by Pam Jenoff
He blinks twice, as though checking if the image he had seen through the window was a dream. “Margot?” he says again, his voice hollow. We had parted so badly that he had not expected to see me again at all, much less on his doorstep in the middle of the night.
“I’m so sorry to come here like this.” I could have called. Just rung the hotel and asked to speak with him. It would have been quicker that way. But instead I had to come.
“Is something wrong?”
“No, I mean, yes...” I falter. The rain continues to fall around me, though I am soaked to the point where it no longer matters. “May I come in?” He does not answer right away and, for a moment, I wonder if he will refuse. But then he steps back and ushers me upstairs to the room where he had been working. I stand in the entranceway, water dripping onto the parquet floor. “Thank you,” I say as he hands me a towel. I avert my eyes from the rumpled bed in the far corner, cringing at the half-empty bottle of liquor on the nightstand.
He clears a chair by the desk for me, but I do not sit. “Tea?” I shake my head. I have not come for a social visit. “What’s wrong? Is it your father?”
“No, I have to tell you something.” I take a deep breath. “There’s a man from Paris who was blackmailing me to spy on you.” His eyes widen. “You remember the assassination attempt on Clemenceau’s life that happened before you came to Paris?” I do not wait for an answer. “I’d said something in public that I shouldn’t have about Papa’s work and it prompted the man who tried to kill Clemenceau to act. And after, well, this other man was blackmailing me to get information from you. If I didn’t, he was going to blame everything on Papa. Anyway, I thought it was all done with in Paris. But then I discovered this.” I hold up the blueprint of the villa. “They were planning some sort of assassination attempt at my wedding, I think.”
“Who are ‘they’?” he asks. I hesitate. I’ve told the story in a roundabout way, jumbling Ignatz’s role in it with Krysia’s. But it is not until I have spoken that I realize what I am planning to do. “The man who asked me to take documents from you is called Ignatz Stein. He’s a Ukrainian and he used to run a bar in Montparnasse that has been shut down by the police. He’s working for someone, the communists or the British, maybe.”
He is quiet for several seconds, processing. “The map?”
I lower my head. “That was me. But it went missing before I could give it to him.” I stop, unable to say more without involving Krysia.
“Wait here,” Georg instructs, then disappears through the doorway. I hear him making a call, speaking in a low voice. I glance around his hotel room, as spare as the one in Versailles. What is it that makes him unable to call anywhere home?
I drop to a chair, shaken. I have told Georg about my deception and implicated Ignatz, but steered clear of Krysia and the full truth. Even now, after everything that has happened, my instinct is still to protect her. Will the half-truth I’ve told be enough to stop Krysia and those she works for from what they are trying to do?
A moment later, Georg returns. “Your suspicions were right. Our intelligence had picked up the possibility of an attempt on the prime minister’s life, but we hadn’t known where or when—until now. It would have thrown the country into total anarchy. We’ve alerted the police and the border patrol.” I exhale slightly. I should tell him about Krysia, too, but I cannot.
“Georg...” We stare uncertainly at each other, the full extent of my deception laid naked between us. “Say something, please. You must understand, they had threatened my father’s reputation...”
“So instead you decided to risk mine.”
“It wasn’t like that.” But it was exactly like that. Papa was my blood and I had chosen him. “Papa’s health never would have withstood the scandal.”
He is not mollified. “You should go.”
“Georg, please. I’m sorry. I did take the document from you. I knew you trusted me and I hated myself for doing it. The second time, though, when I got the document from Lieutenant Bouvier, I might have turned it over. But I didn’t. I chose you.”
His eyes search my face and something in him seems to give. “You were just protecting your father. You had no other choice.” My shoulders slump with relief. Georg has forgiven me, at least for the one transgression. But he had opened himself up to me and he had gotten burned. It is a mistake, I can tell by his grimly set jaw, that he will not make again.
“I’m only sorry that being close to me put you in such a position.” He is talking about something deeper than the materials. “And you risked a great deal coming here to tell me. I want to tell you that you shouldn’t have, but thank God you did. Margot...” He falters and the room is instantly cold and cavernous around us.
His eyes drop to my travel bag, which I’d forgotten I was still carrying. “You’re leaving?” His voice is hollow with disbelief.
“Yes,” I reply. His face looks as though he’s been slapped. In that moment, I realize for the first time the depth of his feelings. He loved me—still does—and although until recently we had not seen each other in months, the feelings are there, as real and intense as in Paris.
“When Ignatz was blackmailing me to get information from you, I thought that leaving was the only way to avoid hurting Papa—and you.” I watch the conflict on his face as he processes the information—that I cared about him enough to leave to protect him, but might have left without saying goodbye.
“But now that he is to be stopped, surely you needn’t go.”
“It’s more than that.” I turn away, unable to finish. Even in these final moments, I cannot bring myself to tell him everything.
“Oh?” I can hear him struggling to keep the hope from his voice. “But you are to be married tomorrow.”
I stand up. “Exactly.”
“You would rather go on alone?”
I nod. “Rather than live a lie, yes.”
“And what about...?” He waves his arm in between us, unable to finish the thought.
I stare at him, wordless and stunned. How is it possible, after all of the lies and everything I have done, that Georg still wants me?
“You are to be married tomorrow,” he repeats. I take a step toward him. He stares at me unabashedly now.
I swallow. “But I am here with you tonight.” And suddenly there is no other moment than this. I pull him close and he surges forward. His lips miss mine, crashing hastily against my chin. He kisses my neck and then my shoulder, his stubbled cheek grating against my skin, inflaming it. I cup his face and draw it upward.
His hands drop to my waist and I arch against him, the wetness of my clothes seeping through to his as I mold myself to the shape of his caress. Then he stops. In his hesitation I can feel it all, his concern about my marriage, his not wanting to get hurt again. This time, there will be no return. “Margot,” he whispers, “I think...”
“Don’t.” I urge him on, taking his hands and moving them where I need to be touched. His hands inch lower, raising my skirt, and it is exactly as I’ve dreamed a thousand times. But now, after all of the betrayal, it is the one real thing. I press against him harder, losing myself.
He lets out a low growl, lifting me off the ground with the intensity of his embrace. I pull his shirt above his head, then rip off my own and the buttons burst and scatter across the floor. His skin is hot and damp against mine as I draw him down to the floor with me, his hands cushioning me from the hard wood. My whole life I have played it safe and have in fact protected nothing. Now I am going to live. He lifts me onto his lap and I bite hard against the saltiness of his shoulder, his cries mingling with my own.
And then I surrender.
Afterward, I lie in his arms, waiting for the shame that does not come. “Margot,” he murmurs against my shoulder. “I never should have....”
“No. Don’t be sorry. I’m not.”
“Don’t marry him, Margot,” he pleads, turning to me, brushing a lock of damp hair from my face. All of the realities of the o
utside world come rushing back, intruding on the haze of desire. “We’ll do it all,” he promises. “We’ll take the railway to China, see Africa. It will be a wonderful adventure. Just break your engagement to him.”
“But...”
“Goddammit, Margot,” he says, and I start, unaccustomed to hearing him swear. “For everything that has happened, I still love you.” His words echo and hang in the air between us: love you. If only it were that simple.
He rolls over on his back, clasps his arms behind his head. Watching the muscles in his arms flex, I am seized with the urge to reach for him once again. “We could elope,” he persists. An image forms in my mind, Georg and I hopping on a freighter and traveling the world, never looking back. We would be happy, I know in that instant. “Or if you want to be close to your father, we could live in Berlin. I could bear the city in the long term if I was with you.” I do not answer. I cannot marry him or anyone else. I am already wed to Stefan.
There is a knock at the door. “Ja?” Georg calls, a note of irritation in his voice.
“Pardon me for interrupting,” the voice on the other side of the door, presumably a clerk, replies. “But you have a caller downstairs.” I sit up. Who could be here at this hour?
Georg turns to me. “I’m not expecting anyone, but it could be about the call I just put in to the ministry.” He pats my arm reassuringly. “You stay here.” He dresses and walks from the room. Uneasily, I climb from bed and pull on my clothes, closing my top as well as I am able. Then I peer into the corridor and down the stairs.
There, at the door to the hotel, stands Stefan.
“Margot!” he bellows over the rain. How had he found me? Had he made good on his joking promise to come see me after the stag night and somehow followed me here?
I hear Georg’s voice at the door, low and pleading for calm. “Corporal Oster, please.”
“I know that she’s here,” Stefan bellows, his words slurred from liquor. He wears his tattered army uniform, the one I have not seen since returning to Berlin. Georg does not counter the statement. “Margot!” Stefan bellows again, louder this time. For a moment, I consider remaining hidden. But I cannot ask Georg to lie for me. I take a deep breath and walk from the apartment.
“Margot,” Stefan says, his voice rising with disbelief. Taking in my disheveled hair and the unbuttoned top of my dress, his face crumples and he leans harder on his cane. “Your friend Krysia rang and said she was concerned. But I never thought...” So she had tipped him off, hoping to forestall my telling Georg the truth about her by sending Stefan after me.
Seeing the confrontation between the two men—it is Paris all over again. Only this time in redux, Stefan understands everything. The full extent of my betrayal, which he had not wanted to acknowledge in Paris, is laid out before him, impossible to deny.
“There’s been a misunderstanding,” Georg says, persisting in the attempt, however implausible, to preserve my honor. He steps outside. “Young Margot works as my translator, that is all.” He tries to make his voice paternalistic. Even knowing my deception, he is still trying to protect me. But his explanation falls so far short of explaining matters—why I am here in the middle of the night, months after our translation work was done. Georg extends an arm to Stefan. “Why don’t you come inside out of the rain and we’ll sort all of this out.” Other guests have trickled from their rooms now, and a few people from the neighboring buildings have come into the street, drawn in spite of the rain by the commotion.
Stefan looks from Georg to me and then back again. He has been through hell and is a remnant of his former self, but he isn’t a fool. “Draw your weapon, sir.” The sky crackles white with lightning behind him.
Georg, of course, is half-dressed and not wearing his saber. “I challenge you to a duel,” Stefan declares. An audible murmur passes through the crowd that has assembled. It sounds silly, like something out of a nineteenth-century romance novel. But Stefan’s tone is deadly serious.
Georg shakes his head, then exhales slowly. “I’ll not raise arms against another Imperial soldier.” He turns away.
“Coward! I spit blood in the trenches while you sailed around on a cruise ship. It’s an affront to have you say we are the same.” There is a whistling sound as Stefan draws his saber. Georg spins and puts his arm across my midsection in a protective gesture. Stefan’s stunned expression explodes into rage. “Take your hand off my wife,” he snarls, weapon in one hand, cane flailing wildly in the other. Lightning crackles in the distance, a second too late to obscure this last word.
Georg turns to me, his face stunned. “Wife?” Processing the information, shock and sadness cloud his face. His hand drop from my side as though hot to the touch.
“Georg, no, it isn’t...”
But Stefan is charging him awkwardly now with as much speed as he can manage, taking advantage of Georg’s shock to attack. He raises his saber high, the blade glinting silver in the streetlights. Before Georg can react, Stefan lunges toward him, swinging wildly. Georg cries out angrily as the blade slashes against his face.
“Georg!” I shout, starting forward, but hands unseen grab me from behind, holding me back from the fight. He is all right, I realize with relief. Though blood pours through his fingers where they press against his face, he is still standing. I brace myself, expecting him to go after Stefan, to seek the retribution now so rightfully his. But he shakes his head and growls, unwilling even in his pain to attack a fellow soldier, especially one who is still half-lame.
Angered to see Georg still standing, Stefan lunges forward once more. “Georg!” I cry again. But his reaction has been slowed by the pain and he does not move as Stefan charges toward him, blade aimed at his midsection, intended this time not to maim but to kill. Desperately, I push Georg out of the way, turning my shoulder to deflect Stefan as he nears.
Stefan slams into me and his cane sails through the air, slipping on the wet step and losing his footing. I reach out, but before I can grab him, he flies backward, seeming to remain suspended in midair for several seconds before falling down the stairs. For the rest of my life, I will wonder about the angle of his arm, the odd way in which his saber fell under him, blade running his midsection through.
“No!” I start toward the spot where Stefan lays motionless on the wet pavement. “Call an ambulance!” His eyes are open, gazing blankly toward the sky, and I know he is seeing not the rain-soaked Berlin sky, but clouds over the battlefield of the Marne.
Someone, not Georg, is beside me then, wrapping me in a blanket and spiriting me from the street. “Come, you should not be seen here.” As I am led away, I look back for Georg, but the crowd had closed in around him and sirens cry out in the distance.
Epilogue
Early morning fog hangs thick above Hamburg harbor as I step from the bus before the passenger terminal. I search for a porter among the stevedores unloading freight from ships. Finding none, I start forward. My valise is heavier than I expected and I struggle to walk evenly under the weight, my footsteps kicking up clouds of dust.
I walk through the building and check my bag, then a few minutes later step out onto the other side. A winding expanse of water unfurls before me, adorned with boats of every size, tall-masted ships and cargo freighters. Looking down the dock at the people bidding one another farewell, I am suddenly lonely. Celia had offered to come with me when I’d said goodbye the previous evening, standing in Papa’s stead for the journey to the coast that would be too much for him. But life on my own was the bargain I had made, and I was intent on beginning it as soon as possible.
Our last night together had been a quiet wine-filled meal at which Papa forbade tears. “Go,” Papa said. “There’s no life for you here anymore.”
“You are my life.” After Stefan died I had told Papa the truth about our wedding. There were no secrets between us anymore.
But he shook his head. “That’s not enough anymore. That’s what you were trying to tell me in Paris. You need to make s
omething for yourself.”
I was glad that I had not snuck away in the middle of the night like a thief, but was going with his blessing. It was Papa who had in fact secured my position as a governess for two young children with a family in North London he’d come to know during our stay there. He’d made the arrangements quickly after I asked, leaving an envelope on my pillow with the ferry tickets to England. It was his silent apology for Celia bringing Stefan to Paris and all of the misery it caused.
The family in England offered a room as part of my pay but I declined, asking instead for extra money to let a place of my own. Though I am excited about the prospect, I suspect I will not stay there long before moving on—the boat will take me to a train and a train to a path, perhaps with a bicycle. At some point perhaps the path will grow tiring and I will decide that I have seen enough and it is time to come home. Or perhaps I will just keep going. But this trip is about more than just escape. It is time to figure out who I am, the direction of my life.
Celia had insisted on riding with me as far as the train station, and I was very touched by her parting gift of a new parasol, pale pink but not at all frilly, for the trip.
“Take care of him,” I said as I started from the car.
“I shall. We will see you for the wedding. And, Margot, I want to apologize, if I’ve sometimes overstepped.” She turned away. “When I invited Stefan to Paris, I never meant to hurt you.” She blamed herself for everything that happened, as if she and not I had set in motion the terrible events that had resulted in Stefan’s death. “I only wanted what was best.”
I raised my hand. “There’s no need to apologize. The fault is all mine. It is I who should ask for forgiveness, for not being kinder to you and more grateful for everything you have done for Papa and me. We really are very lucky to have you in our family. I’m so glad to know you’ll be here caring for him.”
She beamed, basking in my words, and it was only then I realized how much my approval meant to her, how long she had been waiting for my true acceptance. “Then let’s not either of us ask and just part as friends. Your mother, she would have been very proud.”
