The InvisibleBridge

by Julie Orringer

  “A fever?” Klara said. “Has the doctor been here?”

  “Polaner’s been taking care of me,” Andras said.

  “I’ve been a poor doctor,” Polaner said. “He looks like he’s lost weight. I’ll be off before I do any further damage.” He put on his own spring hat, of such a fashionable shape and color that you could miss the place where he’d resewn the brim to the crown, and he slipped into the hall, closing the door quietly behind him.

  “A fever,” Klara said. “Are you feeling better now?”

  He didn’t answer. She sat down in the wooden chair and touched the cardboard walls of the concert hall. “I should have told you about Zoltán,” she said. “This was a terrible way for you to find out. And there might have been worse ways. You worked together. Marcelle knew.”

  He hated to think of it, of Madame Gérard knowing all and seeing all. “It was a bad enough way to find out,” he said.

  “I want you to know it’s over,” Klara said. “I didn’t see him two weeks ago, and I won’t if he asks again.”

  “I’m sure you’ve said that every time.”

  “You have to believe me, Andras.”

  “You’re still tied to him. You live in the house he bought you.”

  “He made the down payment for me,” Klara said. “But I paid for the rest. Elisabet doesn’t know the details of our finances. Perhaps she doesn’t want to believe I support us. That would make it difficult for her to justify the way she behaves toward me.”

  “But you did love him,” Andras said. “You still do. You took up with me to make him jealous, just as you did with those others. Marcel. And that writer, Édouard.”

  “It’s true that when Zoltán turned away from me, I didn’t sit home alone. Not for long, in any case. When he claimed to be moving on with his life, I moved on with mine. But I didn’t care for Marcel or Édouard the way I cared for him, so I went back.”

  “So it’s true, then,” Andras said. “You do love him.”

  She sighed. “I don’t know. Zoltán and I are very close, or we were, once. But we didn’t give ourselves to each other. He couldn’t, because of what he felt for Edith; and I didn’t, also because of that. In the end I decided I didn’t want to be someone’s mistress for the rest of my life. And he decided we couldn’t keep on with it if he and Edith were to have a child.”

  “And now?”

  “I haven’t seen him since we made those decisions. Since November.”

  “Do you miss him?”

  “Sometimes,” she said, and folded her hands between her knees. “He was a dear friend, and he’s been a great help with Elisabet. She’s fond of him, too, or was. He’s the closest thing she’s had to a father. When we decided to end it, she felt as though he’d left both of us. She blamed me for it. I think she hoped I was seeing him again, those nights when I was with you.”

  “And what now? What if he asks you again? You were together for eleven years, nearly a third of your life.”

  “It’s finished, Andras. You’re in my life now.”

  “Am I?” he said. “I thought you were finished with me. I didn’t know if you could forgive me for keeping Elisabet’s business from you.”

  “I don’t know if I can,” she said, without a hint of humor. “Elisabet had no right to put you in that position, but once she did, you should have told me immediately. The man is five years older than she is-a rich American, studying painting at the Beaux-Arts on a lark. Not someone who’s likely to treat her kindly, or take her seriously. And worse than that, he knows my nephew.”

  “You can hardly hold that against him,” Andras said. “I believe your nephew knows everyone between the ages of sixteen and thirty in the Quartier Latin.”

  “In any case, it’s got to stop. I don’t intend to let that young man prove himself dishonorable.”

  “And what about what Elisabet wants?”

  “I’m afraid that’s beside the point.”

  “But Elisabet won’t see it that way. If you oppose her, she’ll only become more resolved.”

  Klara shook her head. “Don’t try to tell me how to raise that child, Andras.”

  “I don’t claim to know how. But I do know how I felt at sixteen.”

  “I told myself that was why you’d kept her secret,” Klara said. “I knew you felt a certain empathy with her, and I think it’s rather sweet of you, actually. But you’ve got to imagine my position, too.”

  “I see. So you’ve put an end to things between Elisabet and Paul.”

  “I hope so,” Klara said. “And I’ve punished her for showing you those letters.” Her brow folded into a familiar set of creases. “She seemed rather pleased with herself when she saw how upset I was about that. She told me I had gotten what I deserved. I’ve placed her under a kind of house arrest. Mrs. Apfel is keeping watch while I’m gone. Elisabet is not to go out until she writes you a letter of apology.”

  “She’ll never do it. She’ll grow old and die first.”

  “That will be her decision,” Klara said.

  But he knew Elisabet wouldn’t remain bound by Klara’s house arrest for long, Mrs. Apfel notwithstanding. She’d soon find a way to escape, and he worried that when she did she’d leave no forwarding address. He didn’t want to be responsible for that.

  “Let me come tomorrow and speak to her,” he said.

  “I don’t think there’s any point.”

  “Let me try.”

  “She won’t see you. She’s been in a vicious mood.”

  “It can’t have been as bad as my own.”

  “You know what she’s like, Andras. She can be beastly.”

  “I know. But she’s still just a girl, after all.”

  Klara gave a deep sigh. “And what now?” she said, looking up at him from her chair. “What do we do, after all this?”

  He ran a hand over the back of his neck. The question had been in his mind. “I don’t know, Klara. I don’t know. I’m going to sit down here on the bed. You can sit beside me if you like.” He waited until she sat beside him, and then he continued. “I’m sorry about the way I spoke to you the other night,” he said. “I acted as though you’d been unfaithful to me, but you haven’t, have you?”

  “No,” she said, and put a hand on his knee, where it burned like a feverish bird. “What I feel for you would make that impossible. Or absurd, at the very least.”

  “How is that, Klara? What is it you feel for me?”

  “It may take me some time to answer that question,” she said, and smiled.

  “I can’t be what he was. I can’t give you a place to live, or be anything like a father to Elisabet.”

  “I have a place to live,” she said. “And Elisabet, though she’s still a child in many ways, will soon be grown. I don’t need now what I needed then.”

  “What do you need now?”

  She drew in her mouth in her pensive way. “I’m not certain, exactly. But I can’t seem to stand to be away from you. Even when I’m livid with anger at you.”

  “There’s still a great deal I don’t know about you.” He stroked the curve of her back; he could feel the glowing coals of her vertebrae through her thin jersey.

  “I hope there’ll be time to learn.”

  He drew her down with him onto the bed, and she put her head on his shoulder. He ran his hand along the warm dark length of her hair and took its upturned ends between his fingers. “Let me talk to Elisabet,” he said. “If we’re to continue with this, I can’t have her hate me. And I can’t hate her.”

  “All right,” Klara said. “You’re welcome to try.” She rolled over onto her back and looked up at the slope of the ceiling, with its water stains in the shape of fish and elephants. “I was terrible to my mother, too,” she said. “It’s foolish to pretend I wasn’t.”

  “We’re all terrible to our parents at sixteen.”

  “Not you, I’m sure,” she said, her eyelids closing. “You love your parents. You’re a good son.”

  �
��I’m here in Paris while they’re in Konyár.”

  “That’s not your fault. Your parents worked so you could go to school, and they wanted you to come here. You write to them every week. They know you love them.”

  He hoped she was right. It had been nine months since he’d seen them. Still, he could feel a fine cord stretched between them, a thin luminous fiber that ran from his chest all the way across the continent and forked into theirs. Never before had he lived through a fever without his mother; when he’d been sick in Debrecen she’d taken the train to be with him. Never had he finished a year at school without knowing that soon he’d be home with his father, working beside him in the lumberyard and walking through the fields with him in the evening. Now there was another filament, one that linked him to Klara. And Paris was her home, this place thousands of kilometers from his own. He felt the stirring of a new ache, something like homesickness but located deeper in his mind; it was an ache for the time when his heart had been a simple and satisfied thing, small as the green apples that grew in his father’s orchard.

  For the first time ever, he went to see József Hász at school. The Beaux-Arts was a vast urban palace, a monument to art for art’s sake; it made the humble courtyard and studios of the École Spéciale look like something a few boys had thrown together in an empty lot. He entered through a floriated wrought-iron gate between two stern figures carved in stone, and crossed a sculpture garden packed with perfect marble specimens of kore and kouros, straight from his art history textbook, staring into the distance with empty almond-shaped eyes. He climbed the marble entry stairs of a three-story Romanesque building and found himself in a hallway teeming with young men and women, all of them dressed with careful offhandedness. A list of studio assignments bore József’s name; a map told him where to look. He went upstairs to a classroom with a sloping north-facing ceiling made all of glass. There, among rows of students intent on their paintings, József was applying varnish to a canvas that at first glance seemed to depict three smashed bees lying close to the black abyss of a drain. Upon closer inspection, the bees turned out to be black-haired women in black-striped yellow dresses.

  József didn’t seem much surprised to see Andras at his painting studio. He raised a cool eyebrow and continued varnishing. “What are you doing here, Lévi?” he asked. “Don’t you have projects of your own to finish? Are you slacking off for the day? Did you come to make me have a drink in the middle of the morning?”

  “I’m looking for that American,” Andras said. “That person who was at your party. Paul.”

  “Why? Are you dueling with him over his statuesque girlfriend?” He kicked the easel of the student across from him, and the student gave a shout of protest.

  “You imbecile, Hász,” said Paul, for that was who it was. He stepped out from behind the canvas with a paintbrush full of burnt umber, his long equine features tightened with annoyance. “You made me give my maenad a moustache.”

  “I’m sure it’ll only improve her.”

  “Lévi again,” Paul said, nodding at Andras. “You go to school here?”

  “No. I came to talk to you.”

  “I think he wants to fight you for that strapping girl,” József said.

  “Hász, you’re hilarious,” Paul said. “You should take that act on tour.”

  József blew him a kiss and went back to his varnishing.

  Paul took Andras’s arm and led him to the studio door. “Sometimes I can stand that jackass and sometimes I can’t,” he said as they descended the stairs. “Today I can’t, particularly.”

  “I’m sorry to interrupt you at studio,” Andras said. “I didn’t know where else to find you.”

  “I hope you’ve come to tell me what’s going on,” Paul said. “I haven’t seen Elisabet for days. I assume her mother’s keeping her at home after that late night we had. But maybe you’ve got more information.” He gave Andras a sideways glance. “I understand you’ve got something going with Madame Morgenstern.”

  “Yes,” Andras said. “I suppose you could say we’ve got something going.” They had reached the front doors of the building and sat down outside on the marble steps. Paul searched his pocket for a cigarette and lit it with a monogrammed lighter.

  “So?” he said. “What’s the news, then?”

  “Elisabet’s been confined to her room,” Andras said. “Her mother won’t let her out until she apologizes to me.”

  “For what?”

  “Never mind. It’s complicated. The thing is, Elisabet won’t apologize. She’d rather die.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Well, I’m afraid I’m the one who blew the whistle on the two of you. When Elisabet was out late the other night, her mother was frantic. I had to tell her Elisabet might be with you. Now it’s all out in the open. And her mother didn’t take kindly to the idea of her having a gentleman friend.”

  Paul took a long draw of his cigarette and blew a gray cloud into the courtyard. “I’m relieved, to tell you the truth,” he said. “The secrecy was getting a little stifling. I’m wild about the girl, and I hate”-he seemed to search his mind for the French phrase-“sneaking around. I like to be the guy in the white cowboy hat. Do you understand me? Are you a fan of the American western?”

  “I’ve seen a few,” Andras said. “Dubbed in Hungarian, though.”

  Paul laughed. “I didn’t know they did that.”

  “They do.”

  “So you’re here on a peace mission? You want to help us, now that you’ve mucked everything up?”

  “Something like that. I’d like to act as a go-between. To earn Elisabet’s trust again, if you will. I can’t have her hate me forever. Not if her mother and I are going to keep seeing each other.”

  “What’s the plan, then?”

  “You can’t pay a visit to Elisabet, but I can. I’m sure she’d want to hear from you. I thought you might want to send a note.”

  “What if her mother finds out?”

  “I plan to tell her,” Andras said. “I predict she’ll come around to you eventually.”

  Paul took a long American drag on his cigarette, seeming to consider the proposition. Then he said, “Listen to me, Lévi. I’m serious about this girl. She’s like no one else I know. I hope this isn’t just going to make things worse.”

  “At the moment, I’m not sure they could get much worse.”

  Paul stubbed his cigarette against the marble step, then kicked it down into the dirt. “All right,” he said. “Wait here. I’ll go write a note.” He got to his feet and offered Andras a hand up. Andras stood and waited, watching a pair of finches browse for seeds in a clump of lavender. He looked over his shoulder to make sure no one saw him, took out his pocketknife, and cut a sheaf of stems. A length of cotton string torn from the strap of his canvas satchel served to tie them. A few minutes later, Paul came downstairs with a kraft envelope in his hand.

  “There’s a note,” Paul said, and handed it to him. “Good luck to us both.”

  “Here goes nothing,” Andras said. His sole English phrase.

  When he arrived the next day at noon, Klara was teaching a private student. It was Mrs. Apfel who opened the door. Her white apron was stained with purple juice, and she had a pair of bruised-looking moons under her eyes, as though she hadn’t slept in days. She gave Andras a tired frown; she seemed to expect nothing from him but more trouble.

  “I’m here to see Elisabet,” Andras said.

  Mrs. Apfel shook her head. “You’d better go home.”

  “I’d like to speak to her,” he said. “Her mother knows why I’m here.”

  “Elisabet won’t see you. She’s locked herself in her room. She won’t come out. Won’t even eat.”

  “Let me try,” Andras said. “It’s important.”

  She knit her ginger-colored eyebrows. “Believe me, you don’t want to try.”

  “Give me a tray for her. I’ll take it in.”

  “You won’t have any better luck than the
rest of us,” she said, but she turned and led him up the stairs. He followed her into the kitchen, where a fallen blueberry cake stood cooling on an iron rack. He stood over it and breathed its scent as Mrs. Apfel made an omelet for Elisabet. She cut a fat slice of the cake and set it on a plate with a square of butter.

  “She hasn’t eaten a thing in two days,” Mrs. Apfel said. “We’re going to have to get the doctor here before long.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Andras said. He took the tray and went down the hall to Elisabet’s room, where he knocked the corner of the tray twice against the closed door. From within, silence.

  “Elisabet,” he said. “It’s Andras. I brought your lunch.”

  Silence.

  He set the tray down in the hall, took Paul’s envelope from his bag, pressed it flat, and slipped it under Elisabet’s door. For a long while he heard nothing. Then a faint scraping, as though she were drawing the note closer. He listened for the rustle of paper. There it was. More silence followed. Finally she opened the door, and he stepped in and set the tray on her little desk. She gave the food a contemptuous glance but wouldn’t look at Andras at all. Her hair was a dun-colored tangle, her face raw and damp. She wore a wrinkled nightgown and red socks with holes in the toes.

  “Close the door,” she said.

  He closed the door.

  “How did you get that letter?”

  “I went to see Paul. I thought he’d want to know what had happened to you. I thought he might want to send you a note.”

  She gave a shuddering sigh and sat down on the bed. “What does it matter?” she said. “My mother’s never going to let me leave the house again. It’s all over with Paul.” When she raised her eyes to him there was a look he’d never seen in them before: grim, exhausted defeat.

  Andras shook his head. “Paul doesn’t think it’s all over. He wants to meet your mother.”

  Elisabet’s eyes filled with tears. “She’ll never meet him,” she said.

  She was exactly Mátyás’s age, Andras thought. She would have cut her teeth when he’d cut his teeth, walked at the same time, learned to write during the same school year. But she was no one’s sister. She had no age-mate in that house, no one she could think of as an ally. She had no one with whom to divide the intensity of her mother’s scrutiny and love.