Sometime near dawn—he scarcely knew how it happened, and never learned why—four officers approached him and Danny and took them by the arms, drag-walked them to the doors, and pushed them out into the street. They got to their feet, dusted themselves off, and half-ran to the office on the boulevard Garibaldi. There was Gussie, God bless him, still awake, working on a project of his own: he’d been rooting around for information about the new resistance movement, trying to establish communication between isolated cells outside Marseille. Varian was secretly proud; he felt he’d incited Gussie to the work. Gussie’s light burned on as Varian and Danny closed themselves into Varian’s office, Danny attempting to get an international line so they could place a call to Eleanor Roosevelt, Varian drafting an urgent telegram to the New York office. But everything was closed for the night in New York, and the telegram office in Marseille was still shuttered.
At some point Varian must have put his head down on his desk, because he found himself waking in a daze, Danny shaking his arm. For a moment it seemed to him that they’d merely worked late on an ordinary day, that none of the events of the last twelve hours had come to pass; he imagined himself complaining to Grant about his stiff back, Grant telling him how foolish he’d been to push himself so hard. Then Danny said they must get to the Gare St. Charles, that he’d just learned from Hirschman’s former girlfriend at the Préfecture that Zilberman was to be deported that morning.
“We have to go at once,” Danny said. “Maybe we can still put a stop to it.”
“How?” Varian said. “We’d need a police force of our own, or an army.”
“Can’t everything be bought in this town?”
“Or a diversion,” Varian said. “A skirmish. A faked shooting. Something to distract the police from the prisoners.”
“Who do we know who can help us?”
“Vinciléoni,” Varian said. “Someone must go to the Dorade.” He opened the door to the office. Gussie looked up from his desk, his eyes dark-ringed.
“What can I do, Monsieur Fry?” he said. “Is there any way to help?”
“I want you to go to see Vinciléoni,” Varian said. “We need him to send a team of men to the Gare St. Charles. Armed, if possible. Men who can distract the police while we get Zilberman out of there. We’ll need a tool, too—something capable of cutting a steel chain.” He went into his office and opened the safe, taking out the fat envelope of cash they kept for bribes; he loaded twenty thousand into an envelope and pressed it into Gussie’s hand. Gussie nodded his understanding, and in another moment he’d gone down the stairs and out the door.
Varian collapsed into the desk chair that had been Lena’s, put his head down on the blotter, and closed his eyes.
“Danny,” he said. “I should have put him on that ship weeks ago.”
“You couldn’t have known about yesterday’s rafle.”
“His arrest had nothing to do with that. It was Killer who sold him out, after I ejected him from Air Bel. I’m sure of it. Villand said they’d had a tip.”
“You can’t know that for certain.”
“What does it matter anyway? I’ve failed at my job. It should have been Zilberman on the Sinaïa. I got it wrong.”
“Well, it won’t do any good to sit talking about it,” Danny said. “Allons-y.”
* * *
________
They ran all the way, through the narrow streets and across the Canebière and up the boulevard d’Athènes, then up the shallow stairs that spilled from the station like a cubist waterfall. But what then? The train in question hadn’t even arrived yet, and there was no sign of the prisoners. They checked the timetable boards; the train’s departure platform hadn’t yet been posted. At the station café they bought thin chicory coffee and inedible biscuits, then sat on a bench beside one of the platforms, but neither of them could drink or eat a thing. A quarter of an hour later Gussie arrived out of breath, having carried his bicycle up the long stairs; he reported that Vinciléoni had refused to put any of his people into a situation involving so much risk, on behalf of a prisoner he knew little about, who had run afoul of the French authorities and was due to be deported.
“Didn’t you tell him who Zilberman was?”
“I told him everything,” Gussie said, his hands trembling on the bike handles. “I offered him the money. I said we had more where it came from. I asked him to name a price. But he refused to consider it. What should I have done, Monsieur Fry?”
Just then, a prison van pulled up to the station entrance. Officers opened the doors, and a line of prisoners, chained together, stumbled out onto the flat gray paving stones. There were eight of them, Zilberman nowhere among them. But then another van arrived, and another; ten in all, a whole train’s worth of prisoners to be sent east. Finally Zilberman’s group arrived; he was the fourth prisoner in a line of ten. Even from a distance, Varian could still see the untreated wound on his cheek, the slash of blood across his neck. The officers led the prisoners into the station, toward the eastbound platform. Varian shouted, but Zilberman didn’t turn or raise his head. He followed the man in front of him and was followed by the man behind. Varian found himself half-running toward them; he had no idea what he planned to do, only that he meant to get closer. He reached the entrance to the eastbound platform and stepped toward the prisoners.
“Stop there,” an officer shouted, hand on his gun. “These men are under the protection of the state.”
Varian stopped. The prisoners were only a few feet away, close enough for Varian to see the red marks on their wrists where the handcuffs had chafed them. Zilberman himself was almost within reach; Varian spoke his name. Zilberman’s eyes came up for a moment, but then he looked down, shaking his head. What expression had flashed over his features? Was it pity? Resentment? Disgust? Varian tried again to get closer, but a guard stopped him with his stick. The guard’s mothlike mustache, gray-brown, twitched on his lip as if it meant to take flight.
“No one is to enter this platform while prisoners are being loaded,” he said.
“Lower your stick!” Varian said. “Let me pass.”
“You’re not permitted to approach the prisoners, monsieur.”
Danny had appeared at Varian’s side; he took his arm and pulled him back. “There’s no use getting yourself arrested,” he said.
The mustachioed guard stepped back toward the prisoners, and Varian stood beside Danny, watching in furious impotence as the officers led the prisoners along the platform. A train was just arriving, chuffing along the rail, sending out plumes of steam from its brakes; for a long moment the prisoners’ legs disappeared into that rolling cloud, and they seemed to float along the platform like a pack of condemned angels. One of the guards shouted them to attention; another conferred with the station gendarmes, presenting papers on a clipboard. The mustachioed officer blew a whistle, and the prisoners were loaded rank by rank onto what appeared at first to be a series of ordinary railway carriages, but were revealed at second glance to be prison cars, their windows covered with metal mesh. The last of the prisoners climbed aboard, and guards walked the length of the train, closing and barring and locking every door. Minutes later, the train began its slow transit out of the station.
Gone. What could he do? His insides seemed full of molten lead, his throat closed with grief and fury. Without a word, he left Danny and Gussie at the edge of the platform; he crossed the station at a half-run and pushed through its glass doors. Through the blinding morning light he descended the cascade of steps toward the Canebière, then ran to the south side of the Vieux Port, all the way to the Dorade. The place was full of white light and morning hush, one black-haired blear-eyed boy swabbing its decks with a tentacled mop. Varian knew where to find Vinciléoni, knew that he was an early riser and would already be at work. Down he went, down into the alimentary canal of the restaurant, through the low passageways bel
ow the dining room, all the way to the narrow appendix that was Vinciléoni’s office. He opened the door with his fist, and there was Vinciléoni at his desk, freshly shaven, dressed in a crisp white shirt and a neat black tie, drinking his seltzer, holding his china marker.
“Don’t you knock?” Vinciléoni said.
“Not now,” Varian said, pushing a stack of papers off the other chair. He pulled the chair up to the desk and sat down.
Vinciléoni drew his eyebrows together. “I suppose you’re here to ask why I wouldn’t send my men to be arrested on your client’s behalf.”
“I could,” Varian said. “I could ask why you weren’t willing to send a few thugs to jail for a few hours, if it meant saving the life of Lev Zilberman. But I don’t have to talk about that. Your conscience will do the work for me later.”
“You know nothing of my conscience,” Vinciléoni said.
“Undoubtedly,” Varian said. “I’m not sure, come to think of it, that you have one.”
Vinciléoni cocked his head at Varian. “Just what’s gotten into you, Monsieur Fry? You seem to have lost all perspective.”
Vinciléoni’s tone sounded a warning in Varian’s head, one that broke through the haze of his desperation and exhaustion. He suspected he wouldn’t get what he wanted by fighting; he had to force himself to exercise diplomacy. “Forgive me,” he said now. “I’m not here about what happened this morning. There’s something else I want. Something I need to know. It’s about Tobias Katznelson.”
“Ah, yes, your small fish. He made it to Oran, I trust?”
“Yes, and out of Oran too. He may have reached Martinique by now.”
“Then what’s the concern?”
Varian laced his hands. Through his anger, through his exhaustion, he struggled to frame the question. “When I first mentioned Katznelson,” he said, “you said you suspected he wasn’t as small as I made him out to be. You said your sources had informed you otherwise. I must know, Charles, who those sources were. It’s a matter of the greatest importance to me.”
Vinciléoni laughed. “Mr. Fry,” he said. “Everything with you is a matter of the greatest importance. A person trying to help you wouldn’t know where to begin. You must get Breitscheid and Hilferding out, it’s a matter of the greatest importance. Save Herr Zilberman, a German Jewish muralist especially desired, God knows why, by the Nazis—greatest importance! And now, on behalf of this Katznelson, you want me to reveal my sources? Can you truly imagine I’d do that? My sources are the nerves that run through the body of Marseille—of underground Marseille, I should say. Lay them bare and they die of exposure. Kill the nerves and the body can’t feel, can’t function. Kill too many and the body itself dies.”
Varian had begun to tremble with fury. “Look, Charles,” he said, willing his voice steady. “We’ve been funneling cash into your organization for some months now. Lots of cash. I’m asking one small favor. That’s all.”
“So you say. But why this favor? What can it matter to you?”
“Because I have reason to believe Katznelson was a fraud. And I want to know who defrauded me. I have to know. My life depends on it.”
Vinciléoni sat back in his chair and sipped his seltzer. “Your life!” he said. “Dear me.” He set his glass on the desk and ran his hands over his salted black hair, smoothing it to an otterlike sleekness. “Are you concerned,” he said, “that you put an ordinary young man on the Sinaïa? Someone whose life was worth no more than anyone else’s?”
“Tell me who spoke to you about Katznelson,” he said. “Was it Raymond Couraud? The one we call Killer?”
“I’ve just told you quite clearly, Mr. Fry, that I don’t care to reveal my sources.”
“Did you pay Couraud for information?”
“If I did, what would motivate me to tell you?”
“Can you muster some compassion for me, Charles, as a human being? This is a personal matter, not a business one.”
“We’re business associates, Monsieur Fry. I can’t open my address book for your private benefit. I admire and respect the work you do, but our relationship exists in the professional sphere only. And my patience has its limits. You breached them, in fact, some time ago. I am a busy man. You arrived without an appointment. I must ask now that you let me get back to my work.”
He would have liked, just then, to jump across the desk and throttle Vinciléoni. Instead he stood before him, still trembling, and replaced his hat on his head.
“You’ve been small and mean-spirited, Charles,” he said.
“And you’ve been rude and abrupt, Monsieur Fry. But I won’t hold it against you. Your patronage is too valuable to me. Don’t hesitate to come here in a different mood, on matters of business, at a mutually convenient time. Are we in agreement?”
Varian turned and left without a word, letting the door slam behind him.
* * *
________
Without thinking, he walked up to the tram line on the Canebière and caught the train for La Pomme. As he rode, he looked out the window at now-familiar sights: the balcony of a yellow building painted an incongruous turquoise; a silver scooter stripped of its wheels and chained to a peeling postbox; a brick wall graffitied with six-foot-high penises; an orange cat in a third-floor window, its ophidian eyes narrowed against the sun. He stared in desperation at these objects, unchanged since the day before: incontrovertible evidence of his continued life here in Marseille. But all else seemed to have slipped away, vanished into the fog of the Vieux Port. He needed to think; needed a proper night’s sleep. It was ten in the morning but it might as well have been midnight; in another minute he would doze off in his tram seat. Where could he go, where could he rest? How could he go to Air Bel when Grant lay in his own bed?
He reached La Pomme as usual, left the station as usual, headed down the usual hill. But he found himself failing to cross under the tracks, failing to walk through the tunnel that led to the villa. Instead he followed the paved road that ran along the train tracks, walked it for nearly a mile until he came to a different crossing, a path he hadn’t taken in months. He walked that path until he passed through an iron gate and along a lane flanked by cypresses, and when he looked up at the end of the lane he saw that he’d reached the Medieval Pile.
He knew there was a caretaker, but the man was nowhere in sight. The garden, overgrown with poppies and yellow broomflowers, seemed consumed by a swaying, licking fire. Above, the great stone house stood silent in the morning air. Varian walked through the persimmon orchard, the limbs of the trees covered in fresh leaves and pale yellow star-shaped flowers; he walked the slate-paved path to the front door. When he tried the handle, the door swung open onto the dark entry. Bars of dusty light fell through the high narrow windows, faintly illuminating the hexagonal stair. He could almost hear Grant’s laugh from above, inviting him up. He found himself walking toward the conservatory, where he’d first met Gregor Katznelson that day in September; the long stretch of windows yielded a familiar view of trees and wildflowers and rocks, a rolling upholstery of lavender draped in folds along the downward slope of the valley. On the far side of the conservatory stood a rolltop desk with dozens of pigeonholes, Gregor’s writing table. Varian went to it now and ran a hand along the surface of the blotter, blue leather edged in gold leaf. A dead beetle lay in one corner, its articulated legs surrendering mutely; in another, a calligraphy nib pointed north in a compass rose of dried ink. He opened the large drawers on either side of the desk, pulling hard enough to rattle their frames. Nothing inside but the scent of damp wood and a couple of spent matchbooks. One by one he opened the tiny drawers above the desktop: nothing. What was he looking for? What did he imagine he might find?
He pushed himself away from the desk, escaped from the room, and climbed the familiar stairs to the bedroom where Grant had lounged in Katznelson’s bed, shaved with his shaving
things, worn his robe, read his books, admired the view from his window. He crossed the pomegranate-colored Persian rug and opened the French doors. Here was the balcony where he and Grant had stood looking down into the valley in winter, at that strange mixture of verdure and decay that seemed to embody the dual nature of the place. Some things dried and crumbled; others grew. If he stood here long enough, if he concentrated, could he will this balcony to slip its moorings, give way, fall down the cliff below with him as passenger? Fog obscured the sun and made him feel the chill of the wind; he went inside and closed the doors behind him. The high bed, carved of dark wood and hung all around with velvet curtains, stood against the western wall like a funeral bier. He climbed on top of it and lay there like a dead monarch, the late King Varian, his head a stone on a stone pillow, his legs stretched to their full length along the velvet bedcover.
He must have slept; he didn’t know how long. When he woke, the sky outside was dark and there was only one thought in his mind: he had to get back to Air Bel. Without examining the thought, without giving himself time to question it, he rose from Katznelson’s bed and straightened the bedcovers, then ran down the hexagonal stair and out through the entryway, the massive door banging behind him. He ran as though the place were haunted, as though all the ghosts there were chasing him, trying to catch and kill him before he could make it back to Air Bel, to Grant. He ran until he’d reached his own crossing, until he’d gone beneath the railroad track again and gained the driveway with its line of towering plane trees. A light burned in his room; a shadow crossed it. He walked up the drive, then entered the house and climbed the stairs toward that light.
Zilberman was gone. That was all he told Grant before he collapsed into bed beside him; everything else was as yet unspeakable. As they lay in bed together, as Grant ran his hand along the length of Varian’s body beneath the sheet, as he draped his arm around Varian and breathed sleep into his ear, the news about Katznelson seemed to become insubstantial, inconsequential. Grant hadn’t lied to him; he couldn’t have. This was the person he’d known bone-deep since they were barely out of boyhood, the man whose absence had hurt him like a chronic disease, the man who had revealed himself to Varian over the past nine months as no one had before, the person who had excavated, who had required, who had wanted everything Varian held closest to his heart. This person could not have deceived him, could not have been deceiving him all this time. Not this one, with his quiet breath at Varian’s ear, his hand on Varian’s breastbone.
The Flight Portfolio Page 52
