The Map

by T. S. Learner

  ‘The accommodation is perfect, but I need the use of two hotel rooms for a couple of hours tomorrow – say at six? I will also need a fake receipt for a single passage on a ship from Marseille to Port Said and a map of Marseille.’

  ‘I think I understand. The hotel is L’Hôtel de Pont, eighty-six rue Victor Hugo. The owner is a close friend, discreet. We tell him it is for some unusual tryst.’ Edouard winked at Izarra. ‘And he will not bat an eyelid. And for two hours, he will make a trade, maybe fifty brochures. The receipt for the ship’s passage and the map of Marseille, now that is easy.’

  ‘Good, make it rooms fifteen and sixteen. There’s one other request, Edouard. I need to make a telephone call to a trusted friend back in England. It would be a big favour.’

  ‘Don’t worry, the telephone is not tapped. But I have only one in this building, upstairs in my office.’

  August waited until Edouard had stepped out of the office, then he sat down at the large old art nouveau desk and picked up the heavy handset of the telephone. After dialling the operator, he requested an English number in French. The operator, cool and efficient, patched him through in seconds, but the phone rang for ages. August checked his watch. Eight o’clock in France, seven in London – dinner time. Just when he was about to give up, Malcolm Hully’s voice sounded at the other end of the line.

  ‘Hello?’

  For a minute Malcolm’s detached and terribly English voice disorientated August, sweeping him straight back into his previous life in Kensington, the comparative safe anonymity. Cecily, she must have heard by now. What would she make of it all? Would she believe I’m a murderer, a wanted criminal? Was it morally reprehensible to have involved her in my complicated life? Well, she’s free now. In the background August could make out the sound of children’s voices and the faint drone of a radio. It made what he was about to do feel almost criminal. What happened to you, Malcolm? Was our friendship so cheap? Or is it that now we’re fighting a far more complex war in which friends will betray friends and enemies assist enemies for the right price or ideology?

  ‘Hello? Is anyone there?’ Malcolm persisted.

  ‘Malcolm, it’s August.’

  There was a pause at the other end, during which August could hear the sound of a door being closed then footsteps across what sounded like parquet floor as Malcolm returned to the telephone.

  ‘Where are you?’ Malcolm waited, amazed the American had made contact at all, and if he was a Soviet spy, why now? Was it possible he was working independently? He was maverick enough.

  ‘Never mind, I can’t talk for long but I need some information.’

  ‘August, you should know people are a little edgy here, and they’re extremely interested in you.’

  ‘Great, nice to know I’m still wanted.’

  ‘Oh, you’re top of the hit list. I give you two weeks on the outside. First Professor Copps, your old mentor, found murdered, a terrible thing, such a nice innocuous old chappie. Then this Jimmy van Peters murder, some retired OSS operative living in Paris. The Yanks are most upset – seems you’re the only common denominator. It doesn’t look good.’ Malcolm kept his voice deliberately light, reeling the American in with an outraged friendliness.

  ‘Listen, I’m being set up. There’s a CIA operative called Damien Tyson who was responsible directly or indirectly for both murders. He’s an old colleague of Jimmy’s from the OSS. Can you pull some discreet strings and find out as much as possible about him?’ Take the bait, take the bait. If Malcolm Hully was working with Tyson, he would now realise August knew the identity of his pursuer. It was a dangerous ploy but effective.

  At the other end of the line Malcolm stared down at an old paperweight he’d inherited, a scorpion suspended in glass. This was getting interesting. He’d heard of Tyson. On the other side of the Atlantic, he had the reputation of a viper, bloodless, near invisible, and deadly if he didn’t like you. Malcolm also knew Tyson’s playground was the Iberian Peninsula, sometimes even as far north as Paris, but why Tyson? And, if August was with the Soviets, why would he want to plant Tyson as a suspect? Was it possible August knew that Malcolm was MI5 and might be playing him? Malcolm contemplated all the ramifications. The situation had more layers than an onion, but he was determined not to be taken for a fool. He decided to play along – for now. ‘I’ll do my best, but the Americans have become totally paranoid since Stalin’s death, very edgy indeed, I’m afraid. Start of a new big chill, I fear. We are all suspect, my dear, do be careful.’

  ‘Thanks, Malcolm, I really appreciate this. I’ll ring you in a couple of days. Another thing, would it be possible for you to wire some money? I will be at L’Hôtel de Pont, eighty-six rue Victor Hugo, Avignon, room fifteen, tomorrow, at 6 p.m. precisely.’

  ‘Not a problem, but take my advice: trust no one.’

  ‘Advice taken.’ Starting with you, August added, silently. In the distance the cathedral bells began to chime 9 p.m.

  ‘Where are you now?’ Malcolm asked. To his ears, having grown up with a father who was a local bell puller at the village church, the bells sounded loud, substantial, quite possibly those of a cathedral. But before he had a chance to hear another peal the dial tone clicked into the void. Malcolm stood staring down at the phone then scribbled the address of the hotel and the time August had said on a notepad. He was pretty sure August was now back in France as the American had seemed unsurprised to hear about Jimmy van Peters’s death, which meant he might have been in Paris himself at the time of the murder. But Malcolm was convinced he would have fled the city by now, there were many cities in France that had cathedrals. Avignon was just one of them. Should he believe the Tin Man or not? Malcolm sat down at his desk and began making a list.

  When he’d finished he picked up the phone and dialled the direct line through to Upstairs. He got him straight away. ‘The Winthrop situation – I now have a strong lead, sir, but I think it’s time we talked directly to the OGA.’

  ‘Are you sure we have to go to the CIA? You do realise that is tantamount to relinquishing control?’ Upstairs did not sound happy.

  ‘I suspect we have already lost control, sir.’

  On the other end of the line Upstairs fell into a dense silence, which Malcolm, if he was honest with himself, found terrifying.

  August stared down at the telephone, then lifted up a corner of the blind pulled down low over the window. Night had fallen and the lane was lit by one old iron lamppost, streaking the cobblestones in yellow.

  Somewhere in the shadows they were waiting.

  August towelled dry his newly dyed hair, the shorn feeling alien to his hands, then peered into the broken piece of mirror perched on two nails over the washbasin. The short black hair set against the scar on his face and his crooked nose made him look gaunt, more sinister. He lifted the false moustache he’d packed from his kit and stuck it carefully over his upper lip. Immediately, he was transformed into a soldier, an officer, older, arrogant, probably served with the Vichy government, the narrative already spinning out in his head. He threw back his shoulders and gave his spine the rigidity of a man used to salute and duty, a man who was a traditionalist, who most likely grew up in the northern provinces, rural originally, once desperate to leave the poverty of his father’s provincialism. Reaching over, he put on the soldier’s jacket Edouard had left hanging over a chair. The weight and fall of the cloth felt right. Invigorated and now in character, he clicked his heels.

  ‘You’re frightening me. I think you have let another man’s soul into your body.’ Izarra was staring at him from the other side of the room.

  ‘Antoine Bools.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Antoine, that’s my new name. I had a Belgian father, something I don’t volunteer. This has made me even more patriotic. I don’t really like Charles de Gaulle but I don’t advertise the fact and I’m hoping that my marriage will help me get promoted next year.’

  ‘Who’s your fiancée?’

  ‘You.’
<
br />   ‘You’re very confident I would have said yes.’

  ‘If you’d said no, Antoine would have simply said au revoir and immediately begun looking for the next candidate, he’s that kind of man.’ August then started to walk around the room, practising. He introduced a kind of stiffness to his upper body, then a characteristic: a nervous habit of striding with his hands held behind his back.

  ‘Extraordinary. You are unrecognisable,’ she said, fascinated.

  ‘You see, to really disappear you have to let the artifice become your reality, even under interrogation. The trick is not to be a good liar, but a great believer.’

  ‘I can believe you.’ She blushed suddenly then glanced down at the blond locks scattered around his feet.

  ‘You were better looking before.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I can change back.’

  ‘But don’t expect me to marry you.’ Izarra stifled a yawn while he stifled a grin then checked his watch. It was late, past 1 a.m.

  ‘Izarra, catch some sleep. I have to work for a while.’

  She glanced over at the bunk bed. ‘You prefer upstairs or downstairs?’ she asked, seriously, not knowing the term for bunk bed.

  August laughed.

  ‘I’m fine sleeping on upstairs. And don’t worry, I don’t snore.’

  ‘Actually, you do,’ she retorted. ‘Don’t stay up all night, you will need to be alert in the morning.’

  She picked up her bag and carried it over to the bed and placed it on the lower of the two. August turned to take off his jacket. As he did he caught the reflection of Izarra undressing through the broken piece of mirror; she was pulling her trousers and top off, her breasts pale half-moons cupped in a black bra, a swirl of feminine curves that made him ache. He tactfully glanced down at the basin, the image still burning against his loins.

  There was the sound of a log exploding inside the wood stove. Ignoring it, August looked down at the old eighteenth-century map Edouard had borrowed from his historian friend. It was a delicate web of villages, rivers, farmland, roads and streams, over which August could imagine the future shadow of modern Avignon and its surrounds.

  Behind him he heard Izarra turning in the bunk bed. It was late, his eyes stung with exhaustion, but he was determined to find the location that night. They had to move on as fast as possible. He turned back to the chronicle, a newly translated page of his transcription set against the original diary entry from Shimon Ruiz de Luna.

  Elazar ibn Yehuda hath spoken of a place where the sky met two rivers, and that it were in this fork that the next sacred location lay. I have to confess as I sat studying the philosopher’s cryptic words in the small lodging-house where Uxue and I had taken refuge, it was overwhelming. I had not the slightest notion of where I should begin my search.

  §

  Shimon stopped writing and looked across at the tiny fire flickering in the grate. To write the truth would be to condemn his wife and yet not to write the truth struck him as a moral compromise. He was not a compromising man. He stared into the flames, pulling the old horsehair blanket tighter across his shoulders. Uxue had not yet returned from a market where she hoped to find some abandoned fruit and cheese to feed them. An ember flared up as a small twig caught light. Shimon, closing his eyes, tried to fight the vague memory of three nights before, but failed and allowed the images to flow over him like water.

  It had been near dawn, the smell of the night evaporating away with the first warm breath of the day. He had been sleeping, wrapped in the thick dance of a dream in which he was sitting down to a Shabbat dinner with his family, his sister, a languidly beautiful girl of eighteen, turning towards him, a bowl of roasted chickpeas in her hand, when he was woken by the feel of a breeze across his skin and a low murmuring. He’d lain there half asleep, not knowing whether he was still dreaming or not, his eyes half-open, adjusting to the darkness of the bedroom, the image of his wife, her dress open and about her waist, her breasts uncovered, the window behind her open, the dawn sky bleeding up from the horizon. Unaware of his gaze, Uxue appeared to be smearing herself with a thick green paste that looked to be made of herbs, her voice a loud singing in her native tongue, as slowly, rhythmically, with the ritual of a priest, she applied the ointment.

  ‘Sasi guztien gainetik eta odei guztien azpitik – “Above all the thorns and through the clouds”,’ she chanted.

  Shimon, wondering whether he was actually awake or whether his dream had shifted into a new reality, shut his eyes, only to hear a cock crow thrice. When he opened them she had gone, the curtains of the window billowing in a sudden gust. He rolled over and returned to his dream.

  A few hours later he woke to find her asleep and naked by his side. Later, she had told him, in exacting detail, of the place Elazar ibn Yehuda had described, a place where the sky met the water. She had also told him how to travel there. But how? How had she known? He had heard stories of bruja smearing themselves with flying ointment in order to travel over the fields. Was this what he had witnessed? Or had he just imagined it? He glanced back at the half-written page of his chronicle; he loved his wife – he would lie to his reader to protect her.

  But just then Uxue returned from evening song and told me she had made a friend, a woman who was also a healer, a local, who knew the surrounding lands and fields of the town. I asked her if her new friend might be able to help us find this place, and my wife, ever resourceful, agreed to ask the woman in the morn …

  The next day the woman arrived at the dwelling house. When I had described the place I was looking for, she told us there was a place she knew that was good for gathering herbs, outside of the city. Below Avignon there was a small peninsula sandwiched between the River Durance and a smaller stream where the two joined and then descended a small waterfall. It was possible, she told us, to stand amid the long grass and rushes and look out over the waterfall and there it was as if the sky met the water. She then turned to Uxue and whispered something – the kind of confidence that only happens between womenfolk. Later, Uxue told me the old healer had said that this place was rumoured to be of great energy, haunted by a great magi who had visited hundreds of years before. The next day she led us there.

  §

  August looked back at the old French map. No doubt the suburbs of Avignon had spread south in the last three hundred years and swallowed up such a rural location. It was even possible the smaller stream had been made into a city drain, but just maybe … He ran his finger down the map, tracking the course of the Durance. There were several small streams that fed into it. The question was, which one led into a waterfall?

  ‘Could I help?’

  Izarra stood behind him, wrapped in an old shirt. The scent of her hair, now loosened and falling over her shoulders, and the sight of her long bare legs were an instant distraction.

  ‘I was trying to find the location of what I think might be another maze. In the chronicle it’s described as the place where two rivers meet the sky, a kind of junction of two waterways leading into a waterfall,’ he told her, a little more perfunctorily than he intended, but he was trying to disguise his feelings.

  Izarra bent down over the desk, her hair sudden black silk across the page, the arc of her back tantalising. August closed his eyes for a moment, trying to will away the swelling erection he tried to hide under the table.

  ‘The voice of my ancestor. It is extraordinary to me to think he sat somewhere in this foreign city and wrote this,’ Izarra murmured, looking down at the marked paragraph on the transcribed page. ‘It is as if we are travelling along his words, making the same journey.’

  ‘We are … From what I can glean he seems to be an honourable man, driven by a legacy he is compelled to carry through – not just for personal gain but as a kind of redemption, a way of avenging his father’s murder. You know his family was executed by the Inquisition for being secret Jews.’

  ‘They were conversos?’

  August nodded cautiously. Knowing the pride many of the Basques
took in their nationality, he was a little concerned about how Izarra would take this news.

  To his relief she smiled wryly. ‘I always thought we might not be pure Basque. My mother’s mother had some interesting customs, for example she always refused to eat pork and would insist that the family have a large meal together on a Friday night. But it is strangely comforting to think that Shimon Ruiz de Luna and myself share a legacy – our families were both murdered and we are both seeking revenge.’

  She was now leaning up against the edge of the desk, her legs inches away from him. Glancing up from his chair, he wondered whether she consciously realised how provocative her stance was, but her expression was serious. Fighting the impulse just to reach across and wrap his arms around her thighs, he decided his only hope was to move away. He got out of his seat and walked over to the wood stove, his hand thrust into his pocket. Izarra noticed nothing.

  ‘But tell me, I know why I’m here but why are you, August? Is it just the allure of the great secret of the chronicle or something else you are keeping hidden?’

  Staring down into the little glass window behind which he could see the red flickering flames of the burning wood, he struggled for an answer, one he could live with.

  ‘I was drawn back to Spain because I had left something of myself behind back in 1939. This is my last chance to make it right.’ He thought he sounded inarticulate, guarded. Like with all the other women he’d cared about, he was finding it impossible to be completely honest with her. Was it fear that she would think him a monster? Or was it that he’d been so successful in obliterating the memory that only when he was drunk and in the throes of the transient intimacy of a one-night stand did the compulsive need to confess override all his rationality, his cool justification? He looked back up at her. To his relief, she smiled, albeit a little sadly, at him.

  ‘We all lost something of our souls in that war. In some ways it made us a little less human,’ she said. Then, sensing that he didn’t want to elaborate, she started studying the map again. ‘The place “where two rivers meet the sky”… Here, August, there’s a village south of the city called La Rivière Rencontre le Ciel – “The River Meets the Sky” – Skywater?’