77 Rue Paradis

by Gil Brewer

  CHAPTER 11

  The tooth woke him up. He lay there experiencing the pain, and everything rushed back into his mind, out of the deeply bleeding wound of sleep. He swung his feet to the floor, sick with the prospects of a new day. Today would be the real beginning and after a while he would know something about himself. He would know courage and he would know if he could lie to his friend Chevard and get away with it.

  He bought clothes, had one decent suit made up while he waited. Returning to his room, he dressed. He was stiff in every bone. His muscles ached. He could not find the nerve to face a dentist. The swellings on his face had receded, and he looked fit above the collar and tie of his new shirt. He wore an Oxford-gray flannel suit, debated about the felt hat he’d purchased, decided against it, and flipped it onto the rumpled bed. The only comfort he discovered in his wrath of calamity was the clean, roomy sensation of new socks in well-fitting shoes.

  Gorssmann had done something for him. Perhaps Gorssmann had bought him his funeral clothes.

  It was early afternoon already and during the morning he became slowly more and more nervous. He could not wring Bette from his mind. He wanted to search Gorssmann out, see if Bette was all right. He wished Gorssmann would appear at his room. He wondered if he should hang around, waiting for Gorssmann. He knew that if he did, the fat man would not like it. For all Gorssmann had said about taking his time, Baron knew he was meant to get on with the job as quickly as possible.

  He kept recalling Lili. If he could depend on her, if he could trust her, if she were truthful, honest…. If, if, if!

  And all the time he kept forcing to the back of his mind the knowledge that he had to find Chevard and face him and lie.

  He knew he should eat. He could not eat. Twice he went into cafés, twice he walked out with nothing but a double brandy under his belt. On an empty morning stomach, the brandy did not help.

  The enormity of what he had to do was beginning to come through clearly to him. He was a spy, not merely an acting one, not a man posing as a spy—and he was from the wrong camp. One of the few men in the world who believed in him must be used, lied to, his faith undermined.

  Baron knew he had to go through with it. He had no choice. Bette was in danger. There was the chance that neither he nor Bette would be alive when it was all over, even with Gorssmann’s word. Gorssmann’s word was an empty thing; a loud laugh in a wind tunnel. Yet he had to do as he was told.

  Baron left his room, went out onto the street. His first move, since he did not know where Paul Chevard lived, was to find a telephone directory.

  He went into a hotel nearby on Paradis, and found the phone and a battered directory. A moment later his finger prowled beneath the name. Paul Chevard. Baron’s heart began to thud then, because he was this much closer and his nerve had to hold out, only it wasn’t holding out. He stared at the telephone on the wall, with his finger still beneath the name in the directory. Baron reached for the phone. His hand actually touched the cold metal. But his hand leaped away as though the phone were searing hot.

  He stood there in the small telephone alcove, staring down at the battered directory. His hand with the finger pointing to the name was trembling, and beneath the crisp new white shirt, the blue tie, the immaculate gray flannel, he began once again to perspire and to shrink.

  It’s duty to yourself, he thought. To your daughter and perhaps even to that girl Lili. You’ve got to go ahead with it. Chevard himself would do the same, you know he would.

  He leaned partially back against the wall of the alcove, and his tooth throbbed and throbbed in his head. How could it suddenly mean this much? Did it take this for a man to find out what he was made of? Was this the crisis in life?

  Think, he told himself. Remember why you are in France. Remember back through those days, months, years—back to when it began. Who helped you? What did you decide?

  And thinking this way, he felt a lessening of fear, a sharper patience, the possibility of victory. You want that man, he thought. That man who sits someplace, waiting. The man who ruined you and caused all of this in the first place. Think back, he told himself. Remember how it would be now if that man had not done as he did.

  But he did and you swore an oath to yourself, he thought.

  You’re getting melodramatic, he thought. Get off it. Think straight and reason it out. Don’t dicker with the consequences now. All that matters is the first move, then the next, and the next. Call Chevard, go see him, get it over with. You’ve got to!

  Exuberance gripped him. He reached for the phone, took the receiver, heard the whistling whine of the wire as he placed the instrument to his ear. He glanced down at the directory, but his finger had slipped from Chevard’s name. The operator was questioning loudly, emphatically. He searched almost frantically for Chevard’s name. He couldn’t find it. His nerve vanished like sugar poured into the ocean. He slammed the receiver back on its prongs and stood there in the telephone alcove, shattered, perspiring, the sweat trickling down his neck, under his collar. He stared at the directory, turned suddenly, and walked from the hotel.

  He could not do it.

  He turned up Paradis, walking dazedly. A loud voice argued with him in the back of his mind. You’ve got to do it! You can’t back out now! What’s the matter with you? And it was his own voice and his own voice answered back, I can’t do it! Damn you!

  All right. Go get a drink. Think it over. Only don’t take too long, because Bette is here, remember?

  He stopped dead in his tracks there on the street.

  Look, he thought. Look what hangs on a telephone call. Maybe if you got drunk, he thought. Then maybe you would make some sense to yourself. Maybe you would find the nerve you should have, he thought. Maybe it’s courage. Maybe you have no courage, maybe you have nothing. What’s the matter with you? It’s for somebody else. Weigh it, consider it. Is it from a selfish motive that you would put a whole country in jeopardy? Can you do this?

  What is France to you, Baron? What is the world to you?

  And as he thought like this, it became worse and worse. Because it was, in a sense, the world. It had happened before to other men, he knew. If cogs whirred right, if machinery were oiled properly, his making this phone call might very well be the first step toward instigation of war.

  My God, he thought. Get a drink. Get a drink before you blow your fool top.

  It had stopped being personal. He knew this. He was fighting with everything he had to keep it personal. From a purely selfish motive, he might be able to handle it. But when it expanded out of all proportion to his everyday thinking, it was beyond him. He could not deal with it. He had never been meant to deal with things of this sort. Gorssmann had said, “You are the man.”

  He walked swiftly now toward the Cannebière. He wanted to shy away from it. Because it wasn’t for him, it had not been meant for him.

  But it is you, he thought. You are the man walking down this street with this problem and you have to deal with it. Don’t be spineless. At least face it. For God’s sake, I am sick to death of you.

  He turned the corner onto the Cannebière and walked into the first café at hand. It was a large place, with tables and chairs on the sidewalk, a large dining area, and a long zinc bar. He made for the bar. He almost ran.

  “Cognac,” he said.

  The bartender eyed him wisely, raised his eyebrows, and reached behind him for the green bottle.

  The first glass went down, the second, the third, the fourth, all in rapid succession, with the bartender standing there smiling pleasantly and pouring, then frowning and pouring, then hesitating.

  “Pardon, monsieur.”

  They stared at each other. Baron flipped his roll of francs onto the bar, peeled off a thousand-franc note, and pushed it at the barman.

  The barman smiled ingratiatingly. He reached behind him, under the shelf, and brought out a large brandy glass. He filled it brimming, until some of the brandy dribbled over the sides onto the zinc, carelessly. Baro
n liked the way the man poured the brandy. That was the way all brandy should be poured. Carelessly. He drank the entire glassful, gulping it, swallowing it like water, and motioned for the man to refill it.

  Now, he thought. Now turn and run to the nearest phone. Quickly. You’ll be able to do it now. You know you will. King Brandy has come to the rescue. Good King Brandy. It will be easy now, won’t it?

  “Perhaps something to eat, monsieur?” the barman said.

  “No.”

  It was very early in the afternoon and the café was nearly empty. He stood alone at the bar. He felt the maggots begin their crawling in his blood now. He felt the pressure, the good pressure inside his head, the release and the relief. Bette was all right. Wasn’t she?

  And thinking of Bette, he leaned against the bar and drank from the glass, thinking and knowing that he had already passed the point where he could have made the telephone call. It had been but a minute ago and now it was miles behind him.

  “Encore, monsieur?”

  He nodded at the barman. The barman had not moved. He stood there with the bottle in his hand. Then he turned and opened a fresh bottle of cognac, grinned at Baron, and set it before him and walked away.

  Baron leaned against the bar and quietly filled his own glass, letting it overflow and stream across the bar. He reached for the glass, started to raise it to his lips, and realized suddenly that he was drunk. He set the glass down and stared at it, watching it closely.

  The brandy rose in his throat, turned over neatly, and settled, and he was quite drunk. He stood there and watched his glass and thoughts coursed through his mind like steel plates on a greased slide so that when he sought to grasp them and hold onto them, they slipped away and new ones took their place. It was simple and good and he was thoroughly drunk and nothing mattered.

  Only in the back of his mind something did matter. He turned sharply away from the bar and walked out onto the street.

  The sun was hot on the Cannebière. People streamed past in a blur of bright wandering imprints, flashing across his mind, and vanishing. The bright-skirted, flashing-eyed women. The flashing-eyed, bright-skirted women. The flashing-skirted, bright-eyed women.

  He turned right off the Cannebière, walking swiftly. There was something he had to do. He knew there was something he had to do and as he walked rapidly along the slowly slanting sidewalk, rising smoothly beneath the elms, he remembered the telephone call and Chevard and then forgot and then remembered again in a haze of forgetting to remember, and remembering to forget.

  Music soared, cascading against his ears like wet fountains of bright-slamming sound, bright and vivid and sparkling and dull, all at once, and he leaned on this sudden bar, staring, and somewhere off to his right in the dim fog of music and talking and laughter a woman sang and glasses clinked and he heard the loud pop of a cork. The wine.

  He fumbled at the glass before him, trying to remember and fighting to forget.

  “Chéri?”

  He turned and she left, whoever she was. Whoever she was, he was too drunk for her, whoever she was. Her hips moved beneath the shimmering black skirt, like a tight taunt. He stood there recalling the redness of her mouth as she said the word, the dark conspiring light in her eyes. He turned back to the bar, watching the glass closely, and was surprised to see it was empty. He ordered again, ordering through the music that washed down over his shoulders, remembering Paul Chevard through the fog, thinking about Paul Chevard and of how long he had known him and knowing what he had to do.

  On the street, walking, in the cool shade of night, he felt the wind that came down the street washing coolly against him, washing away the sound of the music, the pound and throb of it, and walking with him was the strong odor of cognac, like a laughing wrath. His wrath, his madness, his bitter grapes. Cultivate your vineyard, he thought. And the streets echoed to the pound of his hurrying heels, and he was out of breath standing against still another bar in the orange-colored night amid new music like the lilt of burlesque bounding, tightly insinuating a thousand pedigreed sounds and pictures, shoving the elbows that prodded him at the bar, thinking in direct hopelessness against the laughter and the talk and the laughter and the beat-beat-beat of the music.

  “Monsieur?”

  “Cognac.”

  Splash.

  «Encore?»

  «Oui.»

  «Upstairs, monsieur?»

  «No, go away.»

  “Autre cognac?”

  “Oui.”

  Splash.

  He looked away from the bar at the suddenly naked woman over there through the fog between the heads and the tinkling tables, beyond the throbbing glare of red music, at the woman with the billy goat on the stage.

  Good Lord!

  He ordered another cognac, suddenly sober in the turgid scarlet interim of drunkenness.

  They shouted out there amid the tables and the wild sound. They shouted for the billy goat. They shouted for the girl. They shouted and screamed for the both of them and everything went silent and he stood there listening to the slow, pulsing, whispering beat-beat-beat of the music, hearing them watching in the scarlet darkness and the whispering shriek of le jazz hot, the night, the patiently squealing night, and the slow, self-conscious laughter breaking like waves across the tables without applause, only laughter, the crazy press roll of the snare, the mad four-four steady rocking, and the sudden awakening of the waiters with fresh drinks.

  He was reeling now in the shade of the moon beside a canal, the cement wall close beside him, dragging like sandpaper against his hand, still on his feet, still fighting the remembering.

  He had met Paul Chevard during the war, long before any of the trouble, when he was in France. Paul had been in the air industry, even then, coming to it through his father. He had met Paul’s mother and Paul’s wife. He had lived at Paul’s home in Paris. Later, Chevard had come to America to visit him, bringing along his wife and daughter. He wanted to see Baron’s factories. And then during the Korean war, during the big mess, during the trials, Paul had written him that he must endure. If there was anything he could do he would do it, and at least he had friends who believed. In Europe, Chevard said, these things were of common occurrence, not so much importance was attached to them. They tried to free the seemingly guilty. They did not get excited, because they were used to sabotage. Sabotage.

  He leaned against this new bar. The place was bright white with light. There was no sound. The barman read a newspaper at the far end of the empty bar. Baron staggered over there and read it, too. He read of himself, of Bette. Through a crazy blur of remembering and drunkenness, he read of Bette’s drowning in Florida. Of himself in France. On page three it was, down in the right-hand corner.

  “The paper, monsieur. I was reading it.”

  He hurled the paper at the barman and sprawled against the bar.

  He looked at the woman who leaned over the bed. He was sick, viciously sick. He tried to hold his eyes open, won out, and kept watching the woman. A pretty woman, smiling, but anxious, too.

  “Hello, Frank.”

  Beyond her head sunlight shone across a smooth ceiling and glittered on the glass of a chandelier. He was fully dressed, lying across a bed. He gagged, tried to say something.

  She laughed.

  “Give him a drink,” somebody said. “He needs some hair of the dog.”

  His head ached angrily and he fought his way up on his elbows on the bed. The room whirled, and he sprawled back. He heard the clink of a bottle neck against glass.

  “How did I get here?” he said, listening to his own voice.

  “Through the front door,” Paul Chevard said. He came close to the side of the bed and looked down at Baron. “You burst through the door at three-thirty this morning, Frank. Drunk as a lord. You smashed the lock on the front door.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Here,” the woman said. “Don’t you remember me, Frank?”

  It was Paul Chevard’s wife, Jeanne. She hel
d the glass out toward him and he watched the glass, trying to fight his way up through despair.

  CHAPTER 12

  Paul Chevard laughed.

  “We sent the girl away,” he told Baron.

  Baron looked up at him. They were seated at the breakfast table in the dining room of Chevard’s home. Jeanne was in the kitchen. Baron sipped at his coffee, not wanting to hear this.

  “She was some girl,” Chevard said.

  “What girl?”

  Chevard shrugged, chuckling. “You brought her with you. You said she had an inferiority complex. You insisted you had to cure her of billy goats. She was a good-looking one, all right,” Chevard said, remembering. “An entertainer at some night spot. According to your story, she preferred billy goats to men. You were making strong attempts to teach her differently. She seemed to reciprocate, seemed to like you very much. You had her skirt off when you broke down the door, Frank. Yes, she was something. You insisted that we rent you a room so you could convince her that she was worthy of a man, that a man was better than a billy goat.”

  Jeanne laughed from behind Baron’s chair. He felt the blood push into his shoulders, the sharp embarrassment.

  “You were a picture!” Jeanne said.

  “I must catch her act,” Chevard said.

  “You will not!” Jeanne said. “You saw enough last night.” She rested one hand on Baron’s shoulder. “You know, Frank, Paul really and truly wanted to give you a room. He told me maybe you were right. He said perhaps the poor child was repressed, or something.”

  “All she did was laugh,” Chevard said. “She’s a student at the Sorbonne, studying philosophy. Some philosophy.” Chevard leaned forward across the table. “Listen, Frank, was she really—”

  “Paul!” Jeanne said.

  Baron sat back. He knew they were trying to make him feel better and he thanked them for it, but it did not help.

  He knew what he was here for. He was sick enough without that. In his drunkenness, he had made up his mind, apparently, and worked it out in his own way. He remembered nothing of the girl save the scarlet stage at the night spot itself and flashes of her laughter as she walked skirt-less through the night, her stockinged thighs flashing in the street lights. How long had that gone on? He must have returned to the place and picked her up. They had been in a park someplace because he recalled her lying on the grass with a fountain splashing over there through the trees and she was laughing even then.