Page 30 of One of Them

I t was eight o’clock on a Sunday morning, and Anne had already been up for almost two hours, hours during which she’d finished all the assignments due for this week’s classes, brushed her hair until it shone like a gleaming cap, and changed her outfit three times, finally settling on a plaid skirt and matching vest worn over a silk blouse with a pussycat bow at the neck.

The bow just peeked out from the collar of her coat, and Anne thought the effect was very pretty.

She quietly gathered her hat, gloves, and handbag; Nancy was still sleeping, and Anne hoped she could slip out of the room before she woke.

But just as her hand turned the doorknob, Nancy sat up in bed. “Where are you going?”

“For a walk.” She had wanted to avoid a direct question like this.

“So early?” Nancy’s hair was sticking up on one side and squashed flat on the other; she patted it tentatively.

“It seems like a nice day.”

“Does it?” Nancy turned her gaze to the window. The sky outside was gray and filled with clouds.

“Well, I was just feeling restless, and—”

“You’re meeting my brother, aren’t you?”

“Why do you ask that?”

“Because you’ve met him at least once a week for the last month. Or is it month and a half?”

Anne didn’t know what to say. That she had a crush on Nancy’s older brother was obvious, but until now, she hadn’t thought Nancy minded.

And as if Nancy had read her thoughts, she tossed a cushion in Anne’s direction and laughed.

“I know you’re crazy for him,” she said.

“And it looks like he’s pretty sweet on you. You haven’t told each other yet?”

Anne felt her face getting hot; she retrieved the cushion, which had landed in a corner. Was Drew really “sweet on her”? “He has the day off, so we’re going to the Louvre,” she said. “You could come with us.”

“Mmm, not now.” Nancy settled back down into the bedclothes. “I’m still sleepy. But let’s meet later. How about three o’clock at Les Deux Magots?”

Anne left the dorm and walked the few blocks to Drew’s hotel.

As she walked, she kept looking up at the clouds, dark and threatening.

Too bad she’d been so eager to rush to leave that she hadn’t thought to take an umbrella.

Just then it really did start to rain, lightly at first and then more heavily. She quickened her pace.

Rounding the corner, she saw she needn’t have worried; there stood Drew with a wide smile and an even wider black umbrella in one hand, with ample room under it for two. His Leica was on a strap and slung over his shoulder, and in his other hand he held a small bunch of flowers in a waxed cone.

“Good morning!” he called out, and when she’d gotten close enough, he handed the flowers to her.

“Thank you.” She looked down at the small bunch of violets, their velvety purple blossoms, their tiny yellow centers, each one as bright as a spark.

He’d bought her flowers! Surely that meant he was indeed sweet on her.

But she could read nothing different in his eyes; he could have been a doting older brother or a favorite cousin offering this gift.

She couldn’t tell. “They’re beautiful. Maybe we should put them in water and leave them in your apartment. We could get them later.”

“I have a better idea.” He extracted the violets from the paper and fastened them to the lapel of her coat with a pin he’d pulled from his pocket. “There—that’s perfect.”

Anne thought he was perfect. Sheltered by the wide black silk dome, they set off for the Louvre.

Since it was so early, they stopped for café crème and croissants and then waited by the entrance of the museum until it opened.

Anne had been here several times before, and had seen many of the most famous works of art—the Nike of Samothrace, the Mona Lisa , The Wedding at Cana —and so was happy to follow Drew into rooms where lesser-known works were hanging.

She stood in front of a painting by Piero di Cosimo that showed the Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus. Drew walked over to join her. “Do you like it?”

“I do,” said Anne. “She seems thoughtful. Sad. And she’s not looking at the baby, not even holding him very tightly. It’s almost like she’s not sure that he’s hers.”

“I see what you mean.”

Anne felt encouraged, so the art history student in her continued. “Maybe she’s thinking about the future. His future—nailed to a cross, the crown of thorns still on his head, the awful men who give him vinegar when he asks for water and who play dice for his clothes.”

“That could be.” Drew was looking at her intently.

“And then there’s the dove.” Anne pointed to the white bird in the bottom right corner of the painting.

“What about it?”

“Well, it’s a symbol of the Annunciation—I know that—but I also think the artist just really liked painting it. Look at how deftly he’s done the tail.”

“You’re right. When I was painting, I never could get the texture of feathers. It always eluded me somehow, though God knows I tried.”

“Maybe the camera is better for that.”

“Not better. Just different. Paintbrush, camera—they’re both tools.”

He moved away to look at another painting across the room.

Anne remained where she was, not quite ready to move on.

She loved Renaissance painting. Almost all the imagery was religious, but it was nothing like the religious imagery that came just before.

In the medieval period Jesus was a judge, either standing or sitting on a throne, intent on sending people to heaven or hell.

Even when he was supposed to be a child, he didn’t look remotely like one.

He was that same stern, imposing figure, only smaller.

Anne thought of the figures she’d seen at Chartres; compared to this pensive mother and plump naked baby, they were abstractions, austere and impenetrable, not real people with whom she could empathize and whose emotions she could understand.

“You’re still here.” Drew had wandered back over to where she stood.

“Still here.” She wasn’t done looking, wasn’t done seeing.

What she was thinking—but not saying—was that despite being Jewish, she found all this religious imagery, this Christian imagery, so resonant.

Jews took the injunction about graven images very seriously; their visual tradition didn’t include any human figures.

But looking at all these painted characters, the whole arc of life from birth to death, made Anne think this rule was a limitation, even a loss.

Besides, Mary and Jesus, along with Joseph and all the characters in that story, were Jews, a fact that had somehow been obscured over time.

When they emerged from the museum, they found that the rain had stopped and the sun was making a valiant effort to shine.

Since they still had time before they met Nancy, they decided to stroll across the Pont Neuf to the Left Bank.

Below, the Seine was dark, the inky blue almost black, but above, a faint rainbow arced over the tops of the buildings; Anne wanted to read it as a sign, though of what she wasn’t sure. Something good, though.

They came to the window of an art gallery, and Anne noticed a small piece of sculpture, its reddish-brown stone polished and shining. “Can we stop?” she asked.

“Of course.”

They went inside so Anne could get a closer look.

At first it looked like an abstract form, but wait, wasn’t that a face, and the curve of a body—oof!

Someone had slammed right into her, and her hands flew to her shoulder, throbbing from the impact.

She looked up to see who had been in such a hurry and was astonished to see that the someone was Delia Goldhush.

For a moment no one spoke. Then Drew asked Anne, “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” said both Anne and Delia, almost at the same time.

“Then what—”

But for once, Anne ignored Drew and gave all her attention to Delia. “What a surprise to see you here.”

“It’s hardly a happy one,” Delia said coldly.

“I know, and I just wanted to say...” But Anne didn’t know what she wanted to say. She fell silent.

“To say what? I saw your name on that letter. I know you were part of it.”

Anne couldn’t utter a word, or believe that this confrontation, which she had both longed for and dreaded, was happening here, in a Parisian art gallery. Delia was still talking. “... getting me expelled. I might have expected it from them. But not from you. I thought we were becoming friends.”

“We were!”

“Excuse me? That’s your idea of friendship?”

Just then a woman in a severe black dress and glittering pin stepped in. “Ladies, what’s going on here?” She looked at Delia. “Mademoiselle, I can see that you are overwrought, but I can’t have you speaking this way to people who come into my gallery. I’m going to ask you again to leave.”

But Delia ignored both the woman and Anne, and spoke directly to Drew. “Don’t waste your time with her. She’ll betray you just like she betrayed me—wait and see.” And with that, she turned and marched out into the street.

Anne was aware of Drew’s confusion. How could she explain this to him? Her gaze darted around the gallery, as if she could find an answer there. Then she saw the sculpture, the very thing that had drawn her eye in the first place and made her want to stop in, and she walked right up to it.

“Sophie Rossner,” she said.

“What?” Drew looked puzzled.

“Sophie Rossner, that’s what the label says.”

“I don’t understand,” said Drew. “Who is Sophie Rossner, and what does she have to do with any of this?”

“The girl who just stormed out of here? That was Delia Goldhush. I knew her at school. And Sophie Rossner was her mother. She was a sculptor, and she was killed during the war.”

“Did you really get her expelled?”