Transgression (13 page)

A
dele tumbled down into the ditch and crawled behind a tangle of bushes. She tried to lay still. Finally she mustered up the courage to look back down the road. There was nothing to be seen but dust and a shimmer of dancing heat. The army truck had disappeared.

Adele pulled herself out of the ditch and began to walk toward Paris again. As she approached the place where the truck had stopped, she could see Lucille’s raincoat lying on the ground. She put it back on and rearranged her arm sling. She stood in a kind of trance on the road.

Her head was throbbing where the soldier had hit it. She felt a burning scrape between her legs. She thought that she might just stand there forever.

Manfred was waiting. He was on St. Augustine Street. Her feet began to move of their own accord.

After walking two or three miles, she heard a loud banging and rattling coming up quickly from behind her. A man sitting on top of a wagon was trying to rein in a large black horse. Adele moved to the side. As the man swung past, he looked down at Adele’s bandages and pulled up. The horse tossed its head, sweat and foam flew, the bridle jangled.

“Where are you travelling?”

Adele looked up at him. He was wearing a sweat-stained fedora, his face was covered with a grizzled beard. She hesitated. The black horse stamped its feet impatiently.

“Where?” the man said again.

“To Paris.”

He reached a large hand down to her. “No sense walking.”

Adele gave him her hand, and it disappeared inside his. He helped as she lifted herself up the step and on to the wooden bench beside him. “Go on,” he said to the restless horse.

They rode together mostly in silence until they reached the dingy edge of the city. The sun was beginning to set behind the flat roofs on a long line of factories. The man, pointing to a corner, told her that she could catch a bus from there to the closest Metro station. All she had to do was be patient, eventually a bus would show up.

“Good luck,” he said and pressed a few coins into her hand.

All the people riding in the subway carriage were looking at her. Adele turned away and studied her reflection in the dark rushing window.

At a stop near the centre of the city the carriage began to fill up with American soldiers. Spontaneous applause broke out. Men patted them on their shoulders. An old woman pushed forward and kissed them on their cheeks. One of the soldiers sat down beside Adele.

“Hello,” he said.

Adele didn’t answer.

It was dark by the time she found her way to St. Augustine Street. She was surprised that it looked just the same as before, cobblestoned and narrow, the rows of houses still neat and prim-looking as if the ravaged villages she’d passed through were in another country, as if the latest round in the war had never happened.

She walked the length of the street, expecting at every moment to see Manfred step out from a shadowed doorway or a dark cellar step. She practised what she would say. “I’m all right,” she would say. “The bandages don’t mean anything,” she would say.

Adele walked back on the opposite side of the street, the side Madame Bouchard’s
pension
was on and then she walked the street twice more.

She told herself not to be disappointed that Manfred was not there at precisely that moment. He’d be working. He’d have to have found some kind of work to survive, though it would have been difficult. The Resistance was everywhere. That’s what Maddy had said, because that’s what Lucille’s brother had told them, and anyway they’d read it for themselves in the newspapers
he used to bring up to Lucille’s rooms. Collaborators were being hung in the streets. Captured German soldiers were being beaten to death.

But not Manfred.

Adele rested on a window ledge hidden under a winding staircase three doors down and across the street from Madame Bouchard’s. Hours passed. Traffic dwindled to almost nothing. The hot day had become a cold night. A wind moved between the buildings, swept over the cobblestones.

She knew she had only enough money to last a day or two if she was forced to find her own place. But Manfred would have a room by now. He would have some money.

Adele nodded off and then woke up in a panic, certain Manfred had walked right past and hadn’t noticed her. She hurried up the street looking for him. She ran back the other way. There was no one in sight.

She came back to her spot and began to think that the reason for the delay was that Manfred must work at night. The more she thought about it, the more certain she became. It would be much safer for him to work at some obscure job through the night, which meant he would have to search St. Augustine Street during the day.

The lamps went out in all the houses opposite. She decided to wait another hour, perhaps two, just to make sure, and then she’d find a place to sleep. She’d return at daybreak.

It was three in the morning by the time Adele left her post and took a room on a shabby street several blocks away. The room she rented had no key, just a bolt on the inside of the door. A cord hung down from a bare light bulb. There was a cot and just enough room to get undressed. No dresser. No chair or mirror. And no window.

I’ve rented a grave, Adele thought.

She wondered if she’d run out of air during the night. She wondered how she would know if she did.

Soon she was asleep and dreaming of the redheaded soldier. They were riding in the truck cab together, moving incredibly fast.

“Manfred misses you,” he said in perfect French. “He had to work today.”

“Yes,” Adele replied.

She could see the blond one’s face. He was looking in the window, his mouth moving soundlessly, his hair whipping in the wind.

“Everyone knows who you are,” the soldier said.

Adele woke with a start. She felt blindly for the cord and pulled the light on. She had no idea what time it was. Perhaps only an hour had passed or perhaps she’d fallen hopelessly asleep and it was the middle of the morning.

Adele got up, secured her bandage and put on her arm sling. She hurried down the narrow stairs and out into the street.

It was still dark outside.

Adele limped up and down St. Augustine all the next day. People began to take notice. Women shaking out mats stared at her. Men passing by on their bicycles looked back at her. A group of boys began to follow her along, whispering and giggling and limping.

Adele retreated to her window ledge. By late afternoon she told herself that she must leave long enough to find a café and eat, but she couldn’t make herself leave. She didn’t know Manfred’s schedule.

The sun finally set behind the houses. Adele curled up on her ledge. She didn’t feel hungry any more. The lamps began to come on in the windows across the way. The street lamps came on. Light blurred in Adele’s half-closed eyes and spread out everywhere. She felt as if she were falling into some darkness, but Manfred was walking in light. He would find her. She should have no fear. No fear.

She felt herself slipping away from consciousness.

She felt something wet pressing against her face.

Adele opened her eyes. She saw another pair of eyes.

Adele lurched up.

A dog was sniffing her. She could see a man standing in the shadow of the staircase.

“Hello,” he said.

“I’m waiting for someone,” Adele managed to say. “He’ll be here soon.”

The man held up something. Her head bandage was dangling from his hand. “Horizontal collaborator.”

“Pardon?”

“That’s what they call women like you.”

Adele ran.

The dog barked and ran after her, nipping at her ankles, jumping at her sleeve. She raced across the road, aimed herself toward a dark opening between two houses, ran into the alleyway and into a sudden, brilliant flash of light.

Adele was in a dark place. She wondered if she was in that same airless room again. She put her hands out to feel for the walls. Was she standing up or lying down? She couldn’t tell.

“Not too bad,” a voice said.

A narrow stream of light appeared. It was coming in through a window high up somewhere. She started to climb a ladder up through the dark. A man’s face materialized above her, moving very close. “Nothing to speak of.” His eyes looked blind. She felt pressure on the top of her head. She could feel black paint dripping down. “Scalp wounds bleed like water fountains. Highly effective. Blackjacks. Knuckle-dusters. People get hysterical, think they’ve been killed.”

Adele tried to study his face. Deep lines ran down his cheeks from the outer edges of his nose to the corners of a turned-up mouth. His eyes were white. Big horse teeth.

He looks like a giant marionette, Adele thought.

“Your bandage would fool most people, I suppose. Dead give-away to me.”

Adele looked down at her lap. She was sitting on a bench. Light from somewhere was falling all around. Her bandage was dangling in front of her eyes. She could see that now it was soaked in blood.

“Never run in the dark unless you have a plan. Always figure out your escape route in the daylight.” His marionette eyes, round and glassy, weren’t white now. They were looking straight at her.

Adele’s skull felt like it was ballooning out. Some sharp pain was coming, though it was still far off, like a distant storm. She tried to blink it away.

“Try to stay awake,” the marionette said.

Adele fell asleep.

There was something in front of her. A rough plank. Adele watched it for some time. It had been painted blue but that must have been a long while ago. The dusty paint was curling up; she could see the plank’s grey grain beneath. The air smelled musty. She seemed to be lying on a bed. She tried to turn her head but a sharp pain pushed her back. Someone’s warm breath was feathering her neck. She turned again, more slowly this time, dreading the face she might see. The dog was staring at her.

Adele raised herself up on an elbow. The man was sitting across the room on the top of a small table, his legs drawn up to his chest. He was watching her.

The room seemed to be made of wood, like the inside of a large crate washed faintly blue. Adele’s throat felt parched. “Where am I?” she managed to whisper.

“Can’t tell you,” the man replied.

Adele searched his face. Horizontal collaborator, he’d said, but he didn’t look full of hate. If anything, he looked slightly bemused.

“Can I have some water, please?”

The man shook his head. His hair was fair and wispy except for a large crescent bald spot at the front. “Never give water to a person with a head wound.”

Adele hesitated. “I don’t think that’s right.”

“Yes, it is.”

I shouldn’t argue with him, Adele thought to herself, he could be insane. Besides, her head was beginning to pound again. “But I’m thirsty.”

The man shrugged as if to say that he wouldn’t be held responsible for any unfortunate consequences and slid in a disjointed way off the table. Adele could see that he was quite tall and remarkably skinny. Dressed in a stained black sweater and rumpled black pants-there didn’t seem to be much to him at all.

He glided over to a sink that was hanging precariously off a wall and turned on a creaking tap. Eventually a small stream of water trickled out. He held a tin mug under it and crossed his long legs to wait.

“My father’s a doctor, that’s how I know,” Adele said, and then she asked, “How did I get here?”

“I carried you. Robber helped.”

“Robber?”

The dog barked.

“How did he help?”

“By opening the doors. He’s trained.”

The man turned off the tap and came back to the bed with a half mug of water. “Let’s hope your father was right.”

Adele drank it down. It felt warm and tasted tinny. Her head pounded faster.

“My name is André Dupont. What’s yours?”

“Adele Georges.”

André’s bright eyes danced. “I hope you don’t mind, I used that make-believe sling of yours to bind the wound.”

Adele could feel a cloth wound tightly around her head. She reached up to touch it.

“You ran into the corner of a brick wall. Since your father was unavailable, I stopped the bleeding.”

“My father is a doctor, I wasn’t lying.”

“Everyone lies,” André said.

Adele could feel something rising up inside her. It felt like rage. “Why didn’t you just leave me alone? I wasn’t hurting you!” Emotions ambushed her, tears burned her eyes. “I wasn’t hurting you!”

André looked alarmed. He rubbed his long bony chin.

“I wasn’t hurting you!” Adele screamed at him. Tears were streaming down her face. The pain in her head was on fire. “I wasn’t hurting you!”

Robber jumped off the bed and sat under the table.

“I’m trying to help,” André said.

“But why did you take off my bandages? That’s despicable. Why did you do that?”

“It’s my business to be curious. And exceptionally perceptive.”

“You’re despicable.”

“I saved you from bleeding to death.”

“No, you didn’t!” No one did, Adele thought.

Adele lay down again. Her mother was standing behind the window, her mother was telling her to go away.

André leaned against the wall. “By the way, I can find you work.”

Adele waited for a moment. She concentrated on breathing. The pain in her head was beginning to retreat to a middle distance. She looked back at André. His shiny brown eyes grew even more large, his mouth pulled up in a hopeful, ridiculous grin.

He’s trying to make me laugh, Adele thought.

“I have nothing against you. I collaborated with the Germans. Why not? It worked out for me, it didn’t work out for you. That’s life, isn’t it? You’re in a bad spot, sleeping on the street, hungry, penniless.”

Penniless? Adele looked for her raincoat. It was draped over the only other piece of furniture in the room, a pink wing chair.

Adele got off the bed. The wooden room rolled like a cabin at sea. She lurched toward her raincoat and felt inside both pockets. “Where’s my money?”

André continued to smile his lunatic smile. He opened up his hand to reveal her pitifully small roll of francs.

“If you’re any kind of a human being, if you have any decency at all, you’ll give me back my money!”