The Man from Lisbon, page 24
Hennies flinched at the attack, his face paling. He hunched forward, hands on knees, collar cutting into his throat.
Alves pressed his advantage. “Besides money, be good enough to tell me what you brought to our arrangement? A past so checkered that it has become a maze of false documents and faked identities, a questionable reputation as a German spy, membership in the most despised race in Europe. … Did you look upon these as your contribution? No, you brought money. … Now you back out on me, on all of us.” Alves shook his head in mock sorrow. “Are you so misled as to think I will forget your behavior?”
Hennies roused himself. “Are you threatening me, sir?”
“Are you backing out on our agreement?” Alves lifted his eyebrows and frowned. “The fact is, you owe us another thousand pounds.”
There was a pause during which Alves stood up and went to the window, folded his arms and watched the traffic below. Finally, against the sound of the ornate ormolu clock ticking on the desk, he spoke with his back to Hennies: “I am sorry, Adolf. Goodbye.”
“All right, you win,” Hennies whispered, unfolding his checkbook.
“There is no time for checks now. I want the money in escudos, small denominations, no later than one o’clock this afternoon. I am very much afraid that you’ll miss your lunch, Adolf. You had better be on your way.”
Hennies limped out of the room.
The room was silent again, the clock ticking.
“You’ve made an enemy,” Arnaldo said at last.
“Nonsense,” Alves said. “I know my man and I know I have been much too timid from the beginning. Hennies is the one deriving benefit from this arrangement. He owes his inclusion entirely to me … lazily, I had let him forget it. Now he will remember. Now we go forward.” He looked from face to face. “Well, then,” he said heartily, clapping his hands, “it is time for lunch.”
There was something different in their faces and, on the whole, he liked it. He had his feet on solid ground again. No more desperate hours in the tiny office bent over the typewriter.
At one o’clock Hennies appeared meekly with an aged satchel full of escudos. Smiling broadly, Alves took it and placed it in the middle of the large table beneath a set of windows.
“Reis,” Hennies began, standing stiffly at one side, jowls quivering. “About this morning. I wish to make it clear that I have been under much strain. … There is not an endless supply of money to draw on.” He polished his monocle with the white handkerchief from his breast pocket.
Alves slapped him on the shoulder. “We have all been under a good deal of strain. Confidentially, let me tell you that even I have been near to it at times during these past few weeks.” He smiled benignly. “I foresee no more demands of this kind—from here on, we should be making money, not spending it.”
“Then all is well?” Hennies asked softly. “Between us?”
“Of course, Adolf. We understand each other perfectly. Have an extravagant lunch, have a swim and some steam! You’ve earned it.”
Hennies retired, awash in relief.
For the next two hours, in his shirtsleeves and with the door securely locked, Alves covered six pages with notations of banknote designations, trying to discern the pattern. It was just beginning to take shape when Maria returned with the children. Her excitement filled the room. After she arranged the children with books and games, she returned to Alves and perched on the edge of the desk, barely noticing what he was working on.
“You’ve had a pleasant afternoon, my darling?” Alves inquired, slipping his spectacles off and rubbing his eyes.
“More than pleasant! We walked all the way to the Arc de Triomphe and it was so exciting that we forgot about the cold. And you will never, never guess whom we saw. …” She waited expectantly.
“No, I’m afraid I haven’t any idea, dearest.”
“Well, just as we were turning back and thinking about a bite of lunch, who should come striding up in a very grand fur coat but the famous … Greta Nordlund! A chance meeting and what a wonderful time we had! Isn’t that amazing in such a large city?”
“Perhaps it is amazing. In any case, you are surely amazed.”
“As was she.” Maria began to stroll about the room, arranging ashtrays, turning on lamps, fluffing pillows. She found the remains of Hennies’ cigar and dumped it into a wastebasket. Watching her move, her shapely figure and heavy breasts shaking as she walked, he recalled the previous night and felt himself quickening. He wished, however, that Greta had not turned up. His new frame of mind had not provided him as yet with a means of handling her.
“And we lunched together at a charming little café and she took me to some shops. Beautiful bags and shoes and scarves. Such taste the woman has! And, of course, she asked about you and I said you were meeting with your associates at Claridge’s.” Maria’s voice dropped to a whisper and she came closer. “Alves, is there some trouble between her and José? She said she hasn’t seen him since you were all together in The Hague.”
“And what else? Surely she must have had new amours in the days since then.”
“Alves, don’t be unkind. She is a lovely, friendly woman with great style, and José has probably treated her badly.”
“I had no intention of being unkind, my dear. I’m sure she is all you say. But who understands such matters? Not I, not with the sweetness of our marriage. I know nothing of their personal problems.”
“But couldn’t that cause conflicts in your group?” She had grown unusually interested in this new gossip, and Alves wondered how he might head her off. He turned back to his calculations, stacks of banknotes, none of which Maria seemed to have noticed.
“Perhaps we won’t be seeing much of her if José is no longer involved with her—”
“Ah, but that’s what I’m leading up to,” she cried. “The most exciting thing of all—a New Year’s Eve party, here in Paris!” She put her hand over his, stopping his shuffling of papers. “We’re all to meet at her apartment at nine o’clock—including José. … She says there’s no point in having a party unless we’re all there.”
“Oh, Maria,” Alves said at length, “I really don’t believe we should have quite so much to do with this woman. After all, we hardly know her. … I don’t really approve of mixing business with our private life. So, please, my darling, let’s celebrate New Year’s Eve alone, together.”
“Alves,” she began, her voice troubled, “Alves, I am always, unfailingly a good wife, but tonight I was hoping we could go out, see Paris, do something exciting—live, Alves, live. … Greta wants to have a party—dreams are answered! And you, sitting here surrounded by money and scribbling and your business deal, you say we cannot spend a few hours doing something I want to do!” Her face crumpled up in sobs. “I just don’t understand why you would be so cruel when I was so happy.” She broke off in mid-wail and ran into the bedroom, slamming the door. Alves stared after her, bewildered. She would never have behaved in such a way before meeting Greta. Now she had seen another kind of woman and the trouble was beginning. What to do? Obviously, he could not allow her to run his life. She would just have to cry; she could then apologize and he would arrange a private candlelit dinner in the hotel and everything would be back to normal.
The telephone rang shortly after he returned to his compilations and frightened him into knocking his ashtray onto the floor. Smoke rose from the carpet. He leaped up, grinding his heel into the smoldering mess and grabbed the infernal ringing machine.
“What is it?” he said sharply.
“Alves, is it you?” The low husky voice with the peculiar intimations he could never quite identify: he wasn’t surprised.
“Of course, Greta. How are you?”
“Hoping to see you this evening. I thought it would be such great fun for us all to celebrate together.”
“Well, Greta, I’m afraid we’re both very tired from the train trip. And we have the children here, you see.”
“You drive me to an indiscretion, Senhor …”
“I don’t understand—”
“I will be frank with you and, please, don’t think me mad. Do you promise?”
“Of course.” The carpet was still smoking. With his free hand he reached one of the slender vases of flowers, withdrew the flowers, which wetted his hand and sleeve, and poured the water on the small but persistent fire.
“Your sound peculiar, Alves.”
“The carpet here is on fire.”
“What did you say?”
“Nothing. The carpet is burning.”
“My indiscretion, then, is that I very much want to see you—you personally, Alves Reis.”
“Greta, what are you saying?”
“Only that I want you to come to my party. With your wife and all our other friends. Simply that. Whatever happens will happen.”
Maria poked her head through the doorway. She held a damp face cloth and looked from Alves to the wet, black debris on the carpet and back to Alves. “Is that Greta?”
He nodded.
“Are you coming now, Alves? As a personal favor to me? Now that I’ve delivered my little indiscretion?”
“Yes, of course, Greta, we will be very happy to attend your soiree. … Forgive my devotion to my work; sometimes I am very selfish.”
Maria flew to Alves, flung her arms around him, kissing his cheek.
“I shall look forward to it,” Greta said softy, a smile in her voice. “Maria has the address. Goodbye, Alves.”
Her voice lingered in his ear as he put his arms around Maria, heard her warmly whispering tiny privacies as she moved her body against his. Quietly, she took his hand and led him to the bedroom. Behind him on the table his researches went uncompleted.
With the exception of José, who had agreed to meet a friend for a quick drink and would be along later, the entire group arrived at Greta Nordlund’s Left Bank flat precisely at nine o’clock. She inhabited the top floor of a squat old building with a view of Notre Dame and the Ile de la Cité. There were skylights in a cavernous studio room heated by two large fireplaces, the logs crackling and spitting in the flames. A light rain dripped cozily on the skylights, and through the wall of windows all Paris seemed to glow with New Year’s Eve light, blurred and softened and enlarged by fog banks slipping up off the Seine. Oriental pieces were scattered about the room, statues of inscrutable gods, vases that seemed alive with curling dragons, incense burners that gently gave the space a hint of exotic practices carried out by the famous actress and her Bohemian friends. Soft, deep cushions outnumbered the low bamboo chairs. There was a peacock-backed chair set on a platform with an oddly Scandinavian wallhanging behind it, creating a throne effect; on the walls there were several large framed theatrical posters celebrating the owner’s career. A huge canopied bed of Oriental design could be glimpsed past an archway hung with beaded curtains. A Javanese maid greeted them, led them into the studio, where a low table was spread with curries and champagne. Greta was standing near one of the fireplaces, seeming immensely tall in loose-fitting beige trousers and blouse with a lavender belt cinching her waist, lighting a long, thin black cigar. The whole thing struck Alves as rather stagily produced, but, on the other hand, he’d never seen such an extraordinarily dramatic setting or such a remarkable beautiful woman. As he’d grown older and seen to his own education, he’d come to realize that vaguely similar places and people actually existed. But to be in their presence was an awe-inspiring experience. Maria leaned against him for a moment when the full impact of the room struck her. A smile crossed Greta’s face as she exhaled thick aromatic cigar smoke; then she broke the pose and came toward them.
There was a quick tour in response to Maria’s cries of delight at the furnishings and the views of the cathedral, the bridges, the lights across the water. Champagne flowed, curries were sampled with toasted almonds and apple slices and cocoanut and chutney and raisins. There was a spinach and mushroom salad and several more guests arrived: a sculptor whose partially completed bust of Greta was ceremoniously unveiled to applause and toasts; a Belgian drama critic dressed in puce velvet; José’s diplomat brother Antonio Bandeira, who came from The Hague and wore a chestful of intensely colorful medals; several painters and poets; the newspaperman Jake Barnes, who apologized for his pal Hemingway, who was at The Select and unlikely to leave. There was Covarrubias, who had done the pink drops with watermelons and hams in cornucopias for Josephine Baker’s La Revue Nègre at the Theatre des Champs-Elysées; and there was the tiny Rumanian poet—though everybody thought him French, Greta said with a wink of her lavender eyes—Tristan Tzara, founder of what Greta informed him was the Dada movement, and his Swedish wife, the daughter of a fabulously rich industrialist and an old friend of Greta’s.
Alves was leaning against the wall near an open window, sipping champagne and feeling its liberating effect, when Greta touched his arm. Fog blew past the windows and someone was singing in the streets below.
“Being a hostess is such a bore,” she said, “particularly when I want to be spending my time talking with you.”
“I am very flattered,” he said. Her face was close to his. He smelled her perfume, longed to touch her cheek, run his fingertips over her face. “But why should you want to spend time with me?” She shrugged.
“Because I am terribly attracted to you. Surely I have made that clear.”
“I am a married man.”
“I didn’t ask you to commit bigamy, Senhor.”
“You know what I mean.” His throat was dry. He tilted the champagne to his mouth.
“You are a very strong man. So few men can truly dominate. Hennies and José, they both are in thrall to you. … You should hear them speak of you—you hypnotize them. Maybe that’s what I feel. I like to listen to you, the sound of your voice. … Do you remember The Hague? I felt it then, your power over me.” The wind at the window moved her hair, the soft material of her blouse.
“But you are always laughing at me.”
“I am laughing at myself, the way my mind is behaving like an adolescent schoolgirl’s. I want to kiss you, do more than kiss you. …” She took a deep breath standing so near him that he felt it. A gramophone was playing something familiar and emotionally potent behind them, and he forgot to worry that Maria might see them.
“You must forgive me,” he said, stroking his mustache, feeling the power she attributed to him, “but why tell me such things?”
“What good is there in denying your feelings? Or keeping them to yourself? This is New Year’s Eve in the twentieth century, and if a woman wants to tell a man that she …”
“Tell him what?”
“No, really, I’ve said more than enough. I am an emotional actress and sometimes say things I shouldn’t.” Abruptly she stiffened, her face darkened. “José is here,” she said.
He felt José’s heavy hand on his shoulder and smelled the liquor on his breath. The hooded eyes squinted past cigarette smoke and the slick black hair was mussed.
“Alves,” he said, “Happy New Year … and where is the faithful little wife? With Arnaldo running along behind her, keeping her occupied while you tag along after this …” He jerked his head toward Greta.
“I’m tired of this, José,” he said. “You’re an old and dear friend, but my patience is wearing thin.”
“Too fucking bad about your patience,” José said, biting off each word as best he could, considering his condition. He tilted slightly, as if preparing either to launch or receive an attack.
“José, I’ll have you thrown out,” she said.
“I don’t see Hemingway here. I thought he did all your throwing out for you … stupid ox.”
“José, please, you’ll ruin my party, darling. Now behave.”
“I saw the party you and my dear friend Alves Reis, Hero of Angola, Oxford graduate, were having over here by yourselves, standing nice and close together. I’ve seen your work, Greta darling, I watched you work on me—how’s that for a joke?” Sweat was beaded up across his forehead and an eyelid twitched nervously. He shook his head like a fighter getting up and holding on. “You’re after him now and you’ll damn well have him, whatever it costs him … but you think he’ll just buckle like all the rest of your men, eh?” He held onto the window frame, swayed for a moment before steadying himself.
“You’re making a fool of yourself,” she said, moving away.
He grabbed her arm, yanked her back. Out of the corner of his eye, Alves saw Maria and Arnaldo turn to watch.
“It’s you that’s the fool, Greta,” José said, voice louder and more insistent. “Because no matter how much you talk and let him look at your tits and tell him you want him in your bed …” His voice cracked. The room at large could not hear them, but Maria and Arnaldo had drawn closer, heard every word. Alves looked quickly at Maria as if to say there was nothing he could do about this drunken madman.
“No matter what whore’s tricks you play on him, Alves Reis is not like me! He is a man of proven character, a respectable married man with children, and Alves Reis will tell you to go straight to hell!”
Immediately he swept away toward a tray of champagne. Maria ran to Greta’s side and put her arm around the actress’ shoulder, comforting. Arnaldo watched the two women in amazement. Alves sank back against the wall, releasing the tension.
“Maria,” Greta said laughing, “you are so good! José is such a poor fool. And so madly jealous. He sees me chatting innocently with your husband and the drink goes to his head, he becomes a crazy man. …”
“Have you ever seen José behave in such an offensive manner, Alves?” Maria’s horror was palpable.
