Varian shook his head. “All right,” he said. “We won’t talk about it.”
“Good,” Grant said. “I want a coffee, and then I want to see the Roman baths.” He said it decisively, as if that settled everything. “Let me just take a picture of you, and then we’ll go.”
“No! I hate that. You know.”
“Oh, no, you don’t, you vain thing, you just pretend to.”
Varian suffered Grant to set up his tiny camera and take a picture of him sitting on the lowest tier of the amphitheater. He would pore over it later: his expression grave with joy or dread, one eye obscured by the sun glinting off his glasses, his ankles pale and crossed. The curving marble arcs rising behind him like steps of a giant’s villa. Afterward they gathered their few things, cleared their shoes of pebbles, checked their route. On the way to the baths they would pass a delightful café, according to the guidebook; should they stop there for Grant’s coffee? They should, of course; they both needed one. They’d been up half the night. They made their way toward the gate of the fence that surrounded the amphitheater, but before they could walk through, Grant pulled Varian into one of the recesses in the stone. There, in an ancient Roman shadow, they crushed each other against the marble. Here was what he could never have, not with Eileen, not in the arms of young men in the Village, not for money, not in his wild imaginings, of which there were plenty; not even in his dreams, where his mind would tip him back into consciousness the instant his mouth touched Grant’s. How often, he wondered as he held Grant against him and kissed him, if the violent thing they were doing could be called that—how often had he gotten just to the verge of this moment in a dream and woken devastated, as if the night’s disappearance were the original? What might he have done to himself back in college if he knew he’d relive Grant’s departure again and again? And what had he done to deserve its reversal?
A noise startled them: a brown bird tussling with its mate in the dust. They stepped from their niche and went on. Unobserved? They had to hope so.
* * *
________
At the café, unremarkable except for the formidable black-and-gold gryphon of its sign, they sat at a curbside table in the usual woven cane chairs and drank wartime coffee through a fine dense foam of milk. The milk was a rare luxury, the bad coffee a bitter corrective. And now, in case the coffee alone hadn’t brought them back to the awareness that they sat at leisure in a country at war, here came a pair of gendarmes with their hands on their guns, striding up to the café tables to arrest Varian and Grant.
But it was another patron they were after, a bespectacled middle-aged man in a white painter’s shirt and blue neckerchief, sitting at the table beside their own; he was so quiet and still that they hadn’t noticed him until that moment. The man looked up through his glasses—perfectly round lenses framed in heavy tortoiseshell—just in time to see the gendarmes arrive. As they yanked him to his feet and demanded his passport, a newspaper fell from his hand and butterflied on the ground: La Verité Quotidienne, a small left-wing rag written largely by émigrés. The gendarmes, thankfully, did not take note of it. Varian was close enough to capture the paper with his toe and slide it toward his table. The man in the blue neckerchief observed this from the corner of his eye and met Varian’s glance for a moment, understanding him at once to be an ally.
The more senior-looking of the gendarmes, a fat man with a face like a hole-riven bucket, announced that monsieur was under arrest and must therefore pay his bill at once. The bespectacled man shot a look of amused incredulity at Varian and Grant, and at the same moment the waiter arrived, bill in hand, and waited politely for the accused to produce the necessary francs and centimes. The man tipped generously, if the waiter’s bow of gratitude was any indication. And then off they went, the two policemen and their prisoner in his loose white shirt and straw hat. The waiter pocketed his francs and asked Grant and Varian if he could be of service to them; they declined, watching the three men disappearing down one of the streets that led from the public square. And as Varian watched, a certainty began to grow in his mind. That white shirt, those distinctive round glasses, the loosely knotted scarf. And the man’s particular expression, all-knowing, conspiratorial.
“Grant,” he said, getting to his feet, his heart speeding. “I believe that was Lev Zilberman.”
“What? Sit, Varian, please.”
Varian sat. He leaned closer to Grant and spoke under his voice. “If I’m not mistaken, that was Zilberman. Whom Chagall particularly mentioned. The one Alma Werfel talked about in Cerbère.” The one whose daughter, if Alma was to be believed, was involved with Tobias Katznelson.
Grant paled, his hand on Varian’s arm. “You’re sure it’s him?”
“He’s just like his photo from the exhibition catalogues.”
“So now what?”
“We have to follow to wherever they’re taking him. Then we have to get him out. We’ve got to get him to Marseille, to somewhere safe, where he’ll be out of the public eye. I’ve got to telephone Lena immediately.”
“Well!” Grant said. “Heigh-ho. Au revoir, les vacances.” He lifted his gaze to Varian’s and smiled with regret. They had been somewhere together for a while.
* * *
________
The sous-préfecture of Arles made its home in an eighteenth-century former convent in the rue du Cloître, not five minutes’ walk from their hotel. They passed through the arched doorway and into a waiting room floored with echoing pink marble tile; a girl in a blue uniform greeted them there. Would they care to wait in the courtyard while she conveyed their request to Captain Castorel? Did they care for something to drink meanwhile? With flirtatious solicitude, she showed them to the courtyard with its neat groundcover of tiny round pebbles, its original meditative benches, its high aperture at one end, a cross-shaped opening that projected its twin in light upon the stone. Grant and Varian strolled the walkway around the perimeter as generations of nuns must have done. As urgent as their mission was, Varian could not restrain his awareness of Grant’s body, the unclothed self poorly disguised beneath Grant’s linen shirt and trousers. If he could have reached into his own brain and surgically resected that awareness, he would have done so in an instant; it was nothing but a liability now.
Here at last came Captain Castorel, steel-haired, resplendent in some Nazified version of the provincial policeman’s uniform. And how might he be of help? he asked from beneath his military-style mustache. He understood they were interested in the prisoner just taken into custody.
Varian knew at a glance that Castorel would be bribable. Vanity nearly always coincided with that other weakness. “I’m the director of a U.S. relief organization, the Centre Américain de Secours,” he said. “This is my colleague, Mr. Grant.”
Castorel bowed stiffly. “A pleasure,” he said.
“Your prisoner,” Varian began.
“Ah, yes. Monsieur Zilberman. Or perhaps you know him by the name on his false papers: Olivier Simonet. I imagine this is not the only name he’s used. And your name, sir? I don’t believe you mentioned it.”
“Varian Fry.”
A spark of recognition crossed Castorel’s features, and Varian had to wonder for a moment whether his notoriety had reached the countryside. But then Castorel said, smiling to himself, “You’re the young men who rode into town yesterday covered in mud. I saw you from my office window. I didn’t envy you your journey.”
“Bad weather in the Coussouls de Crau,” Varian said.
“It must have been very bad indeed!” He gave a snort of self-pleased laughter. “And what exactly is your business here in Arles? A relief mission?”
“We’re here to see some clients. Our relief operation is based in Marseille.”
Castorel raised an eyebrow, and Varian wondered again what exactly he knew.
“We believe you’ve arre
sted the wrong man,” Grant said now in his limpid and agile French. “We don’t think your prisoner is Monsieur Zilberman at all. We think it must be a case of mistaken identity. We believe him to be Monsieur Grossman, a client of ours. We’d be glad to relieve you of the burden of his care at once.”
Castorel took this in frowningly, adjusting the extremities of his mustache. “That is impossible, messieurs. We’ve been watching Monsieur Zilberman for some time now. He’s been charged with attempting to travel on his false papers. Regrettably, such things have been occurring in France with increasing frequency.”
“You don’t say,” Varian said.
“Oh, yes. Our region is rife with refugees, most of them paperless.”
Grant’s line was risky, but Varian pursued it. “Perhaps you can check the prisoner’s identity papers again. If he turns out to be Monsieur Grossman, we’re keen to help him. He’s got a family of six waiting for him in the States.” He put his hand into the pocket that contained a narrow brass cigarette case, the one Hirschman had instructed him to carry in case he had to make a swift bribe. Castorel followed Varian’s every movement with his eyes. He paid close attention as Varian withdrew the pack and thumbed a smoke forward. Beneath the cigarette were two thousand-franc notes.
“Care for one?” Varian asked, and offered the pack to Castorel.
Castorel hesitated for a moment, long enough for Varian to wonder if he and Grant would end up in the cell next to Zilberman’s. A concentration camp would be the inevitable next stop. But Castorel withdrew the cigarette and the bills, swiftly pocketing the money as if he’d done it a hundred times, which likely he had. Varian took a cigarette for himself and offered another to Grant.
“That’s the second one you’ve smoked in two days,” Grant said in English. “I thought you’d quit.”
“Quitting’s a bad habit,” Varian said, and lit Castorel’s cigarette, then his own.
“My son is a bicycle-racing fanatic,” Castorel said, musingly. “He follows the Tour de France in the papers. His birthday’s in a month. I’ve been wanting to get him his own bicycle, but they’re so hard to come by just now, as you must know.”
Varian threw a look at Grant. “Yes,” he said. “We found ours rather hard to come by. We borrowed them from friends in Marseille.”
“Have you any children yourself, back in the States, Monsieur Fry?”
Grant looked back at Varian. Castorel was casually making his way through his cigarette; it was clear they didn’t have much time. But they couldn’t gild their bribe with a bicycle. Not Gussie’s green Motobécane. And certainly not the Gitane that had belonged to the concierge’s husband.
“None, Monsieur,” Varian said.
“A pity,” Castorel said. “If you did, you’d understand how much it pleases a father to indulge his son’s wishes.”
“I think I do understand,” Varian said, tightly.
“Well, I wish I could stay to smoke, but I’ve got matters to attend to inside.”
“Stay a moment longer,” Varian said. God, what was he about to do? “How does your son feel about the color green?”
“He’s never favored it,” Castorel said. “It’s the Brits’ racing color.”
Varian gritted his teeth. He had to get Zilberman; this could be his only chance. “Is he predisposed to black?”
“Oh, yes,” Castorel said. “He adores black.”
Grant and Varian exchanged a look.
“Monsieur Grant was just about to stop by the hotel to pick up a few things,” Varian said. “If you like, maybe he can bring the bicycle back with him. You might want to—have a look at it. And if you don’t mind, I’ll wait here until he returns.”
“Of course. Make yourself at home,” Castorel said, smiling a little to himself. “And in the meantime, why don’t I double-check the prisoner’s identity card? We do sometimes make mistakes.” He nodded to Varian and Grant and turned on his heel, then went off down the pebbled convent walk.
* * *
________
Varian, waiting for Grant, found it impossible to remain still. He strolled the rectangle of the courtyard four, five, six times, berating himself for having promised the concierge’s bicycle. Couldn’t he have done better than that? How would Grant have managed it if he’d been on his own? He would have made it back to Marseille with Zilberman and the concierge’s bicycle, Varian was sure; any other outcome seemed a fool’s defeat. He couldn’t bear to imagine Madame Balansard’s reaction when he showed up empty-handed. He’d worked himself into a fine sweat by the time Grant returned with the black Gitane; he could hardly watch as the secretary in the blue uniform led it away. She returned shortly, and there was a tense span of minutes where Varian had to wonder if the bribe was in vain. But then a guard emerged from the arched hallway, leading a dazed-looking Zilberman in his white painter’s shirt, blinking through his tortoiseshell glasses. Zilberman, squinting in confusion at Grant and Varian, signed his name on an official form and received his personal effects from the guard. Then the guard told Zilberman that he was free to go, and the three men went out through the central doorway of the gendarmerie and into the glaring afternoon.
“You’re safe,” Varian said in German. “For the moment, at least.” They paused on the sidewalk while a stream of schoolchildren parted around them; it was the dismissal hour, boys and girls running at top speed in their blue school smocks.
“Wer sind Sie?”
“We’re from the Centre Américain de Secours. Your name is on our list.”
“It’s been on a few too many of those lately,” Zilberman said.
“Chagall himself implored us to find you. As did my friend Alfred Barr at the Museum of Modern Art.”
The painter blushed to the roots of his silver-black hair. “Gentlemen, don’t flatter me. I’m nothing. There are so many of us. I don’t deserve any particular favor.”
“Others don’t share that opinion, Herr Zilberman. But won’t you come to our hotel, where we can talk a little more freely? We’re staying just nearby.”
They made their way through the river of shouting children to the Hôtel du Forum, where, in the leafy courtyard, a girl who might have been the sister of the one at the jail offered cups of hot tea. A large courtyard fountain provided a fortuitous soundscreen; under its veil, Varian described what the Emergency Rescue Committee did and how it could help. He learned that the painter’s wife and daughter had in fact already emigrated; now they lived in Cambridge, where his wife’s father was a visiting professor at MIT. That would make it infinitely easier to secure Zilberman’s U.S. entry visa. They would still need to get him a new identity card, a fake French exit visa, and Spanish and Portuguese visas; then they’d have to wait to see if the Spanish border opened again. There was no telling how long it all might take. He must accompany them to Marseille in the morning and stay there for the duration.
The painter moved a shock of hair out of his eyes, removed his glasses, and wiped them with the tail of his shirt. His cheeks streamed with tears. “What can I do to thank you?” he said. “What could ever suffice?”
“There is something we need, in fact,” Grant said, glancing at Varian; Varian gave the slightest nod. “There’s someone else we’re looking for, someone we think you may know.”
Zilberman’s eyes moved from Grant to Varian. “Who is it?”
Grant lowered his voice to a near-whisper. Fixing Zilberman in his clear gaze, he pronounced Tobias Katznelson’s name.
Zilberman’s brow wrinkled. “Katznelson?”
“His father’s a colleague of mine,” Grant said. “Tobias has been missing for some months. We think he may be in grave danger. And we’ve learned he is—well—associated with your daughter.”
“Associated!” Zilberman said, and gave a short, gruff laugh. “Yes, I should say they are associated. It began a year and a half ago—Sara was sevent
een. Tobias invited her to a picture show, and after that he began to turn up at odd times. At a neighboring table when we were out to dinner, or on a path in the Tiergarten when we were out for a walk. I finally remarked to my wife, in Sara’s presence, how strange this was, and Sara confessed they were arranging it.” He laughed again. “I told her there was no need for secrecy. Tobias was a fine young man, Jewish, of good family. The sort of boy I might have welcomed as a son-in-law, if it came to that. But soon afterward he disappeared, and that was the last we heard of him.”
“You have no idea of his whereabouts now?”
“None, I’m afraid. His parents must be frantic.”
“Do you think you might spread the word among your friends here in the South of France? Other refugees—anyone from Berlin. Exercising, of course, the utmost of caution.”
“I’m rather without connections,” Zilberman said. “I don’t know anyone at all in Marseille, in fact. I’m not sure where I’ll hang my hat if I travel there with you. I’ve nearly run out of money, hiding out here in Arles.”
“The Centre Américain will see to it all,” Varian said, though in fact he had no idea where they would house Zilberman; there was not a free hotel room in town. Maybe he could foist a roommate upon Mehring. “In the meantime, you’d better spend the night here at the hotel. You can take Mr. Grant’s room. We’ll double up.”
“I hate to inconvenience you, gentlemen.”
The Flight Portfolio Page 19
