in a haze of despair. If he walked out alone he resented every couple he passed on the street; if he tried to distract himself with a film he cursed the jet-haired screen goddess who crept from her husband's train compartment to climb into her lover's moonlit couchette. If, at the end of such a night, he came home to the rue des Ecoles to find a light on in his windows, he would climb the stairs telling himself she had only come to break it off for good. Then he'd open the door and find her sitting beside the fire, reading a novel or stitching the hem of a practice dress or making tea, and she would get to her feet and put her arms around his neck, and he would be ashamed he'd doubted her.

In mid-May, when the trees wore close-fitting green singlets and the breeze from the Seine was warm even at night, Klara appeared one Saturday evening in a new spring hat, a pale blue toque with a ribbon of darker blue. A new hat, that simple thing: It was nothing more than a scrap of fashion, a sign of the changing season. Surely she'd worn a variety of hats since the red bell of their first winter embraces; he could remember a camel-colored one with a black feather, and a green cap with some sort of leather tassel.

But this decidedly vernal hat, this pale blue toque, reminded him, as the others hadn't, that time was passing for both of them, that he was still in school and she was still waiting for him, that what existed between them was an affair, gossamer and impermanent. He removed her dragonfly hatpin and hung the hat on the coat stand beside the door, then took both her hands and led her to the bed. She smiled and put her arms around him, saying his name into his ear, but he took her hands again and sat down with her.

"What is it?" she said. "What's wrong?"

He couldn't speak, couldn't begin to say what had made him melancholy. He couldn't find a way to tell her that her hat had reminded him that life was short and that he was no closer to being worthy of her than he'd ever been. So he took her into his arms and made love to her, and told himself he didn't care if there were never anything more between them than these late-night meetings, this circumscribed affair.

The hours passed quickly; by the time they'd pried themselves from the warmth of the bed and dressed, it was nearly three o'clock. They descended the five flights of stairs to the street, then walked to the boulevard Saint-Michel to hail a cab. They always said their goodbyes on the same corner. He'd grown to hate that patch of pavement for taking her away from him night after night. During the day, when its power to strip him of her was cloaked beneath the love-ignoring clamor of everyday life, it seemed a different place; he could almost believe it was like any other street corner, a place of no particular significance. But now, at night, it was his nemesis. He didn't want to see it--not the bookstore across the street, nor the fenced limes, nor the pharmacy with its glowing green cross: none of it. He turned with her instead down another street and they walked toward the Seine.

"Where are we going?" she said, smiling up at him.

"I'm walking you home."

"All right," she said. "It's a beautiful night." And it was. A May breeze came up the channel of the Seine as they crossed the bridges toward the Marais. The sidewalks were still full of men and women in evening clothes; no one seemed ready to give up the night. As they walked, Andras entertained the impossible fantasy that when they reached Klara's house they would climb the stairs together and move noiselessly down the hall to her bedroom, where they would fall asleep together in her white bed. But at Number 39 they found the lights ablaze; Mrs. Apfel ran downstairs at the sound of Klara's key and told her that Elisabet had not yet been home.

Klara's eyes widened with panic. "It's past three!"

"I know," Mrs. Apfel said, twisting her apron. "I didn't know where to find you."

"Oh, God, what could have happened? She's never been this late."

"I've been all over the neighborhood looking for her, Madame."

"And I've been out all this time! Oh, God. Three in the morning! She said she was just going to a dance with Marthe!"

A panicked hour followed, during which Klara made a series of telephone calls and learned that Marthe hadn't seen Elisabet all night, that the hospitals had admitted no one by the name of Elisabet Morgenstern, and that the police had received no report of foul play involving a girl of Elisabet's description. When she'd hung up the phone, Klara walked up and down the parlor, her hands on her head. "I'll kill her," she said, and then burst into tears. "Where is she? It's nearly four o' clock!"

It had occurred to Andras that Elisabet was most likely with her blond American, and that the reason for her absence was in all probability similar to the reason for Klara's late return. He'd sworn to keep her secret; he hesitated to speak his suspicions aloud. But he couldn't watch Klara torture herself. And besides that, it might be dangerous to hesitate. He imagined Elisabet in peril somewhere--drink-poisoned in the aftermath of one of Jozsef's parties, or alone in a distant arrondissement after a dance-hall night gone wrong--and he knew he had to speak.

"Your daughter has a gentleman friend," he said. "I saw them together one night at a party. We might find out where he lives, and check there."

Klara's eyes narrowed. "What gentleman friend? What party?"

"She begged me not to tell you," Andras said. "I promised her I wouldn't."

"When did this happen?"

"Months ago," Andras said. "January."

"January!" She put a hand against the sofa as if to keep herself upright. "Andras, you can't mean that."

"I'm sorry. I should have told you sooner. I didn't want to betray Elisabet's trust."

The look in her eyes was pure rage. "What is this person's name?"

"I know his first. I don't know his last. But your nephew knows him. We can go to his place--I'll go up, and you can wait in the cab."

She took up her light coat from the sofa, and a moment later they were running down the stairs. But when they opened the door they found Elisabet on the doorstep, holding a pair of evening shoes in one hand, a cone of spun-sugar candy in the other.

Klara, standing in the doorway, took a long look at her, at the shoes, the cone of candy; it was clear she hadn't come from an innocent evening with Marthe. Elisabet, in turn, cast a long look at Andras. He couldn't hold her gaze, and in that instant she seemed to understand that he had betrayed her; she turned an expression of startled outrage upon him, then pushed past him and her mother and ran up the stairs. A few moments later they heard her bedroom door slam.

"We'll talk later," Klara said, and left him standing in the entryway, having earned the furious contempt of both Morgensterns.

"I think you ought to know what kind of woman my mother is," Elisabet said.

She sat on a bench in the Tuileries and Andras stood before her; two days had passed since he'd last seen Klara, and no word had come from the rue de Sevigne. Then that afternoon, Elisabet had surprised him in the courtyard of the Ecole Speciale, causing Rosen and Ben Yakov to think she must be the mysterious woman he'd been seeing all that time--the woman they'd never met, whom he'd mentioned only in the vaguest terms during their conversations at the Blue Dove. When they emerged from studio and saw Elisabet standing in the courtyard, her cold eyes fixed upon Andras, her arms crossed over the bodice of her pale green dress, Rosen gave a whistle and Ben Yakov raised an eyebrow.

"She's an Amazon," he whispered. "How do you scale her in bed?"

Only Polaner knew this wasn't the woman Andras loved--Polaner, who, thanks to Andras's ministrations, and Klara's, and the unwavering friendship of Rosen and Ben Yakov, had returned to the Ecole Speciale and entered his classes again. Only Polaner was privy to the secret of Andras's relationship; though he had never met Elisabet, he knew as much about Klara's history and family as Andras did himself. So when this tall, powerful girl had appeared in the courtyard of the Ecole Speciale, shooting cold electric fire in Andras's direction, he guessed in an instant who she was. He distracted Rosen and Ben Yakov with a request for tea at the student cafe, seeing no other alternative but to leave Andras to his fate.

At the gates of the school, Elisabet turned and led Andras down the boulevard Raspail without a word. All the way to the Tuileries she stayed two steps ahead of him.

She had drawn her hair into a tight ponytail; it beat a rhythm against her back as she walked. He followed her down Raspail to Saint-Germain, and they crossed over the river and into the Tuileries. She led him down paths awash in gold and lilac and fuchsia, through the too-fragrant profusion of May flora, until they reached what must have been the park's only dismal corner: a black bench in need of repainting, a deflowered flowerbed. Behind them swept the rush of traffic on the rue de Rivoli. Elisabet sat down, crossed her arms again, and gave Andras a hate-laced stare.

"This won't take long," she said. And then she told him he ought to know what kind of woman her mother was.

"I know what kind of woman she is," Andras said.

"You told her the truth about Paul and me. And now I'm going to tell you the truth about her."

She was angry, he reminded himself. She would do whatever she could to hurt him, would tell whatever lies it suited her to tell. In a sense, he owed it to her to listen; he had betrayed her, after all.

"All right," he said. "What do you want to tell me?"

"I suppose you think you're my mother's first lover since my father."

"I know she's led a complicated life," he said. "That's not news."

Elisabet gave a short, hard laugh. "Complicated! I wouldn't say so. It's simple, once you know the pattern. I've seen pathetic men fawning over her for as long as I can remember. She's always known what she wanted from them, and what she was worth.

How do you think she got the apartment and the studio? By dancing her heart out?"

It was all he could do not to slap her. He dug his nails into the palms of his hands.

"That's enough," he said. "I won't listen to this."

"Someone has to tell you the truth."

"Your mother doesn't take me for a fool, and neither should you."

"But you are a fool, you stupid fool! She's playing a game with you, using you to a fool, you stupid fool! She's playing a game with you, using you to make another man jealous. A real man, an adult, one with a job and money. You can read about it yourself." She produced a sheaf of envelopes from her leather schoolbag. A masculine hand; Klara's name. She took out another sheaf, and another. Stacks and stacks of letters. She peeled an envelope from the top of the pile, extracted the letter, and began to read.

"'My dear Odette.' That's what he calls her, his Odette, after the swan-princess in the ballet. 'Since last night I've done nothing but think of you. Your taste is still in my mouth. My hands are full of you. Your scent is everywhere in my house.'"

Andras took the letter from her hand. There were the lines she'd just read, in a familiar script; he turned it over to look for the signature. One initial: Z. The envelope bore a year-old postmark.

"Who do you think it is?" Elisabet said, her eyes fixed on his own. "It's your Monsieur Novak. Z is for Zoltan. She's been his mistress for eleven years. And when things go sour, as they do now and then, she takes up with idiots like you to drive him mad. He always comes back. That's how it works. Now you know."

A wave of hot needles rolled through him. He felt as though his lungs had been punctured, as though he couldn't draw a breath. "Are you finished?" he said.

She got up and smoothed the skirt of her pale green dress. "It might seem hard to take," she said. "But I can assure you it's no harder than what she's doing to me, now that she knows about Paul." And she left him there in the Tuileries with Novak's letters.

He didn't go to work. Instead he sat on the bench in that dusty corner of the park and read the letters. The oldest was dated January 1927. He read about Klara's first meeting with Novak after a dance performance; he read about Novak's failing struggle to stay faithful to his wife, and then he read Novak's half-exultant self-castigation after his first tryst with Klara. There were cryptic references to places where they must have made love--an opera box, a friend's cottage in Montmartre, a bedroom at a party, Novak's office at the Sarah-Bernhardt; there were notes in which Novak pleaded for a meeting, and notes in which he begged her to refuse to see him the next time he asked. There were references to arguments involving crises of conscience on both sides, and then a sixmonth break in the regular stream of letters--a time when they must have been apart and she must have begun seeing someone else, because the next letters made angry mention of a young dancer named Marcel. (Was this the Marcel, Andras wondered, who'd written Klara those postcards from Rome?) Novak demanded that she break off the liaison with Marcel; it was absurd, he wrote, to think that that young salamander's feelings could ever match his own. And she must have done as he wished, because the letters from Novak picked up their steady pace again, and they were once again full of affectionate reference to the time he'd spent with Klara. There were letters in which he wrote about the dance studio and the apartment he'd found for her, dull letters about the technicalities of the real-estate transaction; desperate notes about how he would leave his wife and come to live with her on the rue de Sevigne--marry her and adopt Elisabet--and sober-toned notes about why he couldn't. Then another break, and more letters referring to another lover of Klara's, this one a writer whose plays had been performed at the Sarah-Bernhardt; one week Novak swore that this was the final straw, that he was finished with Klara forever, but the next week he begged her to come to him, and the following week it was clear that she had done so-- what sweet relief to have you again, what fulfillment of my wildest what sweet relief to have you again, what fulfillment of my wildest hopes. Finally, in early 1937, it seemed his wife had learned from their lawyer that they owned a piece of property she hadn't known about; she'd confronted Novak, and he'd confessed. His wife had told him to make a choice. That was when he'd gone home to Hungary--to take a cure for a mild case of tuberculosis, as he'd told everyone, but also, in fact, to decide between his marriage and his mistress. It must have been on his way back from Hungary that Andras had met him at the train station. He'd come back full of remorse, ashamed at having wronged both Edith and Klara. He'd broken off his relations with Klara, and his wife had become pregnant. That piece of news had come in December. But the most recent letter was from just a few weeks ago, and concerned rumors that Klara had been seeing someone else--and not just anyone, but Andras Levi Andras Levi, the young Hungarian whom Zoltan had hired at the Sarah-Bernhardt last fall. He demanded that she explain herself, and begged her to do so in person at a certain hotel, on a certain afternoon; he would be waiting for her.

Andras sat on the bench with the stack of letters beside him. That afternoon, two weeks earlier--what had he been doing? Had he been at work? At school? He couldn't remember. Had she cancelled her classes, gone to meet Novak? Was she with him this very instant? He had the sudden desire to choke someone to death. Anyone would do: that brocaded matron beside the fountain with her bichon frise; that sad-looking girl beneath the limes; the policeman on the corner whose moustache seemed grotesquely like Novak's. He got to his feet, stuffed the letters into his bag, and walked back toward the river. It was dark now, a damp spring night. He stepped in front of cars that blared their horns at him, shouldered past men and women on the sidewalks, trudged through groups of clochards on the bridges. He didn't know what time it was, and didn't care. He was exhausted. He hadn't eaten anything and wasn't hungry. It was too late for him to show up at Forestier's now, but he didn't want to go home, either; there was a chance Klara might come to talk to him, and he couldn't bear the thought of seeing her. He didn't want to confront her about Novak; he was ashamed at having read the letters, at having allowed Elisabet to do this to him. He turned away and walked off down the rue des Ecoles to the place de la Sorbonne, where he sat at the edge of a fountain and listened to a one-legged accordionist playing the bitterest love songs he had ever heard. When he couldn't stand another measure he fled to the Jardin du Luxembourg, where he fell into a fretful sleep on an elm-shadowed bench.

He awoke some time later in a humid blue dawn, his neck in a spasm from the way he'd slept. He remembered that some disaster had crushed him the night before; he could feel it rushing toward his consciousness again. And there it was: Zoltan Novak, the letters. He rubbed his eyes with thumb and forefinger and blinked at the morning. Before him on the grass two tiny rabbits browsed the clover. The first light of day came through the delicate endive leaves of their ears; they were so close he could hear the snip and grind of their teeth. The park was otherwise silent, and he was alone with what he knew about Klara and could not unknow.

He was right: She'd been at his apartment the night before. In fact she'd been looking for him all over town. He traced her movements through a series of increasingly anxious notes, which he received in reverse order. First the one she'd tacked to his drawing table at the studio: A, where can you be? I've looked everywhere. Come see me A, where can you be? I've looked everywhere. Come see me as soon as you get this. K.; next the one she'd left in the care of the good Monsieur next the one she'd left in the care of the good Monsieur Forestier, who was more worried than angry when Andras came to work looking like he'd spent the previous night on a bench: A, When you didn't come home I came here to look A, When you didn't come home I came here to look for you. Going to check at school. K.; and finally, at the end of what felt like the longest and finally, at the end of what felt like the longest day he'd ever lived, the note she'd left for him at home, on the table downstairs: A, I've A, I've gone to look for you at Forestier's. Your K. He climbed the five flights to his attic and opened the door. In the dark, there was the clatter of a chair falling over, and Klara's light tread on the floor, and then she was beside him. He lit a lamp and shrugged off his jacket.

"Andras," she said. "My God, what happened to you? Where have you been?"

"I don't want to talk," he said. "I'm going to bed." He couldn't look at her. Every time he did, he saw Novak's hands on her, his mouth on her mouth. Your taste Your taste. Nausea came at him in a towering wave, and he went to his knees beside the bed. When she put a hand on his shoulder he shrugged it away.

"What's wrong?" she said. "Look at me."

He couldn't. He stripped off his shirt and trousers and crawled into bed, his face to the wall. He heard her moving through the room behind him.

"You can't do this," she said. "We've got to talk."

"Go away," he said.

"This is crazy. You're acting like a child."

"Leave me alone, Klara."

"Not until you talk to me."

He sat up in bed, his eyes going hot. He wouldn't cry in front of her. Without a word, he got up and took the letters from his bag and threw them on the table.

"What are those?" she said.

"You tell me."

She picked up one of the letters. "Where did you get these?"

"Your daughter was kind enough to deliver them. It was her way of thanking me for telling you about Paul."

"What?"

"She thought I might want to know who else you were fucking."

"Oh, God!" she cried. "Unbelievable. She did this?"

"'Your taste is still in my mouth. My hands are full of you. Your scent is everywhere in my house.'" He peeled the letter off the pile and threw it at her. "Or this He peeled the letter off the pile and threw it at her. "Or this one: 'But for you, my life would be darkness.' 'But for you, my life would be darkness.' Or this: Or this: 'Thoughts of last night have 'Thoughts of last night have sustained me through this terrible day. When will you come to me again?' And this one, And this one, from two weeks ago: ' ... The Hotel St. Lazare, where I'll be waiting.'" ... The Hotel St. Lazare, where I'll be waiting.'"

"Andras, please--"

"Go to hell, Klara, go to hell! Get out of my house! I can't look at you."

"It's all in the past," she said. "I couldn't do it anymore. I never loved him."

"You were with him for eleven years! You slept with him three nights a week.

You left two other lovers for him. You let him buy you an apartment and a studio. And you never loved him? If that's true, is it supposed to make me feel better?"

"I told you," she said, her voice flattened with pain. "I told you you didn't want to know everything about me."

He couldn't stand to hear another word. He was exhausted and hungry and depleted, his mind a scorched pot whose contents had burned away to nothing. He almost didn't care whether there was anything between Klara and Novak still, whether their most recent break was decisive or just one of many temporary breaks. The idea that she'd been with that man, Zoltan Novak, with his odious moustache--that he'd put his hands on her body, on her birthmarks and scars, the terrain that had seemed to belong to Andras alone, but which of course belonged only to Klara, to do with as she wished--he couldn't stand it. And then there were the others--the dancer, the playwright--and before them there had undoubtedly been others still. They seemed to become real to him all at once, the legions of her former lovers, those men who had preceded him in his knowledge of her. They seemed to crowd the room. He could see them in their ridiculous ballet costumes and their expensive overcoats and their decorated military jackets, with their good haircuts and bad haircuts and dusty or glossy shoes, their proud or defeated-looking shoulders, their grace, their awkwardness, their variously shaped spectacles, their collective smell of leather and shaving soap and Macassar oil and plain masculine desire. Klara Morgenstern: That was what they had in common. Despite what Madame Gerard had told him, he had thought himself unique in her life, without precedent, but the truth was that he was a foot soldier in an army of lovers, and once he'd fallen there would be others to replace him, and others after that. It was too much. He pulled the quilt over his shoulder and put an arm across his eyes. She said his name again in her low familiar voice. He remained silent, and she said it again. He wouldn't make a sound. After a while he heard her get up and put on her coat, and then he heard the door open and close. On the other side of the wall a pair of new neighbors began to make noisy love. The woman called out in a breathy contralto; the man grunted in basso. Andras ground his face into pillow, wild with grief, thinking of nothing, wishing to God he were dead.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

The Stone Cottage BY THE NEXT MORNING he was dizzy with fever. Heat poured out of him and soaked the bed; then he was shaking with chills beneath his blanket and his jacket and his overcoat and three wool sweaters. He couldn't eat, couldn't get up for work, couldn't go to school. When he got thirsty he drank the cold remains of tea straight from the kettle.

When he had to piss he used the chamber pot beneath the bed. On the morning of the second day, when Polaner came looking for him, he didn't have the strength to tell him to leave, though all he wanted was to be alone. Now it was Polaner who stepped into the role of nurse; he did it as though he'd done it all his life. He made Andras get out of bed and wash himself. He emptied the chamber pot, changed Andras's sheets. He boiled water and brewed strong tea; he sent the concierge for soup and made Andras eat it. When Andras was clean and dressed and lying exhausted on the freshly made bed, Polaner made him tell him exactly what had happened. He took it all in with careful attention, and judged the situation grave, though not hopeless. The important thing now, he said, was for Andras to get well. There were two projects to be finished for studio. If he couldn't get out of bed and get back to work, Polaner would suffer for it: They were team projects, and he and Andras were the team. Then there were exams to prepare for: statics and history of architecture. They would be given in ten days' time. If Andras failed, he would lose his scholarship and be sent home. There was also the small matter of Andras's job.

For two days he'd sent no word to Monsieur Forestier.

Polaner said he would gather their things from the studio--Andras was too depleted from the fever to make the trip to the boulevard Raspail--and they would work on their projects all day. In the afternoon Polaner would go to the set-design studio with a note from Andras begging Monsieur Forestier's pardon. Polaner would offer to do Andras's copy work that night. In the meantime Andras would lay out a plan of study for the statics and the history exams.

He had never had a friend like Polaner, and would never have a better one as long as he lived. By the next day his job was secure, his final projects on their way to completion. They had to draw plans for a single-use building, a modern concert hall, and there were still problems to solve in the design: They had chosen a cylindrical shape for the exterior, and had to design a ceiling inside that would send the sound toward the audience without echo or distortion. When they were finished with the plans they would have to build a model. Arranging and rearranging cardboard forms consumed an entire day and night. Polaner didn't mention going home; he slept on the floor, and was there when Andras woke in the morning.

At half past ten, just as Polaner was getting ready to go home, they heard a rising tread on the stairs. It seemed to Andras as if someone were climbing his very spine, toward the black and painful cavern of his heart. They heard a key in the lock, and the door edged open; it was Klara, her eyes dark beneath the brim of her spring hat.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't know you had company."

"Monsieur Polaner is on his way home," Polaner said. "Monsieur Levi has had enough of me for now. I taxed his brain with architecture all night, though he was still recovering from a fever."

"A fever?" Klara said. "Has the doctor been here?"

"Polaner's been taking care of me," Andras said.

"I've been a poor doctor," Polaner said. "He looks like he's lost weight. I'll be off before I do any further damage." He put on his own spring hat, of such a fashionable shape and color that you could miss the place where he'd resewn the brim to the crown, and he slipped into the hall, closing the door quietly behind him.

"A fever," Klara said. "Are you feeling better now?"

He didn't answer. She sat down in the wooden chair and touched the cardboard walls of the concert hall. "I should have told you about Zoltan," she said. "This was a terrible way for you to find out. And there might have been worse ways. You worked together. Marcelle knew."

He hated to think of it, of Madame Gerard knowing all and seeing all. "It was a bad enough way to find out," he said.