Maria shrugged, ‘The girls should not have gone there, they should have known what to expect. Girl tourists – they only come here to be raped; they think it’s romantic to be raped in Paris.’
‘Two of these girls were sixteen years old, Maria, they were children; the other only eighteen. They’d asked your boyfriend the way to their hotel and he offered them a lift there. Is this what has happened to our great and beautiful city, that a stranger can’t ask the way without risking assault?’
Outside the weather was cold. It was summer and yet the wind had an icy edge. Winter arrives earlier each year, thought Maria. Thirty-two years old, it’s August again but already the leaves die, fall and are discarded by the wind. Once August was hot midsummer, now August was the beginning of autumn. Soon all the seasons would merge, spring would not arrive and she would know the menopausal womb-winter that is half-life.
‘Yes,’ said Maria. ‘That’s what has happened.’ She shivered.
14
It was two days later when I saw M. Datt again. The courier was due to arrive any moment. He would probably be grumbling and asking for my report about the house on the Avenue Foch. It was a hard grey morning, a slight haze promising a scorching hot afternoon. In the Petit Légionnaire there was a pause in the business of the day, the last petit déjeuner had been served but it was still too early for lunch. Half a dozen customers were reading their newspapers or staring across the street watching the drivers argue about parking space. M. Datt and both the Tastevins were at their usual table, which was dotted with coffee pots, cups and tiny glasses of Calvados. Two taxi-drivers played ‘ping-foot’, swivelling the tiny wooden footballers to smack the ball across the green felt cabinet. M. Datt called to me as I came down for breakfast.
‘This is terribly late for a young man to wake,’ he called jovially. ‘Come and sit with us.’ I sat down, wondering why M. Datt had suddenly become so friendly. Behind me the ‘ping-foot’ players made a sudden volley. There was a clatter as the ball dropped through the goal-mouth and a mock cheer of triumph.
‘I owe you an apology,’ said M. Datt. ‘I wanted to wait a few days before delivering it so that you would find it in yourself to forgive me.’
‘That humble hat doesn’t fit,’ I said. ‘Go a size larger.’
M. Datt opened his mouth and rocked gently. ‘You have a fine sense of humour,’ he proclaimed once he had got himself under control.
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘You are quite a joker yourself.’
M. Datt’s mouth puckered into a smile like a carelessly ironed shirt-collar. ‘Oh I see what you mean,’ he said suddenly and laughed. ‘Ha-ha-ha,’ he laughed. Madame Tastevin had spread the Monopoly board by now and dealt us the property cards to speed up the game. The courier was due to arrive, but getting closer to M. Datt was the way the book would do it.
‘Hotels on Lecourbe and Belleville,’ said Madame Tastevin.
‘That’s what you always do,’ said M. Datt. ‘Why don’t you buy railway stations instead?’
We threw the dice and the little wooden discs went trotting around the board, paying their rents and going to prison and taking their chances just like humans. ‘A voyage of destruction,’ Madame Tastevin said it was.
‘That’s what all life is,’ said M. Datt. ‘We start to die on the day we are born.’
My chance card said ‘Faites des réparations dans toutes vos maisons’ and I had to pay 2,500 francs on each of my houses. It almost knocked me out of the game but I scraped by. As I finished settling up I saw the courier cross the terrasse. It was the same man who had come last time. He took it very slow and stayed close to the wall. A coffee crème and a slow appraisal of the customers before contacting me. Professional. Sift the tails off and duck from trouble. He saw me but gave no sign of doing so.
‘More coffee for all of us,’ said Madame Tastevin. She watched the two waiters laying the tables for lunch, and now she called out to them, ‘That glass is smeary’, ‘Use the pink napkins, save the white ones for evening’, ‘Be sure there is enough terrine today. I’ll be angry if we run short.’ The waiters were keen that Madame shouldn’t get angry, they moved anxiously, patting the cloths and making microscopic adjustments to the placing of the cutlery. The taxi-drivers decided upon another game and there was a rattle of wooden balls as the coin went into the slot.
The courier had brought out a copy of L’Express and was reading it and sipping abstractedly at his coffee. Perhaps he’ll go away, I thought, perhaps I won’t have to listen to his endless official instructions. Madame Tastevin was in dire straits, she mortgaged three of her properties. On the cover of L’Express there was a picture of the American Ambassador to France shaking hands with a film star at a festival.
M. Datt said, ‘Can I smell a terrine cooking? What a good smell.’
Madame nodded and smiled. ‘When I was a girl all Paris was alive with smells; oil paint and horse sweat, dung and leaky gas lamps and everywhere the smell of superb French cooking. Ah!’ She threw the dice and moved. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘it smells of diesel, synthetic garlic, hamburgers and money.’
M. Datt said, ‘Your dice.’
‘Okay,’ I told him. ‘But I must go upstairs in a moment. I have so much work to do.’ I said it loud enough to encourage the courier to order a second coffee.
Landing on the Boul des Capucines destroyed Madame Tastevin.
‘I’m a scientist,’ said M. Datt, picking up the pieces of Madame Tastevin’s bankruptcy. ‘The scientific method is inevitable and true.’
‘True to what?’ I asked. ‘True to scientists, true to history, true to fate, true to what?’
‘True to itself,’ said Datt.
‘The most evasive truth of all,’ I said.
M. Datt turned to me, studied my face and wet his lips before beginning to talk. ‘We have begun in a bad … a silly way.’ Jean-Paul came into the café – he had been having lunch there every day lately. He waved airily to us and bought cigarettes at the counter.
‘But there are certain things that I don’t understand,’ Datt continued. ‘What are you doing carrying a case-load of atomic secrets?’
‘And what are you doing stealing it?’
Jean-Paul came across to the table, looked at both of us and sat down.
‘Retrieving,’ said Datt. ‘I retrieved it for you.’
‘Then let’s ask Jean-Paul to remove his gloves,’ I said.
Jean-Paul watched M. Datt anxiously. ‘He knows,’ said M. Datt. ‘Admit it, Jean-Paul.’
‘On account,’ I explained to Jean-Paul, ‘of how we began in a bad and silly way.’
‘I said that,’ said M. Datt to Jean-Paul. ‘I said we had started in a bad and silly way and now we want to handle things differently.’
I leaned across and peeled back the wrist of Jean-Paul’s cotton gloves. The flesh was stained violet with ‘nin’.7
‘Such an embarrassment for the boy,’ said M. Datt, smiling. Jean-Paul glowered at him.
‘Do you want to buy the documents?’ I asked.
M. Datt shrugged. ‘Perhaps. I will give you ten thousand new francs, but if you want more than that I would not be interested.’
‘I’ll need double that,’ I said.
‘And if I decline?’
‘You won’t get every second sheet, which