Chapter Fourteen Hannah
December 1951
Outside Cairo, Egypt
Inside the car, hurtling down the highway, they might have been traveling at any speed at all. Hannah had to check the dial between the prongs of the steering wheel to see that Lucien was pushing the Mercedes-Benz to nearly a hundred miles an hour.
Lucien glanced at her and smiled. “Afraid?”
“Just curious. Nothing really frightens me anymore. If I die, I die.”
“But I would rather you didn’t die, sweetheart.”
“Don’t call me that. I’m not your sweetheart.”
Lucien reached in his pocket and drew out a cigarette case. With his thumb he sprang it open and offered the contents to her. She selected a cigarette and stuck it in her mouth while he lit her up, then himself, as he directed the Mercedes-Benz down the strip of asphalt at a hundred miles an hour with one hand on the wheel.
“I have a question for you, Hannah,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“If you’re not my sweetheart, then whose sweetheart are you?”
Hannah turned her head to stare at the fields rushing past, the fertile Nile delta that spun outside the window. She thought of János, bending the Daimler around the hairpin curves of Capri. Her heart choked her. She couldn’t breathe. She reached across the seat and pulled Lucien’s shirt from the waistband of his trousers. He looked at her in shock, then back to the road, then down to her hand, unfastening his trousers. Back to the road while she eased his penis free from the layers of trouser and shirt.
He remained silent as she worked him with her mouth and tongue, except for these little sighs that escaped his lungs, almost of pain. The car roared happily along the road. When his balls tightened, he murmured, Hannah, I’m going to come, and pulled to the shoulder of the road. The car skidded to a stop in the gravel and he slid both hands into her hair and shouted her name.
What had surprised Hannah most, as she rode home from that first encounter at Shepheard’s Hotel six weeks ago, was how little guilt she felt. Oh, there was some guilt, naturally. She wasn’t inhuman. A pod of unease lay inside her conscience somewhere, small and humble as a peanut.
But the guilt was nothing compared to the exhilaration.
Three times she had committed adultery with Lucien Beck. First on the bed, amazed at her own audacity, at his nakedness, at the way they remained linked after the act of intercourse itself was over—Lucien lying against her breasts, inside her body, for so long that (in the daze of aftermath) she feared they might have died together at the instant of climax and were now bound for eternity. Then, returning to life, they’d fucked each other all around the room (the wall, the rug, the edge of the bed, the armchair, and so on), goaded each other into acts of shocking indecency, on and on, an orgy of two, until they were both sapped dry, sprawled on the bed, incapable of thought or movement. And finally—this was the exhilarating part, the evidence of kismet—after some rest and a tray of food from the kitchen, they could still summon the vigor for a quick, desperate, half-dressed farewell screw against the bedpost.
Hannah’s legs ached, her head rang with fatigue, her womb brimmed over with what she had come for, and all she wanted was more.
When she’d stolen at last into the marital apartment, Alistair was still asleep. He had rolled onto his stomach in bed and the rising sun struck the back of his head, turning the silver hairs a brilliant rosy gold. She went back into the drawing room and rang up the Shepheard’s Hotel switchboard. In a minute Lucien came on the line.
Hannah, he said. (Not a question.)
I’ll be in the main salon this afternoon at teatime, she told him.
The Cecil Hotel reminded Hannah of a palace. Grand pediments and flourishes of stonework. Nearby, the sea beat against the esplanade. The air was gentle and smelled of brine. She stood by the swooping wheel well of the Mercedes-Benz as Lucien spoke to the porter about their luggage, and in her head there shimmered a grand house of pale stone, a green forest, a long gravel drive, a fountain with nymphs.
What do you think? (János’s voice.)
It’s like a dream. (Her voice.) A fairy tale.
(His laugh.) Wait until the pipes freeze in winter.
“Second thoughts?” said Lucien, at her shoulder.
She hooked her arm around his elbow. “Of course not.”
Like any respectable couple, they crossed the grand marble lobby arm in arm. Hannah felt some irrational terror that someone would see them, some acquaintance, but who came to the great seaside hotels of Alexandria in December? Nobody she knew, and she knew so few people anyway. Lucien strolled confidently by her side, as if he did this all the time. Probably he did.
What had Mrs. Beverley told her? About Lucien and Helen Hill?
They were lovers. People say.
They reached the front desk and Lucien gave the clerk their names, Mr. and Mrs. Beck, checking in until Wednesday. On Friday Alistair returned from his conference in Rome, and Hannah wanted a little space between her dirty rendezvous with her lover and the arrival of her husband. To wash and to think.
When the clerk turned to select the key from the board behind him, Hannah said, “Are you sleeping with Helen Hill?”
He hesitated only an instant. “Not at present, no.”
“Did you ever take her here?”
“Of course not.”
“Good,” she said.
The clerk stepped forward with the key. As Lucien reached to accept it, Hannah could have sworn he was smiling.
Inside the suite Lucien had reserved for them, a bottle of champagne chilled in a bucket and dinner lay piping under a pair of silver domes. They ate first, talked about German music, undressed piece by piece, bathed in the large tub. Lucien took his time making love to her. Afterward, he cradled her while they passed a cigarette back and forth.
“I think Alistair suspects something,” she said.
“I shouldn’t be surprised. You look unmistakably like a woman who’s having an affair.”
“When he left for Rome, he said he imagined I would amuse myself while he was gone.”
Lucien laughed. “My God, the English. Does he know it’s me?”
“Probably. He doesn’t seem to care, however.” She sucked on the cigarette and handed it back to him. “You’ve heard nothing more about Ismailia, have you?”
“No. Have you?”
“Not a word. As if it never happened. Nobody mentions it, not even Alistair. I wonder why.”
“Bad form, I suppose.”
She rolled onto his chest, belly to belly. “Or someone’s found a way to keep things quiet.”
“Me?”
“You have your secrets, don’t you?” When he opened his mouth to reply, she laid her finger over his lips. “Don’t tell me. There’s no need. I would rather you said nothing than something that isn’t true.”
“And yet you lie to me all the time.”
“Is that so?”
He reached to crush out the cigarette in the ashtray and gathered her hips in his hands. “You say to me, I’m not your sweetheart, Lucien. I don’t give a damn about you, I only want a nice fuck from you, a baby from you.”
“That’s the truth.”
He turned her on her back and slid into her. She sucked in her breath. “Tell me something,” he said, in a voice that was halfway to a growl. “What happens when you get what you want from me? Do we stop meeting like this?”
Hannah groaned and wriggled her hips to work him deeper. She slung her arms around his neck and pulled him down to kiss him.
“What happens, Hannah? Do you go to this husband of yours and say, it’s a miracle, my pet, you’re going to be a father at last? Does he take you in his arms and thank God for giving him an heir?”
As he spoke, he thrust into her—long, imperative strokes that made her shout in the back of her throat. She raised her knees and dug her heels into the backs of his legs.
Lucien lifted himself on his palms. His face was dark and furious. “What about me, Hannah? Do I send you back to him, carrying my child, for him to raise as his own?”
Hannah reached to her sides and grabbed his wrists. Together they rolled like a pair of tigers, fighting and clawing. He flipped her onto her stomach. She reared up behind and he took her by the hips.
“This means nothing, does it?”
“Nothing!”
“Like animals? Mating?”
“Yes!” she said. “Yes!”
He pounded her without pity. When release delivered her, she collapsed, a limp doll. They sprawled in a hopeless tangle, panting. He pulled back her hair and bit her neck. You love me, he said. He was still inside her. She felt him softening, spent at last. His heart thundered against her spine. The sweat dried into a plaster that stuck her skin to his. His spread hand covered her belly.
She fell asleep thinking, I would die for this.
Hannah woke alone in the middle of the morning. The champagne and the supper had been cleared away; the curtains were shut tight, though a finger of vivid light betrayed the hour. On the nightstand lay a note. Gone for a walk. Order breakfast. L
She rose from the bed and walked on rubbery legs to the bathroom. It was white and modern, flooded with sunshine. From the window she glimpsed a corner of the sea. In the mirror she stared at her belly, her breasts. She cupped them with her hands. A little sore, a touch swollen. Had he noticed?
She ran the taps in the bathtub and washed herself thoroughly. When she’d dressed, she went downstairs to the restaurant and told the ma?tre d’ that her husband would be joining her shortly for breakfast. The waiter brought her some toast and a pot of fragrant coffee. She had just stirred in the sugar when a voice startledher.
“Why, Countess Vécsey!”
The spoon dropped from Hannah’s fingers. She looked up, half rising from her chair. Her body had some idea she should flee.
A woman stood before the table—tall, slight, fashionably dressed. Short dark hair curled beneath a chic hat; an expression of shock and delight on her pale face, her red mouth. She continued in Hungarian, “But what are you doing here in Alexandria? Safe and sound? I thought you were dead!”
A movement caught Hannah’s eye. She looked to the restaurant entrance, where Lucien Beck had just appeared, scanning the tables in search of her. The light gleamed on his hair.
“I’m sorry,” she said to the woman standing before her. “I’m afraid you have mistaken me for somebody else.”
“Tell me about this woman at breakfast,” said Lucien. “The one you were speaking to when I arrived.”
They were walking along the esplanade. To the left, a stiff north wind propelled the sea onto the rocks. A flock of gulls shrieked overhead.
“Just a woman who mistook me for somebody.”
Lucien stopped and turned to lean his elbows on the railing. His eyes narrowed against the wind. “You said only truth between us, Hannah.”
“But I told you—”
“You were both speaking Hungarian.”
She stared at the brim of his gray hat, the clean line of his suit along his shoulder. “Where did you go walking this morning?” she asked him. “How do you find all this money for fancy hotels and champagne to shower on your mistress?”
He turned his head to smile at her. “Are you my mistress?”
“I respect your secrets, that’s all. I don’t ask questions. My dominion extends to your bed and no further.”
“So who is this woman?” he asked again.
“Why do you care so much?”
“Because she upset you. Anything that upsets you concerns me.”
Hannah sighed and joined him along the rail. “Her name is Irina Esterhazy. She was a friend of my husband’s, before he met me. We were in Budapest together at the end of the war.”
“And why did you pretend not to know her?”
“Because she’s trouble. First she fought the fascists, then she fought the Soviets.”
“A true Hungarian patriot, then?”
“Something like that. Do you have a cigarette?”
He lit one for her, then himself. “Now, then. To answer your questions, I went for a long walk this morning—along this very esplanade, in fact—in order to clear my head.”
“Clear your head of what?”
He examined the end of his cigarette, as if he might find the words there. “Of you. As for the expense, why, I’m a frugal man. Most of my salary goes straight to the bank to brood by itself. Why not liberate a little of this savings to spend on my mistress? It’s the least I can do for her.”
“You’re too sentimental, Lucien. One would think you’d never done this before.”
“I have never done this before,” he said.
“What do you mean, this? Whisk your lover away for the weekend? I find that hard to believe.”
Lucien turned toward her and leaned his elbow on the railing, smoking pensively. “How does this end, Hannah?”
“How does any love affair end? Tell me, I’m curious to know.”
“You don’t give a damn for Ainsworth. Why remain married to him?”
“To give my child a name.”
“What about my name?”
She laughed. “You can’t be serious.”
“Am I not rich enough for you? Not important enough?”
She stared at his strained face and swallowed back some pain that was gathering at the back of her throat.
“Exactly,” she said. “I simply can’t imagine divorcing my important husband for the assistant manager of Shepheard’s Hotel.”
Lucien took a last drag of his cigarette and tossed the stub on the wet rocks. “Tell me something else. What are they discussing in Rome, Hannah?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“Curiosity. Your husband is a personal friend of Eden, isn’t that right? He must be privy to some interesting knowledge.”
“Do you want me to find out for you?”
“Would you do such a thing?”
She shrugged. “It’s the least I can do for my lover. Why shouldn’t you Egyptians have your country to yourself?”
“Indeed,” he said.
They looked at each other, an exchange of confidence. The cigarette scorched quietly between Hannah’s fingers. She thought her heart might shatter her chest.
Lucien lifted his arm and caressed the ridge of her cheekbone with his thumb. “I want you to meet someone,” he said.
The apartment was spacious and shabby, on the third floor of a building that wore the dignified air of former grandeur. It was like an apartment you might find in Vienna before the war, Hannah thought, or maybe Paris. A dark-haired woman answered the door and led them through an entrance hall tiled in chipped mosaic to a sitting room where a woman of about fifty sat at a desk near the window, writing on a piece of paper with a fountain pen of black enamel. When she looked up and saw them, her face lifted. She laid down the pen, rose from the chair, and held out both hands.
“Lucien,” she said in French, “what a happy surprise.”
He took her hands and kissed each cheek. “Mama. How are you feeling?”
“Better, better. The cough is almost gone. But you’ve brought a guest.”
“Yes, Mama.” He turned to Hannah and beckoned her closer. “I want to introduce to you a friend of mine. Mrs. Ainsworth.”
Lucien’s mother extended a spidery hand. “Mrs. Ainsworth. I am enchanted to make your acquaintance.”
“And I yours,” said Hannah.
A fragile, delicate beauty still clung to her. Her dark hair was shot with silver, cut short to curl around her ears; her eyes were an intriguing green, a little darker than Lucien’s, large and hooded. They fixed on Hannah’s face with sharp curiosity.
“May I offer you some tea, perhaps?” she asked.
Over tea and marzipan, Madame Suarez (this was the name she gave to Hannah) was frank. “I fell desperately in love at a rash age,” she said, shrugging her shoulders in a way that reminded Hannah of a Frenchwoman she had once known, as if to say, What else can one do, when one falls desperately in love? “I don’t recommend it, except that I had this beautiful boy.” She nodded to Lucien.
“What about your family?” asked Hannah. “What did your parents think?”
“My parents disowned me, naturally. A married Swiss, twenty years older than me! I was only just out of school. I was supposed to make a respectable match. Well, I wasn’t especially pleased with the respectable match they found for me.”
“An arranged marriage? I thought that kind of thing belonged to another age.”
Madame Suarez glanced at Lucien and smiled. “My family belonged to a certain tradition. To marry outside this tradition—to have a child outside this tradition—to them, it was the same as if you had died.”
“I think Mr. Beck acted badly,” said Hannah. “To take advantage of a sheltered girl, when he was already married.”
Madame Suarez shrugged this away too. “His marriage was not a happy one. And he took good care of us. Didn’t he, my dear? He provided generously. Saw to the children’s education.”
Hannah looked at Lucien, who nodded toward a framed photograph on the lamp table next to his shoulder.
“My sister,” he said. “She lives abroad with her husband and children.”
Madame Suarez brushed the crumbs from her lap. “So you see, it has all worked out in the end.”
“Are you furious with me?” Lucien asked.
They were walking back to the hotel. The sky had cleared and the Mediterranean sun soaked them with an unexpected warmth.
“It was an infamous ambush,” she said, “but a pleasant afternoon nonetheless. I like your mother.”
“So do I.”
“Did she ever reconcile with her family?”
“I’m afraid not. I understand they don’t speak her name, even now.”
“Do you mean to say you’ve never met them?”
“Never.” He took her hand. “Her people came to Egypt from Spain, in the sixteenth century. Forced out by the Inquisition.”
Hannah stopped and turned to him. “They were heretics?”
“You might say that.”
The realization hit her like a blow to the head. “They were Jews.”
“Yes. Are you shocked?”
“You never hinted.”
“It’s not something you go about proclaiming, these days,” he said. “Only to people you trust.”
“I see.”
“Does it matter to you?”
He was studying her now. His brows were drawn over the bridge of his nose, his eyes worried.
“It doesn’t matter to me at all,” she said.
Lucien captured her hand and kissed it, then he bent to kiss her mouth. His lips were warm and gentle; his tongue tasted of tea. When he lifted his head, his green eyes caressed her. He tugged at her hand. “Come along. Let’s return to the hotel.”
On the road back to Cairo, two days later, Lucien drove at a stately pace. Hannah curled on the seat and burrowed into his side. From time to time, she dozed. The smell of Lucien’s clothes made her drowsy; his fingers idled in her hair.
“What are you thinking, sweetheart?” he asked, above the purr of the engine.
“Nothing,” she said. Then—“What a brute you are.”
Lucien leaned down and kissed the top of her head.
About a mile from home, he pulled to the side of the road and eased her up to a sitting position. “Time to get in back,” he said. That was how she had climbed into the car three days ago, when he’d stopped outside the apartment building—into the back seat, as if he were her chauffeur.
It was dark and the car sat in the void between two streetlights. She saw his brow, the ink of his hair, a tiny dot of reflected light where his right eye should be. She wanted to say, Take me somewhere else, anywhere else, just take me! Or else, Come inside with me instead, Alistair won’t be back until tomorrow.
Or—I believe I’m carrying your child, let’s run away together.
“Kiss me goodbye, then,” she told him.
Obediently he leaned forward and kissed her.
“You’ll speak to your husband, remember? About Rome.”
“Ah, that.”
“If you’d rather not—”
“Don’t worry, you’ll have what you need.”
“It might be dangerous. If he figures out what you’re doing.”
“I have a pistol.”
“You would shoot a man? Your husband?”
She shrugged. “If I had to.”
He searched her face through the dark air and cupped her cheek. “When did you learn to shoot a gun, Hannah?”
“There was a war, Lucien. Everybody knew how to shoot a gun.”
“Did you ever fire one? Kill a man?”
The words were so gentle, innocent almost. Picking at the seams of her memory. Kill a man. She wanted to laugh, she wanted to weep. She took his hand and drew it away.
“Yes,” she said. “I have killed men before.”
One morning in the winter of 1941, János came to find Hannah in the study, where she played with little Míklos on the rug before the fire. He was dressed for the outdoors in an old wool jacket and tall leather boots. Míklos shrieked with delight at the sight of his father and scrambled to his feet, arms straining upward. János swept him high in the air and loudly kissed his stomach and each pink cheek. Míklos clung to him like a bug. János met Hannah’s gaze over the shoulder of their son.
“Let’s go for a walk,” he said.
Hannah looked at her old nanny, Sofia, who had raised her after her mother died and who now sat on the sofa with her sewing basket. She had come to the country with them to help with the new baby, due any day. “Go ahead,” she said to Hannah. “I’ll watch Miko. You two could use some fresh air.”
Outside, the weather had finally cleared after a blizzard of two days, and the air was so clear and cold it hurt her lungs when she drew it in. They tramped silently across the meadow toward the narrow strip of woods that rimmed the hayfields. János carried a shotgun in the crook of his arm; across his back hung a rucksack of old green canvas. As they wallowed through the snowdrifts, he caught her elbow from time to time to make sure she had her footing. The clouds of her breath sometimes mingled with the clouds of his breath.
When they reached the woods, János stopped and offered her a drink from a flask that turned out to be coffee, still hot. “Hannah,” he said, “have you ever fired a gun?”
“No, never.”
“You should learn.”
He fixed his eyes on hers when he said this. His cheeks were red; his nose was red. He had rested one boot on a fallen log, and the shotgun in the crook of his arm looked as if it had grown there like another limb.
“Because of the war, you mean,” she said. “Because Hungary has joined the Axis.”
“Yes,” he said.
They spent the rest of the morning in the hayfield, where János taught her the fundamentals of cleaning and loading the shotgun, then how to aim and shoot a target. At first he stood behind her and showed her how to hold the weapon—one hand on her right arm and one hand on her left, instructions murmured into the well of her ear. Once she got the hang of things, he stood back and let her fend for herself. After about an hour he nodded with satisfaction and propped the shotgun against a tree.
“Now we will try the pistol,” he said, drawing it from his rucksack.
On the way home, they trudged more slowly. The estate had come to János from his grandmother, who’d died the previous year, and the main house dated back some three hundred years. Sofia complained about the shabby furnishings and primordial plumbing, the miles of road between the family and any neighbors, but Hannah didn’t mind. White-gray smoke curled from two of the several chimneys. János paused to light a cigarette.
“Do you want to go to war?” she asked him.
He sucked on the cigarette. “It doesn’t matter if I do or not. I don’t have a choice.”
“What about Hungary? Don’t you want to fight for our country?”
“To defend my country, yes. But we are not under attack, are we?”
“We’re afraid of Germany,” she said. “They say jump, and we jump.”
“You’d have the nerve to stand up to the Nazis?”
“If I had to,” she said passionately.
János’s breath emptied his lungs as he labored through the snow. “Yes,” he said, after a moment, “I believe you would.”
“Besides, this makes us the enemies of the Soviets.”
“Yes, that’s the trouble, isn’t it? Stuck between the two tyrants. Between the rock of fascism and the hard place of communism. A man is seldom lucky enough to fight for what he believes in. He just fights to stay alive.” János stopped and turned to her. He had grown a beard over the Christmas season and his brown eyes stood out from this frame of bristling dark hair and pale skin, a little bloodshot at the corners. He took the cigarette from his mouth. “Listen to me, Hannah. You know why I’ve taken you out here this day, don’t you? When you’re so big with child?”
“To learn to shoot a gun.”
“To defend yourself. I’m going to have to leave, to fight, and I can’t fight a war if I’m worrying about you and the children. I’m counting on you, Hannah. You understand what I mean?”
“Yes.”
He nodded. “Good, then.”
Together they turned back toward the house and tramped on through the snow. When they reached the kitchen door, Hannah realized that the occasional cramps she had been feeling since the morning had turned hard and fierce. She turned to János and told him he had better telephone the doctor, and by nightfall little Léna had burst into the world—a tiny, exquisite daughter, a perfect fit for the crook of her father’s arm.
When Hannah arrived at the front door of her apartment, she discovered it was already unlocked. She walked into the drawing room and set down her suitcase. Alistair rose from the sofa and waved away the curtain of cigarette smoke.
“Hello, darling,” he said. “Had a nice trip?”
She took off her right glove, then her left. “Quite nice. You’re home early.”
“Wasn’t feeling at all well. Flew home this morning.”
“Oh, dear. Nothing serious, I hope? Have you seen a doctor?”
He raised a glass. “Doctor Scotch. Can I pour you a gin and tonic? You look rather wrecked.”
“I am rather wrecked, to say the truth. The weather was impossible. It’s not the time of year for Alexandria.” She watched him bustle about the liquor cabinet. “I did walk along the sea, which was lovely. Bracing. Thank you.”
He handed her the gin and tonic and lit a cigarette for her. Together they sat on the sofa. She took a long drink of gin and put her hand on his knee.
“Tell me all about Rome, darling,” she said.
The funny thing was, as he grunted away on top of her an hour or so later—Almost, almost, blast it all, hang on, hang on, blast it, almost got it, almost got it—she didn’t mind. She really didn’t. She’d drunk two gin and tonics on an empty stomach; she could do anything. She shut her eyes tight and imagined Lucien—no, it was János—no, it was Lucien, Scotch and cigarettes, and her belly tightened, her nerves gushed. She lifted her knees and dug her heels into the backs of his legs. She arched her back and tilted her hips until she met his determined shoving along the exact nexus she required—hang on, hang on, blast it all, almost, almost—and worked and worked until finally she climaxed in floods of relief—Fuck! Fuck! FUCK!—and so did he.
Then he fell on her chest, so heavy she couldn’t breathe, so senseless she thought for an instant he might be dead. Inside, she felt him shrivel and slip free. She pushed at his shoulders until he groaned and rolled away snoring. For a moment or two she stared at his sagging chest, his soft paunch, the damp, timid penis that languished on the sparse hair at his pubis.
She rose to retrieve her pocketbook from the living room and rooted inside for her cigarettes. Her fingers discovered the squashed cardboard box and the lighter and something else. A piece of paper, folded over twice into a square.
She unfolded it and held it to the light from the window.
For Hungary
111 rue de l’Athénée, Genève