Next to my heart, in an oilskin pouch, I keep the lock of Elizabeths hair and your last unopened letter to me, with your solemn instruction on the envelope: To be Opened if You Know You Will Not Return to Me. If the time comes, I will open it. But the time wont come; I will make it back, I will be with you again.
This comes to you with all my love, from your dearest
Max
The Forest
LATER THE SQUAT WHITE cylinders with their delicate indentations would be revealed as a species of lantern. But when Krzysztof Wojciechowicz first glimpsed them, dotted among the azaleas and rhododendrons and magnolias surrounding Constance Humboldts kidney-shaped swimming pool, he saw them as dolls. The indentations cut the frosted tubes like waists, a third of the way down; the swellings above and below reminded him of bodices and rounded skirts. Perhaps he viewed the lanterns this way because the girls guiding him down the flagstone steps and across the patio were themselves so doll-like. Amazingly young, amazingly smooth-skinned. Sisters, theyd said. The tiny dark-haired one whod appeared in the hotel lobby was Rose; the round-cheeked one driving the battered van, with her blond hair frizzing in all directions, was Bianca. Already hed been clumsy with them.
You are are you Dr. Humboldts daughters? hed asked. The sun was so bright, his eyes were so tired, the jumble of buildings and traffic so confusing. The step up to the vans back seat was too high for him, but neither girl noticed him struggling.
The small one, Rose, had laughed at his question. Were not related to Constance, shed said. Im a postdoctoral fellow at the institute. The blond one, who called to mind his own mother sixty years earlier, pulled out of the hotel driveway too fast and said nothing during the short drive to the Humboldts house. He feared hed hurt her feelings. For the last decade or so, hed been subject to these embarrassing misidentifications, taking young scientists for children or servants when he met them out of context. They all dressed so casually, especially in this country; their faces were so unmarked how could anyone tell them from the young people who chauffeured him about or offered trays of canapes at parties? But these girls he should have known, hed probably met them earlier. Now, as he stepped down into the enormous back garden and moved toward the long table spread with food and drink, the girl called after a flower veered toward a crowd gathered by the pool and left him with the girl hed affronted.
Dr. Wojciechowicz? she said, mangling his name as she steered him closer to the table. Would you like a drink or something?
Reflexively he corrected her pronunciation; then he shook his head and said, Please. Call me Krzysztof. And you are Bianca, yes? He could not help noticing that she had lovely breasts.
Thats me, she agreed dryly. Bianca the chauffeur, Roses sister, not related to the famous Dr. Constance Humboldt. No one you need to pay attention to at all.
Thats me, she agreed dryly. Bianca the chauffeur, Roses sister, not related to the famous Dr. Constance Humboldt. No one you need to pay attention to at all.
Its not he said. Of course he had insulted her. Its just that Im so tired, and Im still jet-lagged, and
Could he ask her where he was without sounding senile? Somewhere north of Philadelphia, he thought; but he knew this generally, not specifically. When hed arrived two days ago, his body still on London time, he had fallen asleep during the long, noisy drive from the airport. Since then hed had no clear sense of his location. He woke in a room that looked like any other; each morning a different stranger appeared and drove him to the institute. Other strangers shuttled him from laboratory to laboratory, talking at length about their research projects and then moving him from laboratory to cafeteria to auditorium to laboratory, from lobby to restaurant and back to his hotel. The talk hed given was the same talk hed been giving for years; he had met perhaps thirty fellow scientists and could remember only a handful of their names. All of them seemed to be gathered here, baring too much skin to the early July sun. Saturday, he thought. Also some holiday seemed to be looming.
Do forgive me, he said. The foibles of the elderly.
How old are you?
Her smile was charming and he forgave her rude question. I am seventy-nine years of age, he said. Easy to remember I was born in 1900, I am always as old as the century.
Foibles forgiven. SheBianca, he thought. Biancaheld out her hand in that strange boyish way of American women. Meanwhile she was looking over his shoulders, as if hoping to find someone to rescue her. Bianca Marburg, not quite twenty-two but Im very old for my age.
Youre in college?
She tossed her hair impatiently. Not now. My sister and I were dreadful little prodigies in college at sixteen, out at nineteen, right into graduate school. Rose already has her Ph.D. how else do you think shed have a postdoc here?
Would he never say the right thing to this bristly girl? So then you what is the project you are working on? Americans, hed been reminded these last two days, were always eager to talk about themselves.
So then II should be in graduate school, and I was until two months ago but I dropped out, it was seeming stupid to me. Unlike my so-successful sister Rose, I am at loose ends.
She moved a bowl of salad closer to a platter of sliced bread draped with a cloth, then moved it back again. Which is why Im driving you around. Why Im here. Im sort of between places, you know? I got a temp job typing for an Iraqi biophysicist see the short guy near the volleyball net? He hired me because I can spell vacuum. Im staying with my sister until I get enough money together to move. I might go to Alaska.
Thats nice, Krzysztof said helplessly.
Oh, please, she said. You dont have to pretend to be interested. Go talk to the other famous people. Constance collects them, theyre everywhere.
She huffed off furious, he saw. At him? In the battered leather bag that hung from his shoulder he felt the bottle hed carried across the ocean as a special gift for his hostess. But his hostess was nowhere to be seen, and no one moved toward him from either the pool or the round tables with their mushroomlike umbrellas. Already the top of his head was burning; he was all alone and wished he had a hat. Was it possible these people meant to stay in the sun all afternoon?
Bianca made a brisk circuit through the backyard, looking for someplace to settle down. There was Rose, leaning attentively toward Constances camel-faced husband, Roger, and listening to him as if she were interested. Entirely typical, Bianca thought; Rose submitted herself to Rogers monologues as a way of pleasing Constance, who was her advisor. Constance herself was holding court from a elegant lawn chair beneath an umbrella, surrounded by graduate students and postdocs but Bianca couldnt bear the way Constance patronized her, and she steered wide of this group. She considered joining the two students Constance employed, who were trotting up and down the steps bearing pitchers of iced tea and lemonade; at last weeks reception, though, Constance had rebuked her for distracting the help. The knot of protein chemists at the volleyball net beckoned, Rick and Wen-li and Diego stripped of their shirts and gleaming in the sun, but shed slept with Diego after that reception, and now they werent speaking. Perhaps Vivek and Anisha, easing themselves into the shallow end of the pool just as Jocelyn, already cannonball-shaped, curled her arms around her legs and launched herself into the deep end with a splash?
No, no, no. Vivek was charming but Jocelyn, impossible Jocelyn, was already whaling down on her young squire. Everywhere Bianca looked there was laughter, chatter, the display of flesh much of it, Bianca thought, better left hidden flirtation and bragging and boredom. A standard holiday-weekend party, except that all of these people were scientists, and many were famous, while she was neither. And had, as Rose reminded her constantly, no one to blame for this but herself.
Off by the fragrant mock orange tree, she spotted the institutes two resident Nobel laureates side by side, looming over the scene in dark pants and long-sleeved shirts. She drifted their way, curious to see if they were clashing yet. Arnold puffed and plucked at his waistband; Herb snorted and rolled his eyes: but they were smiling, these were still playful attacks. Last week, during Winifreds seminar on the isozymes of alpha-amylase, shed watched the pair shred Winifred in their boastful crossfire. Arnold, sitting to her left, had favored her with a smile.
Nice to see you gentlemen again, Bianca said.
The men stared at her blankly, Arnolds left foot tapping at the smooth green grass.
Bianca Marburg, she reminded them.
From Jocelyns lab? Arnold said now.
Rose Marburgs sister, she said, grinning stupidly.
Herb frowned, still unable to place her. Didnt I see you were you typing? For Fuad?
She held her hands up like claws and typed the air. Cest moi she said. What was she doing here?
Ah, Arnold said. You must be helping Constance out. Its a lovely party, isnt it? So well organized. Constance really amazes me, the way she can do this sort of thing and still keep that big lab working
But that last pair of papers, Herb said. Really.
Bianca fled. From the corner of her eye she saw the man shed driven here, that Polish émigré, physical-chemist turned theoretical structural-biologist, Cambridge-based multiply medaled old guy, standing all alone by the bamboo fountain, watching the water arc from the stem to the pool. Pleasing Constance inadvertently, she thought; Constance fancied her home as a place conducive to contemplation and great ideas. Krzysztof raised his right hand and held it over his head, either feeling for hair that was no longer present or attempting to shade his array of freckles and liver spots from the burning sun.
Quickly Bianca traversed the yard and the patio, slipped through the glass doors and across the kitchen, and ran upstairs to the third and smallest bathroom. The door closed behind her with expensive precision: a Mercedes door, a jewel-box door. On the vanity was a vase with a Zenlike twist of grapevine and a single yellow orchid. She opened the window and lit up a joint. Entirely typical, she thought, gazing down at Krzysztofs sweaty pate. That Constance and Arnold and Herb and the others should fly this man across the ocean to hear about his work, then get so caught up in institute politics that theyd forget to talk to him at their party. Had it not been for the lizardlike graze of his eyes across her chest, she might have felt sorry for him.