Exiles in the Garden (6 page)

How strange, Lucia thought, sitting in her Washington garden and listening to anonymous voices that brought her so close to herself. She wanted to meet Leisl and Leisl's friend but she could not see through the stake fence, so the guests at the Alhambra parties remained a mystery, identified only by language. She imagined stout gray-haired women and small nervous men, wirerimmed spectacles, scuffed shoes, clouds of cigarette smoke, and in the background the splash of a fountain. Lucia continued to sit quietly, listening to the party break up. She was still trying to fill Prague's blank page in her memory. She was just three years old when she left, by train according to her mother, on passports provided by a considerate friend at the Swiss embassy. They both wept when the train crossed the Austrian frontier at Salzburg, where a correspondence would take them to Zurich. Her mother remembered that Lucia cried and cried, inconsolable; her father had stayed behind but that was not the cause of her tears. Leaving Prague was the cause of her tears. Of that border crossing she had no memory either. Lucia was Czech by birth but did not feel Czech. Her mother and father were Czech but they were lost to her now.

Lucia adored Swiss life, flamboyantly healthy, hiking in the mountains in the summer and skiing the rest of the year. She believed herself a different person in the thin air of higher elevations. Her body would do anything she asked it to do. Life on the mountains was thrilling, as far from her mother's quarrelsome salon as it was possible for her to get. Lucia preferred nature's realm, climbing solo, nothing between her and the mountain, no one to rely on except herself. She skied competitively until she was sixteen and took a bad fall, shattering her leg badly enough so that on damp days her bones ached. The leg remained weak, so her racing days were ended and technical climbing was too difficult. She no longer had fluidity of movement, and she was the same person in the crystal air of higher elevations as she was on the flat.

All this time her mother dreamed of Prague, knowing they could never return. Her mother deemed the ski accident fortuitous since Lucia could now concentrate on her studies. Alas, she was an indifferent student, playful in the classroom, popular with boys. Her mother urged her to take music lessons, as there was a Czech proverb that asserted that whoever was Czech was also a musician. But Lucia was unable to carry a tune; piano, then violin lessons were useless. As a further insult Lucia insisted she had no interest in politics, a distinctly Swiss attitude. Her mother smiled bravely and said not to worry, Lucia was Czech through and through whether she liked it or not. Her Czechness would assert itself at the proper time. Czechness was not a suit of clothes to be discarded on a whim. Czechness was bottomless and forever. Lucia had an adolescent's answer to that: her mother did not understand her.

Fifteen minutes later there was silence in the garden next door except for the sounds of Charles clearing away glasses. Lucia heard a noise and looked up to see her American husband at their back door. Alec looked so large, a giant almost. She said something to him and did not realize until the words were out that she had spoken in German. He seemed not to notice, late as usual, smiling apologetically. He had brought her a pretty bouquet of yellow tulips wrapped in cellophane. Upstairs the baby began to fuss. Alec laughed and said, Are you just sitting here in the dark? What's going on? Is anything wrong? She turned her head toward the stake fence but did not speak because suddenly her mouth was full of tears.

Lucia hoped that one day an invitation would arrive, and one day one did, hand-delivered by Charles. That afternoon she went to the dress shop on Wisconsin Avenue, the fashionable one everybody went to, and bought a black shift. She had her hair washed and cut and ordered up a manicure. She bought a new pair of shoes. Lucia stood in front of the mirror for many minutes trying to decide if her mother's Lalique gold choker would be suitable and decided that it was quite suitable. She asked Alec please, please not to be late that evening. Will you promise me? It means so much. You can tell them our baby's sick with grippe. Mathilde's running a fever. They were invited next door, six-thirty
P.M.
sharp, the Count and Countess d'An requested the pleasure of their company for cocktails.

Welcome to the Salon des Refusés, the count said with lifted eyebrows.

We are very happy you can be with us.

We are neighbors after all. It is time to be neighborly.

Most of the other guests had arrived—Alec had not been prompt after all; the president had decided to call a news conference and he had caught the assignment—and were visible in the garden through the French doors, open at the end of the long room. It was furnished like a country house in middle Europe. A stag's head dominated one wall, smaller heads of roebuck hung left and right. Here and there were landscapes, romantic vistas of mountains and forests, streams disappearing into valleys. The artworks were as mixed up as middle Europe itself, a Caspar David Friedrich next to a Kandinsky, Max Liebermann beside Klee, and a supple line drawing that could have been Matisse or Picasso, hard to tell which. Lucia was entranced by the look of the place, especially the preposterous stag's head. The interior was dark, light bulbs concealed behind heavy opaque lampshades. The stag was poised above an enormous fireplace, large enough for a man to stand upright with space left over for his top hat.

We are happy to meet you at last, Lucia said in French. The count's nationality was unknown to her. His accent gave no hint. He was of medium height and build, dressed in twill trousers, a blue blazer with silver buttons, and an ascot. The count had the assured manner of an aristocrat but Lucia suspected he was a bit of a roughneck. His hands were huge with knuckles the size of marbles, a gold signet ring on his right pinkie. His eyes were black as a Gypsy's. His age was somewhere between forty-five and sixty. She did not know why she had spoken French to him and then she noticed in his lapel the rosette of the Légion d'honneur. No doubt she had seen it subliminally. Of course the Légion d'honneur could be given to anyone for anything—successful winemaking, successful literary endeavors, or unspecified but surely successful services to the state.

My father shot it, the count said, pointing at the stag. It is hideous but I like it. The countess likes it not so much. But she puts up with it.

Where was it shot? Alec asked.

On one of our mountains, the count said. I forget which one.

My father was a beautiful shot, he added.

Beautiful shot, beautiful horseman. He died in the war.

Come, the count said, and guided them down the long room and through the French doors into the garden, bathed in soft light from the torchères. The night was warm with only a breath of a breeze. Alec and Lucia were introduced to Herr Doktor Professor Anwalt, Maître de La Goue, General Symjon, Ambassador Kryg, the linguist Madame Brun, and half a dozen others whose names flew by. Lucia counted two beards, one goatee, and four wire-rimmed eyeglasses. The women tended to be slender except for Madame Brun and her companion, both stout as tree stumps. One boxy jacket belonged to a thick-bellied Bulgarian, identified as a second secretary at the embassy, aggressively drinking a highball; he wore a little red star in his lapel and looked to be spoiling for an argument. Ronald diAntonio waved at them from his place beside the great cedar. Alec and Lucia took flutes of champagne from Charles's silver tray and followed the count and countess. The count explained that they liked to throw a wide net for their parties, including both the oppressors and the oppressed, the commissars, the refuseniks, and anyone in between.

They should get to know one another.

Unfamiliarity breeds contempt.

Somewhere about was one of Franco's henchmen, and nearby the woman they all called La Niña, a disciple of the venerated revolutionary La Pasionaria. All this was said with the barest hint of sarcasm. And then Ambassador Kryg was at their elbows and the count took Alec away to meet the Bulgarian. Bemused, Alec followed the count, met the Bulgarian, continued on, thinking all the while that Washington was his city, the city where he grew up and went to school. He knew the names of the Iowa congressional delegation and the woman who ran the brownstone brothel way out Sixteenth Street and the chairman of the English department at St. Albans School and the son of the D.C. police chief and Lyndon Johnson's daughters, but he did not know a person in this garden with the exception of Ronald diAntonio. He had never been in a place where the company was exclusively foreign-born. He thought to himself that if he listened carefully he might learn something. Alec took a fresh glass of champagne from Charles's tray and glanced back to see Lucia listening intently to Ambassador Kryg. Then the count was telling another droll story, this one about General Symjon and his collections of antique firearms and French postcards.

Dear lady, the ambassador said to Lucia, what a beautiful choker.

Thank you, Lucia said.

Is it Lalique?

It was my mother's, Lucia said.

Most rare, the ambassador said.

You are very kind, Ambassador.

Dear lady, it is a pleasure to meet you at last. We have a friend in common.

Lucia was startled. They had never met before and when she was introduced, her name was given only as Lucia.

Your father, the ambassador said. Andre Duran. But I have not seen him recently.

Lucia let a breath go by and did not reply.

I saw him in Trieste, the ambassador said.

He disappeared years ago, Lucia said.

Disappeared?

Vanished, Lucia said.

Dear lady, I am so sorry. I have distressed you. I had to speak, the ambassador said. Such a strange coincidence, seeing you here of all places.

Lucia said, How did you know?

Well, he said, and seemed to blush.

No, she said, tell me. I want to know.

Andre said he had a daughter called Lucia.

Lucia is a common name, she said. You must do better than that, Ambassador.

Well then, he said, and gave an embarrassed laugh. Ambassador Kryg was short, barely over five feet. He too wore the rosette of the Légion d'honneur in his lapel and also a heavy copper bangle on his left wrist of the sort that was said to combat arthritis. A neatly barbered goatee and heavy horn-rimmed glasses completed the ensemble. Ambassador Kryg laughed again and threw up his hands in mock defeat. Dear lady, you look exactly like him, the way you walk, your gestures, your smile, your dimples. I am bound to say, even the freckles.

Lucia was silent. She had no idea.

A quite remarkable resemblance. When I saw you I was in no doubt.

Lucia could not think what to say. She was suspicious of this Kryg, so ingratiating, so eager to meet her and share his information about her father. She stepped back, searching the garden for Alec, and discovered him deep in conversation with two men she had not met. She tried and failed to catch his eye. She said finally, Was my father in good health?

This was some years back, the ambassador said. I would say his health was normal.

Normal? What does that mean?

I think he had been through very much. He was tired. It is normal.

What had he been through, Ambassador? And why was he in Trieste?

I cannot say. The ambassador raised his shoulders and let them fall. I'm afraid I cannot remember. I believe he was in business.

What exactly did he say about me?

He said that you were most attractive. That you had been apart but that he planned to visit you very soon. I believe he said it was difficult for him to travel.

My father is dead, Lucia said.

I am sorry to hear it, the ambassador said.

He died many years ago.

Your father was much admired.

By whom? Who admired him?

The ambassador smiled thinly, his affability not what it had been. Andre Duran was admired by everyone who knew him, dear lady.

And which country do you represent, ambassador?

Czechoslovakia, he said. But that, too, was many years ago. I am retired.

At that, the countess swept Lucia away to join a nest of women gathered around General Symjon and Madame Brun. Lucia, stunning in her short-skirted shift and gold choker, was soon the center of attention. Alec had finished a third glass of champagne and was working on his fourth, utterly at sea in this company. He remembered reading somewhere that exiles by definition led interesting lives, had biographies worth knowing. But this group had proved elusive. He watched Lucia telling some story. He supposed it was a Swiss story but whatever it was everyone laughed at the end of it and Lucia beamed as if she were taking a curtain call. Alec found himself with Professor Anwalt and the writer Koch, both speaking English for his benefit. They were discussing another writer, Walta Bin-yameen, a formidable soul who had evidently met a tragic end seeking exile in Spain during the war. Had Alec read his work? No, Alec had not. Do so without delay, Professor Anwalt said as the writer Koch nodded solemnly and added that Bin-yameen's ambition was to be the greatest literary critic ever to write in the German language; and he succeeded. And then the champagne disappeared and, as if at the chime of a clock, everyone began to leave. The party was over.

We must do this again, the count said at the door.

I can't remember when I've had a better time, Lucia said. Your party reminded me so much of home.

I suspect we are a change of pace, the count said. Something different from what you're used to. Everyone was on good behavior tonight, even Madame Brun. She has a sharp tongue. Sometimes there are terrible arguments. People almost come to blows. Political differences, cultural differences, memories that are irreconcilable. They have grievances. You could call it a clash of civilizations except it's the same civilization, mostly.

Kryg was not on good behavior, the countess said.

Oh, no, Lucia said, it was nothing.

What did Kryg say? the count asked.

He made an uncalled-for remark about Lucia's father.