said, ‘Something about a shirt, I can’t understand, it’s so fast.’
‘No matter,’ said Datt. ‘You’ve done a good job. Thank God you were here.’
I wondered why they were speaking in a foreign language. I had told them everything. I had betrayed my employers, my country, my department. They had opened me like a cheap watch, prodded the main spring and laughed at its simple construction. I had failed and failure closed over me like a darkroom blind coming down.
Dark. Maria’s voice said, ‘He’s gone,’ and I went, a white seagull gliding through black sky, while beneath me the even darker sea was welcoming and still. And deep, and deep and deep.
9
Maria looked down at the Englishman. He was contorted and twitching, a pathetic sight. She felt inclined to cuddle him close. So it was as easy as that to discover a man’s most secret thoughts – a chemical reaction – extraordinary. He’d laid his soul bare to her under the influence of the Amytal and LSD, and now, in some odd way, she felt responsible – guilty almost – about his well-being. He shivered and she pulled the coat over him and tucked it around his neck. Looking around the damp walls of the dungeon she was in, she shivered too. She produced a compact and made basic changes to her make-up: the dramatic eye-shadow that suited last night would look terrible in the cold light of dawn. Like a cat, licking and washing in moments of anguish or distress. She removed all the make-up with a ball of cotton-wool, erasing the green eyes and deep red lips. She looked at herself and pulled that pursed face that she did only when she looked in a mirror. She looked awful without make-up, like a Dutch peasant; her jaw was beginning to go. She followed the jawbone with her finger, seeking out that tiny niche halfway along the line of it. That’s where the face goes, that niche becomes a gap and suddenly the chin and the jawbone separate and you have the face of an old woman.
She applied the moisture cream, the lightest of powder and the most natural of lipstick colours. The Englishman stirred and shivered; this time the shiver moved his whole body. He would become conscious soon. She hurried with her make-up, he mustn’t see her like this. She felt a strange physical thing about the Englishman. Had she spent over thirty years not understanding what physical attraction was? She had always thought that beauty and physical attraction were the same thing, but now she was unsure. This man was heavy and not young – late thirties, she’d guess – and his body was thick and uncared for. Jean-Paul was the epitome of masculine beauty: young, slim, careful about his weight and his hips, artfully tanned – all over, she remembered – particular about his hairdresser, ostentatious with his gold wristwatch and fine rings, his linen, precise and starched and white, like his smile.
Look at the Englishman: ill-fitting clothes rumpled and torn, plump face, hair moth-eaten, skin pale; look at that leather wristwatch strap and his terrible old-fashioned shoes – so English. Lace-up shoes. She remembered the lace-up shoes she had as a child. She hated them, it was the first manifestation of her claustrophobia, her hatred of those shoes. Although she hadn’t recognized it as such. Her mother tied the laces in knots, tight and restrictive. Maria had been extra careful with her son, he never wore laced shoes. Oh God, the Englishman was shaking like an epileptic now. She held his arms and smelled the ether and the sweat as she came close to him.
He would come awake quickly and completely. Men always did, they could snap awake and be speaking on the phone as though they had been up for hours. Man the hunter, she supposed, alert for danger; but they made no allowances. So many terrible rows with men began because she came awake slowly. The weight of his body excited her, she let it fall against her so that she took the weight of it. He’s a big ugly man, she thought. She said ‘ugly’ again and that word attracted her, so did ‘big’ and so did ‘man’. She said ‘big ugly man’ aloud.
I awoke but the nightmare continued. I was in the sort of dungeon that Walt Disney dreams up, and the woman was there saying ‘Big ugly man’ over and over. Thanks a lot, I thought, flattery will get you nowhere. I was shivering, and I came awake carefully; the woman was hugging me close, I must have been cold because I could feel the warmth of her. I’ll settle for this, I thought, but if the girl starts to fade I’ll close my eyes again, I need a dream.
It was a dungeon, that was the crazy thing. ‘It really is a dungeon,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ said Maria, ‘it is.’
‘What are you doing here then?’ I said. I could accept the idea of me being in a dungeon.
‘I’m taking you back,’ she said. ‘I tried to lift you out to the car but you were too heavy. How heavy are you?’
‘Never mind how heavy I am,’ I said. ‘What’s been going on?’
‘Datt was questioning you,’ she said. ‘We can leave now.’
‘I’ll show you who’s leaving,’ I said, deciding to seek out Datt and finish off the ashtray exercise. I jumped off the hard bench to push open the heavy door of the dungeon. It was as though I was descending a non-existent staircase and by the time I reached the door I was on the wet ground, my legs twitching uselessly and unable to bear my weight.
‘I didn’t think you’d get even this far,’ said Maria, coming across to me. I took her arm gratefully and helped myself upright by clawing at the door fixtures. Step by difficult step we inched through the cellar, past the rack, pincers and thumbscrews and the cold fireplace with the branding irons scattered around it. ‘Who lives here?’ I asked. ‘Frankenstein?’
‘Hush,’ said Maria. ‘Keep your strength for walking.’
‘I had a terrible dream,’ I said. It had been a dream of terrible betrayal and impending doom.
‘I know,’ said Maria. ‘Don’t think about it.’
The dawn sky was pale as though the leeches of my night had grown fat upon its blood. ‘Dawns should be red,’ I said to Maria.
‘You don’t look so good yourself,’ she said, and helped me into the car.
She drove a couple of blocks from the house and parked under the trees amid the dead motor cars that litter the city. She switched the heater on and the warm air suffused my limbs.
‘Do you live alone?’ she asked.
‘What’s that, a proposal?’
‘You aren’t fit enough to be left alone.’
‘Agreed,’ I said. I couldn’t shake off the coma of fear and Maria’s voice came to me as I had heard it in the nightmare.
‘I’ll take you to my place, it’s not far away,’ she said.
‘That’s okay,’ I said. ‘I’m sure its worth a detour.’
‘It’s worth a journey. Three-star food and drink,’ she said. ‘How about a croque monsieur and a baby?’5
‘The croque monsieur would be welcome,’ I agreed.
‘But having the baby together might well be the best part,’ she said.
She didn’t smile, she kicked the accelerator and the power surged through the car like the blood through my reviving limbs. She watched the road, flashing the lights at each intersection and flipping the needle around the clock at the clear stretches. She loved the car, caressing the wheel and agog with admiration for it; and like a clever lover she coaxed it into effortless performance. She came down the Champs for speed and along the north side of the Seine before cutting up through Les Halles. The last of the smart set had abandoned their onion soup and now the lorries were being unloaded. The fortes were working like looters, stacking the crates of vegetables and boxes of fish. The lorry-drivers had left their cabs to patronize the brothels that crowd the streets around the Square des Innocents. Tiny yellow doorways were full of painted whores and arguing men in bleu de travail. Maria drove carefully through the narrow streets.
‘You’ve