The Man from Lisbon, page 25
“Please,” Greta said. “Let’s not let this spoil our evening. I have an idea—shall we go dancing? Isn’t that a good idea?”
“Wonderful!” Maria exclaimed. “Alves, please …”
Relieved at the way it had all turned out, Alves nodded.
Arnaldo stared at him once the women had moved away. “What was Greta saying to you? Before José arrived. …”
“What’s the matter with you? She was going on about some play about Cleopatra. … She’s always talking about things I don’t understand. Come on, old fellow, cheer up. I’m ready to watch you dance, you sly fox.”
The procession of taxis moved through the chilly mist up Rue Vaugirard to turn down Montparnasse, past the dim, dreary buildings toward the warm glow emanating from the corner at Raspail where the cafés bloomed like flowers in the night. The crowds were thick. Less than an hour until 1925.
Riding with Greta and Maria on either side of him, Alves saw for the first time the Dome, which was seething, people spilling out from the interior onto the terrace. Next door, with an even longer terrace, the Coupole’s crowd was a trifle more controlled, maintaining a certain order in the chairs at the long rows of tables. There was a good deal of singing going on as they left the taxis and the sound of the bands intermingled in the boulevard. American jazz, of course, but unidentifiable as it mixed with the horns of dozens of taxis bringing merrymakers to the Left Bank. The gendarmerie was out in full force.
Greta squeezed his arm as she led the way, spoke to both of them: “Here, across from the Dome, is the Rotonde, our destination. I always feel more at home there; it’s where most of the Scandinavians go. The Americans go to the Dome as a rule and the Coupole is international. We all mingle, of course, everyone seems to know everyone else.” Friends, or admirers, who recognized her cleared a path and welcomed the actress to several tables where room was made at once. There were cries of “Bravo!” as she nodded, inclined her head, and Maria’s face glowed in Greta’s reflected fame. Alves smiled as if some of the attention was for him, wishing in a way that it were but also enjoying being the man of mystery with the women on his arm. It was like the champagne, a fizz of excitement beneath the pink and white and blue lamps. Braziers of coal glowed behind their table, and the chill was lessened considerably.
“Don’t order any champagne,” Greta whispered. “It will come.” She glanced, smiling, at the crowd banked around their tables. “I’m sorry to subject you to all this attention, but it’s one of the prices I pay … and they do supply me with champagne on occasion.” She leaned closer; he felt her breath on his ear. “I’m so glad we’re here, together on New Year’s Eve. It is right that we are, don’t you see? And what José said? Well, he was not altogether mistaken.” He felt her lips move in a smile against his ear. “I am in pursuit of you.” A laugh caught deep in her throat. “But don’t worry. What happens happens.” She turned quickly away, and when he looked she was pointing out someone to Maria. Champagne arrived and was poured into goblets. The band grew louder and dancers threw off their coats and began stamping rhythmically. A bald man whose beret was slipping appeared with an accordion strapped across his chest, followed by a trumpeter and a clarinetist, all of whom gathered near one of the braziers and began to play, heightening the excitement on the terrace. It all reminded Alves of the party of the past summer, celebrating his release from Oporto. It had been different then, of course, but there was a feeling that night that he had never known before—the feeling of beginning anew, full of confidence in himself and his plans. Somehow in the complexity of the months that followed he had lost that sense of his own destiny and let himself grow weary and mired in the mechanics of what had to be done. He could do anything, anything at all. It was quite fitting that there be a party. As for a new woman … Whatever would happen would happen.
“Le java!” a voice cried, and a handsome young Frenchman took Maria by the hand and with only a quick, tentative backward glance at Alves she followed. With her quick instincts she began the dance, caught up in it at once, coat open, eyes flashing.
Greta nodded approvingly. “Very good, your Maria! Lively. Would you care to try?”
“No, thank you.” He put his arm around her shoulder.
“I thought not.” She smiled, her thin mouth barely moving. It was her eyes that communicated: a code they both understood. Hennies and Marang chatted with her other guests; Arnaldo’s eyes followed Maria, would then flicker back to Greta and Alves, then move restlessly on across the crowd. A large blond woman closed in on him shortly before midnight and resistance was hopeless: she pulled him into the dancing and Alves applauded, shouted, “Hooray, Arnaldo! The dancing man!”
“Le fox!” another shouted, and the band segued into a popular American foxtrot.
“And now, Senhor Reis,” Greta said, standing, “this is our dance. Le fox …”
Her mink coat draped open, and he was conscious of her nipples stiffening beneath the thin fabric of her blouse. She smiled, watching him watching. Playfully, she shook her finger at him. She was pliable in his arms, moved where he wished, bent gracefully, didn’t speak but looked frequently into his eyes. She conveyed the frankest suggestions possible, without a hint of self-consciousness.
At midnight the terrace had become a dance floor and the mass of people was impenetrable. He could not see Maria anywhere. The band was counting off the seconds, and as the moment came the cafés exploded with sound, music and cheers and the riotously loud horns of the taxis. The mist was caught in the lamplight, balloons floated away like the travail of the old year. Greta took his hand and placed it against her breast beneath her coat, drawing herself close against him. The lights were extinguished, and a sparkling device was lit on the sidewalk, casting a faint red glow across the terrace. Someone began singing “Auld Lang Syne” across the street at the Dome, and it was taken up from one café to another.
“Happy New Year,” she said. There were tears on her pale cheeks and she wiped them away, her lips parted.
“Yes, Happy New Year.”
She closed her eyes and leaned forward. He felt a catch in his chest, a lightheadedness. He kissed her, at first a mere touching of their mouths, then harder, pulse quickening, his ears closing out the sounds around them. It was as if he heard her heartbeat, felt the throbbing of blood in her veins. It was almost like the first kiss of his life, a first step into mystery. He tasted the tip of her tongue, the pulse beneath it. …
When he finally drew back she clung for a moment, eyes closed, her fine head tilted to one side as if listening for some distant applause. He knew even then that he would never quite be certain of the difference between the truth of the matter and her performance.
Later as the crowd returned to their tables and the dancing grew less frenetic, he found Maria pushing her way through the chairs and coats to throw herself into his arms. She was tipsy, slurring her words and laughing at herself. She kissed him, missing his mouth. He knew Greta was watching as she spoke with Marang a few feet away.
“I danced le Java, my love,” Maria cried. “Did you see me? Were you proud?”
“Of course I saw you and of course I was proud!”
“And your wife is the mother of four! Think of it! Oh, Alves,” she cascaded onward, “I am so glad we came—to Paris, to Greta’s party, to this place, whatever its name is. … Aren’t you?”
“Very glad. And Happy New Year, my darling.”
“It will be our best year ever! Do you promise, Alves? An unforgettable year?” Her grip tightened on his hands. She was staring up at him, but the dark eyes were glazed.
“The best year of our lives, Maria. I promise you. Unforgettable. …”
Later as he stood smoking, his collar turned up against the cold wind, he noticed snowflakes in the glow, drifting down over the scene like smoke.
Arnaldo came up, a worried look on his face.
“José is back drunker than ever and looking for you. I tried to get him to give it up, but he wasn’t making much sense.” He cast searching glances behind him at the crowd.
“Damn him,” Alves said tiredly.
“He’s jealous,” Arnaldo said. “How can he know your relationship with Greta is innocent if it doesn’t appear innocent even to me? You are not being wise, Alves.”
“And what do you think I should do?”
“Take Maria and get out of here. She’s about ready to pass out, anyway. Call it a night. …”
They found Maria sitting next to Greta, a faint smile fixed on her mouth, snowflakes lacing her hair.
“Come, my darling,” he said. “It’s time to say good night.”
Maria giggled. “Good night, my dear Greta. I’m afraid Alves knows me too well. … I should be in bed.”
“It has been a long night,” Greta replied. “You see her safely home, Alves. I’m so happy you could join us. … We did launch the New Year handsomely, didn’t we?” She kissed Maria’s cheek, smiled at Alves and clasped his hand.
Arnaldo, Maria and Alves were halfway across the street, gesturing to a taxi, slipping on the suddenly slick paving, when José saw them. His coat bore the marks of a recent fall in the snow, and he was carrying a bottle of red wine in his left hand. He waved with it, slopping wine on his hand. “Hey there, Reis!”
“Yes, José, here I am.”
“Well, I’ve had enough of you,” José shouted. People began to stare. “You rotten bastard …” He seemed to forget what he was about to say, stood confused in the street. He took a drink from the bottle. “I’m telling you to leave my whore alone! My whore is …” He lurched forward, flailing again with the bottle, wine floating through the air to spatter Alves’ coat. Arnaldo pulled Maria toward the waiting taxi. “My whore is my whore!” He belched and glared drunkenly at Alves.
Alves straightened him up, gently, balancing him on the snowy street, and struck him on the side of the face, the blow carrying on past his cheek to glance off the bridge of the nose. José waved both arms like a windmill in an attempt to keep his footing. His hat fell off. The wine bottle described an upward trajectory and stopped abruptly when it contacted Alves’ nose. José, staggering backward, cried out, clutched his own nose, slipped desperately in the snow and sat down heavily on his hat. Alves’ nose was dripping blood. He left a trail in the snow as he went toward José, who was using the bumper of a taxi to get back on his feet. He had just drawn erect and was shouting “Whore!” when Alves arrived and slammed a right into his midsection. José collapsed forward over the fist and forearm and, when Alves stepped back, fell face downward. The skin on his nose had been broken and was beginning to bleed. A stain spread in the snow, pink.
Glancing up from his efforts, Alves saw a taxi growling past with Arnaldo’s face, expressionless, in the window and the shape of Maria’s head slumped forward on his shoulder. At the first sight of the fight the taxi drivers had edged their vehicles closer, lights on, motors running, the drivers egging the combatants to keep at it. The crowds at the cafés, aware that something interesting was happening, had pushed in behind the taxis and were now seeping through to the site itself. “Come on, get up and give us a fight.”
“Two bloody noses, that’s not bad.”
“Ach, two drunks, let’s go back and have another drink. …” Hennies pushed his way to Alves’ side, while Marang went to bend over the inert figure of José. “You’re bleeding,” Hennies said. “I saw him, he threw the bottle at you. …”
“He didn’t mean to,” Alves said. He took the handkerchief Hennies offered. “I’m all right.”
Hennies clapped him on the back, laughing. “Well, I’m glad you didn’t deal with me like that!”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Adolf. I don’t do this habitually.”
“Damned lucky for José you don’t. … Hey, Karel, will he live?”
“I expect he will,” Marang replied. The horns were still honking and the gendarmes were having considerable difficulty getting to the scene of the fisticuffs. Marang tugged at José, who was suffering the effects of being drunk rather than of any blows received. He ineffectually slapped José’s face. José grunted, wiped snow on his face.
Greta had reached Alves’ side and was dabbing at his nose with a white handkerchief. “You knocked him out! A veritable Georges Carpentier you are. …”
“I suppose you know him, too,” Alves muttered.
“But of course,” Greta said, licking the handkerchief and continuing her repair work. “Dear Georges never did a quicker job in his life! How do you feel?”
“All right. …”
“Oh, look at your hand! The skin is all broken. … Fighting for my honor, too. What can I say to you?”
“You heard what he said?”
“Yes, of course I did. When he gets an idea he certainly does cling to it, doesn’t he?”
Hennies returned from his inspection of José, who was by now propped against the wheel of a taxi with several drivers gathered around toasting him from their own supplies of wine.
“Adolf,” Alves said, “I am counting on you to take care of this as quietly as possible. José may not even remember it by tomorrow.”
“Of course, exactly. Discretion, eh? Leave it to me.”
“Good. You may begin by dealing with the gendarmerie.”
Hennies went to explain the situation to the uniformed officers, who had finally arrived in force and were looking around for culprits. Leaning over José, one of them slipped and fell down. The drivers laughed. The police decided to get the taxis moving and unclog the corner.
Greta led him back past the Rotonde, where the scene was growing much quieter. It was something past one-thirty and the snow was still drifting lazily down in the lamplight. “Please, come back to the flat with me.” She spoke without urgency, as if she already knew his reply.
By five o’clock, the night still dark outside the bedroom windows, they were finally quiet. The sheets had all come loose and were now drawn tightly around their bodies as they lay cradled by pillows. He had retrieved the heavy comforter from the floor and piled that on top of the sheets. Now he smoked, eyes open, body limp, feeling her naked legs clasped around his thigh, her pubic hair soft on his flesh.
“Are you awake?” he asked, whispering.
“Yes,” she sighed. “I am utterly exhausted, but I cannot possibly sleep.” She kissed his chest, fondling the amulet on the cord around his neck.
She burrowed against him. He smelled her hair, the sweat that glued their bodies together and made a sibilant sucking sound when they shifted, pulled apart. A lamp glowed in the large studio room beyond the beaded curtains. It seemed to him in the haze of spent passion that he was somehow playing a part in a stage production or a film. The whole thing—the taxi moving through the falling snow, the elderly driver who had chuckled indulgently at the kissing in the back seat, the quiet street with the smell of the cold Seine, the climb up the squeaking stairway, the way she had dropped her coat on the floor inside the door, the quiet complicity with fate as she led him to the bedroom and slipped out of her clothing while he watched, the sound of her washing in the bathroom and the cold sheets against him as he waited—there had been a dreamlike quality, a heightened reality unlike anything he had ever known before. … Never had there been such an opportunity, never such a woman, not even in his fantasies.
Cool and smooth and white, she had before his eyes grown warm and moist, an urgent and demanding woman, responsive yet concerned for her own sexual satisfaction. Nothing at all like the cuddlesome, childlike Maria, who had always looked upon love-making as something playful and amusing, not something that led deliberately to moans and sweat and pushing, driving thrusts, cries of passion and bodies wracked with the violent spasms of need and irrepressible climax. … No, she had been wholly unlike Maria, and he couldn’t shake the thought from his mind. He wanted to think only of these hours with Greta, but Maria, with her innocent pleasures, would not fade away. Yet Maria had never drained him so thoroughly, so insistently. Closing his eyes, he could taste again her thighs, feel the texture of Greta’s warm flesh beneath his tongue, straining against his mouth, holding his face against the thick darkness. … Now he knew more about her than he had ever known of Maria, more, he feared, than there was to know. …
“What is this you wear around your neck?”
He looked down, leaned across and circled her nipple with his tongue, felt it harden until she pushed him away.
“Behave, Senhor, I beg you. …”
“My grandmother gave it to me on her deathbed. It is a thunderbolt, very old—it protects me, though it has not always done a very good job.”
“A thunderbolt,” she mused, laughing. “It is you, I am quite sure, who are the thunderbolt.” She leaned up, pushed herself back on the pillows. “Alves, did my behavior shock you? I cannot help myself sometimes. I do those things which, I am told, proper people don’t do. …”
“You are most womanly—more desirable than I thought possible.” He kissed her hair.
“I am not what José calls me, but I am not innocent. I don’t believe I was ever innocent, not completely. Does that bother you?”
A draft shook the glass in the window frames. Far off an automobile engine coughed into life.
He took her hand and placed it on himself. “Does this bother you?”
He pulled her over on top of him, looked up into her eyes, felt the long blond hair falling like a drapery around his face.
“Yet again?” she whispered.
“Yet again. …”
Dawn came gray and wet, and still they had not slept. Together they dressed and found a tiny pastisserie in a narrow crumbling street nearby. The morning was cold and cutting. He felt cleansed. The croissants were freshly baked, the coffee strong and mixed with hot milk and sugar. New lovers, they held hands across the small table, the sounds of the bakery a few feet away. He felt drunk with the smell of the ovens, the touch of Greta, yet his head was clear.
“Come,” she said. “I have a surprise for you.”
He followed her down another side street, stopped behind her as she unlocked a garage door. Inside there was a Bentley roadster, green with gleaming spoked tires and the steering wheel on the right.
“Wonderful!” Maria exclaimed. “Alves, please …”
Relieved at the way it had all turned out, Alves nodded.
Arnaldo stared at him once the women had moved away. “What was Greta saying to you? Before José arrived. …”
“What’s the matter with you? She was going on about some play about Cleopatra. … She’s always talking about things I don’t understand. Come on, old fellow, cheer up. I’m ready to watch you dance, you sly fox.”
The procession of taxis moved through the chilly mist up Rue Vaugirard to turn down Montparnasse, past the dim, dreary buildings toward the warm glow emanating from the corner at Raspail where the cafés bloomed like flowers in the night. The crowds were thick. Less than an hour until 1925.
Riding with Greta and Maria on either side of him, Alves saw for the first time the Dome, which was seething, people spilling out from the interior onto the terrace. Next door, with an even longer terrace, the Coupole’s crowd was a trifle more controlled, maintaining a certain order in the chairs at the long rows of tables. There was a good deal of singing going on as they left the taxis and the sound of the bands intermingled in the boulevard. American jazz, of course, but unidentifiable as it mixed with the horns of dozens of taxis bringing merrymakers to the Left Bank. The gendarmerie was out in full force.
Greta squeezed his arm as she led the way, spoke to both of them: “Here, across from the Dome, is the Rotonde, our destination. I always feel more at home there; it’s where most of the Scandinavians go. The Americans go to the Dome as a rule and the Coupole is international. We all mingle, of course, everyone seems to know everyone else.” Friends, or admirers, who recognized her cleared a path and welcomed the actress to several tables where room was made at once. There were cries of “Bravo!” as she nodded, inclined her head, and Maria’s face glowed in Greta’s reflected fame. Alves smiled as if some of the attention was for him, wishing in a way that it were but also enjoying being the man of mystery with the women on his arm. It was like the champagne, a fizz of excitement beneath the pink and white and blue lamps. Braziers of coal glowed behind their table, and the chill was lessened considerably.
“Don’t order any champagne,” Greta whispered. “It will come.” She glanced, smiling, at the crowd banked around their tables. “I’m sorry to subject you to all this attention, but it’s one of the prices I pay … and they do supply me with champagne on occasion.” She leaned closer; he felt her breath on his ear. “I’m so glad we’re here, together on New Year’s Eve. It is right that we are, don’t you see? And what José said? Well, he was not altogether mistaken.” He felt her lips move in a smile against his ear. “I am in pursuit of you.” A laugh caught deep in her throat. “But don’t worry. What happens happens.” She turned quickly away, and when he looked she was pointing out someone to Maria. Champagne arrived and was poured into goblets. The band grew louder and dancers threw off their coats and began stamping rhythmically. A bald man whose beret was slipping appeared with an accordion strapped across his chest, followed by a trumpeter and a clarinetist, all of whom gathered near one of the braziers and began to play, heightening the excitement on the terrace. It all reminded Alves of the party of the past summer, celebrating his release from Oporto. It had been different then, of course, but there was a feeling that night that he had never known before—the feeling of beginning anew, full of confidence in himself and his plans. Somehow in the complexity of the months that followed he had lost that sense of his own destiny and let himself grow weary and mired in the mechanics of what had to be done. He could do anything, anything at all. It was quite fitting that there be a party. As for a new woman … Whatever would happen would happen.
“Le java!” a voice cried, and a handsome young Frenchman took Maria by the hand and with only a quick, tentative backward glance at Alves she followed. With her quick instincts she began the dance, caught up in it at once, coat open, eyes flashing.
Greta nodded approvingly. “Very good, your Maria! Lively. Would you care to try?”
“No, thank you.” He put his arm around her shoulder.
“I thought not.” She smiled, her thin mouth barely moving. It was her eyes that communicated: a code they both understood. Hennies and Marang chatted with her other guests; Arnaldo’s eyes followed Maria, would then flicker back to Greta and Alves, then move restlessly on across the crowd. A large blond woman closed in on him shortly before midnight and resistance was hopeless: she pulled him into the dancing and Alves applauded, shouted, “Hooray, Arnaldo! The dancing man!”
“Le fox!” another shouted, and the band segued into a popular American foxtrot.
“And now, Senhor Reis,” Greta said, standing, “this is our dance. Le fox …”
Her mink coat draped open, and he was conscious of her nipples stiffening beneath the thin fabric of her blouse. She smiled, watching him watching. Playfully, she shook her finger at him. She was pliable in his arms, moved where he wished, bent gracefully, didn’t speak but looked frequently into his eyes. She conveyed the frankest suggestions possible, without a hint of self-consciousness.
At midnight the terrace had become a dance floor and the mass of people was impenetrable. He could not see Maria anywhere. The band was counting off the seconds, and as the moment came the cafés exploded with sound, music and cheers and the riotously loud horns of the taxis. The mist was caught in the lamplight, balloons floated away like the travail of the old year. Greta took his hand and placed it against her breast beneath her coat, drawing herself close against him. The lights were extinguished, and a sparkling device was lit on the sidewalk, casting a faint red glow across the terrace. Someone began singing “Auld Lang Syne” across the street at the Dome, and it was taken up from one café to another.
“Happy New Year,” she said. There were tears on her pale cheeks and she wiped them away, her lips parted.
“Yes, Happy New Year.”
She closed her eyes and leaned forward. He felt a catch in his chest, a lightheadedness. He kissed her, at first a mere touching of their mouths, then harder, pulse quickening, his ears closing out the sounds around them. It was as if he heard her heartbeat, felt the throbbing of blood in her veins. It was almost like the first kiss of his life, a first step into mystery. He tasted the tip of her tongue, the pulse beneath it. …
When he finally drew back she clung for a moment, eyes closed, her fine head tilted to one side as if listening for some distant applause. He knew even then that he would never quite be certain of the difference between the truth of the matter and her performance.
Later as the crowd returned to their tables and the dancing grew less frenetic, he found Maria pushing her way through the chairs and coats to throw herself into his arms. She was tipsy, slurring her words and laughing at herself. She kissed him, missing his mouth. He knew Greta was watching as she spoke with Marang a few feet away.
“I danced le Java, my love,” Maria cried. “Did you see me? Were you proud?”
“Of course I saw you and of course I was proud!”
“And your wife is the mother of four! Think of it! Oh, Alves,” she cascaded onward, “I am so glad we came—to Paris, to Greta’s party, to this place, whatever its name is. … Aren’t you?”
“Very glad. And Happy New Year, my darling.”
“It will be our best year ever! Do you promise, Alves? An unforgettable year?” Her grip tightened on his hands. She was staring up at him, but the dark eyes were glazed.
“The best year of our lives, Maria. I promise you. Unforgettable. …”
Later as he stood smoking, his collar turned up against the cold wind, he noticed snowflakes in the glow, drifting down over the scene like smoke.
Arnaldo came up, a worried look on his face.
“José is back drunker than ever and looking for you. I tried to get him to give it up, but he wasn’t making much sense.” He cast searching glances behind him at the crowd.
“Damn him,” Alves said tiredly.
“He’s jealous,” Arnaldo said. “How can he know your relationship with Greta is innocent if it doesn’t appear innocent even to me? You are not being wise, Alves.”
“And what do you think I should do?”
“Take Maria and get out of here. She’s about ready to pass out, anyway. Call it a night. …”
They found Maria sitting next to Greta, a faint smile fixed on her mouth, snowflakes lacing her hair.
“Come, my darling,” he said. “It’s time to say good night.”
Maria giggled. “Good night, my dear Greta. I’m afraid Alves knows me too well. … I should be in bed.”
“It has been a long night,” Greta replied. “You see her safely home, Alves. I’m so happy you could join us. … We did launch the New Year handsomely, didn’t we?” She kissed Maria’s cheek, smiled at Alves and clasped his hand.
Arnaldo, Maria and Alves were halfway across the street, gesturing to a taxi, slipping on the suddenly slick paving, when José saw them. His coat bore the marks of a recent fall in the snow, and he was carrying a bottle of red wine in his left hand. He waved with it, slopping wine on his hand. “Hey there, Reis!”
“Yes, José, here I am.”
“Well, I’ve had enough of you,” José shouted. People began to stare. “You rotten bastard …” He seemed to forget what he was about to say, stood confused in the street. He took a drink from the bottle. “I’m telling you to leave my whore alone! My whore is …” He lurched forward, flailing again with the bottle, wine floating through the air to spatter Alves’ coat. Arnaldo pulled Maria toward the waiting taxi. “My whore is my whore!” He belched and glared drunkenly at Alves.
Alves straightened him up, gently, balancing him on the snowy street, and struck him on the side of the face, the blow carrying on past his cheek to glance off the bridge of the nose. José waved both arms like a windmill in an attempt to keep his footing. His hat fell off. The wine bottle described an upward trajectory and stopped abruptly when it contacted Alves’ nose. José, staggering backward, cried out, clutched his own nose, slipped desperately in the snow and sat down heavily on his hat. Alves’ nose was dripping blood. He left a trail in the snow as he went toward José, who was using the bumper of a taxi to get back on his feet. He had just drawn erect and was shouting “Whore!” when Alves arrived and slammed a right into his midsection. José collapsed forward over the fist and forearm and, when Alves stepped back, fell face downward. The skin on his nose had been broken and was beginning to bleed. A stain spread in the snow, pink.
Glancing up from his efforts, Alves saw a taxi growling past with Arnaldo’s face, expressionless, in the window and the shape of Maria’s head slumped forward on his shoulder. At the first sight of the fight the taxi drivers had edged their vehicles closer, lights on, motors running, the drivers egging the combatants to keep at it. The crowds at the cafés, aware that something interesting was happening, had pushed in behind the taxis and were now seeping through to the site itself. “Come on, get up and give us a fight.”
“Two bloody noses, that’s not bad.”
“Ach, two drunks, let’s go back and have another drink. …” Hennies pushed his way to Alves’ side, while Marang went to bend over the inert figure of José. “You’re bleeding,” Hennies said. “I saw him, he threw the bottle at you. …”
“He didn’t mean to,” Alves said. He took the handkerchief Hennies offered. “I’m all right.”
Hennies clapped him on the back, laughing. “Well, I’m glad you didn’t deal with me like that!”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Adolf. I don’t do this habitually.”
“Damned lucky for José you don’t. … Hey, Karel, will he live?”
“I expect he will,” Marang replied. The horns were still honking and the gendarmes were having considerable difficulty getting to the scene of the fisticuffs. Marang tugged at José, who was suffering the effects of being drunk rather than of any blows received. He ineffectually slapped José’s face. José grunted, wiped snow on his face.
Greta had reached Alves’ side and was dabbing at his nose with a white handkerchief. “You knocked him out! A veritable Georges Carpentier you are. …”
“I suppose you know him, too,” Alves muttered.
“But of course,” Greta said, licking the handkerchief and continuing her repair work. “Dear Georges never did a quicker job in his life! How do you feel?”
“All right. …”
“Oh, look at your hand! The skin is all broken. … Fighting for my honor, too. What can I say to you?”
“You heard what he said?”
“Yes, of course I did. When he gets an idea he certainly does cling to it, doesn’t he?”
Hennies returned from his inspection of José, who was by now propped against the wheel of a taxi with several drivers gathered around toasting him from their own supplies of wine.
“Adolf,” Alves said, “I am counting on you to take care of this as quietly as possible. José may not even remember it by tomorrow.”
“Of course, exactly. Discretion, eh? Leave it to me.”
“Good. You may begin by dealing with the gendarmerie.”
Hennies went to explain the situation to the uniformed officers, who had finally arrived in force and were looking around for culprits. Leaning over José, one of them slipped and fell down. The drivers laughed. The police decided to get the taxis moving and unclog the corner.
Greta led him back past the Rotonde, where the scene was growing much quieter. It was something past one-thirty and the snow was still drifting lazily down in the lamplight. “Please, come back to the flat with me.” She spoke without urgency, as if she already knew his reply.
By five o’clock, the night still dark outside the bedroom windows, they were finally quiet. The sheets had all come loose and were now drawn tightly around their bodies as they lay cradled by pillows. He had retrieved the heavy comforter from the floor and piled that on top of the sheets. Now he smoked, eyes open, body limp, feeling her naked legs clasped around his thigh, her pubic hair soft on his flesh.
“Are you awake?” he asked, whispering.
“Yes,” she sighed. “I am utterly exhausted, but I cannot possibly sleep.” She kissed his chest, fondling the amulet on the cord around his neck.
She burrowed against him. He smelled her hair, the sweat that glued their bodies together and made a sibilant sucking sound when they shifted, pulled apart. A lamp glowed in the large studio room beyond the beaded curtains. It seemed to him in the haze of spent passion that he was somehow playing a part in a stage production or a film. The whole thing—the taxi moving through the falling snow, the elderly driver who had chuckled indulgently at the kissing in the back seat, the quiet street with the smell of the cold Seine, the climb up the squeaking stairway, the way she had dropped her coat on the floor inside the door, the quiet complicity with fate as she led him to the bedroom and slipped out of her clothing while he watched, the sound of her washing in the bathroom and the cold sheets against him as he waited—there had been a dreamlike quality, a heightened reality unlike anything he had ever known before. … Never had there been such an opportunity, never such a woman, not even in his fantasies.
Cool and smooth and white, she had before his eyes grown warm and moist, an urgent and demanding woman, responsive yet concerned for her own sexual satisfaction. Nothing at all like the cuddlesome, childlike Maria, who had always looked upon love-making as something playful and amusing, not something that led deliberately to moans and sweat and pushing, driving thrusts, cries of passion and bodies wracked with the violent spasms of need and irrepressible climax. … No, she had been wholly unlike Maria, and he couldn’t shake the thought from his mind. He wanted to think only of these hours with Greta, but Maria, with her innocent pleasures, would not fade away. Yet Maria had never drained him so thoroughly, so insistently. Closing his eyes, he could taste again her thighs, feel the texture of Greta’s warm flesh beneath his tongue, straining against his mouth, holding his face against the thick darkness. … Now he knew more about her than he had ever known of Maria, more, he feared, than there was to know. …
“What is this you wear around your neck?”
He looked down, leaned across and circled her nipple with his tongue, felt it harden until she pushed him away.
“Behave, Senhor, I beg you. …”
“My grandmother gave it to me on her deathbed. It is a thunderbolt, very old—it protects me, though it has not always done a very good job.”
“A thunderbolt,” she mused, laughing. “It is you, I am quite sure, who are the thunderbolt.” She leaned up, pushed herself back on the pillows. “Alves, did my behavior shock you? I cannot help myself sometimes. I do those things which, I am told, proper people don’t do. …”
“You are most womanly—more desirable than I thought possible.” He kissed her hair.
“I am not what José calls me, but I am not innocent. I don’t believe I was ever innocent, not completely. Does that bother you?”
A draft shook the glass in the window frames. Far off an automobile engine coughed into life.
He took her hand and placed it on himself. “Does this bother you?”
He pulled her over on top of him, looked up into her eyes, felt the long blond hair falling like a drapery around his face.
“Yet again?” she whispered.
“Yet again. …”
Dawn came gray and wet, and still they had not slept. Together they dressed and found a tiny pastisserie in a narrow crumbling street nearby. The morning was cold and cutting. He felt cleansed. The croissants were freshly baked, the coffee strong and mixed with hot milk and sugar. New lovers, they held hands across the small table, the sounds of the bakery a few feet away. He felt drunk with the smell of the ovens, the touch of Greta, yet his head was clear.
“Come,” she said. “I have a surprise for you.”
He followed her down another side street, stopped behind her as she unlocked a garage door. Inside there was a Bentley roadster, green with gleaming spoked tires and the steering wheel on the right.
