Free The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer Page B

Something foreign. Levi.
    Undrash.

    Buy new shovels for the workers. Leave the programs as they were--too expensive to reprint. And no, he didn't know a Levi Undrash. Even if he did, God help him, the last thing he had for anyone right now was a job.

    Andras had planned to arrive at school on Monday morning with triumphant news for Professor Vago: He had found a job, had arranged to pay his tuition, and would therefore remain at school. Instead he found himself trudging down the boulevard Raspail in twig-kicking frustration. All weekend he had scoured the Latin Quarter in search of work; he had inquired at front doors and back doors, in bakeshops and garages; he had even dared to knock on the door of a graphic design shop where a young man sat working in his shirtsleeves at a drafting table. The man had stared at Andras with a kind of bemused contempt and told him to stop in again once he'd earned his degree. Andras had walked on, hungry and chilled by rain, refusing to capitulate. He had crossed the Seine in a fog, trying to imagine who he might call upon for help; when he looked up he saw that he'd walked all the way to the place du Chatelet. It occurred to him then that he might present himself at the Theatre Sarah-Bernhardt and ask to see Zoltan Novak, who had, after all, invited Andras to stop by. He could go that very moment; it was half past seven, and Novak might be at the theater before the show. But at the Sarah-Bernhardt he'd been turned away--politely, regretfully, and with a great deal of rapid, sympathetic French--by a young man who claimed to have spoken directly to Novak, who hadn't recognized Andras's name. Andras had spent the rest of that evening and all the next day searching for work, but his luck hadn't improved. In the end he'd found himself back at home, sitting at the table by the window, holding a telegram from his brother.UNBELIEVABLE
    NEWS! THANKS FOREVER TO YOU & VAGO. WILL APPLY STUDENT VISA TOMORROW. MODENA. HURRAH! TIBOR

    He would have given anything to see Tibor, to tell him what had happened and hear what he thought Andras should do. But Tibor was twelve hundred kilometers away in Budapest. There was no way to ask or receive advice of that kind by telegram, and a letter would take far too long. He had, of course, told Rosen and Polaner and Ben Yakov at the student dining club that weekend; their anger on his behalf had been gratifying, their sympathy fortifying, but there was little they could do to help. In any case, they weren't his brother; they couldn't have Tibor's understanding of what the scholarship meant to him, nor what its loss would mean.

    At seven o'clock in the morning the Ecole Speciale was deserted. The studios were silent, the courtyard empty, the amphitheater an echoing void. He knew he could find a few students asleep at their desks if he looked, students who had stayed up all night drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes and working on drawings or models. Sleepless nights were commonplace at the Ecole Speciale. There were rumors of pills that sharpened your mind and allowed you to stay up for days, for weeks. There were legends of artistic breakthroughs occurring after seventy-two waking hours. And there were tales of disastrous collapse. One studio was called l'atelier du suicide . The older students told the younger about a man who'd shot himself after his rival won the annual Prix du Amphitheatre. In that particular studio, on the wall beside the chalkboard, you could see a blasted-out hollow in the brick. When Andras had asked Vago about the suicide, Vago said that the story had been told when he was a student, too, and that no one could confirm it. But it served its purpose as a cautionary tale.

    A light was on in Vago's office; Andras could see the yellow square of it from the courtyard. He ran up the three flights and knocked. There was a long silence before Vago opened the door; he stood before Andras in his stocking feet, rubbing his eyes with an inky thumb and