Stained Glass (18 page)

“The similarities to which I alluded are listed in the chapter on Braque in my book.”

Next question.

M. Argoud did not care for his students, and did not care if his students cared for him. But he would do what he had contracted to do so that as quickly as possible he might get back to his own work. He broke his rhythm on one occasion to notice Erika, with her tweed skirt, blouse, and sweater, her full bosom—perhaps she reminded him of something Braque had said, or painted, or loved? Erika looked at the teacher, still young, but utterly unconcerned. If he could look ten years younger by snapping his fingers, she thought, he would probably not take the trouble. But to inquire into the authenticity of a Del Sarto in a museum, he had devoted seven months—and came up calmly with the pronouncement that it was a forgery. Erika guessed that, on the whole, M. Argoud would probably prefer coming up with a forgery than with an original: the whole exercise would somehow reinforce his misanthropic inclinations.

Except, of course, for Paul. M. Argoud obviously cared for Paul. Paul's (infrequent) questions were answered in a tone of voice distinctly different. M. Argoud was even seen, on at least one occasion, talking casually with Paul in the cold, high ceilinged corridor. Since Paul was young and beautiful and intense, Erika wondered whether the relationship was unnatural, but when Paul sat next to her in the cafeteria one day at lunch and they fell to talking she discovered that Paul Massot was Frangois Argoud's step-brother and that they had belonged to the same guerrilla unit during the resistance. Both had been tortured in the same cellar at the same time, she would learn weeks later when she and Paul were lovers, and Paul whispered to her early one morning, stroking her breasts with his chin, that if he had known her then, he'd have probably told them everything, done anything, espoused any creed, incurred any risk, performed any treachery, lest they deprive him of her, his Erika, no one else's, ever ever—his rhythms were matching now the words, and her responses were elatedly fused to his own, as he repeated the word, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, more excitedly, more quickly, almost shouting now, as she closed her eyes and moaned, then opened them to observe her beautiful Paul, EVER!

Whenever he left her apartment, whether to fetch a book in the library, or perform an errand or check the mailbox, there was prolonged discussion. Exactly how long would he be gone? Twelve minutes? That was too long, Erika said, and Paul would agree. And he would say that perhaps if he ran both ways he could manage it in eleven minutes. As often as not, Erika would suggest that the safest way to handle the problem would be for both of them to leave together. His solemn young face would light up with pleasure and, taking her hand, he would open the door, pausing on the stairway, now for a passionate, now for a tender kiss.

Paul Massot's stepfather, the elder Argoud, had died during the war. Since he wasn't shot by the Nazis and did not die in a military prison, he didn't qualify for the Vermork; but he was listed officially as a “casualty” of the war because, suffering from diabetes, he was medically undernourished owing to scarcities that were an undisputed result of the war; so that his impoverished widow, Paul's mother, received a little pension on which Paul now drew a few francs every month to finish the studies interrupted when, at seventeen, he withdrew from the university to devote himself to the resistance.

He had gone then, instinctively, to his austere, normally unapproachable half-brother, older by eight years, with whom he associated during the nearly three years before the American troops, General Leclerc heading the procession, entered Paris. There were long, tedious hours of joint activity. On one occasion, Argoud and Paul were responsible for checking the movements of a Gestapo official. They huddled in a single room across the street with their stopwatches and notebooks, clocking the monster's goings and comings for nearly three months. In the long stretches of inactivity Argoud undertook two missions, the first to teach his half-brother something about the esthetic history of the world: it would prove, before long, a substantial history of the Renaissance. And the second, to convince Paul that the only hope for humanity lay in acknowledging the truths of Marxist analysis and historiography, and in backing the Soviet Union's lonely, and acknowledgebly often brutal efforts to export to the world that which only Russia was experiencing.

Paul knew about Erika's background and had even read some of the works by Chadinoff, whose fame had come to France. Neither he nor she was perturbed by Chadinoff's reactionary politics. Why should one expect Chadinoff to feel or reason otherwise? Paul said. How natural! If it were
easy
for the world to accept communism, it would have done so by now. The forces aligned in opposition to communism aren't merely those specifically identified by Marx. There are all those other accretions of man: his nostalgia, his fear of the unknown, his conservative temptation to resist change.

“But, Paul, there
are
other things.” They were at dinner, in their favorite restaurant where, unless instructed otherwise, the waiter brought them the same appetizer, the same entrées, the same house wine, and the same bill, but no longer any cigarettes (Paul having told Erika she must give up smoking), which came to seventy-five U.S. cents apiece. “There's the suffering in Russia.”

“There has been suffering everywhere. Look at the suffering in Germany and Italy. Even in the United States, one hundred years advanced over Russia industrially, they could not manage their Depression. Stalin is not a gentle man, and he has made many mistakes, and will make other mistakes. But unlike the Catholic Church, the Marxists do not claim infallibility for their leader. We claim only that history has imposed a responsibility on him, and we must help him discharge that responsibility. There is no way of getting around the fact, Erika, that millions of Russians fought for Stalin and for their country: and no one disguised from them that they were fighting for communism. Of course it has been bitter and hard. And it will be harder and more bitter if we are to prevent the forces in opposition from gainsaying the effort of all those years, all those lives, because”—he dug into his meatloaf with his knife; he never used a fork—“that is exactly what will happen if, just because the formal fighting is over, we think of ourselves as other than at war.”

Erika heard the arguments but could not say, really, that she had listened to them. All through her life she had resisted only that one intellectual challenge, an examination of the ideology that had banished and impoverished her father. She did not, really, want to go into the arguments now, though she would if Paul wanted her to. She would do anything Paul wanted her to. She could not imagine that it was possible to know such joy as she knew, whether at the table listening to him, seeing his straight dark hair fallen over his brow, his sad brown eyes, his pointed and delicate mouth deftly retrieving the morsels of food from the knife, his long tapered fingers, explaining his position to her, sensitive to every sound, every inflection, or in bed during those long bouts of ardor and tranquility. Or sitting next to him, listening to his unprepossessing but acknowledgedly brilliant half-brother. She could admire her father, but she could not ever really
believe
in him. In Paul she believed—entirely. And she knew that she would never betray him. If it should happen, in a final philosophical revelation, that his ideology was wrong, and the contrary of it right, it would matter far less that she had taken the wrong course, than that she had followed him. He was her ideology, her idyll, her lover, her friend, her counselor, her Paul, forever forever forever.

“Do you understand what I'm talking about?”

“I understand what I need to understand. If you want me to study Marxism, of course I'll study Marxism. And”—she smiled at him—“I'll even win the Marxist Prize if you want me to.”

No, he did not want her to study Marxism, he said. He would like it if she read Marx, but that didn't matter so much; he, Paul, would tell her everything she needed to know about politics. What he did not want was for her to associate openly with Marxists, because that would put her in the way of unnecessary harassments. The anti-Communist French were mobilizing against the French Communists, and there were divisions already even among men and women who had worked together during the resistance. The Croix de Feu, which drew from the militant wing of the anti-Communist coalition, were talking violence. The forces of American fascism were everywhere. There was no need to alert anyone, save his own special friends, to her new political allegiance. He himself had been careful not to enroll in the Party, and not to attend any of its official functions—François, though himself an active Party member, had so counseled him.

And thus it was left, during that golden autumn. One day every week he was away, by himself, pursuing duties which, he told her, he could neither neglect nor explain. One other evening per week he required her to share with his political intimates, who, after the briefest experience with her, were all of them happy that Paul, whose star was so manifestly ascendant, had found so accomplished and lovely a companion. She liked especially Gerard, and when one day he actually stopped smoking long enough to make it possible to see through the smoke to his wry face, she was surprised to notice how much he looked like her own father, though younger of course. He presided over the meetings, which is what they really were, and there was a worldliness but also a spirituality in his analysis of the French contemporary scene that touched Erika, which she found wanting in her own father. Gerard was especially kind to Erika and one day surprised her by addressing her in a Russian which, though clearly not native, betrayed a convincing knowledge of Russia, a knowledge the details of which Erika did not feel free to probe: these were, after all, clandestine meetings. She did not know Gerard's surname, nor where he lived.

It had proved difficult to locate Gerard, but finally Erika succeeded in doing so, exactly one week after the day when, groceries in hand, she had opened the door, exhilarated at the prospect of seeing Paul lying there as she so regularly came on him, dressed only in his undershorts, reading easily in the dim light. He was there exactly as she had anticipated, but the book rested flat on his olive-skinned chest and his head was slightly turned, by a bullet that had entered his brain.

Erika was released from the hospital just in time to attend the funeral three days later. Scant attention was given to the extraordinary shooting—execution?—of young Paul Massot. Paris was inured to death and terror, after five years of it. The detectives came, but eventually they left, without formal findings. Still white when she tapped the doorknob of Gerard's apartment, she waited, and Gerard came and, on opening the door, beheld a grown woman ten days after knowing her as a university schoolgirl.

“Who did it?” she asked.

“I don't know,” he said.

“You do know”—she looked him in the eyes, and the psychic pressure was greater than the torturer's that nightmare night in 1944. He yielded.

“It was almost certainly the work of the Croix de Feu. Paul was assigned to penetrate the organization.” Gerard held out his arms to her but she was past tears, and simply took his extended hand in hers and said goodbye, and told him that if ever he needed her services, he might have them.

CHAPTER 13

Rufus and Singer were seated as before. Leaning back slightly in his chair, Rufus began.

“We didn't think it opportune to tell you before, Blackford. The KGB is on to you.”

Blackford was astonished and annoyed that he had not been told immediately upon the Agency's learning about it, but he calmed himself that there must be a reason. He found himself defending his professional behavior.

“So help me, I can't figure it out. Where did they pick up the trail? London?”

“We don't know, just plain don't know,” Rufus said as though confronting an academic problem. “London, likely. Conceivably in Washington. Now let me give you some background. You arrived at St. Anselm's just about the time Wintergrin began to get red-hot. On October first, the Soviet ambassador called on the Secretary of State and said, in what was apparently a pretty ugly scene—it was reported right away to the President—that—perhaps you will be pleased to hear
this
, Blackford—said that one of our ‘top operatives' had arrived physically at the scene of the Wintergrin operation, ‘confirming their suspicion' that the Wintergrin movement had been our enterprise right along. The Secretary of State demanded to know whom they were talking about. Their reply: ‘The same man you sent to London last year.' Go ahead, the Secretary said. Well, they demanded the United States ‘withdraw' the whole Wintergrin operation, or else they would ‘rise to the challenge.' He didn't of course specify (a) what he meant by ‘withdrawing the operation,' or (b) what he meant by ‘rising to the challenge.' The Director, reached by telephone instants after the ambassador left, told the Secretary: Sure, we have somebody at St. Anselm's, and Yes, it happens to be the same guy who did the job in London last year. So though your name was never mentioned by the Russians—by them
or
by us—we concluded—obviously—that they know about you, since there isn't anybody else on our team up there at St. Anselm's.

“Now, we've told them—maybe fifty times?—maybe a hundred times?—that Wintergrin
isn't ours
, that we penetrated the operation not
to help it
, but to assess where it was going and, if possible, to discourage it as reckless. Either they don't believe us or—much,
much
more likely—they simply
pretend
they don't believe us. It makes it easier for them to press their demands. And you now know what those demands are.

Blackford looked over at Singer. He was rocking his chair on its hind legs slowly, forward and back, in unconscious rhythm with the cadenced sentences of Rufus, who moved only his lips.