"I'd love to see the look on that secretary's face again," Rosen said.

"You mean the Secretary to the President Himself?"

Rosen put his hands on his knees and laughed. But then an ambulance rushed down the street in the direction of the assembly hall, and a few moments later another followed. Not long afterward, more Ligue members passed; these looked pale and stricken, and they dragged their banners on the sidewalk and held their hats in their hands. Andras and Rosen watched them in silence. Something grave had happened: Someone from the Ligue had been hurt. Andras took off his own hat and held it on his lap, his adrenaline dissolving into hollow dread. Le Grand Occident wasn't the only group of its kind; there had to be dozens of similar meetings taking place all over Paris that very minute. And if meetings like that were taking place in Paris, then what was going on in the less enlightened cities of Europe? Andras pulled his jacket tighter around himself, beginning to feel the cold again. Rosen got to his feet; he, too, had become quiet and serious.

"Far worse things are going to happen here," he said. "Wait and see."

On the rue de Sevigne the next day, Madame Morgenstern and Elisabet sat in silence as Andras described the incidents of the past forty-eight hours. He told them about the critique, and how far his work had fallen in his own estimation; he told them what had happened at the meeting. He produced a clipping from that morning's L'Oeuvre L'Oeuvre and read it aloud. The article described the disrupted recruitment session and the melee that followed. Each group blamed the other for initiating the violence: Pemjean took the opportunity to point out the deviousness and belligerence of the Jewish people, and Gerard Lecache, president of the Ligue Internationale Contre l'Antisemitisme, called the incident a manifestation of Le Grand Occident's violent intent. The newspaper abandoned all pretense of journalistic objectivity to praise the Maccabean bravery of the Ligue, and to accuse Le Grand Occident of bigotry, ignorance, and barbarism; two members of the Ligue, it turned out, had been beaten senseless and were now hospitalized at the HotelDieu.

"You might have been killed!" Elisabet said. Her tone was acidic as usual, but for an instant she gave him a look of what seemed like genuine concern. "What were you thinking? Did you imagine you'd take on all those brutes at once? Thirty of you against two hundred of them?"

"We weren't part of the plan," Andras said. "We didn't know the LICA was going to be there. When they started making noise, we joined in."

"Ridiculous fools, all of you," Elisabet said.

Madame Morgenstern fixed her gray eyes upon Andras. "Take care you don't get in trouble with the police," she said. "Remember, you're a guest in France. You don't want to be deported because of an incident like this."

"They wouldn't deport me," Andras said. "Not for serving the ideals of France."

"They certainly would," Madame Morgenstern said. "And that would be the end of your studies. Whatever you do, you must protect your status here. Your presence in France is a political statement to begin with."

"He'll never last here, anyway," Elisabet said, the moment of concern having passed. "He'll fail out of school by the end of the year. His professors think he's talentless. Weren't you listening?" She peeled herself from the velvet chair and slouched off to her bedroom, where they could hear her knocking around as she got ready to go out. A few moments later she emerged in an olive-green dress and a black wool cap.

She'd braided her hair and scrubbed her cheeks into a windy redness. Pocketbook in one hand, gloves in the other, she stood in the sitting-room doorway and gave a half wave.

"Don't wait up for me," she told her mother. Then, as an apparent afterthought, she arrowed a look of disdain in Andras's direction. "There's no need to come next weekend, Champion of France," she said. "I'll be skiing with Marthe in Chamonix. In fact, I wish you'd desist altogether." She slung her bag over her shoulder and ran down the stairs, and they heard the door slam and jingle behind her.

Madame Morgenstern lowered her forehead into her hand. "How much longer will she be like this, do you think? You weren't like this when you were sixteen, were you?"

"Worse," Andras said, and smiled. "But I didn't live at home, so my mother was spared."

"I've threatened to send her to boarding school, but she knows I don't have the heart. Nor the money, for that matter."

"Well," he said. "Chamonix. How long will she be there?"

"Ten days," she said. "The longest she's been gone from home."

"Then I suppose it'll be January before I see you again," Andras said. He heard himself say it aloud-- maga maga, the singular Hungarian you you--but by that time it was too late, and in any case Madame Morgenstern hadn't seemed to notice the slip. With the excuse that it was time for him to go to work, he got up to take his coat and hat from the rack at the top of the stairs. But she stopped him with a hand on his sleeve.

"You're forgetting the Spectacle d'Hiver," she said. "You'll come, won't you?"

Her students' winter recital. He knew it was next week, of course. It was to take place at the Sarah-Bernhardt on Thursday evening; he was the one who had designed the posters. But he hadn't expected to have any excuse to attend. He wasn't scheduled to work that night, since The Mother The Mother would already have closed for the holidays. Now Madame would already have closed for the holidays. Now Madame Morgenstern was looking at him in quiet anticipation, her hand burning through the fabric of his coat. His mouth was a desert, his hands glacial with sweat. He told himself that the invitation meant nothing, that it fell perfectly within the bounds of their acquaintance: as a friend of the family, as a possible suitor of Elisabet, he might well be asked to come. He mustered a response in the affirmative, saying he'd be honored, and they executed their weekly parting ritual: the coat-rack, his things, the stairs, a chaste goodbye. But at the threshold she held his gaze a moment longer than usual. Her eyebrows came together, and she held her mouth in its pensive pose. Just as she seemed about to speak, a pair of red-jacketed schoolgirls ran down the sidewalk chasing a little white dog, and they had to move apart, and the moment passed. She raised a hand in farewell and stepped inside, closing the door behind her.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

Winter Holiday THAT YEAR, in her studio on the rue de Sevigne, Claire Morgenstern had taught some ninety-five girls between the ages of eight and fourteen, three of the oldest of whom would soon depart for professional training with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. She had been preparing the children for the Spectacle d'Hiver for two months now; the costumes were ready, the young dancers schooled in the ways of snowflakes, sugarplums, and swans, the winter-garden scenery in readiness. That week Andras's advertising poster appeared all over town: a snowflake child in silhouette against a starry winter sky, one leg extended in an arabesque, the words Spectacle d'Hiver Spectacle d'Hiver trailing the upraised right hand trailing the upraised right hand like a comet tail. Every time he saw it--on the way to school, on the wall opposite the Blue Dove, at the bakery--he heard Madame Morgenstern saying You'll come, won't you? You'll come, won't you?

By Wednesday, the evening of the dress rehearsal, he felt he couldn't wait another day to see her. He arrived at the Sarah-Bernhardt at his usual hour, carrying a large plum cake for the coffee table. The corridors backstage were thronged with girls in white and silver tulle; they surged around him, blizzardlike, as he slipped into the backstage corner where the coffee table was arranged. With his pocketknife he cut the plum cake into a raft of little pieces. A group of girls in snowflake costumes clustered at the edges of the curtain, waiting for their entrance. As they tiptoed in place, they cast interested glances at the coffee table and the cake. Andras could hear a stage manager calling for the next group of dancers. Madame Morgenstern--Klara, as Madame Gerard called her--was nowhere to be seen.

He watched from the wings as the little girls danced their snowflake dance. The girl whose father had come late was among that group of children; when she ran back into the wings after her dance, she called to Andras and showed him that she had a new pair of glasses, this one with flexible wire arms that curled around the backs of her ears.

They wouldn't fall off while she danced, she explained. As she kicked into a pirouette to demonstrate, he heard Madame Morgenstern's laugh behind him.

"Ah," she said. "The new glasses."

Andras allowed himself a swift look at her. She was dressed in practice clothes, her dark hair twisted close against her head. "Ingenious," he said, trying to keep his voice steady. "They don't come off at all."

"They come off when I want want them to," the girl said. "I take them off them to," the girl said. "I take them off at night." at night."

"Of course," Andras said. "I didn't mean to suggest you wore them always." always."

The girl rolled her eyes at Madame Morgenstern and raced to the coffee table, where the other snowflakes were devouring the plum cake.

"This is a surprise," Madame Morgenstern said. "I didn't expect to see you until tomorrow."

"I have a job here, in case you've forgotten," Andras said, and crossed his arms.

"I'm responsible for the comfort and happiness of the performers."

"That cake is your doing, I suppose?"

"The girls don't seem to object."

"I object. I don't allow sweets backstage." But she gave him a wink, and went to the table to take a piece of plum cake herself. The cake was dense and golden, its top studded with halved mirabelles. "Oh," she said. "This is good. You shouldn't have. Take some for yourself, at least."

"I'm afraid it wouldn't be professional."

Madame Morgenstern laughed. "You've caught me at a rather busy time, I'm afraid. I've got to get the next group of girls onstage." She brushed a snow of gold crumbs from her hands, and he found himself imagining the taste of plum on her fingers.

"I'm sorry I disturbed you," he said. He was ready to say I'll be off now I'll be off now, ready to leave her to the rehearsal, but then he thought of his empty room, and the long hours that lay between that night and the next, and the blank expanse of time that stretched into the future beyond Thursday--time when he'd have no excuse to see her. He raised his eyes to hers. "Have a drink with me tonight," he said.

She gave a little jolt. "Oh, no," she whispered. "I can't."

"Please, Klara," he said. "I can't bear it if you say no."

She rubbed the tops of her arms as if she'd gotten a chill. "Andras--"

He mentioned a cafe, named a time. And before she could say no again, he turned and went down the backstage hallway and out into the white December evening.

The Cafe Bedouin was a dark place, its leather upholstery cracked, its blue velvet draperies lavendered with age. Behind the bar stood rows of dusty cut-glass bottles, relics of an earlier age of drinking. Andras arrived there an hour before the time he'd mentioned, already sick with impatience, disbelieving what he'd done. Had he really asked her to have a drink with him? Called her by her first name, in its intimate-seeming Hungarian form? Spoken to her as though his feelings might be acceptable, might even be returned? What did he expect would happen now? If she came, it would only be to confirm that he'd acted inappropriately, and perhaps to tell him she could no longer admit him to her house on Sunday afternoons. At the same time he was certain she'd known his feelings for weeks now, must have known since the day they'd gone skating in the Bois de Vincennes. It was time for them to be honest with each other; perhaps it was time for him to confess that he'd carried her mother's letter from Hungary. He stared at the door as if to will it off its hinges. Each time a woman entered he leapt from his chair. He shook his father's pocket watch to make sure nothing was loose, wound it again to make sure it was keeping time. Half an hour passed, then another. She was late. He looked into his empty whiskey glass and wondered how long he could sit in this bar without having to order a second drink. The waiters drifted by, throwing solicitous glances in his direction.

He ordered another whiskey and drank it, hunched over his glass. He had never felt more desperate or more absurd. Then, finally, the door opened again and she was before him in her red hat and her close-fitting gray coat, out of breath, as if she'd run all the way from the theater. He leapt from his chair.

"I was afraid I'd miss you," she said, and gave a sigh of relief. She took off her hat and slid onto the banquette across from him. She wore a snug gabardine jacket, closed at the collar with a neat silver pin in the shape of a harp.

"You're late," Andras said, feeling the whiskey in his head like a swarm of bees.

"The rehearsal finished ten minutes ago! You ran out before I could tell you what time I could come."

"I was afraid you'd say you wouldn't see me at all."

"You're quite right. I shouldn't be here."

"Why did you come, then?" He reached across the table for her hand. Her fingers were freezing cold, but she wouldn't let him warm them. She slid her hand away, blushing into the collar of her jacket.

The waiter arrived to ask for their orders, hopeful that the young man would spend more money now that his friend had arrived. "I've been drinking whiskey," he said.

"Have a whiskey with me. It's the drink of American movie stars."

"I'm not in the mood," she said. Instead she ordered a Brunelle and a glass of water. "I can't stay," she said, once the waiter had gone. "One drink, and then I'll go."

"I have something to tell you," Andras said. "That's why I wanted you to come."

"What is it?" she said.

"In Budapest, before I left, I met a woman named Elza Hasz."

Madame Morgenstern's face drained of color. "Yes?" she said.

"I went to her house on Benczur utca. She'd seen me exchanging pengo for francs at the bank, and wanted to send a box to her son in Paris. There was another woman there, an older woman, who asked me to carry something else. A letter to a certain C.

Morgenstern on the rue de Sevigne. About whom I must not inquire."

Madame Morgenstern had gone so pale that Andras thought she might faint.

When the waiter arrived a moment later with their drinks, she took up her Brunelle and emptied half the glass.

"I think you're Klara Hasz," he said, lowering his voice. "Or you were. And the woman I met was your mother."

Her mouth trembled, and she glanced toward the door. For a moment she looked as if she might flee. Then she sank back into her seat, a tense stillness coming over her body. "All right," she said. "Tell me what you know, and what you want." Her voice had thinned to a whisper; she sounded, more than anything, afraid.

"I don't know anything," he said, reaching for her hand again. "I don't want anything. I just wanted to tell you what happened. What a strange coincidence it was.

And I wanted you to know I'd met your mother. I know you haven't seen her in years."

"And you carried a box for my nephew Jozsef?" she said. "Have you spoken to him about this? About me?"

"No, not a word."

"Thank God," she said. "You can't, do you understand?"

"No," he said. "I don't understand. I don't know what any of this means. Your mother begged me not to speak to anyone about that letter, and I haven't. No one knows.

Or almost no one--I did show it to my brother when I came home from your mother's house. He thought it must be a love letter."

Klara gave a sad laugh. "A love letter! I suppose it was, in a way."

"I wish you'd tell me what this is all about."

"It's a private matter. I'm sorry you had to be involved. I can't make direct contact with my family in Budapest, and they can't send anything directly to me. Jozsef can't know I'm here. You're certain you haven't told him anything?"

"Nothing at all," Andras said. "Your mother mentioned that specifically."

"I'm sorry to make such a drama of it. But it's very important that you understand.

Some terrible things happened in Budapest when I was a girl. I'm safe now, but only as long as no one knows I'm here, or who I was before I came here."

Andras repeated his vow. If his silence would protect her, he would keep silent. If she had asked him to sign his pledge in blood upon the gray marble of the cafe table, he would have taken a knife to his hand and done it. Instead she finished her drink, not speaking, not meeting his eyes. He watched the silver harp tremble at her throat.

"What did my mother look like?" she asked finally. "Has her hair gone gray?"

"It's shot with gray," Andras said. "She wore a black dress. She's a tiny person, like you." He told her a few things about the visit--what the house had looked like, what her sister-in-law had said. He didn't tell her about her mother's grief, about the expression of entrenched mourning he had remembered all this time; what good could it have done?

But he told her a few things about Jozsef Hasz--how he'd given Andras a place to stay when he'd first come to town, and had advised him about life in the Latin Quarter.

"And what about Gyorgy?" she asked. "Jozsef's father?"

"Your brother."

"That's right," she said, quietly. "Did you see him, too?"

"No," Andras said. "I was there only for an hour or so, in the middle of the day.

He must have been at work. From the look of the house, though, I'd say he's doing fine."

Klara put a hand to her temple. "It's rather difficult to take this in. I think this is enough for now," she said, and then, "I think I'd better go." But when she stood to put on her coat, she swayed and caught the edge of the table with her hand.

"You haven't eaten, have you?" Andras said.

"I need to be someplace quiet."

"There's a restaurant--"

"Not a restaurant."

"I live a few blocks from here. Come have a cup of tea. Then I'll take you home."

And so they went to his garret, climbing the bare wooden stairs to the top of 34 rue des Ecoles, all the way to his drafty and barren room. He offered her the desk chair, but she didn't want to sit. She stood at the window and looked down into the street, at the College de France across the way, where the clochards always sat on the steps at night, even in the coldest weather. One of them was playing a harmonica; the music made Andras think of the vast open grasslands he'd seen in American movies at the tiny cinema in Konyar. As Klara listened, he lit a fire in the grate, toasted a few slices of bread, and heated water for tea. He had only one glass--the jam jar he'd been using ever since his first morning at the apartment. But he had some sugar cubes, pilfered from the bowl at the Blue Dove. He handed the glass to Klara and she stirred sugar into her tea with his one spoon. He wished she would speak, wished she would reveal the terrible secret of her past, whatever it was. He couldn't guess the details of her story, though he suspected it must have had something to do with Elisabet: an accidental pregnancy, a jealous lover, angry relatives, some unspeakable shame.

A draft came through the ill-fitting casement, and Klara shivered. She handed him the glass of tea. "You have some too," she said. "Before it gets cold."