Kingdom of Shadows (11 page)

They walked afterward, down the dark streets that ran from the back of the 5th to the river. “An apartment,” Morath said, “for a clandestine love affair.”

Szubl thought it over. “A lover who won’t rent his own apartment.”

“Very romantic,” Mitten said.

“Very clandestine, anyhow,” said Szubl.

Mitten said, “What are they, prominent?”

“Cautious,” Morath said. “And rich.”

“Ah.”

They waited. Morath said, “Two thousand a month for the love nest. Five hundred for you. One of you signs the lease. If they need a maid, you hire her. The concierge knows you, only you, the friend of the lovers.”

Szubl laughed. “For the five hundred, do we have to believe this?”

“For the five hundred, you know better.”

“Nicholas,” Mitten said, “people like us don’t get away with spying.”

“It isn’t spying.”

“We get put against a wall.”

Morath shook his head.

“So, God willing, it’s only a bank robbery.”

“Love affair,” Morath said.

“Six hundred,” Mitten said.

“All right. Six hundred. I’ll give you money for the furniture.”

“Furniture!”

“What kind of love affair is this?”

They were, to Morath’s surprise, good at it. Quite good. Somehow, in a week’s time, they managed to unearth a
selection
of love nests. To start, they took him up to Mistress Row, the avenue Foch area, where gorgeous shop girls luxuriated on powder-puff sofas, behind windows draped in pink and gold. In the apartment they took him to, the most recent
affaire
had evidently ended abruptly, an open tin of caviar and a mossy lemon left in the little refrigerator.

Next, they showed him a large room, formerly servant’s quarters, up in the eaves of an
hôtel particulier
in the Fourth Arrondissement, where nobody ever went. “Six flights of stairs,” Mitten said.

“But very private.”

And for an actual love affair, Morath thought, not the worst choice. A quiet neighborhood, last popular in 1788, and deserted streets. Next, a taxi up to Saint Germain-des-Prés, to a painter’s atelier on the rue Guénégaud, with a pretty blue slice of the Seine in one of the windows. “He paints, she models,” Szubl said.

“And then, one afternoon, Fragonard!”

Morath was impressed. “It’s perfect.”

“For a Parisian, I’m not so sure. But if the lovers are, perhaps,
foreign,
well, as you can see, it’s pure MGM.”

“Très chic,”
Szubl said.

“And the landlord’s in prison.”

Their final choice was, obviously, a throwaway. Perhaps a favor for a friend—another Szubl, a different Mitten, penniless and awash in a Gallic sea. Two rooms, barely, at the foot of the Ninth Arrondissement, near the Chaussée d’Antin Métro stop, halfway down the side street—the rue Mogador—just behind the Galeries Lafayette department store. The streets were full of people, shopping at the Galeries or working there. At Christmas, children were brought here to see the mechanical père Noël in the window.

The apartment was on the third floor of a nineteenth-century tenement, the exterior dark with soot and grime. Inside, brown walls, a two-burner stove, toilet in the hall, limp net curtains, yellow with age, a table covered with green oilcloth, a couch, and a narrow bed with a page of an illustrated Hungarian calendar tacked to the wall above the pillow—
Harvest in Esztergom.

“Well, Morath, here it is!”

“Gives you a stiff pencil just to
see
this bed, right?”

“
Ma biche, ma douce,
that army blanket! That coat rolled up for a pillow! Now is our moment! Undress—if you dare!”

“Who’s your friend?”

“Laszlo.”

“Nice Hungarian name.”

“Nice Hungarian man.”

“Thank him for me—I’ll give you some money to take him to dinner.”

“So then, it’s the first one, right? The pink boudoir?”

“Or the atelier. I have to think it over.”

They left the apartment and walked downstairs. Morath headed toward the street door but Mitten took his elbow. “Let’s go the other way.”

Morath followed, through a door at the opposite end of the hallway, across a narrow courtyard in perpetual shadow, then through another door and down a corridor where several men and women were talking and smoking cigarettes.

“Where the hell are we?”

“The Galeries. But not the part the public sees. It’s where the clerks go for a cigarette. Sometimes it’s used for deliveries.”

They came to another door, Szubl opened it and they were on the street floor of the department store, amid crowds of well-dressed people carrying packages.

“Need anything?” Szubl said.

“Maybe a tie?”

“Salauds!”
Morath was smiling.

“Laszlo wants twenty-five hundred.”

Balki called him a week later.

“Perhaps you’d like to meet a friend of mine.”

Morath said he would.

“So tomorrow. At the big café on the rue de Rivoli, by the Palais Royal Métro. Around four. She’ll be wearing flowers—you’ll know who she is.”

“Four o’clock.”

“Her name is Silvana.”

“Thank you, Boris,” Morath said.

“Sure,” Balki said, his voice hard. “Any time.”

The café was exceptionally neutral ground; tourists, poets, thieves, anybody at all could go there. On a steaming day in July, Silvana wore a dark suit with a tiny corsage pinned to the lapel. Back straight, knees together, legs angled off to one side, face set in stone.

Morath had very good manners—not once in his life had he remained seated when a woman came to a table. And a very good heart, people tended to know that about him right away. Even so, it did not go easily between them. He was pleased to meet her, he said, and went on a little, his voice quiet and cool and far more communicative than whatever words it happened to be saying.
I know how hard life can be. We all do the best we can. There is nothing to fear.

She was not unattractive—that was the phrase that occurred to him when he first saw her. Thirty-five or so, with brass-colored hair that hung limp around her face, an upturned nose, generous lips, and olive, slightly oily skin. Not glamorous particularly, but sulky, that kind of looks. Prominent breasts, very pert in a tight sweater, narrow waist, hips not too wide. From somewhere around the Mediterranean, he guessed. Was she
Marseillaise
? Maybe Greek, or Italian. But cold, he thought. Would Von Schleben actually make love to her? For himself, he wouldn’t, but it was impossible to know what other people liked in bed.

“Well then,” he said. “An aperitif? A Cinzano—would that be good? With
glaçons
—we’ll drink like Americans.”

She shook a stubby Gauloise Bleue loose from its packet and tapped the end on her thumbnail. He lit a match for her, she cupped the back of his hand with hers, then blew out the flame. “Thank you,” she said. She inhaled eagerly, then coughed.

The drinks came—there was no ice. Looking over Silvana’s shoulder, he happened to notice that a little man seated at a corner table was watching her. He had thin hair combed flat and wore a bow tie, which made him look like—Morath had to search for it—the American comedian Buster Keaton. He met Morath’s eyes for a moment, then went back to reading his magazine.

“My friend is German,” Morath said. “A gentleman. From the nobility.”

She nodded. “Yes, Balki told me.”

“He would like you to join him for dinner, tomorrow night, at the Pré Catalan. At 8:30. Of course he’ll send his car for you.”

“All right. I stay at a hotel on the rue Georgette, in Montparnasse.” She paused. “It’s just the two of us?”

“No. A large dinner party, I believe.”

“And where did you say?”

“Pré Catalan. In the Bois de Boulogne. It’s very fin-de-siècle. Champagne, dancing till dawn.”

Silvana was amused. “Oh,” she said.

Morath explained about Szubl and Mitten, the apartment, the money. Silvana seemed a little detached, watching the smoke rise from the end of her cigarette. They had another Cinzano. Silvana told him she was Roumanian, from Sinaia. She’d come to Paris in the winter of ’36 with “a man who made a living playing cards.” He’d gotten into some sort of trouble, then disappeared. “I expect he’s dead,” she said, then smiled. “Of course, with him you never know.” A friend found her a job in a shop, selling candy in a
confiserie,
but it didn’t last. Then, down on her luck, she’d been hired as the hatcheck girl at the Balalaika. She shook her head ruefully.
“Quelle catastrophe.”
She laughed, exhaling Gauloise smoke. “I couldn’t do it at all, and poor Boris got the blame.”

It was the end of the afternoon, cool and dark beneath the arches that covered the rue de Rivoli. The café was jammed with people and very loud. A street musician showed up and started to play the concertina. “I think I’ll go home,” Silvana said. They stood and shook hands, then she unchained a bicycle from the lamppost on the corner, climbed on, waved to Morath, and pedaled away into traffic.

Morath ordered a scotch.

An old woman came around, selling newspapers. Morath bought a
Paris-Soir
to see what was at the movies. He was going to spend the evening by himself. The headlines were thick and black:
GOVERNMENT DECLARES COMMITMENT TO DEFEND CZECHOSLOVAKIA “INDISPUTABLE AND SACRED.”

The little man who looked like Buster Keaton left the café, giving Morath a glance as he went. Morath thought, for a moment, that he’d nodded. But, if it happened at all, it was very subtle, or, more likely, it was just his imagination.

Juillet, Juillet.
The sun hammered down on the city and the smell of the butcher shops hung like smoke in the dead air.

Morath retreated to the Agence Courtmain, not the first time he’d sought refuge there. On the run from summer, on the run from Uncle Janos and his politics, on the run from Cara, lately consumed by vacation manias. The sacred
mois d’Août
approached—one either went to the countryside or hid in one’s apartment and didn’t answer the phone. What troubled Cara was, should they go to the baroness Frei up in Normandy? Or to her friend Francesca and her boyfriend, in Sussex? It wasn’t the same, not at all, and one had to shop.

At Agence Courtmain they had big black fans that blew the heat around, and sometimes a breeze from the river worked its way up avenue Matignon and leaked in the window. Morath sat with Courtmain and his copy chief in her office, staring at a tin of cocoa.

“They have plantations in Africa, at the southern border of the Gold Coast,” the copy chief said. Her name was Mary Day—a French mother and an Irish father. She was close to Morath’s age and had never married. One line of gossip had it that she was religious, formerly a nun, while another speculated that she made extra income by writing naughty novels under a pen name.

Morath asked about the owner.

“It’s a big provincial family, from around Bordeaux. We deal with the general manager.”

“A Parisian?”

“Colonial,” Courtmain said. “
Pied-noir,
with barbered whiskers.”

The tin had a red label with
CASTEGNAC
printed in black across the top. Down below it said
CACAO FIN
. Morath pried up the metal cap, touched a finger to the powder and licked it. Bitter, but not unpleasant. He did it again.

“It’s supposedly very pure,” Mary Day said. “Sold to
chocolatiers,
here and in Turin and Vienna.”

“What do they want us to do?”

“Sell cocoa,” Courtmain said.

“Well, new art,” Mary Day said. “Posters for bakeries and grocery stores. And he told us that now, with the war winding down, they want to sell in Spain.”

“Do Spaniards like chocolate?”

She leaned forward to say
of course,
then realized she didn’t know.

“Can’t get enough,” Courtmain said.
They do in this agency.

Morath held the tin up to the window. Outside, the sky was white, and there were pigeons cooing on a ledge. “The label’s not so bad.” There was a decorative strand of intertwined ivy leaves around the border, nothing else.

Courtmain laughed. “It’s perfection,” he said. “We’ll sell it back to them in ten years.”

Mary Day took several sheets of art paper from a folder and pinned them up on the wall. “We’re going to give them Cassandre,” she said. A. M. Cassandre had done the artwork for the popular
Dubo/Dubon/Dubonnet
image in three panels.

“In-house Cassandre,” Courtmain said.

The art was sumptuous, suggesting the tropics. Backgrounds in renaissance ochres and chrome yellows, with figures—mostly tigers and palm trees—in a span of Venetian reds.

“Handsome,” Morath said, impressed.

Courtmain agreed. “Too bad about the name,” he said. He made a label in the air with his thumb and index finger.
“Palmier,”
he suggested, meaning palm tree.
“Cacao fin!”

“Tigre?”
Morath said.

Mary Day had a very impish smile.
“Tigresse,”
she said.

Courtmain nodded. He took an artist’s chalk from a cup on the desk and stood to one side of the drawings. “That’s the name,” he said. “With this tree,” it curved gently, with three fronds on top, “and this tiger.” A front view. The animal sat on its haunches, revealing a broad expanse of white chest.

Morath was excited. “Do you think they’ll do it?”

“Not in a thousand years.”

He was at Cara’s when the telephone rang, three-thirty in the morning. He rolled out of bed, managed to fumble the receiver free of the cradle. “Yes?”

“It’s Wolfi.” Szubl was almost whispering.

“What is it?”

“You better go to the apartment. There’s big trouble.”

“I’ll be there,” Morath said, and hung up the phone.

What to wear?

“Nicky?”

He’d already put on a shirt and was trying to knot his tie. “I have to go out.”

“Now?”

“Yes?”

“What’s going on?”

“A friend in trouble.”

After a silence, “Oh.”

He buttoned his pants, shrugged a jacket on, forced his feet into his shoes while smoothing his hair back with his hands.