Novak brought his hands together, a single beat of applause. “It would have been a terrible shame to lose you,” he said. “But it’s an excellent chance, and well timed. You’ve got to do it, of course.”
“I can’t thank you enough for what you’ve done,” Andras said.
“You’re a good young man. You’ve worked hard here. I’ve never regretted taking you on.” He drained the rest of his drink and pushed the empty glass across the desk. “Now, would you fill that again for me? I’ve got to go break the news to the others. You’ll come to work tomorrow, I hope. There’ll be a great deal to do, getting this place closed down. You’ll have to tell Forestier I can’t release you until the end of the month.”
“Tomorrow, as usual,” Andras said.
He went home that evening with a frightening sense of vacancy in his chest. No more Sarah-Bernhardt. No more Monsieur Novak. No more Claudel, or Pély; no more Marcelle Gérard. And no more Klara, no more Klara. The hard white shell of his life punctured and blown clean. He was light now, hollow, an empty egg. Hollow and light, he drifted home through the January wind. At 34 rue des Écoles he climbed the flights and flights of stairs-how many hundreds of them were there?-feeling he didn’t have the energy to look at his books that night, nor even to wash his face or change for bed. He wanted only to lie down in his trousers and shoes and overcoat, pull the eiderdown over his head, ride out the hours before dawn. But at the top of the stairs he saw a line of light coming from beneath his own door, and when he put a hand on the doorknob he found it unlocked. He pushed the door open and let it swing. A fire in the grate; bread and wine on the table; in the single chair with a book in her hands, Klara.
“Te,” he said. You.
“And you,” she said.
“How did you get in?”
“I told the concierge it was your birthday. I said I was planning a surprise.”
“And what did you tell your daughter?”
She looked down at the cover of her book. “I told her I was going to see a friend.”
“What a shame that wasn’t true.”
She got to her feet, crossed the room to him, put her hands on his arms. “Please, Andras,” she said. “Don’t speak to me that way.”
He moved away from her and took off his coat, his scarf. For what felt like a long time he couldn’t say anything more; he went to the fireplace and crossed his arms, looking down into a faltering pyramid of bright coals. “It was bad enough, not knowing whether or not I’d see you again,” he said. “I told myself we were finished, but I couldn’t convince myself it was true. Finally I confided in Marcelle. She was kind enough to tell me I wasn’t alone in my misery. She said I belonged to an illustrious club of men you’d thrown over.”
Her gray eyes darkened. “Thrown over? Is that what you feel I’ve done to you?”
“Thrown over, jettisoned, sent packing. I don’t suppose it matters what you call it.”
“We decided it was impossible.”
“You decided.”
She went to him and moved her hands over his arms, and when she looked up into his face he saw there were tears in her eyes. To his horror his own eyes began to burn. This was Klara, whose name he’d carried with him from Budapest; Klara, whose voice came to him in his sleep.
“What do you want?” he said into her hair. “What am I supposed to do?”
“I’ve been miserable,” she said. “I can’t let it go. I want to know you, Andras.”
“And I want to know you,” he said. “I don’t like secrecy.” But he knew as he said it that what was hidden made her all the more attractive; there was a kind of torment in her unknowability, in the rooms that lay beyond the ones in which she entertained him.
“You’ll have to be patient with me,” she said. “You’ll have to let me trust you.”
“I can be patient,” he said. He had drawn her so close that the sharp crests of her pelvis pressed against him; he wanted to reach into her body and grab her by the bones. “Claire Morgenstern,” he said. “Klárika.” She would ruin him, he thought. But he could no sooner have sent her away than he could have dismissed geometry from architecture, or the cold from January, or the winter sky from outside his window. He bent to her and kissed her. Then, for the first time, he took her into his own bed.
When he stepped into the world the next morning it was a transformed place. The dullness of the weeks without her had fallen away. He had become human again, had reclaimed his own flesh and blood, and hers. Everything glittered too brilliantly in the winter sun; every detail of the street rushed at him as if he were seeing it for the first time. How had he never noticed the way light fell from the sky onto the bare limbs of the lindens outside his building, the way it broke and diffused on the wet paving stones and needled whitely from the polished brass handles of the doors along the street? He savored the bracing slap of his soles against the sidewalk, fell in love with the cascade of ice in the frozen fountain of the Luxembourg. He wanted to thank someone aloud for the fine long corridor of the boulevard Raspail, which conducted him every day along its row of Haussmann-era buildings to the blue doors of the École Spéciale. He adored the empty courtyard awash with winter sunlight, its green benches empty, its grass frozen, its paths wet with melted snow. A speckle-breasted bird on a branch pronounced her name exactly: Klara, Klara.
He ran upstairs to the studio and looked among the drawings for the new set of plans he’d been working on with Polaner. He thought he might spend a few minutes on them before he had to report to Vago for his morning French. But the plans weren’t there; Polaner must have taken them home with him. Instead he picked up the textbook of architectural vocabulary he would study that morning with Vago, and ran downstairs again for a stop at the men’s room. He pushed open the door into echoing dark and fumbled for the light switch. From the far corner of the room came a low wheezing groan.
Andras turned on the light. On the concrete floor, against the wall beyond the urinals and the sinks, someone was curled into a tight G. A small form, a man’s, in a velvet jacket. Beside him a set of plans, crumpled and boot-stomped.
“Polaner?”
That sound again. A wheeze sliding into a groan. And then his own name.
Andras went to him and knelt beside him on the concrete. Polaner wouldn’t look at Andras, or couldn’t. His face was dark with bruises, his nose broken, his eyes hidden in purple folds. He kept his knees tight against his chest.
“My God,” Andras said. “What happened? Who did this?”
No response.
“Don’t move,” Andras said, and staggered to his feet. He turned and ran out of the room, across the courtyard, and up the stairs to Vago’s office, and opened the door without knocking.
“Lévi, what on earth?”
“Eli Polaner’s been beaten half to death. He’s in the men’s room, ground floor.”
They ran downstairs. Vago tried to get Polaner to let him see what had happened, but Polaner wouldn’t uncurl. Andras pleaded with him. When Polaner dropped his arms from his face, Vago took a sharp breath. Polaner started to cry. One of his lower teeth had been knocked out, and he spat blood onto the concrete.
“Stay here, both of you,” Vago said. “I’m going to call an ambulance.”
“No,” Polaner said. “No ambulance.” But Vago had already gone, the door slamming behind him as he ran into the courtyard.
Polaner rolled onto his back, letting his arms go limp. Beneath the velvet jacket his shirt had been torn open, and something had been written on his chest in black ink.
Feygele. A Jewish fag.
Andras touched the torn shirt, the word. Polaner flinched.
“Who did it?” Andras said.
“Lemarque,” Polaner said. Then he mumbled something else, a phrase Andras could only hear halfway, and couldn’t translate: “J’étais coin…”
“Tu étais quoi?”
“J’étais coincé,” Polaner said, and repeated it until Andras could understand. They’d
caught him in a trap. Tricked him. In a whisper: “Asked me to meet him here last night. And then came with three others.”
“Meet him here at night?” Andras said. “To work on those plans?”
“No.” Polaner turned his blackened and swollen eyes on him. “Not to work.”
Feygele.
It took him a moment to understand. Meet at night: an assignation. So this, and not the girl back in Poland, the would-be fiancée who had written him those letters, was what had prevented him from showing interest in women here in Paris.
“Oh, God,” Andras said. “I’ll kill him. I’ll knock his teeth down his throat.”
Vago came through the door of the men’s room with a first-aid box. A cluster of students crowded into the doorway behind him. “Go away,” he shouted back over his shoulder, but the students didn’t move. Vago’s brows came together into a tight V. “Now!” he cried, and the students backed away, murmuring to each other. The door slammed. Vago knelt on the floor beside Andras and put a hand on Polaner’s shoulder.
“An ambulance is coming,” he said. “You’ll be all right.”
Polaner coughed, spat blood. He tried to hold his shirt closed with one hand, but the effort was beyond him; his arm fell against the concrete floor.
“Tell him,” Andras said.
“Tell me what?” said Vago.
“Who did this.”
“Another student?” Vago said. “We’ll bring him before the disciplinary council. He’ll be expelled. We’ll press criminal charges.”
“No, no,” Polaner said. “If my parents knew-”
Now Vago saw the word inked across Polaner’s chest. He rocked back onto his heels and put a hand to his mouth. For a long time he didn’t speak or move. “All right,” he said, finally. “All right.” He moved the shreds of Polaner’s shirt aside to get a better look at his injuries; Polaner’s chest and abdomen were black with bruises. Andras could hardly bear to look. Nausea plowed through him, and he had to put his head against one of the porcelain sinks. Vago pulled off his own jacket and draped it over Polaner’s chest. “All right,” he said. “You’ll go to the hospital and they’ll take care of you. We’ll worry about the rest of this later.”
“Our plans,” Polaner said, touching the crumpled sheets of drafting paper.
“Don’t think about that,” Vago said. “We’ll fix them.” He picked up the plans and handed them carefully to Andras, as though there were any chance they could be salvaged. Then, hearing the ambulance bell outside, he ran to direct the attendants to the men’s room. Two men in white uniforms brought a stretcher in; when they lifted Polaner onto it, he fainted from the pain. Andras held the door open as they carried him into the courtyard. A crowd had gathered outside. The word had spread as the students arrived for morning classes. The attendants had to push their way through the crowd as they carried Polaner down the flagstone path.
“There’s nothing to see,” Vago shouted. “Go to your classes.” But there were no classes yet; it was only a quarter to eight. Not a single person turned away until the attendants had gotten Polaner into the ambulance. Andras stood at the courtyard door, holding Polaner’s plans like the broken body of an animal. Vago put a hand on his shoulder.
“Come to my office,” he said.
Andras turned to follow him. He knew this was the same courtyard he’d crossed earlier that morning, with the same frosted grass and green benches, the same paths bright-wet in the sun. He knew it, but now he couldn’t see what he had seen before. It astonished him to think the world could trade that beauty for this ugliness, all in the space of a quarter hour.
In his office, Vago told Andras about the other cases. Last February someone had stenciled the German words for filth and swine onto the final projects of a group of Jewish fifth-year students, and later that spring a student from Côte d’Ivoire had been dragged from the studio at night and beaten in the cemetery behind the school. That student, too, had had an insult painted on his chest, a racial slur. But not one of the perpetrators had been identified. If Andras had any information to volunteer, he would be helping everyone.
Andras hesitated. He sat on his usual stool, rubbing his father’s pocket watch with his thumb. “What will happen if they’re caught?”
“They’ll be questioned. We’ll take disciplinary and legal action.”
“And then their friends will do something worse. They’ll know Polaner told.”
“And if we do nothing?” Vago said.
Andras let the watch drop into the hollow of his pocket. He considered what his father would tell him to do in a situation like this. He considered what Tibor would tell him to do. There was no question: They would both think him a coward for hesitating.
“Polaner mentioned Lemarque,” he said. It came out as a whisper at first, and he repeated the name, louder. “Lemarque and some others. I don’t know who else.”
“Fernand Lemarque?”
“That’s what Polaner said.” And he told Vago everything he knew.
“All right,” said Vago. “I’m going to talk to Perret. In the meantime”-he opened his architectural vocabulary book to the page that depicted the inner structures of roofs, with their vertical poinçons, their buttressing contre-fiches, their riblike arbalétriers-“stay here and study,” he said, and left Andras alone in the office.
Andras couldn’t study, of course; he couldn’t keep the image of Polaner from his mind. Again and again he saw Polaner on the floor, the word inscribed on his chest in black ink, the plans crumpled beside him. Andras understood desperation and loneliness; he knew how it felt to be thousands of miles from home; he knew how it felt to carry a secret. But to what depths of misery would Polaner have had to descend in order to imagine Lemarque as a lover? As a person with whom he might share a moment of intimacy in the men’s room at night?
Not five minutes passed before Rosen burst into Vago’s office, cap in hand. Ben Yakov stood behind him, abashed, as though he’d tried and failed to prevent Rosen from tearing upstairs.
“Where’s that little bastard?” Rosen shouted. “Where is that weasel? If they’re hiding him up here, I swear to God I’ll kill them all!”
Vago ran down the hall from Perret’s office. “Lower your voice,” he said. “This isn’t a beer hall. Where’s who?”
“You know who,” Rosen said. “Fernand Lemarque. He’s the one who whispers sale Juif. The one who put up those posters for that Front de la Jeunesse. You saw them: Meet and Unite, Youth of France, and all that rubbish, at the Salle des Sociétés Savantes, of all places. They’re anti-parliament, anti-Semitic, anti-everything. He’s one of their little stooges. There’s a whole group of them. Third-years, fifth-years. From here, from the Beaux-Arts, from other schools all over the city. I know. I’ve been to their meetings. I’ve heard what they want to do to us.”
“All right,” Vago said. “Suppose you tell me about it after studio.”
“After studio!” Rosen spat on the floor. “Right now! I want the police.”
“We’ve already contacted the police.”
“Bullshit! You haven’t called anyone. You don’t want a scandal.”
Now Perret himself came down the hall, his gray cape rolling behind him. “Enough,” he said. “We’re handling this. Go to your studio.”
“I won’t,” Rosen said. “I’m going to find that little bastard myself.”
“Young man,” Perret said. “There are elements of this situation that you don’t understand. You’re not a cowboy. This is not the Wild West. This country has a system of justice, which we’ve already put into play. If you don’t lower your voice and conduct yourself like a gentleman, I’m going to have you removed from this school.”
Rosen turned and went down the stairs, cursing under his breath. Andras and Ben Yakov followed him to the studio, where Vago met them ten minutes later. At nine o’clock they continued with the previous day’s lesson, as if designing the perfect maison particulier were the only thing that mattered in
the world.
At the hospital that afternoon, Andras and Rosen and Ben Yakov found Polaner in a long narrow ward filled with winter light. He lay in a high bed, his legs propped on pillows, his nose set with a plaster bridge, deep purple bruises ringing his eyes. Three broken ribs. A broken nose. Extensive contusions on the upper body and legs. Signs of internal bleeding-abdominal swelling, unstable pulse and temperature, blood pooling beneath the skin. Symptoms of shock. Aftereffects of hypothermia. That was what the doctor told them. A chart at the foot of Polaner’s bed showed temperature and pulse and blood-pressure readings taken every quarter hour. As they crowded around the bed, he opened his swollen eyes, called them by unfamiliar Polish names, and lost consciousness. A nurse came down the ward with two hot-water bottles, which she tucked beneath Polaner’s sheets. She took his pulse and blood pressure and temperature and recorded the numbers on his chart.
“How is he?” Rosen asked, getting to his feet.
“We don’t know yet,” the nurse said.
“Don’t know? Is this a hospital? Are you a nurse? Isn’t it your job to know?”
“All right, Rosen,” Ben Yakov said. “It’s not her fault.”
“I want to speak to that doctor again,” Rosen said.
“I’m afraid he’s making his rounds at the moment.”
“For God’s sake! This is our friend. I just want to know exactly how bad it is.”
“I wish I could tell you myself,” the nurse said.
Rosen sat down again and put his head in his hands. He waited until the nurse had gone off down the ward. “I swear to God,” he said. “I swear to God, if I catch those bastards! I don’t care what happens to me. I don’t care if I do get kicked out of school. I’ll go to jail if I have to. I want to make them regret they were born.” He looked up at Andras and Ben Yakov. “You’ll help me find them, won’t you?”
“Why?” Ben Yakov said. “So we can bash their skulls in?”
“Oh, pardon me,” Rosen said. “I suppose you wouldn’t want to risk having your own pretty nose broken.”
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