The Knife-Edge Path

by Patrick T. Leahy

  She looked up. The words flew out as if unbidden. “They killed him! They hated him! You hated him!”

  Mattei fixed a withering look on her.

  The door flew open, Dax lunged in. “Sir! Are you -?”

  “It’s all right, Dax.” Mattei raised his hand against Dax but kept his eyes on Geli. She threw her face into her hands. “Oh, God, I – I didn’t mean that!” But she had, and she wanted to run.

  Mattei pulled her into his arms and she fought him, but he held her tight, and she began to sob, not knowing where she was except in the middle of a sea and everybody had gone down but her, and Kurt’s hand slipped away and they both knew, now, what it was to want to live when you knew that you should be dead.

  Two jailers suddenly came into the doorway, spoke breathlessly to Dax. Dax turned to Mattei. “You’re needed downstairs, sir. Colonel Laurent is there with Dr. Trouillet. They were asking about the letter.”

  Mattei stepped away from Geli. “Go down and tell them I’m on my way, Dax.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And Dax – I’m sending Mlle Miroux home for the rest of the day. She’s not available if anybody asks.”

  “I understand, sir.” Dax turned to go, forcing the other two men aside and they began to dog his heels into the corridor.

  Geli turned to feel the closeness of Mattei.

  Beads of sweat broke from his forehead. He was close enough to smell the heat of her perfumed tears. “I have to go, now,” he said. “Let me have the letter. Laurent will never know you’ve read it. You’re going home now, ill. That’s all they have to know. No telling how long you may be out. But you won’t come back. You’re going to have to get out, immediately. Meet me tonight at our bistro in Montmartre. Nine o’clock. If I’m not there on time, wait for me. Your life depends on it.”

  His saying ‘our’ bistro struck a strange chord. As if with his embrace, and her collapse into his arms, liberties followed Kurt’s obliteration into what might have been with this man if she’d gone on with being Mlle Miroux.

  She handed him the paper. “I’ll be there,” she said.

  29

  She had stood on this bridge before – centuries ago, it seemed. Not like now. Not in the dark, alone. The water down there combed out in a smoky dream of dying sunlight. Stillness rippled on that great green slab that slid past underneath. It had been noontime, then. People strolling arm in arm. Bustles, parasols and feathered caps in the airless pastel brown, as if the sun was going out. She thought she might have seen them in the movies, but none of them had names. Kurt was not among them. He had not been gone that long. Nobody smiled. She didn’t, either, watching them. They were content to be without her. Resigned to being let out for a while into the final hours of the sun. It had been dark, then, but not night. Not like now.

  She’d come out onto the Pont des Arts, in what little light twinkled from the spires atop the gallery, shone down onto the damp iron balustrade and found its way in quiet streaks across the water from the darker banks of the stone quays. She hadn’t wept since she’d been on her bed in the dark.

  She looked down at the river, how the light gleamed on the swirls across the heaving depths you couldn’t see. She shut her eyes and clenched her fists and in her mind she was in Missie Vassilchikov’s grand ballroom, watching for who else would notice what she smoked and what she wore, and who her husband was that made her something else to look at, too. He would come home from the party late. Or was it from that place where he’d been shot? He must have died without a thought of her, and she had done that to him so he, too, had died alone. Her eyes came open slowly. The silence of the night went on without her.

  She caught a taxi to Montmartre. The bartender, as soon as she walked into the bistro, was drawing the shades - a younger man this time, and as she hurried on along the empty stools, glancing back, he gave her a look as if she’d come in just in time to stop him from closing up.

  She said, “You’re getting ready to go home, Monsieur?”

  The young man gave her a look that sized her up for whether turning her away could be bad for business. “It’s been a slow night, Madame.”

  “I’m expecting a companion. He should be here any moment.” Without a watch to glance at, she made imploring eyes instead. “I would hate to miss him.”

  He ambled around the end of the bar, dragging one hand across the top, and back along the tier of bottles and the mirror in which she saw herself – makeup smeared around her eyes, a woman who’d been crying.

  He sighed, and with a wan smile, said, “A drink while you’re waiting?”

  “Yes, thank you. A glass of Bordeaux, please.” She looked down toward the rear exit beyond the latrine. “Last time we sat back there,” she said. “So nice and private.”

  He pulled the cork out of the bottle, reached for a glass under the bar. “Take your pick tonight, Madame. Privacy whichever way you look.”

  “You’re new, aren’t you?”

  “No, I come in often to relieve my uncle when he goes to Cherbourg on business.”

  “I see. What do they call you?”

  “I’m Maurice.” Then coyly, “I won’t be a bartender all my life.”

  She smiled and looked at him again, his almost girlish pretty face and the hulking, beefy shoulders of an athlete.

  “No, you won’t. The sky’s the limit, isn’t it – now that the war is over.”

  He brought up another glass. “For the gentleman, too?”

  “We’d better wait. He likes absinthe.”

  Maurice poured a soupcon into her glass.

  She lifted a sip to her lips. “Quite nice,” she said. “I’ll just go back and find a place to wait.”

  He filled her glass, then glanced at his watch and said uneasily, “Begging your pardon, Madame – I’m due to meet a person very soon. Like you!” With the twitch of a smile he told her of the rendezvous with a girl he was afraid might not be there if he was late. “I wouldn’t want her to think I’d stood her up,” he said.

  “Of course, I understand. All I can tell you -”

  Just then the bell jingled at the door. Mattei stepped in, looking rumpled in his uniform.

  “Ah, he’s here!” Geli said.

  Maurice stood away from the bar, impatiently preparing to serve the new unwanted customer, looking a little disgruntled that he’d come. Seeing her, Mattei hurried her way. “Sorry I’m late. I haven’t been home, yet.”

  “Oh, then - yes, of course.”

  Maurice lifted the bottle. “Bordeaux for you, Monsieur?”

  Mattei stared at the bottle. His cap was on askew. His tunic bulged sloppily above the belt of his Sam Browne. “A short one, that’ll do,” he said.

  The bartender poured half a glass. Mattei gently took her arm. She thought he was escorting her down to the table at the end again when he stopped beside a booth, gestured toward the seat and waited while she got in. He tossed his cap onto the table before he scooted in across from her. “How are you holding up, Frau Straub?”

  Her own name struck like a brazen insult, the real alias, and she looked in vain for the man he used to be, who’d had it bad for her. When he would do almost anything for Mlle Miroux. She’d left the tear-stained mess of makeup under her eyes. Down at the bottom of her heart she felt empty. He was watching her: was she in pain? You can only cry so long.

  “I’m doing all right, Monsieur.”

  He sat back, shaking his head. “Things aren’t looking good back at the prison. Laurent is out to find a scapegoat, and the jailers are nervous.” He fixed a hard look on her across the table. “You’re going to have to get out of Paris right away.”

  “Oh, but, how soon?”

  He reached into the inside pocket of his tunic, pulled out a long brown envelope. “I have here the notice of your resignation. You’ll sign it now, and by the time they see it, you’ll be gone. They won’t think twice about accepting this. With your departure goes any trace of your connection to Herr Langsdorff.” He
spread out the paper in front of her, lent her his pen.

  She had it poised over the paper when she looked up. “What name?” she said.

  He shook his head as if she ought to know. “Simone Miroux, of course. I’ll simply tell them you’ve resigned and won’t be coming back.”

  She scratched the name across the line at the bottom of the page, dropped the pen and fingered her wine glass as she looked up at him again. “There. For the last time,” she said, and tried to smile, but courage failed her and she began to feel afraid. Suddenly she knew that she was going to miss him, this man who was now trying to get rid of her, and she said, “I don’t know where I’ll go.”

  “You must go back to Germany. Destroy your French papers as soon as you’re across the border. Revert to your German citizenship. They’re going to ask you what you’ve been doing in Paris.”

  “What have I been doing?”

  “You were called to testify at a military tribunal.”

  “But if they -”

  “I doubt you’ll be detained. They’ll be too bogged down to bother with a woman who seems unafraid to tell the truth.”

  “You seem so sure of that.”

  “I’ll give you a note they will accept. They’ll have no time or inclination not to.”

  “So now, you mean I’ll just walk off ?”

  “Yes, resign and that’s the last we’ll ever hear of you. I’m the only one who knows what your connection to Herr Langsdorff was. That’s how it will remain.”

  “What about Dax?”

  “He’ll keep his mouth shut. I’ve been looking after his interests.”

  “I liked him,” she said.

  “Yes, I know. Now, where are your German papers?”

  For a moment she was in his office again, being interviewed for a job with the Second Standing Military Court. The questions seemed perfunctory. She knew he was going to hire her. “I’ve got them in a safe place,” she said.

  Mattei sat back with a deep sigh, looking suddenly very tired. “Good. I’ve got a ticket for you.”

  “A ticket to where?”

  “Berlin.”

  It felt so odd that he no longer cared for her. Or did he care enough to make her go? So odd that she’d hung on to how he’d felt about her. Pride coming in, all tattered but still standing, even on Kurt’s grave. Berlin loomed like a death trap.

  “Oh, God! Berlin’s a rubble heap. My old flat - it can’t be mine anymore. Probably not even there.” But then she wondered what that was to him. Once she was gone and out of his hair, her fate was in the hands of anybody but him.

  He said, “Haven’t you some relative? Some former -”

  “We had a cottage in Münster. I rarely went there after the war heated up and Gunther was gone. There was a caretaker. I couldn’t pay him after the money ran out, so I don’t know. Gunther never got around to putting my name on the deed.”

  “But as his wife and only heir, you could legitimately go there.”

  “I suppose so, if he’s dead. The only person who could tell me if he’s still alive is General Guderian.”

  Mattei nodded. “Was there a will?”

  “Yes. Gunther left all his assets to me. Of course I don’t know if he’s still alive.”

  “Still I see no reason why you shouldn’t go straight to Münster while the tide of the refugee problem is still high and you’re not likely to stand out.”

  She knew these things, but still wanted to rely on him, and said, “Poachers might have taken over.”

  “Go to the Allied occupation authority. I’ve heard good things about the Americans. They should be only too glad to kick out any poachers for you.”

  She thought she heard him saying she’d be pretty enough to get that done, but in his eyes he’d swerved back onto the straight and narrow.

  He said, “I’ve heard Guderian is still alive. The Americans have him locked up at Neustadt. You might have a chance of finding out about your husband if you went there.”

  “No, I won’t go to Neustadt. It’s too late for me to know. Right now I - oh, never mind.” She looked up, tried to take him in without self-pity. “I’m sorry I deceived you, Monsieur,” she said.

  He shrugged, then she could see him looking for that waif in her that ran around in circles, ran and ran and couldn’t stop until he called a halt. She wanted to give her to him, so he couldn’t say goodbye. She said, “Did you ever tell Herr Langsdorff who I was?”

  He gave her a long look. “As I recall, you didn’t want me to.”

  She looked down at her glass, rolling the stem between her fingers. “I don’t suppose he ever spoke of me.”

  “You didn’t want that either, did you?”

  She lowered her eyes again, feeling guilty, as she nodded, for having no more tears to bring up from that place that wouldn’t tell her if she had a heart. “No,” she said.

  He tipped his glass up to his lips, drank sparingly and set the glass back down carefully, clutching the stem.

  “For your information, he didn’t take his life as a way out of choosing between you and his wife.”

  She looked up. “Why do you say that?”

  “Just so you know.”

  “If you think I ever sought to steal him from her, God knows I always knew he was meant for her. Sometimes I feel, though, I killed him.”

  Mattei looked up sharply. “I don’t like the sound of that.”

  She shrugged, fingering her glass. “Maybe what I mean is I feel worthless, I suppose.”

  With a trembling hand Mattei picked up his glass and drained it. “One day I’m sure his wife and I will meet. I hope by then I will have cleared his name. I won’t give up because he’s dead.” He looked steadily across at her.

  “Suicides,” she said, “do you think they’re damned to everlasting hell?” She stared back at him through a veil of bitterness.

  “Some say so. But what do they know?”

  “I thought he had everything to live for,” she said.

  He sat back suddenly like a fighter ducking a blow. “Yes. I fell for that myself, with all my pride that drove me on until I thought I’d got it in the bag. I promised him what I was never sure I could deliver. The trouble was he bought it. As soon as freedom stared him in the face, he didn’t like what he saw.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I didn’t see it. Not until it was too late. How hope was turning on him – so obsessed was I with getting him off. I couldn’t see that only bought him time enough to know he couldn’t take it.”

  “Monsieur, I can’t see any sense to that.”

  “That’s right. Sense was never in the cards. You have to go back to that day when he stood stoically at a death camp watching people shuffle to their death, fighting the urge to die with them. The will to live told him it was useless, even stupid. They would die anyway. His death wouldn’t save them. Staying alive, he might save others. So that’s what he set out to do, the more dangerous things got to be, the better. He’d tried to get the war to kill him when you came along and bought him some more time. I think he loved you that day he lost track of you in Rottweil. But then, locked up in prison, his wife came back into the picture, even though he’d just as soon be dead to her. Two lovely women – you and her – warm and pulsing in your flesh and blood with all the succor you could beckon him to lie down in and fall asleep – you went with the same bill of goods I sold him with my hope. I didn’t know how fatally he knew better. That he was promised to a naked girl, who’d given up her name to ’19’, the age at which she would be dead in minutes, with the hatred she burned into him before the whips drove her on to where her death left him alive. You helped him at a time when you might have destroyed him, but that, too, went the way of all those things the war forgave. There was no resting on his laurels – however truthful they appeared to be in his report. There was no more war to swim against to keep his head above water. Going home would have to be the lie he’d let his wife believe until the day she found him ha
nging from a crossbeam, and he couldn’t do that to her.”

  She watched him, not knowing whether he was blaming or forgiving her, and fear struck like a snake, just barely missing. Tears flooded her eyes. “I wonder if I knew that all along.”

  Mattei was staring at her. “Did you love him?” he said sternly.

  Her gaze slanted crazily toward the table. She couldn’t find the words and looked up. “I thought I did. No, God help me, I did.”

  “Then don’t ever tell me you were worthless. If it’s a flogging you want, I’m afraid I can’t oblige.” He sounded angry.

  She didn’t know. The words seemed to condemn her. She reached across and took his hand and held it fast. “I’m going to miss you, Monsieur.”

  He smiled faintly, looking away. “As long as you don’t miss her.”

  “Who?”

  “Mlle Miroux. You’ll have to leave her here, you know. Where you’re going, you won’t be needing her.”

  She held her eyes on him wistfully. “You still call me that, after all -”

  “Hard to break a habit,” he said, then broke open in his face as if he’d just awakened from a dream. “All right, enough of that.” He began to peel the cuff back from the wrist his watch was on.

  She said quickly, “I don’t suppose our paths will cross again, but if you ever get to Münster, look me up. You might find me in the directory.”

  “What are the chances?” he said.

  “Yes, to a Frenchman, Germany couldn’t be much of a tourist attraction. I’ll keep a lookout, though. One day I’ll be looking out the window, aimlessly, and there you’ll be. All dapper in a suit and hat. No chance I could mistake you for the mailman.”

  They looked across the table at each other. He had nice eyes, she thought. Words with no sound flew between them like birds that didn’t want to lite.

  Suddenly he moved, and he was pulling back his cuff again. “God, look at the time! I won’t be home till after midnight. Remember, now - there’s no need for you to come in tomorrow morning.” He reached back and hauled out his billfold. “Here, you’ll need some money.”