“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 café 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 József Hász-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 György?” she asked. “József’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 Écoles, 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 Collège 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 Konyár. 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.”

His throat closed with a spasm of emotion. For the first time, she’d addressed him with the familiar te instead of the formal maga. “No,” he said. “I made it for you.” For you: te. He offered it to her again, and she closed her hands around his own. The tea trembled between them in its glass. She took it and set it down on the windowsill. Then she moved toward him, put her arms around his waist, tucked her dark head under his chin. He raised a hand to stroke her back, disbelieving his luck, worrying that this closeness was ill-gotten, the product of his revelation and her stirred emotions. But as she shivered against him he forgot to care what had brought them to that moment. He let his hand move along the curve of her back, allowed himself to trace the architecture of her spine. She was so close he could feel the jolt of her ribcage as she pulled a sharp breath; an instant later she moved away from him, shaking her head.

He lifted his hands, surrendering. But she was already retrieving her coat from the rack, winding her scarf around her neck, putting on the red bell-shaped hat.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I have to go. I’m sorry.”

…

At seven o’clock the next evening he went to see the Spectacle d’Hiver. The Sarah-Bernhardt was filled with the families of the dancers, an anxious chattering crowd. The parents had all brought ribboned cones of roses for their daughters. The aisles were draped with fir garland, and the theater smelled of rose and pine. The scent seemed to wake him from the haze in which he’d lived since the previous night. She was backstage; in two hours’ time he would see her.

Violins began to play in the orchestra pit, and the curtain rose to reveal six girls dressed in white leotards and jagged points of tulle. They seemed to levitate above the silvered floorboards, their movements dreamlike and precise. It was the way she moved, he thought. She had distilled her sharpness, her fluidity, into these little girls, into the forming vessels of their bodies. He felt as if he were caught in a strange dream; something seemed to have broken in him the night before. He had no idea how to behave in a situation like this. Nothing in his life had prepared him for it. Nor could he imagine what she might have been thinking-what she must think of him now, after he’d touched her that way. He would have liked to run backstage that moment and get it over with, whatever was going to happen.

But at intermission, when he might really have gone backstage, he was hit by a wave of panic so deep and cold he could hardly breathe. He went downstairs to the men’s washroom, where he locked himself into a stall and tried to slow his racing pulse. He leaned his forehead against the cool marble of the wall. The voices of men all around him had a soothing effect; they were fathers, they sounded like fathers. He could almost imagine that when he came out, his own father would be waiting. Lucky Béla, though sparing with words of advice, would tell him what to do. But when he came out, no one he knew was waiting; he was alone in Paris, and Klara was upstairs.

The lights flickered to signal the end of the intermission. He went up and took his seat again just as the house fell into darkness. A few rustling moments, and then blue lights glowed from the lighting bar beneath the catwalk; a high cold string of woodwind notes climbed from the orchestra pit, and the snowflakes drifted out to begin their dance. He knew Klara was standing just behind the stage-left curtain. She was the one who had signaled the musicians to begin. The girls danced perfectly, and were replaced by taller girls, and after that taller girls still, as if the same girls were growing older backstage during the moments when the lights dimmed. But at the end of the show they all came onstage to bow, and they called out for their teacher.

She came out in a simple black dress, an orange-red dahlia pinned behind her ear, like a girl in a Mucha painting. First she made her révérence to the young dancers, then to the audience. She acknowledged the musicians and the conductor. Then she disappeared into the wings again, allowing the girls to reap the glory of their curtain calls.

Andras sensed the return of his panic, heard its millipedal footsteps drawing closer. Before it could take him again he slid out of his row and ran backstage, where Klara was surrounded by a mass of rouged, tulle-skirted girls. He couldn’t get anywhere near her. But she seemed to be looking for him, or for someone in particular; she let her gaze drift over the heads of the little girls and move toward the darker edges of the wings. Her eyes flickered past him and returned for an instant. He couldn’t tell if her smile had darkened just at that moment, or if he had imagined it. In any case, she’d seen him. He took off his hat and stood twisting its brim until the crowd around her began to subside. As the parents rushed backstage to bestow bouquets on their children, he cursed himself for failing to bring flowers. He saw that many of the parents had brought roses for her as well as for their daughters. She would have a cartload of bouquets to bring home, none of them from him. The father of the bespectacled little Sophie had brought a particularly large sheaf of flowers for Madame-red roses, Andras noted. He saw her cordially refuse countless invitations to celebratory post-performance dinners; she claimed she was exhausted and must have her rest. It was nearly an hour before the little girls had all gone home with their families, leaving Klara and Andras alone backstage. He had twisted his hat entirely out of shape by then. Her arms were full of flowers; he couldn’t embrace her or even take her hand.