The InvisibleBridge

“You didn’t have to wait,” she said, giving him a half-reproachful smile.

“You’ve got a lot of roses there” was what he managed to say.

“Have you had di

He hadn’t, and he told her so. In the prop room he found a basket for her flowers. He loaded it and covered it with a cloth to protect the roses from the cold. As he helped her into her coat, he received a wondering look from Pély, the custodian, who had already begun to sweep up the evening’s snowfall of sequins and rose petals. Andras raised his hat in farewell and they went out through the backstage door.

She took his arm as they walked along, and let him lead her to a whitewashed café near the Bastille. It was a place he’d passed many times in his walks around Paris; it was called Aux Marocaines. On the low tables were green bowls of cardamom pods. On the walls, wooden racks held Moroccan pottery. Everything seemed to be built on a small scale, as if made for Klara. He could afford to buy her di

A waiter in a fez seated them shoulder to shoulder at a corner table. There was flatbread and honey wine, a piece of grilled fish, a vegetable stew in a clay pot. As they ate they talked only about the performance, and about Elisabet, who had departed with Marthe for Chamonix; they talked about Andras’s work, and about his examinations, which he’d passed with top marks. But he was always aware of her heat and movement beside him, her arm brushing his arm. When she drank, he watched her lips touch the rim of the glass. He couldn’t stop looking at the curve of her breasts beneath her close-wrapped dress.

After di

At the doorstep her eyes darkened again. She leaned against the door and sighed, looking down at the roses. “Fu

He let out a long breath. “I’m sorry if-last night,” he began.

She stopped him with a shake of her head and told him there was nothing to apologize for.

“I shouldn’t have asked about your family,” he said. “If you’d wanted to talk about it, you would have.”

“Probably not,” she said. “It’s become such a habit with me, keeping everything secret.” She shook her head again, and he experienced the return of a memory from his early childhood-a night he’d spent hiding in the orchard while his brother Mátyás lay in bed, gravely ill with fever. A doctor had been called in, plasters applied, medicines dispensed, all to no effect; the fever rose and rose, and everyone seemed to believe Mátyás would die. Meanwhile, Andras hid in the branches of an apple tree with his terrible secret: He himself had passed the fever along, playing with Mátyás after their mother told him he must keep away at all costs. If Mátyás died, it would be his fault. He had never been so lonely in his life. Now he touched Klara’s shoulder and felt her shiver.

“You’re cold,” he said.

She shook her head. Then she took her key from her little purse and turned to unlock the door. But her hand began to tremble, and she turned back toward him and raised her face to him. He bent to her and brushed the corner of her mouth with his lips.

“Come in,” she said. “Just for a moment.”

His pulse thundering at his temples, Andras stepped in after her. He put a hand at her waist and drew her toward him. She looked up at him, her eyes wet, and then he lifted her against him and kissed her. He closed the door with one hand. Held her. Kissed her again. Took off his thin jacket, unbuttoned the glossy black buttons of her coat, pushed it from her shoulders. He stood in the entryway with her and kissed her and kissed her-first her mouth, then her neck at the margins of her dress, then the hollow between her breasts. He untied the black silk ribbon at her waist. The dress fell around her feet in a dark pool, and there she was before him in a rose-colored slip and stockings, the red-gold dahlia in her hair. He buried his hands in her dark curls and drew her to him. She kissed him again and slid her hands under his shirt. He heard himself saying her name; again he touched the bead-row of her spine, the curve of her hips. She lifted herself against him. It couldn’t be true; it was true.

They went upstairs to her bedroom. He would remember it as long as he lived: the way they moved awkwardly through the doorway, his persistent certainty that she would change her mind, his disbelief as she lifted the rose-colored slip over her head. The quick work she made of his embarrassing sock braces, his poorly darned socks, his underclothes worn to transparency. The shallow curves of her dancer’s body, the neat tuck of her navel, the shadow between her legs. The cool embrace of her bed, her own bed. The softness of her skin. Her breasts. His certainty that it would all be over in an embarrassing flash the instant she touched him with her hand; his wild concentration on anything else as she did it. The word baiser in his mind. The unbearable thrill of being able to touch her. The shock of the heat inside her. It could have all ended then-the city of Paris, the world, the universe-and he wouldn’t have cared, would have died happy, could have found no heaven broader or more drenched with light.

Afterward they lay on the bed and he stared at the ceiling, at its pattern of pressed flowers and leaves. She turned onto her side and put a hand on his chest. A velvety drowsiness pi

“Klara,” he said. “Am I dead? Are you still here?”

“I’m still here,” she said. “You’re not dead.”

“What are we supposed to do now?”

“Nothing,” she said. “Just lie here for a little while.”

“All right,” he said, and lay there.

After a few minutes she removed her hand from his chest and rolled away from him, then got out of bed and went off down the hall. A moment later he heard the thunder of ru

“Come have a bath,” she said.

She didn’t have to coax him. He followed her into the white-tiled bathroom, where water steamed into the porcelain tub. She let the dressing gown drop and climbed into the water as he stood watching, speechless. He could have stood there all night while she bathed. Her image burned itself into his retinas: the small, high breasts; the twin wings of her hips; the smooth plane of her belly. And now, in the electric light of the bathroom, he saw something he hadn’t noticed before: a crescent-shaped scar with faint stitch-marks, just above the neat dark triangle of her hair. He stepped forward to touch her. He ran his hand along her belly, down to the scar, and brushed it with his fingers.