The Keeper of the Walls (28 page)

H
enri Verlon
, the future manager of the refinery in progress, was close to sixty, tall, slender, distinguished—a fine man, Misha and Prince Ivan had always thought. This was to be his last post before retirement. Prince Ivan had set aside for him the manager's house, surrounded by a small garden, which came free of rent; and he had promised him a monthly pension for the remainder of his life, so that he might retire in peace after a few years. He had declared himself extremely grateful; he loved the country; he would cultivate his garden and live out his last years in security.

But now he hardly looked distinguished and at peace. His gray hair looked disheveled, and his tie was loose below his Adam's apple. The terrain around the hastily put together office structure was loaded with bricks, metal frames, and glass. He waved at the tall heaps of materials, shaking his head; his blue eyes were rimmed with red. “It's all below par,” he murmured. “Every last brick.”

Misha stared across the yards of construction in progress, to the vast fields that seemed to stretch to the horizon—green, the grass blowing in the light breeze, and totally uncultivated. He could feel the blood stretching his arteries, and the perspiration pouring from his armpits. His stomach felt queasy. He turned to Claude, and asked: “Is Verlon correct, in your opinion?”

His brother-in-law was standing beside him, almost rigid in his pearl gray suit and neat, shining spats. An incongruously urban figure among country dust and rubble. He nodded. “I can't understand it,” he stated. “What I saw in Germany—what Rabinovitch sold me on the books—wasn't this at all.”

“Then you'll simply have to return to Germany, and confront the Rabinovitches, father and son. I'll send one of the firm's lawyers with you. I don't see how we'll make the harvest on time—and I want to sue the bastards for compensation.”

Claude uttered a short, mirthless bark of laughter. “Like the reparations France is still waiting for? You'll see, it won't work. The Germans have become very smart—especially the Jews. They're fighting for survival.”

Misha's eyes narrowed, and he said, quietly: “Brasilov Enterprises is fighting for survival, too. We're hanging on by a shoestring; each operation is dependent on the successful completion of the one before it. If one fails, the whole operations will come crashing down over our heads, like a house of dominoes.”

“That's ridiculous,” Claude answered. “We're the most successful firm in town.”

Henri Verlon stood staring at the two of them, and the breeze lifted a few strands of his gray hair, like the comb of a madman. In the growing dusk, he looked like a very old man.

L
ily hesitated
in front of the closed panel of oak, behind which she could hear somebody existing, working, getting up and walking in the room. She'd left the children at home after school, and had come here by bus, feeling like a guilty child doing something behind her parents' back. But the need that impelled her was so strong, that she felt drawn as by a magnet to the office beyond the door.

She raised her gloved hand, knocked—her heart beating very fast. A man's voice said: “Come in. Who is it?” Lily turned the knob and found herself face to face with Grand Rabbi Julien Weill, spectacles on his nose, writing on long sheets of paper at his desk. She felt herself blush. “Rabbi—”

“Liliane Brasilova—Claire's daughter,” he said, in his measured, educated voice. “Please—sit down.”

She sat. The small hat with its discreet feather felt tight over her pinned-up hair, and her shoes felt small. She was aware of her own awkwardness, of her height, of the way her hands were folded over her bag, as if clutching it for support. He smiled at her. He looked tired, drained. “We were reintroduced at Diane de Rothschild's wedding, last Wednesday. Although I'd have remembered you from Maryse's wedding, seven years ago. You're a striking young woman. How old are you now, may I ask?”

From anyone else, this would have seemed the epitome of rudeness. But she felt that he was reacting sympathetically, wanting to know his old friend's child. “I'm twenty-seven,” she answered.

“Claire and I have been friends for thirty-five years. She's a good woman: and an unusually strong one. She reminds me of those women in the Old Testament—Ruth, Esther—who were the mainstays of their families. I suppose you know that we go back a long way—or you wouldn't be here, would you?”

She smiled. She remembered looking at him curiously, at the Rothschild wedding. Hanging on to Misha's arm, but scouring the rooms for signs of Rabbi Weill. Odd how she'd been saving him for a last hope—as a last resort. Somehow she'd felt that he alone might understand—that he alone wouldn't judge her. He hadn't judged the mother—he wouldn't judge the daughter.

Diane de Rothschild came from one of the most important families of Paris. Her father, Robert, knew Misha; they had had some connections through the Bank of France. Unlike Maryse's wedding, this event had been a business necessity to attend, to see and be seen by
le tout-Paris.
Her mother had come, with Jacques, and Lily had tried to spend as little time with them as possible, sensing the danger of being in the same room with people who were sure to know that Jacques—Jacob, as Claire called him when Misha and Claude weren't there—was Jewish.

Diane had married Anatole Muhlstein, and the gifts had been displayed on five enormous counters, the jewels in a glass-paneled showcase: a diamond pendant, a crescent of rubies, a pearl necklace, a river of diamonds and a necklace of three emeralds. Lily had examined the gems as if she'd been in a museum, and remembered when she'd asked Misha if they were rich enough “never to feel to anything.” She understood now the difference between the inexhaustible fortune of the Rothschilds, and the small, new French wealth of her husband and father-in-law.

It was then that she'd made up her mind to come and see Rabbi Weill—as she knew that her mother had, some thirty-three years ago, when she'd found out she was pregnant. Now she said, softly: “I came here because of my trouble. I hope that you can hear me out. I know my mother's story—she told me everything, several years ago—before she married Jacques Walter. I know how much you helped her.”

“It was difficult to be of real help,” he said.

“When my mother told me, I was angry. I felt that she'd kept the truth from me, and betrayed my love. And also—I was angry because I was married to a man who . . . well . . . isn't particularly fond of the Jews. I was afraid he'd find out.”

“And would that be so terrible, Liliane?”

She leaned forward, her dark eyes wide with passion—fear? anger? he wasn't quite sure—and said: “He's a terrible man! Rabbi Weill . . . you probably think I'm overdramatizing. But, oh, God—four years ago, he did something dreadful, for which I've never been able to forgive him! I was pregnant, and hadn't told him yet. A friend of mine, a man, was visiting me, and . . . well, the conversation between us was actually quite innocent, we were discussing my mother and Jacques . . . but Misha overheard some words that made him believe that this man and I had been having a love affair. And so he took me to a woman ... an
abortionist
. . . to force me to end my pregnancy. He was sure that I'd betrayed him and that my friend was really the father.”

Rabbi Weill removed his spectacles, and carefully wiped the lenses with his handkerchief. Then he looked at her. “And? What did you do?”

She didn't look away, but whispered, with an emotion that seemed to reverberate through the room, like a sound: “I went ahead with it.” And she sat back, waiting.

He slipped the glasses back over his ears and nose, and folded his hands together over the blotter on his desk. Still the dark eyes were on him, measuring him, testing the ground. He said: “How did you feel, Liliane?”

“How do you suppose I felt, Rabbi? I had committed what, in my religion, was a cardinal sin. I'd done something which I condemned with all my heart—against which I rebelled with all my soul. Yet I'd let him do it, because—because I was afraid I'd lose my other children.”

“You're not saying that you did it because you loved him.”

She said, hotly:
“Loved
him? Rabbi Weill—at that moment I hated Mikhail Brasilov. I wanted
him
dead—not the baby.”

Again the eyes were glued to him. He smiled a little. “You are expecting me to be shocked. I'm not. Life—and the actions of human beings—no longer shock me, my dear. Your husband behaved the way children do when they are at their most cruel—and yet, I suppose he did it as a soul in pain. Afterward—what happened?”

He examined the upturned face, its skin white with tension, tension lines also around her lips and eyes. “Afterward, I felt as though I'd lost my life. I was a devout Catholic until that moment—but the priest refused me absolution. I have no church anymore. My husband killed the child inside me, and took away my salvation. Now I just live out the days. And he? He's continued as if nothing had ever happened. We've never discussed any part of it.”

Rabbi Weill cleared his throat. “Well,” he stated. “That's quite a story. You're Claire's daughter, all right. But if you have come here, it's for a reason. Tell me, Liliane, why you have confided in
me,
a relative stranger.”

She said, her voice shaking a little: “I told you, I am no longer a Catholic. Not because I renounced my faith, but because my church no longer wanted
me.
But you see, Rabbi—I need faith. I need a religion. And I could never return to Catholicism. I came to confess, with a full heart; and the priest condemned me, without trying to hear my side of the story—without even asking if there was one. I am so alone, without spiritual guidance; I can't survive like this, in this dry desert, with no God to pray to.”

“And so you thought that you would find out about your mother's religion.”

She nodded. “Mama is so full of love for the Jewish faith. Yet, I know almost nothing about it. After she told me her story, I began to feel a connection with other Jews—but in my heart, in my worship, I remained a Catholic. Now, because of what happened, I want to know more about this religion. My grandparents were Jews—all my mother's family. I remember my grandpa: he was one of the kindest, gentlest men I ever met. Like an older, much older version of Wolf Steiner.”

“Don't make a grave mistake, Liliane. Judaism is a creed—a way of worship. It doesn't make people good, or bad. That's up to them.”

“The confessor told me the same thing. That God gave us free choice. But why is it that
you‘ve
listened to me—that
you
haven't thrown me out? You're a better man, Rabbi. Maybe the Jewish religion allows people to be more human . . . less perfect.”

“I would say that this depends on the particular rabbi whom you are addressing. I've known intransigent rabbis who go entirely by the book—like some of the Catholic fathers. I've always believed that you have to see the wonder in every human being—in every one of God's creatures. I'm far from perfect, and I can't expect anybody else to be, either. But I love my God, and I love my religion. If you want, Liliane, you can come here every Thursday afternoon, and I shall try to teach you something about Judaism. Then, when you know enough, you'll be free to choose for yourself.”

His face was now lined with a beautiful, open smile. “The Jews are not evangelists,” he said. “We are even against the conversion of those of other faiths. We simply try to hang on to our own.”

“But in a sense, I
am
one of those,” she murmured.

He nodded, slowly. “I suppose you are. In the Jewish religion, it's the mother's faith that counts. Claire was Jewish—and so you are, too—and your children. Even if they don't know it.”

She stood up, went across the room to shake his hand. He pressed hers between both of his. “Don't be afraid,” he said softly.

“But Rabbi—you mustn't tell anyone.”

He patted her gloved hand. “I know. After a while, when you know something about us, you may feel that you no longer wish to live in hiding. For Claire, this was the hardest thing in the world, and now, with Jacob, she feels a sense of release that's made her younger and much happier.”

In the street, a wind had started, lifting Lily's veil above her head. She looked around her, as if to check for familiar presences in the shadows. Nobody stopped her. She walked to the bus stop, suddenly free, suddenly happy. Somehow, she knew she had made a step in the right direction. Whichever way it turned out for her, this was the first time in four years she'd had the courage to speak, to unburden herself.

She let herself into the house, checking the time to make sure Misha hadn't yet come home. And then she remembered: He was in the Aisne, because of some problem. She was alone with her children, with the servants. Taking off her suit in her boudoir, she thought about the Lindbergh child, gone about nine weeks, and tried to imagine his parents' anguish. If anybody ever tried to kidnap Kira, or her beloved Nicky—she couldn't pursue the thought. But she realized that, in spite of everything, those two live children still bound her to Misha—that neither she nor her husband would ever be willing to relinquish them.