Paris, 7 A.M.

by Liza Wieland

  Vom Rath will never talk about what he has seen, and fourteen months later, he will never talk about anything because he is dead.

  This taxi is a fortress. It is warm, slightly musty, like the house of an elderly relative. The seat covers a bit frayed, but really quite soft. The faint smell of food—Sunday dinner. The gendarme from the station watches them go, a misty-eyed grandfather.

  Will we take them to your apartment? Elizabeth asks.

  Of course not, Clara says.

  She has, Elizabeth notes, resumed her old persona: tart, dismissive, Parisian Clara.

  If you take them home, Elizabeth, you will fall in love with them. And then no one will be safe.

  I think maybe I already have.

  You must not do that. You must turn your feelings off this instant. It’s a spigot, Elizabeth. Twist it to the right. Hard.

  Marta has dropped the lace giraffe. Elizabeth wants to give it back, but the child does not seem to want it. She slides the toy into her coat pocket.

  Inside the convent, the exchange goes very fast: quite suddenly, Elizabeth’s arms are empty, and Clara’s, too, and half their bags, swept away by three older nuns who seem to have been waiting just inside the door when they ring the bell.

  A young nun, perhaps a novice, leads them to a sitting room and leaves them. Clara stands very close to Elizabeth, as if she will maneuver them into an embrace

  Very well done, Elizabeth, she says.

  Thank you. What will happen now?

  She said we should wait here. I don’t know. Perhaps someone wants to speak to us.

  The room is comfortably furnished with chintz-covered armchairs, a green sofa, two low tables. A fire burns in the fireplace, though it’s summer. Across the room is a small cabinet that in any other place would hold liquor and glasses. Above it, a mirror framed by happy cherubs. Directly across, the nuns have placed another mirror, so the effect is telescoping endlessness, maybe meant to signify eternity. The other walls are decorated with pastoral scenes and still lifes. In fact, Elizabeth notices the only religious artifact is a small crucifix above the door, the Christ’s feet dangling below the door frame.

  This is where the girls tell their families goodbye, Clara says suddenly. This room has seen a thousand tears.

  I didn’t think of that. I almost wish I didn’t know.

  I’m sorry.

  From far away, deep in the center of the house, they hear the wail of an infant.

  I think that’s Marta, Elizabeth says.

  I don’t know, Clara says. There might be other children, too.

  But Elizabeth is sure.

  And suddenly then the memory from the station is complete. She is three years old, in Great Village. She is standing in her crib. She is very thirsty. She is crying for her mother, whom she can see out the window, walking across the lawn below, back and forth, handing out coffee and water to people who have fled the fire. Elizabeth can’t understand why her mother won’t look up at the window, won’t leave those people on the lawn, rush upstairs, lift Elizabeth into her arms, give her something to drink. She doesn’t understand. She will never understand. Who is this she? Elizabeth? Or her distracted mother?

  And then the end of the memory: the scolding voice. The next day, out on the trampled lawn, a woman’s silk stocking glitters, gossamer with dew, as if a fairy queen had left her leg behind (somehow not awful or frightening, this lost limb). Elizabeth picks up the toe, expecting the leg to amplify and make an entire shining body. The anticipation is delicious.

  From across the yard, her mother screams.

  No! Elizabeth! No! Put that down!

  The voice is cruel. Elizabeth hears that now. She knows her mother couldn’t help herself. Deranged by grief, made vicious and desperate, like a wounded animal. Frightened. That voice kept her away: No, Elizabeth! As if the question were always, May I come to you? May I see you?

  No, Elizabeth! No!

  Something has broken, Clara says. She steps between the sofa and the table, bends to pick a small piece of glass out of the rug.

  Oh! Elizabeth says.

  You don’t want to know the story of that, Clara says.

  Elizabeth closes her eyes. No, she tells herself. If you knew, you would never stop thinking about it. It would never leave you alone.

  When I traveled in Spain, I learned a word for this. For what we are doing. Criado. It means brought up in the family. The English is nicer: daughter of creation.

  That is nice. Daughter of creation. A child created.

  Exactly, Clara says.

  Maybe that’s what we all are.

  Perhaps, Clara says. I’ll send you home now, Elizabeth. Wherever that may be.

  GEOGRAPHY IV

  1937

  Elizabeth feels as if she’s been away from Paris for a lifetime, a century. Margaret, Louise, Mrs. Miller, all ask the usual questions: What did you do? Where did you stay? Whom did you see? She is very careful about the answers.

  We sailed.

  We stayed in Arromanches.

  I saw perhaps too much of Clara.

  The unsaid catches in her throat. One particular phrase that comes out of nowhere: I saw the dark ajar. The alley in Dieppe where Rachel and Marta were put into their arms. The unlit streets with their treacherous, uneven cobblestones. That gutting, wordless fear. She would say she saw a door cracked open and just inside, the cruelty of the Germans, the black heart of their intentions. She would say this. Not all Germans, of course. Not Sigrid, though she is a puzzle, will never be completely known. Elizabeth sees her now with clear eyes—this feels literally true—as if Sigrid has stepped from behind a veil, as if Elizabeth has scrubbed her own vision clean. This is what the nuns must believe: that mystery is a fact.

  Elizabeth lifts her suitcase onto the bed in the Millers’ apartment and begins to unpack. Louise comes to stand in the doorway, and Elizabeth worries that some small strange trinket will fly up out of the contents. She knows this is foolish, but still she angles herself so that Louise can’t see what she’s unfolding, sorting. Her clothes still have the bitter tang of marine air.

  You were missed, Louise says. But we went to Versailles without you. It was dusty.

  Then it’s just as well, Elizabeth says.

  Josephine Baker is back. She got married to a businessman.

  Are you heartbroken?

  I’ll get over it.

  I’m sure you will, Elizabeth says. She tries to look Louise in the eye and smile, but she feels not quite in full control of her expression.

  I met someone interesting, Louise says. Natalie Barney. Remember? The Friday salon on rue Jacob? The countess said she would make an introduction.

  Elizabeth feels as if the countess and Clara cannot possibly be the same person.

  I remember.

  She’s speaking next week at Sylvia’s. We should go.

  All right.

  Elizabeth, what’s wrong?

  I think I’m just tired. You can imagine what it’s like keeping up with Clara.

  Did she make you do all the sailing?

  Not all of it.

  Louise sits down on the bed, then stretches out beside the open suitcase. She crosses her arms behind her head, glances down into the suitcase, frowns. Elizabeth wonders what she sees.

  You need some new clothes, Louise says. I swear you had these the year I met you.

  I probably did.

  Louise sighs. Margaret seems better, she says. Her mother found a new surgeon. They all feel hopeful. Margaret actually went with us to the opening ceremonies for the International Exposition. She said she thought the fireworks were a bit too operatic.

  That sounds like the old Margaret, Elizabeth says. She stops rummaging in her suitcase. She’s come across no evidence to suggest she and Clara did anything besides sail and fish and take in the sea views. She smiles at Louise, considers all that is unspoken between them, years now of assumptions and omissions, averted gazes, privacy.

  You know me so well, she s
ays.

  Do I? Louise asks.

  Sigrid telephones to welcome Elizabeth home. She uses the exact word, home, as though Elizabeth lives in Paris now and always will. Her voice is warm, confiding, intimate. She does not ask the usual questions about Elizabeth’s trip. This is a both a relief and a puzzle, almost a physical sensation.

  How did you know I was back? she asks.

  A photographer from Berlin was in the embassy, Sigrid says. She knows Americans. It is like a web connecting all of you.

  I’m not sure I like the idea, Elizabeth says. She feels powerfully the need to see Sigrid, to read her expression as she talks about this photographer.

  A film has just opened at the Marivaux, Sigrid tells her then. Near the Opéra Garnier. La Grande Illusion. Everyone is raving about it, but the German ambassador has forbidden his staff to go. German soldiers are depicted as cruel. Jews are good. It has been viciously denounced by the Nazis. Vom Rath has said it is brilliant.

  Would you like to come with me? she asks.

  That seems reckless, Elizabeth says. What if someone sees you?

  I will think about that. Meet me there, please. Outside. Maybe I won’t go in.

  All right, Elizabeth says.

  There is a show at six o’clock.

  Elizabeth replaces the receiver in its cradle and gazes at her reflection in the hallway mirror. Impassive. She recalls using that word to describe her first conversation with Miss Moore. No. Impersonal. She’s noticed this in photographs—detachment, the impression that’s she’s just about to turn her head away from the camera, walk out of its range. Except now there’s something else in the face looking back at her, some worry, some plea that has not been there before.

  * * *

  Even though the crowds have spilled east from the exposition, and the boulevard des Italiens is roiling with people, Elizabeth cannot imagine Sigrid wouldn’t be observed. She is wearing a dark blue suit, which makes her hair appear brighter, a fiery burnt orange. She is one of the only women on the street without a hat. They shake hands.

  You would be foolish to go into the theater, Elizabeth says.

  You look at me too hard, Sigrid replies.

  I think when he comes to Paris, Hitler will be afraid of you and change his mind.

  About what?

  About everything.

  He is incapable of changing his mind.

  It’s too late now, Elizabeth says. The film will have already started.

  You arrived late on purpose.

  What if I did?

  It’s good of you to save me from myself.

  * * *

  Behind the Marivaux there are benches in a small, shady park. Sigrid suggests they sit for a half hour before she makes her way north to Saint-Denis.

  The photographer is called Gisèle Freund, Sigrid says. She fled to France with Bertolt Brecht and Walter Benjamin when Berlin became too dangerous for Jews. There is a story that she left Berlin with her negatives strapped to her body, under her clothes, so that she would not have to surrender them to the Nazis.

  Elizabeth imagines the slick negatives pressed against the skin, their edges like razors. Suddenly, blood through one’s clothes, betrayal like stigmata.

  Americans have helped her make a marriage of convenience, Sigrid says. The man is very sympathetic, very friendly.

  How odd to do that, Elizabeth says.

  But necessary. I heard she is interested in making photographs of writers, so I told her about you.

  Elizabeth does not want to be photographed, especially not by someone so serious.

  I don’t think so, she says.

  I can take you there, Sigrid says. But I suspect you know the way yourself. She lives above Sylvia Beach’s bookshop.

  How interesting, Elizabeth says. I’m going there anyway, when Sylvia returns from America. She is going to lend me a typewriter.

  Sigrid smiles, pats Elizabeth on the knee.

  You already knew that, didn’t you?

  As I told you, Sigrid says, you’re in a web.

  The idea makes Elizabeth go cold all over. Her bones feel as if they’ve frozen. She can almost see them, long white icebergs floating beneath her skin.

  If one stands at the Palais de Chaillot facing south, the view of the Paris Exposition is terrifying: the German Pavilion to the east, the Soviet Union’s to the west, and the Eiffel Tower just below, or so it seems from this perspective. Really the Eiffel Tower is beyond, cast away, half forgotten. The two pavilions appear to glare at each other. The Eiffel Tower looks on, helpless.

  But there’s something else, Margaret says. Look. It’s as if the Soviets are trying to capture the Nazi eagle. And the eagle wants to devour them, or at least claw their eyes out.

  And what will the Eiffel Tower do? Elizabeth asks.

  It’s very formal, Louise says. Very upright. Stiff.

  It’s a nightmare, Margaret says.

  But how terribly French, Louise says. The Eiffel Tower is what gets you out of the nightmare.

  What do you mean? Margaret says.

  She means Paris is unfailingly heroic, Elizabeth says. They join the crowds wandering through the Trocadéro.

  I don’t want to see either of those two pavilions, Louise says. I don’t really want to see Spain and that hideous Picasso.

  Of course you do, Margaret says.

  But in the end, they can’t stay away from the Spanish Pavilion. Or it may be they have just let the crowd push them along, up the inclined ramp, through the steel doors, past the photograph montage, which is frame after frame of dead children, and upstairs to the second floor and to Guernica. In some ways the painting makes more physical sense than the photographs: humans bent sideways, deformed and broken, rather than dead in one piece. It’s certainly more horrifying. Elizabeth has to look away, turn her back for a moment. Just beyond is Mr. Calder’s fountain. Right there, so people would have something to turn to from Guernica, a reprieve, an object of beauty.

  A guide explains that the piece protests the mistreatment of workers in the mercury mines at Almadén, Spain, but Elizabeth has to put that out of her mind.

  In one hundred years, Elizabeth says to Louise, this fountain will still be beautiful. That—she tips her head backward to indicate the Guernica—will not.

  It will, though, Margaret says. It’s supposed to disturb you.

  This doesn’t disturb me, though, Elizabeth says. They stare at the Mercury Fountain, the plod of its fluid mechanics.

  The difference is the location of the violence, Margaret says. That’s all. In the painting it’s already there. In Calder’s fountain, violence is waiting just outside.

  It makes you prefer mercury to water, Louise says. Which seems dangerous.

  The fountain is made mostly of glass and polished steel, because mercury would corrode any other material. Elizabeth thinks about Miss Moore and her fascination with tattoos, the idea of something under your skin that could poison you but somehow does not. Pipes from the pump and reservoir run under the paving stones to the ground floor. The fountain’s basin is concrete lined with pitch, making a flat black surface that contrasts with the sheen of the mercury, a better balance than the glass or the polished steel.

  Pitch will not corrode, the guide says.

  I wonder, Louise says, why nature made that so.

  The mercury spews onto a warped plate, then pours out of a weir onto a second plate, a smoother surface, so that it appears to be flowing into a sort of lagoon. The third plate is actually a chute and a dam, forming a pool into which the mercury spills. From there, it’s returned to the center of the basin. The flat pooling surfaces are balanced by two rods attached to the plates so that they sway when the mercury hits them. A red disc hangs from one of the rods. The metaphor is obvious: spilled blood.

  The name of the mine, Almadén, fashioned from twisted wire, hangs from the other. A line of poetry begins to take shape in Elizabeth’s head, even as she refuses it: no, no, not another one about some Parisian me
chanical oddity.

  Guides tell the tale of the mercury’s arrival, in English, in French, in German and Spanish, a fugue of a story. The driver got lost navigating around the pavilions, and so the truck was late. Calder and Sert the architect began to believe that the mercury had been lost or stolen, and the exhibit would be a disaster. But finally they saw the truck in the distance, making its tortured way through the Trocadéro. The driver emerged from the cab, cursing them, cursing Parisians, cursing whatever was in the two hundred tiny cylinders, demanding twice the promised fee. He refused to unlock the rear door of his truck. Picasso’s wife, Olga, led the driver into a nearby café and bought him glasses of wine until he agreed to give up his keys. Olga arranged with the waiter that the driver should eat and drink all he wanted, and if he fell asleep, he should be tucked into the banquette and allowed to stay.

  Now watch, the guides say in their cacophony of languages. Everyone in the room turns toward the fountain, one group at a time, a dance, a ballet, perfectly choreographed. Tourists continue to stream through the doorway, admire Guernica, then the fountain. Some visitors seem not to understand or to care that the flowing element is mercury and not water, and they toss coins into the silvery pool.