m not going to tell your brother, if that’s what—”

  A hand fell on my shoulder, and I turned gratefully into the glowing face of my papa—C’était magnifique, ma chérie, magnifique!—and by the time I turned around Nick Greenwald was gone.

  Thank God.

  So I pushed Nick and Stefan out of my mind, and we laughed and drank and smoked for hours and hours, until Paris drained the last guest away just before dawn, and I fell asleep on a cherry Empire sofa with one hand resting on my cello case, still wearing my marvelous black dress, like a dark mermaid beached on a red shore.

  4.

  I had a lesson the next morning in Neuilly, not a long walk, but impossible while carrying a cello. I rang up Charles and asked if he would mind driving me there in his car, a wretched Renault from the previous decade. His voice on the other end was not pleased.

  “Charles,” I said, “when you dragged me from my nice comfortable garden wall to the boathouse last August, did I hesitate for even a second? Or did I scramble down the cliff path in my slippers and sacrifice ten days of my life to the service of your friend?”

  “That’s not the same thing.” He paused. “What time is the lesson?”

  “Eleven o’clock. But the traffic will be immense. You’d better come now, dressed or not.”

  5.

  “Is everything all right?” Charles said, as we spun around the Étoile, dodging a lumbrous delivery truck in a display of expert metropolitan reflexes.

  “Everything’s wonderful.”

  “Because you seem different.”

  “In what way?”

  “I don’t know. I was thinking about it last night, while you were sawing away up there in your black dress. I wouldn’t have recognized you.”

  “Thank you.”

  He changed gears noisily and swerved down the avenue de la Grande Armée, toward Neuilly. A flower seller looked up from his daffodils and tulips and thrust his hand into the air. “And then on the telephone this morning. I hung up the phone and thought, You know, I’ll bet she’d never do that now.”

  “Do what?”

  “Drop everything and run down the cliff and spend half of August nursing a gunshot wound, without as
king any questions.”

  “Yes, I’ve learned to ask questions now,” I said.

  The buildings slid by, cafés and shopfronts, Paris in the reckless enthusiasm of springtime. The sidewalk tables were already out, and the patrons smoked languorously and drank small cups of coffee. Charles had the top down, so I could smell the unmistakable city air: the bread ovens, the cigarettes, the sultry stench of automobile exhaust. I could hear the accordion lilt of a street musician, somewhere nearby. I had always loved Paris, the little I knew of it, and I loved it even more now. I loved the hustle-bustle, the knowledge that I played a small but essential note in this glorious symphony.

  “But you’re quieter, too,” said Charles.

  “Am I? I don’t think so.”

  “That’s why I asked if something was wrong. I can’t put my finger on it. There used to be this light inside you, this spark of life, and it’s gone out. Even last night, when you were laughing, you didn’t seem happy. And you’re pale.”

  “I’ve always been pale.”

  He sighed. “All right. If you don’t want to talk about it.”

  We stopped in midstream, waiting for the traffic ahead to clear. My cello sat on the seat between us, its black rounded end sticking up like a third head. I placed my hand around the edge, near the metal fastening, and as I did I heard my own voice echo back from an Antibes cliff: That’s you. You have brought me to life.

  The car jerked forward, and I pushed the thought away.

  6.

  The lesson lasted an hour, and I emerged into the open air to find a steady spring rain soaking the pavement, and not a taxi in sight. I trudged to the Métro. By one o’clock in the afternoon I was thrusting open the door to the apartment on the rue de Berri, bellowing for lunch.

  Alice had just arisen. “But what about breakfast?” she asked innocently, lighting a cigarette. She was dressed in an emerald-green kaftan and managed to look expensive, even creased with sleep.