The Eleventh Year (11 page)

“So. My darling sweet Jamie. How was your great year at the bastion of all learning?”

She looked down, wet her lips. “Must you speak that way?” she asked in a hushed voice.

“Why not? The world knows you've come home. All the minor dignitaries have been alerted by that
grande dame,
your mother. The Church Auxiliary is buzzing.”

“She tells me you and Eva have married, and are expecting a baby.”

“Always the direct little Jamison. But you're wrong: We've already had the child. She's a month and a half.”

“What's her name?” she asked. “Your daughter?”

He shrugged, looked bitter. “Emmeline Jamie. Can you believe it? I couldn't resist.”

She was stunned. And then, somewhat delighted. “Eva— doesn't mind?”

He stared at her then and said: “She doesn't
know.
She thinks, you see, that you are like my sister. She doesn't hate you. You've been gone, exploring the great horizon. Why should she fear you?”

“Why, indeed? I'm not a threat because you and I finished long ago. I wish you well—all three of you.” That sounded hollow and insincere, and so she finally raised her head and looked at him. He'd been examining her all the while. She blushed and stammered: “Are you happy? I mean—what are you doing with your life?”

“I'm working. At a construction site. And I have a family to support. I don't mind the kid. Of course I wasn't going to let her down—Eva, that is. You know why I couldn't.”

“You really needed to be married, Willy. I don't think you would have let her become pregnant if you hadn't also wanted a family of your own. It isn't
all
because of Emma that you made things legal with Eva: You must be honest with yourself. It's also because of you. Some people need to be solidly anchored to another person.”

“Is that what they teach you at Vassar? Freud—or is it Jung? I do read, you see. Even if I'm not a college boy.”

“Do you wish you were?” she asked abruptly, searching his face for clues. A hope that maybe all was not lost, for his own future. She still cared. Jamie said: “Willy—why can't you try a summer school? Or night classes this fall? You can do all the reading you want, but a good professor—”

“I don't need any professors,” he cut in angrily. “Tell me—do you have someone, an Ivy Leaguer or something? Don't you ever want to get married, Jamie?”

She shook her head. “Not now. And I love what I'm doing. I have a roommate, Lesley. She and I have become quite close. I'm not looking for any great romance. I don't have money to fall back on, like most of the other girls there. So I need to work toward a career, prepare my life.”

“Yes. I'm thinking of going to Germany to enlist.”

She drew back, the wind knocked out of her. “What!”

“Nobody cares here about the war in Europe. I don't like America. My mother and I were never accepted. What is it your ma always called us? ‘Immigrants.' A step up, but only a small one, from the colored folk. We're still Germans to everyone. Well, then, if that's what we are, we should fight like Germans. I've come to that conclusion. Maybe we should even move back there.”

Jamie was horrified. She cried out: “But if America joins the war, we'd be fighting against the Germans! Boys you grew up with would be fighting
you!
I don't believe in war! There's no reason for it.”

“Somebody has to do something,” he answered, looking away. He fidgeted with his pail, then with a button on his shirt. “I don't really know,” he murmured uncomfortably. “But I've sure been thinking about it. I hate it here!”

She heard the passion in his voice and saw that he meant it. He had always hated the United States. Could she really blame him for wanting to hang his hat in a country that might, because of his roots, greet him with more friendship? Filled with sadness, Jamie placed a hand on his sleeve, kissed his cheek. “Oh, God, Willy,” she whispered. “I wish I knew what to tell you. It's such a confused world. And I'm such a fool, I can only repeat what other people say. I'm sorry.”

As he walked away, breaking into a run across the street, she felt the desolation of his life and was sorry for him. He had locked himself into a way of life forever, a way of life now totally removed from hers.

Some day, she would meet someone, but not a Yalie or a Harvard boy at somebody's house party. She would meet a man of consequence, who would accomplish something. But first she had to weld herself into a “somebody.” She had a special quality inside her, regardless of her mediocre family background and her lack of funds, that was going to prove to be great. But she needed to develop it into a real talent. And she already knew what this was: She could write.

Jamie Stewart crossed the street in the shadows of dusk and thought of the trees and the asphalt and the hot summer flies. It was better than thinking about how far she had yet to go, to prove herself. Or about Willy and the war.

H
arbin
. A city turned inside out, upside down. By the time Elena had reached it, she felt burned out. They had gone from Irkutsk to Chita, then crossed the border into Manchuria, she and her elegant Moscow Jewesses. Genia was the more beautiful of the two Adler sisters and also the more unstable; Fania was poised and likable, a solid person. Elena found them both, however, naïve and childlike. For the odyssey of their existence was only just beginning: But it was 1915, and she had been fending for herself since 1908!

They knew of the world only what had been taught to them by their governess. Of men they knew nothing. Well, thought Elena, and what do
I
know? A bitterness flooded her then. She was twenty-five and had never loved. Genia and Fania were after the easy adulation of flatterers; she, who had nothing to offer save herself, no money with which to lure admirers, was after so much more! And yet, she thought, I do not trust men.

Her role had been quickly defined as the leader. The Adlers paid, gratefully, whatever gratuities needed to be issued; but it was she, Elena, who managed their comings and goings, who made certain that Genia was not forgetting her hat nor Fania the passports. She had assumed the part of a paid companion. It was only a temporary measure to get her from one place to the next, and the Adlers treated her with kindness and thankfulness. “What would we ever do without you?” one or the other was forever repeating. Usually it was Fania, looking at Elena with her large almond eyes and smiling that slow, lazy smile of hers, like that of the Gioconda.

Harbin. The clocks seemed turned around. People breakfasted at noon, had lunch at five, and businessmen returned home at eight in the evening to have their high tea, English fashion. Nightclubs did not open until one in the morning, and dancing took place till five or six. It was an interesting city, built in the 1890s to be the eastern end of the Trans-Siberian Railroad to Vladivostok. So essentially it was a railway center, with offices conducting railway business. It was a large city of seven hundred fifty inhabitants, mostly Chinese and Russian. There was an ancient flavor to it, and yet its construction was modern in a western European way, with luxury hotels and nightclubs with dancing girls who did the tango with their rich customers.

How much more advanced Harbin was than the true capital of Manchuria, Chang-chun, south of Harbin! This city was composed primarily of Chinese, and to collect taxes, platoons of soldiers marched from shop to shop. Genia and Fania were mesmerized by the primitive quality of this Manchurian city. They could not associate this sort of life with the one they had led in their genteel Jewish quarter of Moscow. But in Harbin the Adlers began to come out of their shells. In the center of town were a dozen nightclubs, with boxes around the dance floor where the wealthy came to dine and observe. The Adler sisters, blushing, took Elena with them and scoured the floor for potential admirers. There was always a British officer available to do the honors. But, more often than not, his eyes would remain riveted on Elena.

But she saw the larger picture: It did not behoove her to alienate the Adler sisters. And so, humbly, she would cast down her black eyes, flutter their heavy lids, and murmur: “I'd rather not dance, thank you. In Russia I left behind a fiancé.”

At those times Fania's gaze would encounter hers and a slight tremor would traverse Elena. She would feel the blood pounding at her temples and would hold herself quite still in her chair.

Elena looked around her, watched the hostesses in the nightclubs, all well-bred girls whose money had run out for some reason or other. And she wondered! What would happen to me if the Adlers left me? Suddenly, for the first time in her life, she felt unsure of herself.

One evening, after Genia Adler had met a dapper Englishman, and he had swept her off for a tango, Elena noticed that Fania stayed ill at ease at the table. Genia was laughing, on the dance floor, a hysterical note to her mirth, and Fania frowned. Genia had consumed altogether too much champagne. Still, the man was pleasant, courtly. Fania looked away, and Elena saw that her eyes had become full of tears. She reached over and laid a hand upon the other's arm. “Thank you,” Fania whispered. “You are such a sweet girl, Elena. I feel so…alone.”

“I too feel alone,” Elena admitted candidly. She felt depression settling over her like a shroud but could not shake it off. “Harbin does that, don't you think? It's four in the morning and we haven't even begun to think of sleep!”

“I miss my father,” Fania said, bending forward.

“I miss mine too. He was once a remarkable man.”

Despair knotted itself around Elena's throat. “He was so brilliant, so worldly, such a witty man,” she murmured. She could see Prince Sergei in his study, conferring with Stolypin, and then again, bending over the hand of the Tsarina Alexandra.…And she had sworn never to look back!

“My father was strong-willed and stern, and very religious,” Fania said. “We used to tremble before him, Genia and I. He kept us little girls and made us unfit for other men. He shouldn't have done that. Look at Genia now! She is exactly like a fifteen-year-old girl, who hasn't yet had her debut! Blushing and tipsy and flirtatious. You know how to hold a man, Elena: We don't. This one too shall go his own way. Genia does not know how to be a woman.”

“But one doesn't have to learn. It comes to us all, naturally,” Elena countered gently.

“Oh, to you it may. You, my dear, are special. We are merely provincial girls, barely a step removed from the Pale of Settlement. Come—let us go home now to the hotel. He will bring her home later. There is nothing more to be done, and I am exhausted.”

She stood up, and Elena did likewise. It had been a long evening. Genia waved at them from the dance floor, but Fania was too demoralized, too drained to return her sister's gesture. Elena put an arm around her and they took a taxicab back to their suite. Neither said a word. Around them floated the unreality of the Orient, the reality of their personal dilemmas.

In the small but lovely room that was hers, Elena brushed out the long thick strands of her black hair and massaged her temples. Her head felt tight, tense with dull ache. She looked at the mirror reflection of her face, noted the mauve circles under her eyes. Then the door opened, and Fania stood on the threshold, in her nightgown. She was holding some flowers, flowers that the maid had put out that morning in the ornate vases of the sitting room. “For you,” Fania said.

Elena's eyes, inexplicably, filled with tears as Fania's had at the nightclub. She took a few steps, held out her hand, received the bouquet. For a second their fingers touched, and Elena's lips parted on a sudden intake of breath. Then she turned away and placed the flowers in a bowl, busied herself to pour some water at the bottom. Fania waited.

Silently, then, Elena left the bowl of flowers on her dresser and followed Fania to the other bedroom. The other removed her peignoir, and Elena sat very still so that Fania could lower the straps and place soft fingers on her shoulders. Very tentative fingers. “You are so beautiful,” Fania murmured, her voice barely audible. And then Elena burst into tears of fear and misery. She wept and sobbed until Fania's arms were around her, cloaking her from the world. And Elena cried in Fania's arms and then received Fania's kisses, the first that had ever tasted her firm, virginal body. She went to sleep in the crook of Fania's arm, like a lover, and Fania watched her sleep until it was time for breakfast. Genia had not come home, but Fania did not care: Let Genia have this Englishman and all the rest, if she so chose! Her sister would have Elena, the most exquisite, the finest. “I love you,” Fania said to her sleeping form. “I shall love you forever.”

But Elena never heard her. She slept like a small child, after a storm.

Three weeks later, when Genia announced that her British friend wanted to take a drive to Chang-chun with them, Elena declined the invitation. It had been evident to her that this man too looked first at her, then at Genia. She would pretend a headache and thereby avoid the jealousy of both Adler sisters. Fania should not see her drawing a man's attention, and Genia should not see her drawing this particular man's. She watched from the window as he helped first the younger, then the older sister into his Rolls-Royce. Fania was adjusting her goggles, and Genia struggled for a moment with an elegant scarf to protect her from the elements. Then Fania raised her face to the air, scanning the window for Elena. She lifted a hand, smiled. The door closed, and the car took off. Elena remained standing by the lace curtains, looking out at the motes of dust and sand raised in the wake of the automobile. She sighed and turned away. There was nothing to do in Harbin before eight at night, tea time. And then, with whom? The Adlers were really the only ones she knew there.

The next day she was still in the suite, all alone. It was there that the attorney reached her with the news. The Englishman's car had lost a wheel while making a precarious turn around the side of a cliff. The Rolls-Royce had somersaulted over the edge and burst into flames. The three passengers had been killed.

“The Adlers made a will a few weeks ago,” the man told Elena. “They bequeathed all their goods to you, in the event that neither outlived the other. Most of the funds, and the real property, are in Russia, but the sisters did establish a small bank account right here in Harbin, for convenience. It's yours.”

He left his card for her. Elena sat in stunned silence, her strong hands clenched in her lap. She was trying not to think of Fania, or she knew she would crumble. So she concentrated instead on the harsh realities of her financial situation. The lawyer had mentioned funds, in Russia. But she would never return to Russia. Some day, when the Harbin money ran out, she would send someone—this attorney, maybe, for he looked trustworthy—to sell the land and bring her the proceeds. For now—she was not sure what she would do.

The white sun, with its blinding glare, lay over the city of Harbin like a bride's veil. Elena could not weep. It was 1916, and she was in the middle of a no-man's land.

O
ne of Lady
Priscilla's most serious desires had always been for both her daughters to be presented at the Court of Saint James, as she once had been. Blonde, lithe, and elegant, the only child of the Earl of Brighton, she had been presented to Queen Victoria, imposing and triple chinned, during the summer following her eighteenth birthday. Emily Aymes Richardson had come in 1912 and been presented to King George and Queen Mary. Now it was Lesley's turn. Lesley regarded her court presentation much as she had viewed her New York debut. She went dutifully to the rehearsals, modeled the gown that they had bought for her in Paris, but her eyes were turned inward. Her mother noticed that she seemed nervous. During the week she was her normal self, but toward the weekend she would fret, hardly touching her food.

“Did you leave a friend at Vassar?” Priscilla asked carefully, keeping her voice evenly modulated to show she didn't really want to pry.

“A friend, Mama? Jamie?”

“No, darling. A young man.”

Lesley's eyes widened, her face drained of color. “At
Vassar?
In the States? No, Mama. I haven't any boyfriends. Escorts, yes, but no one I like.”

“I see.” Lady Priscilla thought: I shall have to watch her more closely. And then she began to search for meaningful signs among her father's guests. It had to be someone there, because in Paris, they hadn't met anyone new. All the young men were on the front lines.

Lesley, if aware of the parental scrutiny, seemed unconcerned by it. She was thinking: Why isn't he coming back? Am I just someone he saw in a room at his host's summer house? And then she felt the sense of anger, first at herself for being so foolish, then at him for not rushing more quickly back for another weekend, to renew his acquaintance with her. “I have a crush on a man I've seen only for two minutes,” she wrote Jamie, her cheeks red with shame. She worried much more about when and if Justin Reeve would return than about how to address the King and Queen of England. She could do the latter, she knew without doubt; but Justin Reeve filled her with
such
doubts that her stomach knotted and her throat tightened, just in the hope that he would come and in the fear that he might not care to see her again. And so her presentation to King George and Queen Mary went by almost as though it were a routine event.

Then he came. Not the first weekend, but the second one. Lesley, from her window, saw him and his sister, Adele, stepping out of a shining black Rolls-Royce, laughing together. I wish
I
could make him laugh like that, she thought jealously. Adele was so different from Justin. He was all finesse and darkness, all sharp-edged glamour, and she was British tweeds and had the long face of a mare, pleasant but undistinguished. Lesley rushed to her closet, pulled out her new clothes from Paris, and kicked off her shoes. One had to prepare for him—but so casually that he'd never know she'd even thought once of him since their encounter.