Chapter Nineteen Hannah
January 1952
Cairo, Egypt
When the taxi pulled up at her apartment building a half-hour later, Salah stepped forward from the awning to open the door for Hannah. His face was hung with grief. She took his hand to help her out of the seat and held it between both of her own.
“Have you heard anything from Ismailia?” she asked. “Your son?”
He shook his head. “There is no news yet. It is the will of Allah.”
“Salah, I might be able to find something out for you. My husband might be able to learn some news.”
She was trying to meet his gaze, but he wouldn’t look at her. He pulled his hand away and turned to open the front door for her. “Mr. Ainsworth arrived home an hour ago,” he said.
“Thank you, Salah.”
She started to cross the foyer toward the staircase.
“Ah! I almost forgot. A package arrived for you this afternoon, Mrs. Ainsworth.”
“A package?”
Salah stepped behind the porter’s desk and disappeared for an instant. He emerged with a box wrapped in brown paper, about the size of a paperback novel. Her name and address were penciled in charcoal in precise block letters.
She shoved it into the pocket of her coat.
“Thank you, Salah,” she said again.
Hannah found Alistair in the bath, smoking a cigarette. The ashtray was full and a half-empty bottle of Scotch rested on the tiles next to the tub. She dragged the stool across the floor and sat down near his feet.
“I have wonderful news,” she said. “Our marriage has borne fruit at last.”
He stared at her. “A miracle.”
“Yes. The baby will be born in June, I think. Aren’t you pleased?”
Her husband settled his head back on the rim of the tub and closed his eyes. “I’ll tell you who won’t be pleased. My sister Vera and her wretched spawn.”
“You’re an ass, Alistair.”
“I believe,” said her husband, “the word you mean is cuckold.”
Under her coat, Hannah still wore the dress of green crepe, stained with dew. In the steamy air of the bathroom, it had now begun to wilt like a lettuce leaf. It had cost fifty pounds and Alistair hadn’t said a word. Unlike most husbands—even rich ones—he never complained when she spent money on herself.
“Do you care?” she asked.
“Care? I owe the chap a debt. Stepping in where I failed. So long as he doesn’t come along later and cause trouble.”
“I don’t think there’s much danger of that.”
“No, I rather think not.”
There was something about his voice as he said this. Some smug note. He took a last drag on the cigarette and reached over the side of the tub to stub it out in the ashtray.
“Why do you say that?” she asked.
“My dear, I may be a cuckold, but I’m not a fool. I do know who it is you’ve been fucking all autumn. I confess, I didn’t imagine he was your sort.”
“You don’t have the slightest idea what my sort is.”
“Hannah, for God’s sake, the fellow’s fucked his way through half the British and American diplomatic staff, to say nothing of the officers’ wives. Obviously sets his sights on a particular woman. The kind of woman who’s privy to interesting information.” Alistair lifted the bottle and the empty glass from the tiles and poured himself a drink. “Naturally I had him investigated.”
Hannah felt as if she were looking down a long tunnel. “Did you find anything interesting?”
“Should I have, Hannah? Tell me.”
“I don’t know. I suppose he’s a nationalist of some kind. Most Egyptians want the British out. We didn’t talk about such things.”
“No, of course not. A man of his training, he’d have got the information out of you without your even realizing it.”
“I don’t have the least idea what you mean.”
“Mind you,” he said, lighting another cigarette, gazing at the ceiling, “it’s a jolly good joke. I’d have paid in proper gold to see the expression on my father’s face. Blame me for it, of course.”
“A joke?” she said.
He blew out some smoke. “Jew blood in the ancient family line. Dreadful bigot, my father. My elder sister wanted to marry a Jew once. Handsome fellow. She was eighteen. Put a stop to that. She died not long after. Consumption. Dreadful.”
Hannah stared at the fold of skin that wobbled from her husband’s throat. “Jew blood?”
“A taint of Hebrew.” He dropped his gaze to meet hers. “Or didn’t you know?”
“I—he might have mentioned it—”
“Did he mention he’s working for the intelligence agency of the state of bloody Israel? I daresay he didn’t mention that.” Alistair sipped his Scotch and reached over the side of the tub to tap a long crumb of ash into the ashtray. The ash missed and landed on the floor in a small puddle of water. He smiled at her shock. “The report’s on my desk if you wish. Typed up just this afternoon.”
Hannah found herself standing before the liquor cabinet, pouring a glass of gin. Her hand was shaking and the gin kept splashing over the side to land on the tray. She set down the bottle and drank the gin in a gulp or two. For some reason she glanced at the clock and saw it was nearly one o’clock in the morning.
A scene sprang from her memory. A July morning, in a world that no longer existed.
She remembered how she had been nursing the baby on the stool at the corner of the kitchen. She had just put the kettle on to boil water for tea. There was no more coffee, real or ersatz, and for tea she brewed the herbs and roots she’d grown in the garden—mint, chamomile, ginger.
The baby had been born in May, a year almost to the day since János’s fever broke. They had named their new son Károly after her father, and like Hannah’s father he had blue eyes and fair hair. On János’s mother’s side he was Austrian, so he liked to joke that Károly was their little Aryan baby, so colored in order to make himself safe from the Nazis. He was a strapping baby, wanted constantly to nurse. His appetite exhausted her, but she didn’t care. Each time her son reached for her she grew a little more in love with him. At night, Hannah tucked him in a cradle next to the bed, and even though he slept well (for an infant, anyway) she would wake up all the time to make sure he was alive, to touch his satin cheek with her finger and marvel at the way his mouth worked while he slept, as if he were dreaming of milk.
The kettle had just begun to whistle when the door flew open. Hannah looked up in surprise to see János stride into the kitchen. Early that morning he had kissed her on the forehead and left to work in the fields all day. He had promised to bring back some river trout for supper. Now it was only the middle of the morning and his hands were empty, except for this piece of paper, folded over twice into a square.
She remembered how he had dragged a chair from the table to sit beside her. How he put a hand on her knee and bowed his head to kiss their son’s fair hair.
What is it? she’d asked János. What’s the matter?
He had unfolded the paper and stared at it. From Irina, he’d said. Your father was deported last week.
Because her son was suckling his life’s milk from her, she couldn’t scream or rail at God or otherwise fall to pieces. Anyway, the news was not unexpected. Since German troops had moved in to occupy Hungary in March, Jews had rattled away by the trainload, northward to Poland and the infamous death camps, of which everybody knew but no one spoke. Time and again she had pleaded with her father to join her and János in the countryside, but he had always refused. Budapest was his home, he said. Among the highest reaches of Hungarian government, his former students held sway. Surely they would protect him in his hour of need. He would stay where he was.
So Hannah had known for months that her father’s fate was sealed. Now she simply closed her eyes and asked János to read the note aloud to her. Was Irina certain of her information? Had any attempt been made to rescue him from his fate?
The note was short. Irina had done all she could. Had strained every nerve to obtain a safe conduct pass from the Swedish embassy—the diplomats there were handing them out by the thousands—but it arrived too late.
By the time János read out the last sentence, Hannah was weeping. What are we going to do? she’d asked him. What if they come for me and the baby?
They won’t come for you, he’d said. So far east, the middle of nowhere. And you’re my wife. The Countess Vécsey. You’re safe here. You’re safe with me.
She remembered how she had stared at János’s stark face. How she’d shaken her head and said to her husband, Don’t you understand, there is nowhere safe on this earth. No square inch of ground where I can rest.
Hannah turned her head toward the window. Alistair had left the curtains open and the view looked east, toward downtown Cairo, alight and teeming. All the nightclubs and the department stores, the Auberge des Pyramides and Circurel and Groppi’s and Shepheard’s Hotel.
Hannah lifted her arm and hurled the empty glass against the panes.
Then she went to the writing desk in her bedroom and pulled out a piece of paper. Not the engraved stationery with her married name, their address in Cairo, but a plain sheet. She wrote hurriedly and stuffed the note in an envelope. In the back of the bottom desk drawer she felt along the side until she found the scrap of paper that had appeared in her pocket upon her return from Alexandria. She copied the address onto the back of the envelope and sealed it.
Then she rose from the desk and went downstairs, where she gave Salah the envelope to be posted in the morning.
In the taxi, she stuck her hand in the pocket of her coat to search for a handkerchief and discovered the parcel that Salah had delivered to her an hour ago.
Though her name was written in block letters, she recognized the writing. She clawed apart the string and unfolded the brown paper to reveal an ordinary cardboard box. Inside the box, wrapped in cotton wool, was a gold bracelet in the shape of a striking cobra.
There was no note. She ran her finger along the inside of the box, examined the cotton wool, the other side of the brown paper in which the box had been wrapped. Not a word. Only her name and address in those sterile block letters.
She lifted the bracelet to the glow from the passing streetlamps. A pair of tiny emerald eyes stared back at her; a tiny ruby tongue tasted the air. The hood exquisitely flared. The tail wound around the wearer’s wrist in a delicate spiral. In the artificial noon, surging and falling as the lamps went by, Hannah could have sworn it was alive. She meant to wrap it back in its cotton wool and stuff it inside the box.
Instead she found herself sliding the bracelet over her right hand to clasp her wrist.
A perfect fit.
At the front desk, the clerk told Hannah that Mr. Beck was not on duty that evening. He asked whether he could be of assistance instead.
Hannah still wore her dress of green crepe, stained by the dew and wilted by the steam of her husband’s bath, under her coat of dark blue cashmere wool. Her hair was still gathered on one side in its diamante clip; her pearl earrings still dangled from her earlobes. She suspected her lipstick had faded to a disgraceful pink line at the rim of her lips.
She smiled at the clerk. “Perhaps I could leave a message?”
The clerk gave her a pen and a piece of paper and moved tactfully to the other end of the desk. Hannah wrote, Please see me upstairs at once on a matter of great importance. H. She folded the paper twice into a square and wrote J. Beck on the back. From her pocketbook she extracted a pound note, which she also folded into a square. The clerk’s eyes lit with interest. She handed him both notes.
“Please see to it that Mr. Beck receives this as soon as he arrives.”
Lucien’s room was locked, but Hannah had expected that. She unfastened the diamante clip from her hair and knelt before the lock. It was an easy mechanism; hotel locks usually were. The door swung open. Everything tidy, the bed made, not a scrap of paper out of place. In the bathroom, the towels would be hung neatly on the rails. She had always appreciated the pristine surroundings. When you were committing sordid acts, you felt less sordid doing so on an unimpeachable bed. That was how she’d felt, anyway.
And yet. As she roamed around the room, touching the familiar, sacred objects—the lamp, the chair, the bedpost, the mirror atop the chest of drawers—it seemed to her that the room was too tidy. Where were the books stacked on the nightstand and the desk? The gentlemanly silver-backed hairbrush before the mirror? She opened the closet and found it empty. The drawers—vacant. In the bathroom, not so much as a flake of soap, a toothbrush, a stray hair.
Hannah sank onto the chair before the desk and started to laugh.
How heroic she’d felt. A character in a novel, racing to warn her lover of his impending arrest, before it was too late! But some earlier bird had chirped in his ear. He had already fled. Never mind.
The hysteria in her chest soon ebbed. She laid her head on her arms and stared at the dark, glittering eyes of the cobra wound around her wrist. The only trace of Lucien that remained in the room. That, and the smell of him.
On a golden afternoon in late September, Hannah sat on a blanket in the meadow with her son, smiling at his attempts to lift himself up on his hands. The air smelled of warm, ripe hay. She had gathered the last of the potatoes that morning and stored them in the baskets in the cellar, and though her hands were chapped she now worked a pair of knitting needles, trying to rescue one of János’s moth-eaten woolen vests before the cold set in. She was just admiring the glow cast by the sun on Károly’s fine hair when a shadow appeared to extinguish it.
She looked up. “János? What’s the matter?”
He crouched next to her. His face was heavy with grief. “The Soviets have crossed the frontier, fifty miles away.”
Hannah made an exclamation and gathered up the baby in her arms.
“Pack whatever you can,” said János. “We have a little petrol. I’ll drive you as far as I can.”
“But what about you?”
He looked to the eastern horizon, which had already started to dim. “I’m going to have to fight,” he said.
A hand on her shoulder. A gentle, urgent voice next to her ear, calling her name.
Hannah startled upright. “János?”
“Shhh. It’s me. Lucien.”
For a moment, she was lost. This peculiar, antiseptic room. The polished furniture. The air that smelled of whiskey and cigarettes. The golden snake wound around her wrist. The trim, white-shirted man who stood next to her, who possessed the whiplike body of János but not his eyes, his smile, his emaciation, his hair that had turned abruptly gray and begun to thin at the temples.
This one was robust and well fed. His hair made thick waves you could sink your fingers into.
“Lucien,” she said.
He crouched next to the chair, so they were eye to eye. Like János in the meadow. But now her arms were empty. Károly was gone.
“What’s the matter, Hannah? Why are you here?” the man demanded.
She leaned forward against his chest and sobbed.
Lucien let her weep all over his fine white shirt. He closed his arms around her and murmured soothing noises into her ear. At some point, when the leading edge of the squall had blown itself out, he lifted her in his arms and carried her to the armchair, where she curled into a ball on his lap. She remembered who she was, who he was. Where they were and why.
“You have to leave,” she said.
“Yes, I know.”
“It’s my fault. I should have realized—Alistair—”
“It makes no difference.”
She lifted her head. “You were going to leave anyway?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Without telling me?”
“I did tell you.” He touched the cobra with his finger. “I also told you I would find you again, afterward.”
“After what?”
He tried to stir from the chair, but she held him down by the shoulders. “You should have told me what you were doing. That you were spying for Israel.”
“But I did, Hannah. Didn’t I?”
Lucien held her gaze. Steady green eyes, the color of hope. Hannah thought back to the afternoon in Alexandria, in the apartment like an apartment you might find in Paris, the tea and marzipan, the sunshine dreaming through the enormous windows. Lucien’s mother, slight and exquisite. Her gentle voice.
And Lucien, as they ambled back to the hotel. It’s not something you go about advertising, these days. Only to people you trust.
What an idiot she was. Thinking only of their destination—the hotel room, the bed, the hours of passion until supper. He had split himself open for her and she hadn’t noticed. A pair of bodies, that’s all they were to each other.
“It’s all right,” he said to her. As if she had spoken the words aloud. For an instant she thought she had.
But of course she hadn’t. Hannah had never given him her thoughts. Had never split herself open for him. A body, that was all. A field to sow.
She laid her head against his chest and listened to his heart.
“When the Soviets came,” she said, “I was living with János at his family’s estate in the east. We had lost a girl and a boy to typhoid while he was fighting at Stalingrad. By some miracle he came home and we had another son. Károly. My boy.”
Lucien’s heart thumped in her ear. It seemed to her that she had melted into him somehow, that the beat of his heart had become her own. That she didn’t need to speak this terrible thing out loud, because he would see her memory in his own head.
Still, she went on.
“János had word that the Red Army had crossed the frontier. After Stalingrad, everyone thought he had been killed, and he was happy to pretend to be dead and live quietly with me in the country. But the Soviets in Hungary, that was another matter. We packed our things. I was supposed to go to Budapest, to stay with friends. János was going to rejoin the army and defend the country. We were so stupid, we thought we had until the morning. One last night in our home together. One last night in our bed together. Just before dawn, some Soviet soldiers broke into the house.”
Lucien made some small noise in his chest, as if he had taken a blow that knocked him senseless.
“I don’t know how many there were,” she said. “Six or seven, I think. They took turns beating me while the others held János down and made him watch. I remember I called out to him to close his eyes but he wouldn’t do it. He wouldn’t let me suffer without him. When they tired of this they shot János through the head. This Soviet rifle. A single shot in the middle of the forehead. I don’t remember the sound of the gun, or the bullet hitting his head. Just the sight of his brains on the bedroom wall. They left me on the floor cradling his body. I was frantic, I was out of my mind. I remember thinking, this is how it ends? Like this? I heard them outside, these soldiers. They were laughing. To them it was all a big joke, a jolly time. I thought, why didn’t they just shoot me? Then I smelled the smoke. Smoke everywhere. They had set fire to the house in order to burn me alive. To burn me with the body of my dead husband. And I thought, Károly. I remembered Károly in his cradle next to the bed. He had slept through it all. He was always a sound sleeper, we used to joke about it. How the house could burn down around him and he wouldn’t wake up. Somehow I got up on my hands and knees. I don’t know how. There was all this blood. Mine and János’s. On the floor, the rug. I crawled around the bed to the cradle. And I saw it was empty. They had taken him. When I was holding the body of my dead husband. They had taken my son.”
The word son was a whisper. Lucien held her with both arms. If he had said something she would have dissolved. A word of pity would have destroyed her. But he did not. His heart thumped in the same steady rhythm against her ear. His white tuxedo shirt smelled of cigarettes, of laundry starch. Of a woman’s perfume.
“Somehow I got outside. I don’t remember how. I must have taken the back stairs. I was screaming for him. My baby. He had the most beautiful curls, like God had spun sunshine into silk for his hair. János used to play this game with him, he would hide an apple under the table and then pretend to find it behind Károly’s head. And he would laugh. The sound of his laugh, I hear it all the time. I hear it in my sleep. In the street, always just around the corner. I got outside, through the smoke, screaming for my son, but they had already driven away. I ran around the house, looking for them. Down the drive. These Soviet soldiers. They had driven away with him. Or killed him, I don’t know. I could smell the exhaust from their damn trucks. Smoke and exhaust and gasoline. This terrible stench. So I thought, I will go back into the house and burn to death in my husband’s arms, but I didn’t have the strength. I just fell where I stood. When I woke up, the house was gone. It was just a pile of ash and stone. I need some water.”
Without a word, Lucien lifted them both from the chair. He settled her on the bed, against the pillows, and walked into the bathroom. She heard the taps swish. He came out again bearing a glass of water and sat on the edge of the bed while she drank it. She tried to steady her hands but they shook anyway. Gently he drew the glass from her fingers and set it on the nightstand.
“Anyway,” she said, “that’s how I wound up in Budapest during the siege. With my husband’s old lover Irina. To kill as many of them as I could. Nazis and Soviets, I didn’t care. I learned how to fire a rifle from the window of an apartment building and smack a man’s forehead with a bullet. It was so satisfying to watch his body make this jerk when the bullet hit him. When the city surrendered, I was arrested. SMERSH, you know what that was? The Soviet counterintelligence squad. They interrogated me for weeks, I think. I lost track of time. You know their methods.”
“Yes,” he said.
“For women it’s even worse. These barbarians. You have to separate your mind from your body, your soul from your body. You have to think of your body as some sack that doesn’t belong to you. I only escaped when they got so drunk one night, the night Berlin fell, they left the door of the interrogation cell unlocked. Stupid brutes. I walked right out. I walked all the way to Austria. You know the rest.”
Lucien lit a cigarette for her. Side by side they sat on the bed, passing the cigarette back and forth. In the crack between the curtains, dawn poked a finger.
“You must go,” she said. “Alistair will have passed on his information to the authorities. You’ll be arrested any moment.”
He stubbed out the cigarette and reached for her. Hannah still wore her coat of dark blue cashmere over her dress from the party. He pushed the coat over her right shoulder and kissed the bare skin, then covered it again.
“I have to drive to Alexandria to put my mother on a ship,” he said.
“To Israel?”
“Yes. For years, she wouldn’t go. She thought Egypt was her home, the way Jews used to think Germany was their home. I told her she had to leave now, while she could still take her money with her. Finally she agreed. But I must put her on that ship myself. I have to be sure. You understand?”
His eyes were green and steady. The whites a little bloodshot. She said, “You should go with her. You should board that ship.”
“I can’t leave you behind.”
“Nonsense. You had already planned to leave.”
He took her by the shoulders. “Come with me, Hannah.”
“Because you feel sorry for me now?”
“Because I’m in love with you.”
Hannah removed his hands from her shoulders. “There’s no need for that kind of talk anymore.”
“Hannah, stop it. A moment ago you were telling me the truth.”
“That doesn’t mean I intend to leave my husband and go off with you—where? Israel? You must be joking.”
“Wherever you want. Anywhere in the world. We have a child, Hannah.”
“I have a child. You’re free, Lucien. Go. You’re not cut out for fatherhood.”
He flinched. In the instant before he turned his face away, she glimpsed the anguish in his eyes.
“You were right to leave,” she said. “It’s best for both of us. You know it is.”
He rose from the bed and went to the window. “Do you love me, Hannah?”
“Whether I love you or not, it’s not the point.”
“It’s a simple question.”
She looked at her lap, stained and wrinkled. The thickness at her belly. “It’s stupid of me—”
He turned to face her. “Say it, Hannah. You love me. Admit it, for God’s sake.”
“Don’t be an idiot. Of course I do.”
“Then it’s simple, isn’t it? We go together.”
She stared at the hand he held out to her.
“Go,” she said. “Just go.”
His hand fell to his side. He walked to the bed and dropped to his knees. Hannah touched his hair, cradled his head and kissed it. She could smell the peppermint tang of his hair oil. His hands slid up her thighs to cover her belly. Through the thin green crepe he kissed her. She closed her eyes so there was nothing else but his warm lips on her womb, his hands, his head between her palms, his hair against her face.
He lifted his head and closed his hand over the bracelet on her wrist.
“I need to show you something,” he said.