Marianne loses her place. Trying what? Confusion presses in on her. Not just of the moment, the words, but the greater confusion of life itself—the whole murky, impulsive side of human interaction, the tangled knots of influence and emotion. A vast, primordial soup she has spent her life trying to negate.

“—trying, but so often failing, to bend toward the light.”

Marianne can feel her tongue dry in her mouth. The world grows dim, and there is an odd buzzing sound. She meets the eyes of the Chinese scholar she was introduced to last night. What does she know of him? Of his experience? The world is too vast to know in all its corners.

Then, all at once, her knees give out.

Her vision goes before her consciousness.

But she can feel, suddenly, a strong pair of arms, catching her, holding her up. “I’m sorry,” she says, or tries to say.

“Shhhh . . .” She recognizes Martin’s voice. “We need our heroes. No more apologies.”

Then all is quiet.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

BURG LINGENFELS, OCTOBER 1991

Martin wakes in bed next to Mary. He can’t think of her as Marianne, which is what she would like to be called. Mary, it turns out, is a nickname she has always disliked.

Last night, when Marianne revived, the castle was filled with jubilant relief. Thank God! Imagine if she had died, right there on the castle floor, killed by the effort of straying beyond the clarity that has defined her life. When her eyes opened, even stoic Ania wept with relief. And the party that followed was a real bash. The Sophie Scholl scholar played the fiddle, and a Russian philosopher taught a group of guests to dance the barynya. And the food was excellent: delicate white trout, new potatoes, and “homegrown” carrots from the castle kitchen garden, now a vast organic nursery. For dessert, Martin’s favorite: fluffy, shredded pancakes known as Kaiserschmarnn, a local specialty. And of course lots of champagne. Mary and Martin were among the last guests to depart.

Mary is not the sort of woman Martin usually pursues. She is a little scattered and too modern, really. He is generally drawn to cool, steady women with unrufflable feathers. But there is, underneath her disorganized charm, a kind of emotional steadiness. And she has a good sense of humor, which is a surprise coming from the daughter of Ania and Carsten Kellerman, whom Martin remembers as a German version of American Gothic.

Though apparently, what did he know?

Mary shared her mother’s revelations with him last night. A secret past, a Nazi husband still alive when she married Carsten. It is to Marianne’s credit, Martin supposes, that she never told him any of this. It is possible that in his usual sidestepping way, he never really asked her why she and Ania fell so completely out of touch. Like many members of his generation, he has made a career of avoiding difficult questions.

“Can you imagine?” Mary asked as they lay side by side. “My mother was nursing one husband by day and sleeping with another at night.”