Mila 18 - Leon Uris [88]
“I think I’ll practice foul shots for a while,” Andrei said. “Say, by the way, what do you have on tonight?”
“I can be had.”
“Good. My colonel gave me his box at the opera. La Bohème.”
Opera! It struck a note of joy in Chris. He had neglected it so much lately. It had been a religion with him in New York and with Poppa in Italy.
“You'll have dinner with Gabriela and me and then we’ll pick up my sister. She would join us for dinner, but she wants to bring the children and her daughter has a late piano lesson.”
“I didn’t know you had a married sister.”
“Yes, my one and only.”
Chris hedged. “Look, I’ll be a third wheel breaking in on a family party.”
“Nonsense. Her husband is in Copenhagen at a medical convention. Besides, the children will be thrilled to have a real live Italian explain the libretto to them. Settled! Be at Gabriela’s apartment at six.”
“This is my sister, Deborah Bronski. And my niece Rachael, and the schmendrick is Stephan.”
“How do you do, Mr. de Monti.”
“Call me Chris ... please.”
It was the most strange and awesome sensation Chris had ever experienced. Even as he walked from the car to the house he felt it come over him. The instant he saw her eyes she understood that he was reading a message of a deep inner sadness and frustration.
Good God, she was beautiful!
Chris was an experienced, sophisticated man. He was too wise to be felled suddenly like this. Yet his stability seemed shot. This strange feeling had never happened—not even with Eileen.
During the opera they were both uncomfortable in their awareness of each other. It was as though ectoplasm were leaping from the body of one to the other. There was a quick succession of stolen glances. There was the first accidental brushing of arms that made them twinge. And a few less accidental touchings.
Between the second and third acts Chris and Deborah found themselves standing away from the others, oblivious of the pomp and finery around them. Deborah turned completely pale as they stared wordlessly at each other.
The bell rang and the audience began to drift in to their seats.
Deborah suddenly broke and turned. Chris automatically touched her elbow. “I must see you,” he blurted. “Please phone me at Swiss News at the Bristol.”
Andrei called across the lobby for them to hurry.
Four days passed.
Chris started each time the phone rang. Then he began to resign himself to the fact that she would never call him and that he had done something foolish. Flirtations were flirtations, but this wasn’t. There was in this none of the game men and women play. It was something serious from the very first second. Even though he realized she would not call, he could not shake that strange feeling.
“Hello ...”
“Is this the Swiss News Agency?”
“Yes ...”
“Christopher de Monti?”
“Speaking.”
“This is Deborah Bronski.”
Chris’s hand became wet on the phone.
“I will be in the Saxony Gardens in an hour, along the benches beside the swan lake.”
They were both quiet and confused and feeling guilty and foolish as they found themselves sitting opposite each other.
“I feel absolutely silly,” Deborah said. “I am respectfully married and I want you to know I have never done anything like this before.”
“It is all so strange.”
“I cannot lie about the fact that I wanted to see you again and I don’t know why.”
“You know what I think? I think that you and I are a couple of magnets made out of some sort of unique metal. I think I was irresistibly pulled to Warsaw.”
And then they were awkwardly quiet, groping for a logical thought.
“Why don’t we take a walk,” Chris said, “and talk about things?”
She lay awake that night. And she met him again and she lay awake again. All of those little things that make a romance the most wonderful exploration of one human by another had been denied Deborah. Now suddenly she was flooded with them. Flooded with emotions she never believed she would have or knew existed.
The touch of a man’s hand. The little duels of small talk to inflict small hurts on each other. The instantaneous thrill