In the Fall They Leave, page 15
“Ah. Of course. Then Saturday?”
After they set a time, he removes his cap, gives a quick bow, and then skates toward the opposite side of the pond, where his friend is taking off his skates.
Elli is again awkwardly skating back and forth near the edge of the pond while holding Janine’s hand. Marie-Thérèse picks up Janine and glides around the pond with her in her arms. It’s almost heartbreaking to see the little girl’s tentative smile. She returns for Elli and together they make a slower revolution.
“He was a soldier,” Elli says.
“Yes.”
“He wants to see you again, doesn’t he?”
“Yes, he does.”
“We don’t think you should.”
“I know, my dears.”
“Will you, then?”
“I’m afraid I must.”
Seated on the bench and putting on her shoes, Liese says, “You’re not crying, Marie-Thérèse, are you? For heaven’s sake, what happened?”
“It’s just the wind.”
“There is no wind.”
Marie-Thérèse changes into her shoes and then helps Elli. At the bonfire, she holds her hands toward the heat. Soon Gauthier presents a box of twelve chocolates to the matron—a gift from all of them—and then a single chocolate for each, with thanks to Monsieur the Gardener for his resourcefulness.
On the way back, only Liese mentions the incident. “You surprised us, Marie-Thérèse, showing off for those Germans like that. Well, but I suppose you needed to do something for your compatriots.”
The gardener is behind them a few meters, pulling the children in the cart. “Of course!” she says. “My exact intention.” And gives a foolish laugh. She thinks of the chocolate instead—silken on the tongue, its sweetness understated, its richness full and perfect. And so quickly gone. Like time before this time.
She wishes she had savored hers more.
Coincidence
She pours slowly, the stream of coffee bumping the sides of the lieutenant’s porcelain cup, patterned with wild roses. Before them on the table in the nurses’ sitting room are a matching porcelain pitcher and small sugar bowl, each holding minimal amounts of cream and sugar. At the center of the table, a gold-rimmed dessert plate with six small sugar cookies nested in the wild roses. The cook has made them at the matron’s request. Two bread and butter plates from the same set are at each of their places, along with newly polished teaspoons.
“Danke, Fräulein Hulbert. These look delicious. May I?”
She’s forgotten to offer them. “Yes, yes, please.” She takes the plate too forcefully and one slides off onto the tablecloth.
“It’s all right,” he says. “That one’s mine. Danke!”
He’s been glancing around at everything. The framed watercolors, the piano with its stacks of clothing, the books shelved along one wall, the figured carpet, the upholstered chairs and reading lamps.
Her smile, she hopes, disguises repugnance. She places a cookie on her own plate and wonders if she’ll be able to eat it.
He reaches for a second. The remaining two look rather paltry on the plate. “You must have a very good cook here. Or did you make these yourself?”
“Oh no. I’m not much of a cook.” She decides to pretend that he’s a patient with whom she must be pleasant. Better, she’ll pretend he’s Private Schalk.
“And why is that, Fräulein?”
“Why?”
“You were thinking of something else, weren’t you?”
“Yes! I was just thinking how you remind me of a patient who was at our clinic for a time, a kind young man.”
“Ah. I am happy to hear that. A kind young man. And handsome?”
“Yes.” Her ears feel too warm.
“Then we are off to a good start. Is he no longer at your clinic, this handsome and kind patient?”
“He returned to Germany in October.”
“Very good! Then I have no rivals. Or do I?”
His question reawakens memories of loneliness at the Académie. And now, of course, again, who has time for all that?
Any possible lighthearted response eludes her. “No, Lieutenant. There are no rivals.”
“That is difficult to believe. You know, I’ve been looking at your piano. A Bechstein, yes?”
“It is.”
“They’re very good pianos. Favored by Liszt. Does anyone here play?”
She always wondered but never asked how a Bechstein came to be in the nurses’ sitting room. A donation, probably. Her first year at the school, she ignored it. But then, knowing her background, the matron asked if she might play a few carols and hymns at the Christmas party that year. After that, she began finding time to play for herself, despite the painful memories.
“It’s a shame,” he goes on, “if no one plays.”
“I sometimes do,” she finally says. He’s in his dress uniform, with corded shoulder boards unadorned by any stars, which means that he is, in fact, a second lieutenant. Her hands won’t stop trembling. Briefly she tells him about her time at the Académie, years that also precluded any attempts to learn cooking or baking. When she finishes, she observes a dramatically changed expression. Gone is the veneer of strained politeness. In its place, incredulity and excitement.
“It can’t be! Is this true? You were there how long?”
“Seven years.”
“Seven!”
“Yes.”
“Then, please, you must play something!”
Gone, too, the superficiality. And he’s doing what they frequently did at the Académie, the piano students, glancing at one another’s hands, the length of the fingers, assessing their strength.
Waiting for him to call that day and then ushering him into the sitting room had been unnerving. She demanded that everyone stay away. She soaked her hands in warm water. Once he was actually sitting down and having coffee, she relaxed…a little. Now fear is again crackling through her, and her hands are growing colder by the second.
“You hesitate. But I have a feeling you are quite good.”
“Oh no. I was only a mediocre student, Lieutenant, and that’s why I left. And now I’m quite out of practice.”
“You were there for seven years. You cannot have been merely mediocre. And I imagine you had lessons even before attending the Académie.”
“I did, yes.”
“Would you mind playing something, however brief? I would love to hear a bit of music.”
Does he think she’s lying? Under the table she squeezes her hands to get the blood flowing. “Would you like to hear anything in particular?”
“Oh, a hundred things but maybe…some Schubert? I am partial to Schubert because of the melancholic undertones in many of his compositions and also because he lived in the shadow of Beethoven. Had Beethoven not been born, imagine how we would now idolize Schubert. As it is, he’s like the poor second cousin. Or, to fix the analogy, a sapling in the shadow of a towering oak.”
Well, not exactly. Schubert… One of the waltzes? An impromptu? She apologizes for the stacks of clothing and quickly explains their presence while removing them to armchairs. Seated at the Bechstein, she still doesn’t know what to play. Schubert.
Her hands decide for her—the “Phantasie”—and for several minutes she hides inside the music. When she raises her hands from the keyboard and finally turns, his head is lowered over his right hand, thumb on cheekbone, two fingers pressed against brow. She’s made dozens of mistakes. He removes his hand and says, without opening his eyes. “You never should have left.” He sounds tired now, even sad. “A few mistakes, yes, but your playing has a certain…élan.”
Nurses have been peeking in and whispering. The lieutenant pretends not to notice the shuffling in the hallway or the whispering or the door that keeps opening wider. And the mortifying fact that someone is also giggling.
“Should we have a little walk?” he says. “There is still some sunlight. Oh, but you haven’t had anything!”
“It’s fine. I’ll have it later.” Needing her jacket, she excuses herself.
“Out!” she whispers to everyone after shutting the door behind her. “Don’t you have work to do?” She runs up two flights of stairs and then back down. Three nurses are still there, and the door again ajar. Julia offers her serene smile as if to say she approves, though Marie-Thérèse knows she probably doesn’t.
In the park off the rue de la Culture, old women are competing with squirrels gathering acorns under the oaks. The day is calm, the sunlight milky, and the women send the two of them— a German officer in uniform complete with greatcoat, and with him a traitorous Belgian woman—excoriating looks. Marie-Thérèse, trying to ignore the old women, prays they won’t do anything even more dangerous. He notices the women as well, though he pretends otherwise.
Melting snow has left the lawns glittering. Some leaves still cling to the oaks; others lie in wet grass like pieces of maroon parchment. The cold air feels good on her face.
“Fräulein,” he begins, “this coincidence…I don’t know…it’s odd and even incredible. My father, you see, is a great craftsman. In his youth he apprenticed at one of Herr Bechstein’s factories. That’s why I was stunned to see a Bechstein in your sitting room. I found myself wondering if my father might have had some part in building it. He loved music—and still does, particularly piano music—but his family was poor, and there was nothing for lessons. The best he could do was find a way to hear performances, often sneaking in during intermissions and then lurking at the back of the hall and finding an empty seat when someone didn’t return.
“All this he told us, his three children, much later, after he became a successful piano maker. He had taken all he had learned at the Bechstein factory, moved to a different region, and then set up his own shop in a carriage house. His pianos became well known and respected in the area, and best of all, they were affordable for families of lesser means. When he had some time to spare, he tried to learn to play. You can imagine. He was nearing forty years old and had trouble with simple scales, never mind Mozart’s “Eine Kleine Nacht Musik.” But he tried and kept trying until we were old enough to take lessons and then outstripped him in no time. So, he pinned his hopes on us and gradually stopped playing. And for us he bought a Bösendorfer, of course, and found us the best teachers. Evenings after dinner, he would listen to us practice, first my older sister Anna, then Margarethe, and then me. He never tired of listening and never minded our mistakes and repetitions. He would sit there so proud and entranced.
“You know, I have come to believe that hope is the cruelest emotion because the things one hopes for are so often withheld. Think of the myth of Tantalus. A good depiction of futile, agonizing hope. In the end we all disappointed him, I most of all. Anna did become the organist and musical director at our church, though. Margarethe gives lessons, and on Sundays both families go to the house and play for him. Still, he wanted so much more. He wanted what he had heard as a child, that grandeur. He wanted what lived inside him but could not find a way out. Well, there are the grandchildren.”
“And you,” she said after a few moments, “what did you want?”
“To go away. I couldn’t bear the burden of his hope. In his eyes my sisters failed, though he would never tell them that. I just knew that’s how he felt. So it was up to me. And I…well, let’s just say I wasn’t good enough to even enter a conservatory, never mind managing to stay in one. While I listened to your playing, I thought of him and how you should have been his daughter.” These words strike her as bizarre.
“I’m afraid I would have disappointed him too.”
“Yes, well, leaving the Académie. I suppose so.”
So many thoughts. That father. A son’s guilt. Her own mother’s pain and hers as well. And art—what is it that draws one? What force? And why can’t so many aspiring artists be good enough?
“You’re awfully quiet, Fräulein Hulbert. What are you thinking so deeply about?”
“Oh, a bit of everything.” Briefly, she tells him about her mother and the divide between them and how she can alleviate patients’ pain but not her mother’s. Abruptly changing the topic, she asks why he chose the military; it seems so radically different from his previous life.
“Well, you perhaps know about our military reserve groups? All young men must train in a reserve group and then when the group is called up, we go.”
She hadn’t known. “What is your specific task, Lieutenant Fischer, in the army? Do you have one? Are you…infantry?”
“Oh no, just liaison work, a message boy in essence. It’s hardly worth a person’s time. But I have to see my term of service through and then will do something else.”
“Could you go back? I mean to your father’s factory?”
“After I stopped taking lessons, he asked me to consider it. I could manage a section, or learn the financial aspects, or become a salesman. Any number of things. I actually did consider it. Until looking in his eyes and understanding what I’d be seeing each day. That defeat and loss. So, no, I don’t think going back would be good for either of us. When we children were young, my father was so happy taking us to concerts. He had so much hope in those days. But now…actually, I would very much like to study astronomy.”
“Astronomy!”
“Yes. I had an excellent course at university, but then our reserve unit was called into active duty and so here I am. While at university, I read about a sixty-inch reflector telescope lens being built in California, in the United States, at the Mount Wilson Observatory. I would very much like to go to California after this war and continue my studies.”
California. And if the United States should enter the war on the side of Britain and France? She suddenly feels bad for the lieutenant.
“Do you enjoy nursing, Fräulein?”
“I am beginning to enjoy it very much.”
“Are you afraid of making mistakes, as at the Académie?”
“Always.”
“Do you make many?”
“Unfortunately, I do.”
“May I ask another favor, mademoiselle?”
Mademoiselle.
“Could you please call me by my Christian name if that won’t…bother you? I prefer Rudi.”
“Yes, I can do that.” It brings Rani to mind.
“Merci. Now a second question. Would you prefer we speak French…at least here in the park?”
“You speak French, then?”
“Mais oui. And some Polish. My father loves Chopin, of course. We had language lessons as well as vacations in France and Poland. My poor father tried to leave nothing to chance.”
They talk on and on, in French, until she glances at her watch and then they’re trotting like ponies back through the park, past the outraged women, and out through the main gate. The sun is setting in gray gauze. Finally, at the door to the nurses’ residence, while he’s trying to express how much he enjoyed the afternoon, she’s thinking there’s hardly time for her to change.
Later she’ll chide herself for not having prepared an answer.
“Mademoiselle, I am hoping, that is, if you wish, I am hoping we…what I mean to say is that I hope you will have some free time next Saturday and…if you wish…if it is possible, that is…we might have another visit. There is no need for coffee or tea and those excellent cookies your cook provided. We might stop at a café if you wish, of course.”
All those words stated, he lowers his head.
No, she’s thinking. No. Everyone will hate her. Also, she might slip and reveal something. Words form, in thought: Thank you, sir, but my studies are so demanding that—
What she hears herself saying is Yes.
Resolve
Their cook, Amelia, comes over to Marie-Thérèse in the dining room at lunchtime the next day and none too quietly gloats over the fact that five twenty-pound bags of flour and five of sugar unexpectedly arrived at the clinic’s kitchen that morning. The driver wouldn’t tell her anything. “But we know who sent them, don’t we, Fräulein Hulbert? You must have had quite an afternoon!” She cackles with the evil gusto of a Baba Yaga.
Liese, across the table, smirks. Others begin calling out, “Brioche! Streusel! Cinnamon rolls!”
Marie-Thérèse states that she isn’t going to eat anything the cook makes with that flour and sugar. But hardly fazed and so joyful to be able to bake again, the cook only pats her back and fairly shouts, “Très bien!”
Her resolve doesn’t last. There’s brioche, and sugar for coffee and tea, and cinnamon rolls, the holiday scent winding through the dining room and finding its way even into the lecture hall. Cinnamon.
“Do you think,” she asks the matron in her sitting room, “that he might possibly have some motive? After all, Liese is the pretty one. She was there that day too.” It’s difficult to look directly at the matron, her own sense of guilt and unworthiness still so strong.
The matron studies her. “I’ve noticed that you have a tendency to demean your own qualities and abilities, mademoiselle. I’ve been wondering why. You’re an exceptional student, a lovely pianist, and even a fine skater”—here, she smiles—“and yet you so often question your abilities. In addition to the qualities I just mentioned, you also strike me as someone with integrity.”
Integrity. Absolutely not. A few weeks earlier all this praise might have toppled her. And it would have provided emotional sustenance for weeks. Now it only augments the sense of guilt.
“What motive do you think he could have?” the matron goes on. “Did he ask about the clinic?”
“No. Just my family, mainly, and my choices. He said his father wanted him to be a pianist.” She relates his story. “I don’t know. Could he have been fabricating in order to…build trust, create some bond between us? The coincidence seemed so remarkable. Too much so.”
