“Stand up! Come on! Up!” He pulled her to her feet. “Don’t beg,” he said. “Never beg. Not to any man.”
“I don’t want you to die!” she rasped. And there it was. The reality, in amid all the fictions, the parties and the merrymaking. She trembled, and her tears were trickling slowly down and so also trickled down a small thread of saliva from her lower lip.
Get out of here, he almost said. He thought for a few seconds of shouting at her, of running her out because this was too much, it was impossible to bear this. But the fact was, he knew how short their hours were, and if she had to die—if she had to die—then he would be with her when it happened, and it would not be a cold stranger with a silenced pistol or a strangler in the alley at the end of the street. He would take the responsibility to put her over as gently as possible. And then, quite suddenly, he felt the burn in his own eyes and he lowered his head but she’d already seen.
She put a finger under his chin to angle his face toward her again.
Strongly and clearly she said, “I’m not going to let you be lost.”
“I have lied to you,” he heard himself answer. “My Westphalian accent is false. Studied. I was not born in Dortmund. I am…different, from anyone else. I was born in Russia, and I was a child there. What you’re hearing in my accent is—”
Her fingers went to his lips.
“Shhhhh,” she said. “I don’t care. Just answer me this: you’re not a traitor, are you?”
“No, I’m not a traitor.”
“Then what does it matter? Very well, so you were born in Russia. What were you, the family secret?” She didn’t wait for a response. “If you looked into the histories of most of the people at that Signal party, you’d find few of them without a chambermaid or a stable boy hidden in their family trees.”
The power of illusion, he thought. Or delusion. Right now she was creating the story in her mind of how he was the child of an ill-starred love between a German officer and a Russian maiden on the eve of the Great War, and how he’d probably been raised by the simple and gentle maiden, but then she’d sent him to be cared for by his father in Dortmund because she knew what better education and enlightenment he would receive. In fact, that sounded close to the movie they’d seen at the cinema a few nights ago.
What was the point of going down the road of truth? It was too fantastic to be believed. And if he showed her…what then?
He might kill her of fright, and then he could go home like a real hero.
He put his arms around her and held her tightly. They clung together like the only still-solid objects in a universe disintegrating to dust.
“I’m so sorry,” he said. Sorry, he realized, that she had not been born in England, that they had not met years before this one, that even together they stood on different sides of a chasm. Sorry that life was as cruel as it was, and that time could never be stopped or wound backward.
“It wasn’t a bad lie,” she answered, misunderstanding. “I forgive you.”
She kissed him on the lips. She traced her tongue along the outline of his mouth. She took her clothes off and pressed her breasts against his chest. She ground her second heart against his groin in slow circles while she stared pleadingly into his eyes but he could not be roused.
“Are you tired of me?” she asked.
Could a man ever be tired of the sun in winter? He said, “No, it’s not that.”
As Michael sat on the edge of the bed, Franziska knelt behind him and worked the tense muscles of his shoulders with her strong fingers.
“I’ll do anything you like,” she told him. “I’m the tenth woman.”
He frowned. “The tenth woman?”
“Oh, yes. Don’t you know? Five women out of ten will slap a man’s face for an indecent suggestion. Two will turn on their heel. One will kick him in the balls, and one will think it over. I’m the tenth woman.”
He smiled slightly, in spite of himself.
“I’m the woman who refused to leave the Garden of Eden,” she said as she worked on him. “I bake pies from the forbidden fruit, and I serve them to whomever I choose.”
“Sounds delicious,” he said.
“Do you think I’m a bad person?” she asked. “I mean…do you think I’m…” She trailed off, and Michael could feel her shrug. Her hands stopped.
He knew what she was really asking: How do you feel about me?
He turned toward her, and it hit him anew how beautiful she was. She was to him like a masterpiece of a painting, a work of art that comes together in its perfection only once in the proverbial blue moon, and always in her face there was some shade or nuance of expression that changed it ever so slightly so that looking at her was like seeing not one woman but a multitude. And all of them, every one, were now staring at him with this question in the perfume-scented air between them.
He was going to show her how he felt. No matter what tomorrow held. She wanted to know, and words were not enough. So he would lay her down upon the bed and show her, with all his strength and tenderness and desire, because she deserved to know and he owed her that much. Then he would make her promise on both her hearts that she would do nothing to interfere with his orders, and he would tell her that tomorrow night he intended to take her to dinner and to a place where music played until very late, and afterward he wanted her right where she belonged, here in bed with him tasting the forbidden fruit.
And champagne, he would say. Of course they needed champagne to drink, on the last night of their world.
She wrapped herself around him as he entered her, and in his ear she blissfully sighed the name of a stranger.
Twelve
The Light And The Dark
A bad part of the morning was when Michael, returning from a walk, asked at the desk if anything had arrived for Major Horst Jaeger.
“Yes, Major. This came while you were out.” The clerk brought from beneath the smooth oak counter a small box wrapped in brown paper. Michael noted at once that it was about the size of a jeweler’s box. The kind that might hold a—
“If you don’t mind my asking,” said the clerk, “I’ve seen you several times in the company of the beautiful young woman. Um…would this be a ring for her, sir?”
Michael knew what the man surmised. Lovers being parted, the noble soldier of the Reich going off to war. Was this an engagement gift, perhaps? A promise of many bright tomorrows?
“I’ll need a magnum of chilled champagne in my room around midnight,” he said, with no emotion. “Two glasses. I’d like the best bottle in the house.”
“Yes sir. I believe we have some Moet still in stock.”
“That’ll do. Bill my account, of course.” He started to walk away, the box in his right hand.
“My compliments and congratulations, sir,” said the clerk.
In his room, Michael opened the box and unwrapped a small ball of waxed paper sealed with tape. The pill was white with a faint blue tinge, the same color and a little smaller than one of Franziska’s pearls. He returned it to the waxed paper and then to the box, which went up on the closet shelf behind the folded extra blanket.
For most of the day he slept, or tried to. He curled himself against the gray light that fell through the windows. Snowflakes spun against the glass. The steam pipes beat a rhythm. Just after three she called to say she would be there in front at six-thirty. Their dinner reservation, more romantic than necessary, was for seven o’clock. She said she was happy, and she called him darling.