The Ambassador's Daughter (25 page)

“What?” I am suddenly aware of George’s eyes upon me.

“You eat with such gusto,” he remarks, and I can feel myself blush. My failure to be ladylike coming back yet again to haunt me. “I mean that as a good thing. You just seem to grab life and shake it like a tree, finding all that falls from it.”

I laugh and for a moment it is as if we are any other young couple, in love and carefree, shed of all the secrets and unspoken things that stand between us and the future. “So have you had the chance to look through any more of the Leimer file?” I ask as I pull the bottle of chardonnay from the basket and hand it to him to uncork.

“I went through it last night,” he replies as he deftly inserts the corkscrew and turns.

“I left so late it must have been this morning, really.”

“Perhaps. Anyway, it’s fascinating. Leimer’s ideas about how to synchronize the strengths of the various militaries could be very useful and...” He breaks midsentence and smiles sheepishly. “I promised not to talk about work tonight.”

“I don’t mind,” I reply. It is the truth. Work is so much a part of who we are together.
We.
“I’m the one who brought it up.”

I lift a glass for him to fill. But when I raise the second glass, Georg shakes his head. “I’ve decided to stop drinking for a time.”

It must be a very recent decision, I think, remembering the wine on his breath a few nights earlier. “Because of your illness?”

“Because of a lot of things. It just gets too easy at sea—beer when the water is fetid, wine with dinner, brandy after.” Though his tone remains even, there is a scratch to the underside, like a phonograph record played too many times. “The evening before the battle was something of a celebration.” Though he does not specify, I know he means Jutland. There is a care to his voice, a thoughtfulness to the way he forms the words, that tells me he has not shared this story before. “There had been word of a victory, which was becoming increasingly rare. We’d opened the last of the meat stores and the better champagne. I drank more than usual and had retired. If I hadn’t I might have heeded the warning signs, seen the way the British ships were amassing. By the time I’d awoken, the
Pommern
had already been hit.” He blames himself for not being able to stop the battle that had taken his brother’s life.

“Georg, there was nothing you could have done. Even if you’d sensed it...”

But he shakes his head, unwilling to accept any account that does not accord with the narrative he has told himself for so long. “Perhaps I could have signaled for some reinforcements or perhaps repositioned the fleet.” What is it about ourselves that makes us believe we can change great events with our thoughts and deeds? It feels a kind of hubris. “And then they made me into some kind of hero. I protested, tried to tell them the truth, but they said it was needed for the morale of the men. It was a lie.”

It was the dishonesty, perhaps more so than anything else, that Georg found impossible to bear. I understand so much more about him now, his solitary nature, the way part of him always seems to be elsewhere. What would he say if he knew the truth about me and the things I have done?

He looks up as though he has forgotten I was there. “You must think me a terrible coward.”

“Not at all.” I reach out and take his hand, not caring now about the propriety as I try to wash away his self-loathing. It takes courage, I want to tell him, to speak the truth. I am the coward here.

“I’d like to leave,” Georg says. For a minute, thinking he means our date, I am hurt. Did I say something to offend him? “Head south perhaps, to the Mediterranean.” He is referring to the conference and the city. But he seems so intent and driven by the work he is doing here. I nod, recognizing his desire to flee the stifling confines of the city. “Let’s do it,” he says. “There are places, you know, located by the mountains as well as the sea. Places we could both love.” He’s serious.

“Georg, what about the conference? And your work?” And my father and my husband and a dozen other reasons I cannot say.

“Perhaps when the conference is over and we are both back in Germany...” he begins, trying again. I do not respond. Berlin means Stefan and the future that inevitably awaits me, the end of all of this. Then he breaks off. “Of course, I’m not presuming that you would want to be with me.” He has mistaken my hesitation for demurral. I take his hand, uncertain what to say. Paris is something of a vacuum, so many people brought together in this odd little whirlwind where none of the rules apply. Back home life is stratified, divided, and Georg and I come from different worlds, religions, politically and socially. Even without Stefan, our lives in Germany would be so disparate. But I would transcend all of that for the chance to be with him. Could every day be exactly like this, glorious and sparkling? An image comes into my mind then of Georg as an old man, sharing a cup of tea in our parlor, long after the children have grown and left. I stop, struck by the vision. It is so different from the life I usually envision for myself and yet in that moment I know it is exactly what I want. We could be this good every single day, waking up side by side laughing and talking.

“Margot,” he says, squeezing my hand. “We can be together. Why do you resist?” He does not know, as I do, that our days are numbered, that each passing night brings us closer to the fated end.

What will you do after the war?
Krysia’s words echo in my mind. The answer is so different now. I’m not just running
from
Stefan but
to
Georg and yet at the same time there’s an inevitability to the fact that it must end. Is that what makes it so good, the knowledge that these few moments we have together are stolen? No, I decide, looking across at Georg. There’s a connection between us, a spark that would burn through the decades, through the everyday, and all of the great hurts and triumphs. I imagine a child then, a boy, with Georg’s strong features. My stomach jumps.

“Shh.” I lean in, desperate to silence the questions, to stop my head from whirling like a carousel. This time I kiss him, my lips mashing clumsily against his. I wait for him to pull away and tell me it isn’t proper. But he presses into me, meeting the intensity of my mouth, probing, upping the stakes. The voices of wrong and right fade in my mind, drowned out by a low moan that sounds foreign escaping my lips as he presses me back toward the ground.

From the far side of the bushes comes a loud noise, an explosion tearing us abruptly apart. “What on earth?” Georg leaps to his feet, reaching for his waist and the weapon that is not there.

The noise comes again, a succession of popping sounds. “It’s all right,” I soothe, standing hurriedly. But he remains in front of me as we step from the grove onto the path, arm around me protectively.

Fireworks begin to erupt in the distance behind the Eiffel Tower. “Oh!” I exclaim, and we stop to admire the spectacle as great dazzling bursts of green and red and blue fire light up the night sky.

“But why?” he asks, more puzzled than delighted. He has a point—there is no holiday or other reason for them. “Something has happened. We should go.” I repack the basket hurriedly and start toward the bicycle shop. When we’ve returned the bikes, we walk in the direction of the river. The fireworks display has ended then, the sky cloudy with their dust. The faint smell of gunpowder hangs in the air. The streets are crowded, as nearly filled with people as the day Wilson arrived, buzzing excitedly.

Georg takes his hand and mine and places them in my pocket for warmth. He stops unexpectedly and turns to me and his lips are upon mine then and suddenly it is as if the crowds around us have disappeared. “I’m sorry. But I had to do that one last time, before...”

“I understand.” Before the fireworks and whatever lay beyond them change our world forever.

He takes my hand once more and leads me in the direction of a newsstand, hands the boy a few coins for a paper, which gives off the smell of fresh ink. “It’s the treaty,” he says, scanning the headline. “The terms have been announced.” As he reads, his eyes widen with disbelief. I lean in over his shoulder. Millions of marks in reparations, the German military to be disbanded immediately.

“This is not peace,” he says, struggling to maintain his composure. “This is a crucifixion. I must get back to Versailles at once.”

“Yes, of course.” I cannot help but be disappointed at our evening ending so abruptly.

Holding tightly to my arm, Georg cuts a path through the crowd. “Across the river,” he says, pulling me toward the bridge. On the other side, he hails a taxi, handing the driver several bills once we are inside. “Versailles, immediately.” He does not speak as we leave the city. His face is a stony mask, and in the storm clouds of his eyes there is a darkness I had not imagined possible. An hour earlier, we were laughing and coming up with new strategies for work. How had everything changed so quickly?

As we reach Versailles, I can hold back no longer. “Georg, we can still do something about this.” The car pulls up in front of the apartment building, any notion of working tonight seemingly forgotten. Georg walks me hurriedly to the door, head low. Then, he climbs back inside the car and a moment later is gone.

Chapter 14

Sunrise comes as it always does over the fields to the east, illuminating the town below in pale yellow like the lights coming up on the set of a play. I cross the bedroom and pick up my dress, which lies where I’d dropped it to the floor the previous evening. The giddy anticipation with which I’d prepared for my date with Georg seems like another lifetime. I see his face, happy one moment and broken the next. He had pinned so much on the peace process, but those dreams are gone now.

I raise my hands to my lips, which are tender and swollen from our kiss. Guilt rises in me. Once could be seen as an accident. But this time I had kissed Georg and it was deliberate, prolonged. I replay the moment in my mind, wondering what might have happened if we had not been interrupted by the fireworks. How can we ever go back from here as though nothing has happened?

Of course, there is no back, I reflect, as I dress. The world Georg and I had known, of quiet evenings working together, had come to an end last night with the issuance of the peace treaty.

Papa had been gone when I’d come into the apartment the previous night. But he is here this morning, and up uncharacteristically early, hunched over his desk. “Papa, the treaty...”

He straightens and turns toward me. His face is gray and dark circles ring his eyes, as though he has not slept at all. “You’ve heard.” His voice is heavy and cracked around the edges. He is nearly as devastated as Georg, I realize. Papa had been cautious about the scope of Wilson’s plan, but he’d held out hope for a world that could be put together after the war a bit better somehow. That world seems not to be. He holds up some papers.

“Is that it?” I ask.

He nods. “The official treaty won’t be presented to the conference until later this morning, but I received an advance copy by courier.” I walk to the desk, lean over his shoulder. “It’s a disaster. Millions of marks in reparations. We’re losing Alsace-Lorraine and the Sudetenland. It’s hard to fathom the country making it through this.” I wait for him to offer his usual moment of hope, or attempt to shield me from the harsh reality of what has happened. But he does not. “I should go today and see about booking our passage home.”

“No!” I cry. His eyes widen at my outburst. “I mean, the conference isn’t over.” But my explanation does little to lessen his surprise. I have always complained about having to be in Paris and I can see him trying to comprehend as to my changed demeanor, why I might be upset to be leaving it now.

“My work is done here, darling. There’s no reason for us to stay any longer.”

“But Georg’s work...if we can just offer an alternative proposal. It doesn’t have to be this way.”

“Captain Richwalder is fooling himself, my dear. It’s over.” And I know that he is right. So does Georg, I think, remembering how he slumped in such defeat on the ride back from Paris. “So we will be returning to Berlin.” His declaration should hardly be a surprise. With the work of the conference largely done, there is no reason to stay.

“I’ve contacted Greta about reopening the house,” Papa adds. I had not thought of the sweet-faced maid in months. With all of our moving about over the years, life sometimes seemed like a movie set, places and people ceasing to exist once we’d left them behind.

He could not have contacted Greta so quickly, I realize now. He must have done so even before the treaty terms were announced. Though he has spent a good deal of his time with the German delegation the past few weeks, his work at the ministry must have given him a strong indication that the end was near and it wasn’t good. This explains his troubled looks and his caution that I not become too invested in Georg’s work.

Home.
The idea prickles at me like a cactus. I knew that sometime this would have to end. Paris has been a buffer between me and the life that awaits. It could not go on forever. But Germany, with the political chaos and rioting, feels dark and dangerous, a country no longer our own. “Will it be safe for you in Berlin, with everything you’ve written?” I ask, recalling what Ignatz had said months earlier about Papa not using a pseudonym.

“I’m not worried,” he replies, stopping somewhere short of answering my question.

Krysia’s voice comes back to me:
Now or never.
“Papa...” I lick my lips, preparing to tell him that I’m not going back. “Remember when we spoke of my studying abroad? I’d like to go when we’ve finished here, perhaps back to London.”

“But with the war over, I thought you’d be eager to return.”

“It needn’t be a formal degree,” I offer, retreating. “Perhaps language classes.”

“But you can do that in Berlin.”

“It would be so much better to study in the native tongue.” Unable to lie to him anymore, I drop all pretense. “I need to see a bit of the world. I can’t go back. Not now.”

“But Stefan...” He stops as he grasps that my fiancé is the very reason I cannot go. I watch as he wrestles with the conflict. Papa is not a young man and his deepest desire is to have his only child settled and taken care of before he is gone. Not just for financial reasons—Uncle Walter would always make sure that I want for nothing. Rather, he wants me to have the companionship he has lacked since my mother died, to be with someone I love. But doesn’t he understand that there are worse things than being alone?