“What did you say to her?” Helena asked as soon as the signora had retreated to her kitchen.
“I told her you’re an artist. She approves.”
“How did she come to be so far from home?”
“I’ve no idea. I know she was an artist’s model for a while. When that came to an end, she opened this place. She does all the cooking, the tables are always full, and if you can’t pay she’ll ask you to sweep the floor or wash a few dishes. You’ve heard of the sculptor Modigliani, who died a few years ago? When he was flat broke and halfway to starving one winter, she took him in and let him sleep in the back. Never asked for anything in return.”
Luigi brought their first course, huge servings of vegetable, bean, and pasta soup, and as they ate they talked of home and food and the things they missed. Helena confessed to missing currant scones and properly made tea, and spent some time trying to explain the appeal of bread sauce to a mystified Sam.
“If I’m ever in England, I promise to try it,” he said, but she could tell he wasn’t convinced.
“What do you miss about America?” she countered.
“Lots of things. And d’you know what? At this time of year, when it’s getting close to November, I really miss Thanksgiving.”
“That’s an American holiday, isn’t it?”
“The holiday. Here it’s just another Thursday in November, but at home it’s a big deal. You try to be with your family, if you can, and the table is piled with food. Roast turkey with all the trimmings, and American things like corn pudding and baked squash and pumpkin pie.”
“Pumpkin?” she asked, wrinkling her nose at the thought.
“Don’t make that face. It’s really good.”
Their main course had arrived, a pork stew with dark, garlicky greens, and for a few minutes they ate in silence, lost in their appreciation of Rosalie’s cooking.
“This is delicious,” Helena said. “I’ve never eaten anything like it before. My parents aren’t overfond of foreign food.”
“Their loss,” he said, wiping his plate clean with a chunk of bread.
“It is. Where did you learn Italian?”
“Here and there. At college I took a course in Italian Renaissance literature. Dante and the like. Thought it would be easy but I barely scraped through.”
“So Dante isn’t your favorite poet?” she asked, thinking to tease him a little.
“I don’t know if I have a favorite. School put me off a lot of poetry—hard to love something when you’re forced to read it.”
“I loathe Coleridge for exactly that reason.”
“See? I don’t mind some of the more modern stuff, though. Have you ever heard of Rainer Maria Rilke? Not much of his work has been translated, and I don’t read German, but I’ve one book of his poems.”
“What are they about?” she asked.
“Same thing as most poetry. Love. I remember one bit—
“‘In the deep nights I dig for you, O Treasure
To seek you over the wide world I roam,
For all abundance is but meager measure
Of your bright beauty which is yet to come.’”
Their eyes met, and something passed between them, an acknowledgment of some sort, and she was certain he was about to speak when Rosalie bustled up and pinched Sam’s cheek and the moment was lost. The signora said something in Italian, he laughed, and Luigi came over with a scrap of paper, which Sam examined and returned to him with a five-franc note.
“She wants us to finish up and move along,” Sam explained. “She loves me, she said, but I am costing her money. I should have asked before I paid—do you want a coffee? Something sweet?”
“No, thank you.”
“Then let’s be on our way. Where’s your aunt’s house? Is it far?”
“It’s on the Île St.-Louis, just across from the cathedral. A little less than two miles.”
“Do you want me to find a taxi, or shall we walk? The rain is pretty light. And we’ve got my umbrella if it really starts to pour.”
“Let’s walk, please.” She didn’t want the evening to end, not yet, and if that meant a damp coat and hat she didn’t mind at all.
Inches apart, never quite touching, they walked north along the boulevard St.-Michel, its eastern side packed with smoky cafés made raucous by wine-fueled laughter and impassioned arguments.
“Where do you live?” she dared to ask.
“I’ve a room in a hotel on the rue de Vaugirard. Most of my colleagues from the paper live there, too. It’s nothing much to look at, but it’s cheap and clean.”
In the distance, a rumble of thunder sounded. Lightning split the sky and a hard, cold rain began to fall. They stopped short, looking at one another disbelievingly, and then Sam pulled his umbrella from under his arm.
“Here—take this,” he said, and thrust it at her. She reached out, but a sudden gust of wind snatched it from her cold-numbed hands and sent it cartwheeling across the street and under the wheels of a passing taxi.
“I’m so sorry,” she gasped.
“I don’t mind,” he assured her, grinning. “It was Blochman’s umbrella. He lost mine a few months back. Now we’re even.”
Helena tried to look up at him, but the brim of her hat was so sodden that it had flopped down over her eyes. She pushed it out of the way, shielding her face from the downpour as she did so, and saw that Sam had removed his hat for the same reason. Their eyes met, and they both dissolved into helpless laughter.
“Let’s go to my place,” Sam suggested. “At least until the rain stops. I don’t want you to catch a chill.”
“Are you sure? I can take a taxi home,” she offered.
“Haven’t seen one pass since we left the restaurant. Trams are packed, too.”
“I’ll be f-f-fine,” she protested, but her chattering teeth betrayed her.
He ignored her, and instead took off his mackintosh and draped it around her shoulders. “Here. This will help a bit. At least until we’re inside again.”
“Y-your c-c-coat . . .”
“Come on.” He took her hand in his, and she shivered at the sudden contact between them. “Should we run for it? It’s not far now—only a few hundred yards to my street.”
By the time they reached the lobby of the Hôtel de Lisbonne, Helena was soaked through, with even her shoes squeaking under her toes, and Sam was even more bedraggled. They dashed up the stairs, leaving puddles in their wake, and made it to his room without encountering any of his colleagues from the paper. Heaven only knew what they’d say if they saw her going into Sam’s lodgings in such a state.
His room was on the top floor, tucked under the eaves, and seemed ridiculously small for a big man like Sam. It was dominated by a wide bed, hastily made, that had been shoved against one wall. A small coal stove had been installed in the hearth, and beside it sat a bucket of coal boulots. A desk and bookcase took up the opposite wall, and at the end of the room, which was longer than it was wide, a tall window looked onto the street below. To her left, inches away from the door, were a washbasin and bidet.
“Charming, isn’t it?”
“I, ah . . .”
“Like I said, it’s cheap and clean, and they keep it warm in winter. That’s enough for me.”
He went straight to the chest of drawers and, after rummaging through it, handed her a set of well-worn pajamas. “You can wear these. There’s a robe on the back of the door and a towel on the washstand. I’ll wait in the hall.”
As soon as he’d closed the door, Helena stripped out of her sodden clothes and dried herself off with the towel. Moving as quickly as her shaking limbs allowed, she changed into his pajamas, which were so large that she had to roll up the legs and sleeves several times, and wrapped herself in his robe. Her clothes she gathered up in a bundle; perhaps Sam could suggest a way of drying them.
“All done,” she called out.
“Good. You sit on the bed—there’s a blanket you can put around your shoul
ders. I’ll get the stove going and your things laid out to dry.”
Adding several boulots to the fire, he built it up until she could feel its warmth on the far side of the room, and only then did he pull a rickety old clotheshorse from beneath the bed and set it out in front of the stove. Soon her clothes were draped across it, steaming gently, and that included all her garments, even her careworn old cami-knickers and stockings with darned heels.
Back he went to the chest of drawers, and this time extracted a fresh singlet and shirt. He shrugged out of his braces, and then, as if she weren’t there, pulled his soaked singlet and shirt over his head and tossed them on the floor. She knew she should look away, but his shoulders and arms were heavy with muscle, and though he stood in profile to her she could see a dusting of red-gold hair on his chest. She swallowed, her mouth having gone quite dry, and then had to smother a gasp when he turned away from her and she saw his back.
For a moment she thought it might be a trick of the light, but as he moved, drying himself carefully, she knew her eyes hadn’t deceived her. His back was covered with scars, the skin there mottled red and white, like a half-healed sunburn, and the marks extended down the back of his arms and beneath the waistband of his trousers as well.
“I wish I could make you a cup of tea,” he said as he buttoned his shirt, “but I don’t have a teapot, and I don’t have any tea.”
She smiled, glad to have a distraction from the questions racing through her head. “You Americans really are Philistines.”
“How about some bourbon instead? It’s a kind of American whiskey.”
Heaven only knew what a glass of strong spirits might do to her precarious sense of equilibrium. “I’d better not,” she said. “Thank you all the same.”
It wasn’t a safe or wise subject for them to discuss, but she needed to know what had happened to him during the war. “Back in Antibes, at our dinner with the Murphys, you said you’d served with one of their friends during the war. I can’t recall his name now.”
“It was Archie MacLeish. But that was only at the end of the war. I started out as a volunteer with the American Field Service. Was an ambulance driver for almost three years, mainly around Verdun.”
“And this was before America joined the war?”
“Long before. I was young and stupid. Propelled by visions of glory. That wore off in no time, of course.”
“If you didn’t have to stay, if you were a volunteer, what kept you there?”
He shrugged. “I was needed. There were never enough of us, not in those early years. We did what we could.”
“Don’t make light of it. You did more than most.”
“I suppose. Did you . . . I mean, did your parents allow you to do anything? You must have been pretty young.”
“I was eighteen that summer, when the war started. I didn’t do much, not at first, but I didn’t like the thought of just sitting at home. So I talked my mother into letting me volunteer at a hospital near our house. It wasn’t much, just visiting the wounded and writing letters for them. That sort of thing.”
“I’m certain it meant a lot to the men you visited.”
“When America joined the war, did you remain a driver?”
“For a while. And then . . .”
She waited for him to continue, holding her breath all the while.
“My brother was killed that summer. Six weeks to the day after he landed in France.”
Whatever she had expected him to say, it hadn’t been that. “I am so very sorry. What was his name?”
“Andrew. He used to tell me, in his letters, that he was proud of me. That’s why he joined up. And when he was killed, I don’t know . . . I guess I felt I needed to take his place. So I signed up. Was assigned to his old unit. That’s when I met Archie.”
“Your back . . .” she began, but let her voice trail away. She simply wasn’t brave enough to ask outright.
“My scars? Sorry about that. I forgot. Should have changed in the hall.”
“Don’t apologize. Never apologize for something like that.”
He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, his eyes fixed on the floor, and when he began to speak his voice hardly rose above a whisper.
“I was a corporal in the 130th. It was the day before the Armistice. They wanted us to retake the ruins of a village called Marchéville. It was crazy. There was nothing left of it, and we all knew the Germans were about to surrender, but out we went all the same.
“Someone—I’ve no idea if it was us or them—had used mustard gas a day or two earlier, and the ground was muddy. We were on our way back when I slipped. I fell on my back, in a low crater, and it was filled with the gas. The stuff is heavier than air, so it can sit there for days.”
“So that’s why your lungs are sensitive?”
“No,” he said, and he laughed hoarsely. “I was gassed earlier in the war, but that was just chlorine. If I’d got any of the mustard gas in my lungs I’d have been dead inside a week.”
“What happened after you fell?”
“I don’t really remember. I woke up in a clearing station the next day. That’s when they told me the war was over.”
“Were you in hospital for long?”
“Two months or so. Burns weren’t that deep.”
“And now?” she asked, her voice trembling a little. “Does it still hurt?”
“Not really. I didn’t need skin grafts or anything like that. My face and hands weren’t burned, so people don’t stare. It could have been a lot worse.”
“You said you were a corporal. Why not an officer?”
“I could have been, I guess. They did ask me a few times. But I couldn’t stand the thought of it. Left the States to get away from all those buttoned-up idiots I’d known at university. From . . . from all of that.”
He sprang to his feet, walked over to the bookcase, and picked up a bottle of dark-colored liquor. “Sure you don’t want that bourbon?”
“I’m sure, thank you. Where did you go to university?”
He poured himself a measure of spirits and returned to his chair. “Listen to you today. Asking questions like a newspaperman. I went to Princeton.”
“What did you study there?”
“Classics. Then I went to Harvard, to law school.”
“With the view to doing what? Becoming a barrister?”
He tilted the glass in his hand, letting the amber liquid swirl around. “No, not exactly,” he said at last. “I was planning to work for my family business.”
“Why are you here?” she asked softly.
He stared at the spirits in his glass, not once looking up at her. “It’s hard to explain. I guess I could say that I love my family, but they want me to be someone I’m not. I felt terrible about it. I still do, but I just couldn’t become that man. Not even for them. That’s why I left.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.”
“You don’t have to apologize, but would you mind if we talked about something else?” he asked, his smile wry. “I could ask you uncomfortable questions about your family.”
“I’ve no secrets there.”
At this he looked up, his expression doubting. “Really? What brought you here? You hardly ever speak of your family, apart from your aunt and one of your sisters. Did they cast you out?”
“Nothing so Gothic as that. I had scarlet fever last year. It was a normal enough case at first, but then I contracted some sort of secondary infection. The doctors told my parents there was no hope. I heard them talking. And I promised myself that if I survived I would change. I would make something of my life.”
“Oh, Ellie,” he said, his voice gruff. “You’re so brave. You have to know how brave you are.”
“I don’t think so. Not really.”
“You are. Most of us spend our whole lives with our heads down, walking in circles. It never occurs to us to want anything more, so we cling to what’s safe. What we know.”
Sam went to the cloth
eshorse and turned her clothes over so the backs of everything would dry. Then he sat down again, and this time he looked her in the eye.
“Will you stay on in France?”
“I don’t know. There’s nothing much for me back in England. That’s the problem. I’m too old to dream of a home and family of my own, but my parents won’t give up hope. I’m not sure they ever will.”
“Is that what you want?” he asked. “A home and family?”
“I did, once. Before the war.”
“You were engaged, weren’t you?” he asked carefully, with no more affect than a stranger inquiring after the time of day.
“How do you know?”
“Sara,” he answered simply.
“Edward and I were engaged just before the war—weeks before, in fact. I waited for him, of course. When he finally came home, he was changed, and not because he’d lost a leg and had been taken prisoner, although people later said . . .
“At any rate,” she went on, “he realized he no longer wanted me, so we broke things off. It was for the best, really. Especially since he was in love with someone else.”
“Did he break your heart?”
“He didn’t. He honestly didn’t. If we’d stayed with one another he’d have broken it eventually. But he never had the chance.”
They regarded one another, the silence building and building until she could bear it no longer. Glancing at her wristwatch, she saw it was well past nine o’clock. “I ought to be on my way.”
“I’ll walk you home.”
“No,” she said firmly. “No, there’s no need. It’s late, and it’s still raining. I’ll take a taxi.”
“I’ll come down with you—oh, wait. I almost forgot.”
He went to the bookcase and, crouching, rummaged through its contents until he found a slim paperbound volume. “Here—found it.” Returning to where she stood, he put the book in her hand.
“Your Rilke poems,” she said, touched that he should trust her with a favorite book.
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