The Fox's Walk Read Online Free Page B

there could be no question of my mother being not at home. Mother was at a disadvantage; she did not know if Madame Tchnikov was visiting at Uncle Huberts suggestion or if he had perhaps arranged to meet her at Palace Gardens Terrace.
    My mother, flustered, rose to greet her guest and glanced at me. I avoided her eye, fairly sure she would not insult Madame Tchnikov by immediately removing her daughter. And I knew, too, that Mother, guiltily, welcomed my presence as an inhibiting influence on the conversation.
    â€œMara,” my mother said, “how nice. Is Hubert joining us later?”
    â€œI don’t know,” Madame Tchnikov said. It was not possible to tell from the way she spoke whether she was unsure of the exact nature of Uncle Hubert’s intentions for the rest of the afternoon or if she was declaring complete ignorance of his whereabouts and plans. It was not possible to rephrase the question, and my mother had no way of knowing if her guest was the vanguard of a fraternal visit or if she was acting as a free agent.
    I, at least, was pleased to see Madame Tchnikov. She swept me up into a dramatic embrace. She smelled of powder and not quite fresh scent. And of a dark, mysterious femininity that I had never before encountered. My mother smelled of powder, too, but in a way that suggested lavender and fresh white linen. Madame Tchnikov evoked less innocent flowers: dark orchids or overscented lilies.
    The grown-ups sat down and my mother poured Madame Tchnikov a cup of tea. I had a feeling that cups of tea were not much in my new heroine’s line. There was a moment of silence. My mother searched for some subject for small talk that did not involve Uncle Hubert.
    â€œI visited Paris once. With my mother, before the war. Did you live there long?”
    Even I could see that my mother’s Parisian experience—her mother, an English-speaking pension, Versailles, tea made with boiling water in a properly warmed teapot—was not that of a refugee from the unhappy Balkans. This knowledge, of course, was clarified and details added when later experience expanded childhood memory; I was a precocious child, but Swinburne and Montmartre were not yet among my terms of reference. Partly because I sensed the emotions and inferences that made this conversational gambit of my mother’s almost inflammatory, I listened, remembered, and puzzled over each word and nuance. All the while sitting quietly with an expression that suggested incomprehension, mild stupidity, and dreaminess.
    â€œIt was a terrible time,” Mara, as I was beginning to think of her—said, her voice and face tragic.
    â€œI’m so sorry,” my mother’s social awkwardness now becoming sympathy. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
    â€œI was so young,” Mara said, dabbing her eyes with a small handkerchief. I was fascinated but, like my mother, who seemed equally curious and embarrassed, I would have preferred to observe Mara from a distance.
    My mother made a sympathetic sound. The tragedy of Mara’s youthfulness was difficult to comment on, especially since, if she had, as she’d told us, just fled the oppression of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, this youthful tragedy would have had to have taken place in the very recent past.
    â€œMy———” Mara said, indistinctly, into her handkerchief.
    â€œYour family?” Mother asked, her sympathy fully engaged.
    Mara sniffed in a manner that suggested assent.
    â€œYour mother?” my mother asked gently.
    Mara said nothing, but shook her head behind the handkerchief.
    â€œYour father?” My mother tried again.
    Mara repeated her gesture. I watched, fascinated, prepared to have my mother run through every possible family permutation—I already had the feeling that, in some not yet imaginable way, Mother was on the wrong track—as far as second cousins once removed and the list of unlikely people one was, in the