The schedule, the pattern of her life. There it was, printed in her own neat hand. Her mornings were devoted to private lessons, the early afternoons to beginning classes, the later afternoons to intermediate and advanced. Wednesdays and Fridays she took the mornings off. On Sundays, the afternoons. Now, at least, he knew when he might look through this window and see her. Tomorrow wasn’t soon enough, but it would have to be.
All the next day he tried to turn his thoughts away from her. He went to the studio, where everyone gathered on Saturdays to work; he built his model, joked with Rosen, heard about Ben Yakov’s continuing fascination with the beautiful Lucia, shared his peasant bread with Polaner. By noon he couldn’t wait any longer. He went down into the Métro at Raspail and rode to Châtelet. From there he ran all the way to the rue de Sévigné; by the time he arrived he was hot and panting in the winter chill. He looked over the demi-curtains of the studio. A crowd of little girls in dancing clothes were packing their ballet shoes into canvas satchels, holding their street shoes in their hands as they lined up at the door. The covered entrance to the studio was crowded with mothers and governesses, the mothers in furs, the governesses in woolen coats. A few little girls broke through the cluster of women and ran off toward a candy shop. He waited for the crowd at the door to clear, and then he saw her just inside the entryway: Madame Morgenstern, in a black practice skirt and a close-wrapped gray sweater, her hair gathered at the nape of her neck in a loose knot. When all the children but one had been collected, Madame Morgenstern emerged from the entryway holding the last girl’s hand. She stepped lightly on the sidewalk in her dancing shoes, as if she didn’t want to ruin their soles on the paving stones. Andras had a sudden urge to flee.
But the little girl had seen him. She dropped Madame Morgenstern’s hand and took a few running steps toward him, squinting as if she couldn’t quite make him out. When she was close enough to touch his sleeve, she stopped short and turned back. Her shoulders rose and fell beneath the blue wool of her coat.
“It’s not Papa after all,” she said.
Madame Morgenstern raised her eyes in apology to the man who wasn’t Papa. When she saw it was Andras, she smiled and tugged the edge of her wrapped sweater straight, a gesture so girlish and self-conscious that it brought a rush of heat to Andras’s chest. He crossed the few squares of pavement between them. He didn’t dare to press her hand in greeting, could hardly look into her eyes. Instead he stared at the sidewalk and buried his hands in his pockets, where he discovered a ten-centime coin left over from his purchase of bread that morning. “Look what I found,” he said, kneeling to give the coin to the little girl.
She took it and turned it over in her fingers. “You found this?” she said. “Maybe someone dropped it.”
“I found it in my pocket,” he said. “It’s for you. When you go to the shops with your mother, you can buy candy or a new hair ribbon.”
The girl sighed and tucked the coin into the side pocket of her satchel. “A hair ribbon,” she said. “I’m not allowed candy. It’s bad for the teeth.”
Madame Morgenstern put a hand on the girl’s shoulder and drew her toward the door. “We can wait by the stove inside,” she said. “It’s warmer there.” She turned back to catch Andras’s eye, meaning to include him in the invitation. He followed her inside, toward the compact iron stove that stood in a corner of the studio. A fire hissed behind its isinglass window, and the little girl knelt to look at the flames.
“This is a surprise,” Madame Morgenstern said, lifting her gray eyes to his own.
“I was out for a ramble,” Andras said, too quickly. “Studying the quartier.”
“Monsieur Lévi is a student of architecture,” Madame Morgenstern told the girl. “Someday he’ll design grand buildings.”
“My father’s a doctor,” the girl said absently, not looking at either of them.
Andras stood beside Madame Morgenstern and warmed his hands at the stove, his fingers inches from her own. He looked at her fingernails, the slim taper of her digits, the lines of the birdlike bones beneath the skin. She caught him looking, and he turned his face away. They warmed their hands in silence as they waited for the girl’s father, who materialized a few minutes later: a short mustachioed man with a monocle, carrying a doctor’s bag.
“Sophie, where are your glasses?” he asked, pulling his mouth into a frown.
The little girl fished a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles from her satchel.
“Please, Madame,” he said. “If you can, be sure she wears them.”
“I’ll try,” Madame Morgenstern said, and smiled.
“They fall off when I dance,” the girl protested.
“Say goodbye, Sophie,” the doctor said. “We’ll be late for dinner.”
In the doorway, Sophie turned and waved. Then she and her father were gone, and Andras stood alone in the studio with Madame Morgenstern. She stepped away from the stove to gather a few things the children had left behind: a stray glove, a hairpin, a red scarf. She put all the things into a basket which she set beside the piano. Objets trouvés.
“I wanted to thank you again,” Andras said, when the silence between them had stretched to an intolerable length. It came out more gruffly than he’d intended, and in Hungarian, a low rural growl. He cleared his throat and repeated it in French.
“Please, Andras,” she said in Hungarian, laughing. “You wrote such a lovely note. And there was no need to thank me in the first place. I’m certain it wasn’t the most pleasant afternoon for you.”
He couldn’t tell her what the afternoon had been like for him, or what the past week had been like. He saw again in his mind the way she’d smiled and tugged at her sweater when she’d recognized him, that involuntary and self-conscious act. He crushed his cap in his hands, looking at the polished studio floor. There were heavy footsteps on the floor above, Elisabet’s, or Mrs. Apfel’s.
“Have we put you off for good?” Madame Morgenstern asked. “Can you come again tomorrow? Elisabet will have a friend here for lunch, and maybe we’ll go skating in the Bois de Vincennes afterward.”
“I don’t have skates,” he said, almost inaudibly.
“Neither do we,” she said. “We always rent them. It’s lovely. You’ll enjoy it.”
It’s lovely, you’ll enjoy it, as if it were really going to happen. And then he said yes, and it was.
CHAPTER NINE. Bois de Vincennes
THIS TIME, when he went to lunch on the rue de Sévigné, he didn’t wear a costume tie and he didn’t bring a bushel of wilting flowers; instead he wore an old favorite shirt and brought a bottle of wine and a pear tart from the bakery next door. As before, Mrs. Apfel laid out a feast: a layered egg-and-potato rakott krumpli, a tureen of carrot soup, a hash of red cabbage and apples with caraway, a dark peasant loaf, and three kinds of cheese. Madame Morgenstern was in a quiet mood; she seemed grateful for the presence of Elisabet’s friend, a stout heavy-browed girl in a brown woolen dress. This was the Marthe with whom Elisabet had gone to the movies the week before. She kept Elisabet talking about goings-on at school: who had made a fool of herself in geography class and who had won a choir solo and who was going to Switzerland to ski during the winter holidays. Every now and then Elisabet threw a glance at Andras, as if she wanted him to take note of the fact that the conversation excluded him. Outside, a light snow had begun to fall. Andras couldn’t wait to get out of the house. It was a relief when the pear tart was cut and eaten, when they could put their coats on and go.
At half past two they rode the Métro to the Bois. When they emerged from the station, Elisabet and Marthe hurried ahead, arm in arm, while Madame Morgenstern walked with Andras. She spoke about her students, about the upcoming winter pageant, about the recent cold snap. She was wearing a close-fitting red woolen hat shaped like a bell; the loose ends of her hair curled from its edge, and snowflakes gathered on its crown.