“Don’t be ridiculous, Skiff.”
“I’m not joking. If you want that girl, I’m not going to stop you.”
Varian met Grant’s eye, that limpid forest pool. It was a mistake. He had no power to deny the eye what it wanted, nor any defense against the punishment it might mete out. “Oh, for God’s sake,” he said. “You aren’t jealous, are you? Are you really claiming jealousy, when every day—” He fell silent. Why do this, why say it, when there was no way to change it?
“What?”
All right. “When every day you’re living in Gregor’s things, his things all over you, his robe, his slippers, his razor. And when you go home, there he’ll be, waiting for you. And you’ll go on just as before.”
“And you with Eileen, ditto.”
“But, Skiff,” he said, half-desperate now, the wine pressing him onward, forcing his gaze toward Grant’s. “Before, I didn’t know. I didn’t know where you were. How can I go on as if you didn’t exist?”
“You tell me,” Grant said, so low Varian had to strain to hear him. “You tell me. How did you do it before that? How did you do it when we were boys, back in Maine?” And Grant turned away and walked from the room, out through the French doors and onto the veranda. Keep walking, Varian thought. Go. And then an instant later he was following Grant out into the night, past the swell of music and the dancing surrealists, through the open doors, into the scent of rosemary and eucalyptus and damp Mediterranean earth. Grant had gone down the stone steps and into the garden, toward the fountain with its four-lobed basin. Varian experienced the sensation, like a blow to the ribcage, that if he were to leave Grant in that garden he would never see him again.
“Skiff,” he called, and Grant turned.
“There’s nothing more to say,” Grant called up to him. “Go in. Do what you want.”
Varian followed Grant down into the garden. “That’s not what I want.”
“You’re lying,” Grant said. “You’re lying, and you’re a coward.”
Varian drew a breath. “You can’t call me that,” he said.
“I can, and did.”
“You can’t,” Varian said. “Not after what you did. You were the one who left Maine. You were the one who disappeared from school, from the magazine, from Cambridge. Not a word or a trace. I’m the coward!”
“What was I supposed to do? Stay there in Blue Hill and watch you seduce Eileen? Watch you try to impress her with your Latin vocabulary and your command of European politics and the whole of the literary canon? I didn’t have the stomach for it. I got out. It’s called self-preservation.”
“And what did you expect? That I would court you instead? Promise you a house in Westchester and a summer place in Southampton? A church wedding? Sunday dinners at my parents’ house?”
“Kirstein made promises to Ellis. Realistic ones.”
“Kirstein’s rich, in case you hadn’t heard. Kirstein makes his own rules.”
“You too, Varian. You made your own rules when it was worth it to you.”
“You didn’t give me the chance. You left. Disappeared.”
“You’d already made your choice.”
“And can you fault me for it?” Varian said. “Can you claim not to understand? Aren’t you the worst kind of hypocrite if you say you can’t?”
Grant looked away, toward the valley that ended at the distant mountains. “That’s different,” he said. “You know it is.”
“How is it, Grant?”
“You don’t know the first thing about it.”
“Don’t I?”
“No,” Grant said, and went silent, looking at a wavering slip of moon in the fountain.
“In any case,” Varian went on, “did you think I was faking it? That I wasn’t actually in love with Eileen? Don’t you concede that it’s possible? I was in love with Eileen, Grant. I am.”
Up at the house, the jazz trio started in on “I’ve Got You Under My Skin.” Someone opened champagne.
“You were in love with me,” Grant said, almost inaudibly. “You felt whatever you might have felt for Eileen. But you were in love with me.” He stuffed his hands into his trouser pockets, a gesture so adolescent as to evoke in Varian a sudden visceral memory of the nineteen-year-old Grant, the lanky body he hadn’t quite yet learned to control, the wrists perpetually protruding from their cuffs, the vulnerable hollow at the back of the neck. He had loved that boy so violently he’d almost wished him dead. The fact of his existence was torture to Varian. And yet when Grant had really disappeared, he hadn’t experienced his absence as relief. The opposite. A clangor of misery that had never abated, a painful tinnitus that echoed beneath every other event of his life. He did love Eileen. He did. But always with that din of grief in the background.
“If you knew it,” Varian said now. “If you knew. Why didn’t you come back? Why didn’t you try to find me?”
Grant met Varian’s eyes. His mouth trembled, and, in a gesture that belonged to his younger self, he kicked the fountain with the toe of his glass-black shoe.
“But I did,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“I wrote to you at the Splendide. I was the one who broke that silence.”
“Yes, twelve years later! After I’d had plenty of time to think you were dead. Why now, Grant? Why in Marseille? Why not back home, where we were living a few subway stops away from each other?”
“Somehow I could never bring myself to do it there,” Grant said, shaking his head. “You were right, I guess. Cowardice.”
“What on earth was different here?”
“I don’t know. We’re in a country at war. You’re breaking the law almost daily. When I heard you were here, heard what you were doing, I had a notion you might get yourself arrested, thrown into French prison. Maybe killed by the Germans. And then I’d never have another chance.”
The vast dome of the Mediterranean sky, its spray of constellations and its torn plumes of cloud, seemed to fall in upon Varian all at once. He couldn’t draw a breath. He was somewhere beyond drunk, in a realm where he might say or do anything. “And what,” he asked, hardly able to put the words together, “what about Katznelson? Who—who loves and trusts you? This man who”—could he say it?—“you still love?”
“I intend to get his son to safety.”
“And then?”
Grant shook his head slowly, as if in shame. Then he looked up at Varian again, and the truth Varian perceived in his eyes was terrible to see. Grant’s world had come undone, just as Varian’s had. Neither of them had any idea what they were supposed to do. They were in each other’s hands, and yet they couldn’t trust each other. No one had done more damage to their lives than they’d done to each other’s—not Varian’s sick mother, not the father who had left the child Grant, not the loving grandparents who had given Grant their history and taken away his own; not the boys who had tortured Varian at school, not Dean Greenough who had wanted him gone from Harvard, not his father, Arthur, who had given him everything and required nothing, certainly not Eileen, not Katznelson, not even the authors of the war. No one.
“We’re fools,” Varian said. “There’s no haven for us on this earth.”
“That bed in Arles, perhaps,” Grant said, and took Varian by the waist.
“Yes. That bed.”
“You look like you want to die, Varian.”
“I do, desperately. Don’t you?”
“Perhaps we should just get raving drunk.”
“Too late,” Varian said.
“Might as well dance, then,” Grant said, and they turned to go up to the house. But as they climbed the stairs to the stone patio, an arc of police lights traversed the long winding drive; by the time they’d reached the French doors a car had pulled up to meet them. Varian’s first thought, the one that surfaced through the shifti
ng cloud-cover of drink, was that this must be a raid. And more than half his guests were stateless and paperless. Mehring, Zilberman, the Serges: what a victory for Vichy if the lot of them could be brought in at once.
The car door opened and a police captain climbed out, his hat crisp and correct, his breast blazoned with its diagonal white stripe. He was tall, clean-shaven, sharp-jawed, his eyebrow a single slash across his forehead, his nose an emphatic vertical. He removed his hat and held it in his hands; in his dark eyes, a look of vague embarrassment. Varian’s chest unclenched and he released a long breath: this was Robinet, Bingham’s friend, who was sympathetic to their cause. And in fact, as Varian stood wondering what Robinet might be doing there at that hour, Bingham himself came down the steps of the villa, drink in hand. Hirschman followed close behind.
“Monsieur Fry,” Robinet said, and gave a half-bow. “And Monsieur—Grant, is it? Oh, and Bingham, are you here as well? And Monsieur Hirschman—always a pleasure.”
“You’re out late, Inspector,” Bingham said. “Come in for a cocktail?”
Robinet glanced up at the house, where the illegal surrealists could be seen slinking drunkenly about the dance floor. “If only I could! But I’ve come on official business.”
“What’s happened?” Bingham said.
“We’ve apprehended a person of interest who claims a connection to Monsieur Fry. A young fellow, not one we’ve seen around Marseille. No papers at all. German, we suspect, though he gave a false French name.” He looked at Varian, compressed his brow into a tight V. “He’s to be sent to Vernet in the morning, Monsieur Fry. Nothing I can do about that. But you can see him tonight if you want.”
Grant looked up sharply at Robinet. “German, did you say? How old a fellow?”
“Just a sprout. Can’t be over twenty.” He shook his head. “I’m afraid some of my associates dealt rather unkindly with him upon his arrest.”
“Well,” Varian said, exchanging a glance with Grant, then with Hirschman. “I suppose it’ll be easier to see him at the Préfecture tonight than to chase him all the way to Vernet. Won’t you excuse me for a moment? I’ve got to say goodbye to the guest of honor.”
“Of course,” said Robinet, who was known to have a weakness for social protocol. “And if I know Monsieur Bingham, he may yet convince me to take a glass of something.”
Varian said he wouldn’t be a moment, and he and Grant went into the house. In the entryway, Grant took Varian’s wrist.
“Do you think it could be him?”
“I don’t know. It could be anyone. Only one way to find out.”
“Can’t I come, Tom?”
“Better not. If it’s him, we want to keep it as quiet as possible.”
“How will you let me know?”
“There’s no way to telephone. You’ll just have to wait here until I come home.”
Grant went off to explain the situation to Mary Jayne, and Varian found Miriam in the kitchen alone, leaning against the old-fashioned farmhouse sink. She was pinching the bridge of her nose, her shoulders hitching; in her other hand she held an unlit cigarette. When she raised her chin, he could see she’d been crying for some time now, though the glorious bumblebee still flew undaunted against her décolletage.
“Oh, Varian, forgive me,” she said. “I suppose I’m homesick for France already.” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, trailing feathers of mascara.
“Listen,” he said, handing her his handkerchief. “You’re off to see your fiancé tomorrow. He’ll be thrilled. And France is hardly a place to miss just now.”
Miriam shook her head. “I just can’t help thinking about things.”
He put a hand on her arm. “Don’t think about things,” he said. “I’ve always found it futile myself.”
She gave a hard-edged laugh, then began to cough. It was some time before she could speak again. “Your drink’s empty,” she said.
“No time to refill it. I came to say goodbye. I’ve been called to the Préfecture.”
She squinted. “At this hour?”
“They’ve picked up some fool who claims to know me.”
“But why do you have to go now, in the middle of the night?”
“Because the fool is to be sent to Vernet in the morning. I believe this may be my only chance to see if I can be of use to him.”
“Ah,” she said. “I suppose there’s nothing to be done, then.” She folded Varian’s handkerchief and handed it back to him. “I would have kept this if I didn’t think Rolf would find it and wonder.” And then, putting her head on one side, she said, “I don’t suppose you’d kiss me goodbye, would you?”
“Of course,” he said, and leaned in to brush each cheek in the French manner.
“Not like that,” she said.
“Oh, now, Miriam.”
She looked up at him, a tease in her red-rimmed eyes. “Don’t you know how?”
“I can’t,” he said, and glanced at the downy bee. “I’m afraid of getting stung.”
Miriam didn’t hesitate. “A braver man would call the risk worth it.”
“Is that how it is?” Varian said. And then—why not?—he leaned in and kissed her with all the passion he could gather, kissed her properly, the way he’d wanted to, just for an instant, the first time they’d met, when she’d been wearing that white batiste dress, cut low enough in front to show a sliver of lace beneath. He kissed her until she’d lost her breath, and then she pushed him away, laughing her angular laugh.
“There, now,” she said. “That’s what I call a proper goodbye.” And she pressed his hand and ran to the other room to find Mary Jayne, leaving Varian to wonder at the circumstances that had landed a woman like that in his life for a short time, ignited this friendship between them, then took her away again, perhaps forever. The European continent, he thought, must be full of such fleeting connections, fierce brief amities to burn in the face of all the enmity. And then he, too, went into the other room and took leave of Bingham, of Hirschman, and finally of Grant, promising to return as soon as he could.
* * *
________
There were certain nights in Marseille that seemed to go on forever, nights that seemed an infinite distance from the mornings that preceded them. By the time the black police sedan reached the main road, Varian could scarcely remember the events of two hours earlier. He was intoxicated, hungry, exhausted; his gut burned the way it always did when he drank. He wished Hirschman could have come with him; he felt in need of counsel. In the driver’s seat Robinet sat mercifully silent, as if to allow Varian time to reclaim his sobriety before they reached town. But the words in Varian’s mind were the ones Grant had spoken in the garden: I thought you might be killed, and then I’d never have another chance. Another chance at what? Then there was the way Grant had looked at him, unhinged, unmoored, when he’d asked what he would do about Katznelson. Did he dare to hope, did he dare to fear, that there was a future between himself and Grant that might extend beyond the confines of their time in France? Varian had never—not once, not while they were at Harvard, not in the years since, not during their time in Marseille—allowed himself to envision what a daily life with Grant might look like. Would they live in proximity to each other? Could he live with Eileen, and still—? Could they live like Kirstein and his milieu? Men and women drifted like weather through Kirstein’s townhouse on East Nineteenth; usually there was a chief lover and some adoring under-lovers, and they all got along, for the most part. Sometimes there were women—lately the painter Fidelma Cadmus, whom Kirstein had repeatedly threatened to marry. But Varian and Eileen hadn’t lived that way, occasional outside liaisons notwithstanding. The life she envisioned for them in the suburbs, the one waiting for him when he returned to the States, was circumscribed and conventional. What would she think of the ideas that presented themselves to his mind now—she
and Varian and Grant tucked up together in some Upper West Side nest not far from Columbia; the three of them going out for a drive along the Hudson in leaf season; the three of them throwing glittering dinner parties in their little home; the three of them summering in Maine, in a house on Blue Hill Bay? No, no, and again no. Even if Grant would tolerate it—and what were the chances of that?—Eileen would never have it. Perhaps with anyone other, anyone lesser, but not with Grant. Not him. Nor would Eileen lightly accept being cast aside, even if he could envision doing such a thing; she knew she didn’t deserve to be abandoned by the fool she’d championed when he was kicked out of Harvard, the man she’d introduced to his current line of work, the same man whose professional floundering she’d borne—emotionally and practically speaking—for three years after they’d moved to New York. Her connections had gotten him a job. Her social circle had welcomed him, her parents had treated him like a son. She read drafts of everything he wrote, challenged his lazier ideas, explained the things he found obscure in books. She pushed him to do more than he was naturally inclined to do. She was the one, in fact, who had encouraged him to see what might be done about the European artists blacklisted by the Gestapo. And besides all that, he loved her. He had loved her all this time. Otherwise, could he have envisioned marrying her? That summer in Maine, could he have climbed into the sailboat with her when he knew Grant would stay behind?
Arrival at the Evêché, in the middle of the night and against his will, would not ordinarily have come as a relief. Robinet parked and ushered Varian out of the car, through the arched stone entryway; inside the old Bishop’s Palace, they encountered the usual crush of miserable-looking persons, official and otherwise. Minor offenders sat in a temporary holding cell behind a long white marble desk like specimens on public display, all of them in various states of protest, anxiety, unconcern, or repose. Robinet led Varian through a limbo of those whose loved (or resented) ones occupied the holding cell or other more subterranean cells. Through a set of double iron doors they went, down a flight of stairs, then through another set of iron doors and down another flight, this one darker and narrower, a shallow depression worn into the stone of each step. With every metal door and gate they passed, with each twist and turn of the subterranean corridors along which Varian followed Robinet, his sense of confusion increased, so that by the time they reached a single iron door, this one painted white, Varian felt as though they’d hit the center of the Labyrinth.
The Flight Portfolio Page 25
