mobility.
When I reported for duty at one of my usual locations one night the
proprietor told me not to strip for action, but to hie myself around the corner to
rue Houdon and make myself known to the operator of La Maison Chouchoute
there. To Chouchoute herself. She might have a steady job for me, papers or no
papers.
As I instantly understood on entering the premises, Chouchoute’s was
hardly one of your fancy places, but was, in the local parlance, une maison
d’abattage. A cut-rate whorehouse made for quickies. And, judging from the
attendance in the waiting room, highly prosperous.
I was ushered into Madame’s private quarters on the top floor where she
was getting dressed for the evening, and, in the process, unselfconsciously
showing a great deal of her stout self. She looked me over with the eye of a
moray eel. “I’ve heard about you. Hard-working, mannerly, tends to keep his
mouth shut, they said. Doesn’t seem to be a boozer. True?”
“Yes, Madame.”
“Then what’s the catch? Le noir? Le blanc? Chnouf?
40
Hash? Cocaine? Heroin? “No, Madame.” I rolled up my sleeves to
demonstrate the absence of needlemarks. “Only a joint now and then, when
one can be had.”
“We’ll soon find out.” While she talked she was wrestling herself into a
bulky corset. She turned her broad back to me. “Here, lace it up tight. Put those
muscles into it.” She held her belly in while I laced as tight as I could, sure
that as soon as she took her first deep breath the whole contraption would
explode in my face. Against all laws of science, it didn’t. “Good,” said
Madame. “All right, you can try out as handyman here, starting with the
kitchen. The chef is useless when he’s more than half drunk, so see he’s never
more than half drunk. And clean up that filthy kitchen of his once and for all
and see that it stays clean. Same for the rest of the place, top to bottom. And
tend the furnace. Is that enough to keep you out of mischief?”
“Yes, Madame.”
“Not quite. Because sometimes a customer here gets the idea he’s a real
tiger. When that happens your job is to restrain him without damaging him
seriously. Think you can do it?”
“Yes, Madame.”
“I hope so. An honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay, that’s what I
expect of you. And let me inform you, citizen, I’m no one to be trifled with.”
That was probably the most gratuitous piece of information I had ever
been offered in my life.
41
Earn while you learn.
Not only did the job guarantee survival, but the more I came to know
Chouchoute, the more I was convinced that if anyone could help me lay hands
on a forged passport, Madame was it.
So to win her stony heart I gave my duties all the devotion Cousin Jean
Lespere from Decazeville was capable of. The duties of scullion, of course, I
had already mastered. My other duties — house cleaner, fumace tender,
assistant chef, corset lacer, sergeant-at-arms, and psychotherapist for a
houseful of manic-depressive, case-hardened females — well, they did offer
challenges now and then.
For example, one learned not to poke too enthusiastically into an ancient
French coal-burning furnace because then the grates immediately collapsed.
And not to keep urging sobriety on a moody Algerian chef because eventually
he would enter his demurrer with a carving knife in hand. And, in providing a
sympathetic ear for the inmates of a place like Chouchoute’s, not to believe a
word any of them spoke, however plausible it sounded. Le noir, le blanc,
chnouf — all the ladies here were either smoking it, sniffing it, or shooting it.
Plausible but spaced out, one and all.
For their part, despite early suspicions that Madame had hired me to be
house stool-pigeon, they finally came around to treating me as a member of the
team. Someone you could confide your many troubles to, knowing he’d cluck
his tongue at the right places. Janot was the nickname they came to tag me
with. Used as an insult, that word can invite a black eye. In my case, it was
used affectionately. On the Boulevard de Clichy, Dopey in Snow White would
be called Janot.
Even Madame took to using that nickname and to confiding her troubles
to me, always winding up the narrative with the phrase, “C’est du bidon,
bébé.” Meaning, in rough translation, that it’s all a snow job, baby. The world
is a great big snow job, and we poor innocents — Madame in the forefront —
are always getting snowed under.
Then traces of springtime appeared in the 18th arrondissement.
Flowerpots appeared on the windowsills along rue Houdon. And on the
Boulevard de Clichy, potential customers stopped to study the pictorial
42
displays before the strip joints instead of scurrying past them, heads sunk in
their collars.
It was time to test Madame’s good will.
I picked that hour for the test when she was usually, if not in a sweet
mood, at least in a neutral one. Noon. Her breakfast hour. She was in bed at
her coffee and croissant and newspaper. She looked at me and put the paper
aside. “Something’s in the wind,” she said.
“Yes. I need a lead to someone who can provide me with a passport. A
false passport that can pass as the real thing.”
There was no suggestion of surprise in that blobby face, not a quiver of
those jowls. “So it’s just as I thought. You’re on the lam, aren’t you?”
“Not as a criminal, Madame.”
“As some species of revolutionary then? Some agent seeking to crawl
out of the underground and make trouble for decent people?”
“No, Madame. Strictly a J’m’en-fichiste.”
“A sensible policy, if you mean it. But why come to me with your
problem?”
“A fair question, Madame. You see, I’ve taken notice that among our
neighborhood clientele there are certain declassé gentlemen — pickpockets,
fences, con men — with whom you are on excellent terms. I believe that one of
them, at your suggestion, might steer me in the right direction.”
Madame shrugged. “Small-time types, Janot. False passports are bigtime.
That means big money is involved.”
“Given time, Madame, I can pay off any money required. A lot of
companies around town are offering good wages to personnel who are fluent
in foreign languages. I’m well qualified for such work. And a few months on
the payroll means I can meet whatever price is set. First, of course, I must
have the passport to get the job.”
Madame’s eyebrows went up. “The passport on credit? Small chance.”
“Why, Madame? Whoever sells it to me has the best possible collateral.
If I miss any payments for it, all he has to do is make an anonymous call to the
Surêté about me.”
Madame sat studying me. “Formidable,” she said at last. “Everything
planned to perfection, isn’t it? Well, I’m a fool. Always too softhearted for my
own good. I'll see what I can do for you.”
43
“Thank you, Madam
e.”
“No thanks yet. Just get back on the job and keep that mouth tight shut
about this.”
If I thought she would act out of sentiment, I would have known better
than to expect results. I had learned at La Maison Chouchoute that, contrary to
all mythology, Madame and every one of her girls without exception had
hearts like cash registers. But that was in my favor now. The passport would
cost plenty, and of that plenty Madame was undoubtedly expecting a fat payoff.
The accuracy of this was proved when I was called to her room a few
days later. “The price of that item you asked about is ten thousand francs,
including my commission,” she said. “But there are a couple of small strings
attached to the deal.”
“How small, Madame?”
“Well, a French passport is out of the question right now. So what you’ll
be getting is the genuine article issued by the Dutch government itself to
someone about your age who had no police record and is now very much dead.
That shouldn’t bother you any. I’ve heard you speak Dutch like a native to
those Eindhoven truckers that drop in here.”
I thought it over. “Are you sure there’s no police record?”
“None. A little correctional time done as a juvenile, but to the police
that kind of thing is a joke.”
“How did he happen to die, Madame?”
“God moves in strange ways, Janot. He died in a boating accident in the
Channel, and there was no use reporting it to the family because there was no
family. He was a war orphan and a street child in Rotterdam. Nor was the
death reported to the authorities, because,” Madame shrugged broadly, “who
knows which authorities have jurisdiction over all that cold water.”
Who indeed?
“All right,” I said, “when and how do I make the arrangements?”
“When is immediately. How is someone else’s business. You’ll meet
with him today and find you’re in for a pleasant surprise. You’ll work off your
ten thousand francs all right, but in just one little job. A pleasant trip
accompanying a young lady who must bring some merchandise from Marseille
to Paris. After that, the passport is yours, free and clear.”
“And the merchandise?” I said. “Chnouf?”
44
“Where would you get such an idea?”
“Marseille means either fish stew or heroin,” I pointed out. “And I can’t
see someone giving me credit for ten thousand francs for transporting a pot of
fish stew across the country.”
“Hardly,” said Madame. She seemed rather pleased by my surmise. She
leaned forward and rapped me gently between the eyes with her coffee spoon.
“Brains. They rattle a little sometime, but they’re all there. Yes, you’ll do very
well for yourself, I think.”
45
Iwould be met at three o’clock
at the far corner of the Place de la Chapelle, Madame said, and all I had to do
was be there on time and make myself visible. At three o’clock I was there. A
sedate black Renault station wagon was also there, very dusty and a little
battered around the edges, and on its side was a large white cross underneath
which was inscribed Les Amis du Bon Évangéliste.
The particular Friend of the Good Evangelist who apparently
chauffeured it was on the sidewalk handing leaflets to unwilling passers-by,
and a sharply pointed evangelical nose she had, perfectly in keeping with that
mousy hair drawn into a tight bun and those sallow features and the
schoolmarm dress inches longer than any other in view. She approached me
and thrust a leaflet at me. When I started to crumple it in my fist she said
between her teeth, “Read it, Monsieur Janot from rue Houdon. The address on
it is not far from here. Wait until I leave.”
I waited until the wagon scooted off, then followed its direction. The
address was on a dreary block, all ruinous buildings, most housing hole-inthe-
wall bistros, but one curtained store front revealed the neatly lettered sign
on the door, Les Amis du Bon Évangéliste. The Renault was parked across the
street from it.
I stepped into the place. A one-time bistro all right, its past now largely
stripped from it. The bar remained, but on it was an array of missionary tracts.
And on the wall behind the bar were posted various messages. No Alcohol
Permitted! And No Smoking Permitted! And that ultimate secret of salvation:
Our Coffee Contains No Caffeine!
Beautiful. All beautiful down to those freshly whitewashed walls, the
glossy linoleum flooring, the half-dozen rows of slat-backed chairs facing a
lectern at the far end of the room, behind which was an upright piano and a
large crucifix. But the most beautifully convincing touch of all was the
occupant of one of those chairs, the sharp-nosed young lady of the leaflets who
sat there, head bowed in deep meditation. I scraped a foot on the floor and she
turned to regard me. Then with a sharp little motion of the head she indicated
the back door of the room. As I pushed open the door and entered the room
beyond, she was right on my heels.
46
I was in a kitchen now put to other use, because aside from the usual
kitchen equipment there were a filing cabinet, a typewriter on a stand, and a
few open cartons of books. And a kitchen table, behind which stood a man
giving me a toothy smile. About thirty-five, with a beefy red face glowing with
good nature, and done up in a tweed suit and white turtleneck sweater, he had
to be anybody’s idea of a born scoutmaster.
“Prettig kennis te maken,” he said jovially, and, taken aback at
encountering Dutch where I had expected French, I hesitated before politely
responding, “Aangenaam met U kennis te maken.”
“Ah, goed.” He nodded approval. “Zeer goed.”
“Pas de ça!” the young lady said sharply. “Speak French.”
The scoutmaster gave me a big wink. “That is Marie-Paule Neyna,” he
informed me, then shifted to fluent French. “From Namur. One of your
Belgians who think those Dutch-speaking countrymen of hers north of Brussels
should either learn to speak French or keep silent.”
“Buffoon,” said Marie-Paule.
“And of course,” her tormentor remarked to me, “no sense of humor at
all. By the way, my name is Kees Baar. A Netherlander, need I say?”
“Jean Lespere,” I said.
“Dear Chouchoute’s Janot. You know, the old biddy thinks very highly
of you. Considering that she views the world through a vinegar bottle, that’s as
glittering a recommendation as you can get. She gave you an idea of what the
deal is, didn’t she?”
“More or less. A Dutch passport in return for helping transport some
merchandise from Marseille to Paris.”
“Right.” He dug into a pocket and came up with a passport which he
tossed on the table. “Here’s the trophy you’re shooting for.”
I carefully examined the passport. Issued to a Jan van Zee in January of
this year, it was the real thing all right. Only one hitch. The photograph in it
bore not the least resemblance to me.
I pointed this out to Kees, and he said
, “No problem. This evening we
hold services here which you’re to attend so you can get the feel of the thing.
That gives you more than enough time to visit a certain photographer on the
Boul’ Magenta and then leave everything to me. Before you’ve even
completed your assignment, the passport will be in perfect order. Incidentally”
47
— he motioned at my paper sack of belongings — “is that your entire
complement of luggage?”
“Yes.”
“Then after you have your pictures taken, stop in at a secondhand shop
along the boulevard there and pick up a cheap suitcase for yourself. Something
suitably drab and Calvinistic. And a wedding ring. Brass will do nicely.”
“A wedding ring?”
“You and Marie-Paule will be partners on this missionary tour, and we
don’t want any eyebrows raised along the way.” He shrugged. “Naturally, no
operation like this can be completely airtight, but we do try to plug any
conceivable pinhole. Of course, the biggest asset is an ability to improvise on
the spot convincingly. In those terms, I think you’re going to make a worthy
member of the team.”
I didn’t like the direction in which he seemed to be aiming. “A member
of the team for one job,” I pointed out. “This job. None other.”
48
Attendance at services that evening was
meager. Besides staff there were only five present, all of them looking like
charter members of La Société des Cousins. The program opened with the
grim-visaged Marie-Paule issuing books to us — from the bulk of it, Le
Recueil Complet d’Hymnes must have been the fattest hymnal ever published
— and this was followed by a doleful singsong, Marie-Paule thumping away
at the piano, the rest of us caterwauling hymns, and was closed by a hellfireand-
brimstone sermon by Kees who, indeed, made a highly convincing
Reverend Davidson. Then Marie-Paule awakened a couple of sleepers,
collected the hymnals, and, after stacking them away with great care, presided
over a buffet of bread and café sans caféine.
At eight-thirty it was all over, and the redeemed departed for their
night’s rest in their chosen doorways or under their favorite bridges. The staff,
or unredeemed, gathered in the kitchen to clean up, and while we were at these
chores Kees said to me, “Starting tomorrow evening, services in Marseille.
The Luxembourg Run Page 5
