Crossing on the Paris (36 page)

“Hello! Hello!” The men burst out greetings in American accents. “Come in! Please join us!” they cried together.

Constance shyly walked up to the bar, where one of the men offered her his stool.

“I'll have a cup of tea,” she told the barman.

“Tea? No, have a cocktail with us! Let us treat you to something special!”

Crowded around her, they all grinned playfully, their eyes shining. Constance shook her head, protesting mildly, but after a few minutes' insistence, she finally agreed. After all, she could use the distraction.

“Right then!” called one in a brown suit. “What would you like? Rum punch? A manhattan?”

“For a day as wet as this, I'd recommend a dry martini!” said
one with gray hair, raising his glass and laughing at his own joke. “Or, how about a white lady for the lady?

“Hey, Lou-ee!” this one cried to the barman. Constance noticed the familiarity of his tone, as if this
Paris
bar had been his regular haunt for ages. She too had experienced the strange passage of time aboard ship, each day at sea equaling several years on land. “A white lady for our friend.”

“Now then, what's your name? Where are you from? Tell us about yourself!”

Alcohol, it seemed, made one take shortcuts around routine civilities. Constance, however, was rather pleased to have such a captive audience.

“I'm Constance Stone, from Worcester, Massachusetts,” she replied with a smile, as her drink was being served.

“Well, it's a pleasure to meet you, Constance Stone from Worcester, Massachusetts,” the gray-haired gentleman said with a wink. “I'm John Crenshaw and this here is Martin, Albert, and Cy. We're all from New York.”

Martin lifted his glass to make a toast: “To friends, old and new!”

“Here, here!”

Constance found the white lady, served in a long-stemmed glass and decorated with a cherry and a slice of orange, rather imposing. She balanced it in her hand a moment, trying to decide how to drink it without spilling the fruit into her lap. Finally she took a small sip, and though it was far too strong for her taste, she made a good-natured grimace, raising her glass to her delighted companions.

Enjoying their martinis, the four men swapped travel anecdotes: amusing misunderstandings in foreign languages, mishaps on the railways, interesting characters met abroad. During their second round, Constance chimed in to tell them about the bohemian artists she'd met in Paris, making them laugh with her humorous
descriptions of their eclectic fashions and untidy artwork. She didn't mention her sister or her mission; none of that mattered here.

Constance felt agreeably risqué, having a fancy drink (two!) in the company of men. So unlike her! She caught her own reflection in the mirror behind the bar, swinging her glass and grinning like the Cheshire cat. Constance hardly recognized herself. She glanced over at barman Louis and saw boredom in his heavy-lidded eyes, his utter lack of surprise at her inclusion in this group. How refreshing to be unknown.

Suddenly the ship heaved and Constance, perched daintily on the edge of her stool, tipped over and onto the floor. The man introduced as Albert helped her up with a “No harm done?” but gray-haired John gave her a playful wag of his finger.

“I think our white lady has had enough!” He laughed at her blush.

She suddenly remembered her dinner plans and looked at her watch; quarter to seven. Serge was coming for her at eight.

“Oh my!” she exclaimed, covering her mouth with her fingertips. “I do need to run! But, thank you, gentlemen, for a most amusing afternoon!”

“Our pleasure,” they declared, tipping their heads, saluting her with a single finger.

“Let me walk you back to your cabin, miss,” said John. “I'd never forgive myself if you tumbled into the sea.”

Vera lay in bed, shivering under the blankets. She had abruptly woken from a deep sleep an hour before, immediately aware her temperature had spiked. She idly wondered whether this was the fever Robinson Crusoe called ague, chills that alternate with sweats, making one always yearn for the opposite extreme.

“Maximilian,” she mumbled. “Maximilian Laszlo.”

Ever since she'd woken up, she had been thinking about that boy, children in general, her own sterility. About dying with “no issue,” which sounded every bit like the fate of a doomed Roman emperor or an inbred royal. Laszlo had been fortunate in that respect; his elegant mouth and hands would be carried on in that adorable child.

Vera thought she might have enjoyed motherhood, but, very likely, she would have repeated her parents' mistakes. Along with their fortune, she had inherited their selfishness. Like them, she would have inevitably left sons and daughters to servants to better enjoy herself (though they would have been spared a grandmother).

She'd never really regretted not bringing life into this world and the overwhelming responsibility that it implied. But—if she'd only had siblings!—Vera would have dearly loved having nieces and nephews. She imagined being their godmother and choosing their names: Charles Alexis, Percival Campbell, Cassandra Grace. She could have criticized her brother or sister for all their parenting blunders, then, when she was in the mood, spoiled the children with extravagant gifts and outings. When they came of age, she would have taken them for lobster at the Plaza, talked to them about sex, and offered them their first cigarette. They would have adored her in the way one can never love one's parents.

Vera imagined how delighted they would have been to discover her memoirs. Truly, these imaginary relations were their only possible recipients. Her cousins' children were nothing to her (and even worse, she was nothing to them!) and didn't deserve such wealth. She had considered giving the three tomes to Charles, but knew a proper heir had to be of another generation, not a contemporary. He could not read them with youth's open-eyed fascination, marveling at days past. And, of course, Laszlo's grandson was out of the question.

Absently stroking her pearls, she leafed through the journals, page by page. Here were her earliest memories:
B
for P. T. Barnum's
Museum of Oddities on Broadway.
C
for Cornelia, their Negro maid who had walked from Maryland to freedom. Here was Paris in the belle epoque and the writers and artists she'd known:
N
for Natalie Barney and her Sapphic Circle,
S
for Sylvia Beach's Shakespeare and Company.

She picked up another volume, the first of two organized by number, remembering, reliving. Here were raw accounts of her private life: 1 Child Lost; rue Monge, number 5 . . . Her many travels: 28 Days in the Holy Land; 101 Degrees in Athens (in a long skirt, mutton sleeves, and corset); A Dozen Fjords. She thumbed through the pages of the last volume, smiling at the drawings and caricatures, until she came to the Great War: 350 Shells, the blasts on Paris from a railway gun, the constant panic, the fear; 16 Friends Departed, both soldier and civilian, all sacrificed to the war. She kept turning the pages, rereading fragments, until she got to the last, unwritten entry: X Crossings.

All of these things, from the queer to the conventional, from horror to beauty, from delight to sorrow: this was her life. Nothing to regret or lament. No one to blame. She had made choices and embraced chance, and this was who she was. Now, what to do with this heirless treasure? She looked again at the pirate map, wondering exactly what spot the
X
was marking.

Vera took off her glasses and pressed her fingers against the moist skin beneath her eyes, blotting away the beads of sweat. Suddenly, she heard the disconsolate cries of a newborn. Crisp, short, urgent blasts. Odd, she thought, this was the first time she'd heard a baby on this crossing. At first she thought it must be something else—some kind of machinery?—but no, that wail was unmistakable. Her Parisian neighbor had had eight children and Vera knew perfectly well what an unhappy newborn sounded like.

This child was clearly in agony or in great need of being fed or changed. Vera was tempted to rise, to go and see to it herself; it sounded like it was right outside her door. But, there must
be someone—a mother, a nanny—trying to soothe the babe, to quiet it.

Ignoring the sounds, it occurred to Vera that these diaries—with battered covers, fading ink, and pages well-worn from constant perusal; authored not by a famous explorer or a well-known statesman but by a little old lady with a secondhand fountain pen—might not be such a fortune after all. Perhaps an outsider, without the benefit of the original memories, would not find them as rich and powerful as she.

Putting the three books side by side on her bed, Vera had to admit that these tales, written years after the events, were not always
fair.
Many things were deliberately left untold, giving her story a warped perspective. Some close friends were left out, her family rarely mentioned, yet at times virtual strangers received meticulous descriptions. And then, there was Laszlo.

Two days before, he had been a rather insignificant detail in her memoirs, an anecdote. In her telling, he was not a life-altering person, an indispensable event. And yet, ever since she'd met his son and learned the news of his death, Laszlo Richter had been haunting her like a ghost. The importance of their brief time together (and moreover, what their relationship could have been) had been playing constantly in her mind.

Her eyes darted to the door; the newborn's cries continued. She blew out a long gust of air. Dependent and frail, with poor eyesight and a toddling gait, this past year Vera had sometimes felt like a baby herself.

Vera knew she was in denial about her illness, her approaching death. For months now she had been fleeing from it in these journals, returning to her past, trying to remain safe in her youth, her prime. Now Vera wondered whether she had also been in denial about her life. Was she going to spend the rest of her days rereading half-truths about her former self, the spirited though self-centered person who predated her illness? Tales that evoked her best qualities
while downplaying her faults, prose that was written, therefore, with an audience—a sympathetic reader—in mind? Vera would have never guessed that she herself would become that reader.

Pathetic,
she thought, shaking her head. Truly, was this way of dying any better than her grandmother's? During
her
final years, Camilla Wright Sinclair had gradually let go of her past to live exclusively in the present. Each moment was her first, every experience unique and new.

She looked over at Amandine, who was sitting by the window, watching the furious sky, stroking Bibi's silken ear with one hand.

“Have you ever heard such a baby?” Vera exclaimed, suddenly cross. She was agitated, mostly by her somber thoughts, but preferred to find fault with the infant and its incessant wailing. “It's been crying now for a full half hour!”

Amandine looked at her in surprise. “I don't hear anything, ma'am.”

After an hour of cocktails and pleasantries with the gentlemen from New York, Constance had felt more relaxed about her upcoming dinner in Serge's quarters; she was ready to chat and laugh with him as she had with John Crenshaw and the others. However, as she dressed—changing her stockings, buttoning her chemise, buckling up her fine black heels—she began to grow nervous. Did this French doctor truly fancy her? Was he sincere? If he took her in his arms, would she be able to resist? Should she tell him about her family straightaway? Ask about his?

At half-past eight, Constance heard a series of jaunty taps on the door. She hesitated, wondering again whether she should go. Checking herself in the mirror, she gave herself a comical little frown, which in turn made her smile. She'd been overreacting. After a quick dinner, Serge would escort her to the magnificent ballroom,
where she would take part in one of high society's most fashionable galas. Certainly,
that
was nothing to worry about! She crammed the detective novel into her beaded handbag, smoothed out her dress, and opened the door.