by Ward Just
A breeze came up from the south. Heavy snow was predicted in the morning, road closures expected, a three- or four-day blow, locking-in time. He had nothing of a practical nature to worry about; the pantry was full and he had plenty of firewood. At least he would have no visitors and that was a relief. If he craved company he could ski into St. Michel du Valcabrère, two hours to get there, half that to get back, but he was not certain he had the energy for crosscountry. He knew he had to learn to live alone, depend on his own resources after he had had time to "adjust." He knew also that the way ahead was hard, the odds stacked against, and so he must look beyond the present moment, beyond the slick surface to the deep chaotic structure of things, the vision of a man of faith, and not necessarily religious faith. Political faith would serve. Thomas had known a Spanish communist—"the Spaniard," called Francisco—who had an unshakable faith in the revolution despite its many difficulties and contradictions, among them injustice, cruelty, corruption, and a willful obscurantism. The Spaniard brushed them aside as the faults of men—he called them the iron-teeth, Stalin, Mao, Gomulka, and their many accomplices and acolytes—and had to be seen as such. The revolution itself was pure and only awaited a savior, a philosopher-mensch. You'll see, Thomas. It's only a matter of time.
We await our General Washington, he said.
Of course our Washington will not be a general. Nor a slave master. Nor an aristo. Our Washington will be a man of the people.
He will have wooden teeth, Francisco said.
And what do you believe in, Thomas?
I believe in a pure brushstroke.
Ah, but that is not justice. It will not clothe the poor or feed the hungry. Your pure brushstroke, bourgeois decadence. Bad symbolism.
No, Francisco. Sometimes a pure brushstroke is only a pure brushstroke.
The Spaniard laughed in high good humor.
Thomas turned his back to the mountain, noticing that the moonlight had vanished, clouds gathering to the south. Bad light tomorrow for painting but he had no good ideas anyhow. When you were drained of emotion, you were drained of ideas also. Your memories were less vivid because your imagination had gone AWOL. You lived in the half-light of dusk or the crack of dawn when it seemed time could go either way. On the easel was the half-finished portrait of the patron of the café, old Bardèche's heavy arms resting on the zinc bar, an expression of—he supposed the expression was one of suspicion. Thomas had made the sketches one afternoon in September, sitting at his usual table near the pinball machine. He was waiting for Florette and making sketches while he watched the bar action. The patron moved with circumspection, as if he had all the time in the world and his customers had all the time in the world also. His hands were so big the glasses seemed to disappear into them and when he placed them on the bar the effect was of a rabbit pulled from a hat. Old Bardèche habitually wore a years-old white cardigan sweater with leather patches at the elbows, a Florette. His café reminded Thomas of the Spanish communist's utopian state. However disagreeable or uncooperative his customers became, the café itself was sublime, an oasis of conformity and democratic socialism; things never got too unruly because there were laws strictly enforced. With old Bardèche behind the bar and his hatchet-faced wife, Agnès, supervising the caisse, a superior authoritarian order prevailed. In fact, the café did not serve the customers. The customers served the café. That was what made the behavior of the American tourists so shocking, the blind man seeming to instigate a counterrevolution. The Americans came from a world far distant from the café, an aggressive democratic world where rights had pride of place, including the right to spit in anyone's eye. Thomas thought often of the Americans when he worked on old Bardèche's portrait. He was certain the patron would be pleased with it and ecstatic when he presented it to him as a gift. He might even stand Thomas a lager on the house. Two, if he was feeling generous.
Fat snowflakes began to fall, tumbling in slow motion. The patterns of the snow in the air suggested faces and Thomas was convinced he was looking at the men who had harmed Florette; and then the apparitions vanished as the wind disturbed the snowfall. What was owed the dead? And when he discharged his debt, what was his reward? Thomas was unable to think it through, his spirit so crowded with the events of the week and his own fathomless distress. One day bled into another and here he was, alone at last on a Sunday evening discovering faces in the snow. Thomas could not see his way forward because he was empty of feeling and that was why his life would become difficult. Always in the past he had managed to submerge himself in work, slip comfortably between the paint and the canvas; that was how he got on, one day to the next. Certainly he could gain time by returning to old Bardèche's portrait, a neutral subject, and then he recalled that he had given the old man Florette's eyes, their slant and glitter and the wrinkles at the corners, a suggestion of mischief. Wasn't there every possibility that her eyes would draw him into some kind of reconciliation, meaning a way of finding his new place in the world? Thomas did not know what was required of him and if Bernhard's monstrous suggestion turned out to be true, what then? Bernhard in his zeal to find coherence where there was no coherence made life intolerable; that, and his insistence on worst-case wagers. Thomas knew in his heart that Florette had met with misfortune, a misadventure, some combination of the two, wrong time, wrong place.
He had always thought of his odd jobs as a lark, some jobs more larkish than others, but definitely the small change of espionage. His work was such a solitary business that he often felt the urge to break out, as a bank teller might take up polo or high-stakes poker, anything to escape the routine, something with the potential of danger, an experience useful in the studio—in other words, a second life hidden from the first life. Of course you were an impostor fashioning a bogus alternate destiny but there was something exhilarating about it, pulling on a false face and stepping into the unknown. And in his own case it would be a fulfillment of all those civics lessons at the grade school in LaBarre, the class that was the first of the day, the one that met after the Pledge of Allegiance. When your job was done you returned to your solitary business.
They were having drinks at a hotel bar in Paris, Bernhard and Russ having returned from unspecified business somewhere south. The times were fraught. Nixon was president.
You could help us out, Thomas. We can use your help.
There's a man we'd like you to meet.
We'd like to know more about him. What he does, who he sees, how he lives. When he's home and when he's away, dates and times. Nice fellow, harmless.
You have a way in, Thomas. He's an art collector. Fine collection, we're told.
Also, he likes portraits. Portraits of himself. Picasso did one. Braque did another.
We can arrange a commission, Thomas. He pays top dollar, by the way.
And he knows your work. Admires it.
That's all you need to know. Keep your eyes open, make his portrait.
Befriend the poor bastard. He doesn't have many friends, except a few we'd like to know more about. It's a bagatelle, Bernhard said.
A lark, Thomas said.
If you like, Bernhard said.
In the early days they had given him a revolver, a snub-nosed Smith & Wesson .32, all the while assuring him that he would never have occasion to use it, though they sent him to an instructor to learn how. The work he would be asked to do was not intended to bring him into that sort of danger but the book said to take every precaution. When Thomas tried to refuse the gun, they said, No, no, the world was never ideal or predictable. The world was untidy and one could never predict what might happen. A man had an obligation to protect himself against the unforeseen. As soon as he decently could, Thomas disposed of the gun, dropped it off the Pont Neuf late one night. And soon enough Bernhard arrived unannounced with a heavy coffee table fabricated in Grand Rapids, the table ingeniously equipped with compartments that opened at the touch of a button that operated a hidden spring. Inside one compartment were half a dozen passport
s in half a dozen names from half a dozen countries. A second contained currency, American dollars, British pounds, Swiss francs. A third had room for legal-sized files. A fourth had precision fittings for the Smith & Wesson, and Bernhard snapped one into place—since, he said, I understand you lost the original.
I didn't lose it. I threw it away.
I know, Thomas. I know. Don't do it again.
Why do I need all this gear?
We take care of our people. We let them know they're valued.
I'm not your people, Thomas said. I have no need for this stuff.
You never know, Thomas.
And by the way, Bernhard went on, you have a commission with our friend. He expects you tomorrow, ten sharp.
Russ said, This is important, Thomas. Our art collector has some extremely interesting friends. It's the friends we want, not him. Our art collector wants the gift of friendship but he's a naif. You'll like him.
Thomas laughed out loud at the presumption of it but Bernhard only smiled and turned his attention to the table, of which he was tremendously proud. American cabinetmakers had not lost their old-world skills. You had only to give them the specs and pay in advance. The Grand Rapids table was still in Thomas's possession, the currency long since spent, the passports returned to the embassy, the revolver to Bernhard. The Grand Rapids table was ungainly, graceless, the dimensions off-kilter, built to survive an earthquake or a firebomb. Florette wanted to get rid of it but Thomas refused. He told her the table had sentimental value and then he put it in his studio where she wouldn't have to look at it. He was often tempted to show the compartments to Granger, who had an appreciation of artifacts of dubious provenance, but he never did. He never spoke to Granger or anyone else about his odd jobs; that was part of the contract. Granger, accustomed to shadows, accustomed to living with contradiction and ambiguity—familiar with false faces, familiar with flight, familiar with altered biography, vastly disciplined—would propose, not a solution to the problem, but a way to think about the problem.
The world is too much with you, Thomas. Step back. Take stock.
Never discount the value of negligence.
Find out what they want you to do. Then do the opposite.
You want a kiss shot. Just brush the ball into the side pocket.
Something along those lines, Thomas thought.
The snow was steadier now, falling in bunches, flakes the size of marbles falling from a hidden sky. By morning the valley would be covered and he would be locked in whether he wanted to be or not. That was just as well. He had nowhere he wanted to go and if he could not get out, no one could get in; a fair trade. Bernhard and Russ would be boarding their train just about now, stowing their luggage, finding their seats, and departing at once for the bar car, checking their wristwatches en route, calculating the time of arrival in Paris. Surely there would be time for a nightcap somewhere in Montparnasse, and in the morning Bernhard could move on to London and begin his "inquiries." They disliked the countryside and provincial life generally. The pace was too slow, the days predictable, nothing to do and winter coming on. From the look of things, winter had arrived, sooner than usual. How can you stand it there? What will you do all day long? It's unhealthy to spend so much time alone, a situation that gives rise to morbid thoughts.
The wind came up again, the snow swirling, eddying like a river current. There was warmth inside the house but Thomas did not move, remaining on the threshold for many minutes, the sticks of wood in his arms, imagining the train gathering speed as it left the terminal at Toulouse.
Au revoir, gentlemen.
Mind your own business.
Thomas shivered in the cold, shivered as Florette must have shivered. Had she anything to say to her captors? At the end she would not have been capable of conversation. She would be with herself. Perhaps a prayer, not spoken but thought, a wish that someone would arrive with help. She was slowly freezing to death. Her thoughts would come to her piecemeal and in slow motion. The thought was unbearable. Thomas looked through the window into his living room, Florette's portrait over the fireplace, Granger's on the long wall, Piaf near the dining room table. A room of comfort and good cheer, the sense of one conversation just ended and another about to begin. He decided to follow Bernhard and Russ's example and walk to the bar car. He opened the front door but still did not step through it. He shivered, considering vengeance and the satisfaction it would bring dear Florette. Dr. Picot had said she was surely unconscious at the end so would not have felt the knife's blade. But Dr. Picot had also said that Florette was strong as an ox, which she was not. Thomas watched the snow tumble, wishing he were twenty years younger, when he had a young man's certainty and a young man's energy and guile and love of the game, avid for adventure. He wished he had led a different sort of life.
Lebenslüge
THE WIND BLEW every which way all night, carrying with it a foot of snow. Thomas slept fitfully, ill at ease in the howling wind. He slept, woke, and slept again. The old house creaked and time and again he thought he heard footsteps. He rose at dawn, awakened by a frightening dream, lost to him almost at once. What he remembered was a cell-like room with a low ceiling and bone-white walls. He lay quietly trying to reconstruct the dream while outside the wind howled and snow flew at the windows. Finally he pulled on his bathrobe and went downstairs to brew a pot of espresso, feeling all this time like an imprisoned sleepwalker. He stood dumbly for a while looking out the window at the blowing snow, colorless in iron-gray light. He drank one cup of sugared espresso after another, trying to bring himself into present time, wondering which chores to tackle and in what order. They had no obvious precedence and they were all disagreeable. The frightening dream was still a shadow on his spirit. He supposed the cell had to do with his snowed-in state. And then he remembered his portrait of Francisco, the Spanish communist, made in the old man's one-room adobe in the mountains west of Granada, at that time a sparsely populated region. The walls were whitewashed inside and out and the room itself was austerely furnished: a bed, a dresser, a table with two ladderback chairs, and a three-shelf bookcase. He owned a beautiful edition of Cervantes's works. Thomas drew the Spaniard seated before a narrow window that gave onto a field but the sun's glare was such that the field was obscured. The old man was a great subject, his heavy pockmarked face speaking of an outdoor life; inside, he would always be the ugliest man in the room and the one you were drawn to. Francisco was on the run from the authorities, suspected of complicity in the assassination of a captain of the Guardia Civil. His other crimes dated back many years but they were not specified, except they were known to be political. Bernhard had said, Paint his picture, talk to him, find out what's on his mind and what he sees in his future, if he sees anything. And when you have the chance, tell him he ought to change locations. He's not safe where he is.
He's a good man with a mother lode of information.
What he doesn't know about the movement isn't worth knowing.
His politics aren't worth dick. But he shouldn't have to rot in a Spanish jail before they give him the noose or a firing squad.
Some question, by the way, whether Francisco was involved in the Guardia Civil hit. We think he wasn't. Franco's people think he was.
Do your best, Bernhard said. Do him a favor, and us, too.
All afternoon as the sunlight moved across the tile floor the Spaniard talked of his admiration for the poet Baudelaire. Baudelaire of the lower depths, Baudelaire's passion, the ecstasy of creation, the ecstasy of liberation from the bourgeois corset. It was necessary for a man to live with excess. Live with it, die from it. Paris was central to Baudelaire's ambition, Paris the living heart of the revolution, where the masses took to the streets as a matter of civic responsibility. Paris was a pillar of fire. How lucky the French were to have Paris! By contrast, the Spanish had only Madrid, a gray city lacking spirit, a dull provincial city of government like Brussels, Basel, and Washington. Thomas tried to give Francisco instructions; perhaps i
f he could be quiet a moment, the artist might see his face in repose. But the Spaniard plunged on, heedless. Madrid had no imagination. The civil war had seen to that. The war had ended thirty years before but the wounds still bled. The defeat was complete, and so, in the fullness of time, Catalonia would secede and the capital of the Iberian Peninsula would be Barcelona. Barcelona would lead a renaissance free of Spain. The Spanish people were terrified of what they were capable of, and so they became like oxen—ponderous, looking neither to the left nor to the right, putting one thick hoof in front of another. They are a disenchanted people.
The war changed them forever.
The Spaniard went on and on in an ecstasy of his own, moving from French to Spanish to English and back again, depending on the aria. And Thomas, caught up in the old man's imagination, painted faster and faster in bold, slashing strokes, thinking of himself as an orchestra conductor, the Spaniard's face a brilliant score of nineteenth-century music. Halfway through he put away his brush and applied paint with a palette knife, the oils as heavy as the Spaniard's burdens, his suspicion, his fear, his many disappointments, his ambition, his morbid love of the idea of Spain. Thomas finished the portrait as dusk fell and the blade of sunlight ceased its slow transit across the tiles. He knew at once that the portrait was finished and stood looking back and forth at it and at the Spaniard until the man and the portrait seemed to merge. The old man did not notice, so complete was his concentration, talking compulsively of the Spanish people, the urban masses and the campesinos, so divided, so wary, a family torn to pieces, afraid to speak. The Spanish people had a split personality animated by opposing furies. They would never be reconciled in this generation or the next. The fascist army and the bastard priests would divide and conquer as they always had and the nation would remain outside the reach of the revolution. The Pyrenees were a barrier as vast as any ocean. Yet the struggle would continue underground, one corpse at a time. It is my life, the Spaniard said. Poor Spain.
