God Speed the Night (23 page)

For all Marc’s cocksureness, he had been wrong about their dinner. The soup was not thin: it was clear, but it swarmed with vegetables that had not lost their identity. So he described it and looked Moissac in the eye.

Indeed, as the meal got under way, Moissac found himself uncomfortably under the eye of the suspect Jew. Marc, seeing the policeman’s choice of seats, anticipated the niggling questions throughout the meal, the leads and snares with which any fool could trap him, his knowing so little of the Belloirs, much less the farm and town they came from. So, he did the only thing he could do: he launched into what he hoped might be called a virtuosic performance on the subject of student life in Paris. He caricatured some of his own professors giving them parallel authorities in medicine; he spoke of the cafe life before the war, the streets around the Pantheon which he knew well, of body snatchers and of disappearing whores who were sometimes recognizable cadavers. He shocked purposely to rivet attention; he spoke openly of the Resistance so that Antoine, sitting a few seats down from Moissac, tried to signal him to caution. Marc shrugged and went on talking: he was only talking legend, the places, the names now months obsolete. He found himself playing his talent as he might an instrument, discovering with every laugh new wells of wit within himself. Once launched on the gambit, he enjoyed it. He might even come to enjoy the food. He did enjoy the wine. It had a dark softness that soothed the palate and then just before you swallowed, it gave the tongue a nip, declaring the authority of age.

“An aristocrat,” Marc said, turning the glass in his hand. “One must not take liberties.”

Moissac, giving a dry little cough at the catch the wine had left in his throat, said, “Well put, monsieur.”

“Thank you,
Monsieur le Préfet”
Marc said, and looking down at his plate of white beans and goosemeat, he thought he might just enjoy that now too.

“You were very bold,” Gabrielle said afterwards.

“He will come back and back and back,” Marc said, “like a hound momentarily thrown off the scent.”

“There is not that much longer.”

“Then he will come the sooner. He knows there is something, but he’s not sure.”

They sat on the floor in front of the fire. Others were bringing benches from alongside the table. The floor was damp, sweating. Marc had put down his coat and they both sat on it, needing to speak of Moissac. The policeman had left suddenly after the
marquis’
withdrawal. The harvesters were welcome to the fire if they wished, the master of the house had announced. The doors would be open until half-past ten.

“Maybe he isn’t gone at all,” Gabrielle said. “Maybe he is waiting for us outside.”

“No. He is weighing the burden of proof. Poor little Monsieur Lapin. That is the terrible thing of being what we are…” He smiled and corrected himself: “What I am, the danger in which we place others, asking their help.”

“It is hard for you to ask help, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“It is much easier to give than to take. I have found it so.”

“To take,” Marc said, “you give away a little pride in exchange, and all your privacy. I don’t have much of that left, do I?”

“Neither do I, I’m afraid,” Gabrielle said.

“But you do. You have it all. I do not begin to know why you are—what you are.”

“I am nothing in myself, in God I may become more worthy.”

“More worthy of what?” he said with an edge to his voice.

“Sh-sh-sh. More worthy of being alive perhaps, of serving God.”

“If you are not worthy now, no one is. You will forgive my saying this, but you are talking rot. Look at me…” He lowered his voice, but he articulated the more clearly for the whisper. “Of what single thing or person or luck are you not worthy?”

“I am so imperfect…it is like having spots,” she blurted out.

Marc, coddling a rising anger, lost it all. He laughed aloud, and his laughter leaped around the room in echo.

A moment later Antoine came and squatted down beside him. “The policeman, what does he want?”

“Philomène,” Marc said facetiously.

“Are you on the run?”

“Look, my friend. What you do not know will not harm you.”

“What I know doesn’t harm me either. Nothing does.”

“And does nothing heal you?”

Antoine glanced back to where Michèle was waiting. “It heals me to heal her,” he said.

“You are a good man,” Marc said, “and if I needed help, you would be the first one I would ask.”

“That is because you know how I feel about policemen,” Antoine said. “They are bourgeois inventions. They turn my stomach.” He straightened up and limped back to Michèle.

“I do not understand them,” Gabrielle said.

“They are lovers.”

“Is that all? I know that.”

“It is very important,” Marc said. “If all the world were destroyed except them, the world would not be destroyed.”

M
OISSAC DID NOT KNOW
exactly what had happened to him at dinner. He had listened to the magician-sorcerer, whatever the imposter was, with a pleasure that could only be accounted for by his awareness of the woman in every pore of his body. He had by sheer will power avoided staring at her. Yet not a movement of her arm, her lips, the rise of her chin, the tilt of her breasts when she straightened her back, nothing was missed, and the husband’s self-obsession as a teller of vulgar tales had woven a music in itself seductive. When, to end the meal, the heavy sweet plums of Agenais were served, Moissac had with the first bite sickened. Actually sickened. It was to save himself from disgrace that he fled the table at the first opportunity.

The man, Jew or Jesuit, was diabolical, and the one person Moissac knew who might be able to stand up to him was Monsignor La Roque. He had no intention of going to the monsignor on the matter, although, thinking about it as he drove back to St. Hilaire, he felt certain the monsignor would say he was doing his duty in pursuing these two. What the monsignor would say about his feeling toward the woman, Moissac was not sure. In the instance of some men, men worth his thinking about because they were looked up to in the community, the monsignor would say of their sensual accommodations, man is only human. But Moissac, blundering through his admissions of lust, was likely to be told to pray to the Holy Ghost.

As soon as he reached the prefecture, he had René brought to him in the interrogation room. “I am sorry I was delayed. I hope you were not uncomfortable?”

René did not answer. His face was ashen, his hand trembled when he took the cigarette Moissac offered him. Moissac thought he would himself keep his hands in his pockets. The waiting had badly shaken the little man. Moissac adjusted the lamps: they were an innovation of his predecessor in office, who had taken instructions from the
Sûreté
. By keeping his head held high, René could avoid the direct glare. Most men found it difficult to keep their heads that high.

Moissac watched him for a moment or two. “You would be more comfortable in my office. If you would agree to tell me what you know about the couple who are passing under the name of Belloir, we could go in there and talk.”

“You flatter me, Théo,” René said, having to clear his throat.

“So that is how it is going to be.” Moissac sat down on the edge of the table. “Maman will be very disappointed. In which one of us I am not sure. She has become very patriotic. Is it out of patriotism you work for people like that, that you risk your skinny little neck, René? It is so easily stepped on. Or is it only for money? Jews always have money. I have heard they put a great deal of it into the Resistance. What have you heard?”

“Not enough,” René said.

Moissac laughed. Then, “Oh, I see. What you mean is they do not put in enough money. René, these people whose photographs you took—you and I both know it was for new I.D. cards. Shall I tell you? I asked the woman for the address of her parents in Marseille. You remember? She gave me a wrong address. I don’t think she knew the address of the Belloir in-laws. It was all done in a hurry, wasn’t it? The young Belloirs are back in their Paris flat today after a few days’ absence. Long enough supposedly for these people to get away? I should think that’s it. It is not likely they will risk coming home at all now if they find out that I was in Fauré.”

For the first time René reacted, just the contraction of the eyebrows, a reflex.

“It’s too bad if you deceived the old folks into thinking their son could still come home, René. Now God knows when they’ll see him. I wonder what would happen if I told them that. Would they still cover for these people? You know the answer to that. I don’t. I would have to find out. Don’t you agree that it would be better to settle this just between you and me? Tell me who these two harvesters really are and I won’t press the matter any further. I won’t ask why they came to you, how they found you. Not even a word about Gaucher and who meets at
Au Bon Coin
between curfew and the dawn. Just tell me who they are.”

René was trying to get out of the light in order to see where he could put his cigarette.

“Drop it on the floor. I’ll step on it.”

“If you know they are imposters, Théo, why don’t you arrest them?”

“I want to know who they are.”

“Why don’t you say it? You want me to throw you a Jew.”

Moissac struck him with the back of his hand. René put his hand up when the blood began to spurt from his nose.

Moissac had not known that he was going to strike him. He could hardly believe that he had done it, but he saw the blood and he felt the stinging in his knuckles. He averted the lamps and gave René his own handkerchief. “Maman used to hit me like that when I stuck my tongue out at her.”

When René thought he had stanched the blood, he tried to rest his eyes, his neck. The room was small; a man could take no more than four paces in it. And everything was painted white, walls, woodwork, the table, and two chairs. A white windowshade closed out the dark of night through the one small window which a man could not reach in any case. The light was white. Everything. There was but one more thing needed to drive a man from his senses in time, silence. White silence.

“You called him a Jew,” Moissac said. “May I take that as your answer to my question?”

“I said you wanted a Jew. I did not say they were Jews. I don’t know what they are.”

Moissac focused the lamps again. “René, I will not implicate the Belloirs. I will not question Gaucher. I will not even ask why or who expects you to pass these people.” He wet his lips. “I will not say to any authority that they would have had to have been passed by the prefect of agriculture. Monsieur Dorget must be a vital man to the Resistance, and that is something the Germans would like to know.”

René, his chin still high, his eyes closed, the blood beginning to ooze again, said, “How do you know the Belloirs themselves didn’t go back yesterday to Paris? Maybe they decided they did not need to work in the fields of rich men.”

“I thought of the possibility. I ate my dinner with the harvesters tonight and sat across the table from this couple. They are thirty kilometers further away from Paris than they were yesterday, thirty kilometers closer to the border. I gave him a message from Belloir, the elder. Whatever it meant, it would have warned him that Moissac was on his trail. That should clear your conscience, René. They could go tonight. They may be gone already. If they care about the safety of you and the other people who have helped them, they are gone now. Permit me to send you home from here. Protect your friends, not these strangers.”

René sniffed and said nothing. The blood burbled in his nostrils.

“For God’s sake, wipe your nose.”

René cleared his nose, blowing it into his fingers. He slashed the bloody mucus through the air so that it spattered the white wall.

Moissac turned his back. “I wonder if you would have done that if it was the Gestapo asking the questions. They are the proper channel for Jewish affairs. I have found a discrepancy in papers. They could find the other discrepancies much sooner than I could.” He started for the door and then turned back, motioning for René to come. “You might as well come with me, René. Captain Mittag’s going to want to see you anyway.”

René said, “He is a Jew, Théo. Hunt him down. Enjoy yourself.”

Moissac went out and let the door lock behind him. The room was almost soundproof. He could just hear René’s voice. He went to his own office, past the desk where two teen-aged boys were being questioned on violation of curfew. He sat and thought about the woman. Were all Jews sensual? The husband looked as sensual as an umbrella. He saw her again in his mind’s eye as she beat at him while he carried her from the dance. He was again beset by doubts. René could be lying now to save himself.

Going out he instructed the duty officer to leave René where he was until he cleaned the wall. Moissac would call in further instructions. He was tempted not to go home. He had his valise and he could stay at Madame Fontaine’s. But that would cost money, and with any luck Maman, not expecting him home, might be asleep. There was not a light in the house. He shone his way with the electric torch up the back walk and in through the kitchen. The place was spotless as usual, but it also seemed empty. This is what it would be like, he thought, if she were dead. It was peace at least, if it was peace that a man wanted. He hung up his coat and listened for the old lady’s snoring. The only sound was the ticking of the clock on the kitchen sill. He stood a moment trying to puzzle out why that should make him so uneasy. He realized: the clock should have been in the bedroom with Maman. Every night she took it with her, winding it on the way.

He crossed the kitchen in very few strides and pushed open the door to her room. The big bed had not even been turned down. He went through the house, room by room, down with his torch to the cellar, where, before she had gone off, she had hung the goose. Moissac went back upstairs and looked for a note. There was none. And her hat was gone from the corner shelf.

If he had not known where René was at the moment he would have turned his anger on him. He could imagine her having gone out of the house for spite. She might have got a ride to Gaucher’s. She could have walked it. But it was past curfew, and he did not feel that this was what had happened. What did he feel? Relief. The moment he could be sure she was not lying in a heap somewhere in the house, he was very glad to be alone. But where was she? And at what hour had she left the house? He remembered the scythe that had been smeared on the front door and went to see if she had painted it out. There, tacked on the freshly painted door was an envelope. He did not open it until he returned to the kitchen. Then he read: