The Ambassador's Daughter

by Pam Jenoff

  From the far side of the bushes comes a loud noise, an explosion tearing us abruptly apart. “What on earth?” Georg leaps to his feet, reaching for his waist and the weapon that is not there.

  The noise comes again, a succession of popping sounds. “It’s all right,” I soothe, standing hurriedly. But he remains in front of me as we step from the grove onto the path, arm around me protectively.

  Fireworks begin to erupt in the distance behind the Eiffel Tower. “Oh!” I exclaim, and we stop to admire the spectacle as great dazzling bursts of green and red and blue fire light up the night sky.

  “But why?” he asks, more puzzled than delighted. He has a point—there is no holiday or other reason for them. “Something has happened. We should go.” I repack the basket hurriedly and start toward the bicycle shop. When we’ve returned the bikes, we walk in the direction of the river. The fireworks display has ended then, the sky cloudy with their dust. The faint smell of gunpowder hangs in the air. The streets are crowded, as nearly filled with people as the day Wilson arrived, buzzing excitedly.

  Georg takes his hand and mine and places them in my pocket for warmth. He stops unexpectedly and turns to me and his lips are upon mine then and suddenly it is as if the crowds around us have disappeared. “I’m sorry. But I had to do that one last time, before...”

  “I understand.” Before the fireworks and whatever lay beyond them change our world forever.

  He takes my hand once more and leads me in the direction of a newsstand, hands the boy a few coins for a paper, which gives off the smell of fresh ink. “It’s the treaty,” he says, scanning the headline. “The terms have been announced.” As he reads, his eyes widen with disbelief. I lean in over his shoulder. Millions of marks in reparations, the German military to be disbanded immediately.

  “This is not peace,” he says, struggling to maintain his composure. “This is a crucifixion. I must get back to Versailles at once.”

  “Yes, of course.” I cannot help but be disappointed at our evening ending so abruptly.

  Holding tightly to my arm, Georg cuts a path through the crowd. “Across the river,” he says, pulling me toward the bridge. On the other side, he hails a taxi, handing the driver several bills once we are inside. “Versailles, immediately.” He does not speak as we leave the city. His face is a stony mask, and in the storm clouds of his eyes there is a darkness I had not imagined possible. An hour earlier, we were laughing and coming up with new strategies for work. How had everything changed so quickly?

  As we reach Versailles, I can hold back no longer. “Georg, we can still do something about this.” The car pulls up in front of the apartment building, any notion of working tonight seemingly forgotten. Georg walks me hurriedly to the door, head low. Then, he climbs back inside the car and a moment later is gone.

  Chapter 14

  Sunrise comes as it always does over the fields to the east, illuminating the town below in pale yellow like the lights coming up on the set of a play. I cross the bedroom and pick up my dress, which lies where I’d dropped it to the floor the previous evening. The giddy anticipation with which I’d prepared for my date with Georg seems like another lifetime. I see his face, happy one moment and broken the next. He had pinned so much on the peace process, but those dreams are gone now.

  I raise my hands to my lips, which are tender and swollen from our kiss. Guilt rises in me. Once could be seen as an accident. But this time I had kissed Georg and it was deliberate, prolonged. I replay the moment in my mind, wondering what might have happened if we had not been interrupted by the fireworks. How can we ever go back from here as though nothing has happened?

  Of course, there is no back, I reflect, as I dress. The world Georg and I had known, of quiet evenings working together, had come to an end last night with the issuance of the peace treaty.

  Papa had been gone when I’d come into the apartment the previous night. But he is here this morning, and up uncharacteristically early, hunched over his desk. “Papa, the treaty...”

  He straightens and turns toward me. His face is gray and dark circles ring his eyes, as though he has not slept at all. “You’ve heard.” His voice is heavy and cracked around the edges. He is nearly as devastated as Georg, I realize. Papa had been cautious about the scope of Wilson’s plan, but he’d held out hope for a world that could be put together after the war a bit better somehow. That world seems not to be. He holds up some papers.

  “Is that it?” I ask.

  He nods. “The official treaty won’t be presented to the conference until later this morning, but I received an advance copy by courier.” I walk to the desk, lean over his shoulder. “It’s a disaster. Millions of marks in reparations. We’re losing Alsace-Lorraine and the Sudetenland. It’s hard to fathom the country making it through this.” I wait for him to offer his usual moment of hope, or attempt to shield me from the harsh reality of what has happened. But he does not. “I should go today and see about booking our passage home.”

  “No!” I cry. His eyes widen at my outburst. “I mean, the conference isn’t over.” But my explanation does little to lessen his surprise. I have always complained about having to be in Paris and I can see him trying to comprehend as to my changed demeanor, why I might be upset to be leaving it now.

  “My work is done here, darling. There’s no reason for us to stay any longer.”

  “But Georg’s work...if we can just offer an alternative proposal. It doesn’t have to be this way.”

  “Captain Richwalder is fooling himself, my dear. It’s over.” And I know that he is right. So does Georg, I think, remembering how he slumped in such defeat on the ride back from Paris. “So we will be returning to Berlin.” His declaration should hardly be a surprise. With the work of the conference largely done, there is no reason to stay.

  “I’ve contacted Greta about reopening the house,” Papa adds. I had not thought of the sweet-faced maid in months. With all of our moving about over the years, life sometimes seemed like a movie set, places and people ceasing to exist once we’d left them behind.

  He could not have contacted Greta so quickly, I realize now. He must have done so even before the treaty terms were announced. Though he has spent a good deal of his time with the German delegation the past few weeks, his work at the ministry must have given him a strong indication that the end was near and it wasn’t good. This explains his troubled looks and his caution that I not become too invested in Georg’s work.

  Home. The idea prickles at me like a cactus. I knew that sometime this would have to end. Paris has been a buffer between me and the life that awaits. It could not go on forever. But Germany, with the political chaos and rioting, feels dark and dangerous, a country no longer our own. “Will it be safe for you in Berlin, with everything you’ve written?” I ask, recalling what Ignatz had said months earlier about Papa not using a pseudonym.

  “I’m not worried,” he replies, stopping somewhere short of answering my question.

  Krysia’s voice comes back to me: Now or never. “Papa...” I lick my lips, preparing to tell him that I’m not going back. “Remember when we spoke of my studying abroad? I’d like to go when we’ve finished here, perhaps back to London.”

  “But with the war over, I thought you’d be eager to return.”

  “It needn’t be a formal degree,” I offer, retreating. “Perhaps language classes.”

  “But you can do that in Berlin.”

  “It would be so much better to study in the native tongue.” Unable to lie to him anymore, I drop all pretense. “I need to see a bit of the world. I can’t go back. Not now.”

  “But Stefan...” He stops as he grasps that my fiancé is the very reason I cannot go. I watch as he wrestles with the conflict. Papa is not a young man and his deepest desire is to have his only child settled and taken care of before he is gone. Not just for financial reasons—Uncle Walter would always make sure that I want for nothing. Rather, he wants me to have the companionship he has lacked since my mother di
ed, to be with someone I love. But doesn’t he understand that there are worse things than being alone?

  “We can stay a few days longer,” Papa offers as a concession. “Perhaps a trip to the south.”

  “No, that’s not necessary.” If we are going to leave, best to face the inevitable quickly.

  “Georg is from Berlin, too, isn’t he?” he asks, sidestepping his real question.

  I shake my head, looking away. “Hamburg.” The cities are only hours apart by train but it doesn’t matter. Once I am back in Berlin and married to Stefan, our separate worlds might as well be on different planets.

  “Liebchen,” Papa says gently.

  I turn back. A single tear runs down his cheek. “Oh, Papa!” I rush to him. I throw my arms around him. Great sobs rack his body, a dry, unfamiliar wheeze. “I won’t go. How thoughtless of me to even mention it today....”

  He straightens, wiping his eyes. “I’m terribly sorry. It wasn’t that at all.” Then what? He pulls out a handkerchief and walks to the mirror to compose himself. A moment later, he turns back. “Sometimes we want things that we cannot have. We must accept that.” I hold my breath waiting for him to bring up Georg. Should I deny it or tell him the truth, whatever that is? But he is skating just shy of the issue, talking to me in generalities at a more abstract, safe level. “It isn’t always possible....”

  “But you’ve always said I must be true to myself,” I protest, borrowing his favorite Shakespeare quote. “And that’s how you live.”

  “I try. But it is like the peace conference—sometimes the things that we want and aspire to must coexist within the realm of what is possible.” There is a look of longing in his eyes and I want to ask him what he has been forced to compromise. There is a silent gulf between us I have never been able to cross, though, a place in him that for all of our love I cannot reach. I do not press, knowing that he will say no more.

  The doorbell rings. He hesitates, not wanting to interrupt our conversation. “That’s my car. We can continue this later.”

  I nod and walk back to my room, peering out the window in the direction of the hotel. Georg. I see his face last night, hollow as he read for the first time the draconian terms of the peace treaty, crushing to a pulp everything for which he’s worked. I want to go check on him and reassure him. But I suspect he’s withdrawn to a place too far and dark for me to reach.

  When Papa’s car has pulled away, I walk back to the sitting room and cross to the desk, searching for a copy of the peace treaty. Maybe if I can understand it better, I can find a glimmer of hope in the details. Papa has taken the documents with him, but perhaps there is something in the press. I search the desk for Le Journal, which I often read after Papa has left it scattered across his desk. But today it is nowhere to be found. He must have taken it with him, as well, in order to digest the treaty coverage.

  I walk downstairs to the newsstand at the corner. “Le Journal,” I request.

  She shakes her head. “Non.” With news of the treaty, the paper must have sold out quickly. I pick up instead a copy of the Paris Herald, curious what the foreign press will have to say. As I pay the seller, she smirks, as though the harsh treaty terms are to be imposed on me personally. Averting my eyes, I carry the paper back up to the apartment. The front-page story carries most of the details I already know from the previous evening. I flip to the inside, searching for more.

  At the bottom of the second page, there is a photograph of a beautiful woman that seems oddly placed with the treaty. It is an unrelated story: Fatal West End Fire, the headline reads. A massive blaze had broken out at one of the London theaters shortly before showtime. The play had been political in nature and some of the exits had been locked to keep out the protesters. A half-dozen people, including the pictured actress resting in her dressing room before the performance, had been killed.

  Papa and I had been to the West End once to see a show before the travel restrictions on Germans had been imposed, an Oscar Wilde play whose title I cannot remember. The century-old theater, with the balconies and ornate carvings around the stage, had been beautiful. But the plush curtains and wooden stage would have made the place a tinderbox, escape from a fire difficult with the narrow aisles and shrouded doorways.

  I study the photo again. The woman’s large luminescent eyes leap out at me, as familiar as my own. Suddenly it is as if I am looking in a mirror. I scan the caption. The actress was Lucinda Rose, formerly of Berlin. A chill runs up my spine. My mother had been an actress, too, before she had married. But she had died years ago.

  My eyes travel from the photograph in the newspaper to the one that sits over the mantelpiece. Though the woman in the paper is older, the heart-shaped face is unmistakably the same. “Oh!” I cry aloud, bringing my hand to my mouth.

  There is a noise at the door, footsteps behind me. “I forgot some papers....” Papa’s voice is difficult to hear over the roaring in my ears. “Darling, are you...?” He stops midsentence as he leans over my shoulder and sees the newspaper.

  I do not look up. “It’s her, isn’t it?”

  I hold up the paper, waiting for the denial. Silence. I turn in time to see his face crumple. His earlier tears had not been about the conference. He had seen the article, taken the newspaper to hide it from me. “Margot, wait...” he calls as I stand and walk to my bedroom, slamming the door behind me.

  He raps on my door, then opens it slightly. “Let’s talk about this.”

  “What is there to say? She’s my mother, isn’t she?”

  I wait for him to deny it, to offer some explanation that would make the past ten years something other than a lie. “Yes, she is. Or I should say was.” His voice cracks on the last word.

  “But, Papa, why?”

  He sits at the end of the bed, suddenly looking very tired and much older. “I thought it would be easier for you to accept that she had died.” Rather than the truth—that she had left us. “When I met your mother she was a rising star of the stage, poised for greatness. I wooed her and convinced her to leave it all for me.” A married woman never would have been allowed to continue to act and tour. She would have been expected to choose between the footlights and family.

  He continues. “She was always restless, though, and resentful of me for taking the greatness that might have been hers. The story I told you was partially true. She did have the flu and she very nearly died, but when her body healed her spirits didn’t. She was morose after that, and said she felt a prisoner.” She felt trapped by a husband and baby. Me. “She wanted to leave and I couldn’t stop her.”

  So she had left us, whether driven by her depression or something else, I do not know. I picture the elaborate headstone erected in the cemetery in Berlin. It was all a ruse, intended for my benefit��and hers. Better a cherished memory of a mother who had died than hatred for one who had abandoned me. “I planned to tell you when you were old enough.” I’m twenty—why isn’t that old enough? He continues. “So that way you could make your own decision, maybe even meet her...”

  But that opportunity had been taken from me. The article said the show she was in had toured Paris just months earlier. We were in the same city, might have passed each other on the street. If only I had known.

  “Did you suspect she would leave?”

  But he shakes his head. “Never. I knew she was discontented, but when I pressed her as to what she wanted, she would not say.” Because the thing she wanted was not something you could have given her—freedom. “I’m not sure I could have stopped her—she was suffocating.” Papa had always regarded my mother as a fragile object, one too perfect and beautiful to be his, a prophecy that had proved to be true the day she left.

  Could I have done something differently? If I’d been a neater child, with combed hair and clean dresses and good manners, instead of always knocking things over and throwing fits and climbing trees. In an instant I am nine again, reliving the abandonment. But this loss, coupled with rejection, is worse—death from flu
was without choice. She could have stayed, but she chose not to.

  An image pops into my mind long forgotten. I rushed into my mother’s room having just lost a tooth. She jumped up, hurriedly blocking her armoire from view. I waited for her to rebuke me for not knocking. But instead she took the bloody tooth from me in her elegantly manicured hand with none of the usual revulsion, closing a drawer behind her when she thought I could not see. She was hiding something, I realized.

  Later as she napped, I crept back into her room and opened the drawer that she had closed so quickly. Money, great stacks of bills banded neatly together, filled the drawer. Why would she hide it? She could simply ask Papa for anything she needed.

  She had stirred then. “Margot,” she said, unable to keep the uneasiness from her voice.

  “What is all of the money for?” I asked with a childlike trust that my questions would be answered.

  “A present for Papa.” She winked, making me her coconspirator. Was it to be something practical like a hat, or something grand for all of us? The gift never materialized and I later forgot about it. I know now that the money was for her escape. Nearly eighteen months before she was gone, my mother had been squirreling away funds to disappear. Suddenly I am infused with guilt. If only I had told Papa....

  “We could not have stopped her,” he says, reading my mind. “Freedom was like oxygen to her and we could not have stopped her from leaving any more than one could stop breathing.”

  I think of all of her possessions, the jewelry and clothes left as neatly hung in the armoire as though she had just gone out for coffee. It had been easy enough to believe she died because everything remained in place exactly as it had been. Now I see that she left it all and just walked away, not wanting any of her old life to interfere with the escape upon which she was so intent.

  His shoulders slump. “I thought you would be angry with me for having not been enough.”