Ah, here she was.
The Milanowek Tennis Club had been founded late one June night in 1937. Something of a lark, at that moment. “Let’s have a tennis club! Why not? The Milanowek Tennis Club-isn’t it fabulous?” The village of Milanowek was a garden in a pine forest, twenty miles from Warsaw, famous for its resin-scented air-“mahogany air,” the joke went, because it was expensive to live there and breathe it-famous for its glorious manor houses surrounded by English lawns, Greek statues, pools, and tennis courts. Famous as well for its residents, the so-called “heart of the Polish nation,” every sort of nobility in the Alamanach de Gotha, every sort of wealthy Jewish merchant. If one’s driver happened to be unavailable, a narrow-gauge railway ran out from the city, stopping first at the village of Podkowa. Podkowa was the Polish word for horseshoe, which led the unknowing to visions of a tiny ancient village, where a peasant blacksmith labored at his forge, but they would soon enough learn that Podkowa had been designed, at the turn of the century, by the English architect Arthur Howard, with houses situated in the pattern of a horseshoe and a common garden at the center.
The manor house-owned by Prince Kaz, formally Kazimierz, and Princess Toni, Antowina-had three tennis courts, for the noble Brosowicz couple, with family connections to various branches of the Radziwills and Poniatowskis, didn’t have one of anything. This taste for variety, long a tradition on both sides of the family, included manor houses-their other country estate had six miles of property but lay far from Warsaw-as well as apartments in Paris and London and vacation homes-the chalet in Saint Moritz, the palazzo in Venice-and extended to servants, secretaries, horses, dogs, and lovers. But for Prince Kaz and Princess Toni, the best thing in the world was to have, wherever they happened to be at the moment, lots of friends. The annual production of Christmas cards went on for days.
At the Milanowek house, their friends came to play tennis. The entire nation was passionate for the game; in Poland, only a single golf course was to be found but, following the re-emergence of the country, there were tennis courts everywhere. And so they decided, late that June night, to make it official. “It’s the Milanowek Tennis Club now,” they would tell their friends, who were honored to be included. “Come and play whenever you like; if we’re not here, Janusz will let you in.” What a good idea, the friends thought. They scheduled their matches by telephone and stopped by at all hours of the day and early evening: the baron of this and the marchioness of that, the nice Jewish dentist and his clever wife, a general of the army and a captain of industry, a socialist member of the Sejm, the Polish parliament, the royalist Minister of Posts and Telegraph, various elegant young people who didn’t do much of anything, and the newly arrived French military attache, the dashing Colonel Mercier.
In fact a lieutenant colonel, and wounded in two wars, he didn’t dash very well. He did the best he could, usually playing doubles, but still, a passing shot down the line would often elude him-if it didn’t go out, the tennis gods punishing his opponent for taking advantage of the colonel’s limping stride.
That Thursday afternoon in October, the vast sky above the steppe dark and threatening, Colonel Mercier was partnered by Princess Toni herself, in her late thirties as perfect and pretty as a doll, an effect heightened by rouged cheeks and the same straw-colored hair as Prince Kaz. They did look, people said, like brother and sister. And, you know, sometimes in these noble families … No, it wasn’t true, but the similarity was striking.
“Good try, Jean-Francois,” she called out, as the ball bounced away, brushing her hair off her forehead and turning her racquet over a few times as she awaited service.
Across the net, a woman called Claudine, the wife of a Belgian diplomat, prepared to serve. Here one could see that the doubles teams were fairly constituted, for Claudine had only her right arm; the other-her tennis shirt sleeve pinned up below her shoulder-had been lost to a German shell in the Great War, when she’d served as a nurse. Standing at the back line, she held ball and racquet in one hand, tossed the ball up, regripped her racquet, and managed a fairly brisk serve. Princess Toni returned crosscourt, with perfect form but low velocity, and Dr. Goldszteyn, the Jewish dentist, sent it back toward the colonel, just close enough-he never, when they played together, hit balls that Mercier couldn’t reach. Mercier drove a low shot to center court; Claudine returned backhand, a high lob. “Oh damn,” Princess Toni said through clenched teeth, running backward. Her sweeping forehand sent the ball sailing over the fence on the far side of the court. “Sorry,” she said to Mercier.
“We’ll get it back,” Mercier said. He spoke French, the language of the Polish aristocracy, and thus the Milanowek Tennis Club.
“Forty-fifteen,” Claudine called out, as a passing servant tossed the ball back over the fence. Serving to Mercier, her first try ticked the net, the second was in. Mercier hit a sharp forehand, Dr. Goldszteyn swept it back, Princess Toni retrieved, Claudine ran to the net and tried a soft lob. Too high, and Mercier reached up and hit an overhand winner-that went into the net. “Game to us,” Claudine called out.
“My service,” Princess Toni answered, a challenge in her voice: we’ll see who takes this set. They almost did, winning the next game, but eventually going down six-four. Walking off the court, Princess Toni rested a hand on Mercier’s forearm; he could smell perfume mixed with sweat. “No matter,” she said. “You’re a good partner for me, Jean-Francois.”
What? No, she meant tennis. Didn’t she? At forty-six, Mercier had been a widower for three years, and was considered more than eligible by the smart set in the city. But, he thought, not the princess. “We’ll play again soon,” he said, the response courteous and properly amicable.
He managed almost always to hit the right note with these people because he was, technically, one of them-Jean-Francois Mercier de Boutillon, though the nobiliary particule de had been dropped by his democratically inclined grandfather, and the name of his ancestral demesne had disappeared along with it, except on official papers. But participation in the rites and rituals of this world was not at all something he cared about-membership in the tennis club, and other social activities, were requirements of his profession; otherwise he wouldn’t have bothered. A military attache was supposed to hear things and know things, so he made it his business to be around people who occasionally said things worth knowing. Not very often, he thought. But in truth-he had to admit-often enough.
In the house, he paused to pick up his white canvas bag, then headed down the hallway. The old boards creaked with every step, the scent of beeswax polish perfumed the air-nothing in the world smelled quite like a perfectly cleaned house. Past the drawing room, the billiard room, a small study lined with books, was one of the downstairs bathrooms made available to the tennis club members. How they live. On a travertine shelf by the sink, fresh lilies in a Japanese vase, fragrant soap in a gold-laced dish. A grid of heated copper towel bars held thick Turkish towels, the color of fresh cream, while the shower curtain was decorated with a surrealist half-head and squiggles-where on God’s green earth did they find such a thing?