Ah, pardon me. Wrong movie.
I stubbed out my cigarette and got back to work, and I must have done the right thing, because on the first letter of the next file folder, dated May 21, 1914, the Metropolitan’s intrepid Berlin correspondent sandwiched the following between a military review in the Tiergarten and scandal in the ballet de corps of the Berlin Opera:
At the Bluebird last night, and only just recovered. First off, saw the Countess de Saint-Honoré (née Jane Johnson of Rapid City, if one’s feeling sufficiently ungenerous to recall that inconvenient fact, which it seems most ladies of her acquaintance are, at least behind her lovely back). In excellent looks, as ever. She arrived in tandem with a young man of perhaps eighteen or twenty: her son, I presume, since word has it she intends him to study amongst the eminent brains at the Kaiser Wilhelm. (Either that, or she hopes to add a German title to her collection. One suspects the latter, but on the other hand, what doting mother could resist the temptation of tossing her young prodigy under the very noses of Herr Einstein and Dr. Grant?)
Gathump gathump, went my heart.
Our story begins at the Bluebird café.
Violet, 1914
They dine at a café along Unter den Linden, Violet and her husband and Lionel Richardson, amid a high-pitched atmosphere of cigarettes and roasting meat and rattling dishes. Walter calls imperiously for two bottles of Margaux. “The fatted calf,” he says, laying aside the menu, “for the prodigal student.”
“Hardly prodigal, though I appreciate the gesture.” Lionel lights himself a cigarette and leans back in his chair. The frail wood seems too small for him; the room seems too small for him. His shoulders strain against his jacket, too full of life and muscle to be contained by so fine a sheet of gray wool.
“You left the virtuous labor of my laboratory for the British Army. Subduing the innocents in South Africa, I believe.” Walter smiles and takes his pipe from the inside pocket of his jacket.
“Colonial subjects in revolt.”
“Precisely.”
Lionel throws back his dark head and laughs. The electric lights flash along the ridges of his throat. “Still a Marxist, I see. I suppose it comes with the territory, as you Americans say, Mrs. Grant. Isn’t that right?” He turns to Violet, and his eyes crinkle in a silent laugh.
She fingers the bowl of her wineglass. “Of course Walter is a socialist. We are all socialists, aren’t we? All forward-thinking people must be. It’s the natural progression of history.”
“Oh, quite. I can’t fault you there.” He blows out another slow stream of smoke and winks at her, and she thinks that it’s not fair, not a bit. No just Nature should have bestowed so many physical gifts on a single man, while the rest huddle about their urban café tables in thin-shouldered, narrow-faced obscurity. He reclines like a lion before her, or rather a particularly robust panther, with his dark sleek hair and watchful gray eyes, his easy muscular grace, his air of patient vitality. When she switched on the lights in the laboratory two hours ago, she nearly staggered in shock. Had she really shared a darkened room with such a predatory creature? As if she were a mouse curled up with a cat for the night.
“There’s no point in arguing with him, my dear,” says Walter. “One cannot expect the son of a British peer to welcome the revolution with hands outstretched to lift up the downtrodden.”
“Third son. Of no account whatever, really. I should be marching with sickle in hand this instant.” Lionel’s charming lopsided mouth maintains its smile. He looks directly at Violet, as if daring her to challenge him on the subject of primogeniture.
Walter laughs and refills Violet’s glass. “Beware Captain Richardson’s charm, child. He may be a pretty fellow, but he’s not the sort of man to allow women careers in the sciences.”
“Perish the thought. Should never allow my wife near the laboratory. Primitive brute of the worst sort.” Richardson’s white teeth bare themselves at Violet. “Barbaric, on good authority.”
“You deferred to me perfectly well during the experiment.”
“Oh, that’s quite another matter. I’m perfectly civilized with other men’s wives.”
“But not your own?”
“I’m not married, Mrs. Grant. I speak hypothetically.”