“I’ll be gone just long enough to get there, see my parents, and come back.”

“I couldn’t stand it if something happened.”

“Do you think I want to go without you?” he said, and pulled her to her feet. “Do you think I can stand the thought of it? Two weeks without you, while Europe’s on the brink of war? Do you think I want that?”

“What if I came with you?”

He shook his head. “We know that’s impossible. We’ve talked about it. It’s too dangerous, particularly now.”

“I never would have considered it while Elisabet was here, but now I don’t need to protect myself for her sake. And Andras-now I know something of what my mother must have suffered when I had to go away. She’s getting older. Who knows when I’ll have a chance to see her? It’s been more than eighteen years. Perhaps I can arrange to meet her in secret, and no one will be the wiser. If we stay a short time, we won’t be in danger-I’ve been Claire Morgenstern for nearly two decades now. I have a French passport. Why would anyone question it? Please, Andras. Let me come.”

“I can’t,” he said. “I couldn’t forgive myself if you were discovered and arrested.”

“Would that be worse than being kept from you?”

“But it’s only two weeks, Klara.”

“Two weeks during which anything might happen!”

“If Europe goes to war, you’ll be far safer here.”

“My safety!” she said. “What does that mean to me?”

“Think of what it means to me,” he said. He kissed her pale forehead, her cheekbones, her mouth. “I can’t let you come,” he said. “There’s no use discussing it. I can’t. And very soon I’ve got to go home and get my things together. My train leaves at half past seven tomorrow. So you’ve got to think now. You’ve got to sit down and think about what you’d like to send to Budapest. I can carry letters for you.”

“What small consolation!”

“Imagine what comfort a letter will be to your mother.” With trembling hands he touched her hair, her shoulders. “And I can speak to her, Klara. I can ask her if she’ll allow me to have you for my wife.”

She nodded and took his hand, but she was no longer looking at him; it seemed she’d retreated to some small and remote place of self-protection. As they went to the sitting room so she could write, he stood by the open window and watched the sapling chestnuts show the pale undersides of their leaves. The breeze outside smelled of thunderstorm. He knew he was acting for her safety, acting as a husband should. He knew he was doing what was right. Soon she would finish her letters, and then he would kiss her goodbye.

How could he have known it would be his last night as a resident of Paris? What might he have done, how might he have spent those hours, if he’d known? Would he have walked the streets all night to fix in his mind their unpredictable angles, their smells, their variances of light? Would he have gone to Rosen’s flat and shaken him from sleep, bid him luck with his political struggles and with Shalhevet? Would he have gone to see Ben Yakov at his bereft apartment one last time? Would he have gone to Polaner’s, crouched at his friend’s side and told him what was true: that he loved him as much as he had ever loved a friend, that he owed his life and happiness to him, that he had never felt such exhilaration as when they’d worked together in the studio at night, making something they believed to be daring and good? Would he have taken a last stroll by the Sarah-Bernhardt, that sleeping grande dame, its red velvet seats flocked with dust, its corridors empty and quiet, its dressing rooms still redolent of stage makeup? Would he have crept into Forestier’s studio to memorize his catalogue of disappearance and illusion? Would he have gone back through the secret door he knew about in the Cimetière du Montparnasse, back to his studio at school, to run his hands across the familiar smooth surface of his drawing table, the groove of the pencil rail, the mechanical pencils themselves, with their crosshatched finger rests, their hard smooth lead, the satisfying click that signified the end of one unit of work, the beginning of another? Would he have gone back to the rue de Sévigné, his heart’s first and last home in Paris, the place where he had first glimpsed Klara Morgenstern with a blue vase in her hands? The place where they had first made love, first argued, first spoken of their children?

But he didn’t know. He knew only that he was right to keep Klara from going with him. He would go, and then he would come back to her. No war could keep him from her, no law or regulation. He rolled himself into the blankets they’d shared and thought about her all night. Beside him, on the floor, Tibor slept on a borrowed mattress. There was an unspeakable comfort in the familiar rhythm of his breathing. They might almost have been back in the house in Konyár, both of them home from gimnázium on a weekend, their parents asleep on the other side of the wall, and Mátyás dreaming in his little cot.

All he had was his cardboard suitcase and his leather satchel. It wasn’t enough luggage to require a cab. Instead he and Tibor walked to the station, just as they had when Andras had left Budapest two years earlier. When they crossed the Pont au Change he considered turning once more toward Klara’s house, but there wasn’t time; the train would leave in an hour. He stopped only at a boulangerie to buy bread for the trip. In the windows of the tabac next door, the newspapers proclaimed that Count Csaky, the Hungarian foreign minister, had gone on a secret diplomatic mission to Rome; he’d been sent by the German government, and had gone directly from the airport to a meeting with Mussolini. The Hungarian government had refused to comment on the purpose of the visit, saying only that Hungary was happy to facilitate communication between its allies.

The station was crowded with August travelers, its floor a maze of rucksacks and trunks, boxes and valises. Soon Tibor would get on a train and go back to Italy with Ilana; in the ticket line Andras touched Tibor’s sleeve and said, “I wish I could be there to see you married.”

Tibor smiled and said, “Me too.”

“I couldn’t have guessed it would turn out this way for you.”

“I didn’t dare to hope it would,” Tibor said.

“Lucky bastard,” Andras said.

“Let’s hope it runs in the family,” Tibor said. His gaze had drifted toward the front of the line, where a slight, dark-haired woman had opened a wallet to count out notes. Andras felt a pang: She wore her hair the way Klara did, in a loose knot at the nape of her neck. Her summer coat was cut like Klara’s, her posture elegant and erect. How cruel of fate, he thought, to place a vision of her before him at that moment.

And then, as she turned to replace the wallet in her valise, it seemed his heart would stop: It was her. She met his eyes with her gray eyes and raised a hand to show him a ticket: She was going with him. Nothing he could say would keep her from it.