Along the Infinite Sea

by Beatriz Williams

  It’s a damned thing.

  “I don’t know what to tell Else,” I said. “How do I tell her?”

  “Wait until she asks, and then tell her the truth. You will know what to say. She is very young still. It’s much easier when they are so young. Once they have turned five or six, they understand what has happened. They know enough to grieve.”

  I rose and brushed the crumbs from my skirt. “Could you watch them for a moment? I’m going to find Stefan.”

  4.

  I found Stefan on a fallen tree, in the woods at the perimeter of the field, not far away, after all. He was smoking a cigarette and drinking from a bottle of Scotch whisky.

  “Where did you find that?” I asked.

  “In the car, before you left.”

  I sat down beside him. “Are you all right?”

  “No, I don’t think so. Not at the moment.”

  I laid my hand on his thigh. “We’ll raise her children. That’s all any mother wants, that her children are safe.”

  “We left her lying there in the hallway. You did not see her face, Annabelle, but I will see it always.” He looked at his hands, the one with the bottle and the other with the cigarette. “You are a good mother. It was the last thing on my mind, on the yacht, when I was going mad for you, lying awake and imagining what it would be like to have you. But now I’m grateful.”

  “Listen to me.” I turned his face toward me. “We have each other, and the children. We’ll learn to be happy again.”

  “Listen to you. There is no one in the world like you.”

  “That’s what you said when you kissed me, that first time.”

  “Yes, I remember.”

  I put my hands on his cheeks and kissed him, the way he had kissed me three years ago on the Île Sainte-Marguerite, and I ended the kiss the way he had, sliding my lips across his cheek to his ear.

  “The damnedest thing about all of this,” he said, “is that if I hadn’t wanted to do the right thing, it would have been all right.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I would have taken you to Paris, instead of going to Germany to finish things with Wilma first. I would have slept by your side through the long winter, watching the baby grow. Maybe it would have been a sin, living with you like that, but it would have been better than prison, and no one would have died. God in Heaven, how happy we would have been. I would have held my son in my two hands. So where is the nice moral here? I should have been a scoundrel instead.”

  “Don’t say that. Don’t talk as if this was your fault.”

  “But it is. Their blood is on my hands.” He dropped the cigarette into the leaves and squashed it under his heel. “Though I suppose my original sin was to seduce you in the first place, instead of leaving you for von Kleist to marry.”

  “No, because I seduced you. And there would have been no von Kleist if there had been no Stefan.”

  “Then some other worthy man, as God meant for you.”

  I put my arms around his neck. “God didn’t mean me for some stupid worthy man.”

  He set the bottle on the wet ground and kissed me, because he had no choice, because when you are covered in death you crave life. He kissed me feverishly, there in the quiet woods, and tucked his hands inside my coat, covering my breasts with his hands. “In prison, I dreamed always of this, your breasts in the August sunshine. We had only a few days, didn’t we, but when I dreamed, I swear it was like the whole of my life.”

  “Because it will be. It will be the whole of our lives, from now on.”

  He bent down and buried his face in my chest. His hands crept under my dress, and I felt something wet against my feet, as the bottle of whisky spilled over my shoes. We sat there quietly, while his breath warmed my breasts and his hands warmed my hips. “What are you doing?” I asked softly, even though I knew the answer.

  “Listening.”

  “What am I saying to you this time?”

  “Ah, the usual absurd things. That you love my hands on your skin. That you want me to make love to you, even here in this wretched cold November woods. That, in your stupid American optimism, you are already counting the children we will have together, and the olives we will grow, when we finally reach our island.”

  I nearly laughed in relief. “Yes, exactly.”

  He stroked my thighs with his thumbs. “That your heart still beats for me.”

  “Yes, always. And yours?”

  “Do you need to ask?”

  I tried to lift his head and kiss him, but he wouldn’t let me. “No, please, a moment more, Mademoiselle. Just another moment like this, with no more talking.”

  There were no birds to sing for us. The last leaf had already fallen. I stared up at the bony tops of the trees, at the gray sky above, and listened to Stefan’s heartbeat against my belly. The air smelled of whisky and rotting leaves. In Capri, I thought, the sun will be shining, and it will smell like lemon and eucalyptus.

  “You’re shivering,” he said at last.

  “Not from the cold.”

  He lifted his head. “We should get back to the car.”

  5.

  We stayed in the field for a few more hours. Stefan played with the children while Johann slept in the car. When it was time to go, Stefan took the passports and papers from the inside pocket of his jacket, the ones that Wilhelmine had had made for us, and he gave them to Johann. “You can use these to cross the border,” he said, “in case the guards have already been alerted. It will be safer this way, if you don’t wear your uniform.”

  Johann stared at the papers, turned them over, and nodded. “These are good forgeries,” he said, and he took off his uniform jacket and asked if he could trade with Stefan. The sleeves were too short, and the wool strained against his shoulders, but only if you looked closely. He tucked the papers into his pocket, lifted the lid of the boot, and made an apologetic gesture. “It will not be too long, I hope.”

  Stefan climbed obediently into the boot, a little stiff and trying not to show it. He had to bend his body to fit inside. When he was comfortable—or at least as comfortable as he could make himself—I leaned inside and kissed him, and I didn’t care if Johann saw us. “Everything will be fine,” I said.

  “It seems your husband is a decent chap after all.”

  “He’s not my husband anymore,” I whispered, kissing him again, holding his cheek. “I’m Mrs. Annabelle Dommerich now, and I’m married to you.”

  “As you say.”

  Johann stepped in and closed the lid. He leaned against the metal and said, “Okay?”

  “Okay,” came Stefan’s faint response.

  We drove the last twenty kilometers in silence. Johann smoked cigarette after cigarette, holding each one close to the crack in the window, checking the mirror from time to time as if wary of pursuit. The children clustered on my lap, restless and bored, poking at the gears and the dials. Else asked for her mother. The sky had already begun to darken by the time we reached the signposts for the border, for the bridge across the Rhine into France.

  “Here we go,” said Johann, rolling to a stop, and I looked ahead to the striped metal pole across the white pavement, while my stomach turned sick with fear.

  Johann glanced at me. “Don’t worry. Smile, okay?” A face appeared in the window, and he turned. “Guten Tag, mein Herr.”

  The man’s eyes took in the interior of the car, the size of the passenger inside, and his face registered surprise, which he smothered quickly. “Heil Hitler. Passports, please.”

  “Of course.” Johann reached inside his jacket pocket and produced the papers. “Here you are.”

  The soldier took the passport from Johann’s fingers. He cast another curious glance at the elegant Mercedes, the beautiful polished wood inside, and then he looked down at the first passport and fumbled through the pages. “Mr.
Dommerich?” he said.

  “Yes, sir. My family and I are heading to Italy before the snow falls. My wife is in poor health, I’m afraid. These northern winters.”

  The soldier’s gaze traveled respectfully in my direction. I tried to look wan, as befit an invalid. Henrik whimpered and shimmied down my lap to rest at my feet.

  “Frau Dommerich?”

  “My wife is ill,” said Johann sharply.

  “Let her speak. I am required to verify her identity.”

  “Her identity is obvious.”

  So much natural authority, packed into so bass a voice. The young soldier actually hesitated. “Herr Dommerich, you’ve surely heard—that is, because of the demonstrations last night—”

  “I have no knowledge of these so-called demonstrations,” said Johann, “and what is more, I don’t care. I am concerned for my wife’s welfare. We have hotel reservations in Lyon, and it’s already late.”

  The guard peered inside again, at this mysterious invalid who inspired such passionate devotion in her husband. “Yes, sir. I quite understand. I’ll just—”

  “Papa,” Florian said suddenly, “where is Stefan?”

  Else looked up from the map, which she held upside-down on her lap. “Stefan’s in the boot, silly.”

  The air froze. There was no sound at all, except for the slight crackle of the map between Else’s small fingers and the knock of my pulse in my throat.

  The guard looked at the children, and then at Johann. “What did the child say?”

  “Nothing.”

  “She said something about someone in the boot, sir.”

  Johann knocked the ash from his cigarette into the dust outside the car. “Soldier, I assure you, the only thing in the boot of my car is my wife’s baggage.”

  “But the girl said—”

  I lifted my head and spoke in my best German. “Do you mean Stefan?”

  “Yes. The girl said someone named Stefan is in the boot of the car.”

  I smiled. “Stefan is my son’s teddy bear.”

  Florian opened his mouth, and I moved my hand over his lips in a gesture that looked like a caress.

  “His teddy bear?”

  “Yes. Doesn’t your son have a teddy bear?” I looked at the soldier with my most enormous round eyes, and he began to stammer.

  “I—I don’t—that is—”

  “What’s this? Your wife hasn’t given you a big strapping son?”

  “No, she—that is, I’m not married—”

  “Well.” I looked tenderly at Johann and reached out to stroke his arm. “A fine handsome young soldier like that. I think every soldier deserves a pretty German girl to marry.”

  The guard’s face had turned the color of a radish.

  “I quite agree, my dear,” said Johann, “and now I’m afraid we must be off. Are we through here, soldier?”

  “Y-Yes, sir! Heil Hitler, sir!” The guard stepped back and waved us on.

  “Heil Hitler, soldier. I shall be sure to write a letter to your commanding officer, praising your efficiency.”

  6.

  On the other side of the river, the French guard was half drunk, and hardly even glanced at our passports before he stamped them at a sloppy angle. We drove on down the darkened road for perhaps fifteen minutes, watching the beams of the headlamps as they swept over the pavement, until Johann seemed to spot something on the side of the road and pulled over. A barn, made of crumbling yellow stone. I nudged the children off my lap and opened the door almost before we had fully stopped.

  Under the lid of the boot, Stefan made a little groan. Johann grabbed him under the shoulders and helped him out, and he knelt into the grass and vomited. I had no handkerchief left. I waited anxiously until he had finished, and then I sat on the ground and pulled him against my chest.

  “We will stop here tonight, then,” said Johann. “I’ll sleep in the car, you can have the barn. You can leave in the morning. Here are the keys.” He handed them to me.

  I stared dumbly at the metal in my palm. “You’re giving us the car?”

  He shrugged. “You can leave it in Monte Carlo. I will pick it up later. You are leaving from Monte Carlo, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. Help me get him up.”

  But Stefan shrugged us both off. The children had spilled out of the car and stood there, blinking, as he rose to his feet. “Let us have a little dinner,” he said, “and then we will rest for the night.”

  7.

  The straw was old and musty, but I had never known anything more comfortable. I settled the children a few yards away and covered them with my coat, and then I collapsed next to Stefan.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I smell like the devil.”

  “I don’t care. We’ve done it, we’re safe, we’re free. We’re in France.”

  His arm closed around me. “Yes, by God’s grace.”

  “We’ll telephone my father from Monte Carlo and let them know we’re safe. They’ll be worried.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “And your troubles will be over. You will rest and recover.”

  “I am very fortunate, Mademoiselle, to have you watching over me.”

  “Yes, you are. And I was just thinking, in the car, that maybe this horrible night will wake up the world to what’s going on. Maybe Johann can speak to the embassy in Paris, and the whole nightmare will be over, and Wilhelmine won’t have died in vain.”

  He kissed my hair. “My dauntless American girl. Go to sleep. We will save the fucking world in the morning.”

  “I can’t sleep.”

  “Try.”

  I closed my eyes and pulled him closer, until his breath was warm in my hair, and that was all I remembered until I woke up some unknown hour later, and he was gone.

  “Stefan?” I whispered, into the dusty silence of the barn.

  “Over here.”

  I lifted my head and saw his shadow, sitting by the hollow in the straw where the children lay sleeping. What lucky children, I thought, to have Stefan for a father, and then I pictured Johann, bent uncomfortably on the seat of the Mercedes outside, covered by his gray uniform jacket, and for an instant my heart hurt.

  But I will thank him one day, I thought. I will return to him and thank him for the gift he has given to me tonight, to Florian and me. That he loved us both so much, he gave us back to his immortal enemy.

  I settled back in the musty straw and closed my eyes again. In a moment, Stefan would come back to bed and put his arms around me, the way he always did, and in the morning we would drive down with the children to the sunshine of Monte Carlo, to the life we had dreamed together.

  “Thank God,” I said softly. “I thought you’d gone away.”

  Coda

  “The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach—waiting for a gift from the sea.”

  ANNE MORROW LINDBERGH

  Stefan

  CUMBERLAND ISLAND • 1966

  1.

  The knock arrives at sunset, half an hour after he stomped back, damp and chilled, from feeding the horses. He has showered and shaved and put on the teakettle, and at first he thinks the telephone wire has come loose again in the November wind, and is now flapping against the roof.

  He pauses, fingers still wrapped around the handle of the kettle, and turns his cheek to the ceiling, listening. The sound comes again, three imperative knocks, knuckles against wood.

  He doesn’t have many visitors, and they usually mean trouble of some kind: horses loose or fences down or hurricanes on the way. That’s surely why his pulse crashes against his neck, as the knock echoes about the empty rooms. Why his blood turns buoyant in his veins. Because there might be trouble.

  He wipes his hands on the dishcloth and hea
ds for the front door.

  He doesn’t have far to walk. The house is small and simple: living room, dining room, and kitchen on the ground floor, along with a small office and plenty of bookshelves. (He has too many books to count, the natural consequence of solitude.) Upstairs, two roomy bedrooms and a bathroom. One of the bedrooms has a sleeping porch, and he really does sleep there in the summer, when the heat billows up from the tall marsh grasses to merge with the smoldering sky, and you almost can’t breathe the air, it’s so wet. He puts up the screens with the netting to keep the mosquitoes away, and he sleeps in a pair of cotton pajamas with no blanket. In the morning, he’s covered in dew.

  He walks across the living room to the entry hall, past the signs of his recent visitor. If he stands still and closes his eyes, he can still smell her in the air: a hint of perfume, the soap she uses. He can almost hear the trace of her laughter, like an echo trapped in the furniture she has touched. Right there, in the corner of the living room, just two days ago, he showed her how to waltz to the “Blue Danube.” Something every woman should do with a man who loves her.

  When he reaches the entry hall, he pauses, because he hasn’t heard the knock again, and maybe he was mistaken. Maybe he’ll open the door and there will be nobody there. It’s happened before, usually after his visitor leaves. He’ll think he hears something, some sign of human love and habitation—maybe she’s turned back after all, maybe she’ll stay this time—but when he opens his eyes, he knows he’s alone again. That this promising sound was just a delusion, after all.

  Knock, knock.

  Well, not a delusion this time.

  He draws the cool air deep into his lungs, reaches for the knob, and opens the door, and there in the light from the porch stands a dark-haired woman in a coat of soft aubergine wool, full and delicate both at once, whose eyes open wide at the sight of his face.

  “Stefan,” she whispers.

  His hand sticks to the knob. His chest fills up with quicksilver and runs over. He thinks, Hell, I remembered her face all wrong, I forgot the shade of her eyes, I forgot her cheekbones and her pointed chin, I forgot how beautiful she is. How could I forget that? When she lives inside my skin.