Forgetfulness (34 page)

A little of this and a little of that.

Let me guess. Self-portraits.

Those, too, Thomas said.

You should take care on that pier. It's dangerous.

I do, Thomas said.

And you like Maine?

It's quiet. I have few visitors here.

And you intend to stay on?

For the time being, Thomas said.

Well, Antoine said. It's certainly out of the way.

But you found it.

Yes, Antoine said. We found it. He cleared his throat and leaned forward. We have some news for you, Thomas.

Oh, that can wait, Bernhard said. It's so pleasant in the fog. Look at it. The color of belon oysters, wouldn't you say?

Thomas looked from one to the other but did not speak.

Antoine said softly, It's getting late, Bernhard.

Bernhard said, Look at it. That fog is my tomorrow. That's why I like watching it, so messy and opaque, any damn thing could be on its far side. The lost city of Atlantis, a ship in distress, Scylla and Charybdis, the Garden of Eden, your worst enemy or your closest friend. I may close my eyes for just a sec, if you don't mind. His eyelids closed, then popped open. You're my oldest friend, Thomas. You and Russ, but I think you predate Russ by a month or so. I heard you were in LaBarre. You must tell me sometime if you found what you were looking for.

His eyes closed again, this time for good. Leon was at his side at once, taking his pulse. He counted a moment, dropped Bernhard's wrist, nodded casually at Antoine, and walked off to the pier. They watched Leon step cautiously to the end and wait there in the swirling fog as the horn sounded again and again.

He's all right, Antoine said. He'll sleep now for a while.

I didn't recognize him, you know.

Or me, either, Antoine said.

You said you had news.

Yes, Antoine said. Some developments at Le Havre, just last week. Yussef's out. In fact, all four are out. Out? Thomas said, louder than he intended. An exchange, I believe. That's what I understand. An exchange of what?

The four of them for one of ours, Antoine said. They were just—let go?

Put on a plane for—I don't know where. My friends wouldn't tell me.

So they're loose.

Never to return to Europe. That's the arrangement.

Thomas slumped in his chair, his thoughts disordered. He was quiet a minute or more, listening to Bernhard's shallow breathing. He said, You don't know where they are?

Antoine said, No.

Beirut? Damascus? Tripoli?

I don't know, Thomas.

Thomas was quiet again. What do you propose I do with this news?

You're in no danger, if that's what you're thinking.

It had not occurred to Thomas that he was in any danger. But he was not encouraged by Antoine's assurance.

I wish I had more details for you. I was lucky to get as much as I did. My people were not happy when I left the service. I am bound to say that while they admire Bernhard they do not always approve of his methods. Bernhard is not respectful of protocols, as you know. He's the bull in the tearoom. My people did not like it when I went to work for him.

Dusk was coming on. Thomas rose from his chair and went to the edge of the water. Leon, standing at the end of the pier, was nearly obscured by the fog coming in waves. Thomas skipped one stone after another, thinking of Yussef and the boy and the other two, now at large. It didn't matter to him where they were actually, only that they had taken up residence in his mind once again. He saw them clearly at the long table shackled hand and foot, the guards behind them slapping their bastinados against the chair backs. The boy had been terrified, the other two resigned, Yussef still as death itself. That was where they were in his mind and they remained there still, until, at a mysterious signal, they rose from their chairs and glided across the room to the stairs and disappeared while Thomas skipped stone after stone across the ruffled surface of the water.

He took his seat again and said to Antoine, What did you learn about them?

The other two were common criminals, not stupid, Saudis. The boy was a courier. Yussef was a different breed, devout in his own way. He could recite verses of the Koran from memory in a beautiful haunting voice. He did that even when filled up with chemicals. He was unreachable in that state of intoxication. Ecstatic, I would say, and in that state harmless. He reminded me of a feral cat my wife
took in. She was nice to the cat and after a while he lost his hostility and became a house cat like any other, except now and then, entirely unpredictably, his eyes would flash and he would bare his teeth and you saw at once where he came from and what he was and might become again if conditions changed. In other words, if he felt like it. That was Yussef when he was intoxicated. We learned that among other activities he organized public executions. He organized them the way we French organize a parade. Yussef chose the time, the place, the means of execution, and the executioners. The event had a ritual formality to it. Someone had misbehaved, betrayed a comrade, refused an order, disobeyed the Koran, mocked God. Other times Yussef arranged for the car bomb or the assassin's bullet. That was what he told us he did. His descriptions were quite poetic. Yussef had the storyteller's gift and if I had not known better I would have sworn that these stories came from deep in his subconscious and arose from his dreams of the man he wanted to be instead of the man he was. But I cannot swear to that. Much of what he told us could not be verified. Really, the only crime we could prove was the killing of Florette.

And you let him go, Thomas said.

The man we got back was a valuable man.

French?

I don't know. I imagine he was. Or, who knows? Maybe a she.

Thomas wasn't sure how much more he wanted to know. He had the idea he was lying in an open grave and the grave was being filled with sand, one grain at a time. The Moroccan would be with him for the rest of his days, arriving at unexpected times, one scrap of information after another, and he'd better get used to it. This information would come to him whether he wanted it or not. He had no say in the matter. Thomas listened to the foghorn a moment and said, Is it true they were on their way to Holland?

We think so, Antoine said. A disciplinary action. One of their people had talked to the police and Yussef was on his way to prepare the execution. He was a fanatic about security and that was why they were traveling the mountain trail. We believe they entered the country at Perpignan. Probably by boat from Algiers.

This information came from him? Some of it, Antoine said. After torture?

Some of it, Antoine said again. What kind of torture?

What you saw in Le Havre and other kinds. Don't ask me to be specific. I have already said more than I should, but we felt you were entitled to know what we know. Bernhard was most insistent. I have to say that after one year with us Yussef was not right in the head. I suppose verses from the Koran can carry a man only so far. They are only songs, after all. He may have been deceiving us but I don't think so. He was unbalanced, Thomas. I don't think he'll be much use to anyone from now on but I can't give a guarantee. Much remains unexplained. Not all problems have solutions. I am unable to say more than that.

They were silent. Somewhere back of the breeze, the foghorn, and the gulls, Thomas heard piano music, no doubt a late-season cocktail party at one of the trophy houses, probably the Lunds on Hall's Hill. Thomas explained to Antoine that in the summer a musician who did Bobby Short imitations charged five hundred dollars an hour for a three-hour gig. That included the dinner jacket and the smart repartee. The three-hundred-watt smile came with the tip. But the musician migrated to the Caribbean after Labor Day, so he would not be available. The music they heard was recorded. Thomas craned his neck to locate the Lunds house but fog had closed in. Thomas lit a Gitane while they listened to "Ain't Misbehavin '" very faintly in the distance. He said, In the old days Bernhard would have insisted we crash the party. He'd make a pass at the hostess or maybe the host, depending on his mood, and stay till dawn. Flirting, telling stories, drinking everything in sight, letting everyone know he was a basket full of secrets.

Does your wife know what you do, Antoine?

No, Antoine said.

If she knew, would she mind?

I think she would. My wife is religious.

Florette liked the rituals of the church but she was not religious.

I think my wife would mind terribly, Antoine said. She liked the idea of the police, a stable business, guardians of the public order, an early retirement and a good pension. She thought I was a superintendent, which I was, but not the sort she imagined. She thought more along the lines of Inspector Maigret. She would not like to know what I did actually and what I do now. She would definitely not like the idea of running mercenaries for an American. It would not be—

Comme il faut, Thomas said and they both laughed.

The fog continued to gather. The foghorn's moan diminished, the piano music vanished. The pier was lost to view and Leon with it. Somewhere back of the dune an owl cried. Thomas reached into his beach bag and pulled on a sweater against the chill. Dusk was coming on fast.

He said, You can't kill them all, can you?

Antoine said he didn't think so.

There are so many, Thomas said.

Very many, Antoine agreed. On every continent.

In time—

It will be worse, Antoine said.—they may lose heart.

Like my feral cat? Antoine snorted. I didn't tell you the end of the story. My wife's cat was an Abyssinian, quite handsome, ringtailed with a narrow black stripe down its back. One day the brute clawed my wife from her elbow to her wrist, broke the skin to the bone. She was terrified. She loved the cat and could not understand what made him turn on her. So I had it destroyed. Or to be precise: I took it outside to our back yard and shot it dead.

And did she approve?

I didn't ask her, Antoine said.

Thomas was suddenly very tired. This was his favorite time of day, the sun shuddering in the west, the sea settling, the fog arriving to close things out. It was a perfect day for a sketchpad and a pencil. He collected a handful of sand and let it leak through his fingers. There were scores of tiny tooth-shells and other remains of sea creatures. This part of the Atlantic had long been empty of
fish except for fugitives. But it was very beautiful at the end of the day.

Thomas said, Do you miss Le Havre?

Antoine thought a moment and said, Yes.

You were awfully good at what you did.

Yes, I was. I was the best they had.

An unusual skill, Thomas said.

Very unusual, Antoine agreed.

And then you didn't want to do it anymore.

It's not personal, my friend. All mechanics retire. Antoine was silent a minute or more, listening to the owl's cry. He said, I was fifty-five. My wife wanted to return to Bretagne, the village where she was born. Our children and grandchildren live nearby. And when Bernhard came along and offered me enough money to buy the house she always wanted, I said the time had come. Two years with Bernhard and then a proper retirement. A common police story: Inspector Maigret goes home to tend his garden, play boules with his friends, visit his grandchildren, grow old. And in a year or two that is exactly what I will do.

For a split second, as Antoine turned his head, Thomas sensed the ambiance of the stage, and an audience, and a skilled actor alone in the spotlight. Thomas knew that something more was coming and he waited for it, watching sand slip through his fingers. Above them gulls drifted in light wind and the nearby sound of waves curling onto the beach resembled applause.

When you are very good at something, Antoine began and then sighed, declining to finish his sentence. He said instead, I miss hearing confessions. Not the sordid details of their lives—I have no interest in their lives. The details of the crime. A successful interrogation is a beautiful thing. The truth builds so slowly you can believe the room is under a spell, time advancing by heartbeats. You would say: one small brushstroke after another. It's exhausting. It wears you out, hour after hour, and at last all defenses are broken down and the truth makes itself known. We did this and then we did that. X gave the order. Y was the target. Z was the escape route. God is great. And in thirty minutes you have everything you need and more
than you need because the man in the chair cannot stop, a torrent of words. And then you must be very careful that the imagination is not in play. You must beware that the subject has not become bewitched with his story and concluded that as good as it is in fact, he can make it better by exaggerating. As with Yussef.

Antoine was silent again, staring at his hands. Thomas watched him work his callused fingers, a magician preparing to pull smoke from his thumbs.

Do you remember all of them?

Every one, Antoine said. I have an excellent memory. And you're not troubled?

Of course I'm troubled. Not to be troubled is not to be human. But I was a policeman. I acted on behalf of the state. I came to know my subjects very well. I came to know them perhaps better than they knew themselves. Not that any of us can know more than a finite amount, and even that's prone to error. In the end we are doing a job, an assignment. There's a residue we cannot explain. Too bad. Tough luck, as you would say. But Yussef chose the arrangements of his life, not I.

You felt you knew Yussef?

Yussef most of all. Not that it mattered in the end.

That's what happens when you do your job.

You should go back to yours, Antoine said.

I intend to, Thomas said.

So that you will not be troubled.

That depends on the subject, Thomas said.

Antoine poured the last of the wine into their glasses. Thomas shook a Gitane from his pack, offered one to Antoine, took one himself, and lit both with Florette's lighter. Bernhard stirred, murmuring something unintelligible.

I was troubled in St. Michel du Valcabrère, Thomas said, so I thought it was time to return to America. I don't know why; I hadn't been here in years. My acquaintance with it is limited to what I'd read in the newspaper and now that I'm here I find that the newspapers were not wrong. America is not the place for anyone who is
troubled. Still, I was not ready to return to St. Michel. I drove from New York to Boston and up the coast from Boston. I saw a car ferry and I took it. I liked the look of the village, a half-dozen shops, lobster boats in the harbor, a snug anchorage. I spent an hour on the harbor drawing boats. I liked it. And so I stayed.