“Christ, Violet. Some sort of feeling for you. Is that what this is, the two of us? Just some sort of feeling for each other?”
“Because God knows you’re competent at what you do. You take care of those who depend on you.”
“I’m flattered.”
“And because, in the end, I don’t care. Whether you really love me or not, whether you’re telling me the truth about everything, or anything, or nothing. Whether or not you plan to go on your way once we’re safe in Switzerland—”
“To abandon you.”
“—once you’ve accomplished your mission, and begin another one. I’ve thrown my lot in, haven’t I? I sink or swim with you. If I’ve only got a day of you left, I’ll take it.”
“What does that mean?”
“What do you think it means?”
Lionel stands with his hands linked behind his head, watching the sky. The cigarette dangles from his full lips. “Ah. Do you love me, then, Violet? Do I have that, at least?”
“I love you, Lionel.”
He grinds out the cigarette against a tree and turns to kiss her. “There, now. That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
? ? ?
VIOLET AND LIONEL cycle on, toward the mountains. The grassy hills pass by, the sweet-laden orchards, the abundant fertility of July. Every three or four kilometers, a village rises up along the road, gray-roofed and somnolent under the summer sun. They pass a few farmers, who wave and call greetings as if all Europe is not on the brink of war.
Violet doesn’t want the day to end. She wants to cycle forever, exhausted and happy, watching Lionel’s broad gray back shift with the effort of pedaling. They must stop for the night at some point, and he will make love to her again, as sure as the coming darkness, and perhaps even again before dawn. How many more times will Violet lie with Lionel? Twice? A dozen? A thousand? If she keeps pedaling, if they never stop, can they hold back the inevitable?
Evening falls softly. They find a barn and share a picnic dinner, nestled in straw. Violet aches in every bone. She has bicycled thirty miles at least today, most of it upward, winding around the Alpine foothills. Her blouse is unbuttoned, her dusty shoes and stockings laid out nearby. She watches in bewilderment as Lionel moves about the hayloft, checking the doors and windows, whistling softly as he examines his revolver. He’s in his element, doing what he was born to do: the way Violet feels solving a page of equations, or calibrating a perfectly designed experiment.
He glances at her. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing. You. You can’t really intend to give all this up and settle down with a dull woman scientist.”
Lionel sets the revolver down on the wooden floor beside the straw and prowls toward her on his hands and knees, his teeth gleaming in the moonlight, like the panther she imagined him all those weeks ago in Berlin. “I can’t think of anything more exciting,” he says.
? ? ?
LIONEL COULD have broken her hold like a spiderweb, but he doesn’t. He falls against her, shuddering like a dying man. “So you’ll take that risk,” he says, when he can speak again. “But you won’t trust me. You want me to father a child on you one moment and betray you the next.”
“I don’t want you to betray me.”
“But you think I might.”
“All the more reason to want this now. To be selfish. To keep as much of you as I can.”
Lionel’s head sinks into the straw next to hers. His breath is still hard and rapid, his heartbeat like a bass drum. “You’ll kill me, Violet.”
He is so heavy, so warm and excessive. How can she ever be empty of him, in want of Lionel? It defies imagination. The straw prickles her back. His thick elbows stab her shoulders; his hands cradle her hair as if she were made of rubies.
He says, “We’ll be married in Zurich. At the British consulate.”
Violet doesn’t answer. She tightens her arms and legs and keeps him safe inside her, as long as she possibly can.
The light retreats through the windows. Not a sound reaches them, there in the hayloft, as if they’re the only two people in the world: only his breathing and hers, the rustles of straw, the tiny movements of their bodies in the loneliness.
Lionel lifts himself away and draws on his trousers.
“Where are you going?” she asks, half asleep. The sudden exposure makes her shiver.
“Just to smoke.” He lays his jacket over her chest and shoulders. Violet listens to the creak of wood as he climbs down the ladder from the hayloft and crosses the floor below. In his absence, the silence is primeval. She curls herself into a ball, so that she fits entirely inside the weight of his jacket, and closes her eyes. She sees Lionel standing next to the barn, perhaps leaning his bare shoulder against the wall, smoking quietly under the sliver moon. His gray eyes squint into the darkness, and his arms are crossed, and the pale smoke drifts thoughtfully along the side of his face.