The Ambassador's Daughter (21 page)

“You don’t like him,” I say to Krysia, dejected.

She shrugs. “I’m happy for you. It is good to see you wanting something—fighting for something—instead of letting life drag you along. But no, I don’t like him. He’s the enemy.” There is a bitterness in her voice that I have never heard before.

“He’s a German. Am I the enemy, too?” I feel again in that moment the gulfs of anger and hate that the war has sown, even in educated and worldly people such as she, pain too fresh for an armistice paper and a few months’ passage of time to heal. “Don’t you see, if we hate just because of where we come from, we’re no better than the fools who started the war in the first place?”

She does not answer but continues driving. I gaze up at the sky, which is clear, but over the horizon to the west, dark gray clouds are forming. “Krysia, do you believe in fate?”

“You obviously do.”

Suddenly it seems as though all my life I have been searching for the right answers, some hidden script I was supposed to follow without anyone actually giving it to me. Even my little rebellions, studying English instead of Latin, music instead of art, had been well planned and designed in some way to show that my choices were the right ones. “I think there has to be some kind of order, a path.”

But she shakes her head slightly. “I don’t. We each have free will. There may be higher purpose, but the actual path each of us takes to get there, and whether we choose to accept it at all, is up to us.” She turns to me. “If you can’t let go of that fear of making the wrong decision, you will never be able to take the chances you must take to live life fully.” She looks back at the road.

I consider this for the first time. I find romantic the notion that there is a purpose to it all, something that we are intended to do, a path—perhaps not unlike the people who preferred the firm constructs of the good old days. But as Krysia says—we each can choose our way. If it was all preordained and we stepped off, then what would happen? “People make choices every day,” I say, musing aloud. “Turn right or left...”

“Follow someone out of a party or not...” she chides.

I ignore the joke, nursing the more serious line of inquiry. “And things would be very different if they did not.”

“You have a choice. But you have to seize the moment or it may not come again. It is, as they say, now or never.”

“But those choices have consequences,” I counter, and with that she cannot argue. I could refuse to go back to Berlin, but so many people would be hurt—Stefan, for whom all hope would be lost, and Papa, too.

“I just want to go back to the way things were.” But even as I speak the words I am not sure what I mean by them. Back to where? Life in Berlin with Stefan will never feel the same as it once has. London, our temporary stay among the enemy, was not the answer, either. I suppose I mean to some nameless place in time where it is just Papa and I with our books, but that place does not exist in a vacuum. There are others—Celia and Krysia and, yes, Georg.

“There is no back,” she says gently. “We must forge on.”

I nod. I’ve been a prisoner not of Papa’s expectations or of Stefan, but of my own fears all of these years. “And speaking of forging on, what are you going to do about Ignatz?”

“I don’t know.” If I don’t get the papers from Georg, Papa will be discredited. I am caught between the two men I care most about. “Talk to him, see if we can figure something out.” I cannot keep running from Ignatz.

“I will take you to him.” At the roundabout, she exits on a different road, heading to the northern edge of Paris. We reach the city limits and she continues in the direction of Montmartre, the motorcar engine struggling to ascend the steep hills. The neighborhood is ragtag, empty buildings and littered steps. “The artists used to live here before the center shifted to Montparnasse,” she explains. She stops the car in front of a dilapidated building. “Stein lives on the first floor.” I wait for her to offer to go with me but she does not.

The door to the apartment building is ajar so I enter and climb wood stairs so rickety I fear they will fall through. At the top, I knock.
“Da?”
Stein’s voice calls and a moment later he throws open the door wearing only an undershirt and trousers. Behind him the flat is a cavernous space, open and bare, perhaps once an artist’s studio. A woman I recognize from the bar sprawls in a chaise longue, clad in a dressing gown. I comprehend then just how far from my world I have come.

His bushy eyebrows pull together in a single scraggly line. “You! Do you have what I want?”

I swallow. “Not exactly. That is, I found it—it was a map and it showed markings at some of the eastern cities....” I falter, unable to convey the significance of what I had seen.

He rubs his hands together. “Perfect. Where is it?”

“I lost it. That is, I got the document but then it disappeared and...”

“Idiot!” Swift as a cat, he grabs me by the wrist and pulls me close. I cry out as great waves of pain shoot down my arm. I have never been struck, even lightly. Papa did not believe in spankings, despite admonitions from Uncle Walter and others that he would spoil me. It is the first time I have ever felt pain at the hands of another and I am frozen, unable to react. “Do you think I care about your excuses?” His breath is foul with vodka and smoke.

I pull away, stifling a cry at the burning of my skin as I wrest myself from his grasp. “How dare you?” I say, trying without success to keep the tremor from my voice. “I could have you arrested.” I realize my mistake as soon as I have spoken. Threats will only feed his anger.

“Ignatz...” Before he can respond the woman from inside the apartment beckons.

“Three days,” he hisses. “You have three days to get me what I want.” He slams the apartment door, leaving me standing in the hallway, shaken.

I walk down the stairs and climb into the car. Krysia does not ask how it went and I do not offer. Instead, we drive silently into the night.

Chapter 11

Papa is at his desk when I return, trying to read with the lamp turned down too low. That morning when I’d returned from Krysia’s to wash and change, the apartment had been neater than I remembered leaving it, as if the maid had come on the wrong day. Now, it is a sea of strewn papers once more.

We eye each other warily. “I’m sorry,” I say quickly, forgoing my usual stubbornness. I have no energy to argue after my day at the battlefields and confrontation with Ignatz.

Relief floods his face. He does not wish to continue our quarrel, either. “As am I. I just worry about you.”

“I’m going to keep working for him, Papa,” I say, struggling not to waver, to keep my voice clear and calm. I have never dared to defy my father like this and I can hardly believe my own resolve. Alienating him and leaving for good is unthinkable. But on this point I stand firm. “The work we are doing is important and it matters for the delegation and for the conference and for Germany.”

His mustache pulls downward as he bites his lip, unable to disagree. “I understand, but I’m worried,
liebchen
. You seem to be attached to Captain Richwalder in a very strong way. This is not the time for complicated alliances,” he adds, before I can protest. More so than fretting about propriety, Papa is concerned about me. He does not want me to get hurt. I should not be surprised—he has always put me first. But there is something more urgent about his worry this time, as if he is standing above me on a ladder, able to see things in a way that I can’t.

“And then there is Stefan,” he adds. “He’s a good man and he cares for you deeply. He’s sacrificed much.”
I’m your daughter,
I want to say.
My happiness should be what matters.
But to say this would be to admit that my happiness lies with Georg, not Stefan, and how could I tell him that? “Your well-being is everything to me,” Papa says, reading my thoughts. “I only wish...”

That the things that make me happy and the things that are good for me were one and the same. “I know.” I raise my hand, warding off a return to the debate. “I went to Reims with Krysia today to see the battlefields.”

He nods. “I saw your note that you’d gone somewhere.”

“Do you mind?”

“To the contrary. I’m glad. I’ve been so busy with the conference, but it’s no excuse. We’ve been remiss in not going and reminding ourselves of the very reason that we are here.”

“I had no idea about the extent of the devastation. You had not told me.”

“With Stefan fighting, I thought it might be too much. Sometimes I forget that you are not a child.” He had been trying to shield my innocence. Still, I am frustrated by his hypocrisy—wanting me to be educated but not aware, teaching me to be curious and yet sheltering me from the truth.

“I was thinking of dinner in the city on Saturday, you, me and Celia,” he says, changing the subject. There is a moment of uncomfortable silence between us. While I appreciate his need for her companionship, I have always resisted his attempts to bring Tante Celia closer into our circle. The last thing I want to do right now is sit down at a formal meal with the two of them. But he has conceded to my continuing work with Georg. And seeing the hope in his eyes, I cannot refuse. I smile. “Certainly, Papa.”

Our conversation over, I walk to my room and change into my nightgown. Brushing my hair, I go to the window. It is raining now, thick round drops slapping against the window. My gaze travels down the street toward the hotel. I’d wanted to check on Georg, but the late hour, on top of Papa’s forbidding me to go there, had stopped me. I undress and climb into bed, then lie awake in the darkness.

My thoughts roll back unexpectedly to the day Mother died. I came home from school that afternoon like any other. We’d been painting with watercolors and I’d done a scene of our garden I thought my mother might enjoy for her study. That the house was quiet was nothing new—she was often in her own quarters, napping or reading. I made myself a snack of cheese and crackers like I’d been taught, started on my homework. Twenty minutes passed, then thirty.

Finally the door to the kitchen opened but it was Papa who stepped through. This was not unusual, either—he sometimes worked in his home study. But his sleeves were rolled up and his hair disheveled in a way I never saw unless I caught him on the way to the water closet in the middle of the night. “Mama’s gone,” he said in a hoarse whisper and I thought he meant to the market or tea with a friend, though she had none of whom I knew. Seeing the faint red half circles around his lower eyelids like makeup in a play, I understood then that he meant dead. He had always tried to shield me from the worst, then as well as now.

A noise at the window pulls me from my memories. I push back the covers and as I walk to it, puzzled, the sound comes again, a pebble grazing the glass.

Georg stands on the pavement below, head tilted upward, face illuminated in the moonlight. “What are you doing here?” He does not answer. My stomach gives a little skip. But his standing on the street beneath my window is sure to attract attention. Suddenly I am mindful of my nightgown. “Can you wait a moment? I will be right down.”

Quickly I dress and walk through the apartment to the front door. “Is someone here?” Papa calls from his desk.

Unable to bear the questions the truth would bring, I pretend not to hear him. Downstairs, I open the door. “Hello, Margot,” Georg says, as though it were perfectly normal for us to meet like this. His eyes reflect like dark pools.

“Are you mad? You should be in bed.” Behind him, raindrops lingering from the storm that has just ended fall from the eaves, the dripping sound rhythmic.

He shrugs. “I’m better now.” I want to protest that he cannot possibly have recovered so quickly. His color is restored, though, and his face clear but for the faint half circles beneath his eyes. It is as if he has shrugged off serious illness like a bothersome cloak.

I’ve missed him, I realize, as a faint hint of his aftershave drifts beneath my nose. The past two nights apart have seemed so much longer. Then, remembering the missing document, I am flooded with panic. Perhaps he has noticed and that is why he is here.

“When you didn’t come...” He falters. “I was worried.”

I slump with relief, then hope he has not noticed. “I sent word.” My note had only indicated I’d be gone the previous night, though, not tonight, as well. “I meant to return the papers today. I can get them right now if you need them.”

“It isn’t that. Rather, I wanted to know why you had not come.”

Tante Celia appears behind him unexpectedly in the doorway. “Oh!” she says, mouth agape at the sight of the tall, handsome officer. I stare at her, equally surprised. Though I’ve long been aware of her slipping into the apartment to see Papa, this is the first time we’ve encountered each other at such a late hour of the night, when there is no respectable explanation for her appearance.

“Excuse me,” Georg says, moving aside to let her in.

Celia steps around him, forgetting to leave her wet parasol outside. Then she turns to me. “Margot?” We stare at each other awkwardly.

“Tante Celia, may I introduce Captain Georg Richwalder? Georg, this is my...” I hesitate, considering a more explicit introduction, then decide against it. “This is my aunt.”

He shifts his hat to his left arm and extends his right, kissing Tante Celia’s hand as though we are at a ball and not the front door at a wholly improper hour of the night. “A pleasure.”

Her eyes travel from him to me and there is a moment of interminable silence, broken only by the drops falling from her umbrella to the marble floor. “I’ve heard so much about you,” she says slowly. She could tell Georg about my engagement to Stefan. I hold my breath, waiting for the next drop to fall.

Upstairs Papa coughs. “I should go,” she says, walking past us.

“I shouldn’t be here unannounced at this hour,” Georg frets when she has gone. “Only I saw these...” I notice then his hat is full of flowers, still wet from the storm. “Honeysuckle. You mentioned you like it and these are the first I’ve seen of the season. They’ve just begun to blossom,” he adds, his eyes hopeful as a child’s.