by Liza Wieland
Clara leans on the back of Susan’s chair, staring down into Susan’s teacup as if she’s reading the leaves at the bottom.
For you, she says, I would suggest a warmer climate. I was quite taken with Tunisia a few years ago.
But travel’s quite difficult now, isn’t it? Susan says. So many people mobbing about, displaced and all that.
And all that, Clara repeats, her voice flat. Still, you don’t want to miss anything at the end, do you?
Absolutely not! Susan says, lifting the check from its little dish.
I’ve got to run, Elaine says. She opens her wallet, offers a handful of coins.
Nonsense, Susan says.
Elaine clatters the coins into the dish. Her gaze at Susan is raw, imploring. Elizabeth aches for her. They rise from the table and shake hands with Clara, leave the café. Elizabeth observes a quick bisou between them and their departure in opposite directions.
* * *
It is fashionable these days, Clara says when she’s settled in beside Elizabeth, to talk about death and the afterlife.
I think maybe that’s always fashionable in Paris, Elizabeth says.
You’re right. The French love to dabble in this dire stuff, and appear brave, and then go home alone to their cold, dark rooms and cower like the rest of us. They say there is no heaven, but in the middle of the night, they want it so badly that they cry out until their cats jump off the bed in alarm.
Elizabeth laughs.
It’s not funny, Clara says. At my age you have to admit you’re going to die.
If I had more whiskey, Elizabeth thinks, I would contradict her.
You don’t think about dying yet, Elizabeth, Clara continues. In fact, you may arrive at middle age and still believe you’ll live forever. Honestly, I don’t know what you’ll believe. Writers are different, and I’m sure I don’t know what to make of poets. Maybe you’ll think you can read every book and see every painting up until the moment you can’t. But I know a few things about heaven . . .
How do you know? Elizabeth says.
Because I have a rendezvous there already arranged. Heaven is not about weightlessness. You can’t fly or swim.
Oh my.
Clara squints one eye as if she’s trying to glimpse something in the distance. It’s very dark in heaven, I imagine, she says. Except for the kind of light that’s . . . I don’t know the word. It’s hard to describe. Think of bright sunshine on water.
Glare, Elizabeth says.
Exactly. So two kinds of blindness.
Why would anyone want to go there?
To say good night one more time. Or forever, really. I think that time gets stretched, and you can stay in that last embrace forever.
Now I’ll have that whiskey, Clara, Elizabeth says in her mind. How is it that I can want to be with you, and at the same time find it painful as all hell?
Clara gazes out the café window, as if she’s looking for Suzanne. Elizabeth suspects that Clara always chooses this kind of table, in cafés, restaurants, even in the winter, all those times a table farther back would be preferable.
Clara opens her hand as if to admire it, then presses her fingers to the window glass.
You realize, Elizabeth, Clara says, that the Germans will be here, too. And soon. They cannot be contained. They can’t be satisfied. You’ll look out a window like this and see them in the street. The only thing you can do is be ready.
I won’t be here, Elizabeth says. I’ll go home before that happens.
And you should, Clara says. But first I need you to help me with something.
She glances at her watch. Elizabeth waits for her to explain. A pair of nuns enters the café, sits at the table next to them. They ask the waiter for coffee. Or rather, the elder nun asks. She holds up two fingers, the way some artists painted Christ’s gesture, while the other hand holds an orb or points to the fiery sacred heart burning in his chest.
Do you like children, Elizabeth? Clara asks, raising her voice slightly.
I think so, Elizabeth says. I’m afraid I haven’t had much experience with them. I mean I was one, once.
Clara smiles, sphinxlike. Do you believe, she says, they are innocent and in need of our care? Do you believe they come into the world knowing nothing and owing nothing?
Well, Elizabeth says. Yes to the second part. But I don’t think they know nothing. It’s going to sound somewhat mad. She notices the nuns are listening, so she lowers her voice. But I have a feeling that when babies are born, they know everything, and growing up is the process of forgetting.
That’s an interesting theory, Clara says. Is it religious?
I can’t think of where it came from. Where I grew up, the Baptists and the Methodists mixed freely. The churches were across the road from each other. Sometimes if you were late for one service and all the seats were taken, you could just go across to the other. Especially in winter when you wanted to be out of the cold.
I like the idea of that, Clara says. But I’m not sure it would work in most parts of the world.
No, Elizabeth says. I don’t believe it would. Certainly not today.
Are you in some kind of trouble, Elizabeth?
Trouble? If you mean about the accident, that was settled. Louise had to pay a small fine so her insurance would cover the rest.
What about you?
I wasn’t involved at all. I didn’t have to go to the trial.
So the police have no reason to think about you?
No, none. Why are you asking?
Because of my connections, Clara says. I am always what the authorities call a person of interest. And since we will be traveling together, I thought I ought to see where you fall on that spectrum.
I think I’m quite outside it, Elizabeth says. So you don’t need to worry about . . . besmirchment.
Elizabeth, what a word! Clara says. She appears to be both shocked and amused.
I don’t know if it is a word. But I like it.
Elizabeth watches Clara glance quickly at the nuns.
They are rather a presence, she whispers.
The older nun reaches inside her habit, extracts a franc note, and places it over the rim of her cup. The nuns stand, then seem to float around the table and out the door. Their feet are not visible.
In all my time here, Elizabeth says, I’ve never once seen a nun in a café. Really, I’ve never seen one of them eat or drink. All they seem to do in Paris is pray or herd lines of schoolgirls.
They are quite mysterious, Clara says.
Like this entire conversation, Elizabeth thinks. She feels as if she’s being interviewed for some sort of work, but she has no idea what her job might be. Even stranger, Clara seems to be auditioning, dressed in costume: the cape, the feathered hat. She feels she is watching strangers in a play, in this strangest of theaters.
Sigrid is waiting inside Sylvia’s bookshop.
I am going to tell you a story, she says. Before you go away. You will think it is about me, but it isn’t.
Why will I think that?
You’ll see. Listen. A tiny little girl was walking with her sister in Berlin. They were going to school. The little girl was four. She could walk only a few steps and then she would start to complain. Carry me, she would call to her sister. I am so tired. My feet are tired. My legs are tired. My eyes are tired from the sun.
Hurry up, her sister called over her shoulder. I am going to be late. I have to take you to Auntie’s first so you can play all day and eat cakes and sleep, and then I have to catch the bus to the university and work all day to make sure the men understand what the English professor is telling them because they are too stupid to study their lessons at home.
Why are they so stupid? the little girl wanted to know.
Because they are lazy. Like you are being right now to walk so slowly.
The little girl stopped walking and stamped her foot.
I am not lazy! You are the lazy one!
The little girl had come blazing into the world, her sister
recalled, with this fiery temper, a supernatural intelligence, and a beautiful face. Perfect Cupid’s bow mouth, eyes the color of Dutch iris, a halo of bright red hair.
This is about you, Elizabeth says.
No, Sigrid tells her. Just wait. It’s not.
She turns away from Elizabeth to gaze out the shop window and speaks as if she’s telling the story to the street below. Elizabeth almost finds it strange that no one stops to pay attention, to stare up at Sigrid, try to decipher the words.
The sister could stand to be called many things but not lazy, not even by a child. She believed she was perhaps the most conscientious woman in Berlin. She was certainly the most generous. For instance, when her mother died last year and her father, sick himself and easily frightened, left them, she decided she would not send her baby sister to the orphanage as her hysterical relatives suggested, but rather take care of her at home, keep the family together. What family? her uncle shouted. You are completely out of your mind!
If you don’t hurry up, she said to her little sister, I am going to leave you right here.
Carry me! the little sister demanded. I can’t go as fast as you.
I can’t carry you. Look at me! I have this bag of books and papers written by stupid men. I am weighed down by the ponderous thinking of these idiots. I would carry you if I could, but right now I just have to get you to Auntie’s before I lose my job.
Her little sister began to cry. She sat down in the gutter. She tore the large white bow from her hair and threw it into the street.
Seeing this, her sister’s heart heaved as if it could sob on its own and began to break open. Her heart broke in half. But this is a curious, ungainly thing, half a heart. It doesn’t function properly. It cools and hardens.
She would teach her little sister a lesson. She would walk ahead for a few minutes and then come back. Her sister would be afraid and be quiet and she would learn not to make such a scene. She walked to the next block, then the next, almost to the edge of Weissensee, and then she couldn’t hear her sister’s cries any longer. Good, she thought, she must have realized. She must be waiting quietly for me to come back. Maybe someone has returned her bow, too. Then we will be on our way. I don’t think I will be very late.
She reached the spot where her sister had been sitting just in time to see two policemen dragging her away by the arms, yanking her arms high over her head as if they would pull them off her body. Her sister was silent, her body limp, her white knee socks fallen down to her ankles.
Wait, she cried and ran after the policemen. Where are you going? That is my sister.
The policemen turned, let go of her sister’s arms. She fell in a heap between them. A bloody scrape bloomed along the right side of her face, streaked with mud. Her head rolled oddly on her neck. Her blue eyes stared at nothing.
Dreckige Jüdin, the policemen said. She deserved to be thrown into the street.
Elizabeth watches Sigrid stare out the window into the gutter along rue de l’Odéon.
The children cannot help themselves, Sigrid says.
In two days, Elizabeth and Clara are inside Gare du Nord, at the bar, which Elizabeth knows she will be able to leave in time to catch the 14:14 train to Caen because Clara will tell her to drink up. Then Clara will pay the waiter, stand decisively, collect her suitcase and pocketbook from beneath their little table, and instruct Elizabeth to do likewise. But for now, she is enjoying a glass of wine and Clara’s stories about the American Library patrons.
My borrowers are quite clever, Clara says. And naughty. There is a great deal of mischief in the stacks.
Elizabeth is astonished. Some monumental change has come over Clara.
It was quite sedate the time I visited, she says. Very serious patrons at work. Mothers reading to their children.
Really? Clara says. One gentleman scholar recently pointed out that Baden-Powell’s Scouting for Boys sits right up against the works of W. H. Auden. Bolt upright was how he put it.
Oh, Clara, Elizabeth says, laughing. I love Auden. He knows about everything.
Indeed.
And he’s very courageous in the poems.
And very good in the stacks.
My goodness!
Do I shock you? I find I can say certain things to you that I wouldn’t dare say to anybody else.
The train is called, and Clara stands. She lifts her own wineglass as if she is going to deliver a toast to the bar, pausing for effect. Elizabeth can see that Clara is gazing over the heads of their fellow travelers and out of the bar, into the mêlée of the station. She glances down at Elizabeth, then up at the departures board. She seems suddenly confused, lost. Afraid.
Clara? Elizabeth says. What’s the matter?
I thought, Clara begins. Then she shakes her head vigorously, oddly, as if in the grip of some palsy. She looks into her wineglass, then sets it on the table. Elizabeth has to exert enormous self-control. She wants to take up the glass, finish the wine.
Time, Clara says, reaching for her suitcase. I’m not accustomed to this, Elizabeth. I rarely carry my own luggage. It’s refreshing, though, isn’t it? Allons-y! Platform seven!
Clara leads the way, maneuvering efficiently through the crowd. Elizabeth worries that she’ll lose sight of Clara, that Clara will somehow escape. Escape is the word she hears in her head, and she must remind herself that Clara wants to lead, that leading is Clara’s raison d’être, the air she breathes.
And then Clara is gone, disappeared, swallowed. So many tall women in black coats, grasping black suitcases. Platform seven. Signs clearly point the way. In French. Sept. Elizabeth feels the impulse to stop, stand still in the middle of Gare du Nord, let the crowd swirl around and ahead, leave her alone in its wake, even though she knows this can never happen. More travelers will enter the station and take the places of those who have boarded trains. The surge of people will never stop, not for hours, until the middle of the night. By then, Clara will have come back, taken Elizabeth by the arm, as if she were a child. Clara’s child. Suzanne.
Elizabeth wonders if Suzanne has something to do with Clara’s odd moment in the bar just now. She moves sideways to slip between a father and his son, then a group of soldiers, next a clutch of nuns. She catches sight of Clara slowing, stopping, turning to look. Clara’s expression is alarming, bereft. Her mouth opens to shout, but then she sees Elizabeth and her face changes in a sort of jolt, as if she has received a blow. She waits for Elizabeth to catch up.
Don’t get lost, she scolds. We don’t have time for that!
Sorry, Elizabeth breathes. This crowd is tremendous.
No daydreaming. Save that for the train. No writing poems in your head in the middle of the station!
Elizabeth feels at once angry, sad, ashamed. Where else to write poems? But she settles her arm closely around the waist of Clara’s coat, exhales, allows herself to be led. They board the train, find facing window seats. The man seated on the aisle offers to hoist their luggage into the rack overhead, even before Clara has the chance to charm him. He speaks to them in German, and Clara replies in kind.
He is a businessman, Clara explains to Elizabeth when they have taken their seats and the German has gone back to his newspaper. He is looking at properties in Normandy.
You discovered all that while he was lifting our suitcases?
Clara nods, does not smile. It is best to take a person’s measure as soon as possible, she says.
I wonder what measure he took of us? Elizabeth says.
The man looks at them over the top of his newspaper. He speaks again to Clara in German, and something tightens in her face, though her smile is radiant. Ja, she says. Danke. She reaches across the aisle to touch Elizabeth’s cheek. She turns again toward the German, explaining something. Her eyes dart between the German’s face and Elizabeth’s. The German’s eyes open wide. He stares at Elizabeth, smiles broadly, nods his head. He seems to approve of whatever it is that Clara has told him. He reaches inside his suitcoat and produc
es a small pad of paper and a tiny silver pencil, shows them to Elizabeth as if they were the most marvelous objets, tucks them away again. He mimes applause.
Elizabeth wishes Sigrid were with them. She would be able to get to the bottom of this strange melodrama. And Sigrid would like Clara, because Clara would treat her exactly as Ann and Marie do, like their mischievous, magical child. Sigrid would have four mothers. Wouldn’t that be a wonderful extravagance!
The German settles back in his seat, returns to his newspaper. Clara opens her large black pocketbook and draws out an orange, which she begins to peel. The train shudders, moves forward. Elizabeth is relieved to discover she has the seat that faces the direction they are traveling. She wants to see the north suburbs of Paris as they pass through, parts of the city she has not thought to visit. Clara starts to offer a section of the orange, then changes her mind. Paris slips past, clattering, bridges of ochre-colored stone, buildings staring with dead eyes, ends of roads, a man smoking above the tracks. Good, let it go by, put it all behind. Clara moves to sit beside Elizabeth, then splits the peeled orange in two, hands half to Elizabeth, along with a handkerchief. The orange reminds her of Key West, Louise, all of Florida. The state with the prettiest name. And so much ocean!
She can hardly wait to get to the sea.
Is it lack of imagination that makes us come to imagined places, not just stay at home?
QUESTIONS OF TRAVEL
1937
Twenty miles south of Caen, the train brakes, not dangerously, but quickly, so that there is a certain discomfort for the passengers, the sensation of one’s heart nudging against the rib cage, the brain sloshing ahead of itself. No crashing of baggage, though, no cries of pain. The closest town is called Domfront, the German businessman tells Clara, who translates for Elizabeth. Maybe there is an emergency.
After a few minutes, Elizabeth feels a kind of solemn hush come into their car. Passengers on the left side of the train who have been leaning to peer out the windows sit back in their seats and stare straight ahead. This happens all at once, as if choreographed. It’s like the first notes of the organ, and suddenly you remember you’re in church and not gossiping at the market.
