7
The woman laughed. It was a pleasant musical laugh. She said, ‘Not in an E-type. Surely no whore solicits from an E-type. Is it a girl’s car?’ It was the woman from the art gallery.
‘Where I come from,’ I said, ‘they call them hairdressers’ cars.’
She laughed. I had a feeling that she had enjoyed my mistaking her for one of the motorized prostitutes that prowled this district. I got in alongside her and she drove past the Ministry of the Interior and out on to the Malesherbes. She said,
‘I hope Loiseau didn’t give you a bad time.’
‘My resident’s card was out of date.’
‘Poof!’ she scoffed. ‘Do you think I’m a fool? You’d be at the Prefecture if that was the case, not the Ministry of the Interior.’
‘So what do you think he wanted?’
She wrinkled her nose. ‘Who can tell? Jean-Paul said you’d been asking questions about the clinic on the Avenue Foch.’
‘Suppose I told you I wish I’d never heard of the Avenue Foch?’
She put her foot down and I watched the speedometer spin. There was a screech of tyres as she turned on to the Boulevard Haussmann. ‘I’d believe you,’ she said. ‘I wish I’d never heard of it.’
I studied her. She was no longer a girl – perhaps about thirty – dark hair and dark eyes; carefully applied make-up; her clothes were like the car, not brand-new but of good quality. Something in her relaxed manner told me that she had been married and something in her overt friendliness told me she no longer was. She came into the Étoile without losing speed and entered the whirl of traffic effortlessly. She flashed the lights at a taxi that was on a collision course and he sheered away. In the Avenue Foch she turned into a driveway. The gates opened.
‘Here we are,’ she said. ‘Let’s take a look.’
The house was large and stood back in its own piece of ground. At dusk the French shutter themselves tightly against the night. This gaunt house was no exception.
Near to, the cracks in the plaster showed like wrinkles in a face carelessly made-up. The traffic was pounding down the Avenue Foch but that was over the garden wall and far away.
‘So this is the house on the Avenue Foch,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ said the girl.
The big gates closed behind us. A man with a flashlight came out of the shadows. He had a small mongrel dog on a chain.
‘Go ahead,’ said the man. He waved an arm without exerting himself. I guessed that the man was a one-time cop. They are the only people who can stand motionless without loitering. The dog was a German Shepherd in disguise.
We drove down a concrete ramp into a large underground garage. There were about twenty cars there of various expensive foreign makes: Ford GTs, Ferraris, a Bentley convertible. A man standing near the lift called, ‘Leave the keys in.’
Maria slipped off her soft driving shoes and put on a pair of evening shoes. ‘Stay close,’ she said quietly.
I patted her gently. ‘That’s close enough,’ she said.
When we got out of the lift on the ground floor, everything seemed red plush and cut glass – un décor maison-fin-de-siècle – and all of it was tinkling: the laughter, the medals, the ice cubes, the coins, the chandeliers. The main lighting came from ornate gas lamps with pink glass shades; there were huge mirrors and Chinese vases on plinths. Girls in long evening dresses were seated decorously on the wide sweep of the staircase, and in an alcove a barman was pouring drinks as fast as he could work. It was a very fancy affair; it didn’t have the Republican Guard in polished helmets lining the staircase with drawn sabres, but you had the feeling that they’d wanted to come.
Maria leaned across and took two glasses of champagne and some biscuits heaped with caviare. One of the men said, ‘Haven’t seen you for ages.’ Maria nodded without much regret. The man said, ‘You should have been in there tonight. One of them was nearly killed. He’s hurt; badly hurt.’
Maria nodded. Behind me I heard a woman say, ‘He must have been in agony. He wouldn’t have screamed like that unless he had been in agony.’
‘They always do that, it doesn’t mean a thing.’
‘I can tell a real scream from a fake one,’ said the woman.
‘How?’
‘A real scream has no music, it slurs, it … screeches. It’s ugly.’
‘The cuisine,’ said a voice behind me, ‘can be superb; the very finely sliced smoked pork served hot, cold citrus fruits divided in half, bowls of strange hot grains with cream upon it. And those large eggs that they have here in Europe, skilfully fried crisp on the outside and yet the yolk remains almost raw. Sometimes smoked fish of various kinds.’ I turned to face them. The speaker was a middle-aged Chinese in evening dress. He had been speaking to a fellow countryman and as he caught my eye he said, ‘I am explaining to my colleague the fine Anglo-Saxon breakfast that I always enjoy so much.’
‘This is Monsieur Kuang-t’ien,’ said Maria, introducing us.
‘And you, Maria, are exquisite this evening,’ said M. Kuang-t’ien. He spoke a few lines of soft Mandarin.
‘What’s that?’ asked Maria.
‘It is a poem by Shao Hs˘un-mei, a poet and essayist who admired very much the poets of the West. Your dress reminded me of it.’
‘Say it in French,’ said Maria.
‘It is indelicate, in parts.’ He smiled apologetically and began to recite softly.
‘Ah, lusty May is again burning,
A sin is born of a virgin’s kiss;
Sweet tears tempt me, always tempt me
To feel between her breasts with my lips.
Here life is as eternal as death,
As the trembling happiness on a wedding night;
If she is not a rose, a rose all white,
Then she must be redder than the red of blood.’
Maria laughed. ‘I thought you were going to say “she must be redder than the Chinese People’s Republic”.’
‘Ah. Is not possible,’ said M. Kuang-t’ien, and laughed gently.
Maria steered me away from the two Chinese. ‘We’ll see you later,’ she called over her shoulder. ‘He gives me the creeps,’ she whispered.
‘Why?’
‘“Sweet tears”, “if she isn’t white she’ll be red with blood”, death “between breasts”.’ She shook away the thought of it. ‘He has a sick sadistic streak in him that frightens me.’
A man came pushing through the crowd. ‘Who’s your friend?’ he asked Maria.
‘An Englishman,’ said Maria. ‘An old friend,’ she added untruthfully.
‘He looks all right,’ said the man approvingly. ‘But I wished to see you in those high patent shoes.’ He made a clicking sound and laughed, but Maria didn’t. All around us the guests were talking excitedly and drinking. ‘Excellent,’ said a voice I recognized. It was M. Datt. He smiled at Maria. Datt was dressed in a dark jacket, striped trousers and black tie. He looked remarkably