is.” Her smile faded. “I’ve shut Warsaw from my mind. Or tried to.”
“I don’t blame you.”
“How about you, Briny? Do you ever think about it?”
“Some. I keep dreaming about it.”
“Oh, God, so do I. That hospital. I go round and round in it, night after night -”
“When Warsaw fell,” Byron said, “it hit me hard.” He told Natalie about the Wannsee episode. At his description of the waiter’s sudden turnabout, she laughed bitterly.
“Your father sounds superb.”
“He’s all right.”
“He must think I’m a vampire who all but lured you to your death.”
“We haven’t talked about you.”
Sudden gloom shadowed Natalie’s face. She poured more coffee for both of them. “Stir the fire, Briny. I’m cold. Giuseppe’s brought in green wood, as usual.”
He made the fire flare, and threw on it a light log from a blighted tree, which quickly blazed. “Ah, that’s good!” She jumped up, turned off the electric chandelier, and stood by the fire, looking at the flames. “That moment in the railroad station,” she nervously burst out, “when they took away the Jews! I still can’t face it. That was one reason I was so nasty at Konigsberg. I was in torture. I kept thinking that I could have done something. Suppose I’d stepped forward, said I was Jewish, forced the issue? Suppose we’d all created a scandal? It might have made a difference. But we calmly went to the train, and they trudged off the other way.”
Byron said, “We might have lost you and Mark Hartley. The thing was touch and go.”
“Yes, I know. Leslie prevented that. He stood his ground, at least, though he was shaking like a leaf: he did his plain duty. But those other ambassadors and charges — well -”
Natalie had begun to pace. “And my family in Medzice! When I picture those kind, good people in the clutches of the Germans — but what’s the use? It’s futile, it’s sickening, to dwell on that.” She threw up her hand in a despairing gesture and dropped in her chair, sitting on her legs with her skirt spread over them. Nothing of her was visible in the firelight but her face and her tensely clasped hands. She stared at the fire. “Speaking of old Slote,” she said after a long pause, in an entirely different tone, “what d’you think of his proposal to make an honest woman of me?”
“I’m not surprised.”
“You’re not? I’m stunned. I never thought I’d live to see the day.”
“He told me in Berlin he might marry you. He’d be crazy not to, if he could.”
“‘Well, he’s had that option open to him for a hell of a long time, dear.” She poured coffee and sipped, looking darkly at him over the rim of the cup, “Had a big discussion about me in Berlin, you two gentlemen, did you?”
“Not a big discussion. He mentioned that you were just as surly to him that last day in Konigsberg as you’d been to me.”
“I was feeling absolutely horrible that day, Briny.”
“Well, that’s all right. I thought I might have offended you somehow, so I asked him.”
“This is getting interesting. What else did Slote say about me?”
The low, vibrant voice, the amused glinting of her eyes in the firelight, stirred Byron. “That you were no girl for me to get involved with, and that he hadn’t known an hour’s peace of mind since he first laid eyes on you.”
She uttered a low gloating laugh. “Two accurate statements, my pet. Tell me more.”
“That’s about it. It was the same conversation in which he gave me the reading list.”
“Yes, and wasn’t
Byron shook his head.
Natalie said, “You wouldn’t go and get us some brandy, would you? I think I’d like a little brandy.”
He raced down the stairs and up again, returning with a bottle and two shimmering snifters. Swirling the brandy round and round in her hands, looking into the balloon glass and rarely raising her eyes at him, Natalie broke loose with a surprising rush of words about her affair with Leslie Slote. It took her a long time. Byron said little, interrupting only to throw more wood on the fire. It was a familiar tale of a clever older man having fun with a girl and getting snared into a real passion. Resolving to marry him, she had made his life a misery. He didn’t want to marry her, she said, simply because she was Jewish and it would be awkward for his career. That was all his clouds of words had ever come to. At last, with this letter, after thirty months, she had him where she wanted him.
Byron hated every word of the story, yet he was fascinated, and grateful. The closemouthed girl was taking him into her life. These words, which couldn’t be unsaid, were ending the strange tension between them since Warsaw, their own little phony war — the long hostile silences in the library, her holing up in her room, her odd snappish condescension. As she talked, they were growing intimate as they never had become in a month of adventuring through Poland.
Everything about this girl interested him. If it was the account of her affair with another man, let it be that! At least Byron was talking about Natalie Jastrow with Natalie Jastrow, and this was what he had been starved for. He was hearing this sweet rough voice with its occasional New Yorkisms, and he could watch the play of her free gesturing hand in the firelight, the swoop and sudden stop in the air of flat palm and fingers, her visible signature.
Natalie Jastrow was the one person he had ever met who meant as much to him as his father did. In the same way, almost, he hungered to talk to his father, to listen to him, to be with him, even though he had to resist and withdraw, even though he knew that in almost every conversation he either offended or disappointed Victor Henry. His mother he took for granted, a warm presence, cloying in her affection, annoying in her kittenish changeability. His father was terrific, and in that way Natalie was terrific, entirely aside from being a tall dark girl whom he had hopelessly craved to see in his arms since the first hour they had met.
“Well, there you have it,” Natalie said. “This mess has been endless, but that’s the general idea. How about some more of Aaron’s brandy? Wouldn’t you like some? It’s awfully good brandy. Funny, I usually don’t care for it.”
Byron poured more for both of them, though his glass wasn’t empty.
“What I’ve been puzzling about all day,” she said after a sip, “is why Leslie is throwing in the towel now. The trouble is, I think I know.”
“He’s lonesome for you,” Byron said.
Natalie shook her head. “Leslie Slote behaved disgustingly on the Praha road. I despised him for it, and I let him know I did. That was the turnaround. He’s been chasing me ever since. I guess in a way I’ve been running, too. I haven’t even answered half his letters.”
Byron said, “You’ve always exaggerated that whole thing. All he did -”
“Shut up, Byron. Don’t be mealy-mouthed with me. All he did was turn yellow and use me as an excuse. He hid behind my skirts. The Swedish ambassador all but laughed in his face.” She tossed off most of her brandy. “Look, physical courage isn’t something you can help. It isn’t even important nowadays. You can be a world leader and a cringing sneak. That’s what Hitler probably is. Still, it happened. It happened. I’m not saying I won’t marry Leslie Slote because shellfire made him panic. After all, he behaved well enough at the railroad station. But I do say that’s why he’s proposing to me. This is his way of apologizing and being a man. It’s not quite the answer to my maidenly prayers.”
“It’s what you want.”
“Well, I don’t know. There are complications. There’s my family. My parents had wild fits when I told them I was in love with a Christian. My father took to his bed for a week, though
“If he’s really that kind of fool, which I doubt very much,” Byron said, “you could just let him bicycle away.”
“Then there’s Aaron.”
“He’s not your problem. He ought to get out of Italy in any case.”
“He’s very reluctant to go.”
“Well, he survived while we were away.”
