The Secret Life of Violet Grant (33 page)

When Lionel returns some untold time later to settle into the straw, her mind startles awake. He curves his body like a protective shell around her. He's still wearing his trousers, but his chest is bare.

“I can't blame you,” he says.

“Blame me for what?”

“It's a dirty business, isn't it. What I do. I lie, I seduce, I break faith. I change masks without a blink. Sometimes I kill.”

“Not wantonly, surely. Only when you need to.”

“And then there's you, like the new-fallen snow.”

She works herself deeper into the shelter of him. Her legs ache from pedaling, her back aches from bending over the handlebars. She has been caressed and pummeled and made gloriously alive. She thinks for an instant of Walter and his more exotic demands, of her faithful acquiescence and her pride—oh, God, her ridiculous pride—in her own large-mindedness. As if obedience to the unspeakable were proof of worth. “That's not true. I was no innocent.”

“In the essentials, you were. You
are
. There's no pretense in you. The way you're lying in my arms now, lying here willingly with your head between my jaws. You astound me.”

Violet takes his hand and holds it against her belly. She loves the sound of his voice, the cigarette-scented breath of him. The words themselves no longer matter.

Lionel tucks her hair over her ear. “You are so beautiful. Your skin and hair, all sunburned and lovely. Your marvelous mind, your practical fingers. You make me believe in things again. You make me think it's possible.”

“What's possible?”

“Everything.” He kisses her hair. “Anything.”

•   •   •

LIONEL WAKES HER
at dawn, bristling with energy. “You're not human,” Violet says, rolling her face into the straw.

“Come along.” He gives her bottom an encouraging swat. “We've got to cross the border today. I'd give anything for a newspaper this morning.”

“I'd give anything for a bath.”

“You can bathe in our hotel in Zurich tonight. I'll wash you myself. Up you get, or I'll be forced to take extreme measures.”

Violet yanks him into the straw. He yanks her up again, and in a few minutes they're on their way, while the breeze pulls the stalks from her hair.

•   •   •

AT LUNCHTIME
they arrive in the outskirts of the town of Blumberg. Lionel stops to consult a map, the bicycle balanced between his long flannel legs.

Violet brushes back her damp hair. She left her hat behind in the train compartment, and the sun is hot against her unguarded skin. “Where are we?” she asks, for perhaps the dozenth time that morning, though this time she knows the answer. Here, the streets are alive with the hum of commerce, the rattle of urgent travel. The gathering momentum of a steam engine chuffs over the rooftops. Violet cannot breathe.

“It's the main border crossing.” Lionel looks up. “This way.”

Violet seizes her handlebars and follows him about the streets, between carts and chattering pedestrians and the odd automobile, too exhausted to think. He pulls up before a small hotel and dismounts the bicycle. “Here we are.”

“Here?” She looks up doubtfully at the ancient building, which looks as if it's been welcoming weary travelers since the days of the Grand Tour. A columned portico sags to leftward, dreaming of more elegant days,
above a double entrance shut tight to the hot afternoon air. A cluster of agitated tourists huddles in the slanted shade.

“My dear Mrs. Brown.” He helps her from her bicycle and kisses her hand, right atop the ring. “Do remember we're on our honeymoon.”

In the absence of a doorman, Lionel ushers her through the entrance with her valise in his hand. The lobby is cramped and dark and blissfully cool. Two figures rise from the worn red velvet settee in the corner, flanked by a pair of valises.

“I might have known,” Violet says with a sigh.

•   •   •

“I SUPPOSE
you know more than I do about all this,” Violet says to Henry. They are sitting at a small table in the dining room, sipping weak lemonade, while Jane and Lionel confer quietly next to them. Lionel's shoulder brushes her with reassuring nearness, and yet she feels quite apart from the two of them, a different world entirely.

Henry stares at the stained and pitted wood before him. “Not much.”

“Does she usually drag you about on her . . .” Violet squints for a word. “Her missions?”

His dark head lifts, and his eyes examine her with an expression that seems far wiser than his years. All of him seems older and wiser than he did just months ago, in May. His shoulders seem wider, his jaw sturdier. As if his flesh is finally filling out the gaps in his long skeleton. “She's a force of nature, you know,” he says. “She lands on her feet, every time. You can trust her.”

Violet glances at Jane's animated face and back again. She smiles. “We're a great deal alike, aren't we, Henry?”

He manages a smile of his own and reaches out boldly to squeeze her hand. “I'd like to think so.”

Lionel turns to her and speaks in a low voice. “Does that make sense, Violet?”

“Does
what
make sense? I'm sorry.”

“Crossing here, instead of the smaller station near Stülingen. We'd stand out more among the locals.”

Jane speaks up. “Henry and I went for a walk earlier. There's a terrible amount of foreigners crowding up here at the moment. Because of the emergency, I guess.”

“The emergency?”

“Austria's declared war, Violet,” says Lionel. His fingers drum against the wooden tabletop. “I expect Russia's mobilizing already.”

“Good God. What does that mean?”

“It means we've got to move like lightning. We've already wasted enough time.” Lionel rises from the table, without waiting for Violet's agreement. Not that it matters to her where they cross the border; not that she can possibly have an opinion on that point.

Outside, the bright clear air makes Violet blink. The streets are busy, full of hurry and a simmering sense of panic, quite out of place in the idyllic Alpine setting. A train whistle sounds shrilly, making her jump.

Lionel's hand touches hers. “Nothing to worry about.”

Jane's arm loops through her other elbow. “What a grand coincidence, isn't it, Sylvie? Our meeting up here in Germany like this. What a story we'll have for them, back home.”

“Yes, of course.”

Jane keeps up her chatter all the way through the thickening crowds. They reach the border queue on the outskirts of town. It snakes down the road and around the corner of a squat red-tiled guardhouse. Henry sets down his two valises and dashes out to buy a newspaper from a busy vendor.

“They're disembarking everyone from the train and sending them through the crossing,” he says, when he returns. “That's why the queue is so long.”

“I see,” says Lionel.

“What a nuisance to have our holiday spoiled,” says Jane. “And these
Europeans claim to be so civilized. Is Italy going to be a part of all this? Maybe we can run down to Monte and stay there.”

“Monte Carlo is in Monaco, not Italy,” says Violet.

“Oh, that's right. But don't they speak Italian?”

“French.”

Jane tosses her white chiffon scarf over her shoulder. “Well, well! Imagine that. I always thought it was Italian. I never can keep these lingos straight. I wonder if anyone knows anything.” She taps the shoulder of the man before her. He turns, starts at the sight of her, and whips off his hat. She smiles with understanding. “Excuse me, do you speak English?”

To his obvious regret, he does not.

The queue edges forward. Henry finishes the newspaper and hands it to Lionel. “Not much new, sir,” he says.

Violet peers between the restless bodies around her and spies the border guards. Nothing seems out of the ordinary. They're strapping fellows, of course; she would expect nothing less. They wear uniforms of dull field gray, stern and official as they examine papers in the dusty road. The one nearest has a pink and bulbous nose. His jowls dangle doubtfully over the papers in his large paw.

“Nothing to worry about,” says Lionel in her ear, and she swallows her anxiety into her belly.

“The heat is terrible, isn't it?” Jane fans herself. “I do wish they would hurry along.”

Lionel's hand finds the small of Violet's back. “How do you feel, darling? Are you all right in this heat?”

“Yes.” She wants to turn into him, to cling to him and hold him here, to take him away from this ominous long queue and the guard with the bulbous nose. She wants to find their bicycles and pedal backward, back to the barn of last night, the riverbed of yesterday, the Hotel Adlon of two days ago with its indigo twilight and crisp linen sheets.
If I've only got one day of you left, I'll take it,
she said yesterday, but yesterday she didn't know
what that meant. She didn't know that tomorrow would actually arrive. She had thought, somehow, that the clock would stop for her, and she would not actually be standing here before the border to Switzerland listening to the final minutes rattle past.

An automobile rushes by, raising clouds of bitter dust. A pair of uniformed men leap out and approach the guard with the bulbous nose. He looks up and scans the crowd before him. His mouth is working. What are they saying to each other? Violet gathers the alert tension in Lionel's hand at her back, in his body inches away, watching the exchange as intently as she does.

The guard bursts into unexpected laughter. The other men laugh, too, and head into the guardhouse.

“Well! I thought there was a war on,” says Jane.

“Not yet.” Lionel picks up the valise and moves forward in the queue. “Nothing's written in stone, is it?”

Another hour. The guards are working with remarkable efficiency; only one party stands ahead of them in the queue now. They are now being split between the two guards. Violet looks back and forth between them, trying to judge which will finish first. She doesn't want to go to the man with the bulbous nose; she doesn't like the keen squint of his eye, the bloodhound hang of his jowls above his stiff gray collar.

The other guard waves his party through the gate and calls over the next in the queue. Lionel's hand closes about Violet's, in a solicitous husbandly way. “Tired, my dear?”

“It's dreadfully hot.”

“We'll be through soon, I promise.”

Violet watches the guard. He looks up and jerks his head at the man who stands nervously before him, and the man picks up his valise and hurries with relief through the barrier. The guard turns his gaze to Violet, and then, more thoroughly, to Jane. He lifts his hand and motions them forward.

Jane thrusts her papers forward. “Jane Mortimer, of New York City,” she says. “And my son, Henry.”

The guard takes the papers and looks them over.

“What an adorable country you have,” says Jane. “I admire your efficiency tremendously. Such a strong and muscular race.”

He looks up. She smiles winningly.

His eyes shift to Lionel and Violet. “You travel together?”

Lionel offers the papers. “Yes. Edward and Sylvia Brown, New York City. Some crowd you've got here, eh? You'd think there was a war on, ha, ha.”

The guard runs his thumb along the side of Lionel's false passport. He opens the leather cover and flips over the pages. “Edward Brown?” he says.

“Yes, siree. My wife, Sylvia.”

The guard spares a glance at Violet and returns to his study. For some reason, the word
wife
comforts Violet, even though it's false, even though Lionel is telling a patent lie. She likes the way it sounds in his confident American voice. As if, in that instant, she really is his wife, and he really is her husband.

“I hope everything's in order,” says Jane. “I can never keep all these official stamps straight.”

The guard's gaze falls for an instant on her bosom, on the smooth skin of her neck. He turns to Lionel and Violet and jerks his head. “You, go ahead.”

“But we can't—” says Violet.

“Let's go, Sylvie,” says Lionel. “They'll catch up.”

Jane says, “Oh, go on ahead, you two. I suppose I've left something out again.”

Violet looks frantically at Henry. “But—”

“Let's
go
.” Lionel's unshakeable hand surrounds her arm.

Violet gives way. Lionel urges her forward with swift American-like
strides, toward the barrier, which lifts obligingly at their approach. Switzerland, safety, the end of the journey a few steps away. Violet's blood skids giddily in her veins.

A shout from behind. Violet turns.

Lionel tugs her forward. “Come along, Sylvie! Now!”

“Schliessen S
ie! Schliessen Sie das Tor!”

The guard at the barrier brings down the bar with a thud. He looks toward the guardhouse. A swirl of dust lifts past.

Lionel's hand clenches like a vise on Violet's arm. “Look here, we've already been cleared.”

The pair of guards—the ones from the automobile—stride toward the barrier, waving their arms. They shout to the crowd, in English. “No more! No more today!”

An outraged murmur passes among the hot and dusty crowd. Someone shouts out in furious Italian.

“No more today!” the taller one repeats.

“But we've already been cleared,” says Lionel.

The guard shrugs. “By order of the state.”

•   •   •

THEY SIT
around a table in a bare room in the guardhouse, the four of them, Lionel and Violet and Jane and Henry. The guard with the bulbous nose overwhelms a chair in the corner. His eyes fix on Jane's swelling bosom with expressionless intent.

They have been picked out of the crowd, along with a few other parties, and brought here, while all the other travelers drifted off to the hotels and restaurants to nurse their official outrage. “This is ridiculous,” says Jane. “We're American citizens. I demand to see the fellow in charge.”