The Ring (39 page)

She sighed softly and looked at them both. You're both so eloquent, you should be lawyers. And then the three laughed softly, finished their coffee, and Max signaled for the check.

Noel's plane was to leave Kennedy Airport two weeks later, and he planned to stay in Europe for about six weeks. He wanted to be back in New York by mid-August, so he would have time to find his own apartment and start work on September first.

The weeks before he left for Europe were hectic. He had friends he wanted to see, parties to go to, and almost every day now he sat down and went over his travel plans with Max. The trip still bothered Ariana, but she made her peace with it. And she was amused by Noel's constant running. She thought, as she saw him drive off with friends one night, that in twenty years young men had not changed very much after all.

What were you thinking just then? Max had seen the glimmer of nostalgia in her eyes.

That nothing changes. She smiled tenderly at her beloved.

Doesn't it? I was just thinking that it does. But maybe that's because I'm almost twenty years older than you are.

They both thought back to her mother's deserted apartment in the house in Grunewald, when he had first kissed her, while he was hiding from the Nazis. His eyes asked her if she remembered.

Slowly, Ariana nodded. Yes, I do.

He smiled back. I told you then that I loved you. And I did, you know.

She kissed his cheek softly. I loved you then, too, as best I knew how in those days. And then she smiled into the rich brown eyes. You were the first man I ever kissed.

And now I hope to be the last. In which case I shall have to live to be at least a hundred.

I'm counting on it, Max. They smiled at each other for a long moment and then purposely he took her hand, the heavy emerald as always on her finger.

I have something to say to you, Ariana ' or rather, something I would like to ask.

Suddenly she knew. Was it possible? Did it still matter, after all these years?

Yes, it's very important. To me. Ariana, will you marry me? He said it so gently, with such a look of love and pleading in his eyes.

For a moment she didn't answer, and then she looked at him with her head tilted to one side. Max, why now, my love? Does it really make so much difference now?

Yes. To me. Noel is gone now. He's a man, Ariana When he gets back from Europe, he's moving into his own apartment. And what about us? We maintain appearances, as we always have? For what? My doorman and your maid? Why don't you sell your house, or I'll sell the apartment, and let's get married. It's our turn now. You've devoted twenty-five years to Noel. Now let's devote the next twenty-five to us. She couldn't help but smile at his argument. In a way she knew that he was right, and she liked what he had in mind.

But for that we have to be married?

He grinned at her Don't you want to be respectable at your age?

But, Max, I'm only forty-six. She had smiled at him then, and he had known that finally, he had won her. And he kissed her once more, twenty-eight years after the first time.

They told Noel the next morning, and he was delighted. He kissed his mother, and this time he kissed Max as well.

Now, I'll feel better going. And especially moving out in September. Are you keeping the house, Mom?

We haven't worked that out yet. She was still a little flustered by their decision. And then Noel suddenly grinned as he kissed her on the cheek again.

Just think, not every couple gets married to celebrate their silver anniversary '

Noel She still felt a little odd getting married at her age. Getting married, as far as Ariana was concerned, was something one did at twenty-two or twenty-five, not two decades later, with a son who was already a man.

So when's the wedding?

Max answered for her. We haven't decided. But we'll wait till you get back.

I should hope so. Well, do we get to celebrate? It seemed that that was all they had done for weeks since he'd left Harvard, and he was leaving for Europe the next day.

But Max took them both to dinner at C+|te Basque that evening. It was a sumptuous meal, and a wonderful occasion. They celebrated Noel's flight into the past and their venture into the future, and as always, Ariana shed a few tears.

* * *

Paris was everything he'd hoped. He visited the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre. He stopped in caf+!s, read the paper, and wrote a postcard home, addressing it Dear Engaged Couple, and signing it, Your Son. That night before dinner, he called a friend of Tammy's whom he had promised to call, Brigitte Goddard, daughter of the noted art dealer and proprietor of the Galerie G+!rard Goddard. Noel had known Brigitte only slightly during her brief stint at Harvard, but she and Tammy had become good friends. She was an intriguing girl with an odd family, a mother she hated, a father she claimed was obsessed with his past, and a brother whom she laughingly insisted was crazy. She was always teasing and cavorting. She was beautiful and funny.

But there had been something tragic about her as well, as though there was something missing. And when Noel had questioned her seriously about it once, she had said, You're right. My family is missing, Noel. My father lives in his own world None of us matters to him ' only ' the past ' the others ' the people he lost in another lifetime' . We, the living ' we don't count. Not to him. And then she had said something cynical and funny, but he had never forgotten the look in her eyes it was an expression of sorrow and loss and desolation well beyond her years. And now Noel wanted to see her, and he was bitterly disappointed when he learned that she was out of town.

As a consolation he took himself out for a big dinner, with drinks at La Tour d'Argent, and dinner at Maxim's. He had promised himself he'd do that before he left Paris, and now he wasn't going to be able to do it with Brigitte. But now the had the extra leisure time for the fancy dinner, and he enjoyed it thoroughly as he watched the elegant French women and their rather dapper-looking men. He noticed how different the styles were here, how much more cosmopolitan people seemed. He liked the looks of the women, the way they moved, the way they dressed, the way they did their hair. In a way, they reminded him of his mother. There was a finished quality about the way they put themselves together that pleased the eye, an extra touch, a something subtle but sexy, like a flower hidden in a garden; it didn't assault the senses, but one sensed instantly that it was there. Noel liked the subtlety of these women; it evoked something in him that he had never known was really there.

The next morning he left for Orly very early, caught his flight to Berlin, and landed at Tempelhof airport, his heart beating with excitement and anticipation. It wasn't a sensation of homecoming, but of discovery, of finding the answers to secrets long unspoken, of tracing people who had long since vanished, where they had been, where they had lived, what they had been and meant to each other. Somehow, Noel knew that the answers would all be there.

He left his things at the Hotel Kempinski, where he had made a reservation, and as he walked out of the lobby, he looked up and down the Kurf++rstendamm for a long time. This was the street Max had told him about where writers and artists and intellectuals had congregated for decades. Around him he could see caf+!s and shops, and swirls of people walking along arm in arm. There was a festive feeling around him, as though they had all been waiting, as though it had been time for him to come.

With a map and a rented car he set out slowly. He had already seen the remains of the Maria Regina Kirche where he knew his parents had been married. What was left of it still stood there, pointing emptily at the sky. He remembered his mother's description of when they had bombed it, and now it remained, a shattered memory of another time. Most of Berlin showed none of the scars, the damage had all been repaired, but here and there were shells of buildings, monuments to that troubled time. He drove slowly past the Anhalter Station, which also stood in ruins, too, then on to the Philharmonic Hall, and then he walked through the Tiergarten to the Victory Column, which stood as it always had, and Bellevue Palace just beyond it, which was as beautiful as Max said it was. And then beyond that Noel came to a sudden halt. There it stood, gleaming in the sunlight, the Reichstag, which had been Nazi headquarters, located on what they now called the Strasse des 17 Tury, the building his father had died defending. Around him, other tourists also gazed at it in silent awe.

To Noel this was no monument to the Nazis; this had nothing to do with history, or politics, or a little man with a mustache who had had an insatiable desire to control the world. This had to do with a man whom Noel had always suspected had been very much like him, the man who had loved his mother, and whom Noel had never known. He remembered his mother's description of that morning ' the explosions, the soldiers, the refugees, and the destruction of the bombs ' and then she had seen his father dead. As Noel stood there, a quiet path of tears coursed down his face. He cried for himself and for Ariana, feeling her pain as she had stood there, looking into his father's lifeless face lying in a stack of bodies on the gutted street. How in God's name had she survived it?

Noel quietly walked away from the Reichstag, and it was then that he caught his first glimpse of the Wall; solid, intransigent, determined, it wended its way across Berlin, to one side of the Reichstag and cutting right through the Brandenburg Gate, turning the once flourishing Unter den Linden into a dead end. He looked at it in interested silence, curious about what lay beyond. This was something that neither Max nor his mother had ever experienced, the Wall that had left a divided Berlin. Later in his stay he would go there, to see the Marienkirche, the City Hall, and the Dom. He understood that there were many untouched ruins there, too. But first there were other places he wanted to visit, places he had come to see.

With his map on the seat of the Volkswagen he'd rented, he drove from the heart of the city around the Olympic stadium, out to Charlottenburg, where he stopped for a moment by the lake and looked at the schloss. And though he could not know it, this was exactly the place where thirty-five years before his grandmother Kassandra von Gotthard had stood with the man she loved, Dolff Sterne.

From Charlottenburg he drove to Spandau, staring at the great citadel in fascination and getting out to inspect the famous doors. There, the helmets of countless wars were carved in great detail, from the Middle Ages until the last panel, which bore the legend 1939. The prison held only one prisoner, Rudolf Hess, who was costing the city government more than four hundred thousand dollars a year to keep. And from Spandau he drove to Grunewald, driving along the lake, looking at all the houses, and searching for the address he had gotten from Max. He had wanted to ask his mother, but when the time had come, he hadn't dared. Max had given him the directions and told him briefly how lovely the house had been, and once again he had told him the story of how Noel's grandfather had saved Max's life when he was fleeing the country, how he had cut the two priceless paintings from the walls where they hung, rolled them up, and handed them to his friend.

At first Noel thought he had missed it, but then suddenly he saw the gates. They had changed not at all from Max's description, and as Noel got out of the car and peered in, a gardener waved.

Bitte? Noel's German was very rusty. He knew only what he had learned at Harvard in three semesters several years before. But somehow he managed to explain to the old man tending the gardens that long ago this had been his grandfather's house.

Ja? The man eyed him with interest.

Ja. Walmar von Gotthard. Noel said it proudly end the man smiled, shrugging. He had never heard the name. An old woman appeared, admonishing the gardener to hurry, the madam would be back from her trip the next evening.

Smiling, the old man explained to his wife why Noel had come there, and looking at him with suspicion, she then stared back at the old man. At first the woman hesitated, but after a moment she grudgingly nodded her head and gestured toward Noel. He looked at the old man questioning, not sure he had understood them.

But the old man was smiling as he took Noel's arm. She will let you look around.

Inside the house?

Yes. The old man smiled gently. He understood. It was nice that this young American cared enough about his grandfather's country to come back. So many of them had forgotten where they came from. So many of them knew nothing of what had happened before the war. But this one seemed different, and it pleased the old man.

In some ways the house looked very different than he had expected, and in others it looked precisely like Ariana's memories of when she was a child, memories she had shared with him constantly through the years. The third floor, where she had lived with her nurse and her brother, still looked as she had described it. The large room that had been their playroom, the two bedrooms, the large bathroom the children had shared. Now it stood made into guestrooms, but Noel could still see exactly where his mother had lived. On the floor beneath that, much seemed to have changed. There seemed to be lots of smaller bedrooms, sitting rooms, libraries, a sewing room, and a small room filled with toys. Obviously the house had been remodeled, and there was little trace of the past. The downstairs still remained impressive and somewhat stuffy. But Noel could more easily imagine his grandfather presiding over the large dining room table in huge hall. He thought fleetingly of a Nazi general cavorting there with his girls, but quickly dismissed the image from his mind.

He thanked the old couple profusely before he left them, and took a photograph of the house from the spot where he had left his car. Maybe he could get Tammy to do a sketch from the photograph, and he could give it to his mother sometime. The thought pleased him as he drove along to the Grunewald cemetery, where it took him a long time to find the family plot. But there they were, the aunts and the uncles, the great-grandparents; all with names and histories he did not know. The only one that was familiar was that of his grandmother Kassandra von Gotthard. It touched him that she had been only thirty and he wondered briefly how she had died.