The Kommandant
A sudden electrical storm awakened Katherine. She turned onto her back and watched lightning illuminate the night outside her windows. Almost immediately a crash of thunder followed, and then the rain. After a moment, realizing that it was driving in the windows, she got out of bed and shut them, getting wet enough in a few moments to make her nightgown cling to her body. She pulled it off and went to her chest of drawers for a dry one. This storm would certainly break the heat. June was hotter and more humid than she remembered. She thought with longing of the house in Connecticut, where there was always a breeze.
The storm had also broken her sleep. She glanced at her clock: 2 a.m. A miserable time to be wakened, out of the best and deepest sleep of the night. Resolutely she turned out the light, determined to sleep, yet knowing that the determination itself would keep her awake. She rolled on her side, taking the herb-scented pillow with her.
In her mind’s ear she played through the program she had chosen for Felix. An hour’s program. She played some encores. Sleep was still far away.
A Vivaldi horn concerto. During her nocturnal concerts she could play any instrument she chose. Tonight it did not help. She got up and went to the kitchen for the ritual cup of consommé, adding a good dollop of lemon juice. Back to her chaise longue. The garden below was empty, the fountain playing, mingled with the rain, which was still coming down, although the electrical storm had passed.
Lukas. She had in no way explained to Mimi (nor did she intend to) why she thought of the man who had been her jailer as Lukas. She had already said too much. No more.
Kommandant von Hilpert.
She had not been prepared for his courtesy, as she had not been prepared for the occupation of Paris. The other Germans in charge of the makeshift prison had been different and he could not always control them, although she learned later that she and others in the school had been treated far more humanely than those in similar detention sites.
Nor had she been prepared for the first meeting with him. The knock on the apartment door, the uniformed Germans, the sudden departure from her home, Justin taken in one car, she in another, had been a nightmare, but somehow less unexpected than the summons to the office of the Kommandant, which had been the office of the headmistress of the school. The gracious room had been untouched. There was a fire burning in the fireplace. Lamps were lit against the dull skies of a rainy day. Spring in Paris could be cool. The Kommandant had sat at the headmistress’s desk, so that for a moment the nightmare reminded her of boarding school.
‘You do not look like your mother,’ he said.
This nightmare of reality had less coherence than a dream. Such a statement was not part of any reasonable script. ‘How did you know my mother?’ she demanded.
‘Sit.’ He pointed to the straight chair in which no doubt students had sat after being summoned to the office for some misdemeanor.
‘How did you know my mother?’ she repeated, still standing.
‘Sit.’ When she had obeyed he said, ‘I loved her.’
‘You knew her?’
‘I was an adolescent when she played in Berlin. I was studying music, seriously, and I had free tickets to many concerts. I heard her play, and I fell in love with her, with her playing, with the vibrancy of her self. She was charming to me, charming as one is to a puppy. I do not complain. How else could she behave with a callow, adoring youth? But you do not resemble her.’
‘No. I look like my father’s mother.’
He regarded her across the desk. ‘You are quite beautiful, with that splendid black hair and marble skin. But you do not have the—the feral quality of your mother.’
Katherine replied stiffly, ‘I did not think of my mother as wild.’
And he had laughed, a warm, relaxed laugh. She had not realized then what an unusual interview this was, because she had not yet realized what had happened, to herself and Justin, to France. Had they been taken to any other prison than von Hilpert’s, things would undoubtedly have been different.
He had escorted her that first day to the grand piano in the school salon, a Pleyel. She had obeyed his command to play because this was not a public performance; it had, in her mind, to do with her mother, because this man had admired her. He sat, in his immaculate uniform, on a stiff, yellow satin-covered chair while she played, and when she was playing she was out of nightmare, the waking nightmare in which she did not yet believe.
He had said then, ‘You do not look like her, but the quality is in the music. Less mature, perhaps, but there. Every man who hears you is going to want to make love to you.’ There was no lust in his voice; nevertheless, prickles went up her spine. He continued, ‘It would be a pity to let such talent go to seed. I will see to it that both you and your husband have time to practice.’
She did not ask if they would be expected to play in payment for the hours of practice. She did not need to ask. They would have to deal with that when the time came. (A beating for her. Auschwitz for Justin. It might have been different if von Hilpert had still been there.) She asked, ‘Where is my husband?’
‘The men are in the servants’ quarters. He is not being mistreated, I assure you. You are not, after all, criminals.’
‘May I see him?’
‘That would not be wise.’
‘But we’ve just—’
‘I realize. You have just been married. I am sorry to interrupt the honeymoon. If you would like to be together again it is very easy. A concert or so, for audiences who will be, I assure you, appreciative.’
She shook her head.
The phone rang.
It was not the phone in the headmistress’s office in Paris all those years ago. She was in New York. Preparing for a benefit concert. And who would be ringing her at four in the morning? She pulled herself up from the chaise longue, and sat on the bed, reaching for the phone.
“Mormor, it’s Kristen. Did I wake you?” Mormor, Norwegian for the maternal grandmother, literally Mother mother. The paternal grandmother was Farmor, Father mother. She was delighted. “Kristen, how lovely. You didn’t wake me, but I was having a waking nightmare, and I’m grateful to you for freeing me. What’s up?”
“You’re going to be a great-grandmother. I thought you might like to know.”
“My dear, I’m delighted.”
“Do you want a great-granddaughter or son?”
“Either will do. Or both. Don’t twins run in Martin’s family?”
“Mormor, don’t wish that on me! By the way, I’ve just been promoted to first flute in the orchestra, so I’m not spreading the news of my incipient motherhood—seven months off. It’s between us.”
“I’m silent as the grave.”
“I haven’t even told your esteemed daughter yet. You’re the first to know, except Martin, of course.” As Katherine was silent, Kristen added, “Don’t worry, Mormor, I’m learning to be the soul of tact. Only you and I will know of this call. I’ll give Mor a ring this evening when she gets home from work. How’s life in the great U.S. of A.?”
“Interesting.”
“Life’s always interesting for you, Mormor. I’m glad you haven’t changed.”
“I’m preparing for a concert.”
A chuckle from Kristen. “I thought you were retired.”
“It’s only a benefit for an old friend. Gives me something to do. How’s Martin?”
“Ecstatic. You’d think he was the one to be pregnant; he felt queasy this morning at breakfast.”
“And my other grands?”
Her grandchildren were as dear to her heart as her children, and had been spared the inevitable publicity Michou and Julie had endured. Who could blame her for more than skimming the surface with the journalists? If there were the normal family tensions, there was no need for them to be revealed. She did not tell of their anxiety about baby Juliana, slow to speak, not quite up to the other three grandchildren, Juliana who was loving and happy, not severely retarded, but not able to get along with schoolwork, happy with animals and hurt things, ultimately marrying an inarticulate but gentle man who treasured her fey childlikeness and took her to his farm to live away from tensions and competitiveness.
“Last I heard, darling Juliana”—a tenderness touched Kristen’s brisk voice—“is contented as a kitten on the farm and has created some new breed of chicken which lays vast quantities of enormous eggs. I wish people wouldn’t underestimate Juliana. Nils is on something like page 972 of his novel. Ole and Dagmar are talking about having children, so you’re apt to be inundated with greats. When are you coming to see us?”
“Who knows? If I had a fortune I’d bring you all to New York for Christmas.”
“Wish you could. Mormor, I’m glad you’re giving a concert. I never approved of your retiring. I’d better hang up, or Martin will have a fit over the phone bill—though he did suggest that I call you about our babe.”
“Call collect next time.”
“Tusan tak. I will. Have a fine morning, Mormor.”
“It may be morning in Oslo. It’s still night here.”
“Yes, I know. You’re still a gallivanting old lady, and I love you for it. Lots of love, Mormor.”
“To you, too.”
Kristen’s call had achieved what the consommé had not. There had always been a special bond between Katherine and her grandchildren, perhaps particularly with Kristen. With Julie, her own child, she never felt completely secure; it is not a kindness, she thought, for people with demanding careers to have children. In her own case, she had never felt left out or displaced because of her mother’s career. She had lived so much more with her father and stepmother that Julie had been able to remain a special icon to her; there was no competition. And during the brief time she had lived with her mother, before Julie’s premature death, Julie had, like Justin, turned her energies to Katherine’s talent.—It’s a wonder, Katherine thought,—that I was able to retain a sense of my own identity. I am, thank God, me, Katherine, not a creation of my mother’s or husband’s.
Julie, her second-born, had not been an artist, despite her parentage. From somewhere she had been given a shrewd sense of business, so shrewd that as soon as her children were old enough she took over the books for her husband’s shipping business. Katherine admired her daughter, but she was never sure of the love between them. She felt an unspoken resentment of her career which time had only diminished, not taken away. But with her grands, the biological remove made it easy for them to have a deep, delighted love. And was Julie resentful of that, too? In any event, she did not tell her daughter how often she talked with Kristen, with the other three. With the grands, she felt relaxed and secure. Secure in their love, and does the need to love and be loved ever lessen? Is anyone completely secure? She doubted it.
Kristen was, in a way, her link with Julie. It was Kristen who had told her, maybe ten years earlier (she was both vague and indifferent about chronology), that Eric was having what the jargon then called a mid-life crisis. ‘It’s very trying for Mor,’ Kristen said. ‘But Far’s basically a homebody and I’m sure it won’t last long. He’s just trying to see how far he can go. What he needs is for Farfar to put him over his knee and wallop him. But his parents think he’s God, and they have their eyes tightly closed.’ It was Kristen who had told her, ‘Far’s over his philandering phase. Things are pretty good with him and Mor right now, sort of a new honeymoon stage.’ Had it not been for Kristen, she would have known none of this. She hoped the younger children were not as aware of their father’s foibles as Kristen, and thought they were not.
She fell asleep, slipping into a pleasant dream, set in a falling-down hotel in Jamaica where she had once spent some time with Erlend Nikulaussen, whose stepnephew Eric was.
A smell of flowers and the wind blowing in the palms pervaded the dream, and the sound of surf and the warmth of sun. She moved from the solace of the dream to a quiet and deep sleep.
A little before nine she roused, and made herself get up. If she stayed awake half the night and then slept half the day, she would set a pattern, one which she had been used to on her concert tours, but which she did not want to fall back into now, when the structure of her days was logically different. When her children were little, and she was home between tours, she had always carefully made the transition from being a night person to being a morning person, so that she could have breakfast with the children, be with them as much as possible.
Coffee was dripping through the filter when she heard a knock on the kitchen door. Mimi would have knocked and come in. “Who is it?”
“Iona Grady.”
Katherine opened the door. “Good morning.”
Iona looked rested; the shadows under her eyes were less apparent. “Good morning to you, too. May I come in for just a moment?”
“Of course. I’m about to have coffee. Will you join me?”
The doctor shook her head. “Mimi and I have been drinking coffee for an hour, and I’ve had my quota. Go ahead with yours, please.”
Katherine filled her cup, added milk, and then sat down at the small dining-room table.
Iona said, “I want to apologize for my unexpected arrival last night, Madame—uh—”
“Vigneras. And it’s quite all right. I hope you slept well.”
“I went out like a light. Mimi said she told you about Allie and Isobel.”
“Yes. And the baby.”
“I’ve seen a lot of worse things since, but we were very young and it was hell while we were going through it. Don’t judge Allie by Mimi or me. I gave her a very prejudiced picture before she ever met the guy, and Mimi’s the most loyal of friends and, where her friends are concerned, not very objective. Nor, I suppose, am I. Allie and Isobel made their peace years ago. He calls her for advice and, I may say, listens to her when he won’t listen to anyone else. Anyhow, my apologies, Madame—uh—Vigneras.”
“Katherine.”
“Thanks. That’s what Mimi calls you, so that’s how I think of you. I just wanted to—well—put in a good word for Allie. It was all too long ago for any of us to hold on to bitterness. It’s been nice to meet you. I’m glad you’re here for Mimi. She’s terribly generous, but she can be very lonely. Okay—I’m off to give that paper.”
After she had gone, Katherine boiled herself an egg and went to the piano. She was running scales when the phone rang, jarring her almost as much as it had at four in the morning.
It was Bishop Undercroft. “Madame Vigneras, I hope I haven’t disturbed you.” His accent was English, his tenor voice not like Lukas’s at all. “Felix tells me you’d like some time with our Bösendorfer. If you’d care to practice this afternoon, he’ll pick you up.”
“Thanks, I’ll be most grateful.”
“Will around two-thirty be convenient?”
“Fine, thank you. The acoustics will be very different from a concert hall.”
“Of course. You’ll have a number of adjustments to make. Then perhaps you’ll join Yolande and me for an early dinner?”
She was, she had to admit, more curious than ever about the young bishop and his present wife. “Thank you. I’d be delighted.”
“We’ve invited Felix, too, and the Davidsons mère and père. Of course, Merv is lying in state right now, and it’s possible that Felix or Dave or I may have to leave to take our turn at the coffin.”
“I’m so terribly sorry about his death—it seems so reasonless—”
“Reasonless indeed, and Merv was a man of reason. Asking you to come to the Cathedral today when normally we wouldn’t have anything going on is by way of being a tribute to Merv. Dave and I talked it over and agreed that it was what he would have wanted.”
—Yes, for life to continue. An affirmation of value. “I liked him very much at our one brief meeting.”
“And he, you. It was a great shock to us all. Violence grows worse daily, but we tend to get blunted unless it hits home. Now. We’ll get you back early tonight. Felix reminded me to promise you that.”
“Thank you. I’ll appreciate it.” She hung up and returned to the piano. She moved into the music for Felix’s benefit, so that she was within harmony, outside time and space. Mimi had to pound on the kitchen door before Katherine heard.
The doctor stood in the open doorway. “Sorry to disturb you.”
Katherine turned on the piano bench. “I was deep in music.”
Mimi came into the living room, carrying her briefcase and a small overnight bag. “I wanted to tell you that I’m taking the shuttle up to Boston with Iona. I’m just going to spend the night, and I’ll be home tomorrow.”
“Have a good time. You look very nice today.”
Mimi looked down at her khaki traveling suit. “It’s always chilly on the plane.” She looked at Katherine’s half-empty cup of coffee. “I’ll hot up some milk for the coffee. I’ll even wash the pot. I have a while before time to leave, and I’d like a fresh cup myself.”
“I’d like some more, too. Thanks for sending Iona down.”
Mimi turned from the refrigerator, holding a carton of milk. “It was her idea, not mine.”
“Well, thanks, anyhow.”
“Iona is very fair-minded, and she knows that sometimes I’m not. I know I’m interrupting your piano time. Sorry. I’m feeling depressed.”
“You’re never an interruption. Why are you depressed?”
Instead of answering, Mimi said, “You fit my description of a contented person.”
“What’s that?”
“Being happy to snuggle down in bed at night and go to sleep. And being eager to wake up and get going with the new day in the morning.”
Katherine watched Mimi pouring coffee and hot milk. “It’s a good description, and very apt for you.”
“Not always.” Mimi handed her the steaming cup. “Sometimes I look at my life and think that on the surface I’ve accomplished a lot, but I’ll be alone at the end.”
“Most of us are.”
“It’s different. You’ve had Justin. I’ve only had lovers. And friends. A life-line of friends. But sometimes—” She set her cup on the table in front of the long sofa. “What kind of wedding did you have?”
Katherine moved from the piano to sit beside her. “Tiny. And yet enormous. Justin and Anne—his sister—had no family, and Aunt Manya was on tour with a play, and it was long before the days of jet planes and weekends in Europe, so my father cabled us some money for a honeymoon, which of course we never had a chance to take. Marcel—Anne’s husband—was an organist, and we were married in his church, and he played for us as though for a court wedding. All that music alone made me feel very married.”
“A nice memory,” Mimi said.
“Very nice.”
“What happened to them, Anne and Marcel?”
“Marcel went to Africa with de Gaulle. Both his arms were blown off, so we were grateful that he took only a few days to die. Anne was active with the maquis—she got away right after Justin and I were taken. Ultimately she got TB from overexposure and died a few years after the war.”
“Christ,” Mimi said, “I understand why you sounded so sharp when I thought your Justin was a Jew.”
“It’s all water under the bridge now. It doesn’t do to dwell on it.”
“You’ve hardly cheered me up.” Mimi smiled ruefully. “What I am glad about—and I am truly glad—is that you will be here when I get home tomorrow.”
“And I’m glad you’re coming home,” Katherine said.
“Anything I can get you before I go? Food? My fridge is full of salads and cold meats.”
“Thanks, but I’ve plenty in mine for lunch and I’m going up to the Cathedral to practice this afternoon, and have an early meal with the Undercrofts.”
“Good, good. As Iona warned you, I wasn’t very fair about Allie. I’m more shook about Merv than I realized, and I had to dump somewhere. Damn. Why Merv? Allie’s going to miss him terribly. Just remember, Katherine, that most people love Allie, and Iona and I are in the minority. Oh, damn. I thought I was trying not to give you unfair preconceptions of a man who is extraordinarily complicated. Felix has had occasion to remind me that Allie was going through his own hell when Ona was dying, even if he showed it in odd ways. His faith fell to ashes and he couldn’t get any kind of phoenix to rise from them. Not, at any rate, until it was too late for him and Isobel. Dave says he has a very deep faith now. And, according to Felix, he saved Yolande.”
“How did he meet her?”
“I suppose he saw her first when she was performing. Allie’s always loved the theatre.”
“Was she an actress?”
Mimi looked at Katherine in astonishment. “Katherine Vigneras, you don’t know who Yolande Xabo is?”
“Yolande Xabo? Yes, it does have a familiar ring,” Katherine said vaguely. “Was that her name before she was married?”
“Oy veh.” Mimi wiped her eyes. “I forget you’ve lived mostly in Europe. But even there, in the evening, on television—”
“We never had a television set.”
“And on tour, when you were staying in hotels, you never turned it on?”
“It never occurred to me.”
“Ah, me. You have been rather one-sided, haven’t you?”
“I read,” Katherine said, smiling. “Lots of things.”
“Yes, I know you read. And if you’d inadvertently switched on TV and tuned in on Yolande, you’d probably have changed channels or turned her off. She was a singer—the singer for a good number of years.”
“Opera?” Katherine asked, still vague.
Again Mimi laughed. “Dear Katherine—not opera. Pop stuff. Post-rock. Not my cup of tea, either, but she was as much of an idol in her own day as—to turn back the clock—the Beatles were in mine. She married Allie when she was at the peak of her popularity, but she had the sense to know that her star was beginning to descend.”
“What did she sing?”
“Stuff written especially for her. Some of it good. And, to do her justice, she always transcended her material.”
“You heard her?”
“Yes, Quillon Yonge, your tenant below me who’s abroad most of the time, was a big fan of hers, and he took me to hear her several times. In a world daily more fearful of atomic destruction, Yolande Xabo sang of hope—hope that the planet would not be blown apart, that people could go on coupling and birthing.”
Katherine nodded. “And so we have, more and more precariously, somehow managing to hold the balance.”
“Yup. And what Yolande did was to keep hope alive, and terror at bay.”
“No small thing,” Katherine said.
“No small thing indeed. She was almost like a mother soothing an entire audience of frightened children.”
“Did she make any recordings?”
“Oh, millions, I suppose, selling wildly, but you had to have seen her to understand her power. She fostered the illusion that she could see into the future, and there was a carefully publicized rumor that she was a daughter of the Incas. She’s still a beautiful woman, I have to concede that, but her life has taken its toll. She was staggeringly beautiful when she was young. It was all over the papers, of course, when she married an Episcopal bishop.”
“Felix says it’s a very happy marriage.”
Mimi shrugged. “As marriages go, it seems to be lasting.”
“So she was a singer,” Katherine mused. “That does explain her. I was rather baffled by her.”
Mimi made an apologetic gesture. “I don’t suppose it occurred to anybody that you didn’t know who she was. Their marriage was widely publicized—abroad, too.”
“When I was on tour, especially behind the Iron Curtain, I missed weeks of news at a time. Now I understand why she moves like a performer.”
“Katherine, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to give you the impression that life at the Cathedral is like Barchester Towers as written by Dostoevsky and heavily edited by John Updike. It’s basically a happy place, a loving, caring place. I’m sorry I took it all out on Allie last night. It was Iona, appearing out of the blue—”
“Why don’t you have anyone sharing your apartment now?” Carefully, Katherine changed the subject.
“I sometimes go years alone.” Mimi stood and stretched. “It’s only when I find someone who needs a place to live, someone interning at St. Vincent’s, which was how I met Suzy, someone I think unusually gifted, someone I think I’d enjoy, that I’m willing to give up my privacy. Especially now as I grow older. I like my own bathroom. Okay, I’m off. Have fun up at the Cathedral. See you tomorrow.”
A little after two, Felix rang her doorbell. He bent over her hand in a courteous obeisance. “Your chariot awaits.”
As he held the taxi door open for her, she asked, “Please get in first. It’s no courtesy to the lady for the gentleman to stand back and let her crawl across these drop-bottom taxis,” and then wondered, as she watched him struggle, if she weren’t, despite creaky knees, considerably more limber than the bishop.
He caught his breath and directed the driver to the Cathedral. “Allie thinks I’m selfish to insist on coming down for you instead of letting Jos bring you. But I have been good about not bothering you, and I thought this would give us time to talk. I hope you won’t mind a dead bishop at the high altar while you practice. You’ll be in the ambulatory, and you can’t see the high altar from there.”
“Felix,” she demurred, “I’m going to be practicing, not performing.”
“That’s all right. I just want to make sure the vigil won’t be disturbing to you.”
“I don’t see how it could be, unless he leaps out of the coffin.”
Felix sighed. “How I wish he could. I still find it so difficult to realize that he’s gone. It was so sudden—I do want to apologize for dashing off that way without even saying goodbye. I’m still in a state of shock. Merv was so young—and I keep going. I used to talk a lot to him. He was like you, that way—people talked to him. His death is another link with reality gone. But even Merv was too close to it all, and so is Chan.”
“To close to what?”
“Oh—the mishmash of human nature on the Close, the hates and loves and jealousies that all seem exaggerated when they’re contained within a few blocks.”
But then he was silent. It was not an easy silence, so she broke it. “Mimi tells me that Bishop Undercroft was married to Sister Isobel when they were very young.”
He made a sharp exclamation, looked at the taxi driver, then back to Katherine. “That’s true, but I’m sure Mimi gave you a biased version.”
“I think she tried to be fair.”
“What on earth possessed her to tell you, then?” he exploded.
“Iona Grady spent last night in Mimi’s apartment. She’s giving a lecture here today.”
“Oh.” He did not sound happy. “Iona tries to be fair, I grant you that. The way Mimi carries the flag, you’d think Iona had been married to Allie, not Isobel. I suppose it was inevitable that someone would say something, sooner or later. People won’t leave the past alone, and the longer ago it is, the more likely the facts are to be distorted. It was tragic. Tragic for them all. But it’s over, long over.”
“All right,” she said mildly.
“Allie’s finally forgiven himself. That was hardest of all. He accepted Isobel’s forgiveness, and God’s, long before he could forgive himself. Why are we so hard on ourselves, Katya?”
“Part of the human predicament, I suppose.”
“Lack of forgiveness—it’s one of the worst of all sins. I know this, and yet there are things for which I haven’t completely forgiven myself. It’s odd, Katya—at tea, yesterday, before Merv—I needed to tell you about myself, waits and all. I suppose I think of you as a sort of confessor extraordinary.” She made a murmur of negation, but he went on. “I’m not sure the human being has the capacity for self-acceptance without first being accepted. Perhaps it’s because we’re of an age, we’ve lived through a lot—not much shocks us.” They were crawling up Sixth Avenue, with cars behind and ahead of them honking impatiently.
Felix leaned back, saying, “You really do accept me, after all that I told you about myself and Sarah—and after?”
“Felix, dear, don’t brood over it. The past is past.”
“Is it? Never completely, I think. It intrudes on the present.”
“Then you have to look at it, just as it is, and accept it as part of you. If we were made up only of the parts of ourselves of which we approve, we’d be mighty dull.”
“You’re right.” He looked out the window at the traffic. “For once I’m grateful that we’re crawling. It gives us a little more time. Katherine, there’s something else I didn’t tell you about when I was in the army.”
Now their driver leaned on the horn.
“You don’t have to tell me anything,” Katherine said.
“I know I don’t. I need to tell you. I’m an old man, and in the nature of things I don’t have long to live.”
“Felix, I’m an old woman.”
“Yes, but you’re younger than I am, and you’re—you’re better about your memories than I am.”
She dropped her eyes to his hands, which were tightly clasped over the head of his cane, the raised veins blue.
“Katya, when I left the army I didn’t leave with an honorable discharge.”
She waited until she knew that it was she who would have to break the silence. “What happened?”
The taxi inched its way up to Twenty-third Street. “It was, I suppose, the height of irony. We were all totally exhausted, and a couple of men had already fallen apart, gone totally bonkers and been taken away, screaming. God knows what happened to them. So we were sent to London—desk jobs, nice and safe. But during the first week I had the beginning of the nightmares. A corporal heard me screaming—one of our own graves registration men—one of our own group—so he had an inkling of what I was going through. He had his arms around me, trying to wake me enough to calm me down, when in walked a sergeant. Not one of us. A man who’d spent his entire war behind a desk.”
Again Katherine had to break the silence. “Felix, I’m sorry, but I don’t understand.”
“We were given dishonorable discharges for sodomy.”
“Oh, Felix, no, how stupid—”
“Keith, the corporal, was as straight as they come, wife, kids—he fought it, and eventually got an honorable discharge.”
“Why didn’t you fight it, too?”
“Because at that point I didn’t, as they say, give a damn. I testified for Keith. That was more important for me than clearing myself. And I didn’t have a wife and kids. Also, unlike Keith, I hadn’t led a blameless life. This was just one more proof that we live in a lousy world, and I wanted no part of it. Once Keith was cleared he urged me to clear myself, too, and said he’d get the chaplain to testify for me. But I had a fit of stubbornness and I wouldn’t. Let the world think whatever it wanted. Later, after I was priested, I was terrified that Sarah might open the whole thing up, just to get a good laugh. But she was too busy being a society wife on Long Island to want to bother. She did call one night and hold it over my head when she was drunk.”
“Why did you tell her about it?”
“Because, when I came back to New York after the war, we got together again for a few weeks. I was fool enough to think she was serious in wanting to put our marriage back together. We both got very amorous and very drunk one evening, and I was still young and foolish enough to think that there should be no secrets in a marriage. But she was already involved with this Long Island banker, and she was just using me as bait, to make him jealous, to make him come to heel. I never should have told anybody, much less Sarah. I was very young. I know better now. I’ve never told anybody else, except Allie, and now you. That makes a trinity. I’m still, on occasion, fearful. When I was Diocesan I had the feeling that someone might look up the records. But now—who would want to?”
“No one, I should think.” But she wondered: was his fear connected with this sad and ancient history?
“All I know”—he made a convulsive sound loud enough so that the driver turned around briefly—“is that some people hold on to hate. I need to know that you don’t hate me.”
“Why on earth would I hate you, Felix. Of course I don’t.”
“Are we friends?”
“Yes, we are friends.”
They were silent then, a quiet silence. She looked out the window as they passed Lincoln Center and then turned on to Amsterdam. Restaurants. A gas station. A funeral parlor. Barney Green-grass, the Sturgeon King. Someday she’d like to stop in and see what was sold there besides sturgeon. Antique stores. Churches. Buildings with boarded-up windows. Clean new housing developments. Bodegas. Broken windows. Indeed, a little of everything.
Potholes. “Don’t they ever fix these streets?” she asked in exasperation.
“New York isn’t in the best fiscal shape.”
Finally they were nearing the Cathedral. “If I bring you in by the entrance across from St. Luke’s Hospital we won’t have steps to climb, and I can give you a quickie glimpse of the Stone Yard.” As the taxi turned, he said, “That’s St. Luke’s, there on our left. Suzy’s office is across on Amsterdam. Here we are.” As she climbed out of the cab she saw a large woman in a grey uniform purposefully pushing a shopping cart. The woman waved at Felix, with a rather sour smile, and headed toward Broadway. Felix waved back. “That’s Mrs. Gomez. I have an irrational dislike of her. She looks like the Beast of Belsen, but she’s one of the best cooks in the city.”
“Topaze’s and Fatima’s mother …” Katherine murmured.
“The same, though it’s difficult to imagine her doing anything as intimate as giving birth. We go in here. I’ve got the keys.” After he had clanged the gate shut behind them, he put his hand on her elbow to help her along the rough flagstones of the path, then turned right across what seemed to be a playing field to a large, open shed. Between the shed and the Cathedral, stacked on the grass, were piles of stone, each one carefully marked by letter and number. As they neared the shed, she could hear the sound of machinery on wet stone. “I can imagine Mrs. Gomez being the matron of a concentration camp. I’m sure she hits Fatty for being clumsy, and she lets Topaze roam the streets and do anything he wants. And she cooks like an angel. No matter what, we’ll have a superb meal tonight.”
They approached the pile of stones and he nodded toward them. “These will finish the north transept. Most of the work is done by hand, just as it was in the Middle Ages. When Dean Morton started all this, stonecutting was a lost art in this country. We have only a few modern machines, a big gantry crane, and two stone saws, which work like gigantic dentist’s drills, with water constantly flowing.” He held her arm more firmly as the terrain roughened, and led her into the shed, where he was immediately greeted by an assorted group of young men and women, some at wooden worktables, chipping away at the stone with great wooden mallets and chisels, others working the machines. The only thing they had in common was an expression of love in their faces for the work they were doing.
Felix waved at them, and told them to get on with what they were doing. He led her across the ground again, and they entered the Cathedral. As they neared the ambulatory, she saw someone slip out of the shadows and skitter away into the dimness.
“Fatty Gomez,” Felix said in annoyance. “When she’s not with Tory, she’s afraid of her own shadow. Mrs. Gomez makes the kids wait for her to go home on the subway, and once summer school is over for the day, they don’t have any place to go.”
One hand lightly on her elbow to guide her, he walked her up the nave. She glanced toward the high altar, and saw Bishop Undercroft kneeling at one side of a coffin draped with a great pall. A shaft of light touched his fair hair. His body was erect and although she could not see his face there was a feeling of peace about him, and an air of authority; he was very much a bishop. He did not move or sway as he knelt.
At the other side of the coffin was a much younger man, looking like a refugee from the sixties, with long hair and blue jeans, and an enormous cross dangling on his chest. He shifted position and swatted at what appeared to be an imaginary fly and scratched at the back of his neck. There was none of the repose which emanated from the bishop.
As they climbed the steps to the ambulatory and the altar was lost to view, Felix reached for his keys to open the chapel. He looked up and sniffed, then looked toward the long-haired priest. Katherine smelled a ropy, rather unpleasant odor.
“Pot,” Felix said.
“In the Cathedral?”
Felix wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. “Pot in cathedrals is nothing new, unfortunately. Whenever there’s a big concert here, people tend to think they’re back in Woodstock in the sixties, particularly if it’s something to do with ecology or saving the whales. The Davidson kids, I’m glad to say, take a dim view of priests having to get stoned in order to grieve.”
Katherine glanced again at the altar. “Maybe I’m being European, but it doesn’t seem very appropriate for a vigil.”
“It isn’t. And it would have made Merv furious. When there’s a huge concert of non-churchgoing people it’s a little understandable, though it’s strictly forbidden, and we monitor it as much as possible. Don’t judge us by this; it truly doesn’t happen that often. Did you ever smoke?”
“No.”
“I did, for a while. But I didn’t like the people around me. Bless Allie. He’s doing his grieving the appropriate way. Maybe it will have some influence on the others.”
She walked over to the piano and opened the keyboard.
“Sorry,” Felix said. “I’ll try to see that nothing else eats into your practice time. I’ll leave you. Canon Dorsey and I are due to take over the vigil in a few minutes.”
She ran a few scales. The superb instrument was not far from needing a tuning. She would mention it to Felix. Then, in deference to Bishop Juxon, she played through her program. She looked up, briefly, and saw that Fatima and Topaze were sitting in one of the carved pews. She had not noticed them come in. Ignoring them, she turned to some phrases which she felt needed honing, then played over, and then over again, and then over again, a Scarlatti toccata, listening to hear if the rapidly repeated notes would remain clear or blur in these acoustics.
Clumsily bumping into the pews, so that Katherine’s attention was momentarily distracted, Fatima left the chapel. Topaze, hardly seeming to notice, sat quietly, and it was only then that she noticed Emily sitting beside him. The child’s face was somber, severe. Perhaps it was her accident which caused her to look far older than her years, but once again Katherine recognized herself in that young, carefully expressionless face. Justin had thawed her so that she was able to drop her mask of self-protection and reveal her vulnerability, and likely Emily would thaw, too. Thawing hurts, and Katherine ached for the child.
She turned from Emily to the piano, and her memory shifted gears (was it because Justin had taught her the toccata?) to her return to Paris to study with Justin when she was perhaps less than half a dozen years older than Emily now—enough to change her from near-adolescence to near-womanhood.
After the breakup with Pete, her father and stepmother had decided, with blind oblivion to her youth and the state of the world, to send her to Paris to study with her beloved Monsieur Vigneras, who had been her piano teacher during her time in boarding school in Switzerland. Concerned only with healing her unhappiness, and with their own careers, it never seemed to have occurred to them that they were sending her into danger, nor that she was extraordinarily young for her seventeen years. Through friends a small studio apartment was found for her, and a passable piano, and she started weekly lessons with Justin, knitting up her raveled spirit with music. She lived an almost entirely solitary life. The young doctor friend they had expected to look out for her had gone with his wife to Zurich, to a post in the big university hospital there. It did not occur to her any more than to Tom and Manya that she should have been finishing school. She lived from one lesson to the next, hardly aware that she was lonely. In the early winter, walking home in the rain from her lesson, she caught cold, and in a day or so her sore throat and headache turned into a mild case of flu, and she lay huddled on the sofa, with aching bones and fever, trying to pull herself over to the piano. By the day of her next lesson she was on her feet again, belting her raincoat about her, pulling on her beret, and heading for Justin’s studio.
He seemed abstracted, standing by the window, looking down into the street as she played. She finished the Scarlatti, and then he directed her to play the Franck Prelude, Chorale and Fugue, on which she had just started to work. When she had finished, he turned toward her. ‘Katherine, there is something about your playing which puzzles me.’
‘What?’ she asked, and, as he didn’t answer immediately, ‘Is it bad?’
‘It is, but I don’t think it’s irremediable. Your technique is remarkable for someone your age, clear and brilliant and sure. And I believe in technique—don’t mistake me. But you appear afraid to let anything come through yours, and this puzzles me. There’s deep emotion in you; I sense that, though you certainly don’t show it. Not even in your playing.’
She sat at the keyboard, nodding slowly. ‘You’re right. Of course you’re right. Maybe I haven’t got over that boarding school.’
‘It’s more than the school. You were badly hurt at that abominable place, but that was a child’s hurt. This is more. I think that you have been hurt now as a woman, and that you’re afraid to allow yourself to be vulnerable, for fear of being hurt again.’
How did he know? But, tangled with self-consciousness, she said, ‘That’s an awful impression to give. Everybody gets hurt. I’m no exception. Anyhow, being hurt isn’t bad if you use it the right way.’
‘If you know that, why have you pulled such a tight little shell around you?’
‘I didn’t know that I had. I didn’t know it seemed that way. And I don’t know why it should, right now, because I’m terribly happy.’ Happy in adoration of Justin (adoration still far from being transformed into love), of learning from him, being with him once a week.
His stern eyes became gentle. ‘Are you happy, little one?’
‘Can’t you tell?’
‘You make it difficult for people to tell anything about you.’
‘I don’t mean to.’
‘You shy away from people so. You seem afraid. For instance, I know that you haven’t been well this week. That’s a bad cough you have, and I think you still have some fever. But if I were to come over to you and put my arms around you and tell you I was sorry you feel poorly, you would stiffen up like a little ramrod. It would be like putting my arms around a poker.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Experience. Whenever I come near you, you freeze into a little icicle. Why is it?’
She looked down at the piano keys and felt the blood mounting to her face. ‘I don’t know. I don’t feel that way.’
There was a sudden silence between them. He took a step toward her, then stopped. She waited, but he didn’t approach her. Instead, he said, ‘Play the Franck and put something of yourself in it.’
She started to play, trying to forget everything except what she wanted to tell him and could only tell him through music. She blundered a couple of times but it seemed unimportant and she continued.
Justin said softly, ‘That’s all I wanted to know.’
Her heart began to beat violently. Her hands were cold.
He continued. ‘You can do it, Katherine. You’re an artist. I knew there was something in you to be said, but I was beginning to wonder if you were going to be able to express it, if possibly music wasn’t the means. But it is, and you’re all right.’
‘I’m glad,’ Katherine whispered, but she was filled with shame. She had given him her naked heart and now she felt that she had betrayed herself because he didn’t want what she had offered (and how right he had been not to take it then, to wait).
‘Little one,’ he said, ‘you feel ill. Go home and go to bed. But don’t wait till next Friday to come. Have a lesson on Tuesday. I have a cancellation that afternoon.’
‘All right.’ She got up from the piano and stood shivering inwardly as he helped her into her raincoat.
‘That coat isn’t warm enough.’
‘I have a sweater on,’ she answered, buckling the belt. ‘I’ll come back Tuesday. Goodbye, Monsieur Vigneras.’
‘Now, isn’t it time you started calling me Justin?’
‘I’d rather not.’—Idiot, why did she say that when in her daydreams she had called him Justin forever?
‘Then must I start calling you Mademoiselle Forrester?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Then it must be Justin. You are no longer a schoolgirl. Your music tells me that.’ How gently he had prodded her out of frightened adolescence into vulnerability.
‘I’ll try. But I’m in the habit of calling you Monsieur Vigneras.’
‘Habits can be broken.’
‘All right. Goodbye.’
‘Justin.’
‘Justin.’
She did not cry until she reached the street, and then she couldn’t stop herself. She hurried through the grey winter rain, her head ducked against the wind so no one would see her tears.
Justin was a man, and she was behaving like the adolescent she still was, offering him adulation, not daring to believe that it could be transformed into love.
—We do change, she thought, looking briefly from the piano to Emily’s face, which was no longer closed but open, vulnerable, as she listened. She was not aware of Katherine’s glance.
And Katherine realized that she had been playing, not what she had prepared for Felix, but the Franck.
Justin had understood even then that the frozen child, locked into idolatry, had the capacity to become a woman. It had taken a long time for the tight bud of love to open fully, but Justin had opened it and she was still reveling in the glorious process when they had so roughly been interrupted by the occupation of Paris.
Lukas von Hilpert, gentle and courteous and yet exigent, had said, ‘Why do you freeze every time I touch you?’
‘I’ve just been married. I’m a bride.’
‘But not a woman?’
She flushed. ‘Yes. I am a woman. And as a woman I made marriage vows and I intend to keep them.’
‘That needn’t and doesn’t mean that you aren’t as attracted to me as I am to you. War is unnatural. During times of war the old rules do not hold.’
‘They do, for me.’
He, in turn, had become angry. ‘Your virginal integrity is insufferable. I can take you if I want to. You have no choice.’
But he had not taken her. And the opening bud had remained unbruised, free to grow naturally.
When she had finished the last notes of the Beethoven she realized that she was tired, and reached her arms over her head, rotating her neck slowly, doing the relaxing exercises Justin had taught her. As she turned her head she became aware of movement in one of the pews, and she saw that whoever was there was not Emily. She squinted against the light over the piano: Topaze was still there.
“Sorry, lady. Sorry to bother you.”
She looked at him severely. “I am trying to practice for a concert.”
His dark eyes filled with tears. “I just wanted to sit …”
“Very well, child, sit. But please be quiet.” She did not mean to be unkind, but he disturbed her.
“My father’s in jail.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Ma says he’s no good. He did bad things. But he makes his confession to Bishop Bodeway. He made his confession before he went to jail.”
“Topaze”—she tried to keep her voice kind; it must be dreadful for the Gomez children to have their father in jail—“I’m very sorry. But it’s getting late and I don’t have much more time …”
“Fatty told Mrs. Undercroft.”
“Told Mrs. Undercroft what?” The child was making no sense.
“Who goes to confession. When. I wouldn’t have told. Not that kind of thing. That’s private. Sacred. Especially Pa. I wouldn’t tell anybody anything about you. No matter for how much.”
She did not know what he was driving at, but it was apparent that he was distressed, and that the distress went beyond his father’s jail term. “Shouldn’t you go home?” she suggested.
He shook his head. “Can’t go till Ma’s through at Ogilvie House. Fatty and me has to wait for her at night.”
“Sit down, then.”
“Topaze will be quiet. Will listen.”
Determinedly she turned away from the child, to Beethoven, trying to find ways to make the intricacies of the music collaborate with the acoustics of the chapel, working and reworking phrases until sound and space united. She forgot Topaze.
A sharp noise startled her, probably a truck backfiring out on the street, she looked up. She did not see the child. Llew Owen was sitting in one of the pews, next to the Oriental bishop.
Llew rose. “Madame Vigneras, we didn’t mean to disturb—”
Her back was tired. She needed to stand and stretch. “It’s time for me to have a break. Where’s Topaze?”
“I sent him off,” Bishop Chan said.
Llew nodded. “He’s very upset about Bishop Juxon. Ah, Madame, Merv would have loved the way you interpreted that sonata. Beethoven was his favorite.”
The Chinese bishop rose. It was impossible to tell his age, but his skin was like parchment; he did not look well. “You have helped us all, Madame. Merv’s murder was a great shock, and your presence and your playing have helped us to put it in perspective.”
“Perspective,” Llew said, “is something we don’t have much of around here. At least I don’t.”
“Llew,” the bishop warned softly.
There was a whiteness about the young organist’s mouth and nose. “Madame Vigneras, have you ever been somewhere you should not have been at a time when you should have been somewhere else, and against your will?”
“Often. I was in Poland when my husband died. I knew the end was near, though the doctors didn’t, and neither Justin nor Jean Paul would let me cancel my tour. They were insistent that a concert tour behind the Iron Curtain was important. Maybe it was. I don’t know.”
Llew sighed. “I was hoping—”
The bishop, too, sighed, and sat down, almost hidden by the high wood of the pew.
Llew said, “Listening to you play—there was something so certain, as though you had no regrets.”
Katherine looked at the young, pained face. “I’m not sure I do.”
“But you just said—”
“Nobody can live as long as I have, or even as long as you have, without being somewhere when you want to be somewhere else. Or doing things you would never in the world have planned to do or wished to do. But when they’re done, they’re done. Regrets are useless.”
Bishop Chan peered over the pew. “Are you listening?” he asked the organist.
Llew, neither turning nor acknowledging, asked Katherine, “And the people, then, who made you be places you didn’t want to be—how do you feel about them?”
“Mostly they were seeing to it that I did my duty—unfashionable word, but I’ve learned not to take it lightly. Sometimes, if I thought they were wrong, I was angry. But there’s no point in staying in anger. It becomes a festering sore.”
“You didn’t hate them?”
She asked, “Who do you hate, Llew?”
His voice was brittle. “There was a big diocesan service, one of our major events, all tied in with the UN and peace, and I know it was important—but I’m not the only organist in the world.”
“What are you trying to tell me?”
“Dee—my wife—went into labor—two weeks early—the morning of the service. Bishop Undercroft said my place was at the Cathedral, that everything would be all right. And it wasn’t. The baby—the baby wasn’t right, and Dee—started to bleed—and they couldn’t control it—and I wasn’t with her, I was here, at the Cathedral—” He was choking on dry sobs.
Katherine did not move to touch him, but sat quietly at the piano, waiting.
“It was his fault.” The words were muffled. “I could at least have been with her. I’ll never forgive him.”
“Or yourself?”
“Both of us. I wasn’t there, and she died.”
“I wasn’t with Justin when he died. I knew he was ill, and I still went on with my work. I was in Poland. I know something of what you’ve been going through. As for Bishop Undercroft, I gather he was brought up in the British tradition, where the chief purpose of education is to train you to do what you have to do, when you have to do it, whether you want to or not. It isn’t a bad tradition, you know.”—Without it, how could I have gone on playing, giving that first concert after Michou’s death? “It wasn’t Bishop Undercroft’s fault that things went wrong.”
Llew was half kneeling, half sitting on the stone floor, and he put his head in her lap. She touched his fine, thick hair. “The doctors said it was something that no one could have predicted.”
“Then let it go. Stop blaming. You have to get on with things. You are getting on. I have heard you play.”
“I’m alive only when I’m at the organ. Everywhere else I’m lost. I want to kill someone, to—”
“That’s all right at first,” Katherine said, “but you can’t let it go on too long. If you do, it will destroy your music, and you are not permitted to do that.”
“Who won’t permit me?”
“I, for one.”
He laughed then, a strangled sound. “At least you didn’t say God.”
She continued to stroke the lustrous black hair. His head was heavy on her lap, and suddenly she realized that he had fallen asleep, there on the hard stone floor of St. Ansgar’s chapel.
Bishop Chan emerged slowly from the pew. “Thank you, Madame. You’ve done more for Llew than the rest of us together.”
“But I haven’t—”
“You’re Katherine Vigneras. He can hear a musician where he cannot hear a priest.”
“He’s asleep—”
“I’ll wake him in a moment. He was holding vigil for Merv most of last night. You’ve been a catalytic agent among us, Madame. We get very lost in our own world, here on the Close, very ingrown.” The bishop leaned down and touched Llew on the shoulder. “Son.” Llew shuddered and opened his eyes. “We must leave Madame Vigneras to the piano.”
The young organist sprang to his feet, looked around wildly. “What did I do? I dumped it all on you—”
Katherine spread out both her hands and made a gesture as though throwing. “There. I’ve dumped it on these stones where it can’t hurt anyone. Let it go. Serve your music.”
He nodded. “I’m tired of being told to serve God. Serving my music is something I understand.”
“Isn’t it the same thing?” Bishop Chan crossed to him. “Come.”
As they were leaving, in trooped the Davidsons, all four, and Fatima Gomez. Jos approached her. “We’re here to escort you to the Undercrofts’. We haven’t been invited, as we’re still considered children.”
“Perhaps it’s because there are so many of you?” Katherine suggested.
John said, “The Undercrofts have a maid as well as Mrs. Gomez. I think they could have coped. Mom can manage any number.”
Tory shrugged. “Mom’s used to it. And she doesn’t much care what the food tastes like as long as there’s plenty of it. People who don’t have kids can’t cope with numbers. Anyhow, Mrs. Undercroft said if it was only me, she’d invite me.”
“Teacher’s pet, as usual,” Emily said.
Fatima sounded smug. “I’m going to be there. I always help out when there’s company. I help serve at dinner, and then I help with the dishes.”
“What about Topaze?” Emily asked.
“Ma says it’s not man’s work. Anyhow, I’m older than he is, and I need the money.”
“Mrs. Gomez likes me,” Tory said, “and she doesn’t like most people.”
“She can have you, as far as I’m concerned,” Emily snapped.
John said, peaceably, “I don’t want to go to the old dinner party anyhow. They’ll do nothing but talk about a new suffragan and when to call Diocesan Convention.”
Fatima ventured, “Perhaps Mrs. Undercroft will sing.”
“Yuk,” Emily said.
“Okay, kids,” Jos reprimanded. “That’s enough. Ready, Madame?”
As they left the ambulatory she glanced again at the high altar. Felix and Canon Dorsey were at either side of the coffin. The tall candle flames moved softly as though some interior breeze touched them. The two men were motionless, intent on prayer. Felix knelt with an air of quiet expectancy. Canon Dorsey was as still as a black marble statue. In the front row in the nave, Topaze was kneeling, his eyes dwelling on the great gold cross which hung over the high altar.
Tory said, “He’s so pi it makes me want to puke.”
Jos said, “His mother encourages it. She prays every day that he’ll be a bishop.”
Emily looked at Topaze dourly. “To Mrs. Gomez, being a bishop means having money.”
John stood quietly looking at the altar and the coffin.
Katherine asked, “Is this—the vigil—held for everybody?”
“No,” Emily said, “but it ought to be. When I die I don’t want to be off in some funeral parlor. Quite a lot of churches in the diocese are doing it—candles and vigils and all. Uncle Bishop encouraged it when he was Diocesan, and Bishop Undercroft agrees. Of course, the undertakers’ union is against it.”
John said, “I still haven’t quite taken it in. Bishop Juxon was alive, and then he was dead, without any warning, just because he was trying to help an old woman.”
Emily’s voice was suddenly brittle. “Things can be going along, and then all of a sudden everything is changed.” Then, her voice quieter, “The old woman—we don’t even know her name, and Bishop Juxon died for her.”