In Case of Emergency, page 10
There's a knock at the door. Albert appears up there, at the top of the stairs, and when he opens his mouth I've already understood.
'Tell Madame I'm coming up.'
It's time for me to dress and before that I must go and give some instructions to Bordenave, who hasn't finished dealing with the post.
Little Duret is with her, straddling a chair, watching her work, knowing that she hates it and that she doesn't like him. He does it on purpose, to make her angry.
He doesn't look at me either with pity or with irony. Everything in life still amuses him, like exasperating Bordenave until she's reduced to tears, and also no doubt whatever he knows about my affair.
'Have you finished the Palut-Rinfret letter?'
'Here it is. In ten minutes the post will be ready to sign. Shall I bring it up to you?'
'Please.'
It would take so little to make her happy. If I could give her a hundredth, a thousandth part of what I offer Yvette. Bordenave would be satisfied with crumbs, would melt with gratitude. Then why is this beyond my power?
During Yvette's illness I thought once that my secretary was going to faint, she was so hurt by our intimacy. Besides, Yvette would deliberately call me Lucien, ask me to do little services for her, just as she would deliberately get out of bed, naked as usual, to go to the bathroom.
I shall find my wife in her slip in front of her dressing-table, for she always waits till I'm ready before putting on her dress.
'We've got a quarter of an hour,' she'll tell me.
'That's plenty.'
'Were you working?'
'Yes.'
Although she doesn't exactly concern herself with what goes on in the office, she suspects the truth about this dossier, which she saw me putting away one day when she dropped in to say goodbye to me. She has antennae for everything that concerns me, which can be irritating. I don't like to be seen through, especially, as is often the case, when it's a matter of petty weaknesses which one would rather hide from oneself.
I ought to go up and can't make up my mind to. I have the feeling that after having searched so hard for the truth I'm as far away from it as before, if not farther. There will be a lot of people at the ambassador's and I shall find myself seated on the right of his young wife who will have eyes for no one but her husband.
Does that couple invalidate my theories—if they can be called theories—or do we have to wait ten or twenty years to find out?
Viviane must be getting impatient and I know why I'm dawdling, why I hesitate. I foresaw that this would happen when I installed Yvette on the Quai d'Orléans.
It was the most dangerous stage, because in order to keep moving forward there is only one possible step left now.
This reluctance to go upstairs, to face Viviane, is in a way a kind of alarm signal.
Let's go! I cause her enough trouble without annoying her by being late.
I must just lock up my dossier and slip the key behind the complete works of Saint-Simon.
VI
Wednesday, November 28
HE'S come, choosing his day and time as inconveniently as possible.
On Sunday evening Yvette had gone out for the first time since she's been living on the Quai d'Orléans. First I had made sure that no one was prowling about in the neighbourhood. She took my arm and all the time we were walking she seemed to be hanging on it, in a pose I've often envied in loving couples. There were couples on the benches, in the Square Notre-Dame, in spite of the cold, and that reminded me of my Pont-Marie tramps. I talked to Yvette about them.
'They had been gone for some time,' I told her, 'and this morning there they were again, the two of them, under the blankets.'
It surprised her that a man of my type should be interested in such people; I could tell from the look she gave me, as if that brought me a bit closer to her.
'Do you watch them through binoculars ?'
'I never thought of that.'
'I would.'
'Wait. Well, this morning, the woman got up first and made a fire between two stones. When the man crawled out of the heap of rags, I saw that he had red hair, that it wasn't the same man. This one is taller, younger.'
'Maybe they put the other one in prison.'
'Maybe.'
We had dinner at the Rotisserie Perigourdine, where she chose the most elaborate dishes, then we went to a cinema on the Boulevard Saint-Michel. It seemed to me that when she glimpsed from a distance the hotel I had taken her to after the trial she became gloomy. It would be hard for her already to go back to poverty, even to a certain kind of mediocrity. Miss Wilson's flat has had its effect. Even the street, through which a cold wind was blowing and where the people were walking quickly, frightened her a bit.
A sad film was being shown, and several times, in the dark, her hand groped for mine. Coming out, I asked her what she wanted to do and she replied without hesitating:
'Go home.'
This is all the more unexpected as, even at the Rue de Ponthieu, she always put off that moment. For the first time she feels sheltered, feels she has a home. I left her early, because Monday morning was a heavy one for me, like almost all my mornings. For a month it's been stormy or raining, and we haven't had more than half a day of sunshine. People all have colds and are irritable. At the Palais several cases have had to be adjourned because one party or the other had 'flu.
In the evening my wife and I were to dine with Corine, where you rarely get to table before half-past nine and where, the last few days, there's been considerable excitement. The country is without a government. The various candidates for premier have been considered and they say that Moriat will be the last-minute choice, that he already has his cabinet in his pocket. According to Viviane, he wants to set up, as appears to be advisable when the public loses confidence, a government of specialists selected from people unconnected with politics.
'If it hadn't been for the two or three rather too sensational cases you've handled, he would have insisted on you for Garde des Sceaux,' my wife added.
That would never have occurred to me. She thought of it. The funny thing is that it has been she who has expressed an implicit reproach for my having accepted certain briefs; she must have forgotten the incident at Sully.
I left the Palais fairly early, a few minutes before six, and went to the Quai d'Orléans where I found Yvette in a new negligee in front of the log fire.
'You're so cold,' she remarked when I kissed her. 'Hurry up and get warm.'
At first I thought it was the flames in the fireplace that were giving her eyes an unusual sparkle, a sort of mischievous look. Then I assumed she had a surprise in store for me, because she set about making martinis with feverish haste while I was warming myself, sitting on a hassock.
'Remember what I told you the other day?'
I still didn't know what she was referring to.
'We were talking about it, the two of us, this afternoon. I'm not joking. Jeanine would like to. She told me she hasn't had a boy friend for two months.'
She had emptied her glass and was watching me.
'Shall I call her?'
I didn't dare to say no. She went to the door.
'Jeanine! Come here.'
* * *
Suddenly the telephone bell filled the room and, although telephone bells are impersonal, I knew it was my wife ringing. She spoke only one sentence:
'It's nine o'clock, Lucien.'
I answered, as though caught out:
'I'm coming straight away.'
I found out afterwards, when I got back from the Rue Saint-Dominique, where we didn't see Moriat, that Yvette and Jeanine didn't get dressed after I left, that they went on drinking martinis and swapping stories. They didn't have any dinner, just snacks from the refrigerator.
'It's a shame you had to leave. You can't imagine how funny Jeanine is when she cuts loose. You'd think she was made of rubber. She can hold the most difficult poses just like a circus acrobat.'
This morning I was empty. I won't go so far as to claim that I had a guilty conscience or that I was ashamed, but this experience left me with a queer taste in my mouth and a certain uneasiness.
Perhaps this is due to the fact that for some time now I've been catching glimpses of the stage ahead. I try not to think about it, to persuade myself that we're all right as we are, that there's no longer any reason to change.
I was following the same reasoning when I took the room on the Boulevard Saint-Michel for Yvette and again when I installed her in the Rue de Ponthieu. Ever since I've known her, an obscure force is pushing me forward, independent of my will.
It embarrasses me more and more to be alone with Viviane, to take her around town, to be, in the eyes of the world, her husband, her companion, while Yvette mopes around waiting for me.
Does she really mope around? I come close to believing it. As far as I'm concerned, I always feel the same 'something missing', the same agonizing unsteadiness, as soon as I'm separated from her.
A time will come when I shall face the only acceptable solution: that she share my life completely. I'm not blind to what that means, nor to the inevitable consequences. That still seems to me an impossibility, but I've seen so many other impossibilities realized in time!
A year ago the Quai d'Orléans would have looked like an impossibility too, even three months ago.
Viviane, who senses it, is getting ready for the fray. Because she won't give up without defending herself ferociously. I shall have not only her against me, but the whole world, the Palais, the press, our friends, who are her friends more than mine.
It won't happen tomorrow. It's still in the sphere of dreams. I'm keeping a grip on the present, trying to take pleasure in it and find it acceptable. All the same I'm still clear-sighted enough to realize that it's not the end.
Precisely because of this state of mind, our threesome of the day before yesterday bothers me. Since it's happened once, it will happen again. Perhaps that's the way to prevent Yvette seeking pleasure elsewhere, but it's possible that it won't end there and that what has taken place at the Quai d'Orléans will inexorably take place later at the Quai d'Anjou.
After a cold shower, I was in my office by a quarter past eight on Wednesday morning, making a few telephone calls and catching up on current business before the conference set for nine o'clock.
The three men were punctual for the appointment and we went to work, Bordenave seeing to it that we weren't disturbed.
A very big deal is involved: the purchase by Joseph Bocca, and no doubt by people behind him, of a chain of big hotels. One of the men at the conference was the successor of Coutelle, who has retired to Fécamp, a younger fellow who has the title of count and is a regular habitue of Fouquet's and Maxim's, where I've often seen him.
Facing us we had one of my colleagues, with whom I'm on excellent terms, representing the sellers, accompanied by a fat, shy gentleman carrying a heavy brief-case, who proved to be the top expert on company law.
The deal is completely above-board. It's simply a matter of working out the terms so as to avoid taxes to the greatest possible extent.
The fat gentleman passed out cigars, and by ten o'clock the air in my office was blueish and it smelt like a smoking-room after dinner. From time to time I heard the telephone bell in the adjoining office and I knew Bordenave was there to answer it. I wasn't worried. For a long time she's had orders to interrupt me in the middle of any work at all, any conversation at all, as soon as Yvette telephones and this has occurred several times. I can imagine what it costs my secretary to obey my orders.
It was just after half-past ten, and our conference was still going on, when there was a light knock at the door. Bordenave came in without waiting for an answer, as I've told her to, and approached the desk on which she put down an appointment slip, and stood there waiting for the reply.
There was just one word, written with a ballpoint pen, a name: Mazetti.
'He's here?'
'For the last half-hour.'
Bordenave had a serious, worried face, which implies to me that she knows what's up.
'Did you tell him I'm in conference?'
'Yes.'
'Didn't you ask him to come back another time?'
'He said he'd rather wait. Just a minute ago he asked me to bring you his slip and I didn't dare to annoy him.'
My colleague and the two other men were talking in undertones in order to appear not to be listening.
'What's he like?'
'More impatient than when he got here.'
'Tell him again that I'm busy and that I'm sorry I can't see him at once. He can wait or call again, whichever he likes.'
Then I understood why she had disturbed me.
'You don't want me to take any action?'
I suppose she was thinking of the police. I shook my head negatively, less confident than I wanted to appear. This visit would have worried me less a fortnight ago, when Mazetti used to keep watch under my windows, because then it would have been a natural reaction. I don't like him reappearing like this after going two weeks without showing a sign of life. This doesn't fit in with my expectations. I sense something wrong.
'I apologize for the interruption, gentlemen. Where were we?'
'If it's a matter of importance, perhaps we could meet again tomorrow.'
'Not at all.'
I was well enough in control of myself to continue the discussion for three-quarters of an hour, and I don't think my attention wandered once. At the Palais they claim that I'm capable of writing the text of a tricky appeal while dictating letters simultaneously and making telephone calls on the side. That's exaggerated, but it's true that I can follow two ideas at once without losing track of either one of them.
At a quarter past eleven, my callers got up, the stout little man put away his documents in his brief-case, offered another round of cigars, as if to reward us, and we shook hands at the door.
Alone again, I barely had time to come back to my chair when Bordenave came in.
'Will you see him now?'
'Is he still upset?'
'I don't know if you can call it upset. What I don't like is his fixed stare and the fact that he's talking to himself in the waiting-room. Do you think it's all right for you to . . .'
'Bring him in as soon as I ring.'
I took a few steps back and forth, without any definite reason, as athletes loosen up their muscles before an event. I glanced at the Seine, then, sitting down, opened the drawer where the revolver lies within reach of my hand. I laid a sheet of paper over it, so that with the drawer open the gun wouldn't show and it wouldn't look like a provocation. I know it's loaded. I don't carry forethought so far as to release the safety-catch.
I press the buzzer and wait. Bordenave must be going to fetch my visitor from the waiting-room, the small one, I suppose, the one where, just over a year ago, Yvette, too, waited a long time for me. I hear the steps of two people approaching, a quick knock, and the door swings open.
Mazetti comes forward two or three feet and looks smaller than I remember him, more awkward too, more like a factory-hand than a student.
'You want to talk to me?'
I motion him to the chair on the other side of my desk, but he waits, standing up, until my secretary has closed the door behind her, listens to be sure she is going away.
He has seen my three callers leave. The air is still opaque with smoke and there are cigar-stubs in the ashtray. He has noted all that. So he knows that Bordenave hasn't been lying to him.
He is freshly shaved, cleanly dressed. He doesn't wear an overcoat but a leather jacket, because he usually gets around by motor cycle. He seems thinner, and his eyes are sunken in their sockets. I thought he was handsome. He isn't. His eyes are too close together; his nose, which must have been broken, is still crooked. He doesn't alarm me. Instead, I'm sorry for him and for a moment I imagine that he's come here to confide in me.
'Sit down.'
He refuses. He doesn't want to sit down. Standing up, his arms dangling, he hesitates, opens his mouth two or three times before coming out with:
'I need to know where she is.'
His voice is hoarse. He hasn't had time to get it in pitch or to familiarize himself with the rather solemn atmosphere of my office, with its gallery. Others besides him have been intimidated by it.
I wasn't expecting such a simple, direct question straight off, and I spend a few moments looking for an answer.
'First, let me inform you that you have no proof that I know where she is.'
Both of us have said 'she', as if there were no need to mention any name.
His lip has twisted slightly into a bitter smile. Without giving him time to retort, I went on:
'Supposing I do know it and she doesn't want her address given out, I have no right to reveal it to you.'
He stares at the half-open drawer, repeats:
'I need to see her.'
It disturbs me that he remains standing while I am seated, and I don't dare to get up because I want to stay within reach of the revolver. The situation is ridiculous and I wouldn't have our interview recorded by a film camera or a tape-recorder for anything in the world.
How old is he? Twenty-two? Twenty-three? Till now I've thought of him as a man: he was the male who was pursuing Yvette, and now suddenly he looks to me like a little boy.
'Listen to me, Mazetti . . .'
That's not my voice either. I'm looking for the right tone without finding it, and I'm not proud of the result.
'The person you are speaking of has made a decision and informed you of it honestly. . . .'
'It was you who dictated the letter.'
I blushed. I can't help it.
'Even if I did dictate it, she wrote it, knowing what she was doing. So she decided her future with her eyes wide open.'
He raises his eyes to give me a look which is both sad and callous at the same time. I begin to understand what Bordenave meant.
Perhaps because of his thick eyebrows which meet, his face has a shifty expression; you sense a restrained violence in him which might break out at any minute.
