He walked along the island’s rocky apron for a longer stretch, and across from him were Sisters and Pulpit and their interlocking coves and shallows that were so dangerous that even Cyrus would not drive a boat here unless the Old Man directly ordered it. The birds were more curious, as if they were not used to seeing people. He saw three cormorants again, which he took to be good luck. Soon the impatient ocean lay once again in front of him, in a narrow window between the Pulpit and North headlands. This was where he had imagined the forest would be more forgiving, where like the inquisitive birds he hoped that isolation had made the woods less guarded. That was his theory—his intuition. What was definitely true was that so far every intuition had been wrong. What if he was blocked and pinned again? What if he lost his bearings? What if, even in twilight, the forest was too dense to see the water, and he had no sense of where he was at all? Was Baffin big enough to go around in circles forever, or at least until he starved? He ate some seaweed. It was full of rancid little bubbles. It tasted awful. Aunt Diana said that seaweed had good nutrients, that you could live on it. His father had laughed at her.
Now Catta lay down on the rocks and closed his eyes. He fell asleep for a short time, and when he looked up at the sky again, it was completely dark. He saw Big Bear and the Big Dipper and tried to fix their positions in his mind so he could navigate by them, even roughly, just to know where the ocean was. He rinsed his mouth with salt water to replace the grim taste of the seaweed, and then he split off a limb from a pine tree by the water. He rubbed the pine pitch from the branch on his hands and arms and legs and all over his face. He picked up a piece of driftwood and threw it at the wall of branches. Now he was ready.
43
January 1964
Central Park West, New York City
Sometimes they went to the unheated ballroom on the roof. His aviary, Billy called it, from the endless pigeons on the ledge. There were blankets and a thrift shop chair and sofa, concessions to his daughters’ tea parties. It was enough.
How are you? Billy said, afterward.
I’m bored with you, Lila said.
She could feel him smiling in the half-light.
The girls must be ready, he said.
I’ll collect myself.
Lila opened her compact with a click, and a thousand pigeons rose up in a body, as if in answer to a prayer.
Billy said something and then left, and the word downstairs formed an echo among the high windows. It had surprised her, how efficient the absence of pleasantries could be.
When Lila arrived in the kitchen, Billy was sitting at the table with a man she did not know. She was alarmed. He was older, gray, most likely in his late fifties, elegantly if casually dressed. He spoke idiomatic English with a strong accent. Billy introduced him as Hans Kallenbach.
Are you Austrian, Mr. Kallenbach? Lila said.
No, thank God, Kallenbach said, smiling. Why would you say such a thing?
Your shoes, Lila said.
He wore exquisite burgundy loafers that no American shop would ever have stocked.
You’re teasing me, Kallenbach said. The Austrians dress like peasants.
Lila smiled. She was intensely aware of Billy watching her.
Excuse me, she said. I’m here for my nieces.
Had Billy known this man was coming over? she wondered. Was he that stupid, or that reckless?
Lila went into the back bedrooms, where the girls had not begun to pack for their overnight at the Plaza. Within minutes, Lila had pajamas and nightgowns and teddy bears and toothbrushes arranged in two tiny suitcases. The packing and unpacking, Lila thought, were arguably the most important parts of her visits.
Back in the kitchen, Kallenbach had placed wrapped presents for the girls on the table. They were delighted—an unknown man who brought presents! Inside the boxes were beautiful French-style scarves. Ann and Barbara said thank you very gracefully, despite their total confusion at the meaning of these squares of patterned silk. Lila thought that Hans Kallenbach must be in the habit of giving presents to girls somewhat older than six and eight.
Put them in your suitcases, Lila said to the girls. We’ll have a scarf-tying lesson at the hotel.
Billy says you live in Washington, Kallenbach said.
I’m afraid so, Lila said.
It’s a miserable city, Kallenbach said.
It’s much too hot, Lila said, although the cherry blossoms are lovely. That was a joke she had with Jim.
Billy says you know the good Ethiopian restaurants.
What an odd thing for Billy to tell anyone, Lila thought.
It was perfectly true—they often went to a particular Ethiopian place with the children, who liked to eat with their hands. Kallenbach said he would call her for a recommendation when he next came to town. He seemed very comfortable asking people for favors. When she left with the girls fifteen minutes later, he and Billy were drinking coffee at Billy’s kitchen table.
44
Diana Hillsinger stood in the living room, surrounded by faces, and she knew that her first instinct was right. She should have stayed in her room.
At her own parties, Lila was first to arrive and the last to leave, but tonight she had not appeared. It was very strange. Lila was not in the house or on the lawn or even in the chapel, and now she was missing from the living room. The handful of people already dressed and present, some of them strangers, presumably New House guests, were standing in scattered pairs, more or less balkanized, which Lila would hate. John Wilkie was in the corner by himself, nodding apologetically. It was all too much.
Diana was about to retreat back upstairs when her eyes found the desperately ugly ceramic owl that she herself had insisted they keep in the living room. Now the owl reproached her. Her premonition had been right—the catastrophe had come to pass. This was her moment. If Lila were somehow incapacitated, and if what James related to her was actually true—that Catta was out on Baffin for the night—then Diana would give everything. She would play the hostess, or at least attempt it. She would become one of those women whom she routinely mocked for their hypocrisy and their sweaters. She could endure anything for ten minutes.
Diana plunged into the living room with abandon. She asked Catherine Templeton about her horrific shoes and then dragged her over to Wilkie, who could be shy among strangers, but who, Diana had learned, knew Catherine’s brother-in-law from summer camp. She recruited the outrageously stoic Christopher Templeton to mix martinis, and in the process discovered two things, both wonderful: one, that the poor man was desperate to be useful, and, two, that conversation in that area exploded when he left. She complimented the Van Colls and the Kipps, more of Billy’s guests, on their combined total of eight lovely boys, who were without exception appalling barbarians, even the little ones. As a precaution she introduced her own guests, the Petersons, to everyone in the room several times over, since they had a tendency to get drunk. In Diana’s experience, it was only the unknown drunks that anyone objects to. She took the tray from Susan, and through the medium of toast points smeared with goose liver, tried to bring to this room that fluidity, that lightness of spirit that was the hallmark of all of Lila’s parties and the opposite of how Diana herself had felt since lunchtime today, when she had had her premonition.
Jim Hillsinger arrived downstairs later than he had hoped, and he was surprised to be offered foie gras on a silver tray by a lively and attractive woman bearing an uncanny resemblance to his sister.
“These birds died in your service,” Diana said to him.