Gorgeous East (56 page)

But the deserting Legionnaire and his lover passed through security and the gauntlet of soldiers and down the long corridor to the departure spur without being stopped or questioned. Smith found their gate—112a Air Martinique Vol/Flight 3387 Non-Stop—CDG Paris–KIA New York, departure almost two hours off, but business class already lining up. Across the way, through a pane of etched glass, first-class passengers could be seen drinking quietly and nibbling at snacks on comfortable chairs in the lounge. One storefront down, the cheery facade of a duty-free shop gleamed with bottles of fine perfume and expensive cognac, all displayed on pedestals draped with watered silk in the window. Louise turned to Smith, and kissed him.

“
Et voilà!
” she announced triumphantly. “
Nous sommes libres
. I told you we’d be O.K.!”

Smith managed a smile.

“I’m just going to go in there”—she gestured to the duty-free shop—“I want to have a look at the perfumes. And I might get a magnum of good champagne to celebrate, enough to get us both really drunk. We’ll swallow the whole damned bottle when we get to New York. Wait here a minute—”

She dropped her bag and kissed him on the cheek and went into the shop.

Smith waited. He watched her through the window, sampling perfumes, holding little cards up to her delicate nose, trying a little squirt of this or that on her slim wrist. He turned away. Two more Montagnard soldiers stood on guard close by, at the top of the escalator that led down to the departure gate. Smith tried not to look at them, but couldn’t help himself. One of them was tall and very black, probably an African; the other, thin and loose-looking, all pink and white with colorless eyes set oddly far apart in his head that made him resemble a fish.

The decapitation of Al Bab had not finished the Marabout insurgency. The soul of their leader had migrated into the body of a ten-year-old boy discovered by Marabout mullahs among the refugees of the Awsard camp—this according to the latest UN reports from Western Sahara. There was talk of the Legion returning to the Hip of Africa to keep the peace until MINURSO could effectuate its final withdrawal from the region. If caught deserting now, Smith could be charged with desertion in the face of the enemy. The penalties for this infraction—in the old days death by firing squad—were still too horrible to contemplate.

The judder and scream of jet engines could be felt as a dull rumble through the soles of Smith’s new civilian shoes. Suddenly, he heard Colonel de Noyer’s voice, a ghostly whisper in his ear: “I am a volunteer serving France with honor and fidelity unto death. Devoted to my commanding officers, courage and loyalty are my virtues . . .”

And he saw for a moment that grim, familiar view of the peaks of the Galtat Zemmur, the bleak escarpments out the doorway of his old prison hovel, and felt the mountain chill along his bare skin and he knew that some part of himself would always be chained there, naked, waiting to die. He turned back toward the duty-free shop, a sudden feeling of despair clutching his heart. He wanted to cry out to Louise, wanted her to stop him from doing what, suddenly, he knew he would do next. She was at the register now, paying with a credit card as the smiling clerk wrapped a large bottle of champagne in colorful paper. He didn’t have much time, he wouldn’t have the strength to act once she returned. Now! He turned smartly on his heels and marched up to the two soldiers standing guard at the top of the escalator.

“Legionnaire Milquetoast, serial number 02294897,” he announced, and drew himself up and saluted, palm out, Legion fashion. “Reporting as a deserter. I ask to be returned to my regiment in Aubagne under arrest!”

The soldiers looked at him blankly. Was this some kind of joke?

“
Mais t’es fou?
” the African soldier said. You crazy? Then, “Move on before I call security.”

“Once again, I ask to—” Smith began.

“Want me to go for the sergeant?” the fish-eyed soldier interrupted. “I’ll go for the sergeant!”

“This one’s a big joker.” The African shook his head. Then to Smith, in a low voice. “Move on, I said. You have a valid ticket and a passport or you wouldn’t have gotten this far. Just get on your plane and go!”

“I can’t do that,” Smith said. “If you’ll please call your duty officer.”

“I’ll get the sergeant!” the fish-eyed soldier interrupted and he turned and hurried off down the concourse.

“Get out of here!” the African soldier said to Smith. “Before it’s too late!”

“Legionnaire Milquetoast,” Smith began again. “Serial number—” But this time he was interrupted by the sound of breaking glass from the direction of the duty-free shop—Louise had dropped the magnum of Veuve Clicquot.

“
Non!
Stop!”

And she was at Smith’s side, pulling on his arm desperately, pulling him toward the gate.

“Don’t listen to him,” she pleaded with the African soldier. “He hasn’t been well. We’re going to America, you see. We’re going to start a new life . . .” But she choked on her words, tears running down her face. Smith wrenched his arm away.

“I demand to be placed under arrest,” he told the African soldier insistently. “I demand to be returned to my regiment.”

“
Non, non . . . !
” Louise, sobbing now. “He’s crazy. John, please. Please! I’m begging you. I love you! Look at me! Johnny!”

Smith couldn’t look at her, he needed all his strength for this. The African soldier shook his head.

“Idiot,” he said.

A group of soldiers and five or six security guards were now approaching quickly from the far end of the concourse.

“You know what they’ll do to you in Aubagne?” The African soldier leaned forward, his voice low, urgent. “They’ll cut your balls off and feed them to you on a plate. Me, I’d rather go to America”—he shifted his eyes to Louise—“especially with her! Listen, I’ll tell them that you’re a little drunk, that it’s all a funny joke. Go! This is your last chance!”

Smith shook his head and turned to face Louise.

“Darling,” Smith said, resolved. “I’m sorry. I signed on to serve France for five years. I’ve got to finish my enlistment. I’m so sorry.”

The tears on Louise’s face dried suddenly, her eyes went cold. “Then you are a fool!” she hissed. “A moron! The Legion is a mad house, perfect for people like you! Everything was arranged! How can you do this to me?”

“Come down to Aubagne,” Smith said. “We’ll rent the apartment again. I swore to your husband I’d—”

Suddenly, Louise put her hands over her ears and screamed at the top of her lungs—a shrill note, pathetic and enraged at once and far more expressive than words. This was the one eventuality she had refused to contemplate: Now her lover, like her dead husband before him, had chosen the Legion over her! Very quickly, in mere seconds, all the tenderness she felt for Smith died inside her like a miscarried embryo. How could she have been so stupid to have fallen in love with this American buffoon? She stepped around him, picking up her feet carefully as one might step around a fresh piece of roadkill, and walked quickly to the escalator.

“Louise!” Smith called. “Wait—”

“I will not be some Legionnaire’s bitch!” she shouted over her shoulder and she didn’t turn around and was halfway down the escalator on her way to New York without him, drawn by gravity to the departure gate as rough hands pulled Smith to his knees, as his arms were drawn back, cuffs snapped over his wrists.

“I’ve never seen anything so absolutely idiotic!” the African soldier said now, disgusted. “You’re really in for it now,
putain
!”

Smith didn’t respond, trying not to think about the consequences of what he had just done. And he tried not to think about it throughout the course of the vicious beatings administered in the holding tank at the Fort de Nogent two hours later; tried not to think in the back of the prison van taking him, cut and bruised and poorly bandaged, to the Legion prison camp at Lac d’Ilay in the Jura mountains the next morning. (The hastily convened military court had sentenced him to three months’ hard labor, three less the usual six, inclined toward leniency on account of his medals and the fact that he’d turned himself in.) And he tried not to think at all for the first ten days of icy solitude in his tent, or later as he broke rocks in the sleety mountain rain with a twelve-pound sledge, wearing only a thin T-shirt and a pair of shorts, his hands and feet freezing.

But when thought returned to Smith’s numbed brain at last, he began to regret his impulsive decision to remain a Legionnaire. Yes, what an idiot he’d been! Why hadn’t he gone off with Louise into the golden future? A house in Malibu or maybe San Francisco, bought with her money; his Ph.D. from UCLA, then the soft life of an academic. There might even be children someday. No. All gone.

5.

B
ack in Aubagne after completing his sentence, restored to the austere, monotonous, and brutal life of the Legion, reduced to eating Legion slop and drinking mediocre wine from the Legion’s vineyards and sleeping with whores in the Legion’s brothel, Smith’s regret became acute, like a sharp pain stabbing him in the heart. Why had he done this to himself? And he wrote letter after letter to Louise, telling her he still loved her, begging forgiveness, pleading for a face-to-face meeting to explain himself more clearly to her—though their conversation would have to be brief and could only take place at the visitor’s center on the base in Aubagne, since, because of his desertion, he’d lost leave privileges for at least a year.

Smith wrote twenty-seven letters in total. Some of them more than thirty pages long, with copies mailed to each of her several addresses—to the town house in the Sixteenth Arrondissement in Paris, to the château de Noyer in Brittany, to the little beach house she’d bought with Phillipe at Saint-Jean-de-Luz in the Pyrénées Atlantique. He never received a single response, though a few of the envelopes mailed to the town house in Paris came back scrawled over with NOT AT THIS ADDRESS!! in what was certainly Louise’s own handwriting. Eventually, Smith stopped writing. He consoled himself with the thought that their relationship would have ended badly sooner or later, probably wouldn’t have lasted more than a few months. Because a man, no matter how handsome or talented or good or deserving of happiness, simply cannot live off a woman for long.