Ilana drew a sharp breath as the needle went in. “Tibor,” she said, turning her eyes again toward Andras. Then the morphine found its mark, and her eyelids fluttered and closed.
“Go home, now,” the nurse said. “We’ll take care of your wife. She needs to rest. You can visit her this afternoon.”
“She’s not my wife,” Andras said. “She’s a friend. I told her husband I’d stay with her until he got back.”
The nurse raised an eyebrow, as if something weren’t quite right about Andras’s story, and went back to her patient down the ward.
Through the windows the sky continued its slow bleed toward blue. The quiet of the ward seemed to deepen as he looked at Ilana, her chest rising and falling beneath the sheet. The drug had enclosed her within a transparent capsule of sleep, like the princess in the fairy tale, Hófehérke-in French it must be Blanche-Neige-the exiled princess sleeping in her glass coffin on a hill, while those little men, the törpék, watched over her. He thought again of the Marot poem he’d cut from Klara’s book. If fire dwells secretly in snow, how can I escape burning? He was glad Ben Yakov hadn’t been there when Ilana had spoken, glad he hadn’t seen her lips flush with color when she’d thought it was Tibor watching over the bed.
Ben Yakov returned forty minutes later, redolent of new-mown grass; the back of his pajama shirt was damp with dew. He took off his cap and smoothed his hair.
“How is she?”
“Fine,” Andras said. “The nurse gave her a shot of morphine.”
“Go on home, now,” Ben Yakov said. “I’ll stay with her until she wakes up.”
“We’re both supposed to leave. The nurse says she has to rest. We can come back this afternoon.”
Ben Yakov didn’t protest. He touched Ilana’s pale forehead and let Andras lead him from the ward. All the way back to the Latin Quarter they walked in silence, their hands stuffed into their pockets. It seemed a particularly cruel morning to have lost a child, Andras thought: A loamy damp scent arose from the window boxes, from the new flowerbeds in the park; the branches of the chestnuts were crowded with small wet leaves. He walked Ben Yakov to the door of his apartment building and they faced each other on the sidewalk.
“You’re a good friend,” Ben Yakov said.
Andras shrugged and looked at the pavement. “I didn’t do anything.”
“Of course you did. You and Klara, both.”
“You would have done the same for us.”
“I’m not much good as a friend,” Ben Yakov said. “Still worse as a husband.”
“Don’t say that.”
“People like me shouldn’t be allowed to marry.” Even after a night at the hospital and an hour’s sleep on a bench, he was elegant in his angular, cinematic way. But he twisted his mouth into a grimace of self-disgust. “I’m neglectful,” he said. “And, to be honest, unfaithful.”
Andras kicked at the boot scraper beside the entryway. He didn’t want to hear anything more about it. He wanted to turn and walk home to the rue des Écoles, climb into bed and sleep. But he couldn’t pretend he hadn’t heard what Ben Yakov had just said.
“Unfaithful,” he said. “When?”
“Always. Whenever she’ll see me. It’s Lucia, of course. From school.” Ben Yakov’s voice had fallen to a half whisper. “I’ve never been able to break it off. Even this morning she came out and sat in the park with me while you watched over my wife. I’m in love, I think, or something horrible like that. I have been ever since I met her.”
Andras felt a surge of indignation on behalf of the girl in the hospital bed. “If you were in love with her, why did you bring Ilana here?”
“I thought she might cure me,” Ben Yakov said. “When I met her in Florence, she made me forget Lucia. She delighted me. And, though it’s shameful to say, her innocence was arousing. She made me think I could be a different person, and for a time I was.” He lowered his eyes. “I was excited about the prospect of marrying her. I knew I couldn’t have married Lucia. She doesn’t want to marry, for one thing. She wants to be an architect and travel the world. For another thing, she’s-une negresse. My parents, you know. I couldn’t.”
Andras thought of the classmate who’d been attacked in the graveyard, the man from Côte d’Ivoire. That style of bigotry was supposed to belong to the other side. But it didn’t, of course. Hadn’t he himself been terrified to speak to Lucia because of her race, and, at the same time, inexplicably excited by her? What if he had fallen in love with her? Could he have married her? Could he have brought her to his parents? He took Ben Yakov’s shoulder in his hand. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Truly.”
“It’s my own fault,” Ben Yakov said. “I should never have married Ilana.”
“You ought to get some sleep now,” Andras said. “You’ll need to go back to see her this afternoon.”
A flint spark of fear burned for an instant in Ben Yakov’s eyes. Andras recognized the expression; he’d seen it countless times on his younger brother’s face at bedtime, just before Andras snuffed the candle. It was the panic of a child afraid to be left alone in the dark. Countless times, Andras had lain down beside Mátyás and listened to him breathing until he fell asleep. But they were adults, he and Ben Yakov; the comfort they could ask of each other was finite. Ben Yakov repeated his thanks and turned away to unlock the door.
The second thing that happened that month-the second thing important enough to turn Andras’s attention away from the increasingly grim headlines-was that the architecture contest came to a close. After a week of sleepless nights during which he experienced nausea, hallucinations, and the vertiginous thrill of last-minute inspiration, he and Polaner found themselves in the crowded amphitheater, waiting to defend their project before the judging panel. Professor Vago had invited Monsieur Lemain to lead the trio of judges. The other two, whose identities had been kept secret until the day of the prize critique, turned out to be none other than Le Corbusier and Georges-Henri Pingusson. Le Corbusier was dressed as if he had come directly from a construction site; his plaster-whitened trousers and sweat-stained workshirt seemed a silent reproach to Lemain in his impeccable black suit, and to Pingusson in his pearl-gray pinstriped jacket. Perret, presiding over the contest, had waxed his moustache to crisp points and put on his most dramatic military cape. The judges walked a slow circuit of the room, examining the models on their display tables and the plans posted on corkboards around the periphery of the amphitheater, and the students followed in a respectful cluster.
Before long, it became clear that a profound difference of opinion existed between Le Corbusier and Pingusson. Everything one said, the other denounced as pure foolishness. At one point Le Corbusier went so far as to poke Pingusson in the chest with his pencil; Pingusson responded by shouting directly into Le Corbusier’s reddened face. The issue at hand was a pair of Dianalike caryatids, the entryway ornamentation of a sports club for women designed by a pair of fourth-year women. Le Corbusier declared the caryatids neoclassicist kitsch. Pingusson said he found them perfectly elegant.
“Elegant!” Le Corbusier spat. “Perhaps you would have said the same of Speer’s monstrosity at the International Exposition! Plenty of hack neoclassicism in evidence there.”
“I beg your pardon,” Pingsson said. “Are you suggesting we forget the Greeks and Romans entirely, simply because the Nazis have appropriated them? Bastardized them, I might say?”
“Everything must be taken in context,” Le Corbusier said. “At the present political moment, this choice seems indefensible. Though perhaps we’re to give the young women a pass because, after all, they’re just women.” Those were the words he punctuated with a pair of jabs to Pingusson’s chest.
“Rubbish!” Pingusson shouted. “How dare you accuse me of chauvinism? When you dismiss this choice as kitsch, are you not entirely disregarding the tradition of feminine power in classical mythology?”
“A fine point,” Lemain said. “And since you’re both so enlightened, gentlemen, why n
ot let the women defend the choice themselves?”
The taller of the student architects-Marie-Laure was her name-began to explain in a neat, clipped French that these were no ordinary caryatids; they were modeled after Suzanne Lenglen, the recently deceased French tennis champion. She went on to defend other features of the design, but Andras lost the thread of the argument. He and Polaner would be critiqued next, and he was too nervous to concentrate on anything but that. Polaner stood beside him, crushing his handkerchief into a dense ball; on his other side was Rosen, who wore a look of vaguely interested detachment. He didn’t have to worry; he hadn’t entered the contest. He’d been too busy with meetings of the Ligue Contre l’Antisemitisme, of which he had recently been elected secretary.
Far too soon for Andras’s comfort, the critique of the women’s sports club concluded and the judges moved on. The students collected behind them around the table where Andras and Polaner’s model was displayed.
“Introduce your project, gentlemen,” Perret said, with a wave of his hand.
Polaner was the first to speak. He tugged at the hem of his jacket, and, in his Polish-tinged French, began to explain the need for an inclusive sports club, one that would stand as a symbol of the founding principles of the Republic. The design would be oriented toward the future; the building’s predominant materials would be reinforced concrete, glass, and steel, with panels of dark wood crowning the doors and windows.
He paused and looked at Andras, who was to speak next. Andras opened his mouth and found that his French had fled entirely. In its place there was an astounding blankness, a book washed clean of text.
“What’s the matter, young man?” Le Corbusier said. “Can’t you speak?”
Andras, who hadn’t slept in three days, was afflicted with a temporal hallucination. Time slowed to a chelonian crawl. He watched the cycle of Le Corbusier’s blink, taking place over what seemed an eternity, behind the plaster-flecked lenses of his glasses. From the back of the amphitheater someone launched an oceanic cough.
He might never have found his voice had not Pierre Vago, Master of Ceremonies, come swiftly to his rescue. Vago was the one who had taught Andras the language he was supposed to speak now; he knew the words that might put Andras at ease. “Why don’t you begin with the piste,” he said. Piste: the running track, French for pálya. They’d had the conversation two days ago in studio: how one said sports track in French, and how that word differed from the ones that meant road, trail, rail, and trace. Andras could talk about the piste; it was the most unusual element of their design, a stroke of recent late-night inspiration. “La piste,” he began, “est construit d’acier galvanisée,” and would be suspended from the roof of the building, halolike, on steel cables attached to reinforced I-beams. The words had come back to him; he spoke them, and Le Corbusier and Lemain and Pingusson listened, making notes on their yellow pads. The suspension design allowed for a longer track than would be possible if the piste were housed inside the building. The sports club would be constructed higher than the surrounding buildings, and the track could hang over their uppermost stories. The roof of the building itself was also the ceiling of the natatorium; Andras bent over the model and demonstrated how it might be retracted in fine weather. Both design elements, the exposed track and the retractable roof, reflected the sports club’s principles of inclusivity and freedom.
When he’d finished, there was a hush in the room. He sent a look of gratitude in the direction of Professor Vago, who refused to acknowledge that he had helped Andras. Then the judges’ questions began: How would a suspended track be kept from bouncing under the runners’ impact? What would happen in a wind? How quickly could the retracted roof be closed again in case of thunderstorms? How did they propose to deal with the problem of housing a hydraulic system in the open space of the natatorium?
Now the words came faster. These were problems Andras and Polaner had discussed and argued about for hours in the studio at night. The supporting cables would be wrapped in thin bands of steel to make them rigid without entirely eliminating their elasticity; a certain degree of spring would cushion the runners’ tread. The track would be braced against the building with support struts to prevent sway. And the hydraulic system would be housed within this closetlike enclosure. After they’d answered all the questions, it seemed to take hours for Pingusson and Lemain and Le Corbusier to inspect the materials and make their notes; even Perret himself insisted upon taking a closer look, muttering to himself as he examined the cross-section of an external wall.
“And who are you, Monsieur Lévi?” Le Corbusier asked finally, lodging his pencil behind his ear.
“I’m a Hungarian, from Konyár, sir,” Andras said.
“Ah. You’re the young man they discovered at the art exhibition. They admitted you to the school based on some linoleum cuts, I understand.”
“Yes,” Andras said, and cleared his throat self-consciously.
“And you, Monsieur Polaner?” Pingusson asked. “From Kraków? They tell me you’ve got a taste for engineering.”
“I do, sir,” Polaner said.
“Well, I’d call the design superb but impractical,” Le Corbusier said. “The zoning is the problem. You’ll never get Parisians to hang a track off a building. It looks a bit like what ladies used to wear under their dresses in the eighteenth century. Those whatever-you-call-them. Martingale. Frimple.”
“More like some sort of outlandish hat,” said Pingusson. “But it’s an awfully good use of urban space.”
“Rather fantastical,” Lemain said. “The building itself is well designed, though. And the wood ornamentation is a fine element. Echoes of gymnasium parquet.”
And then the judges moved on to the next set of designs. It was over. Andras and Polaner exhanged a look of exhausted satisfaction: Their design, if imperfect, had at least been worthy of praise. As the other students surged past them, Rosen clapped them on the shoulders and kissed them on both cheeks.
“Congratulations, boys,” he said. “You’ve created the first ever architectural frimple. If I weren’t entirely broke, I’d treat you both to a drink.”
The next morning, when Andras came in through the blue courtyard doors-the same threshold he’d crossed nearly two years earlier as a novice student-he was greeted by cheers all around. The students in the courtyard clapped and began to chant his name. On a chipped wooden chair in the corner of the yard, Polaner sat in state: Students crowded around him, and a gold medal hung from his neck. Someone had draped the tricolor over his shoulders. A photographer bent to a camera and shot pictures. When Rosen heard the new round of cheers, he rushed over to Andras and took him by the arm.
“Where have you been?” he said. “Everyone’s been waiting for you! You won, idiot. You and your adorable partner. You won the Grand Prix. Your medal’s hanging on display in the amphitheater.”
Andras ran to the amphitheater, where he saw that it was true: Their Sportsclub Saint-Germain was crowned with a gold-stamped certificate and flanked by a medal on a tricolor ribbon. There were the judges’ signatures on the certificate, Le Corbusier’s and Lemain’s and Pingusson’s. He stood alone for a long moment, trying to believe it; he took the medal and turned it over in his hand. It was heavy and burnished, with a portrait of Emile Trélat sculpted in low relief upon its surface. Grand Prix du Amphithéâtre, it read; on the back it was inscribed with Andras’s and Polaner’s names, and the year, 1939. He put the medal on, the weight of it pulling the tricolor ribbon against his neck. He had to see Polaner, and then Professor Vago.
“Lévi,” someone said, and he turned.
It was a pair of students who’d entered the contest, two third-year men. Andras had seen them around the École Spéciale but didn’t know them; neither of them had been among his studio group or his third-year mentors. The tall fellow with ink-black hair was a Frédéric something; the one with the broad chest and horn-rimmed glasses went by the nickname of Noirlac. The tall one reached for Andras’s medal a
nd gave it a yank.
“Nice trinket,” he said. “It’s a shame you had to cheat to get it.”
“Pardon?” Andras said. He didn’t trust his comprehension of the man’s French.
“I said it’s a shame you had to cheat to get it.”
Andras narrowed his eyes at Frédéric. “What’s this about?”
“Everyone knows they gave it to you out of pity,” said the one called Noirlac. “They felt bad for your little friend, the one who got buggered and beat up. It wasn’t enough that Lemarque had to hang himself over it. They had to make a public statement.”
“We all know you work for Lemain,” said the other. “And don’t think we don’t know about Pingusson and your scholarship. We know it was fixed. You’d better admit it to yourself. You’d never win for a monstrosity like that, not unless you were someone’s little pet.”
A muted cheer reached them from the courtyard. Andras could just make out Rosen’s voice as he delivered a laudatory speech. “If you touch Polaner, I’ll kill you,” he said. “Both of you.”
The taller man laughed. “Defending your lover?”
“What’s going on, gentlemen?” It was Vago, striding across the amphitheater with a sheaf of plans under his arm. “Congratulating the winner, are we?”
“That’s right, sir,” said Frédéric, and grabbed Andras’s hand as if to shake it. Andras pulled away.
Vago seemed to take in Andras’s expression and the mocking smiles of the third-year students. “I’d like a word with Monsieur Lévi,” he said.
“Of course, Professor,” said Noirlac, and made a half bow to Vago. He took his friend’s arm and crossed the amphitheater, turning to give Andras a salute at the courtyard door.
“Bastards,” Andras said.
Vago put his hands on his hips and sighed. “I know those two,” he said. “I’d kill them myself if it wouldn’t get me fired.”
“Just tell me. Is it true? Did you give us the prize to make a point?”
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