“Why? Why do you have to start anywhere? Why don’t you leave it alone?”
I seized her hands. “Lotty. Stop. Look at yourself. Ever since this man came on the scene last week, you’ve been demented. You’ve been howling on the sidewalk and then insisting that the rest of us pay no attention because there isn’t a problem. I can’t believe this isn’t spilling over into the operating room. You’re a danger to yourself, your friends, your patients, carrying on like this.”
She jerked her hands away and looked at me sternly. “I have never compromised the attention I give my patients. Ever. Even in the aftermath of the war. Certainly not now.”
“That’s just great, Lotty, but if you think you can go on like this indefinitely, you’re wrong.”
“That’s my business. Not yours. Now, will you have the goodness to go back to this Web address and retract your message?”
I chose my words carefully. “Lotty, nothing can threaten the love I have for you: it’s too deep a part of my life. Max told me he has always respected the zone of privacy you erected around the Radbuka family. I would do that, too, if it weren’t for this heartbreaking torment you’re suffering. That means—if you won’t tell me yourself what is torturing you, I need to find it out.”
Her expression turned so stormy I thought she was going to blow up again, but she mastered herself and spoke quietly. “Mrs. Radbuka represents a part of my past of which I am ashamed. I—turned my back on her. She died while I was ignoring her. I don’t know that I could have saved her. I mean, probably I couldn’t have saved her. But—I abandoned her. The circumstances don’t matter; it’s only my behavior that you need to know about.”
I knit my brow. “I know she wasn’t part of your group in London, or Max would know her. Was she a patient?”
“My patients—I can treat them because our roles are so defined. It’s when people are outside that box that I become less reliable. I’ve never stinted a patient, not ever, not even in London when I was ill, when it was bitterly cold, when other students whisked through consultations as fast as possible. It’s a relief, a salvation, to be in the hospital, to be the doctor, not the friend or the wife or the daughter, or someone else utterly unreliable.”
I took her hands again. “Lotty, you’ve never been unreliable. I’ve known you since I was eighteen. You’ve always been present, warm, compassionate, a true friend. You’re beating yourself up for some sin that doesn’t exist.”
“It’s true we’ve been friends this long time, but you aren’t God; you don’t know all my sins—any more than I know yours.” She spoke dryly, not the dryness of irony but as if she were too worn out for feeling. “But if this man, this man who thinks he’s one of the Radbukas, is threatening Calia—Calia is the mirror of Teresz. When I look at her—Teresz was the great beauty in our group. Not only that, she had great charm. Even at sixteen, when the rest of us were gauche. When I look at Calia, Teresz comes back so vividly. If I really thought harm might come to Calia—”
She wouldn’t finish the sentence. If she really thought harm would come to Calia, she would finally tell me the truth? Or—what?
In the silence that hung between us, I caught sight of the time and blurted out that I had to be at dinner. I didn’t like the tautness in Lotty’s face as she escorted me back to the elevator. Running down Lake Shore Drive to the Rossys’, I felt it was I who was the unreliable friend.
Now, in a living room weighted down with bronze sculpture, nubbed-silk upholstery, enormous oil paintings, as I listened to the glittery chatter of skiing and whether a city like Chicago could possibly produce first-class opera, I felt utterly untethered from the world around me.
XXXI
Rich Tastes
I moved away from the chatter to the French windows. They stood open so that guests could pass through the heavy drapes to stand on a small balcony. Lake Michigan lay in front of me, a black hole in the fabric of the night, visible only as a blot between the winking lights of airplanes heading for O’Hare and headlights of cars on the road below. I shivered.
“Are you cold, Signora Warshawski? You shouldn’t linger in the night air.” Bertrand Rossy had come through the window behind me.
I turned. “I don’t often have the chance to see the view this clearly.”
“Since I’ve been remiss in attending to my guests, I can scarcely chide you for avoiding them, as well, but I hope you will join us now.” He held the curtain for me, giving me no choice really except to return to the gathering.
“Irina,” he called in English to a woman in a traditional maid’s uniform, “Signora Warshawski needs a glass of wine.”