Silently I watched his urine bag, which was beginning to fill up.
"Pretense," he whistled angrily and patted the bag. "Old age turns life, with its vision, imagination, courage and hope, into pretense. All the old relics you see here made a lot of noise once, were full of ideas, initiatives, and even things they were prepared to die for..." His hand wound limply round my arm. "If you'd come to me two months ago I would have dismissed you for not arranging your life instead of making my daughter miserable. Today I feel slightly closer to you..."
I got up, subduing a tiny whimper of excitement. I wanted to shake his hand, maybe even kiss him. But his voice took on the familiar old lion's tone and he said, "Hannah's got the car, hasn't she?"
"Yes."
"Then you'd better leave. Soon Sabbath begins and there won't be any buses."
A long-legged young nurse burst in. "Time for your afternoon rest!" she called gaily and began arranging the wheelchairs in a row facing the entrance. The old man looked at her. "Youth depresses me," he said.
He turned his wheelchair round and wheeled himself out, energetically passing his neighbors, who were slumped in their chairs, bewildered and confused, passengers on lifeboats lost at sea. After a moment his voice thundered in the corridor.
"The problem with this place is that they let anyone in!" The nurse finished fastening the mouth of a urine bag, looked at me and smiled.
CHAPTER TEN
By four in the afternoon the center of town was marked by festive neglect. Few cars were still in the car parks; the wind adorned them with papers from overflowing dustbins. At the entrance to the office a weary cleaning lady was polishing the glass doors. The Head's driver appeared at the top of the stairs and gestured to her to open them.
"He's been waiting an hour," he complained, "since you phoned..."
I went through the secretary's empty office. A solitary printer gurgled quietly. Who manned the mail room now? A red lamp was lit above the next door. I waited. Obedience suffused the walls, the furniture and even the leaves of the potted plants, deposited there by the masses of employees who had gone in and out of that door, in an orderly fashion. I felt the mocking tension of an outsider, and was thinking my hostile thoughts again: what was the tension of the walls, the depth of the base of the support columns, the most effective way of sending a shock-wave along the corridors...
The red light changed to green with no warning. The man behind the door sneezed.
"Hello," I said as I went in.
He replied, "Thank you," and immediately wiped the palms of his hands with a Kleenex. I sat down quickly, to avoid shaking hands.
He seemed different. His body, behind the desk, was too plump, almost corpulent. His brusque movements and pink face gave him the appearance of a violent baby. Beneath eyelashes that seemed to have been trimmed, his eyes observed me with the usual friendly expression, neutralizing his reprimand.
"You were supposed to stay there, Simon."
"I didn't hear from you."
The smile froze on his face. He must have been expecting a better answer.
"You're experienced. This isn't the first time you've been held in reserve..."
"I want to leave."
He said nothing.
"To resign."
The friendly look vanished completely from his face.
"I'm not fit for field-work anymore and I don't want to go back to the mail room."
He continued to regard me. I fell silent too. For a long moment we looked at one another, and then he said, "What will you do? Dismantle bombs in cinemas?"
"Why not?"
He sighed. "Why is a cinema better than our mail room? I wish we could offer all the agents we bring back from the field such useful work..."
"I've tried to be useful for too long..."
"Are you complaining?" He laughed in a way which invited participation.
"Perhaps." My defiance only increased. "Maybe I missed something that happened to other people while I was being useful under false identities..."
Now his voice became serious. "You didn't have any choice. In order to succeed in a fabrication you have to live it, believe in it as if it were the truth."
"And what do I have afterwards, when the fabrication ends?"
"You've got a wife, a son, and..." again he tried to smile encouragingly, "a mission in Dura, this time under your true identity."
"My true identity doesn't manage to fit any more."
He removed an invisible grain from the desktop. "And how, do you think, we are going to deal with Dura if you don't go back?"
"How did you deal with it when I was there?"
"Through you."
Those two words brought back the old man's vision of the broken vessels.
"Maybe you weren't informed," I said, "but I didn't manage to make contact with our agent..."
"Maybe you weren't patient enough," he said calmly.
"It's been several weeks now..."
"Maybe all you need is another week, maybe another day, the day that you're here..."
"There's no point waiting," I said. "He won't make contact, he doesn't belong to us anymore." Carefully, consistently avoiding any mention of Yvonne, I recounted him the full story: the priest and the transmitter, the doctor who was a counteragent and had been arrested, Michel and the attacks. "Everything's become complicated there."
"Perhaps," he continued as if I had not said anything, "you know only part of the truth. Maybe you ought to trust us..."
"How can I trust you? What do you know about what's happening there, anyway?"
"Everything."
"That's impossible."
"For example," his face had again lost its expression, "the day you began to make your bomb..."
Scheckler? The man with the seedy car who had sold me the toaster? Some other, unknown person who had seen me wandering around the village in my search for material to make the detonator?
"I'm sure," he said carefully, "that it is all planned and is going as it should." He intertwined his fingers in an effort to illustrate what he was saying. "You are also essential for the overall plan."
"How?" I bent forward, thrusting on him all the apprehension aroused by the old man. "How do I fit in, when two months ago I was superfluous? What have I now that makes me so essential?"
The world beyond the large windows was becoming rapidly darker, and he turned on the desk lamp.
"You are too experienced to ask questions like that. You're supposed to know that sometimes plans are secret..."
"Secret?" I sneered. "You forget that I'm experienced. I can smell secrets which aren't really secret, which are just a certain unpleasantness or a tradition that has hardened with age..."
Unconcerned, he looked at his watch. "Do you have a car?"
I stood up and faced him. "I'll walk..."
“Take a few days off," he said ungenerously, "and come in on Wednesday, first thing in the morning. We'll fix you a ride."
"I'm not sure," I went to the door.
"I'm sure you'll know what's best for you."
I went out and walked along the dark, empty streets for two hours. Several times I stopped and looked round. Traffic lights, letter-boxes and low trees took on the form of human figures. Through the windows of almost every house I saw the flickering blue lights, and heard the uniform voice of the newscaster announcing victories and the chance of even greater ones. On the paving stones my heels had a double echo. Was it the sound of another person's footsteps? Was someone following me? No, I was not important, nor dangerous or unpredictable enough. Only in Dura had those qualities been attributed to me.
***
The next morning, after a sleepless night in which I heard the rustlings of imaginary people in the garden, the house emptied early. Empty. Hanna took Jonathan first, with a large bag and his racket, then returned for me.
"I understand you're perfectly satisfied in that armchair," she said, "but after all you did promise to watch Jonathan play..." As I
got into the car she added, "How would he ever have turned out if I hadn't been there..."
I glanced into the side-view mirror. There were no cars following. The road in front was empty too. Jonathan was waiting at the entrance to the car park of the club. One of his socks had fallen around his ankle. The look in his eyes, which met mine for a moment, was forlorn and apprehensive. Hannah took his arm, spoke to him gently and led him to the registration table.
Circus music blared from a loudspeaker. A card bearing the name of Jonathan's opponent, the number of the game and the court allotted to him was hung around his neck. He sat down on a stone bench, behind a fence, and pulled up his socks. Hannah and I went up the iron steps of the stand. I was sweating. Sporting occasions have always been something of a torment for me.
I looked out beyond the club fence. On a hill that extended along the highway, an old man was walking alongside a boy of about ten. The man pressed a football against his ribs. Under the other arm was a folded newspaper. He stopped at a patch of open ground, spread one of the pages of the newspaper over it and kicked the ball far away. The boy ran after it and the man was left alone. Now he sat down, spread the rest of the paper across his knees, and began to read. Part of my consciousness was with him, another part with the boy, who was disappearing along the road. On the court the game began. The white ball flew back and forth, like a dove seeking a way out. Hannah gripped my arm, talking to me enthusiastically. "Did you see how your son plays? How powerfully he hits the ball...?"
But I was looking at the boy, who was now waving at the passing cars, and at the man, who got up and walked to the edge of the slope. He shaded his eyes and looked over at us, the people in the stands. I could almost feel his eyes as he scanned my face. He was no more real than the delusions of my night. Still, I turned my face away to make it more difficult to identify me. The people around me were cheering. They looked well cared for, well fed and well rested. I felt something else, an easily-identified outsider. How had they all managed to be included in the magic while I remained outside? Hannah rose. Her keys fell on the concrete floor. Several pairs of hands reached out to pick them up and hand them to her. She thanked them all jubilantly and quickly climbed down between the rows. Jonathan stood in the middle of the court, near a table, which had been decorated with the national flag and laden with cups. I too stood up and advanced along the row. The man on the other side of the fence let his paper fall, stood up and called the boy. I could see his hands. Why had they not equipped him with binoculars? A slight breeze began to blow, wafting in the scent of botanical abundance from afar. The loudspeakers called "Simon," but they meant Jonathan. I was grateful to Hannah for being there with him, on the court, her ability to hope and demand and fear the right things.
"Your son has a great future," said a man wearing sunglasses who suddenly appeared in front of me. I slipped away. Others came and shook my hand. Suddenly I was in the center of things, accepting praise and affection simply by virtue of that night in Africa when I had become a father.
"Excuse me," I mumbled and pushed my way forward. "Excuse me."
On my way to the exit Hannah approached. She was walking across the grass, one arm holding Jonathan with that way she had - half amused, half imprisoning - of embracing his waist. Her other arm was around a slender girl whose long hair was tied up at the top of her head.
"Meet your son's girlfriend..." The girl gave me a cautious look, tinged with calculated coquetry. Hannah looked at her approvingly. "Now we'll have lunch, all of us together," she said, latching herself onto my arm.
"I've got to go," I said in alarm. It was all heading towards some impromptu festivity. From a nearly restaurant that resembled a hunting cabin, laden plates flowed towards tables set up on the grass. Loudspeakers played marching music. Hannah looked me, plea in her eyes.
"Sit here with me. I know you're bored, but if you join me now I'll be able to sit with other people all those other Saturdays..."
The tension inside was becoming unbearable. I could pretend no longer. "I can't," I murmured.
"Please, do it for me..." she pleaded in that whiney spoiled-child voice she kept for occasions of this kind.
"Not this time. I have a problem..."
"What kind of problem can keep you from sitting here for a while?" She suddenly smiled and waved over my shoulder, to a new group approaching. I turned and pushed past the flow of hungry families. Along the club fence I found an emergency exit. I opened a bolt and went out.
I ran for a while along the highway, enjoying the security and ease that space affords. It was not enough. I climbed the hill which looked onto the club. It looked like the last outpost of a declining society. The restaurant chimneys emitted the smoke from broiling steaks. Beneath one of the stands there was a slight movement. I took a few paces along the ridge and stood in the spot where the man with the boy had left his newspapers. I could see what he had been watching. In the narrow gap between the columns supporting the stands and the fence some young girls were lying on tanning mats, side by side, bikinis undone, their breasts exposed to the sun. I bent down behind a bush, ashamed at my own excitement. After a moment I crouched away. At the road I took my shoes off and forced myself to walk quickly on the burning asphalt.
On the street in front of our house nothing looked out of the ordinary. Inside too, was the usual dimness and cloud of autumnal heat. Detached and disappointed, I wandered from one room to another. In the kitchen I lit the gas beneath the coffee pot. A moment later I turned it off. A record sat on the phonograph player in the living room. I put the needle on and sank into the green armchair, my bed for the past two nights. The sound of an accordion filled the room, a French song of the boulevards I had long forgotten, full of charm and double-entendre. How had Hannah come to it?
For a moment I hoped that all my fears had been groundless and were the first installment of the price that every liar pays: the loss of trusting others. Perhaps the Head had been right, I was not patient enough. One had to invest in people, give credit to their ability to develop and dispel doubts. Wasn't the simple music coming from Hannah's phonograph her reply to my suspicions of her insensitivity, artificiality and trickery? And Scheckler, was he nothing more than what I saw in him. And the priest? Yvonne? Michel? The Head?
A different and contrasting role could be described for each of the characters in my story, but the real mystery was my role. Of one thing I was sure, it went far beyond the declared position of explosives expert supposed to create a provocation in a tiny border village. There was something else, obscure. I remembered the way the Head had intertwined his fingers, defining me as, "essential for the general scheme." His fingers had expressed entrapment rather than unification. Suddenly, Dura was not only representative of amazingly interconnected events, but also part of a scheme. I got up and peered agitatedly out of the window. I knew the shadows I had seen were unreal. But at the same time I realized that they were signals of a deep, inner realization which was now formulating itself in my mind: they are going to put the blame on me.
I could see the whole scenario. Intentionally or not, something had happened to Anton Khamis which was more terrible and strange than anything that could happen in war. Someone had taken care to keep me for the time when this would have to be explained. I would be the person who had had the tools, the opportunity and the motive: I had arrested him, I had taken the letter and had visited the woman who lived with him. I went rapidly over how I had played into their hands. I had no receipt from the detention camp, I had lied to Yvonne. There were my visits to the priest and even the incident of the blind girl in the cellar, which could indicate my aggressive tendencies.
Overcome by the injustice of it all, I moved towards the telephone, to contact the Head, or to call a taxi and go to the old man. The memory of my last conversations with each of them cooled me down. The Head, to the extent that he was involved, would not retreat from his plans. My father-in-law could do nothing. His only advice had been to keep my eyes ope
n and react with agility.
A wave of lassitude swept me back to the armchair. What should I look out for? What should I beware of? How could I be agile? If I could dislodge even one of the components in the tight web which had been woven around me, find someone who had seen Anton Khamis at the detention camp and would agree to testify, lay my hands on the original arrest warrant, find the medical file, the clothes he had been wearing or something else which had not been through the perverted, distorting prism of Dura.
The accordion fell silent.
"Hallo, Paul," a woman's voice said in French above my head.
I jumped up.
"Hallo, Eugenie," a man's voice answered from the other loudspeaker. "Shall we begin the lesson?"
"Let's begin," Eugenie said. I sat down again. Paul asked, "Do you live in Paris?"
Eugenie replied, "Of course, in my old flat in Boulevard Saint Germaine."
Paul laughed. "I had to move to Boulogne. The prices there are cheaper..."
"In that case," Eugenie declaimed, "I'll send you a postcard."
"A postcard is a good idea," Paul said. "And you can also phone..."
How had I failed to think of it before? I hurried to Hannah's bedroom. The phone lay in the middle of the bed. I dialed: first the international code, then the dialing code for France, for Paris, and finally the phone number of my flat there.
It rang once, twice, three times, four times. I tried to reconstruct the time needed to get to the phone from the furthest point in the flat. Seven, eight, nine rings. No answer. When I put my hand out to hang up the receiver was lifted and someone said, "Hallo, oui?"
"Monsieur," I began, "you don't know me. I'm the previous tenant."
"What?"
"I lived in your flat before you."
"I don't live here. I'm the painter."
"Can you call the concierge?"
"Who?"
"Madame Joubert, the concierge."
"Will you wait?"
"I'll wait," I promised impatiently.
The Rainy Day Man: Contemporary Romance Page 18
