A Man in Uniform (7 page)

Out on the street, he turned south toward his office, but then stopped and pulled his watch from his pocket, wondering as he did so if he might not just pop in to see Madeleine while he was in the neighborhood. It was almost eleven and he had thought, since his wife had a lunchtime engagement, to eat at a small restaurant around the corner from his office where the
patron
made a particularly good dish of tripe, but perhaps instead he might share the midday meal with Madeleine. It would cheer him up, bring his mind back to his own affairs. He expected to find her at home because she seldom left the house before noon.

He turned into the rue de Grammont with a light step and the notion of a lunchtime encounter, made all the more pleasurable for both parties by being unexpected, tingled just below the surface of his consciousness. He arrived at the narrow entrance of the small building where Madeleine lived and let himself in with his key, before walking up the three flights to her apartment and tapping gently on her door. This was their unspoken agreement: he used his key at the street door but always knocked at her apartment door to warn her of his arrival.

Today, there was no answer. He waited a minute, just in case he had caught her at her toilette. He did not keep his mistress in such style that she could afford a lady’s maid to pin up her hair or tighten her corsets, and one could hardly have called her lodging large, although both of its rooms were generously proportioned. There was an alcove off the
main room where she could prepare simple meals, and a bathtub behind a curtain in the bedroom; water had to be fetched from the pump on the landing and heated on the stove, a task performed by the daily maid employed by the concierge who lived on the ground floor. In these small quarters, a knock did not go unheard. Dubon knocked again. He now thought he heard a faint rustling from within, like the swishing sound Madeleine’s skirts made as she crossed a room, but when his third knock went unanswered, he supposed he had only imagined it, gave up, and retreated down the stairs.

He emerged on the street in what was, for such an even-tempered man, a sullen mood, more disappointed than he would have been if a scheduled appointment with his mistress had been canceled. The world was not bending itself to his will this morning, and for Dubon, a lawyer who spared himself the drama of the courtroom and a man who had achieved what he considered a happily balanced domestic life, this gave rise to an uncomfortable feeling of impotence.

Turning onto the boulevard, he straightened himself and breathed in the fresh air. The wide pavements seemed full of well-dressed ladies enjoying the first fine spring day. Admiring them, Dubon felt his good humor return and, reviewing the morning’s failed business, he reminded himself that, on the one hand, he would see Madeleine that afternoon and that, on the other, he was not without his own contacts in the press.

As he stepped into the office, he ignored the sheaf of messages that Lebrun, who was now back at his post, handed him. Instead he sat down to write a letter, which he instructed the clerk to post immediately while he went around the corner for his tripe.

The reply came promptly by midafternoon: his old school friend and former comrade from the days of the Commune, the sports journalist Morel, was only too happy to arrange a meeting with
Le Soleil
’s military correspondent but would be at Longchamp covering the races the rest of the week. If Dubon was free that very evening, Morel invited him to the Bistro des Italiens after six, when he would introduce him to his colleagues who regularly gathered there. Dubon sighed. Events were conspiring to keep him from Madeleine these days. No, really, it would not do. This was not his case, after all. He responded saying
that evening was unfortunately impossible, but wondering if they could not invite the military correspondent to the races sometime in the next few days? Dubon was not a gambling man, but he might enjoy a day at Longchamp. He could always, he thought as he remembered again the fate of the unfortunate young Fiteau, set himself a strict budget.

He returned to his neglected files, and at 4:50 left the office promptly.

Letting himself into Madeleine’s building a few minutes later, he inhaled appreciatively as he caught the scent of a particularly fragrant cigar smoke lingering in the lobby, and climbed the stairs with enthusiasm. This time, his knock was answered promptly.

“I am in need, Lebrun, of a box of chocolates.”

The next day, Dubon was giving a few quick instructions before he left the office for lunch. Roberge’s lugubrious presence was still fresh enough in his imagination that he felt a little wave of comfort and relief every time Lebrun’s face appeared at the office door.

“The five-hundred-gram with the gold bow?” Lebrun inquired.

“I was thinking the kilo today.”

Dubon was feeling the need to be generous. His reunion with Madeleine the previous evening had been unusually flat, even a little awkward. When he had entered her apartment at five, he had the odd sensation that someone had preceded him; he had no rational evidence of this, no half-empty glasses on the table or a forgotten scarf trailing across the divan, just a sense that Madeleine was not the only one who had been breathing the air in those rooms or sitting on the chairs. It was not that he forbade her other companionship, but he always assumed that he was offering an easier life than the one she would have experienced had she pursued her original profession or married any of
the artists or clerks who used to hover about her. Perhaps, he thought to himself, he was being naive.

“Pleasant afternoon?” he had asked, without mentioning to her that he had knocked on her door earlier in the day. Was it his imagination that she responded just a trifle too quickly, “I was out”? Their conversation proceeded listlessly from there, and what followed in the bedroom was almost perfunctory. Dubon had felt deflated as he prepared to leave for home, and if he clasped her tightly to him as he kissed her on his way out the door, it was to reassure himself that this little coolness between them was an aberration, that their relations where unchanged and unchanging.

“Very good, Maître,” Lebrun replied. “I’ll go around the corner after I have closed up for lunch.”

Dubon turned his attention back to his desk, but Lebrun, usually as discreet as a ghost, lingered. He seemed to have something to say.

“I wanted to apologize again to Maître Dubon for the inconvenience caused by my absence last week.”

“Not at all, my dear Lebrun,” Dubon said, continuing to tidy his papers.

“I know how difficult it is when you have to make do with Roberge.”

Dubon looked up again. “We managed. Not as well as we do when you are here, of course.”

“I trust I always give satisfaction.”

“Yes. Of course, satisfaction. Entirely. And your mother is better now?”

“Yes, thank you, Maître. She is much improved, as much as one can expect under the circumstances.”

“Ah yes, the circumstances.” Dubon hadn’t a clue what the circumstances might be and wasn’t at all sure he wanted to ask.

“Yes, the elderly. You know, Maître, how it is. One cannot ask that they heal the way the young do. An elderly relative is something of a burden. My mother is increasingly unable to care for herself. Thankfully, I have found an excellent housekeeper for her. The expense is significant but familial duty makes certain demands. I do not need
to tell Maître Dubon that. I am lucky, of course, that I do not have a wife and children—that would be a great responsibility, a great financial responsibility—but nonetheless, there are costs associated with the care of an aging parent …”

This was about the longest speech Dubon could ever remember Lebrun making.

“Yes, well, I am sure you are a dutiful son, Lebrun,” he said, as he rose from his desk to forestall the request he suspected was coming and straightened his jacket. “I must hurry home. You know how I disappoint Madame Dubon if I am late for lunch.”

In fact, Geneviève was not home when he got there.

“Madame is still out,” his manservant Luc informed him as he greeted him at the door.

“Out where?”

“Out visiting.”

“In the morning?” Geneviève followed the convention of paying her calls in the afternoon.

“I believe she was delivering her condolences to Madame Fiteau.”

“Madame Fiteau!” Dubon almost laughed. He had told his wife not to stand on ceremony, but he hadn’t actually expected her to march right over there. The metallic ping of the doorbell sounded behind him, and Geneviève, who never used a key because she thought it more genteel if a servant answered the door to her, walked into the hall.

“So?” Dubon asked.

“So?” she replied, taking off her gloves and handing them to Luc.

“I hear you were visiting Madame Fiteau.”

“Yes, well, you need not look at me like that. I’ll tell you about it at lunch.”

Indeed, once settled at the table, she was eager to recount her exploits. She had given in her card at the Fiteaus’ with a small note of comfort scribbled on it and, to her surprise, had been ushered in for an audience with the general’s wife.

“I think she was so relieved to see someone. Her own sisters are staying away. Can you imagine that?”

“Barbaric.”

“It’s hardly her fault.”

“No.”

“It wasn’t a pleasant visit. She is in a horrible state. Part of her really can’t believe it happened. She denies that the young man even gambled.”

“But she must have known. Your brother said the general had refused to keep paying the debts.”

“Maybe he never told her.”

“Maybe. Seems a bit improbable. She’s a powerful woman.”

“You wouldn’t have said that today. Just a shriveled old lady. A terrible thing to lose a child.”

“He wasn’t a child. He must have been twenty.”

“For a mother they are always children. I wish you could help them, François.”

“How could I help them?”

“Find out what happened …”

“Their son shot himself because he couldn’t pay his latest debts.”

“His mother doesn’t believe that. Or at least, maybe part of her knows he was gaming, but she says he was inveigled, trapped somehow in some kind of plot. I told her you could try to find out what happened.”

“You told her what?”

“At least, you could find out to whom it was he owed the money.”

“Geneviève, if young Fiteau owed someone a lot of money, whoever it is will now make himself known to the general.”

“If he dares.”

Madeleine answered the door wearing an afternoon dress in a flattering shade of rose that she often favored and accepted from Dubon with half-mocking protests the box of chocolates Lebrun had procured that morning.

“Goodness, you must think I do nothing but sit at home devouring bonbons. You will make me fat, dear … No, no I was out this afternoon, with Lucie. We went to the gallery finally. We were entranced, the figures are so lifelike, you would almost think they’d come off the walls and talk to you. We spent so long there, we didn’t even have time for tea. Shall I make us some now? I picked up a few cakes on my way home—or perhaps you would just like to eat chocolates,” she concluded with a giggle.

They ate tea and cakes happily together—although Dubon himself preferred a glass of wine by that hour of the day—and proceeded to the bedroom. Later, as they lay under the covers, a seemingly sleepy Madeleine raised the topic of the chocolates again.

“You are so good to me,” she sighed as she patted him gently on the thigh. “I am always grateful for your generosity.”

“Um.” Dubon assumed this was a reference to his sexual manners and didn’t feel it required much response.

“The chocolates are a lovely treat …”

“Oh, the chocolates. It’s nothing,” he said, but Madeleine was not to be dissuaded.

“No, it’s very good of you. Not every man is so attentive. The chocolates, that lovely necklace at New Year’s. You are very good.” She paused before adding, “But you know what they say, man cannot live by chocolate alone.”

Dubon laughed. “You’re becoming a wit, are you? Looking to start a salon?”

“Well, I hardly have the space here, do I?” Madeleine pointed out, gesturing around the bedroom.

“Most ladies hold their salons in the salon, not in the bedroom,” Dubon replied. “I guess you might squeeze in a few poets or two next door, perhaps a duchess, hmm? A painter, you have to have a painter for it to be a true salon.” Despite his joking tone, Madeleine seemed to consider the topic seriously.

“No, there’s not enough space.”

“Do you really want a salon?” Dubon had his first inkling that perhaps their conversation was not entirely lighthearted.

“No, of course not. I don’t have such pretensions. But still, it would be nice to entertain a little, not always be locked up here alone.”

“You’re not locked up here alone. You were at the exhibition this afternoon with Lucie.”

“I just mean it would be nice to have a little more space to invite my friends over. I get lonely during the evenings, you know.”

“I know you, you are out at the cafés. You tell me you are sewing but you are probably at Montparnasse.”