77 Rue Paradis (9 page)

“You know all about what I’m supposed to do?”

“And more,” she said softly. “And still more.”

“Oh.”

“Are we friends?”

He reached out, took her hand, and drew her toward him on the bed. She sat beside him, pulled one leg up under her, and leaned back against the foot of the bed. She laid her purse beside her and folded her hands in her lap.

He wanted to believe her. He felt that he should. He felt she must be truthful. But in the back of his mind, how could he believe? He thought of something.

“How is the girl Elene Cordon?” he said. He did not look her in the eye. He could not. It would give him away. She would know he knew something. “Do you get a chance to speak with her, Lili?”

When she did not answer immediately, he looked at her.

She was staring down at her folded hands. He watched her lips. They formed words several times, but she did not speak. Then finally she said, “The girl is dead, monsieur.”

“Dead?” He knew the tone of his voice was not as it should be, and because of the quick look she cast him, he knew she suspected something. She would not know what.

“Yes.”

“How?” He tried now to put anxiousness, worry into his voice. But it wouldn’t work. He knew Elene was dead and he was not much of an actor. He was a very lousy liar. He had known this for some time. He wondered if Lili lied, and he found himself hoping strongly that she told the truth.

“They said it was an accident, monsieur. I don’t know who did it. But”—she turned her gaze once again to her folded hands—”you can be sure it was no accident. Did she mean so much to you?”

“She was a good woman.”

“I suspected as much. I’m sorry, monsieur.”

He said nothing.

“You knew, didn’t you? You knew she was dead.”

“How could I know?”

She shrugged. “I can tell. You were not surprised. Did the pig tell you?”

He shook his head. He wanted to avoid telling her anything much as yet. He wanted to take her into his confidence, but he was afraid to. If Gorssmann had sent her to keep tabs on him—which might easily be the case—he had to be wary.

“Listen, monsieur,” she said. She leaned forward on the bed, unfolded her hands, and laid them palms down on the bed as she looked at him. Her eyes seemed to become even a darker blue and very intense. “I know what is in your mind. But you must trust me. You must!”

He rose from the bed, walked over to the window. He turned and looked at her. She was still seated as he had left her, facing toward the head of the bed, where he’d been sitting.

He began to perspire again. Gorssmann was smooth. Every angle known to smart operation was in his command, and Lili could be a top mark on the page.

“I cannot escape them,” she said. “There is nothing I can do. I have nobody, monsieur. You are the first one I have believed I might be able to trust in a long, long while. This is why I come to you. Between us, we must do something. Gorssmann must be stopped.”

He still said nothing. Lord, how he did want to believe her! Not only that; he felt a strong desire to take her in his arms, and hold onto her, to crush her. It was a desire that had lurked in the back of his mind ever since she had entered the room. There was something quietly sincere about her and he hated the barb of doubt that clung there inside him, reminding him to take no chances.

“You work for Gorssmann?” he asked.

“I have been forced to do certain things, the same as you are being forced. I know all about you, monsieur. They have talked of nothing else for months. I have seen pictures of you. I have read the papers of your life. I know all about you. I know where you have been, what you have been doing. And I know that I can trust you, monsieur. That is why I am here.” She looked across at him now and she seemed very small and lonely, seated there on the bed. He wanted to go over to her and tell her he understood and that they would work something out together. But he could not do this. The gnawing worm of doubt was there and he could not evade it.

“You cannot bring yourself to believe in me, can you?”

He turned his back, stared at the lowered shade over the window. He moved to the dresser, peered into the mirror. He could see her back, the thick mass of coal-black hair with the red highlights from the lamp, and the sag of her shoulders beneath the tan coat.

“Just after the war,” she said, “Gorssmann contacted my father, who was a lens maker. He did something to him, I do not know what, and my father was forced to do something in turn. To work for him. My father nearly went mad, and my mother died of a stroke when she discovered that her husband was working with the enemy. The same enemy that had taken my brother and shot him, during the war. When I learned how serious it was, I told Gorssmann that I would do things for him, if he would only give my father freedom. Gorssmann lied. My father was very ill. He took me and trained me in various things. For instance, the painting of chinaware. It is a code, monsieur. An everyday code with which the agents in different cities and towns are kept posted on what is going on. What they are to do. It is extremely practicable. My father is in Austria now. I do not know where. Gorssmann insists that I stay with him, do what I have been doing, or my father will be put to death. It is very simple. I love my father. He is a fine man, but possibly as dead now as if he were buried. I think something must be done. I must make a sacrifice. But just leaving Gorssmann is no longer enough. Vengeance is not nice, but I must do something.” She paused, turned her head, and looked at him very intently. “Between us, perhaps something can be done.”

“I want to believe you, Lili.”

She turned, rose from the bed, walked across to him. She stood very close to him, her head tipped back, her sly smile and her serious eyes somehow more than appealing.

“Also,” she said, “I have no man, monsieur. This is continually on my mind. I am frank with the other, I shall be frank about this.”

He could feel himself weakening. He could do nothing about it. He thought even of Elene just then and of what she would think, and Elene would have said, “It is to laugh,” and he heard Lili speak again.

“Did you hear me, monsieur? I feel as if I have known you for ever so long. I do not want just any man.”

“You’re a very peculiar person, Lili.”

“No,” she said. “I am simply honest, monsieur.”

They were silent and she stood very close to him and he could sense her body and smell the perfume and her hair looked soft and rich and he wanted to sink his hands into it and grip it between his fingers; he wanted to crush her against him, and even with the thought, the desire, the want, he was doing just that. Her coat flared open and her body came against him, pressing close and tight and warm, and her lips opened almost wildly beneath his, damp and heating with the pressure. She trembled violently in his arms and he could not recall ever having kissed a woman’s lips that were so sweet and angry, and he had never held a woman so anxiously tortured with desire. She was like something untame, savage, in his arms. As though she were starved. Before his hands caressed her, her body caressed his hands as she came close against him, demanding, certain, frank not as Elene had been frank, but with a dangerously wild abandon that sent Baron plunging toward an understanding of her. She trembled and whispered frantically. Having seen her calm, he now realized her passion. He gripped her, wanting to hurt her, wanting with sudden bright anger to have her in hot forgetful endlessness.

She thrust herself away from him, backed to the bottom rail of the bed, and leaned there, breathing rapidly, watching him.

“I must go,” she said. “I am sorry. I should not have come so close, monsieur. I cannot stay, not now. They will be wondering and we must be careful.”

“Lili, please—”

“Yes. I know, but I cannot stay. Besides, you do not know if you believe in me as yet. Until you do, this would not be good. It would be good, but not perfect.”

“Lili, that’s just a woman’s— You want to be honest, you say. You know that—”

She smiled, then laughed outright. It was nice laughter. It was laughter that did not often occur and he recognized the fact that she laughed seldom.

“They will want to know where I have been. I must go.” She turned and walked over to the door, then looked back at him. “Monsieur,” she said, “I will be the person that takes care of your daughter. I will let you know how she is. À bientôt!”

She was gone, quickly, and the door closed. He stepped hurriedly across the room.

“Lili! About Bette—”

She turned in the hall, smiled at him. “Don’t worry, please. I will let you know.” Again she smiled, and strode off toward the rear of the house, the back stairs. He started out after her, then stopped in the shadowed darkness of the hall. For a time he stood there, listening, waiting, and becoming conscious of all he waited for and of how small his chances were.

He returned to his room and stood for a long time staring down at the bed, thinking about Lili and what she had done and said. Then he lay down on the bed and consciously sought sleep. Somehow he missed sleep, though. It eluded him and he spent most of the night remembering Elene and how honest Lili had seemed. And in the back of his mind it gnawed and gnawed at him. Could he trust Lili? And he began to get Lili and Elene mixed up as he drew closer to sleep, until they merged and he slept.

CHAPTER 11

The tooth woke him up. He lay there experiencing the pain, and everything rushed back into his mind, out of the deeply bleeding wound of sleep. He swung his feet to the floor, sick with the prospects of a new day. Today would be the real beginning and after a while he would know something about himself. He would know courage and he would know if he could lie to his friend Chevard and get away with it.

He bought clothes, had one decent suit made up while he waited. Returning to his room, he dressed. He was stiff in every bone. His muscles ached. He could not find the nerve to face a dentist. The swellings on his face had receded, and he looked fit above the collar and tie of his new shirt. He wore an Oxford-gray flannel suit, debated about the felt hat he’d purchased, decided against it, and flipped it onto the rumpled bed. The only comfort he discovered in his wrath of calamity was the clean, roomy sensation of new socks in well-fitting shoes.

Gorssmann had done something for him. Perhaps Gorssmann had bought him his funeral clothes.

It was early afternoon already and during the morning he became slowly more and more nervous. He could not wring Bette from his mind. He wanted to search Gorssmann out, see if Bette was all right. He wished Gorssmann would appear at his room. He wondered if he should hang around, waiting for Gorssmann. He knew that if he did, the fat man would not like it. For all Gorssmann had said about taking his time, Baron knew he was meant to get on with the job as quickly as possible.

He kept recalling Lili. If he could depend on her, if he could trust her, if she were truthful, honest…. If, if, if!

And all the time he kept forcing to the back of his mind the knowledge that he had to find Chevard and face him and lie.

He knew he should eat. He could not eat. Twice he went into cafés, twice he walked out with nothing but a double brandy under his belt. On an empty morning stomach, the brandy did not help.

The enormity of what he had to do was beginning to come through clearly to him. He was a spy, not merely an acting one, not a man posing as a spy—and he was from the wrong camp. One of the few men in the world who believed in him must be used, lied to, his faith undermined.

Baron knew he had to go through with it. He had no choice. Bette was in danger. There was the chance that neither he nor Bette would be alive when it was all over, even with Gorssmann’s word. Gorssmann’s word was an empty thing; a loud laugh in a wind tunnel. Yet he had to do as he was told.

Baron left his room, went out onto the street. His first move, since he did not know where Paul Chevard lived, was to find a telephone directory.

He went into a hotel nearby on Paradis, and found the phone and a battered directory. A moment later his finger prowled beneath the name. Paul Chevard. Baron’s heart began to thud then, because he was this much closer and his nerve had to hold out, only it wasn’t holding out. He stared at the telephone on the wall, with his finger still beneath the name in the directory. Baron reached for the phone. His hand actually touched the cold metal. But his hand leaped away as though the phone were searing hot.

He stood there in the small telephone alcove, staring down at the battered directory. His hand with the finger pointing to the name was trembling, and beneath the crisp new white shirt, the blue tie, the immaculate gray flannel, he began once again to perspire and to shrink.

It’s duty to yourself, he thought. To your daughter and perhaps even to that girl Lili. You’ve got to go ahead with it. Chevard himself would do the same, you know he would.

He leaned partially back against the wall of the alcove, and his tooth throbbed and throbbed in his head. How could it suddenly mean this much? Did it take this for a man to find out what he was made of? Was this the crisis in life?

Think, he told himself. Remember why you are in France. Remember back through those days, months, years—back to when it began. Who helped you? What did you decide?

And thinking this way, he felt a lessening of fear, a sharper patience, the possibility of victory. You want that man, he thought. That man who sits someplace, waiting. The man who ruined you and caused all of this in the first place. Think back, he told himself. Remember how it would be now if that man had not done as he did.

But he did and you swore an oath to yourself, he thought.

You’re getting melodramatic, he thought. Get off it. Think straight and reason it out. Don’t dicker with the consequences now. All that matters is the first move, then the next, and the next. Call Chevard, go see him, get it over with. You’ve got to!

Exuberance gripped him. He reached for the phone, took the receiver, heard the whistling whine of the wire as he placed the instrument to his ear. He glanced down at the directory, but his finger had slipped from Chevard’s name. The operator was questioning loudly, emphatically. He searched almost frantically for Chevard’s name. He couldn’t find it. His nerve vanished like sugar poured into the ocean. He slammed the receiver back on its prongs and stood there in the telephone alcove, shattered, perspiring, the sweat trickling down his neck, under his collar. He stared at the directory, turned suddenly, and walked from the hotel.

He could not do it.

He turned up Paradis, walking dazedly. A loud voice argued with him in the back of his mind. You’ve got to do it! You can’t back out now! What’s the matter with you? And it was his own voice and his own voice answered back, I can’t do it! Damn you!

All right. Go get a drink. Think it over. Only don’t take too long, because Bette is here, remember?

He stopped dead in his tracks there on the street.

Look, he thought. Look what hangs on a telephone call. Maybe if you got drunk, he thought. Then maybe you would make some sense to yourself. Maybe you would find the nerve you should have, he thought. Maybe it’s courage. Maybe you have no courage, maybe you have nothing. What’s the matter with you? It’s for somebody else. Weigh it, consider it. Is it from a selfish motive that you would put a whole country in jeopardy? Can you do this?

What is France to you, Baron? What is the world to you?

And as he thought like this, it became worse and worse. Because it was, in a sense, the world. It had happened before to other men, he knew. If cogs whirred right, if machinery were oiled properly, his making this phone call might very well be the first step toward instigation of war.

My God, he thought. Get a drink. Get a drink before you blow your fool top.

It had stopped being personal. He knew this. He was fighting with everything he had to keep it personal. From a purely selfish motive, he might be able to handle it. But when it expanded out of all proportion to his everyday thinking, it was beyond him. He could not deal with it. He had never been meant to deal with things of this sort. Gorssmann had said, “You are the man.”

He walked swiftly now toward the Cannebière. He wanted to shy away from it. Because it wasn’t for him, it had not been meant for him.

But it is you, he thought. You are the man walking down this street with this problem and you have to deal with it. Don’t be spineless. At least face it. For God’s sake, I am sick to death of you.

He turned the corner onto the Cannebière and walked into the first café at hand. It was a large place, with tables and chairs on the sidewalk, a large dining area, and a long zinc bar. He made for the bar. He almost ran.

“Cognac,” he said.

The bartender eyed him wisely, raised his eyebrows, and reached behind him for the green bottle.

The first glass went down, the second, the third, the fourth, all in rapid succession, with the bartender standing there smiling pleasantly and pouring, then frowning and pouring, then hesitating.

“Pardon, monsieur.”

They stared at each other. Baron flipped his roll of francs onto the bar, peeled off a thousand-franc note, and pushed it at the barman.

The barman smiled ingratiatingly. He reached behind him, under the shelf, and brought out a large brandy glass. He filled it brimming, until some of the brandy dribbled over the sides onto the zinc, carelessly. Baron liked the way the man poured the brandy. That was the way all brandy should be poured. Carelessly. He drank the entire glassful, gulping it, swallowing it like water, and motioned for the man to refill it.

Now, he thought. Now turn and run to the nearest phone. Quickly. You’ll be able to do it now. You know you will. King Brandy has come to the rescue. Good King Brandy. It will be easy now, won’t it?

“Perhaps something to eat, monsieur?” the barman said.

“No.”

It was very early in the afternoon and the café was nearly empty. He stood alone at the bar. He felt the maggots begin their crawling in his blood now. He felt the pressure, the good pressure inside his head, the release and the relief. Bette was all right. Wasn’t she?

And thinking of Bette, he leaned against the bar and drank from the glass, thinking and knowing that he had already passed the point where he could have made the telephone call. It had been but a minute ago and now it was miles behind him.

“Encore, monsieur?”

He nodded at the barman. The barman had not moved. He stood there with the bottle in his hand. Then he turned and opened a fresh bottle of cognac, grinned at Baron, and set it before him and walked away.

Baron leaned against the bar and quietly filled his own glass, letting it overflow and stream across the bar. He reached for the glass, started to raise it to his lips, and realized suddenly that he was drunk. He set the glass down and stared at it, watching it closely.

The brandy rose in his throat, turned over neatly, and settled, and he was quite drunk. He stood there and watched his glass and thoughts coursed through his mind like steel plates on a greased slide so that when he sought to grasp them and hold onto them, they slipped away and new ones took their place. It was simple and good and he was thoroughly drunk and nothing mattered.

Only in the back of his mind something did matter. He turned sharply away from the bar and walked out onto the street.

The sun was hot on the Cannebière. People streamed past in a blur of bright wandering imprints, flashing across his mind, and vanishing. The bright-skirted, flashing-eyed women. The flashing-eyed, bright-skirted women. The flashing-skirted, bright-eyed women.

He turned right off the Cannebière, walking swiftly. There was something he had to do. He knew there was something he had to do and as he walked rapidly along the slowly slanting sidewalk, rising smoothly beneath the elms, he remembered the telephone call and Chevard and then forgot and then remembered again in a haze of forgetting to remember, and remembering to forget.

Music soared, cascading against his ears like wet fountains of bright-slamming sound, bright and vivid and sparkling and dull, all at once, and he leaned on this sudden bar, staring, and somewhere off to his right in the dim fog of music and talking and laughter a woman sang and glasses clinked and he heard the loud pop of a cork. The wine.

He fumbled at the glass before him, trying to remember and fighting to forget.

“Chéri?”

He turned and she left, whoever she was. Whoever she was, he was too drunk for her, whoever she was. Her hips moved beneath the shimmering black skirt, like a tight taunt. He stood there recalling the redness of her mouth as she said the word, the dark conspiring light in her eyes. He turned back to the bar, watching the glass closely, and was surprised to see it was empty. He ordered again, ordering through the music that washed down over his shoulders, remembering Paul Chevard through the fog, thinking about Paul Chevard and of how long he had known him and knowing what he had to do.

On the street, walking, in the cool shade of night, he felt the wind that came down the street washing coolly against him, washing away the sound of the music, the pound and throb of it, and walking with him was the strong odor of cognac, like a laughing wrath. His wrath, his madness, his bitter grapes. Cultivate your vineyard, he thought. And the streets echoed to the pound of his hurrying heels, and he was out of breath standing against still another bar in the orange-colored night amid new music like the lilt of burlesque bounding, tightly insinuating a thousand pedigreed sounds and pictures, shoving the elbows that prodded him at the bar, thinking in direct hopelessness against the laughter and the talk and the laughter and the beat-beat-beat of the music.

“Monsieur?”

“Cognac.”

Splash.

«Encore?»

«Oui.»

«Upstairs, monsieur?»

«No, go away.»