The Librarian Spy(45)
With that proclamation, he put his drink to his lips and drained the contents so only the lemon twist remained. He held up his glass as a waiter passed to summon another. Again. As if catching her assessment, he winked at her. “This is better than the pills most refugees take for their nerves.”
Regardless of what he said and the luxurious surroundings he enjoyed, the wear of waiting so many months began to whittle at his appearance. He remained slender despite the abundance of canapés and heaping plates of meats and pastries and delicacies from around the world. Most of which he didn’t touch. Instead, his attention swung to what could be splashed into a crystal glass. And though he said it settled his nerves, the slight tremor in his hands never seemed to abate, and the lines around his mouth and on his brow appeared to be etched deeper every time they met.
A man and woman walked by the table, their conversation in German apparent. Lamant’s hold on the cup tightened until his bony knuckles went white.
“Are you all right?” Ava asked when the man and woman passed.
He swallowed, appearing pale beneath his light sunburn and offered her a wan smirk. “Forgive me, German being spoken nearby never ceases to rattle me.”
She nodded. While she would never understand on the level Lamant had experienced, she understood about the shift in emotion hearing German elicited. “My father was fluent in German. And French,” she added with a smile. “Once hearing German reminded me of him.”
“Now it is sullied,” Lamant finished for her.
“Precisely.”
A waiter appeared and exchanged Lamant’s glass with a fresh one, offered on a glossy silver platter. Lamant took a generous sip and visibly relaxed. “I spent much of my life enjoying the works of Goethe and find I can only stomach his words in French now. It is a pity as the translation is never as true as the original.”
“It doesn’t surprise me that you are a man who appreciates Goethe.” Ava finished the last of her wine as James caught her eye from across the room.
It was time to go. And time to tell Lamant the news she had been dreading the entire night.
“I confess, I have been trying to secure a visa for you from the American Embassy.” Ava stared at her empty glass, a remaining circle of wine pooled at the bottom like a drop of blood. “But I have failed.”
Lamant blinked in surprise. “I would never ask that of you.”
“I know.” Ava set her wineglass on the small table between their chairs. “I wanted to help regardless.”
And she still did, to repay him for all he had done in procuring the foreign publications. At every turn, her requests had been denied. She had been warned by Peggy, then snubbed by the vice-consuls at the embassy who refused to hear her pleas and then refused by a contact in DC she knew through one of her former roommates.
“I didn’t want you to think I hadn’t tried,” she said softly. “Not that it did any good.”
A waiter whisked by, and her glass disappeared.
Lamant studied her for a long moment. “No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted,” he said, quoting Aesop.
“My father used that quote often.”
“Then he would be proud of you.” Lamant settled his hand on hers, his fingers cold from cradling his drink. “You are meant to do great things.”
Though his compliment warmed her, it was another brick of expectation she did not feel she could support. In her months in Lisbon, she had not helped the refugees save for a few books given to children in the mornings and while she worked hard at collecting the newspapers, she wished she could do more. Daniel was still in danger, she was unable to find her neighbor who had been arrested by the PVDE, the world was still at war, and she could not even procure one American visa.
She was letting everyone down.
The sense of her own helplessness did not diminish as the months slid into October, when the chill of autumn gilded the foliage, leaving the trees awash in a splay of burnished gold. However, it was then she received two letters. One from Daniel—short and sweet, erring on the side of censorship, safe rather than the elaborate. And one under the door of her apartment from Lamant who she had not seen in several weeks.
I have finally not only secured an American visa but am leaving on a ship tomorrow. I wish to enjoy the final night of Lisbon with the people I cherish most in this stunning city.
Sheer joy engulfed her at such a letter, exquisite and filled with light. Despite the hurdles in Lamant’s path, he had managed to scale them and was on the other side at last. It was a worthy cause for celebration indeed.
That was how she and James found themselves navigating the ancient section of Lisbon known as Alfama with a moon hung high and full overhead in an inky, star-studded sky. The rest of the city was charted in a modern grid-like Pombaline pattern with widely spaced streets, but Alfama maintained its narrow winding passages with a complex maze of stairs and steep slopes, exactly as it had been in the medieval days.
That area was one of the few to have survived the fateful day in 1755 when an earthquake struck and destroyed most of the city. But the tragedy was not finished there. The shuddering earth enraged the Tagus River, which swelled into tidal waves and washed away pieces of Lisbon. As if that were not enough, the tipped candles and lanterns from the earthquake set ablaze what had not been reduced to rubble or submerged.
The devastation was momentous and resulted in tens of thousands of lost lives. Its worldwide news deeply impacted Voltaire who not only incorporated the tragedy into his tales of Candide but wrote an entire poem lamenting the disaster.