The Invisible Bridge

by Julie Orringer

  "Would you allow your daughter to marry Francois Ben Yakov? Particularly if you'd raised her as an observant Jew? I'm afraid Ben Yakov was right when he came to the conclusion that they had to do it in secret."

  Klara sighed. "What will my own daughter think?"

  "She'll think she has a compassionate and understanding mother."

  "I understand too well," Klara said. "So will Elisabet. This Florentine girl is restless, most likely. She wants a way out of the fate her parents have chosen for her. So she imagines herself to be in love with your friend. She must be very strong-willed if she's ready to leave her family behind for his sake."

  "Strong-willed, indeed," Andras said. "And in love. To hear him tell it, she wants to come more than anything. And he wants it too."

  "Do you think he can make her happy?"

  Andras looked into the fire, at the heat swimming up through the coals. "He'll do his best. He's a good man."

  "I hope he does," she said. "I hope he is."

  On the night of Tibor and Ilana's arrival they all went to the station to meet the train. They stood in a group on the platform, Andras and Klara and Polaner, Rosen and Shalhevet, while Ben Yakov paced the platform a little distance away; in one clenched hand he held a nosegay of pansies for Signorina di Sabato. Pansies were a terrible extravagance in winter, but he'd insisted upon buying them. They were the flowers he'd given her when they first met.

  It was Shalhevet who spotted the train, the speck of light far off down the line.

  They heard the throaty alto notes of the whistle; their group pressed forward with the rest of the Parisians who'd come to meet their holiday visitors. The train pulled in, letting off a skirt of steam, and the waiting crowd surged closer still as it came to a stop. After a maddeningly long time, the doors opened with their metallic clack and the gold-

  epauletted conductors jumped down onto the platform. Everyone took half a step back and waited.

  Tibor was among the first to appear. Andras saw him at the door of one of the third-class cars, his expression anxious and weary; he held a pale green bandbox and a lady's fancy umbrella. He moved aside to make way for a young girl with a long dark braid, who paused on the top step to cast a searching look over the crowd.

  "It's her," Ben Yakov shouted over his shoulder to them. "It's Ilana!" He called her name and waved the pansies. And the girl broke into an anxious smile so beautiful that Andras nearly fell in love with her himself. She came down the steps and crossed the platform to meet Ben Yakov, stopping just short of running into his arms, and let forth a stream of quick and insistent Italian as she gestured toward the train. Andras wondered how Ben Yakov could keep from embracing her; it gave him a moment's worry before he remembered it was forbidden by her observance. Ben Yakov would not touch her until he placed the ring on her finger at the wedding. But she raised her eyes to him with a look more intimate than an embrace, and he offered her the pansies, and she gave him that smile again.

  Tibor had crossed the platform behind Signorina di Sabato; he set the bandbox at her feet and propped the umbrella against it. She spoke a few words in a tone of gratitude and he made a quiet reply, not meeting her gaze. Then he put an arm around Andras, bent to his ear, and said, "Congratulations, little brother."

  "Congratulate Ben Yakov!" Andras said. "He's the groom."

  "He is now," Tibor said. "But you'll be next. Where's your bride?" He went to Klara, kissed her on both cheeks and embraced her. "I've never had a sister," he told her.

  "You'll have to teach me how to be a proper brother to you."

  "You've got a fine start," Klara said. "Here you are, all the way from Modena."

  "I'm afraid I won't be very good company tonight," Tibor said. He put a hand on Andras's sleeve. "I've got a rather bad headache. I don't think I'm fit for a celebration at the moment." In fact he seemed overcome with exhaustion; he took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes with two fingers before he greeted the others. He shook Ben Yakov's hand, gave Polaner an appreciative clap on the shoulder, told Rosen what a pleasure it was to see him with such a lovely companion. And then he drew Andras aside.

  "Get me to bed," he said. "I'm whipped. I think I may be ill."

  "Of course," Andras said. "We'll get your bags and go." He had planned to accompany Signorina di Sabato to Klara's house, to see her comfortably settled there, but Klara insisted she could manage on her own. There wasn't much to transport: Signorina di Sabato had a small trunk and a wooden crate in addition to the bandbox, and those pieces, along with the fancy umbrella, made up the sum of her possessions. They got everything to the curb and Ben Yakov hailed a cab. He held the door for Signorina di Sabato and ushered her inside; to preserve her modesty he allowed Klara to slide in next.

  Finally, with a salute to the rest of them, he ducked into the cab and pulled the door closed.

  Rosen and Shalhevet remained on the sidewalk with Andras and his brother.

  "Won't you come have a drink?" Rosen asked.

  Tibor made his apologies in his confident but skeletal French, and Shalhevet and Rosen assured him that they understood. Andras called another cab. He had thought they might walk home, but Tibor looked as if he might fall to his knees at any moment. He was quiet on the way to the rue des Ecoles; all he would say about the journey was that it had been long and that he was relieved it was over.

  They climbed out of the cab and took Tibor's things inside. By the time they got to the top, Tibor was taking rapid shallow breaths and bracing himself against the wall.

  Andras hastily unlocked the door. Tibor went in and lay down on the bed, not bothering to remove his shoes or overcoat, and put an arm over his eyes.

  "Tibi," Andras said. "What can I do? Shall I go to the pharmacist's? Do you want something to drink?"

  Tibor kicked his shoes loose and let them drop to the floor. He rolled onto his side and curled his knees to his chest. Andras went to the bed and leaned over him. He touched Tibor's forehead: dry and hot. Tibor pulled the quilt over himself and began to shiver.

  "You're sick," Andras said, one hand on his brother's shoulder.

  "Common virus. I felt it coming on all week. I just need to sleep."

  In another instant Tibor had drifted off. He slept as Andras took his coat off, as Andras undressed him and laid a cool cloth over his forehead. Around midnight the fever broke and Tibor threw the covers off, but it wasn't long before he was shivering again. He woke and told Andras to get a box of aspirin from his suitcase. Andras gave him the medicine and covered Tibor with every blanket and coat he had. Finally Tibor turned over onto his side and slept. Andras unrolled the mattress he'd borrowed from the concierge and lay down on the floor beside the fire, but found himself unable to sleep. He paced the room, checking on Tibor every half hour until his forehead grew cooler and his breathing deepened. Andras lay down in his clothes on the borrowed mattress; he didn't want to take the covers from his brother.

  In the morning it was Tibor who woke first. By the time Andras opened his eyes his brother had made tea and toasted a few pieces of bread. Sometime in the night he must have spread a blanket over Andras. Now he sat in the orange velvet chair, clean and close-shaven, wearing Andras's robe and eating toast with jam. At intervals he blew his nose loudly into a handkerchief.

  "Well," Andras said, from his mattress on the floor. "You're alive."

  "You'd better not get near me, though. I've still got a fever."

  "Too late. I took care of you all night." He sat up and ran his hands through his hair to stand it on end.

  Tibor smiled. "That style suits you, brother."

  "Thank you, brother. And how are you feeling this morning? Any better?"

  "Better than I felt on the train." He looked down into his teacup. "I'm sure Signorina di Sabato must have thought me a fine companion."

  "She seemed in good enough spirits when you arrived."

  "She had a few bad moments when we left Florence, but on the whole she was rather brave."

  "Made bo
ld by love," Andras said.

  Tibor gave a nod and turned the cup in its saucer. "Tell me," he said. "What kind of person is this Ben Yakov?"

  "You've met him," Andras said, and shrugged. "He's a good enough man."

  "Is that the best you can say for him?"

  It wasn't, after all. Andras remembered the talk they'd had at Polaner's bedside after the attack. It was Ben Yakov who had shamed them both into realizing how little they knew of their friend, and how unlikely it was that he would have chosen to confide in either of them. "He's a good friend," Andras said. "He's a good student. Women like him. He hasn't always been honest with them, but he's been nothing but sincere about Ilana."

  "She told me how they met," Tibor said. "It was at the marketplace. She was there with a friend. She had just bought two live chickens, but they broke their cage and got away. They went down an alley and ran into someone's courtyard. Ben Yakov caught them. He got them back into their cage and fixed it with wire. Then he insisted on carrying them home for her."

  "Escaped chickens," Andras said. "A romantic beginning."

  "And then he started visiting her in secret," Tibor said.

  "Yes, of course. He's always had a flair for the dramatic."

  "And there was the problem of her family's plans for her. But it all seems rather dishonorable on his part, doesn't it? He might have declared himself to her father and made an argument for himself."

  Andras gave a short laugh. "That's just what Klara said, almost to the letter."

  Tibor frowned and put his cup on the table. He laced his fingers over his chest, looking out at the gray sky and the ostrich plumes of chimney smoke fading into its heights. "The girl is nineteen," he said. "I saw her passport. Her birthday was last week.

  Do you know what else? She has a birthmark on her neck in the shape of a flying bird."

  "What sort of bird?" Andras said. "A chicken?"

  Tibor gave a great helpless laugh, which led him into a cough. He leaned forward in the chair, covering his mouth with the handkerchief. When he sat back, he had to wipe his eyes with his sleeve and drink the rest of his tea before he could speak.

  "Why do I bother talking to you?" he said.

  "I suppose you got into the habit years ago and never quit."

  "Anyway, we've got more important things to discuss. Your engagement to Madame Morgenstern, for one."

  "Ah, yes. By some miracle, Klara Morgenstern has agreed to be my wife."

  "So you'll be the first of the three of us to marry, too."

  "Unless the world ends before next summer."

  "A distinct possibility, the way things stand at the moment," Tibor said.

  "But if not, she'll be Madame Levi."

  "And what about this secret history of hers?"

  Andras had refused to write him about it, saying instead that they would talk once Tibor came to visit; he had remembered the elder Mrs. Hasz's caution and decided it might be unwise to send the story via post. Now he joined Tibor at the little table and related Klara's history from beginning to end, a revelation Klara herself had given him permission to make. When he'd finished, Tibor regarded him in stunned silence for a long moment.

  "What a horror," he said finally. "All of it. And now she's an exile."

  "And there's our problem," Andras said. "Apparently insoluble."

  "You haven't written to Anya and Apa about this, have you? Haven't told them you're engaged, or any of it?"

  "I haven't had the heart. I suppose I'm hoping Klara's situation will change."

  "But how, if there's no statute of limitations?"

  "I don't know how, I confess. Until it does, I'll share her exile."

  "Ah, Andraska," Tibor said. "Little brother."

  "You did warn me," Andras said.

  "And you ignored me, of course." He bent to cough into his fist. "I shouldn't be sitting up so long. I should be in bed. And I shouldn't be giving anyone advice about love, of all things. Here's what I know of the heart: It's a four-chambered organ whose purpose is to pump blood. Left ventricle, right ventricle, left atrium, right atrium, and all the valves, tricuspid, mitral, pulmonary, and aortic." He coughed again. "Ah, get me back to bed and let me sleep. And don't give me any more bad news when I wake."

  The next day, when he was well enough to venture out, Tibor suggested they pay a visit to Signorina di Sabato--to make sure she was comfortably settled, he said, and to return a book he'd borrowed from her on the train: a beautiful old edition of the Divina Commedia, bound in tooled leather. When Andras expressed surprise that Signorina di Sabato would be reading Dante, Tibor insisted that she was better read than any girl he'd ever met. From the age of twelve she'd been a secret borrower from the library near her home in the Jewish Quarter. The Divina Commedia belonged to that library; Tibor showed Andras the stamp on the spine. She hadn't meant to steal it, but as she was packing she realized that if she left it behind, her parents would find out that she'd been borrowing from the library in secret. She had told Tibor about it on the train, laughing sadly at herself as she did: There she'd been, running off to Paris to get married, and what had worried her was the idea that her parents might be scandalized by her having borrowed secular library books.

  At Klara's they found Signorina di Sabato engaged in hemming the ivory silk dress that was to be her wedding gown. Klara sat beside her on the sofa, sewing a fine band of scalloped lace along the edge of a veil. Elisabet, not usually one to take an interest in what everyone else was doing, pored over a book of fancy cakes; she gave Tibor a look of mild curiosity and waved to him from her chair. But Ilana di Sabato was on her feet the moment she saw him, the ivory dress falling from her lap to the floor.

  "Ah, Tibor!" she said, and followed with a few quick words in Italian. She made a gesture toward the library book and offered a smile of gratitude.

  "You brought the book," Klara said. "She told me you'd borrowed it. I understood that much. We've been getting by, between my bit of Italian and her bit of French."

  "And what does Signorina di Sabato think of Paris?" Andras asked.

  "She likes it very well indeed," Klara said. "We had a walk in the Tuileries this morning."

  "I'm sure she despises it," Elisabet answered, not raising her eyes from the book of cakes. "So cold and dismal. I'm sure she wants to go back to Florence."

  Signorina di Sabato gave Elisabet a questioning look. Tibor translated, and Signorina di Sabato shook her head and made an insistent reply.

  "She doesn't hate it at all," Tibor said.

  "She will, soon enough," Elisabet said. "It's depressing in December."

  Klara set down the wedding veil and declared that she would like some tea.

  "Won't you help me with the tray?" she asked Andras. He followed her into the kitchen, where a raft of recipe books lay open on the table.

  Andras touched a page on which there was a drawing of a whole fish dressed in thin slices of lemon. "And when will the wedding be?" he asked.

  "Next Sunday," Klara said. "Ben Yakov has arranged it with the rabbi. His parents are taking the train from Rouen. We'll have the luncheon here afterward."

  "Klarika," Andras said, taking her by the waist and turning her toward him. "No one meant for you to host a wedding luncheon."

  She put his arms around his neck. "They have to have some sort of party."

  "But it's too much. You've got the recital to think about."

  "I want to do it," she said. "I may have been too quick to judge the situation when we talked before. Your friend seems to have some serious notions of love, after all. And I think I expected Signorina di Sabato to be a different sort of girl."

  "Different in what way?"

  "Less confident, perhaps. Less mature. Maybe even less intelligent, which should indicate to you how small-minded I've become. I consider myself a Jew, with my occasional observances, but I think of truly observant Jews as old-fashioned and myopic.

  Evidence of my ignorance, I suppose."

  "And Ben Yakov?
Has he been here?"

  "He spent most of Shabbos with us," Klara said. "He's been terribly kind and respectful, if a bit anxious. This morning he brought the rabbi to meet her, and they made all the plans for the wedding. Afterward, privately, he begged me to tell him if she seemed at all unhappy."

  "And what did you say?"

  Klara arranged the teacups and saucers on a blue tray. "I told him she seemed fine, given the circumstances. I know she misses her parents. She showed me their photograph and wept. But I don't think she regrets what she's done." She measured the tea into a strainer and lowered it into the pot. "Of course, Elisabet has been difficult. She's suffering from jealousy. I'm terrified she'll run off at any moment to marry her American.

  But this morning she told me she wanted to make the cake, which is something." She shook her head and gave him a wry half smile. "And what about your brother? Is he well?