He was alone at Toulon and at Sanary-sur-Mer, where he’d had a glorious swim with Hirschman months and months before; he was alone at Le Lavandou and St. Tropez, alone in white rooms overlooking the ocean, its surface alternately toothed with foam, englittered with sun, doused in moonlight, or flat and still to the horizon. Waiters and baggage-carriers, some of them spectacularly beautiful men, received his involuntary glances and offered themselves to him at the various doors of his various hotel rooms; he sent them all away, sick at the thought of sleeping with someone who wasn’t Grant. Instead he walked down to the water, night after night, in town after town, bending to touch the surf with his bare hands, feeling the pull of the ocean, reasoning that since its every molecule was, in a way, connected with every other, if he touched this wavelet he would be in contact with the continent where Grant now walked. At breakfast he found himself ordering what Grant would have ordered. In the afternoon he toured Roman ruins and hiked paths to views Grant would have wanted to see. As if through Grant’s eyes he took in the white beaches, the bougainvillea-clad houses climbing the verdigris hillsides, the improbable constructions of cloud; he knew Grant would have insisted on photographing this narrow rosemary-choked stone stairway, or the tiny precipice-clinging café where a nubile black-haired Perseus served fresh stone fruits, honey, and tea made from hillside mint, all of which Varian consumed without tasting.
The numbness was familiar, homelike. Nothing penetrated it, not even the news, sent to him in a cheerful letter from Eileen and forwarded to his tiny hotel in Le Dramont, that Hirschman, having arrived in Berkeley on a fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation, had fallen in love with a French literature scholar and had married her in late May. Hirschman safe, Hirschman married: it should have been enough to shake him awake; enough, at least, to make him aware of his breakfast of shirred eggs and crevettes, or to allow him to take more than a dull, half-conscious interest in the tiny pin-legged plovers that skated the foam at the edge of the ocean. He abandoned his breakfast on the hotel terrace and walked down to the beach, not bothering to remove his canvas shoes; he walked all the way to the edge of the sea and squatted on the firm wet sand. The plovers spooked, skitting away on their twig legs; in their wake, air holes opened in the sand like tiny mouths. He leaned forward, placed one hand on the sand, and felt it shift beneath his fingers. The ocean approached and subsumed his hand and the tips of his shoes, the warmth of the water like an invitation. Beneath the surface he could see the glint and dart of hundreds of fish, near-invisible jots of life, each with its own agency, each with its urgent and vital desire. The war did not exist there, a centimeter beneath the surface of the ocean; it did not exist in those infinitesimal flashing lives. The earth itself cared nothing for the clashes on its surface, large or small. It spun through space at a mind-cracking rate, bound to its orbit, warmed by its star, carrying its freight of water and rock and life. How little he mattered, how little any of it mattered, considered on that scale; someday it would all be over, his grief absorbed into the planet’s crust, and, sometime later, the planet engulfed by its sun. He took off his shoes and clothes and left them on the sand, not caring who might see; swimming nude on those beaches was common enough. Without thinking, without considering, he held his breath and ran into the waves. He dove underwater and drove himself through the first warm yards of sea, then into the colder, harsher blue; he swam deep, fighting the incoming tide, going deeper still, until a force beyond his will shot him to the surface and made him breathe. For a long time, who knew how long, he floated on the surface beneath the hard July sun. Finally, against his will, he let himself be washed back to shore, a long pale branch of human driftwood. On the empty beach he pulled on his clothes and lay on the sand, shamefully glad to be breathing.
* * *
________
The days stretched on without end, and the police failed to knock at his door. He felt, truly, as if he’d slipped between the pages and disappeared for good. It was a place one might stay, this noplace; it was somewhere to live for a time, before one vanished quietly forever. Every new town was a flattened, muted version of itself, every hotel a place to lie awake in the dark. One night in St. Raphael he got out of bed at half past two and climbed a path he’d followed earlier that day, one that led to a promontory overlooking the sea. There he lay on the edge of the limestone cliff and stared at the profusion of stars. How much time had passed since he and Grant had stood on the balcony of the Medieval Pile, searching the winter sky for Cetus and Hydra? Now the summer triangle of Altair, Deneb, and Vega stretched above him, framing the tableau of Vulpecula, the little fox, grabbing his goose, Anser. Ursa Minor arced upside down, an acrobat of a bear; at the tip of his tail burned Polaris, faint but steady, which ten thousand years ago had lain not north but east. On that cliffside he could almost feel Grant beside him, could almost smell his familiar scent, could almost feel the warm length of his body along his own as it had been when they lay on their backs in a field in Maine, watching these same stars wheel and dive above. On his other side, far down below, he could hear the crash of the ocean at the bottom of the cliff. How easy might it be to drift toward that roaring as he looked at the sky; to feel its approach as a kind of welcome, a hand leading him toward mercy: the kind that would, after a swift descent, a single clap of pain, a flash of light, deliver him directly into the constellated sky.
Coward.
He couldn’t do that either. All he could do was to remain invisible, there in the South of France. He lay in the long grass, held its sharp-edged blades in his hands, letting his mind drift upward into the surrounding buzz of nighttime insects. He was nowhere, he was out of the world, de Rodellec du Porzic could not touch him, nothing could touch him, he was swept clean of feeling, he was hardly a man, hardly alive at all.
* * *
________
Some weeks later—late August, nearly a year since he’d landed on the continent—he found himself at the Hôtel Martinez in Cannes, in a lounge chair on the beach, his eyes covered by the wings of a thin cotton towel, his skin browning in the flagrant sun, a forgotten Look magazine in his hand. When a slender shadow paused over him and blocked the sun, his heart seemed to stop. Grant. He sat up and pulled the towel from his eyes, his heart clamoring.
Not Grant, of course; Danny Bénédite, standing on the sand in his glossy caramel-colored shoes and his usual tweed suit, his eyes hidden behind a pair of the paper-and-cellulose sunglasses tourists could buy for three francs on the boardwalk.
“The concierge told me I might find you here,” he said.
Varian thought he would weep from relief. His impulse was to throw his arms around Danny, but here he was in his swim trunks, shirtless, sweating, slick with coconut oil, generally unwashed. He contented himself with rising to shake Danny’s hand, holding it long enough to reassure himself that he was really there. Danny sat down on the chaise next to Varian’s and rested his arms on his knees.
“I thought you might have left for points west by now,” Varian said. “I hoped you’d be long gone. Though I’m awfully glad to see you.”
“I tried,” Danny said. “Theo and I tried to cross into Spain three weeks ago. But we were arrested at the first checkpoint.”
“You! The first of all our clients to be arrested at the border!”
“Yes. Mary Jane and Navarre had to come to the rescue again. I’m afraid I can’t see when we can try next. Navarre said we wouldn’t be so lucky again, now that I’ve got what he calls un casier judiciaire.”
“So what are you doing here?”
“I thought it was time you came home. Your visa must be thoroughly expired by now.”
“Thoroughly,” Varian said. “But how can I go back? How can I, when it’s not—when none of it—” He found himself unable to continue; he couldn’t give voice to the words that suggested themselves, not even to Danny, who must have known what he meant; he’d been there for all of it, he and Theo, l
iving just down the hall from where it had happened.
“I’m afraid you’ve got no choice,” Danny said. “There’s work to be done. The Martinique route’s open again. The border is beginning to soften. As long as you’re still in France, you may as well make yourself useful.”
“What if I’m arrested? Du Porzic can’t have forgotten his threats.”
“Then we’ll find a way to get you out. You’ve paused, Varian. You’ve stepped out of your life. There’s no good in it.” He glanced at the empty drink glass in Varian’s hand. “Soon you’ll find yourself at the bottom of a martini, thoroughly pickled.”
Varian laughed. “I don’t believe I’ve won an argument with you yet, Danny,” he said. “You’re so gravely persuasive.”
“Come up to the hotel,” Danny said. “There’s business to discuss. I brought some papers that require your attention. Then we can go into town for dinner.”
“There’s a first-rate restaurant here at the hotel. Marvelous crabs, they say.”
“Never refuse marvelous crabs,” Danny said, getting to his feet; he reached down to pull Varian up, and the two of them ascended to the hotel.
Varian bathed and dressed in his own room, taking care with the details of his toilette for the first time in weeks. Then he and Danny sat for a time on Danny’s balcony, paging through a series of office papers. There were missives from New York, describing the organization’s failure to secure a replacement for Varian; other letters confirmed his clients’ arrival in the States, and still others were from collectors who had bid speculatively upon pieces from the Flight Portfolio and had since learned of the portfolio’s disappearance. Some of the collectors’ letters expressed chagrin, others threatened legal suit, still others offered condolences and cash. All of them demanded an answer. Danny had, providentially, brought along a small portable typewriter and a good supply of paper. It was something of a relief to sit at the desk and answer correspondence while the sun dropped toward the horizon.
Sometime after dark they went down to the restaurant and claimed a table on the veranda. The crabs were indeed marvelous; so was the wine. They talked about Hannah Arendt, whose husband had recovered from his illness, thanks to the ministrations of Dr. Mirandeau; Danny believed her papers would come through before long. Now that the shipping routes had opened again, hundreds of refugees had appeared on the steps of the Centre Américain. But there was a general dearth of money. Mary Jayne had given what she could, and had recently extracted the promise of more from Peggy Guggenheim, but other sources must be found. When that subject ran out, they talked about Danny and Theo’s thwarted exit plans, and how, under the current circumstances, they might arrange another flight from France.
“If I were to return to the States,” Varian said, “I could sponsor you. That would make a difference on the visa front, criminal record notwithstanding.”
Danny glanced out toward the rolling ocean, then back at Varian. “Is that what you plan?” he said, his voice low and serious. “To return to New York?”
“I imagine I’ll be kicked out of France eventually. I can’t avoid it forever. And where else can I go? New York is my home.” There it was, that word again; and it seemed true for the first time in months that New York, and the States, were places that claimed him. He told himself it had nothing at all to do with the fact that Grant was there now.
“We’ve just had a letter from New York,” Danny said, meditatively. “News of our boy. Peterkin’s aunt has enrolled him in a nursery school in Westchester County, some miles north of the city. He has learned to count to thirty, imagine! And he knows the names of colors in English. His latest fascination is for birds.” He fell silent for a moment, worrying the hem of his linen napkin with his thumb. “Sometimes Theo wakes in the night, thinking she’s just heard him call. I can’t convince her that it’s impossible. She runs through the house, looking. Sometimes, Varian, I almost believe her—I almost believe she’s heard him, and that if we look hard enough we will find him. Sometimes I’m certain we’ll find him dead, drowned in the fishpond or fallen from a window. I think about the moment we put him on that ship, the way he looked at us, no idea what was going to happen. It’s a torture. How can I explain it?” Danny put his thumb and index finger to the corners of his eyes. It was some time before he could go on, and when he did, his voice was scarcely audible. “At night, it’s the distance I keep thinking of,” he said. “All the miles between us—miles and miles of dark space. The land, the ocean. Every living thing in the Atlantic, closer to me than my son. What if he were to fall ill, what if he were in real danger and I couldn’t reach him? I would do anything for him, Varian. I would tear out my own eyes.”
“God, Danny. I’m so sorry. We’ll get you there.”
“I don’t know what I’ll do otherwise,” he said. “Or what Theo will do.” He put his fingers to his eyes again, and Varian laid a hand on his arm. He had never craved fatherhood himself, had never followed Eileen more than vaguely into her ideas about their future small Fry. But now, for the first time, he felt he could imagine the sheer physical pull of it: of having a son, a child, a living fragment of one’s own being, loose in the world. He remembered Danny with his boy in his arms, saw them standing at the edge of the bassin, watching a leaf boat make its slow and drifting transit; he saw Danny putting a pewter cup into Peterkin’s hands, the cup overflowing with clandestine milk. He saw Danny buckling Peterkin’s shoes, saw him pulling up his stockings and buttoning his coat, defending him against the mistral. For months he’d seen Danny doing those things; they were a part of Air Bel, as present and ignorable as the wallpaper. But now he could feel, as if he were inhabiting Danny’s body, what it would be like to have all of it taken away. What it would feel like to be separated from that bright fragment. Like having one’s own lungs torn out; like being forcibly separated from one’s soul.
Then, all at once, there was a change of pressure in his head, an inrush of noise, like a needle scratched backward along a record groove. “Danny,” he said, sitting upright in his chair.
“What’s wrong?”
He put his hands to his temples, where an intolerable pressure was gathering. He couldn’t sit still; he had to rise from the table, had to be away somewhere. He said he felt suddenly unwell; the wine had hit him all at once. Danny said he was finished too, after the travel, the sun, the marvelous crabs. He called for the bill and signed it; then they rode the lift to Danny’s floor, where they said a gruff goodnight, Varian assuring Danny he would call on him if he needed help. Then he rode to his own floor, where he walked the long hallway to his room, closed, the door, and went out to the balcony.
Out on the water were the faint lights of some massive ship, and not a pleasure ship; even from this distance, even by moonlight, he could see ordnance bristling from its towers. If that ship were to turn its guns on the hotel, he thought, it could blow it all to splinters in a minute.
Then back it came: the rush, the sound, that mind-halting scratch. What Danny had said: I would do anything, I would tear my eyes out.
What a father would do for his son.
What a father would do: cross an ocean toward a continent at war. Then lie to his lover on his son’s behalf. Lie in detail and with conviction. Lie in the belief that his son deserved saving, simply by virtue of his being an imperiled human creature on this earth, whose right to breathe and eat and reproduce could be held at no lesser value than anyone else’s. What a father would do: lie deeply, lie elegantly, to save his son. Then leave his lover overseas, charging him to bring his son to safety, to convey him over all that dark space: the land, the ocean. Over every living thing in the Atlantic.
39
Refoulé
They took the train to Marseille the next morning, Varian wondering every minute if he’d be apprehended along the way. He kept thinking of the ride home from Pamiers, of the sound of Gestapo officers moving down the corri
dor, pulling out the man in the ill-fitting coat, wrestling him off the train. But they made it to the Gare St. Charles without incident, and at the office he found everything in readiness: his desk tidy and stacked with papers that wanted his attention, Jean Gemähling in the midst of a phone call with the consulate, bright-voiced Lucie Heymann interviewing a pair of clients, and Theo crouched beside a refugee mother who sat nursing her baby as she narrated her story. Theo’s look, when she saw Varian and Danny, lay somewhere between chagrin and relief; he perceived that the relief was not only for her husband’s safety. She was willing, at least, to meet Varian’s eye. With a murmured word to the nursing mother, she got to her feet and went to them, first pressing Danny’s hand, then taking Varian’s.
The Flight Portfolio Page 60
