Stiletto (13 page)

For the first time Ileana felt a sense of disappointment. “Daddy’s away?”

“He’ll be back in a few days,” her mother said quickly. “Something came up with his estate claims.” For the first time she really looked at Ileana. “Why, you’re taller than I am,” she said in surprise.

“I’m all grown up, Mother,” she said, “I’m not a little child anymore.”

Her mother’s voice grew petulant. “For God’s sake, Ileana, speak French instead of that horrible language. You know I never could understand it.”

“Of course, Mother,” Ileana replied in French.

“That’s better,” her mother said. “Now let me take a look at you.”

Ileana stood very still while her mother walked around her slowly. She felt like a horse on the auction block.

“Aren’t you dressed rather too old for your years, dear?” her mother asked.

“I’m eighteen, Mother. What did you expect me to wear? A middy blouse and skirt?”

“Don’t be fresh, Ileana. I’m trying hard enough to get used to the idea of having a grown-up daughter. Why I don’t look that much older than you that we can’t be mistaken for sisters.”

Ileana looked at her mother. In some ways, she was right. Somehow she had managed to keep an air of youthfulness about her. She didn’t look her thirty-six years. “Yes, Mother,” she said quietly.

“And stop calling me ‘Mother,’” the older woman snapped. “It’s old-fashioned anyway. If you must call me something call me by name. Or better still ‘Dearest,’ as your father does. Everyone calls me that now.”

“Yes, Moth—Dearest,” Ileana said.

Her mother smiled. “Now that wasn’t so bad, was it? Come, let me show you your room.”

Ileana followed her mother down the long corridor to a small room on the far side of the kitchen. No one had to tell her it was a servant’s room. The furnishings did that very clearly.

“It will be quite nice when we fix it up,” Dearest said. She looked up at Ileana. Ileana’s face was impassive. “What’s the matter?” she asked sharply. “You don’t like it?”

“It’s small,” Ileana said. Her closet at school seemed larger than this.

“Well, you’ll have to make do with it,” Dearest snapped. “Your father isn’t one of the wealthiest men in the world, you know. And it’s difficult enough to manage on the money we have as it is.”

She started to leave the room and at that moment the doorbell rang. She stopped, then turned back to Ileana, a startled expression on her face. “Oh, I almost forgot. I have a cocktail date with an American friend of ours. Be a dear, will you, and get the door for me. Tell him I’ll be ready in a moment.”

She hurried back through the corridor, Ileana following her. At the door to her room, Dearest stopped and looked at Ileana. “And do me another favor, darling. Don’t introduce yourself as my daughter this time. Tell him you’re my sister and down for a visit. I don’t feel quite up to involved explanations just now.”

Dearest shut her door quickly before Ileana could answer. Ileana walked down the hall and through the living room slowly. She didn’t need anyone to draw a diagram for her. The school in Switzerland was very thorough.

When her father came home the following week, Ileana was shocked at the change in his appearance. The once tall figure was bent and stiff with the pain from his almost immobilized legs. He moved slowly with his canes and dropped into his wheelchair as soon as he was inside the door. He looked at her and smiled as she knelt beside him. He reached out his hand and drew her toward him.

“Ileana,” he said. “I’m glad you’re home at last.”

In spite of his infirmity, the Baron had to spend a great deal of time away from home. There was the matter of his estate to be settled, a negotiation was pending with the present regime that would allow some sort of compensation for their losses to the former holders of property. Return was impossible for now the country was firmly in the Soviet bloc.

During the times her father was away, Ileana busied herself with friends. She kept out of the apartment as much as possible and very often used the back door when she heard voices in the living room.

It was more than a year later that she received a letter from a school friend inviting her to spend the summer with them in Monte Carlo. The Baron was away again and she hurried to her mother’s room with the letter. Excitedly, she gave the letter to her mother.

She spoke while her mother was reading the letter. “It will be so wonderful, just to get away from Paris in the blistering heat. The beach and the water. I just can’t wait!”

Dearest folded the letter and put it down on the table. “You can’t go,” she said. “We can’t afford it.”

“I can’t?” Ileana’s voice was incredulous. “But I won’t need any money. I’ll be their guest.”

Dearest looked up at her. “You’ll need clothes,” she said. “You can’t go looking like a ragpicker.”

“I have clothes,” Ileana flared up. “Everything I had from school still looks good on me.”

“But the styles have changed and they’re dated,” Dearest said. “And everyone will know you couldn’t afford a proper wardrobe. Drop her a note and explain that unfortunately you’ve made other arrangements. You can use my stationery if you like.”

“Save your crested stationery!” Ileana said, close to tears. “I have my own.” She stamped out of the room.

While she was still in the corridor, the front doorbell rang. Dearest’s voice floated after her. “Get the front door for me, darling. I’ll be out in a minute.”

Clenching her teeth, Ileana went to the front door. It was another one of Dearest’s American friends. He was already slightly drunk. Ileana introduced herself as Dearest’s sister.

He came into the apartment and sat down on the couch. He looked up at her. “The Baroness never told me she had such a beautiful sister.”

Ileana laughed at his typically American attempt at gallantry. “My sister never told me she had such an attractive friend.”

He laughed, pleased with himself. “It’s too bad I have to go back home tonight. Otherwise we might have become better acquainted.”

Dearest’s voice came from the doorway. “You have to return, John? Oh, I’m so sorry.”

She came into the room and John struggled to his feet. “I was called back,” he said sadly. “An emergency in the factory.”

“That is too bad,” Dearest said, taking his hand.

“It is too bad,” he said earnestly, looking into her eyes. “Three times we had cocktails and dinner together and each time I said to myself it would be the next time. And now I have to go back and there will never be a next time.”

“You will come back to Paris,” Dearest said.

“Yes,” he answered. “But who knows when?” He sat down on the couch again. He looked up at Dearest. “I stopped in the bar downstairs and had three whiskies before I came up.”

Dearest laughed, her false tinkling laughter that Ileana knew so well. “What on earth for?” she asked.

His face became very serious. “I have something very important to ask you.”

Dearest looked at Ileana. “Will you get some ice from the fridge, darling? John likes lots of ice with his whisky.”

Ileana turned and left the room. She pulled the ice cubes from the tray and put them into a small serving bowl. When she came back into the room, John and her mother were both silent. She began to place the bowl on the small coffee table in front of the couch when she saw the pile of bills stacked on it. It was American money.

She glanced at John quickly. He didn’t speak. He still held his wallet in his hand. She looked at her mother questioningly.

John saw the look. He spoke to Dearest. “I’ll make it twenty-five hundred dollars if she joins in the party.”

Suddenly she knew what he meant. She fled from the room, her face flaming, and closed the door of her room behind her.

A few moments later Dearest came into the room. Her face was cold and she looked down at her daughter. “Why did you run from the room like that?” she asked angrily. “It was absolutely infantile.”

Ileana stared up at her mother. “But you know what he was asking, Mother. It was disgusting. He wanted us to go to bed with him.”

“You don’t have to explain it to me,” Dearest snapped.

“You’re not going to bed with him?” Ileana’s voice was incredulous. “With that drunk?”

“I am,” Dearest said calmly. “And so are you!”

Ileana sprang to her feet. “I will not! And you cannot make me!”

“Do you know how much money twenty-five hundred American dollars is? One and a half million francs on the black market. How do you think we have been living anyway? On the thirty-two pounds a month disability pension that your father gets from the army? How do you think we can afford the medicine and doctors for him? From the estates he will never see again? What kind of a life do you think it is for me to spend my days with a cripple who cannot walk and is no good for anything a man is supposed to be good for?” Dearest shook Ileana angrily. “With this money you can go to Nice to your friends, we can live for six months, your father can have that operation he has postponed so many times.”

Ileana sank back into her chair. “I won’t do it. I can’t. The whole idea makes me sick to my stomach.”

Dearest laughed scornfully. “What are you talking about? Don’t make me laugh. You’re no innocent little virgin. I know what went on at that precious school of yours. You’ll do as I say or I leave right now and you can explain to your father why I won’t live with him anymore. See if he appreciates your actions then—or even if he believes you!” She turned and swept out of the room.

Ileana sat for a moment, then got up slowly and walked out into the corridor. She stumbled against a table in the dark hallway. Her mother’s voice came from the living room.

“Is that you, Ileana?”

“Yes,” she answered.

“Be a dear, will you, and fetch us some more ice?”

“Yes, Dearest,” Ileana replied. Her mother’s tinkling laughter followed her into the kitchen.

***

A faint sound made her bolt upright in the bed. She cast a quick glance at her mother. Dearest was sleeping, an arm thrown over her eyes to shield them from the light. The American lay next to her on his stomach, breathing stertorously.

There was the sound again. A faint squeak as if from the wheel of a rolling chair. A cold fear clutched at her heart. She reached out and touched her mother quickly.

Dearest sat up. She rubbed her eyes. “What, what?”

“Hurry, Mother,” she whispered, “into the next room! Hurry!”

Dearest was wide awake now, her eyes frightened. She began to get out of bed then stopped. It was too late. The door was opening.

The Baron sat there in his wheelchair, looking at them. His face was white and impassive, his eyes were cold.

The American got out of bed, reaching for his trousers with trembling hands. “I—I can explain,” he stammered.

The Baron’s lips scarcely moved. “Get out!”

Frightened, the man ran from the room. A moment later they heard the front door slam behind him.

The Baron sat there in his chair, looking at them. They stared back at him, Dearest shrinking back against the bed, Ileana, leaning forward and holding a sheet to her bosom. At last, her father spoke.

His eyes tore at his wife. “It is not enough for you that I looked away from what you are, because I loved you once and somehow felt responsible for you. But do you hate me so much that you have to turn your own daughter into a whore?”

Ileana spoke. “Father, it was I who—”

Her father looked at her. His eyes were the saddest she had ever seen. “Put something on, Ileana,” he said gently, “and go to your room.”

Silently, she slipped into her robe and started through the doorway. He rolled back his chair slightly to let her pass and his hand brushed her arm. His hand was cold as ice.

She went out into the corridor and he rolled his chair into the room and closed the door behind him. She was almost at the door of her room when she heard the shots. She ran back and opened the door. She screamed. Her mother lay dead across the bed, her father in his chair, the gun still smoking on the floor near his outstretched fingers.

Her father left her no money but her mother left an estate of more than sixty thousand dollars. Ileana took the money and went to Monte Carlo and lost it all in a week. She felt better when the money was gone. Cleaner. Then she went to Nice and visited with her friend.

It was there she first met Cesare. He had placed second in the annual race. It was also there she found a new way to live. Like her mother, there was always some rich man who was willing to help her. And somehow when she realized how like her mother she had become nothing much mattered anymore.

The only thing that mattered was today. And how much living she could squeeze out of it—or into it.

Cesare walked back into the living room. “Tonio!” he called.

Tonio appeared in the dining-room archway, a bag of groceries still in his arms. “Excellency!” he cried. “You are home early!” He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper and looked meaningfully toward the bedroom. “The Baroness de Bronczki is—”

“I know,” Cesare interrupted him. “I’ve already seen her. Where have you been?”

Ileana’s voice came from the bedroom door. “I sent him out to get some things in for dinner. I thought it would be nice if we had dinner in tonight.”

Cesare turned to look at her. She was wearing black-velvet toreador pants that clung to her body, a gold lamé blouse and gold shoes. “You did, eh?” he asked. “What made you think I want to eat in? How did you know that I didn’t have plans to dine at El Morocco?”

She laughed, shaking her head. Her long black hair shone in the light as she came into the room. “Oh, no, Cesare. We couldn’t do that. Not tonight.”

“Why not?”

She looked up into his face. “I could not go to El Morocco in these clothes. And they are all I brought with me.”

He stared at her. “All? Where are the rest of them?”

She put her arms up to his face and kissed his cheek. Then she crossed to the couch and sat down.

“Tonio, bring us some cocktails,” Cesare said.

Tonio bowed, shaking his entire frame. “Yes, Excellency.” He went back into the kitchen.