A swim. Something he hadn’t had in four years. He gestured toward his bag. “I didn’t bring-” Who had bathing suits?
“Use one of Daniel’s. He’s got a drawer full of them. Just root around and pick what you like.”
He threw his bag on the bed and went over to the window. The pool was below, blue and rippling, catching the light in quick flashes. It had been set off from the rest of the hill by a private wall of trees, with the far end left open, so that the land seemed suspended in air before falling away to the distant grid of streets. Around the edge were large pots of geraniums, a few lemon trees, and a row of trimmed oleanders, high enough to flower but not block the view. Ben stared at the pool, unsettled, as if a wrong note of music had been hit, jarring the whole piece. He’d thought of Danny as somehow desperate, not lying on a chaise in the sun, picking fruit off trees. How did they fit? An acre of paradise and a room at the Cherokee Arms.
He went to the dressing room, curious. More money. Rows of sport jackets on hangers, shoes laid out. A drawer full of bathing suits: tropical flowers, chevron stripes, finally a pair of navy blue trunks that could be anybody’s. He looked through the other drawers quietly, feeling like a burglar. Socks rolled up, a stack of handkerchiefs, pressed and folded. But Danny’s drawer at home had been neat, too. Under the handkerchiefs there were old passports, kept for some reason, filled with the stamps of their childhood, crossing into Germany, crossing out of Germany, Dover and Calais, Berlin-Tempelhof, the last with an eagle on a swastika, just before the pages ran out. He looked at the photo. In his next passport he’d be grown up, but here he was still young, the hair brushed to one side.
Where would the other pictures be? His study, probably. He crossed the hall, carrying the trunks, and surprised Iris, who was putting papers away in drawers.
“I’m just cleaning up in here. You get people in and out, you know they’re going to come snooping. They go looking for the bathroom and next thing they’re at the desk, just happening to read what’s on it. I’ve seen it. Something I can help you with?”
“No, I’m just snooping myself,” Ben said. “Trying to find some pictures. You know, we haven’t seen each other in a while.”
She went over to the shelves where a few small frames rested against the books.
“This is pretty recent,” she said, handing him one.
Ben looked down. A group on the beach, Danny with his lopsided grin, making a face at the camera. The whole row smiling, enjoying the day. Liesl wore a two-piece suit with polka dots, like Chili Williams, her hair blowing behind her.
“You planning to stay long?”
Ben raised his head.
“I only ask because of the food. So I can plan.”
“I don’t want to make things worse for her,” Ben said, a question.
Iris shook her head. “Far as that’s concerned, she could use the company. You know what it’s like in an empty house. She’s already taking it hard. It’s the suddenness of it. And the way-” She stopped and went back to the desk. “Don’t mind me.”
Ben put the picture back, then glanced down at the day bed. “He spend a lot of time in here?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“I just meant-”
“I know what you meant. I suppose you’ve been hearing things? People like to talk. When it’s none of their business. I’ll tell you, I never saw it. But people have different ways. You take Mr. Baker-that’s my ex. That man was a hound. I threw him out. I said, ‘I know you can’t help it, you got to chase anything runs in front of you, but I don’t want any part of it.’ Now Mr. Kohler, I never saw that. Two years I’ve been working here. Since they got the house. So you live and learn.” She closed the drawer and looked up at him. “He seemed the same to me. Like always. Well.” She moved to the door. “You want to help, people have to eat. She hasn’t touched a thing in days. Melon. What’s melon? Water is all. Get her to eat something.”
When she’d gone, Ben looked at the other pictures, more wrong notes, as jarring as the pool. Danny and Liesl on a picnic blanket. With another couple around a nightclub table covered with glasses. Hans Ostermann, unintentionally comic in his somber European suit, surrounded by Danny and a few other young men in tennis whites. A croquet game. A pool party. Danny smiling in all of them. A happy life. But everybody smiled for the camera.
He went over to the desk, intending to start on the drawers, but Liesl came in, carrying flowers. “Oh good, you found one,” she said, nodding to the bathing suit. “I’ll be right down. As soon as I deal with these. I have to put them where she’ll see them. She’ll ask otherwise. Now what?” she said, as the phone rang. “Why does everybody want to talk?” But she picked it up anyway, not waiting for Iris, and immediately switched into German. She had the rich, fluid German he remembered from before the war, before all the coarse shouting, and her voice sounded relaxed, at home in it.
“Salka wants to drop off a cake,” she said wryly, hanging up. “But she wants to know if Alma’s here. They’re not speaking to each other.”
“Alma who sent the flowers to Danny?”
Liesl nodded. “Mahler. Well, Werfel now, but if you leave out the Mahler she puts it back in.”
“And Salka?”
“Viertel. Berthold’s wife. Well, when he’s around. Everyone goes to her on Sundays-like a real salon. So of course it makes Alma crazy. Two queen bees in one hive. I suppose they’ll have to see each other, if there’s a funeral. For five minutes anyway. They’ll all come. It’s like a village. They’ll come to see who doesn’t come. So, you’ll be all right?” she said, gesturing again to the trunks, then glanced at the desk. “Were you looking for something?” She met his eyes, her face suddenly soft. “He didn’t leave a note. You can look, but he didn’t.”
The drawer was a mess of papers: letters, odd pages of scripts with margin notes, bank statements with canceled checks, more private than clothes. An envelope with a doctor’s return address. He pulled out the letter. An annual physical, boxes checked in columns, blood pressure, heart rate-everything had been fine in January, perfect in fact, except for the lazy eye that had got him a 4-F. He put the form down, suddenly embarrassed. What exactly was he looking for? An explanation? An apology? He looked at Danny’s handwriting againswooping caps and then tight, closed letters. Which meant what? Would he even have given it a thought a few days ago? This was like looking at tea leaves or chicken entrails. He shoved the paper back and closed the drawer.
Downstairs, sliding glass doors led out to the pool. There was a wet bar, some bright patio furniture, and a galley kitchen with a serving window that opened to the terrace. Ben imagined parties with platters of food, umbrella tables by day, the million lights by night. To the side was a closed door. The garage? No, a screening room with red plush seats and musty velvet drapes, so dated it must have come with the house. He turned up the lights. Except for the sound speakers, it was the kind of room Lasner might have used to run Two Husbands. Maybe even for Chaplin, a lifetime before Paulette. Did Danny still use it?
The projection room, at any rate, was functional, the equipment newer than some he’d used in the Signal Corps. A few cans of film lay next to the projector, waiting to be put back on the metal shelf lined with hexagonal storage boxes. Ben went over to look, expecting a row of Republic serials, but they were Ufa films, titles on the boxes inked in German. Drei Madchen, Ein Tag in Berlin, Sag Mir Adieu — all the silly comedies and shopgirl dramas their father had made out in Babelsberg, a kind of shrine to Otto Kohler. All here, even the ones from the thirties, when Otto still thought he’d be safe. Ben ran his fingers across the boxes. Films he hadn’t seen, then never asked to see later, all faithfully collected. The father’s son. Even Two Husbands, probably moldering away now in its canister.