Along the Infinite Sea (10 page)

“Don't they mind?”

“They only really care about the frescoes. The frescoes are astonishing, though they are not for the faint of heart.”

“Are they violent?” I asked, thinking of the gladiators and the casual Roman lust for blood.

“No, they are profoundly erotic.”

A bird sang at us from within a tree somewhere, a melancholy whistle. The low crunch of our footsteps echoed from the woods.

“There are also casts,” Stefan said. “They found these hollows in the ash, the hardened ash, and so they had the good idea to pour plaster of Paris into these hollows, and when it dried and they chipped away the molds, there remained these exact perfect casts of the people who had died, who had been buried alive in the ash. You can see the terror in their faces. And
that
, my Annabelle, is when you realize that this thing was real, that it actually happened, this unthinkable thing. Each cast was a living person, two thousand years ago. These casts, they are proof. They are photographs of a precise moment, the moment of expiration. They are like the resurrection of the dead.”

“How awful.”

“It's awful and beautiful at once. The worst was the dog, however. I could bear the sight of the people, but the dog made me weep.”

“You don't mind the people dying, but you mind the animals?”

“Because the people knew what was happening to them. They knew Vesuvius was erupting, that the town was doomed. They couldn't escape, but at least they knew. The dog, he had no idea. He must have thought he was being punished.”

“The people thought they were being punished, too. That the gods were punishing them.”

“Yes, but we humans are all full of sin, aren't we? We know our mortal failings. We know our own culpability. This poor dog never knew what he had done wrong. Here we are.”

A wall appeared to our right, behind the trees. I looked up, and the dawn had broken free at last, gilding the peaks of the fort, which had somehow, in the course of our conversation, grown into a forbidding size and complexity. Ahead, the trees cleared to reveal a paved terrace.

“Can we go in?” I asked.

“We can try.”

The sun had not quite scaled the rooftops yet, and the terrace was in full shade. We walked up the path until an entrance came into view, interrupting the rough stone of the fort walls: a wide archway beneath a modest turret. There was no door, no impediment of any kind. A patch of white sun beckoned on the other side.

“Are there any soldiers about, do you think?”

“No, the garrison was disbanded some years ago, I believe. It is now a—I don't know if there is some particular term in English—a
monument historique
. I suppose it belongs to the people of France.”

“Then it's mine, because I am a person of France, after all,” I said, and I walked under the archway and up the stairs to the patch of light that squeezed between the corners of two buildings.

“But you are not simply a person of France, are you?” said Stefan, coming up behind me. “You are a princess of France.”

“That doesn't mean anything anymore. We're a republic. We shouldn't even have titles at all. Anyway, I'm half American. It's impossible to be a princess and speak like a Yankee.”

“It suits you, however. Especially now, when the sun is touching your hair.”

I stopped walking and turned to Stefan, who stopped, too, and returned my gaze. He was almost a foot taller than I was, and the sun had already found his hair and eyes and most of his face, and while he could sometimes look almost plain, because his bones were arranged so simply, in the full light of morning sunshine he was beautiful.

“Don't look at me like that,” he said.

“Like what?”

“Like you want me to kiss you.”

“But I do want you to kiss me.”

Stefan shook his head. “How can you be like this? No one in the world is like you.”

“I was going to say the same about you.”

He lifted his hand and touched the ends of my hair, and such was the extraordinary sensitivity of my nerves that I felt the stir of each individual root. “I don't know how I am going to bear this, Annabelle,” he whispered. “How am I going to survive any more?”

I didn't say anything. I didn't want to disturb the delicate balance, one way or another. I took a step back, so I was standing against the barracks wall, which was already warm with sunshine, and Stefan followed me and raised his other hand to burrow into my hair, around the curve of my skull. His gaze dropped to my lips.

“Alles ist seinen Preis wert,”
he said, and he lowered his face and kissed me.

I held myself still as his lips touched mine, lightly at first and then deeper, until he had opened me gently to taste the skin of my mouth. I didn't know you could do that, I didn't know you could kiss on the inside. I thought it was all on the surface. He tasted like he smelled, of champagne and cigarettes, only richer and wetter, alive, and I lifted my
hands, which had been pressed against the barracks wall, and curled them around his waist, because I might never have the chance to do that again, to hold Stefan's warm waist under my palms while his mouth caressed mine. He cradled the back of my head with one hand and the side of my face with the other, and he ended the kiss in a series of nibbles that trailed off somewhere on my cheekbone, and pressed his forehead against mine. I relaxed against the barracks wall and took his weight. A bird chattered from the ridgepole.

“All right,” he said. “Okay. Still alive.”

“I'm sorry. I don't really know how to kiss.”

“Don't ever learn.”

I laughed softly and held him close against my thin nightgown. The new sun burned the side of my face. I said, “I suppose your mistress wouldn't be happy to see us now.”

Stefan lifted his head from mine. “As it happens, I do not give a damn what this woman thinks at the moment, and neither should you. But come. The groundskeepers will be coming soon, and then the tourists. It will be a great scandal if we are seen.”

“I don't care.”

“But I do. I will not have Annabelle de Créouville caught here in her nightgown with her lover, for all the world to stare.” He gave my hair a final stroke and picked up my hand. “Can you walk all the way back in your bare feet, do you think?”

“Must we? I wanted to see the rest of the fort.”

“We will come back someday, if you like.”

His voice was warm in my chest. I wanted him to kiss me again, but instead I followed him around the corner of the barracks to the stairs.
Your poor feet,
he said, looking down, and I said,
Your poor leg,
and he kissed my hand and said,
The lame leading the lame.

I said,
I thought it was the blind, the blind leading the lame,
and he said,
I am not blind at all. Are you?

No,
I told him.
Not blind at all.

There were two weather-faced men smoking on the terrace when
we passed under the arch. They looked up at us and nearly dropped their cigarettes.

“
Bonjour,
mes amis
,” said Stefan cheerfully, and he bent down and lifted me into his arms and carried me the rest of the way, to hell with the wounded leg.

12.

An hour later, we were standing inside the
Isolde
's tender, a sleek little boat with a racehorse engine, motoring across the sea to my father's villa on the other side of the Cap d'Antibes. The wind whipped Stefan's hair as he sat at the wheel, and the sun lit his skin. Against the side of the boat, the waves beat a forward rhythm, and the breeze came thick and briny.

We hardly spoke. How could you speak, after a morning like that? And yet it was only seven o'clock. The whole day still lay ahead. We rounded the point, and the Villa Vanilla came into view, white against the morning glare. Stefan brought us in expertly to the boathouse, closing the throttle so we wouldn't make too much noise.

“I will walk you up the cliff,” he said. “I do not trust that path.”

“But I've climbed it hundreds of times. I walked down it in the dark, the night we met.”

“This I do not wish to think about.”

The house was silent when we reached the top. No one would be up for hours. There was a single guilty champagne bottle sitting on the garden wall, overlooked by the servants. Stefan picked it up as we passed and then looked over at the driveway, which was just visible from the side as we approached the terrace. “My God,” he said, stopping in his tracks. “Whose car is that?”

I followed his gaze and saw Herr von Kleist's swooping black Mercedes, oily-fast in the sun. “Oh, that's the general, Baron von Kleist. I'm surprised he's still here. He didn't seem to be enjoying himself.”

“Von Kleist,” he said.

“Do you know him?”

“A little.”

We resumed walking, and when we had climbed the steps and stood by the terrace door Stefan handed me the empty champagne bottle and the small brown valise that contained my few clothes. “You see? You may tell your brother I have returned you properly dressed, with your virtue intact. I believe I deserve a knighthood, at least. The Chevalier Silverman.”

“What about me? I was the one who nursed you back to health, from the brink of death.”

“But you are already a princess, Mademoiselle. What further honor can be given to you?”

All at once, I was out of words. I was empty of the ability to flirt with him. I parted my lips dumbly and stood there, next to the door, staring at Stefan's chin.

His voice fell to a very low pitch, discernible only by dogs and lovers. “Listen to me, Annabelle. I will tell you something, the absolute truth. I have never in my life felt such terror as I did when I saw you lying on that beach this morning in your white nightgown, surrounded by the rocks and that damned treacherous Pointe du Dragon.”

“Don't be stupid,” I whispered.

“I
am
stupid. I am stupid for you. I am filled with folly. But stop. I see I am alarming you. I will go back to my ship now. It is best for us both, don't you think?” He kissed my hand. I hadn't even realized he was holding it. He kissed it again and turned away.

“Wait, Stefan,” I said, but he was already hurrying down the stones of the terrace, and the sound of his footsteps was so faint, I didn't even notice when it faded into the morning silence.

13.

I passed through the dining room on the way to the stairs, and instead of finding it empty, I saw Herr von Kleist sitting quietly in a chair, eating his breakfast. He looked up at me without the slightest sign of surprise.

“Good morning, Mademoiselle de Créouville,” he said, pushing back his chair and unfolding his body to an enormous height.

“Good morning, Herr von Kleist.” I was blushing furiously. The champagne bottle hung scandalously from one hand, the valise from the other. “I didn't expect anyone up so early.”

“I am always up at this hour. May I call some breakfast for you?”

“No, thank you. I think I'll take a tray in my room.”

“We have missed you these past ten days.”

“I've been staying with a friend.”

“So I was told.” He remained standing politely, holding his napkin in one hand, a man of the old manners. The kitchen maid walked in, heavy-eyed, holding a coffeepot, and stopped at the sight of me.

“
Bonjour
, Marie-Louise,” I said.

“
Bonjour
, Mademoiselle,” she whispered.

I looked back at Herr von Kleist, whose eyes were exceptionally blue in the light that flooded from the eastern windows, whose hair glinted gold like a nimbus. He was gazing at me without expression, although I had the impression of great grief hanging from his shoulders. I shifted my feet.

“Please return to your breakfast,” I said, and I walked across the corner of the dining room and broke into a run, racing up the stairs to my room, hoping I would reach my window in time to see the
Isolde
's tender cross the sea before me.

But it did not.

A1A
•
1966

1.

Annabelle waits for her to finish, like a woman who's done this before: waited patiently for someone else to finish vomiting. When Pepper lifts her head, she hands her a crisp white handkerchief, glowing in the moon.

“Thank you,” says Pepper.

“All better? Can we move on?”

“Yes.”

The engine launches them back down the road. Pepper leans her head back and allows the draft to cool her face. Annabelle bends forward and switches on the radio. “That was too late for morning sickness,” she observes.

“I don't get morning sickness.”

“Lucky duck. Nerves, then?”

“I don't get nerves, either.” She pauses. “Not without reason.”

The static resolves into music. The Beatles. “Yesterday.” So far away. Annabelle pauses, hand on the dial, and then lets it be. She sits
back against the leather and says, “Are you saying the bastard's been threatening you?”

“He's been trying to find me, and I've been making myself scarce, that's all.”

“Why? He
is
the father, after all.”

“Because I know what he wants.” Pepper examines her fingernails. She thinks, You're an idiot, Pepper Schuyler, you're going to spill it, aren't you? You're just going to lose it right here
.
Her throat still burns. She says, “I didn't even tell him. He found out, I don't know how. He called me up at the hotel and yelled at me. Why couldn't I get it taken care of, he wanted to know.”

“What a gentleman.”

Pepper gives up on her fingernails and looks out the side. They're passing close to the ocean right now, that grand old Atlantic, toiling away faithfully under the moon. “He was very good at the chase, I'll say that. I always swore I'd never sleep with a married man. I know what everyone says about me, lock up your husbands, but the truth is I just flirt. Like a sport, like some women play bridge. And silly me, I thought he knew that. I thought we weren't taking it past first base, until we did, one night. Big victory, big glasses of champagne, big beautiful hotel suite, and before you know it, the all-star hits himself a home run right out of the park, a grand goddamned salami. Oopsy-daisy, as my sister Vivian would say.”

Annabelle drives silently. She keeps one hand on the wheel and one elbow propped on the doorframe beside her. Pepper steals a glance. Her head is tilted slightly to one side, showing off her long neck. The skin is still taut, still iridescent in the moonlight. What bargain did she make with the devil for skin like that? Whatever it is, Pepper would happily take that bargain. What was the point of an eternal soul, anyway? It just meant you spent eternity in fleecy boredom, strumming your harp. Pepper would rather have twenty good years on earth, flaunting her iridescent skin, and then oblivion.

“What are you thinking?” asks Pepper.

Annabelle raises her head and laughs, making the car swerve slightly. “Do you really want to know?”

“It beats the Beatles.”

“I was thinking about when I fell in love, actually. How grateful I am for that. We were in the South of France, in the middle of August, and I was nineteen and just crazy about him. We were right by the sea. I thought I was in heaven.”

“What was his name?”

She pauses. “Stefan.”

The radio plays between them, the instrumentals, a low and mournful string. Someone believes in yesterday. Pepper stares at her thumbs in her lap and thinks about the night she lost her virginity. There was no sunshine, no Mediterranean, no mysterious Stefan. There was a friend of her mother's, after a party. She had flirted with him, because flirting gave you such a rush of delicious power. Such confidence in this newfound seventeen-year-old beauty of yours, that a man twenty years older hung on your every banal word, your every swooping eyelash. That he would tell you how you'd grown, how you were the most beautiful girl he'd ever seen. That he would lead you dangerously into a shady corner of the terrace, overlooking Central Park, and feed you a forbidden martini or two and kiss you—you'd been kissed before, you could handle this—and then do something to your dress and your underpants, and a few blurry moments later you weren't handling this at all, you were bang smack on your back on the lounge chair with no way to get up, and maybe it was a good thing he'd fed you those martinis, maybe it was a good thing you couldn't remember exactly how it happened.

The song changes, some new band that Pepper doesn't recognize. She reaches forward and shuts off the radio.

2.

They reach Cocoa Beach at half past one o'clock in the morning. A bank of clouds has rolled in, obscuring the moon, and Pepper can't see a thing beyond the headlights. She's too tired to care, anyway.

“Here we are,” Annabelle says cheerfully. “The housekeeper is in bed, but the cottage should be ready.”

“You do this kind of thing often?”

“No. I just had a hunch I'd have company.”

Pepper stumbles out of the car and follows Annabelle across a driveway and up a pair of stone steps. A little house by the beach, she said, but this is more like a villa, plain and rough-walled, like something you might find in Spain or Italy, somewhere old and hot. The smell of eucalyptus hangs in the air.

Annabelle holds open the door. “I expect you're tired. I couldn't keep my eyes open when I was pregnant. I'll save the tour for tomorrow and take you straight to bed.”

“I've heard that one before.”

Annabelle laughs. “I expect you have, you naughty girl.”

Pepper is just awake enough to appreciate the lack of censure in Annabelle's voice. Well, she is European, isn't she? She has that welcome dollop of joie-de-whatever, that je ne sais no evil. She's not one to judge. Maybe that's why Pepper spilled her guts back there, in the middle of the road, like a cadaver under dissection. Or maybe it was the moon, or the goddamned ocean, or the baby and the hormones and the nicotine starvation. Whatever it was, Pepper hopes to God she won't regret all this over breakfast.

“We bought the place in 1941,” Annabelle was saying, as they passed through the darkened rooms. “It was built in the twenties, during the big land rush. We got it for a song. It was in total disrepair, not even properly finished, but the bones were good, and there was plenty of room for the children, and it was all by itself, no nosy neighbors.
There was something rather authentic about it, which is a difficult thing to find in Florida.”

“I'll say.”

“I mean, except me, of course!” Annabelle's midnight exuberance is almost certifiable. Pepper wants to throttle her. Of course, six months ago, Pepper could midnight with the best of them. Six months ago, midnight was just the beginning. That was how she got into this mess, wasn't it? Too much goddamned midnight, and now here she was, stumbling through an old house in the middle of Florida, knocked up and knocked out.

A latch clicks, a door swooshes open, and now they're in a courtyard, full of fresh air and lemon trees. Annabelle turns to the wall and switches on a light. Pepper squints.

“Just over here, honey,” says Annabelle.

Pepper follows. “I don't mean to be pushy, but does this guest cottage of yours happen to have a working lavatory?”

Annabelle claps a hand to her cheek. “Oh, my goodness! What an idiot I am! It's been so long since I had babies. Come along. My dear, you should have said something. I didn't realize you were so polite.”

“I'm not, I assure you. I just didn't happen to spot any flowerpots along the way.”

The grass is short and damp. They've moved beyond the circle of light from the house. Pepper sees a rectangular shadow ahead and hopes to God it's the cottage, and nobody's waiting inside. Peace and quiet, that's all she needs. Peace and quiet and a toilet.

A step ahead, Annabelle opens the door and steps aside for Pepper to enter first. The smell of soap and fresh linen rushes around her.

“Home sweet home. The bathroom's on the right.”

3.

When Pepper emerges from the bathroom ten minutes later, Annabelle is standing by the window, looking into the night. From the side,
her face looks a little more fragile than Pepper remembers, and she thinks that maybe Annabelle is right, that she isn't really beautiful. The nose is too long. The chin too sharp. The head itself is out of proportion, too large on her skinny long neck, like a Tootsie Pop.

Then she turns, and Pepper forgets her faults.

“All set?”

“Yes. Thanks for the nightgown and toothpaste. I'm beginning to think you had this all planned out.”

“Maybe I did.” Annabelle smiles. “Does that make you nervous?”

Pepper yawns. “Nothing's going to make me nervous right now.”

“All right. Sleep in as long as you like. I'll have coffee and breakfast waiting in the main house, whenever you're up. Is there anything you need?”

“No, thanks.” Pepper hesitates. Gratitude isn't her natural attitude, but then you didn't spend your life dangling elegantly from the pages of the Social Register without learning how to keep your legs crossed and your hostess well buttered. “Thanks awfully for your hospitality,” she adds, all Fifth Avenue drawl, emphasis on the
awful
.

“Oh, not at all. I'm happy I could help.”

Pepper's radar ears detect a note of wistfulness. She sinks on the bed, bracing her arms on either side of her heavy belly, and says, “Helped me? Kidnapped is more like it.”

“Miss Pepper Schuyler,” Annabelle says, shaking her head, “why on this great good earth are you so suspicious? What have they done to you?”

“A better question, Mrs. Annabelle Dommerich, is why you care.”

An exasperated line appears between Annabelle's eyebrows. She marches to the bed, drops down next to Pepper, and snatches her hand. Her hand! As if Annabelle is the mother bear and Pepper is Goldilocks or something. “Now, look here,” she actually says, just like a mother bear, “you are
safe
here, do you hear me? Nobody's going to call you or make demands on you or—God knows, whatever it is you're afraid of.”

“I'm not afraid—”

“You're just going to sit here and grow your baby and think about what you want to do with yourself, is that clear? You're going to relax, for God's sake.”

“Hide, you mean.”

“Yes, hide. If that's what you want to call it. There's a doctor in town, if you need to keep up with any appointments. The housekeeper can drive you. You can telephone your parents and your sisters. You can telephone that horse's ass who put you in this condition, and tell him he can go to the devil.”

Pepper cracks out a whiplash of laughter. “Go to the devil! That's a good one. I can just picture him, hanging up the phone and trotting off obediently into the fire and brimstone, just because Pepper Schuyler told him to. Do you have any idea who his friends are? Do you have any idea who owes him a favor or two?”

“He's no match for
you
. Trust me. You hold the cards, darling. You hold the ace. Don't let those bastards convince you otherwise.”

Pepper stares at the mama-bear hand covering her own. The nails are short and well trimmed, the skin smooth and ribbed gently with veins the color of the ocean. Annabelle doesn't use lacquer.

“You still haven't answered my question,” Pepper says. “Why do you care?”

Annabelle sighs and heads for the door. She pauses with her hand right there on the knob. Dramatic effect. Who knew she had it in her?

“All right, Pepper. Why do I care? I care because I stood in your shoes twenty-nine years ago, and God knows I could have used a little decent advice. Someone to keep me from making so many goddamned mistakes.”