Echo House

by Ward Just

  "A death witnessed by my husband."

  "I believe he was present, yes."

  Sylvia leaned forward, formulating a question.

  But Mrs. Pfister spoke instead. "What does he do, your husband? What is his work?"

  "Government work," Sylvia said without thinking.

  "Secret work," Mrs. Pfister said.

  "I suppose it's secret. He doesn't talk about it. But he isn't forthcoming about anything, so it's not surprising." She hesitated and when next she spoke it was in a whisper. "And how did he react when the French girl died? He was there, wasn't he? What did he do when she died?"

  Mrs. Pfister fanned the cards, concentrating hard. She closed her eyes and moved her head from side to side, stretching her muscles. She was silent a long moment, and then she sighed heavily. Her eyes popped open. She said, "Forgive me, I'm tired and the cards are tired. That will be all for today."

  "Of course," Sylvia said. "I understand. This must take a tremendous effort. You can't know how much I appreciate it. But what did he do, after? Did he try to save her? Did he run away?"

  "I cannot say," Mrs. Pfister said. She collected the cards and set them decisively to one side.

  "Cannot or will not?"

  "Whichever you prefer," Mrs. Pfister said mildly.

  Sylvia tried to imagine the French girl and Axel together and found she could not. She was handling a few fragments of an object and trying to imagine the whole from the parts, while around her swirled ghosts from another place and time. The small room seemed to contain multitudes, the worried souls who visited to ask about their love life or their health or their finances. Be careful what you say, Axel had said. Suddenly Sylvia had the fantastic idea that Mrs. Pfister was taking Axel's side, that Axel was her real client and she was protecting him, refusing to complete the narrative that she had begun. She had left the story in midair, to Axel's advantage. Sylvia leaned forward to ask the question—Is the country girl in his thoughts now? But she knew the answer to that.

  She said instead, "Why do you want to know about his government work?"

  "Sometimes it helps me, knowing."

  "He said I was to say nothing about it."

  "He knows you're here, then?"

  Sylvia looked at her with surprise. "Of course."

  Mrs. Pfister had risen from the bridge table and was standing at the door, waiting.

  "I don't know what he does, really."

  Mrs. Pfister nodded.

  "May I come back?" Sylvia said.

  Mrs. Pfister said of course.

  "It's important to me," Sylvia said.

  Mrs. Pfister opened the door. It was dark outside.

  "It's important that I know about my husband's war."

  Mrs. Pfister waited

  "There's much that's unexplained."

  "It's possible that your husband does not know that the Frenchwoman is dead," Mrs. Pfister said and closed the door.

  That night Axel came home later than usual and after changing his shirt went directly to the garden room. He was surprised to find the ice bucket full and a tray of hors d'oeuvres on the sideboard, a fresh Stilton surrounded by English biscuits and pale pâté de foie gras with toast. Sylvia was puttering among the plants and seemed more cheerful than she had in months, though Axel did not make much of it; he had had an exhausting day moving paper from the White House to Capitol Hill and back, an ambassadorial appointment that was proving difficult enough that they had asked him in on an ad hoc basis to work the usual magic. When Sylvia asked him how his work day had been, he replied, A little of this and a little of that. He was worn out and his back hurt but he believed he had saved the nomination, no thanks to the nominee, who was pig-stubborn even by Wall Street standards He was refusing to supply a biography to the Foreign Relations Committee on grounds of privacy, and if they didn't like it they could go shit in their shoes, pardon my French. He was the one making the financial sacrifice. They should be begging him. But Jimmy Longfellow was a very old family friend and it was important that he be installed in Lisbon as quickly as possible and with a minimum of fuss. Axel had offered his services, something he rarely did, and the White House was grateful. He made a drink for himself and one for Sylvia and turned on the phonograph, one of the Broadway albums she liked. He opened Time and saw a picture of the nominee with his new wife.

  Before he had a chance to read the piece, Sylvia was demanding his attention, rising from her plants, fetching her drink and talking rapidly, describing her ride to Falls Church, describing Mrs. Pfister, describing the'séance, and her own amazement at the accurate recall of details of their London life, the pretty maisonette in Regent's Park with the roses on the trellis and the apple tree and all the rest. The afternoon shade, the stone birdbath.

  "Things no one else could have known," Sylvia said. "Of course there were mistakes, a blue sweater instead of the red. You remember my old red sweater, Axel? And she misidentified the brigadier and his mistress in the top-floor flat."

  Axel looked up. "What brigadier? I never heard about a brigadier and a mistress."

  "They moved in after you left for France. We played backgammon on Sunday afternoons at that club in Mayfair, what's-its-name. I usually won, too. Meta Fitzgibbon didn't know how to attack with the doubling cube, and Alfred was always drunk."

  "Sounds charming," Axel said.

  "It was uncanny, the things she knew. It gave me the creeps."

  Axel fingered the pages of Time as he listened to her. Someone had told him they had inside information, and now, glancing at the photograph, he knew what it was. The new wife looked like a chorus girl, except that she was young enough to be called an ingénue, TYCOON & WIFE, the caption said. The smirk was in the ampersand.

  "She knows you, too," Sylvia said.

  "Who?" Axel said. "Who knows me?"

  "Mrs. Pfister," Sylvia said.

  He sipped his drink, alert now.

  "She knows about your wartime life."

  "What does she know about my wartime life?"

  "That you were in France and that you were injured. And lots more besides." Then Sylvia described the country girl leaning her bicycle against the stone wall and glaring at Fred Greene, offended at something lewd Fred had said. It was a wall to a house and the girl lived in the house, apparently. "She was a lovely French girl. Didn't you tell me once that you and Fred put up for a night in a château? Did the girl come with the château?"

  Axel looked at his wife without expression.

  "Later, there was gunfire and a skirmish of some kind. General confusion. Her word, Axel. 'Skirmish.'"

  Axel nodded slightly.

  "You witnessed it," Sylvia said. "You were there, you and Fred. Mrs. Pfister didn't know what the skirmish was about or who was involved but she said she could see the French girl falling"—Sylvia was watching Axel carefully but his face betrayed nothing—"but would not say what happened next. At any event, she didn't say. Perhaps the cards refused to speak; she wasn't specific. At first I thought you were involved in some way; it was a war after all and you were behind the lines. Anything can happen. But you were only a witness, according to Mrs. Pfister. So you can tell me now what happened, how these events came about. And what they mean to you."

  He was appalled at her enthusiasm, an almost childlike delight in ransacking his life and discovering the money in the mattress. He said, "Shut up."

  But Sylvia, engrossed in her own narrative, assembling the fragments as best she could, did not hear him.

  "For example, she had a husband. Did you know that?"

  "I knew it," Axel said.

  "And you never said anything to me."

  "Why would I?" Axel said. He was staring coldly at her and did not notice the magazine fall to the floor.

  "Not one word," she said.

  "It wasn't your business," Axel said. "It still isn't."

  "Not a word to me or to anyone, an affair so private you couldn't mention it. And it's been between us all these years and I never knew sh
e was there, this French girl you fell for. To me she was one of those unk-unks you're always talking about, the unknown unknown that's discovered too late or not at all. I don't even know her name. And if it isn't my business, whose business is it? Thank God for Mrs. Pfister."

  Axel moved his hand and whiskey spilled from his glass.

  "Do you still think about her?"

  "Go to hell," Axel said.

  "Of course you would," Sylvia said. "Mrs. Pfister insisted that you and the unk-unk hadn't been lovers, but who could believe that?"

  Axel remained silent. He wondered who had gotten to the psychic or whether she had made one connection and guessed at the rest. People talked too much, always had, always would, about matters they didn't understand; of course there were files, and conversation about the files, but none of her clients would have access to either one. Something malignant was at work, unless Mrs. Pfister was exactly what she claimed to be, and that was unacceptable.

  "Mrs. Pfister said she surrounded you like a field of force, an electric current. Mrs. Pfister said your unk-unk represented hope, and I said that was unlikely, because you never lacked hope. My Axel has always been an American optimist, but now I'm not so sure and wonder if that was another deception. I've been thinking about that remark my father made, the one I disagreed with and fought him on. Axel Behl's an adventurer, he said. He's an adventurer just like me. But you weren't like him at all, and that's why I fell in love with you in the bar car of the Twentieth-Century Limited and stayed in England while you played soldier in France. And now I find you've had someone else all this time, while I was blaming myself for our troubles. We don't know each other at all and I'm afraid that's the way we'll always be, because that's the way you want it."

  She paused, looking out the window into the darkness, aware of the amber glow of the city below the roof lines of the neighbors. She suddenly remembered a cocktail invitation she had accepted, friends of Axel's.

  "There's one other thing," she said.

  "I don't care what it is," Axel said.

  "I think you'll care," Sylvia said. "At the very end when I was pleading for information because so much had gone unsaid, Mrs. Pfister volunteered that it was likely that your French girl was dead. And it was possible that you did not know that. Go ahead, you can shake your head yes or no if you don't care to speak, if speaking's too painful. Apparently she died after you left the skirmish. Or perhaps there was another skirmish; Mrs. Pfister wasn't clear on that point. She said her cards were tired. So much is mysterious and incomplete. I'm returning next week for the rest of the story, though why is it that I have the feeling that I have all I'm going to get? She left me on tiptoe, Axel."

  Sylvia raised her heels and let them fall.

  "But that's the way she is, I guess. At the end she was so tired, exhausted really, that she could not go on. But there's no doubt she admires you. The way everyone does, even my father. She was in no way critical or disparaging of your role in things. And you can bet I was discreet when she asked about your work, who you are exactly." Sylvia smiled to herself when she saw him frown, his jaw working. "For a while I thought she was taking your part as she described the events and her very clear picture of the girl falling. How do you suppose she got her gift? Who gave it to her? She seemed to imply that there was a coherence or pattern to the events and that they had worked out according to some plan, though whose plan it was she didn't say. God's plan, I suppose. Of course now that I've established the past I'm looking to the future. That's the main thing, isn't it, Axel? And the cards will speak to that point also, I assume."

  He was no longer listening carefully, but his eyes never left his wife as she moved back and forth in front of the sideboard, her hands describing tight circles and her hips swinging seductively with each step; but that was her normal strut, high heels snapping sharply on the parquet. She had never looked more like one of Modigliani's demimondaines nor sounded more like her mother. He glanced at the copy of Time at his feet, TYCOON SC. WIFE. He remembered to take a sip of Scotch, then allowed his attention to wander.

  "Why is it that you can never say what's in your heart? I have no idea what's there, this locked room you have—"

  He was remembering Nadège, the set of her mouth, the way she wore her beret, her coloring, her stride, and the unquiet emotions buried beneath her skin. He saw her as a philosopher saw an idea, now clear, now vague, always within reach but never entirely grasped. Now somehow Nadège had been summoned to a bungalow in Falls Church and made to perform for strangers. Her sleep had been disturbed. He could do nothing for her; she was beyond his protection; and now more shadows crowded in upon him. He was unable to separate her from the city of the dead or the château or her bicycle. They had never addressed each other by name, had never touched, had never laughed together or quarreled. If she was dead, it was God's will. By rights he should be dead, too. He believed Nadège was present in his memory in order to remind him of the ghastly afternoon in the summer of 1944 when so many died under such appalling circumstances, except him. He lived. It was a simple fact that in wartime your imagination ran riot.

  "But what I want to ask," Sylvia said. "Were you responsible?"

  She was quiet now, waiting for his answer.

  "Was it something you did? Or didn't do?"

  He looked beyond her now, to the croquet court in darkness, the soft glow of the capital on the horizon, the city Sylvia said had the heart of a hangman and the soul of an accountant. He wished Nadège had been left in peace with her patriot. She had no business in Falls Church. It was true that her name derived from the Russian Nadezhda, meaning hope. So the psychic was correct in that sense if not in any other. The name hadn't done Nadège any good, though. Everyone knew that in combat events worked according to their own logic, which was never foretold. Angels and demons hovered over every battlefield, directing events. It was not a matter of doing or not doing. Axel saw her very clearly now, bending over the cutting board. He was watching his wife, but Nadège was present, moving in Sylvia's shadow cast by the two bright lamps on the sideboard. The two were indistinguishable; and then she was gone, vanished utterly. Sylvia remained.

  Her voice was low and she was speaking rapidly, something about Mrs. Pfister's Slavic accent and regal bearing. Sylvia was wearing a tight blue skirt and a white silk blouse and her mother's pearls. Gold bangles clicked when she moved her arms. He remembered buying them for her in Calcutta before the war, the day after they had been to the museum. She showed them off to everyone they met, extending her arm, pointing out the chasing on the gold. He glimpsed the narrow straps of her bra touching the silk and marveled again at her lithe youthfulness; she was supple as a whip and he was so clumsy. Sylvia seemed never to age and looked almost girlish now as she tossed her head and refilled her drink. She had no gray hair at all and scarcely a line in her face, even around her eyes when they narrowed, and when she spoke it was with an immature intensity, words italicized for emphasis.

  She said, "You never react, do you, Axel?"

  Her body had not matured and her emotions had not matured either. How could she know so little when she felt so much? Now she believed in magic, a seer with a deck of cards and an overheated intuition; and someone had talked out of turn, not much doubt about that. Bewitched, Sylvia thought she had deciphered the Rosetta Stone. She did not believe that a human being had a right to his own memory, the right to preserve and protect his own past.

  She said, "If only you had some imagination, then we might find a way to talk to each other."

  When he did not reply, she said, "You think everyone can read your mind, know your thoughts as intimately as you do. Axel, what happened to you over there? Something must have happened, or is it just this little French tart whose existence I didn't know about until a few hours ago, and now I find she's a guest in my house—"

  Axel's hand was snaking when he brought his glass to his mouth, all the while watching her as she moved back and forth in front of the sideboard, her voice
a bird's shriek. Blood rushed to his face. He put the glass aside and rose, faltering, groaning from the pain in his back—

  Hit her? He could have killed her.

  3. Equilibrium

  ECHO HOUSE was empty now, Alec back at school and only old Mrs. Johnson there to clean and prepare dinner on those evenings when Axel dined in. After Thanksgiving he had dismissed the French staff, his hours too erratic to accommodate a temperamental chef who insisted that dinner be served at nine sharp, no exceptions. Axel enjoyed being alone at table, often reading as he ate, and alone later in his study listening to Django Reinhardt or Benny Goodman while he studied the government documents he had brought home in his briefcase. Axel had no formal tide but operated quietly as a fixer without portfolio. He thought of himself as a mechanic. They had offered him space in the War Department building, but he preferred his own office near Farragut Square, because his own business so often intersected with government business.

  Axel insisted that there was much to recommend the bachelor life, its stillness, leisure, and freedom—well, not freedom precisely; liberty. He lived happily among men, the musicians on his phonograph, the artists on his walls, the authors of his books, the officials whose observations he read each night in documents, his own comments written in a headmasterly hand, well done, incomplete, good idea, bad idea, see me. Often he would look up when the arm lifted from the last disc, Django's run echoing in the study, and hear the clock ticking in the dining room. His house was utterly still except for the clock's pendulum. If the moon was full, the yard was flooded with light, almost bright enough to read by. The light had a kind of murmur to it, as if the angels were gathering round. At such moments he was filled with well-being.

  Once a month or so, round about midnight, Axel would limp to the garage, climb into his black Packard, and drive downtown to the Lincoln Memorial in order to contemplate the ruined face of the President. Axel looked at the great head and saw the barrel of a revolver touch the skull, Lincoln's eyebrows lifting in recognition, an immense sadness settling. Surely at that moment he saw the face of God. He had preserved the Union, but his knowledge of the terrible price cast an eternal shadow on his soul, an ocean of blood to secure an idea, a free, liberated, and undivided nation. Abraham Lincoln had known the cost to the last corpse, and still he persevered. The identical task awaited Lincoln's successors. The demands differed and the price varied with the demand, but it was always paid in blood. The task in the present decade was no less sublime and the cost would be as high. Lincoln's memorial belonged in Washington, a reminder every minute of every day that America's ordeal was to know itself. Thus consoled. Axel Behl put his car in gear and went home.