Hamilton, Donald - Novel 01 (8 page)

     
Paul
Laflin
shrugged his shoulders. "You will anyway."

     
"When Madame
Faubel
came in afterwards," Mr. Hahn said happily, "she was in the bathroom
being, well
.. ."

     
"She was puking her guts out,"
the younger man said. "Don't be polite on my account." He turned to
Branch. "It is his one big joke. Every time I now speak to a girl..."

     
"On her knees in front of the
w.c
.," the chinless man said slyly. "
Romeol
"

     
"All right," said Paul
Laflin
.
"All right!"

     
Branch asked, "What the hell is
Rochemont
?"

     
He felt the tension between the two of
them evaporate in a moment and saw them look at him across the table as if he
were a backward child.

     
Mr. Hahn said slowly, "
Rochemont
was hell, Lieutenant. Hell on earth."

     
"A camp?"
Branch asked irritably, refusing to be impressed. There was always that special
tone of voice that people used in referring to those places, and he was a
little tired of hearing about them. After all, the Nazis had not invented evil.
It was not as if Roman emperors and Spanish priests had not thoroughly explored
the methods of in inflicting pain on the human body centuries before. He
listened unsympathetically while Mr. Hahn described
Rochemont
in the pedantic tone laden with unspoken moral superiority that he might have
used in discussing sexual perversion in a psychology class in a coeducational
university. Then he looked up, and they all looked up, to see the thin-faced
middle-aged woman standing by the booth.

     
"I was telling the Lieutenant about
Rochemont
," Mr. Hahn said.

     
The woman sat down beside Branch. "I
heard you," she said. "You are always telling about
Rochemont
. What do you know about
Rochemont
?"
She swept off her hat and unbuttoned the jacket of her heavy brown tweed suit.

     
"Madame
Faubel
,
Lieutenant Branch," said the chinless man.

     
"The trouble with the girl," the
woman said, speaking to Branch, "was that she did not know. You understand?
They wanted something important, and she simply did not know, and like a fool
she said so, at first, and then she began to lie. It is always fatal to lie.
When it is happening to you, you cannot remember what you told them even five
minutes ago. You contradict yourself. They think you are weakening and keep on
... Get me a drink, Paul," she said.
"Coca-Cola."

     
The younger man rose and went to the bar.

     
"I cannot drink alcohol." Madame
Faubel's
dry, thin face smiled painfully. "The
diet ruined my digestion. I think it is ulcers.... Now I," she said,
"told them that I knew and that I
was
not going
to tell them, and after a while they believed me. I was in for a different
matter, but she was in my hut. I told her, girl, either tell them the truth,
that you do not know, and nothing else; or tell them that you do know and do
not intend to tell them, but for God's sake don't lie to them beyond that. I
said
,
they will keep it up forever if you start lying
to them." She smiled again and shrugged her shoulders. "She was new
then. She was clean and fresh and she resented advice from a dirty old woman.
Later it was too late."

     
Paul
Laflin
returned with the familiar small bottle and a glass.

     
"She was in there by mistake,
then?" Branch asked presently.

     
"Mistake?
Perhaps, or perhaps someone did not like her. Or perhaps-" Madame
Faubel
smiled her thin lipped smile. "-perhaps she was
unwittingly serving
France
by taking the place of
someone who did know."

     
"Kind of tough on her," Branch
said. He could not feel that they were talking about real people.

     
Madame
Faubel
sipped her Coca-Cola. "I am not saying it was not a simple mistake, you
understand," she said gently. "I do not know. It was nothing to do
with me, except that she was in my hut."

     
Branch looked at the primitive colors of
the mural and chewed at his pipe. At the back of his mind was the feeling he
always had when hearing about it, that he could not really feel indignant about
it, because the thousands who had experienced this personal malevolence were
relatively insignificant against the millions who had known the blind
inquisition of the battlefield. It was a legalism to draw an arbitrary line and
say, this is a crime, and this is war. It was all war. You could blame them for
starting it, but to itemize the horrors, now that they were defeated and it was
over, seemed petty.

     
Mr. Hahn said, "She was an object
when we broke in, I can tell you. Even Paul did not want her."

     
"After you have nursed anything long
enough you become rather attached to it," the woman said. "She did
not want to go back to her family. I offered to take her, but she did not want
to." She tasted her drink again. "Pride, I suppose. So I brought her
along. She has been useful. You cannot deny she has been useful. She does as
well as she can." The last was addressed to the two men across the table.

     
Paul
Laflin
said
dryly, "Oh, yes, we could not do without
Constance
."

     
"But you can see that she might be a
little cold in certain respects," Madame
Faubel
said to Branch. "I hope you did not..."

     
Branch said uncomfortably, "Well, I
made a pass at her, all right. Hell," he said, "she was feeding me a
long line about how nice I was and how I
.. ."
He
stopped defending himself. "I'm sorry. I didn't know."

     
"Oh, she will be all right," the
woman said easily. "She will be all right in the morning."

     
"Well," said Mr. Hahn,
"let's forget about it."

     
"I'll get another round of
drinks," Paul
Laflin
said, rising.

     
Branch watched the large young man cross
to the bar and did not like him; and he did not like the chinless man either.
For the woman he had a definite respect, and her long hands fascinated him. He
asked her, "What did you do before ..." She glanced at her hands.
"I played the
violincello
, she said
. "
It is always a little ridiculous, a woman playing
the cello, is it not? In an evening dress it looks like a joke." After a
moment she said, "Perhaps I will take it up again some day. But music
seems a little frivolous now. A little like a luxury."

     
Madame was a concert cellist," Mr.
Hahn said.

     
"That is an exaggeration," the
woman said. "I gave a few concerts, it is true, but mainly I played with a
small provincial orchestra of which you have never heard."

     
"But only because of the prejudice
against women,*

     
Madame
Faubel
spread her long hands. "That is as good an excuse as any. The truth of the
matter is
,
I was not very good."

     
"Here we are," Paul
Laflin
said, returning with three glasses clustered in his
hands.

     
Mr. Hahn said, "Paul, you had better
take yours ..." He jerked his head towards the door that led into the
lobby.

     
"Nuts to you," said the younger
man and sat down.

     
Mr. Hahn said, after a pause, "His
command of these Americanisms is quite striking, isn't it, Lieutenant?" He
laughed heartily.

     
"That goes for all of you,"
Branch said. "If I didn't know about you I'd never notice your
accents."

     
Paul
Laflin
said
heavily, "Would you expect that they would send persons who would need
interpreters?" He tasted his drink and asked, "When is she
coming?"

     
"I wish to God I
lknew
,"
Branch said. Then he laughed, "You people would look mighty silly-if she
didn't show up, wouldn't you?"

     
Paul
Laflin's
broad, small-featured face had momentarily a very unpleasant look, that passed
quickly; and Madame
Faubel
was speaking:

     
"Has she any money?"

     
"Six or eight dollars," Branch
said.

     
"Plus a fur coat and a watch,"
Mr. Hahn pointed out.
"A very good fur coat and a very
good watch."

     
Branch said, "Why don't you just tell
me what it's all about. Who she is and what she's doing...."

     
Paul
Laflin
leaned forward. "And have you
tell
her how much
we know?"

     
"How can I tell her when she isn't
here?"

     
"The truth of the matter,
Lieutenant," said Mr. Hahn, "is that our position is really, with
respect to the American law, no better than hers. While we feel ourselves
morally justified ..."

     
Madame
Faubel
stirred beside Branch. "You talk too much, Georges."

     
"The Lieutenant is sympathetic,"
Mr. Hahn defended
himself
. "Aren't you, Mr.
Branch?"

     
"I'm neutral," Branch said.
"All I want now is to get out of it, I guess. I've had enough of sitting
around here. But if I get on a bus-" He grinned at them, "I can't
have you people following me the rest of my life. And I wouldn't want you to
think I had deliberately led you off the trail. You might get mad."

     
"I believe him," Mr. Hahn
announced to the others. "You see? He has come to an impasse, also. If he
stays he is wasting time, and if he leaves we will have to follow him."

     
Madame
Faubel
finished her Coca Cola. "We do not need you to interpret for us,
Georges." She turned to Branch. "What is in the suitcase?"

     
"Clothes.
Nothing but clothes.
Do you want to come up and take a
look?"

     
"Yes," she said.
"If you don't mind."

     
Branch swallowed the remainder of his
highball, glad of the excuse to leave. "Well," he said to the two
men, "thanks for the drinks," and, picking up his cap, he rose and
followed the woman through the crowded room, only now realizing how crowded it
was, and how dense the air was with smoke. He had not realized that he had been
under a heavy tension. It was always hard to be polite to people you did not
like.

     
Upstairs, he closed the door to his room
behind him and threw his cap and coat to the bed.

     
"I'll get it for you," he said
to the woman.

     
"Do you mind if I look around?"
she asked.

     
He glanced at her. "Hell, no,"
he said. "Help yourself.
Bathroom, wardrobe, bureau.
There's no fire escape."

     
He watched her go into the bathroom and
had the sudden absurd fear that Jeannette Duval could have come in while they
were talking, but the woman came out again immediately and tried the closet,
emerging with the small black traveling case, which she put on the bed and
opened, laying the contents carefully aside, one by one, on the bedspread. Then
she as carefully repacked them and closed the bag.

     
"What did you expect to find?"
Branch asked.

     
Nothing," she said. She gave the
suitcase a small push away from her, dismissing it. "Nothing," she
repeated. "I merely wanted to talk to you in private, Lieutenant."
She accepted the cigarette he offered her and allowed him to light it for her.
Because she was a quite homely and badly dressed middle-aged woman in whom he
could have no possible emotional interest it gave him a perverse pleasure to be
very polite to her, and he drew the heavy chintz-covered easy chair from the
corner for her, and sat down on the bed, facing her.

     
"You're an intelligent man,
Lieutenant," she said. "I think you know quite well what the
situation is, even if I cannot describe it to you in detail."