The Words I Never Wrote Page 16

  A question hovered in her kind eyes.

  “Essential.”

  The nurse withdrew a dome-shaped circle of rubber. It was a sepia half-moon the size of her palm. Three tiny inches of translucence.

  “We need to find the right size, and you must learn to fit it. The rim has a spring inside that keeps it in place. If the device fits well, you’re entirely safe. Your secret is hidden inside you.”

  “How long does it last?”

  “It could be five years before you need another.”

  Five years. Where might she be in five years?

  “First you’ll need to undress. Only your skirt and undergarments. I’ll draw the drapes.”

  Irene sat on the banquette enclosed in a cubbyhole of cloth. The daylight filtering through the yellow flowery curtain had the effect of turning the space into a golden floral bower. She removed her shoes, unbuttoned her skirt, then unhitched the garters of her stockings and pulled down her underpants. Instinctively, she folded the clothes tidily and stowed them on the chair beside her, with the shoes beneath. She had never performed this particular routine in a more clinical setting, and she could not help thinking of the people going about their everyday business on just the other side of these walls in Iranische Strasse. What would they make of her illegal act?

  For a moment she remained still, the leather cool against her flesh, and then the curtain was drawn and her nakedness revealed.

  “Just lie back and relax your limbs.”

  That was impossible, of course. Irene never relaxed. In her waking hours her body was perpetually braced with tension. She ached from the fear of being watched or followed. When she slept, her head was filled with nightmares. Of Ernst and his young mistress, of Heydrich and his men reading her letters, following her, noting her every movement.

  Yet now she made a conscious effort to soften her limbs as she crooked her knees upward and spread them apart. Above her a steel lamp focused a bright moon of light on her torso and glanced off a range of steel instruments laid out on a tray to one side. The high windows were obscured by a blind, patterned by a moving tracery of shadow from the lindens outside.

  As for Frau Beckmann, though, how was she able to relax? If anyone discovered what was happening, both of them would face prison, and the penalty for the nurse would be far worse, almost certainly a camp, like the one Martha had talked of. Yet the woman betrayed not a trace of nerves as she covered the little rubber dome with suds of foam soap and patiently demonstrated how to use it. Swiftly Irene learned the feel of it, the way to squeeze and then release it so that it fitted snugly inside her, and how to remove it afterward.

  Even then she could not banish the last shreds of doubt. Could this ounce of onionskin really protect her from the dreadful event she feared?

  When they were done, the nurse instructed her to replace her clothes and handed her a small box inside a paper bag.

  “If you use this correctly, no one but you will know it is there. Treat it very carefully. Keep it safe. Let no one find it.”

  All the way home the cardboard box weighed in her bag like treasure, as light as diamonds, as precious as gold.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Standing between the German and the Soviet pavilions at the World Fair was like being squashed between two equally overbearing and boastful guests at a party. The Exposition Internationale, to give it its proper name, centered on the Trocadéro, running down from the Palais de Chaillot on the right bank of the Seine and sandwiching views of the Eiffel Tower. On the left, Albert Speer’s pillared monolith stood like some dreadful sarcophagus flanked by gigantic bronzes and surmounted by an eagle. Glowering at it from a few hundred yards away was the towering Soviet monument, a male and a female worker striding forward, hammer and sickle in hand, heading for the future. The World Fair had pavilions devoted to every country, designed to show off their cultural and scientific achievements, but these two dominated everything.

  Cordelia shivered in her citron yellow tea dress. “Are they actually designed to make you feel small, do you think?”

  “Certainly. And it works, doesn’t it?”

  Since the awkward moment in the office, when Torin had accused her of following him, he had treated Cordelia with elaborate courtesy. Shortly after he left that day, he had returned with a box of delicate pastel macarons from Fournier, pistachio, vanilla, and rose, as an atonement for my momentary loss of temper. He had been a model employer, good humored and courteous, and in their free time he had even taken her for café crème at the Deux Magots, to see La Grande Illusion at the cinema and the Rodin museum in the Rue de Varenne.

  She understood that he was trying to make up for his discourtesy, even to demonstrate that the rudeness went against every fiber of his being. And in turn she hoped that he did not observe the spark of nerves when he touched her lightly on the elbow to guide her across the road, or brushed her arm in the cinema’s treacherous darkness.

  “This is what I want to see.”

  Torin headed toward a low, modernist construction of glass and steel sited in the shadow of the German pavilion. Compared to the intimidating standoff between the Soviet and German pavilions, this one was conspicuously modest, fronted by an enormous photographic mural of Republican soldiers, accompanied by the slogan We are fighting for the essential unity of Spain. We are fighting for the integrity of Spanish soil. We are fighting for the independence of our country and for the right of the Spanish people to determine their own destiny.

  The Spanish pavilion.

  Past a canvas by Joan Miró of an upraised arm and clenched fist, they entered and were confronted by a sight that took her breath away.

  “You’re an admirer of Picasso, so I thought you ought to see this,” Torin remarked. “It took him five weeks to paint. What do you think?”

  A vast black, white, and gray painting covered the entire facing wall. The artwork seemed to wrap itself around Cordelia as she looked, immersing her in a tableau of clashing figures: bulls, screaming horses, and horrified women, their writhing agony embodying the convulsions of an entire country. It was unlike any war painting she had ever seen.

  Unlike any painting, in fact.

  “It’s called Guernica. That’s the town bombed by the German air force last month. They launched incendiary bombs right onto the market square, killing dozens of women and children. The operation was devised to maximize human casualties. It was planned by Goering as a birthday present for Hitler.”

  Cordelia could not tear her eyes away. The emotion in the huge canvas seemed to engulf her, its compassion reaching out and containing something else, a grief for every human being in the world.

  “I wonder what the Nazis think of it.”

  “I can tell you. You only have to consult their guidebook to the fair. They describe it as a hodgepodge of body parts that any four-year-old could have painted.”

  “I wish my sister could see this. She’s an artist.”

  Cordelia still felt a vicarious glow of pride at the thought of Irene’s talent, followed by the sinking thought that it was almost certainly neglected now. Her sister’s letters never mentioned her painting—the one that had arrived that morning brought the thrilling news that Ernst’s sister, Gretl, had been made Ortsgruppenführerin of the National Socialist Women’s Association and was pressuring Irene to join. She and Ernst had attended the premiere of La Habanera at the Ufa-Palast Am Zoo and were planning a trip to the Bayreuth opera in July. Even the stamps on the envelopes, with their pictures of the Führer’s face, or medieval peasants holding scythes, or the Hindenburg airship, seemed to testify to an alien culture.

  What could Irene be thinking?

  Torin stood braced, shoulders back, feet apart, giving the painting on the wall before them the same precise, focused attention he gave to everything.

  “There’s a Francoist called General Emilio Mola, who
’s in charge of the military campaign in the north. Mola says it’s necessary to spread terror. To create the impression of mastery, eliminating anyone who thinks differently. That includes attacking women and children on market day.”

  Looking at the German planes screaming out of a hard, gray sky, he murmured something under his breath.

  “What did you say?”

  “Sunt lacrimae rerum.”

  “Our English master used to say that. He was a war veteran, and he was always reciting poetry, but I never knew what it meant.”

  “Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt. The world is a world of tears and the burdens of mortality touch the heart. It’s Virgil. The Aeneid. Aeneas is weeping for the carnage and grief of the Trojan War. I always used to wonder how it was we were still talking and reading about a war that happened in the twelfth century B.C., but now I realize the Trojan War was the kind that changes the face of the world. And I suppose—I fear—the next war will change the face of the world just as much. Perhaps be remembered just as long.”

  They came out of the pavilion and strolled between the fountains. High above them a hot-air balloon hovered and the sky was so clear it almost hurt her eyes. The sun had turned the dome of the Invalides molten gold, and a breeze rippled the pelt of blossom on the trees.

  Torin squinted down at her. “Something’s the matter, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Want to talk about it?”

  “I had another letter from my sister today. It’s like I don’t recognize her anymore. She’s changed. She writes pages of nonsense about receptions she’s been to and the people they’ve met.”

  “Sounds like most people’s letters.”

  “But not Irene. She praises everything she used to despise. Her description of Joseph Goebbels’s Olympics party made it sound like something Louis the Fourteenth might stage.”

  “More like Nero, from what I heard.”

  “I can’t believe she mingles with these people. She’s my sister!”

  “Sisters don’t have to agree politically. You must have heard of those Mitfords. A couple of them have gone off to Germany and fallen in love with Hitler. One of them, Unity, even takes tea with him most days, but the rest of the family can’t stand the Nazis.”

  Cordelia was silent a moment. Then she said, “Something happened recently. I met a woman—Frau Elsa Klein. She taught both of us German in Munich, but she’s had to emigrate. She’s Jewish, you see. And she says Irene should leave Germany immediately.”

  “You must have said the same.”

  “Of course. In every letter I send. I ask her how she can bear to live in a country where people are so badly mistreated. But she doesn’t respond. Her letters are the epistolary equivalent of Harper’s Bazaar. Just lists of the diplomatic evenings they attend and the brutes they entertain.”

  “Which brutes?”

  “Count von Helldorf, the chief of police. Hans Globke.”

  “Hans Globke. He helped draft the Nuremberg Laws that deprived Jews of citizenship, ensuring that they can’t marry gentiles.”

  “Irene and her husband went to a movie evening at the home of Robert Ley, the Labor leader.”

  “Elevated company.”

  “And Reinhard Heydrich invited them to a concert.”

  “My God. The secret police chief. It must have turned her head.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “It must be a pragmatic decision. She’s married to a German and she’s made her home there. Do they have children yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Does she not like babies, then?”

  “Oh no, she loves them. And Ernst wants them.” Cordelia felt the tears rush to her eyes. “But Irene’s not the type to ignore injustice. She hates bullies. I remember when I was five she scolded me for arguing with a boy at a birthday party over musical chairs.”

  “You, arguing? Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

  “The boy cheated. Okay, it was his birthday, but he was still cheating. Irene shook me by the shoulders and told me even though I was right, I was being a bully. I made him cry.”

  “What were you supposed to do? Sit back and watch?”

  “Irene said there was more than one way of putting things right.”

  “The motto of appeasers the world over.”

  “My sister’s not an appeaser!”

  He shrugged. “People change.”

  Cordelia drew a sharp breath to keep from crying. Torin had a point. Her sister seemed perfectly happy to live alongside the Nazis, to dine with them and attend their lavish parties. Yet how could the same Irene who had told her off for arguing with a cheat turn her face away from the biggest bully of all, the man who seemed intent on playing musical chairs with most of the countries in Europe?

  “Even if that’s true. Even if she has changed…Oh, Torin, I’m so worried about her.”

  She had the absurd urge to bury her face in the folds of Torin’s tweed jacket. She pressed her fingers into the corner of her eyes to prevent the tears.

  “The thing is…she isn’t just my sister. Irene’s my dearest friend.”

  Torin moved toward her. She felt the mingled heat of their bodies blossoming into the air, and she knew that she was realizing something for the first time—something so close that until then she had been unable to see it properly.

  Without warning, he took her hand and turned his toward it, their two palms touching like naked bodies. Then, with almost unbearable tenderness, he traced a finger along the translucent skin of her forearm, down to the delicate wrist.

  She remembered the first time she saw him. When she heard the poem and supplied the last lines in her head. They fitted together, like a couplet.

  Standing there among the crowds, her hand in his, she held her breath, as though she was teetering on a cliff edge and knew she would fall.

  Torin said, “Come with me.”

  * * *

  —

  AS SOON AS THEY had climbed the stairs of the Hotel Britannia and secured the door behind them, he took her in his arms.

  She felt his fingers moving, easing the buttons, unclipping, pulling, allowing the dress to fall, then the brassiere, then the garter belt, until she stood in the slatted light of the shutters, her body decorated only by the lace of shadows.

  “Stand still a second. Let me look at you.”

  His gaze moved over her as though he was an artist, assessing the pallor of her skin and the curve of her figure. She felt at once self-conscious and almost unbearably excited, yet still, when he took off his jacket and slung it over a chair, followed by his shirt and trousers, her breath stopped in her mouth at the sight of him. She had never seen a man unclothed, let alone one so much at ease with his own nakedness. He moved the same as when clothed, with a loose, rangy stride, as if there were nothing strange about being naked, or having just undressed her. As if it had been inevitable from the first.

  Without thinking she stepped forward, pressing her collarbone against his ribs and inhaling the scent of him. He ran a finger over the hollow between her shoulder and her neck, then down to her waist, and drew her tightly toward him. As he kissed her, his lips tasted salty, and she wanted to catch the moment forever, to stop time and preserve it so that she could feast on it when it was gone. She was astonished that their bodies seemed to know what they were doing, all on their own.

  * * *

  —

  AFTER THEY HAD MADE LOVE, they lay side by side, draped by a sheet like twin figures on a tomb, until Torin shunted himself upright and brought out a packet of Gauloises, with its jaunty white and blue design.

  “Matches your eyes. Smoke blue.”

  “When I was a child our father used to say our eyes were as blue as robins’ eggs.”

  “Does your father know you’re
living in a brothel?”

  “It’s not exactly a brothel. Or only part of it. But to be honest, I don’t think my parents would mind if they did know. They’re terrifically broad-minded. They read Ulysses way before everyone else.”

  “My people would never know your people. My family live in a terraced house in Biscay Road, Hammersmith. My father was a trade unionist. He was terrifically engaged with politics. My mother was a waitress at the Café Royal before she met Dad. You could probably fit our entire house into your drawing room.”

  His speech was clipped, terse again, as if framing the dingy street, with its narrow corridors, the chill front room, kept for best, the linoleum kitchen and brick path down the patch of front garden. Although Cordelia had never talked specifically about her own home, she must have mentioned Birnham Park, and the “park” part of it was unmistakable. In England, the vast acres, fields, drive, lake, gardens, and all the things those spaces represented would create an unbreachable gap between them. It was only because they were here in Paris that the distance separating them had contracted to this small space. An iron bed in a cheap hotel, a narrow room with a slanted ceiling, faded flowery wallpaper patching together the flimsy partition walls.

  Torin reached over to his jacket and pulled a picture out of his wallet. It was a strikingly pretty woman, with wind-whipped dark hair and his own full lips, standing arm in arm with a young man in shirtsleeves and braces. In the stiff breeze the man looked solid and resolute. They were leaning against an iron railing, in front of a choppy sea.

  “Honeymoon in Brighton. Before I came along and disturbed the peace.”

  “What do they think of you coming out here?”

  “My father died nine months ago.” He drew a battered volume covered in burgundy leather from the jacket pocket. It was Virgil’s Aeneid.

  “I’m reading book six. Where Aeneas asks to be allowed to visit the underworld, so that he can speak to the spirit of his father, Anchises.”

  “If you could talk to yours, what would you say?”