He caught up with her. Gripped her arm. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Away.’ She struggled against him. ‘Away. I have to think. I’m going to phone Jacob,’ she was adamant.
‘Katherine,’ he embraced her, held her. ‘It’s a figment. A nonsense. Forget about it.’
‘I can’t.’ The eyes she turned on him were wild, ringed with pain. ‘You didn’t know her the way I did. It has the real Sylvie stamp. Manipulative. Cruel.’
He held her still, tried to calm her. ‘Cruel? Why cruel? She couldn’t have known I would meet you. It’s not directed at you.’
She wouldn’t meet his eyes. ‘I’ll phone Jacob,’ she said, pulling away from him.
‘Why ring him?’ Alexei’s voice was harsh now. ‘Why cause pain? If he had known anything, he would have said so when I met him in New York.’
That stopped her for a moment. He used it to make her sit down.
‘But you told me you had taken on your uncle’s name, had been adopted by him. Jacob might not have recognized a new name.’
‘That’s true,’ Alexei mumbled. It was worrying. She had taken the notion so much to heart. He should never have said anything. It was his own fault. He should have lied. She would go away now. He would never hold her in his arms again. The thought devastated him.
‘You’re upset, Katherine. You’re not thinking clearly,’ he pinioned her with his eyes. ‘Have you ever heard stories in your family about a baby disappearing? About your mother having had another child? Has anyone ever mentioned a man called Ivan Makarov?
She shook her head.
‘Well then. There would have been hints, something. Forget about it. It’s nonsense. I should never have said anything. I wouldn’t have said anything, if I had realised how obsessed you were with your mother.’
That hit too deep. Katherine’s voice cracked, ‘Obsessed? If you had known her, then you would know that anything was possible for her.’ She stared at him, her face suddenly taking on the fixity of stone. ‘That’s it. I knew there was something. You have her eyes.’
‘Alright,’ he stood, angry now, handing her the telephone. ‘Ring your father. A man would know if his wife had borne a child for nine months and then that child had disappeared.
Katherine laughed strangely. ‘That’s what you think. Even that. She could even have managed that. She could always pull the wool over Jacob’s eyes.’
There was hatred in her face. Pure, unadulterated. A passion. Alexei wanted to hold her, to protect her from it. He suddenly had an intuition of the child in her, the pain. He tried to take her in his arms.
‘No,’ she cried out. And then more softly, ‘no’. ‘I have to find out, Alexei. I have to know. If we were to go on. If Natalie…’ the tears rose to her eyes. ‘Goodbye.’ She turned away from him. ‘Goodbye,’ she looked back at him from the door, suddenly aware that she might never see him again.
Katherine never knew how she got back to the hotel, couldn’t remember lying down on the bed. Her mind was a maze of dusty corridors, a labyrinth of dangerous intersecting paths which led nowhere. Laughter, cruel, pitiless, echoed through the halls. Somewhere, at its centre there was a beast, no not a beast, a spider, huge, hairy, laughing, spinning as she ran.
She woke struggling against shadows, confused. Then the thought crystallised. Alexei. Her brother. No. She refused it now in the pale morning light. She hadn’t made love to her brother. No. It wasn’t possible.
But why, why then would Sylvie have written to him, sent him the ring? Jacob, she had to telephone Jacob. Katherine looked at her watch. It was the middle of the night in New York. She couldn’t ring him now. And in any event what would she say to him? ‘Jacob, do you know whether Sylvie had an affair with a Russian called Ivan Makarov?’
No. She couldn’t ask him that over the telephone. She would have to see him, be with him. And then, would he know? The laughter, spiteful, malicious, rang out at the back of her head. She tried to drown it.
Jacob would at least know when Sylvie had been in Poland. For how long. Stupid, she was stupid. She hadn’t asked Alexei his age. She could find out. Go to Poland. Look up records. Were there records for those blighted war years? Did records tell the truth?
Questions, questions leading nowhere. Like madness, round and round. Katherine felt she was drowning. Wept.
When she finally rose, there was only one thought in her head. She would go home. Pick up Natalie and go home. Back to New York. She would forget about Alexei. Forget the whole thing. An aberration. She should never have come here. Would never come here again.
The tears blinded her as she flung her clothes and Natalie’s into a bag.
The phone rang. Automatically she picked it up. ‘Katherine, carissima, I’ve been ringing all the hotels in Rome to find you. I’m coming over. Straight over. Wait for me.’
Alexei. Her legs trembled. She sat down on the bed. ‘No, no don’t,’ her voice cracked. She hung up. She couldn’t see him. She would fall into his arms again. No.
Katherine fled. Rented a car. Flung bags into it. Drove. Drove blindly. Away. Away. Towards Natalie.
She lost herself in a one way system. Found herself heading in the wrong direction. Tried to correct her error. Another mistaken turn. What did it matter? She was away. No one was expecting her. She drove.
The road took over. The hypnotic rhythm of a motorway. Lulling her. Disconnected thoughts. Fragments of memory. She tried to reconstruct Sylvie’s life. Alexei had said she would have known, would have heard something, overheard. Katherine probed, dug into the quarry of her childhood. She remembered nothing of Poland. How could she? And those early years in Paris? She tried to re-imagine scenes, faces, words, heard, overheard.
Leo, she suddenly thought. Her brother. He might know. Eight years. Eight long years separated them. He had known about Violette, known long before she had. She would contact Leo as soon as she and Natalie were safely back in New York.
Katherine drove. Katherine dreamt. The texture of nightmare. When she looked up at one point consciously to read a road sign she found that she was heading for Pisa. She was a long way from Natalie. It didn’t matter, she told herself. She was in no state to see her daughter. Tomorrow, tomorrow would do.
But she pulled up at the next motorway service area, drank three cups of coffee in rapid succession, crumbled a panino and telephoned Natalie. She was relieved to find that neither the Contessa nor Natalie were in, were on an expedition to the coast. Katherine left a message, said she would ring again tomorrow.
As she got back into the car, she realised that only a day had passed since she had last seen Natalie. One day. That was all it had taken to turn her life upside down. A hysterical laugh rose in her.
She drove. Oblivious to the sea, to the rise and fall of the hills. She was excavating the past, combing it for traces. The apartment in the Marais. Jacob, Sylvie, Leo, herself. Sometimes Jacques. More rarely Violette and…
Suddenly Katherine had a sense of destination. She put her foot down on the accelerator. Mat. Princesse Mathilde.
Mathilde, who had known Sylvie from childhood. Mathilde. Her better mother.
Chapter
Twenty-Six
__________
∞
Princesse Mathilde closed her well-thumbed volume of Madame de Sévigné’s letters, removed her spectacles and relaxed into her garden chair. Beyond the house grounds, the lush meadows were dappled pink and purple with the frolic of wild flowers. And beyond that the mountains loomed, solid, steadfast with their caps of brilliant white against the clear sky.
If she had Madame de Sévigné’s virtuoso pen, she would write a letter now to Violette. A letter evoking the rise and fall of landscape and emotions, a letter full of maternal solicitude. But the days of letters were past. Now everything was done by telephone. Instantaneous communication or its lack. Chatter without reflection.
Princesse Mathilde sighed, and then catching herself at it, smiled, a little wryly. Her life at one
end seemed to extend back, way back into Madame de Sévigné’s seventeenth century with its court intrigues and complex network of formal relations. A time of letters.
And now, now after the cauldron of two world wars with their shocks and displacements, she was firmly in another world. A staccato world of jets and telephones and computers. A world grown smaller with speed, denser with information, all of it stored. Stored, not in the person, but on disc. Memory externalised.
A young woman had come to see her last week asking her to externalise her own memory. An enthusiastic young woman who wanted to write a biography of Princesse Mathilde. To interview her, read her letters, speak to family, to friends. The Princesse had looked at her in astonishment and then politely, but firmly, declined. She would keep her life to herself for the short time that it still might last. She didn’t want to have to read it in another’s words. Or have it served up, with all its intimacies, for public consumption. The proposition appalled her.
It also made her smile. The biographies of the future, she thought, would no longer have the dense texture of letters exchanged. They would be made up of a smattering of official correspondence and a long list of telephone bills. ‘From the telephone bill of June 1980, we can see that Princesse Mathilde only spoke to her daughter rarely that month. Did this signify a falling off of relations or…’ Mathilde chuckled.
She wrote regularly only to Jacob now. Long detailed letters, full of musings, of books read, thoughts to be shared. He answered in kind. The correspondence had begun again when Katherine came to school in Switzerland and had continued over the years. A duplicate existence through the post. Sometimes she thought it was her real one. She still had a little rustle of excitement when she found one of his envelopes in the post, the black strokes of his firm hand. Like all those eternities ago.
Princesse Mathilde gazed up at the sky. A little gathering of clouds. She would go in now. The afternoon was growing cooler. She stood slowly. Old joints. No flexibility. It annoyed her.
She turned as she heard barking at the other end of the garden. The dogs. A visitor. She wasn’t expecting anyone.
She saw a tall slender woman in white trousers.
‘Katherine, quelle surprise,’ her face crinkled into smiles. ‘What a pleasure to see you like this. Without warning.’
They kissed.
‘I hope I’m not intruding.’
‘Not at all. Not at all. You’re just in time for tea. I hope you’re planning to stay the night. Where are you on your way to?’
‘Only to you.’
The Princesse glanced at her curiously as they walked slowly towards the house. The girl looked strained, overwrought. With all her natural gifts, she had never had an easy time of it. That first marriage. Carlo’s death. ‘And Natalie?’ the Princesse asked, ‘Is she well?’
‘You’ll be pleased to hear that she’s with her grandmother at this very moment.’
‘I am pleased,’ the Princesse said slowly. ‘But you? Is that why you look a little upset?’
Katherine didn’t answer and Mathilde didn’t press. She led her to the conservatory.‘I see cook already knows of your arrival,’ the Princesse approved. Two cups, a tray of cakes, the cane table with its lace cloth. Everything foreseen.
‘You know you run the most efficient house in Europe,’ Katherine attempted a smile which didn’t quite work.
The Princesse made small talk, congratulated Katherine on the Sachs Collection. Yes, Jacob had written to her about it. The letter had come only yesterday. She rambled on, aware that Katherine was only half listening, told her about this and that.
‘And Violette?’ Katherine was making a visible effort.
‘Oh,’ the Princesse shrugged, laughed, ‘she’s well enough by her own lights. She’s running around with a younger man. Making her husband miserable. I’m sure she’ll tell you all about it herself if you stay for a few days. She’s coming up, the day after tomorrow.’
Katherine said nothing. Mathilde wasn’t even sure she had heard her. She was gazing at a bowl of tulips on a corner table.
Suddenly her voice came, low, urgent, ‘Mat, did Sylvie ever mention anyone to you by the name of Alexei Gismondi or perhaps, Ivan Makarov?’ Katherine stared at her with wild eyes.
The Princesse stirred her tea reflectively. So, the moment might have come, she thought. She had hoped it never would. ‘I’ll have to think back,’ she said slowly. ‘My memory’s not what it used to be. Particularly for names.’
Katherine was playing restlessly with her napkin, crumpling it, straightening it, crumpling it again. The girl was distressed. Usually she presented a bland face to the world, so composed. The Princesse crumbled a piece of pastry. ‘Have some of this, Kat. It’s delicious.’
She shook her head.
‘Gismondi, let’s see. He’s an Italian industrialist, isn’t he?’ Mathilde asked blandly.
‘Yes, yes,’ Katherine urged her. ‘Did Sylvie ever mention him? Mention his son? His adopted son?’ she faltered on the last.
Princesse Mathilde gazed into the distance, contemplated space. She looked back at Katherine. ‘Why do you want to know?’
‘I need to know,’ Katherine’s voice was harsh. She pushed back her chair so that it scraped the floor. She paced. Looked again at the bowl of tulips, fingered one, started to crush it, caught herself. ‘I need to know,’ her voice lilted. ‘Alexei Gismondi has told me he might be Sylvie’s son.’ She stared at the Princesse.
Mathilde laughed loudly. To break the tension. ‘Did she tell him that?’ she laughed again. ‘Sylvie was always so good at fabrication. A master storyteller.’ She paused beneath Katherine’s gaze. ‘What does it matter Katherine? She’s dead. It’s all so long in the past.’
‘It matters to me,’ Katherine said, her tone husky, almost inaudible.
Mathilde tried to laugh again. She couldn’t in front of the urgency of that face, ‘Why Katherine? How can it matter?’ she asked softly.
‘Because I’m in love with Alexei Gismondi,’ the girl said breathlessly. And then the tears came. Copious. A single desperate sob. She hid her face.
Princesse Mathilde rose slowly. She put her arms round Katherine. ‘Don’t worry, my little one. I shall put my mind to it. We’ll try and make it come right. Let’s rest now, I need to think.’
Mathilde saw Katherine to her old bedroom. Went heavily to her own. She sat in the window armchair and gazed out at the mountains. So it had come to this. Sylvie’s reach beyond the grave. An impossible set of coincidences set into motion by Sylvie. Mathilde had hoped the story would never have to be unearthed.
She remembered her last meeting with Sylvie. Forced herself to concentrate on it. Sylvie nervous, jumping up and down, filled with brittle excitement.
‘I have seen him. I have seen my son.’
‘You’ve seen Leo?’
‘No. Not Leo. My other son. My lost son. Alexei.’
‘What’s this nonsense, Sylvie? What on earth are you talking about now?’
‘It’s not nonsense,’ Sylvie had looked at her triumphantly. She still remembered that look, the chill it had elicited in her.
‘I have another son. I love him. I have found him. Katherine is not my daughter,’ the last had been uttered with a kind of contemptuous loathing. ‘I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you how it was.’
And she had told her, in that shrill excited voice of hers. A fraught, confused tale of a Poland still at war, of babies exchanged. Of a woman called Hanka in Sylvie’s parents’ house, of a man, Makarov. A story which had left the Princesse reeling. She had thought to herself. She’s making it up. A fabrication. A lie to excuse herself for her hatred for Katherine, for what she’s done to the girl. She had said it to her, confronted her with it. ‘You’ve made all this up Sylvie. It’s a wish. A wish that Katherine weren’t your daughter.’
‘I have no daughter,’ Sylvie had stared at her with those dazzling blue eyes. ‘I only have sons.’
In that last look, the Prince
sse had half believed her.
She didn’t want to believe her. Sylvie’s story had breathed images she wished to forget. Images of children with frightened eyes, children torn from their parents, separated. Displaced. History’s orphans. War. A war which had no place in the peacetime quiet of these Swiss Alps.
‘Have you told Jacob?’ Mathilde had asked softly.
Sylvie had shaken her head forcefully, the blonde hair flying. ‘He doesn’t deserve to know.’
‘And the boy?’
Sylvie had looked a little dazed, had shaken her head again. More slowly. ‘No, no. Not yet.’ she had mumbled.
‘So there’s only me?’
A nod. ‘You’re the only person in the world I trust.’
The words, the Princesse thought, were uttered like a gambler’s challenge.
Not so long after that, Sylvie had killed herself.
Princesse Mathilde stared out of the window. After a moment she got up and went to the telephone. They would all have to be told now. All brought together. She sighed deeply. Jacob, how would he take it? And Katherine? Katherine already in such a state. And Leo? Leo, busy with more important things than these ashes of the past. And this man, this unknown, this Alexei? But there was nothing for it now. She would have to tell what she knew and only dimly believed.
Five days later, they were all gathered. All but one. Gathered in Princesse Mathilde’s dining room. The telephones, the jets had their purposes, Mathilde thought. Jacob and Leo had flown at her bidding. Natalie was playing with the dogs outside on the grounds. Violette was here. And Katherine, pale with her waiting. The Princesse had refused to tell her anything more since that first encounter. The members of her audience, each with their separate knowledge of Sylvie and themselves, would have to determine the truth or fiction of what she related. Only Alexei was still to come. She had only managed to reach him yesterday.
They were sitting around the long walnut table in the dining room. The afternoon light played over its polished surface catching reflections, throwing them back in fragmented form. Leo was talking, telling them of Salvador, of Guatemala, bruised tales of suffering in a world so different from this one, yet the same, made real by his quiet voice. Leo, the one she knew least well, his face darkened by years in the tropical sun, the bones evident beneath the skin. They were all engaged in his narrative. Yet beneath their attention, there was another current, a restless anticipation. A palpable waiting. She had not told them why she had brought them together. Had not even told Jacob. Jacob with his white mane, his eyes still piercing, in that face she now sometimes found it difficult to recognize. It was not the face she conjured up when she read his letters. The sensation must be the same for him. She smiled in his direction, a wistful smile, ruptured by Violette’s restive voice.
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