Though the crow had been flying a great distance for several hours, it displayed no sign of fatigue. Nor did it show, despite the beauty and variety of the passing landscape, the slightest interest in what was beneath it. At least not until in the distance there appeared a huge estate circled by an equally impressive wall.
As it arrived over the gardens, the crow swung down, attracted perhaps by the shimmer of the silver and crystal on the round table below the arbor. It circled for a time and then fell like a shadow upon the house.
• • •
Turned out, it wasn’t only Uncle Albert that did enough talking for two. Even if Adi had been able, she would hardly have gotten a word in edgewise.
Not that she minded. They were odd, this family. But they were all so funny and bright and they seemed to know something about everything. Accompanying the most remarkable feast, the conversation rolled and tumbled across topics with the greatest of ease.
One of George’s aunts delivered a scathing critique of Mark Twain’s book about Joan of Arc. This led to a disagreement about women’s rights, which grew heated upon the subject of Mary Richardson, a British suffragette who had several months earlier taken a meat cleaver to a painting of a naked woman in the National Gallery. This turned into a discussion of hemlines and women’s hats for a time, but came full circle back to the Maid of Orleans and the surprising revelation that there were scores of women who had disguised themselves as men to fight in the American Civil War.
As all this was proceeding, Adi couldn’t help but notice that the weather appeared quite different on the other side of the table. The duchess conversed only perfunctorily with those around her and seemed to be doing her best to ignore the laughter and cheer coming from the other side. Mostly she fed scraps to the little dog sitting in her lap. The only person over there who appeared interested in her side of the table was Halick. It seemed that every time Adi glanced over, he was staring at her.
• • •
George sat back in his chair and watched the girl. She had her hands to her mouth trying not to laugh out loud at some story of Aunt Elodie’s, about her luggage falling into a canal in Venice.
I’d have brought a girl to lunch sooner if I’d have known it would go over so well, he thought. Nobody here seems to mind her not talking.
Though the longer George watched her bright smile and sparkling green eyes, the more he had the feeling that it was unlikely this would work so well with just anyone.
I wonder what her voice would sound like if she were to talk?
Everyone was looking at him.
“What’s that?” he said.
“Tell Adi the story about Klimt and your father,” said Uncle Henri.
George laughed and scratched at the back of his head and said to Adi, “Just a funny thing, a few years ago in Vienna, at the coronation. Do you know this painter, Gustav Klimt?”
Adi shook her head.
“Austrian man. Always mixed up in some controversy. But he’s really great! Amazingly talented.” George popped a grape into his mouth and continued. “Well, my father had seen something or heard something about this man that he didn’t like. And at the ball after the coronation he got into an argument with someone and yelled out, very loudly: ‘Gustav Klimt! The man is nothing but a damned pornographer!’ ” George did this bit, presumably imitating his father’s bearish roar.
Everyone laughed, including George.
“Then my father turned around and there was Gustav Klimt, standing right behind him, having a conversation with the archduke and his wife.”
Everyone laughed and groaned.
• • •
Adi watched George as he told his story. This was a far cry from the hung-over young man at breakfast, with the sleepy eyes and the grass in his hair.
She took another bite of some delicious pie with meat and vegetables. Pastetli, they called it. She repeated it to herself a few times so she wouldn’t forget.
Glancing about at the faces of George’s family, it was obvious. They all adored him. She shook her head in wonder. What must that be like?
Great Aunt Jacquelyn leaned over to Adi and said too loudly, “We have a Klimt drawing in the library! It’s quite risqué.”
“Guests, Aunt Jackie,” said George, loud enough for her to hear. “Behave yourself.”
“I’ll show it to you later,” Aunt Jackie whispered.
“Father had Klimt up to the house a few times,” George said to Adi. “Klimt gave him a drawing.”
Adi looked confused.
“Oh,” said George. “The ‘damned pornographer’ comment. Well, Father always came around, eventually.”
“Only for you, Georgie,” Aunt Elodie said. “You were the only one who could ever get the old man to change his mind about anything.”
“He always spoke well of you, though, Elodie,” said the duchess from the other side of the table.
“Oh, no,” said Aunt Elodie. “I was only saying—”
“I guess I’m just not one of those people,” said the duchess, “who can make sport of someone who isn’t around to defend themselves. I’m old-fashioned that way.”
She tapped at her teacup with her long nails.
“And I’m sure that our guest has not the slightest interest in these sorts of stories. Do you, my dear? Whomever your people might be, I’m certain they have more discretion than to gossip about the departed.”
In dismay, Adi looked to George. George inclined his head ever so slightly toward the garden gate. Adi nodded.
“I couldn’t agree with you more, Johanna,” said George. “I think we’ve exposed Adi to quite enough for one evening.”
George took a last drink of wine and stood.
“Thank you, everyone. A lovely time. On behalf of myself and Adi—”
“George,” said his stepmother, “don’t you think you could at least—”
He held his hand out to Adi. “Sorry, everyone, afraid we must be going. It’s been grand.”
• • •
Under the wisteria, they ran up the steps two at a time, giddy in their escape, detouring only to waylay one of the footman carrying a large tray. George snatched up a couple of pastries in his hands and veered toward the great hedge on their left.
“Get the gate,” he said as they came to the gap. She pulled an ivy-covered gate open and stepped through, George right behind.
She was surrounded by the shapes of animals: elephants and camels, foxes and bears. Adi looked around in amazement at the splendid topiary garden; the trees and shrubs were a shadow menagerie in the early twilight. A half moon was reflecting in the long pool running before them into the garden.
They leaned against the great hedge and caught their breath. They could still hear, faintly, the sound coming up from the table. Talking about them, no doubt.
After a moment, George said, “I’m sorry about that, my stepmother and all.” He looked up at the elephant before them.
“I don’t know when she got so—whatever she is.” He glanced over at Adi. “She used to be pretty nice, really.” He shook his head. “I guess I used to be nicer myself.”
Adi smiled to see him there, leaning into the foliage, holding the two pastries in his hands, slightly damaged but still beautiful confections. He reminded her, his hands before him like that, of a statue of the god Vishnu, in a temple by the river where she grew up.
“Here,” he said, holding out a dessert. “Sorry, it’s a little squished.” Their fingers touched as he handed it over. They dropped down on the seat alongside the pool, the marble still warm from the summer sun.
Adi couldn’t bring herself to take a bite of her pastry. So beautiful. Everything here was so beautiful.
George wasted no time stuffing half of the dessert into his mouth. He looked over at the girl, just as tears began to spill down her cheeks.
“Oh,” he said, trying to talk with his mouth full. “I should not have made you do that.”
Adi looked at him through her tears; trying to wipe them away, she only managed to smear chocolate across her cheeks. Then the dam burst. She broke down and began to sob, her shoulders heaving with each breath.
George looked off into the valley. The twinkling lights of houses were coming on one by one, just as the stars were above. He took the last couple of bites of his dessert.
When the crying let up, George pulled out a large handkerchief from his pocket and slid over next to her.
“Here. Give me.” He took the dessert from her hands and chucked it into the bushes. “I’ll get you another.” He dipped the corner of the cloth into the pool and began to clean her hands, first one, then the other. Then he turned her toward him, cupped her face in his hand and began to wipe away the tears and streaks of chocolate.
“You look like a six-year-old.”
Adi stared up into his eyes, the chirrup of a thrush and the splashing of the fountain the only sounds. George tucked a stray curl behind her ear and brushed her cheek with his fingers.
Automobile lights flashed up the drive.
“That could be our man,” said George. “Come on.” He stood and pulled Adi to her feet next to him. Taking her by the hand, they ran for the house.
• • •
Coal waited. Inconspicuous in the dusk, he lay on his back, high up on top of the manicured hedge. He watched a bat catching its supper in the evening sky and wished it were so simple.
A rustling below and a figure emerged from behind the bank of gardenia, only a few yards away from where George and the girl had been sitting. It was Halick.
Coal studied the young man as he peered around the foliage, watching his stepbrother and the girl running up to the house. There was a large man climbing out of his car pulled up under the porte-cochère.
“Who, who might this be, said the owl,” Halick whispered. “Who else has George invited to our home today?”
Coal was wondering the same thing. He saw the girl curtsy to the new arrival. He glanced back down at Halick.
The young man was plucking blossoms from the gardenia bush, flicking them to the ground one after another, muttering gibberish to himself. “As the lion lies with the monkey, the dog does the same with the donkey. Bethinks, I think, I think, I do believe, in another moment,” he said, more seriously now, “he was going to kiss that girl.”
Coal looked back up to the house.
George and Adi were leading the man inside. Halick scraped flowers into the flagstones with the tip of his shoe, devising doggerel rhymes to amuse himself. Satisfied, he wandered back down in the direction of the family table.
Coal dropped from the hedge and hit the ground with a yelp and a curse. It was as if the girl had struck him again. He looked around to make sure no one had heard, leaning on the hedge for a moment until the pain receded.
He found it hard to believe what he was seeing here, what the girl had managed. “She should be lying in the weeds weeping, but here she is—belle of the ball.”
He wished he had another finger to send her. He’d gotten that one from a child in the morgue, after the train collision in Strasbourg a few days earlier. He should have taken another. Or an ear!
The girl’s fireplace poker, he’d fancied for a moment, it had been poisoned, like a Bushman’s spear or a Borgia’s ring, sending venom coursing through his bloodstream.
But he knew it was not so. The girl was as artless as a child. There was another cause for his affliction. He rolled his shoulder to ease the ache and went off to find supper.