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chats easily, as if among family. The gathering crackles with conversation. Across from me two men are debating how the war will be remembered in the literature, while to my left there is a lively discussion about the future of Palestine. Ideas rise like champagne bubbles around me and I struggle to keep up, to grasp one before it is displaced by the next
    “Is Marcin coming?” one of the men asks in accented French. His sideburns, wide and deep, lash onto his cheeks like daggers. He wears a red silk scarf around his neck, knotted jauntily.
    Krysia shakes her head. “He’s playing a wedding at Chartres.”
    The man snorts. “That’s a disgrace.”
    “One has to eat,” Krysia replies vaguely, then turns to me. “Marcin is my husband.”
    “Oh.” Krysia seems so solitary and stoic, an island unto herself. It is hard to imagine her needing or living with anyone.
    “He plays cello.”
    An older man, fiftyish and portly with a shock of white hair, pads over to the table and places fresh, foaming mugs of beer in front of us. “She’s too modest.” His vowels are rounded, as though his cheeks were full, a Russian accent unmuted by his time in France. “Marcin is one of the foremost cellists in Europe,” the man informs me. He begins twirling a coin between the knuckles of his left hand, index finger, middle, ring, pinky, and then back again without stopping. His fat fingers, each a sizable sausage, are surprisingly nimble. “He should be playing filled concert halls, not background music for wedding guests munching on canapés and cheap wine.”
    The red-scarfed man beside me raises his glass. “Hear, hear.” His words are slurred.
    Krysia pats the arm of the man who has handed us our drinks. “Margot, this principled fellow is Ignatz Stein.” I am surprised to hear her introduce the barman as a friend. “He owns this place.” I take a sip too large, caught off guard by the full, cold taste of hops, carrying me back to the fields of Bavaria in late harvest when Papa and I hiked there years earlier. The extra liquid spills out of the corner of my mouth. I reach for a napkin and, seeing none, furtively blot at the moisture with my sleeve, hoping no one will notice. Krysia turns to the man seated beside her. “And this is Deo Modigliani.”
    “The artist?” I cannot help but blurt out, awestruck. I have studied his work, seen it in the finest galleries and museums. Yet here he is sitting in this nondescript café and drinking beer like everyone else. I’ve heard of this Paris, artists and writers gathering in the Montparnasse cafés to drink and share ideas. It exists beneath the surface, separate and secret from the pomp and formality of the conference and everyday life overhead.
    Krysia does not answer but turns her attention to a debate on the future of Alsace-Lorraine that has heated up at the far end of the table. “Surely the territory will be returned to France now.” I have not been introduced to the man who is speaking.
    “If the Americans and the French don’t tear one another apart first,” Krysia interjects. I nod. The conference is just days old and things had reportedly gotten quite contentious already.
    “But the Americans...”
    “It is quite easy to have views from halfway around the globe.” Her observation is unfair and yet at the same time true. The Americans came to help with the fighting and they are here to help make the peace. Yet they will return home, largely unscathed by what is decided here. So why are they at the center of it?
    She continues, “If the conference is to be democratic, then why is so much being done by the Big Four behind closed doors? And where is Russia?” I watch in awe as Krysia speaks her mind in a forthright way, mixing logic and passion in the way of a woman long accustomed to debate. Holding court, she appears ethereal, bathed in light. I have seldom heard women offer up opinions and have never seen them received with such respect. There is a keen