by J. R. Lonie
Where the hell was he? What if he’d been caught, just when she’d procured passages into Spain for them both? She couldn’t lose him now. She returned to the bed and took out her notebook and her pencil. How absurd, she muttered, and discarded them. Despite her determination to remain awake, she drifted away.
She was too anxious to sleep deeply and easily heard a noise at the window. She leapt up, manoeuvred herself along the doghouse dormer, and there he was, down in the laneway, about to throw another pebble. She beckoned him to come up. Leaving the window unlatched, she hurried down the darkened hallway and stairs to the floor below, filled the basin with hot water and returned. None of the other residents seemed awake or up and about. She had to be calm, to behave as if nothing had changed, yet her heart was beating furiously.
His footsteps were light across the roof. After falling in through the window, he slumped onto the bed, opened his coat and removed the kitten. It was as if he were removing a mere parcel. He dropped it on the bed to fend for itself without any of his usual reassuring pettings, which were just about the only sign he had a heart. He looked dreadful, as if the spark of life was draining from his eyes. His skin was pallid and frozen. He tried to speak.
‘Shh,’ she said gently. She knew misery when she saw it, and to hell with her fears. She brought the basin of hot water closer, wet a cloth and began to wipe his face and his neck. He was shivering and so tense she thought he would break under her touch. She told him she’d found passages for them into Spain, leaving the next morning. Whatever was ailing him, he didn’t respond; his eyes had glazed over. Figuring he was ill, she drew off his woollen pullover and opened the buttons to expose his chest. He was sweating as if fevered. She wet the cloth again, pulled back his shirt and dabbed away the sweat. Still he shivered. She quickly pulled off his boots and his socks. His feet startled her: they looked like the feet on a Greek statue, so marble white and perfect, and to touch they were ice. She lifted each foot into the hot water – and, yes, she was acutely aware of Mary washing Christ’s feet. Henk’s were hard and they were heavy. She could feel the burden each had borne for so long. As she soaped away the grime and the cold, kneaded the tight sinews down to his toes, the muscles under his arches, they softened, and his skin and his flesh came to life and his shivering ceased. She lifted each foot from the water, pushed the basin away and began to dry them. Since Claude had been killed, she’d touched no man intimately, not like this. The longing to be Mary tending to the feet of Christ was overthrown by another longing as her loins surged with heat. Before he could see it too, she jerked her hands away, and her face bloomed to the colour of her now lustrous hair.
But he reached down, took both her hands in his, and drew her up so he could press his face into the warmth of her neck. She felt his fingers, hard and calloused. Yet his lips, with their erotic charge, were as soft as a maiden’s. This was madness, yet she could not have pushed him away if he’d been the Devil himself. Which he probably was. His hands drew hers onto the buckle of his belt. ‘Please,’ he said and she lifted the clasp.
She pulled open his trousers yet hesitated to touch him in the way she had always taken Claude, but he took her hand to grip him as his lips found hers. The kitten scattered for safety as they fell upon each other, pulling away only enough clothing to allow him to enter her, both of them greedy and urgent, yet exquisitely tender.
Afterwards, as Eleanor found her wits again, she laughed and so did he, a sheepish sort of laughter. Only misery could acquaint one with such a strange bedfellow. She had never experienced a man like this, neither giver nor taker, but both. They lay in a tangle of clothes and bedclothes. She felt his backside bare to the cold air and drew the blanket over him but kept her hand on his skin to stroke him. He was smooth and muscled and masculine. Oh, how she’d missed this.
He asked for a cigarette.
‘That’s a change,’ she laughed, reaching out from under him for her case. He took one, lit it and shared it with her.
He inhaled and his head swam; he was lightheaded enough as it was. He’d had plenty of fleeting sexual encounters in his time – this was just another; she’d wanted it to happen. He’d been in such a state when he’d come to the hotel, he’d doubted he would be able to climb up to her room. He was still a mess, but he managed a smile. How strange life was.
‘You have a beautiful smile,’ she remarked. ‘You should smile more often.’
‘Now I have something to smile about,’ he said like a polite little boy. He asked details of the passages into Spain. She told all she knew, which was little. They’d be leaving tomorrow and, she assumed, they’d be doing it on foot through the passes.
‘Are you sure?’ he asked. He could do it, but could she? ‘You have your American passport.’
‘They’re after me as well,’ she reminded him.
‘They can’t know for sure who you are,’ he said. ‘You could be any American.’
‘I don’t think there’s any competition around this town at the moment for being a middle-aged American woman. Give me liberty or give me death,’ she said lightly, but she meant it. This bothered him. She could see his brow knit.
‘The fault is mine,’ he said.
‘If you hadn’t done what you did, I’d be sitting in a German internment camp being starved to death and you’d be back in whatever that camp was, or worse,’ she said. She hadn’t always believed that; now she was sure of it. But what was the point of discussing it? Done was done. You played the hand you were dealt.
His kitten intruded, looking to share the warmth and the affection, and snuggled in between them, purring. He stroked it.
‘What do you think of my hair?’ she asked. He hadn’t said a thing. Had he noticed? He looked puzzled. He took a tuft in his hands and brought it to his nose.
‘It smells nice,’ he said.
‘It didn’t this morning, or yesterday,’ she said.
‘I didn’t smell it this morning or yesterday,’ he said. ‘You would strike me.’
‘I’ll strike you now,’ she responded.
‘Ah,’ he said ‘Like I am your husband.’
‘Not at all,’ she said. ‘They were much more observant than you.’ Both Freddy and Claude, they noticed, they always told her how beautiful she looked.
‘They? You have more than one?’
‘Freddy was first but we divorced,’ she explained. ‘Then came the louse but that turned out to be illegal because he was married already. That rather put me off marriage.’
‘And after that?’
She realised she hadn’t thought much about Claude lately, if at all. Grief, or what she had thought was grief, her companion for so long, and the anger she had refused to recognise, were gone. When exactly, she had no idea. She was in a new world now.
‘I was his mistress,’ she explained. ‘He was married, with children.’
‘You shared him?’ he asked, like some maiden aunt. ‘How can you share someone’s love?’
She thought a little. ‘I shared his time, not his love,’ she said. ‘ “All love is sweet, given or returned, common as light is love, and its familiar voice wearies not ever.” Shelley, one of the great poets.’
‘You were not married to him,’ said Henk. ‘That means I can marry you.’
‘Is that a formal offer?’ she asked, amused.
‘I would then be an American,’ he said.
‘You goose,’ said Eleanor. ‘That’s not how the law works. You wouldn’t be American, I’d be – ’ She stopped. ‘Where did you come from?’ she asked. ‘Vienna? I’d be Austrian. No, dear God, I’d be German. Frankly, sonny, you’re not a good catch.’
‘But I am your son,’ he said. ‘It says so on my French papers.’
‘So it does,’ she laughed. ‘I go from scandal to scandal.’ She touched his lips with her fingers. She felt him rise immediately, thrilling her. She sighed with sweet anticipation and moved to draw him in. This time, they went slower and more deliberate and sweeter and deep
er.
After, when she opened her eyes, he was already asleep, his face nestled tenderly into her neck. She enveloped him with her body and drew the blanket over them both. Outside, the wind whistled and their enemies rested. They were safe. The kitten returned. She smiled as it crept between them. She was aware of how strongly he smelt – musky, unwashed, slightly sickly, a heady and dangerous draught for her, used to her fastidious Claude. This was how she imagined Yann from her novel would have smelt, if only she’d known it. Breathing him in, like smoke from an opium pipe, she was carried away to the deepest and most contented slumber she’d had since the outbreak of the war.
HÔTEL COSMOPOLITAN, PAU
After 9am, Sunday, 14th December 1941
When she awoke, he hadn’t moved. She had gotten up only once during the night, to use the bathroom below, and had returned to where she’d lain beside him. Gazing at him now so minutely, she found that freed of its snarls and worries and with its golden bristles glinting in the morning sun, a face she’d first considered malevolently elfish was the face of a handsome Pan. Likewise, his ill-cut hair. She saw it was flecked with gold. In its disarray, it looked Arcadian. She ran her fingers through its wiry thickness.
When she looked back, his eyes were open, two intense shots of cobalt staring out from some other realm, of sadness and melancholy. The past, she inferred. The room was so still, you could see motes of dust hovering in the light of the sun streaming in through a gap in the curtains.
She had no idea what would happen if they made it into Spain. Was he really set on Jerusalem? Could she get him into the United States with her? Her mother, whose love and patience she had tried severely over the years, would have a heart attack. She blew this line of idle chatter away, content for the moment to enjoy having neither past nor future.
Then he came back to her, noticing her, and he managed a smile.
‘Where have you been?’ she asked.
He could not tell her that, his hold on the present was still too fragile.
‘We’re almost there,’ she said to encourage him.
‘The sun!’ he exclaimed suddenly. And yes, that really was sunlight streaming in through the window, which faced south. What the hell was the time? They sprang out of bed. She grabbed her watch. After nine. They dressed hurriedly. She parted the curtains, opened the balcony door, and she gave a start.
‘What?’ he said and peeked through.
The town had been washed clean. Its prettiness held them only fleetingly. Should he escape across the roof in full daylight? Children put paid to that as they burst excitedly from a house nearby to play in the sun.
She gave him half her remaining francs. ‘Don’t forget to eat,’ she reminded him and said she would walk past the statue of Henry IV on Place Royale at ten. She gave him the location of the bookshop, just in case. She didn’t specify in case of what. In case he was late? Just in case, that was all; although how he, with his sense of direction, would find it, she left to the gods. He grabbed his kitten, his knapsack. She would descend, he would follow closely, enough sound on the stairs for one.
Before she opened the door, he kissed her chastely on one cheek, touching the other with his calloused fingers. ‘Mama,’ he said with a cheeky smile. She laughed, as much from the fun she was having as for the joy in her heart and the thrill of life coursing through her.
Other inhabitants were up, the violinist was playing, voices laughed. She had a strange sense of the day’s ordinariness, a Sunday, a day of rest, no war, no Gestapo; slaughter and pursuit were to be given a rest. The sun was in the vestibule.
Eleanor saw the concierge’s door was shut. She nodded. Henk slipped past her and out the door. Eleanor stood, pretending to look out at the morning as she savoured the smell of him hovering in the still air like the top note of a perfume, musky with a slightly sour flavour. Madame Dumas wasn’t making an appearance.
Eleanor hurried back up to the room. She got hot water, freshened up, preened her hair, ministered to her skin with her cosmetics and sprayed on her Lancôme. There was no sense she was about to leave on a journey on which she might die. Nothing so grim crossed her mind. She was acting like a schoolgirl because that’s exactly how she felt. What would Sylvia or Madeleine say? she wondered as she packed what little she had back into her rucksack and drew on her coat. She knew what Madeleine would say: ‘Lucky you, darling.’ Sylvia would be just a little bit Baltimore-Presbyterian shocked but pretend not to be.
A sharp knock at the door threw Eleanor out of her reveries and on her guard.
‘Who is it?’ she demanded.
The door opened; Eleanor had forgotten to turn the lock after returning. Madame Dumas pushed in.
‘Did madame sleep well last night?’ she asked with honeyed malice.
‘Perfectly well, thank you,’ Eleanor answered. ‘Can I be of assistance?’
‘How fortunate for madame to have found such a powerful sleeping draught,’ Dumas said, ‘and at such a late hour.’
She had seen Henk after all. How loud had they been?
‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘Reading helps enormously.’
Dumas sneezed and then she produced the ‘wanted’ poster with Henk’s photograph, clear and no mistaking him. ‘HEINRICH POHL’, it said. Eleanor knew his real name at last. ‘WANTED FOR MURDER.’
‘What is that to do with me?’ Eleanor asked as lightly as she could.
‘It has everything to do with you, madame,’ said Dumas, as sweet as your grandmother. ‘Your lover is wanted for murder and you are his accomplice. I can’t have murderers in my hotel, you understand.’
‘You are mistaken,’ said Eleanor. ‘I am about to leave. If you’ll kindly get out of my way.’
Suddenly, Madame Dumas pushed Eleanor back with astonishing strength, slipped back out the door and locked it.
‘You have a choice,’ said Dumas from the other side of the door. ‘Push that money belt of yours under the door and I’ll unlock it and you can go. If you don’t, I’ll call the police. You have thirty seconds.’
Eleanor cursed herself and cursed the concierge, who told her not to waste time. She grabbed at the door and then she hurled herself against it. Maybe this would bring someone. Should she call for help? But that would be insane.
‘Ten seconds,’ said Madame Dumas.
Eleanor tore away the belt and pushed it partly under the door so it stuck halfway. ‘Unlock the door first or you get nothing,’ she said. Dumas pulled at her end of the belt. Eleanor wouldn’t let go. Madame Dumas unlocked the door, Eleanor let go of the belt and pulled the door open at the same time. Madame Dumas sprang at Eleanor to push her back inside so she could grab the belt and lock her in again. Then she would call the police, keep Eleanor’s money and get the reward.
Madame Dumas’s leap was her last, for she had thrown herself onto the knife that Eleanor was holding at an angle, just as Henk had shown her, and it was now deep in Dumas’s upper gut. Her eyes and face were astonished; she had no idea what had happened. She looked down, saw the protruding knife handle, saw blood spout in a single gush, went to cry out and slumped to the floor. Her chest rattled as she expelled her last breath.
Eleanor’s hand flew to her mouth in horror. She started to shake uncontrollably. If she didn’t contain herself, she’d be finished. She had the presence of mind at least to remember to breathe in deeply. That at least stopped her shaking. She was then able to drag Dumas by the legs into her room. She bent down and took hold of the knife but couldn’t pull it out; it was stuck. The handle and her hand were covered in sticky blood. No time. She heard the residents one floor below, moving about, talking. The water from her morning toilet was still warm. She quickly washed and dried her hands. She bent down and grabbed her money belt, mercifully not bloodstained, and her rucksack, stepped over the body and shut the door behind her.
The landing was smeared with blood. Nothing she could do about that now. She forced herself to walk at a stately pace down the steps so as not to attract a
ttention. Behind his door, the violinist was playing exercises. Behind other doors, women called out, children played. Down to the next floor, into the vestibule and out. She’d seen no one, and no one had seen her.
At the front door, she made sure she wasn’t leaving a bloodied trail. The ground outside was still damp from the rain overnight. How long she had, she couldn’t tell.
MEDIEVAL TOWN, PAU
9.30am, Sunday, 14th December 1941
Eleanor kept having to tell herself, ‘I’ve killed someone, I’ve killed someone,’ lest she believe it were only a vivid nightmare. Soon the body would be found; soon the police would be all over the place. She had half an hour before she was to fetch Henk, three-quarters of an hour to the rendezvous at the bookshop. Nearby, the bells at St Martin’s called people to Mass. She heard them all too clearly. Would she find comfort or condemnation? She called herself a Christian, and felt to the depths of her soul that she was. Yet she couldn’t seek forgiveness. There was nothing to forgive. She was still too furious. Grief and regret might come later. That stupid, greedy woman had tried to rob her, had she not? And worse, shop her to the Gestapo. What else could or should she have done?
Her fury and self-justification gave her strength. Though she wasn’t at all hungry, she knew she should eat and try to buy food for the journey. She forced herself into a café, one she’d not been in before, and for some of her remaining francs got yellow coffee and the stew, ragoût of rat doubtless. She couldn’t taste a thing, but it would sustain her for a while. Surely the fortune she’d paid for the journey would include food.
By ten to ten, she was out of the café, ten minutes to the rendezvous with Henk nearby on the boulevard. Suddenly she felt such nausea that she bent over from the pain of it and proceeded to retch up her breakfast onto the sidewalk in full view of any passers-by. She staggered a little and waited, still bent, to make sure the spasms had stopped. Someone did come up to her, a man whose assistance was gruff and practical, no hand-wringing. He said, ‘There, there, lady, the food they serve in there’d make a dog throw up. Best get it out of you, and you’ll be all right.’ He offered his hand to help her stand up, and a dirty handkerchief should she need it. The sight of it almost had Eleanor retch again.
