The Master Read Free Page A

Should I have given you some of the letters? Would you have wanted them?’
    Henry put out his hand as though she had not asked the question. He moved his lips, about to say something, and then stopped. He held her hand for a moment. She was almost in tears as she walked
towards the cab.
    H E HAD BEEN living in these rooms in De Vere Gardens for almost ten years but the name Paul had never once been uttered within the walls. His presence
had been buried beneath the daily business of writing and remembering and imagining. Even in dreams, it was years since Paul had appeared.
    The bare bones of the princess’s story would not need to be set down now. They would stay in his mind. He did not know how he would work it, whether it would be her last days in Paris
– burning letters, giving things away, leaving things behind – or her last salon, or her interview with her husband, the moment when she first learned her fate.
    He would remember her visit, but there was something else that he wanted to write down now. It was something he had written before and had been careful to destroy. It seemed strange, almost sad,
to him that he had produced and published so much, rendered so much that was private, and yet the thing that he most needed to write would never be seen or published, would never be known or
understood by anyone.
    He took the pen and began. He could have written an indecipherable script, or used a shorthand that only he himself would understand. But he wrote clearly, whispering the words. He did not know
why this had to be written, why the stirring of the memory was not enough. But the princess’s visit and her talk about banishment and memory, of things that were over and would not come back,
and – he stopped writing now and sighed – her saying the name, saying it as though it were still vividly present somewhere within reach, all these things guided his tone as he
wrote.
    He set down on paper what had happened when he returned to Paris, having received a note from Paul, that summer almost twenty years before. He had stood in the beautiful city on a small street
in the dusk, gazing upwards, waiting, watching, for the lighting of a lamp in the window on the third story. As the lamp blazed up he had strained to see Paul Joukowsky’s face at the window,
his dark hair, the quickness of his eyes, the scowl that could so easily turn into a smile, the thin nose, the broad chin, the pale lips. As night fell, he knew that he himself on the unlit street
could not be seen, and he knew also that he could not move, either to return to his own quarters or – he held his breath even at the thought – to attempt to gain access to Paul’s
rooms.
    Paul’s note was unambiguous; it had made clear that he would be alone. No one came or went, and Paul’s face did not appear at the window. He wondered now if these hours were not the
truest he had ever lived. The most accurate comparison he could find was with a smooth, hopeful, hushed sea journey, an interlude suspended between two countries, standing there as though floating,
knowing that one step would be a step into the impossible, the vast unknown. He waited to catch a moment’s further sight of what was there, the unapproachable face. And for hours he stood
still, wet with rain, brushed at intervals by those passing by, and never from behind the lamp for one moment more was the face visible.
    He wrote down the story of that night and thought then of the rest of the story which could never be written, no matter how secret the paper or how quickly it would be burned or destroyed. The
rest of the story was imaginary, and it was something he would never allow himself to put into words. In it, he had crossed the road halfway through his vigil. He had alerted Paul to his presence
and Paul had come down and they had walked up the stairs together in silence. And it was very clear now – Paul had made it clear – what would happen.
    He found that his hands were