A Mind of Winter

by Shira Nayman

  When I returned, some thirty minutes later, the air in the room was a frenzy of alarm. Her drink was where she’d left it, stained pink at the rim, but Christine and her things—her chiffon stole and heavy wool cape and silver evening bag—were gone.

  It made no sense to me. I waited for her all that evening and again the next day at the club. Shameless, desperate, I went to her rooms to find she’d packed her belongings and left, instructing her landlady to inform me there was no forwarding address. (Later, on the eve of my own departure, when I’d gone one last time to Christine’s lodgings, the landlady let slip that she had sailed to Shanghai.)

  Gone, too, from the Language Center.

  Gone. Gone from me, gone from my life.

  It was then that my own leave-taking plan sprung to mind. A leave-taking that now, I see, was inevitable.

  You see, there was the matter of the paintings. The war enacted its own abrupt end and I found myself in the position of needing to bring about my own erasure. I had a new passport, a new name. I was in a position to construct a new life.

  At times, over the years, when the bewilderment of Christine’s disappearance has felt too hard to bear, I have reassured myself with this thought: that whatever happened that longago evening, the evening that Christine, gently touching the tip of her forefinger to my lips, silenced my confession—I was going to say banished me—we were perhaps in any case moving in opposite directions. Had that evening not happened, perhaps she’d have gone anyway. (Don’t we always find reasons to do what we are fated to do?) The heart of things, she’d said. That was where she wanted to go, Shanghai as good a version of it as any. And I, I was headed to the periphery, embarked on a retreat from exotic human truths. Gardens, boathouses, and frivolity; these were the coordinates of the world I would construct.

  The paintings I sold had not, in fact, been rescued. Not rescued from the Zwinger or any other museum felled by the weight of the Fatherland’s homicidal-suicidal rage.

  The paintings had had owners: had hung on the walls of people’s homes, witness to the lives unfolding before them.

  I know no names, I know only a smattering of detail about circumstances.

  I tell myself the paintings would otherwise have been plundered or destroyed.

  I tell myself the money I made as middleman would have done those people little good. From what I understand, there was no practice of bartering or bribes, once you were crammed into a cattle car. (I don’t know how the paintings came into the hands of my source: one more question I never asked.)

  Though I say this, I know, of course, that it was two gold coins, glinting in the moonlight—two gold coins my mother had sewn into the waist of my jacket, two gold coins that I handed to the helmsman with the hooded eyes—that took me away, brought me toward, and planted me in the city of multiplying money, then across the Atlantic to the peninsula of Long Island, a crooked finger pointing back at the place from which they, the owners of the paintings, did not escape. Five ounces, maybe six, of gold: that was the price I paid for my life.

  Another tortuous turn of the screw sometimes rescues me, for the briefest moment, from guilt (this is worth more to me than anyone can know, though I am ashamed to admit this even to myself). For surely I am not after all a Jew, not really. Maybe this is the reason I was able to flee, this the fact that saved my life. Not the gold coins, but the simple fact that I was not, in my being, what had come to define a person as a criminal and bring about a death sentence.

  And though I occasioned suspicion twice on my journey, many more critical strangers helped me along the way (and Alfred, at the cost of his life). Did they do so because they sensed that my escape was not doomed from the start, but a real possibility? My looks were obviously part of this equation: my features, my coloring. But most important was what I emanated from the core of my being: I did not think of myself as a Jew.

  If it was not money that saved me, then surely money—or valuable paintings, as good as money—could not have saved them.

  I still cannot put the accusation out of my mind. Wallace tells me I am safe, though it is clear that any such declaration is premature. In any case, it is not fear for myself that plagues me so much as the reality of what happened: the crimes that were in fact committed. Not, of course, by me—I must say again that I am innocent of such crimes.

  I hesitated. What was I to do? Is that a choice to put to a man?

  In any case, though, what does it matter who committed the crimes? It was someone. There were many, too many, someones.

  Mama. Else.

  Else. Mama.

  I do confess that I sold paintings.

  I do confess that I took Oskar’s name and discarded my own (it’s been six long years, already; if someone called out Robert, I do believe I would not even flinch). I had thought it an act of restitution: there, in the New World, the world of remakings, of new beginnings, of happy endings. I would take Oskar’s name and plant it in the fresh, clean-smelling earth.

  What did I expect would grow from it? A tree of innocence?

  And Christine. Did I siphon from her too? Or was it she who took from me?

  There is something more.

  I wore the uniform. I feel the swastika still, burning into the skin of my arm. But I wore it as an act of self-preservation. What crime is there in self-preservation? (Hypocrite, hypocrite.)

  Last night, up on deck, the vehemence of the storm effacing all else, I looked death in the face.

  It was not the first time on this voyage that my mind flew to that other sea voyage I undertook all those years ago across the English Channel, from Marseilles to Dover.

  There I was, anchoring my body by sheer will, down through the failing muscles of my legs, on to the waterdrenched boards, the harrowing waves that joined with solid wind gusts so that the force of one became indistinguishable from the other. I clung to the railing, allowing the storm to have its way, giving over, in a sense, to its power.

  It was when I stopped fighting it that my mind cleared. The storm suddenly seemed human, alive not only with threat, but with hope. I had been tagged for death so many times since my father was taken away—perhaps most of all by my own nullifying self, burying, always burying. And now, finally, here I was standing above this great agitating sea; it was telling me, as I thrust my face into its gusts, saying, again and again: Now, Robert, Oscar, Alfred—my new choice of name—whatever it is you call yourself, whoever it is you are. This is the destiny you have set for yourself, the truth of your being. Now is the time to seize it.

  I could not have saved her, I know this. And yet—I hesitated. And what of my sister, my mother? What if I’d stayed? If only to provide some comfort, if only to breathe in deeply, alongside them, in that bare concrete chamber. I could have held them; the three of us, together, we could have held each other.

  It has been many years; I have told myself a great many things.

  But this: I wanted to live.

  I had it, the sea, in my arms, on my face; my clothes were heavy with its cold, wet promise. I had only to answer the call.

  The fact is, I was going to jump. The fact is, I felt a moment of rushing grief that was the sweetest release I’ve ever known. I turned—one final glance on to Life—to find Wallace standing behind me. Wallace, dignified, calm, as if he were simply summoning me to dinner. He was, as always, the picture of professional command, though he was as drenched as I was. When he opened his mouth, it was to shout, in order to be heard above the storm, though of course, being Wallace, the utterance had the effect of a softly spoken suggestion.

  “Below deck would be wise, sir,” is what I think he said, and he placed a hand on my arm—actually, it would be more accurate to say that he took firm hold of my whole drenched, ecstatic, desperate self and pulled me away from the railing, wrenched me from the leap I felt certain, in that moment, was the most important, self-defining moment of this life-death I have been entrusted with in the short time that any of us have. He clutched my arms, an em
brace, of sorts, and led me away. Away from the sea and the storm and toward the metal rungs of the ladder leading down to the warmth of the belowdeck. It is here, now, that I sit, having slept long and dreamlessly, and dined on the simple meal of cold pickled beef and boiled potatoes that Wallace brought me from the dining room. It is here, now, that I sit, awaiting the ruse that will, if all proceeds without incident, land me in a new life—which is to say, a new fiction, one which I am counting on to be my last. A fiction—and I say this with full awareness of the minimal credibility it would hold for anybody knowing the full sweep of my life, of the choices I have made (no such person exists, as it happens, which is both a relief and perhaps my greatest sorrow)—a fiction that I intend to imbue with Truth.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Marilyn

  The North Shore of Long Island. Winter, 1956.

  I had never seen the lawn turned brown, having been to Ellis Park only in summer months. Looking out the morning room window, it seemed so altered, with the little crust of snow melting around its perimeter, all that remained of the light nighttime fall.

  The room was bare but for three chairs and a desk with a red leather top. Glancing back down the corridor I glimpsed, through large open doorways, several white-sheathed edges, the corners of furniture I remembered so well, covered now in sheets. I turned back to the window, watched as my breath formed a circle of fog on the glass. I heard footsteps behind me, on the polished wood floor of the hall. I knew them at once. They continued into the room.

  “It seems we’re the only ones,” he said. “Not counting the attorney.”

  I turned. There he was in the doorway, leaning on the jamb.

  “Hello, Barnaby.”

  “Hello, Marilyn.”

  Five years had passed, but now they fell away, along with that final weekend at the lake—dragging out to sea, leaving only the yellow suite, the green room, the blue suite, leaving, most of all, the glass house. For an instant, I could see the fingers of moonlight dancing across Barnaby’s olive-skinned back and limbs, stippling his rugged face.

  Now, he was smiling an unfamiliar smile. It startled me. No pretense, no swagger, no plan. I saw that he had changed. I wondered if he saw change, too, in me.

  “I don’t believe it for a minute,” I whispered. “That Oscar’s dead. Do you?”

  Barnaby shook his head.

  “Do you have any idea what he’s up to?” I asked.

  “I suspect there’s not a soul on earth who knows what Oscar is up to,” Barnaby said.

  Looking at his broad, welcoming face, I had the feeling that I knew Barnaby better than he knew himself. In that moment, I was grateful that Simon was away on a book tour and not here. It seemed right—Simon had never belonged here, not the way Barnaby and I had. I was grateful to be reencountering Barnaby now, these five years later, in private.

  He walked slowly toward me. Peering into his eyes as he approached, I could feel his lips before he even leaned down and, when they were on mine, I almost gasped with that old feeling of home. Ellis Park, this room, that summer, somehow my life, such as it was—and Simon too—arranged in equipoise: all of it on an axis, the world set to right.

  But we drew quickly apart.

  “It was always only this, wasn’t it, Barnaby?” I said, not knowing exactly what I meant. Barnaby, sweet smile at play in his eyes, soberness in the rest of his face, seemed to understand. With the tip of his finger, he made a line from my cheekbone to my chin.

  I glanced again around the room. Every detail so precise and so familiar—the molding around the window, the curve of the drape, the pale aquamarine of the wall. And yet, the details of that summer strangely eluded me, leaving only mood: the nuances of weather, the undulations of feeling that pass between people. But then, who is to say that memory is not as much the texture of events as the hard nubby this-happened-that-happened facts, lined up in stark little rows? That the whole of it cannot be found in the boiled gray shade of a day, the tremulousness of raised spirits, the mossy green odor of deceit.

  Standing there, I realized I would never really put that summer—or Barnaby—behind me; that when something changes you, it becomes part of you, and you can’t leave your self, even a little bit of it, behind.

  At the sound of footsteps in the hallway, we both turned to see the attorney, sturdy in an expensive blue suit, stride into the room.

  “Mr. Harrington, Mrs. Wright.” He offered his hand, which we each shook in turn. “Thank you for coming. Let me again say how sorry I am about Mr. Harcourt. It must have been very difficult, these past few years, not knowing for certain what happened to him. Perhaps now, it will be easier to put the matter to rest.”

  It was clear to me from the way the lawyer was speaking that he didn’t believe in Oscar’s death any more than Barnaby or I did. For a moment, none of us spoke, as if we each needed a chance to decide how to proceed with this awkward yet necessary charade. I wondered, had Oscar communicated with Barnaby too, the way he had cryptically, through that single postcard, communicated with me? But this was not something I could ask Barnaby. To do so would risk betraying Oscar’s unspoken confidence in me. Perhaps Barnaby was wondering the very same thing.

  It was the lawyer, finally, who broke the silence. “Perhaps we ought to get started. Let me first say, I’m sorry Mr. Wright could not make the meeting today. I trust you will relay all the details. In the will, your two names appear together: always Mr. and Mrs. Simon Wright—though I know, Ms. Whittacker, that professionally, you go by your maiden name.”

  We sat down: Barnaby and I in the two armless chairs with tapestry seats. The attorney sat facing us in the leather wingback. He shuffled quickly through the pages of a lengthy document, and arrived at the place he was seeking. He read aloud several legally technical sentences, which stated that Oscar had bequeathed the three of us the house. I looked over to Barnaby; he wore a clouded, perplexed expression. Joint ownership, the lawyer was saying, Simon and me one party, Barnaby the other. With right of survivorship.

  When Oscar had disappeared, one week after I returned from my disastrous weekend with Barnaby at the lake, everyone but me went into a state of shock. Numerous theories were put forth, one more fanciful than the next. I paid little heed to any of them. One point, though, was clear: the Ellis Park world we had known was over. In took only two days for the place to clear out.

  I knew that Oscar’s leave-taking had something to do with the German-speaking visitor, with the mysterious, and surely dire, accusation, and with the finding of witnesses I’d heard mentioned while eavesdropping late that night by Oscar’s study door. The phone call with the investigator—how odd, his name slips my mind—only convinced me that Oscar was the victim of some terrible mistake; the idea of his being the perpetrator of a war crime came to seem more unlikely as the years passed.

  For a time, I tried to put content to the contours of what I knew. But none of what I came up with made any sense, so finally, after months of anguish, I tried to put the matter to rest. I took comfort in knowing that Wallace was gone too, which suggested not only that Oscar was in his responsible care, but that they were operating with some kind of plan. In any case, the investigation, whatever its details, must have failed, else we’d have heard about the matter in the press.

  Even had I not received that postcard almost a year ago, postmarked London, I’d have known Oscar was alive and well, simply from the filaments that bound us, delicate and steelstrong as spider silk. The card bore the typed name and address of a solicitor in London, along with an ink drawing of an Indian man in a loincloth, his head cleaved in two. Clearly, to my mind, a reference to a conversation we’d had that summer while out, if I recall correctly, for a ride. This was how I understood the message of Oscar’s drawing: All is as it was, nothing is changed.

  Now, the attorney scanned silently down, flipped to the next page, and scanned that one too.

  “There are some details concerning the contents of the house. A few pieces of furniture
and the odd painting are left in bequest to some other party. The majority of the contents, however, are to remain.”

  He handed us copies of the relevant pages.

  “As you will see, it was the wish of my client that the bequest be made in the winter of the present year, and that it be announced here. Our dealings from here on may be conducted at my offices.”

  He handed us each a business card.

  “Call me when you’ve had a chance to read everything through.” He gathered his papers and stood. “And feel free to linger—it’s yours, now, after all.”

  He extended his hand and offered a quick professional smile.

  “I’ve instructed the groundskeeper to give you keys. You know where to find him, I trust.”

  We did not linger, however, but rose soon after the attorney had taken his leave. We walked together into the hallway, past the familiar rooms with their unfamiliar shroudings and dustcovers, empty vases, and unlit lamps. I was struck by how clean everything looked—not a dust ball or felled insect in sight. I pictured the staff going about their business with lonely, closed faces.

  I still sometimes think about the mysterious events that led up to Oscar’s disappearance, and about the late-night visitor, with his peculiarly sinister mildness, though I no longer try to solve the puzzle. I see Oscar as I last saw him, sitting at his desk, in the greenish light of his lamp, and recall how small he had seemed beside the outsized tapestry of the fox hunt, and yet also somehow grand. Much like any individual human reality, I suppose: potent and inconsequential both. As I left the room that night, I’d taken one last glance at Oscar sitting there; I still wonder if I saw him mouth the words, Thank you, or whether this was something I imagined.

  Though it was the last time I saw him, Oscar is with me still, as are the collection of days from that heated summer, which I imagine will always emit for me a disconcerting light: both too shadowy and too bright, disarming the capacity for focus, disabling the mechanism of the shutter.