The eau de vie de framboise she downed required four kilos of raspberries per bottle of the brandy and was priced accordingly at four thousand francs, yet she sipped it constantly until her pâté de foie gras came aux truffes sous la cendre, wrapped in chopped truffles and baked under the ashes, and served with a dicing of beef jelly whose colour was that of old amber.
Her eyes were very blue, the forehead clear and smooth and broad, the lips good, the chin and nose and all the rest really something.
Kohler ordered another beer and the Baeckaeoffe. Louis would just have to wait it out at the Salpêtrière. This spider in her little corner was simply too important to leave.
When the seat directly opposite her became vacant, he moved in, but there was no surprise from her, no smile of anticipation or welcome. She simply stared at and through him, then went stolidly on with her pâté until every last bit of it was gone and the bottle half-empty.
Then she ordered two servings of the grated potato pancakes with toasted goat’s cheese, and the chicken in mushroom sauce.
‘It is good,’ she said. ‘I had the same last night and will do so again.’
A Berliner through and through, but Jésus, merde alors what a conversationalist! ‘Do you live nearby?’ he asked. The racket around them intruded.
‘Not far,’ she said, and for a time that was all.
He’d take to studying her now, she felt, this giant of a Bavarian with the terrible duelling scar, the bullet graze across the brow, and the shrapnel nicks from that other war. He would want to get fresh with her, but would wait a little — he had that look about him. Great ease with loose and stupid girls, the younger the better, she told herself and said silently, Men! They are all the same.
‘I have three daughters,’ she announced straight out of the blue, but offered nothing further until he said, ‘I had two boys. Both were killed at Stalingrad.’
Moisture filled her eyes making them clearer, brighter, but causing him to despise himself for using the boys to crack her armour.
‘I have lost a son, too,’ she said and took a deep draught and then another of the eau de vie. ‘He left his pocketknife with me and I did not send it on to him.’
Verdamm! she’d be bawling her eyes out if he didn’t do something. ‘Waiter … Another beer, please!’ he shouted. ‘And for you, Frau …?’
‘Schlacht. Uma. A bottle of the Riesling, I think. Yes, that will suit.’
They would settle down now, this Scheisse, this Schweinebulle and herself, and maybe that crap about his sons was true, and maybe it wasn’t. We will eat and I will let him strip me naked with those cop’s eyes of his, she told herself. He will get nowhere but I will let him try just for the fun of it.
Oskar … had Oskar finally done something the Gestapo did not like? she wondered. Oskar was always up to things. But this one couldn’t have come because of him. He was just hungry for a woman, like all the others.
‘Guten Appetit, Herr …?’
‘Kohler. Hermann. From Wasserburg, the one that’s on the Ihn.’
Ja, mein Herr, and you are lonely, aren’t you? she said silently to herself and nodded inwardly. A veteran from the Great War, he had big, capable hands whose thumbs, first and second fingers were deeply stained by nicotine.
A smoker, a drinker, and a fucker. She would show him and his kind. She would ask for a steak knife when her dinner came. Yes … yes that would be best, and she would give him a lesson he would not forget.
Louis … Louis wasn’t here to back him up, thought Kohler desperately. Louis must still be with the beekeeper’s sister. But what the hell is it with this one, mon vieux? he bleated silently. She can’t know why I’m here, yet is as uptight as a queen bee with her hot little stinger in my balls.
Line 5, the place d’ltalie-porte Pantin metro was a bitch, the evening rush horrendous and lengthy as usual.
Jostled, shoved — crushed — St-Cyr cursed aloud to none and all in particular, ‘Hermann, you salaudl Where the hell have you gone with my car?’
No one bothered to pay any attention to his frustration. No one cared. ‘JÉSUS, MERDE ALORS, MONSIEUR, THERE IS ROOM FOR NO MORE!’ he shouted.
‘FOUTEZ-MOI LA PAIX, BÂTARD. I’LL SHOW YOU!’
‘SÛRETÉ! SÛRETÉ!’
The whistle fell from his hand. The whistle was lost. He was jabbed in the small of the back, was jammed against two Blitzmädels who managed to squeeze sideways to fit him in and reeked of the cheap, foul colognes that were now so common.
Sweat, farts, colds, coughs, sneezes, the sour stench of thawing, wet overcoats and clothing that hadn’t been washed since the Defeat, roared in at him!
‘A patriot,’ he muttered under his breath. ‘I am still of such a mind.’ Mon Dieu, the heat of so many bodies …
The train rattled on. There were so few seats, all thought of getting one simply did not exist. A Wehrmacht gas-mask canister dug into his groin, a jackboot trod harder on his left foot as the soldier turned at his objection of, ‘Monsieur …’
The burly Feldwebel grinned hugely and began to chat up the girls from home. St-Cyr hung on but the acid could not be stopped. ‘The Wehrmacht ride free, mon General,’ he said in French, ‘while the rest of us have to pay!’
‘Salut, mon brave!’ sang out a listener somewhere. Was it the one who had told him to bugger off? he wondered.
Another began to whistle Beethoven’s Fifth.
Monsieur Churchill’s stubborn V was soon on several lips until the protest died through the gaze, perhaps, of a Gestapo. French or of the Occupier, the difference would not matter.
Packed in like sardines — unable to even look down at the floor to search for a whistle that Stores would accuse him of carelessly losing, he tried to hold on, tried to avoid eye contact — it was impossible! Smelt the garlic breaths of a thousand, that of boiled onions, too, for few had grease or oil to fry them in, tried to think. I must! he said.
Angèle-Marie de Bonnevies had seldom received any visitors other than her brother. The father hadn’t even come to see his little girl, had renounced her, and the mother had had to obey him.
Locked up, confined to a common ward, she had regressed constantly, but after the Great War, and the death of the father, the beekeeper had returned and had done what he could. A room — it had taken him years to convince the doctors such would help. And even though still deeply troubled, she had improved — Lemoine had been convinced of this. ‘Monsieur de Bonnevies had asked for weekend passes for her, Inspector. First to take her out simply for an afternoon, then … then, by degrees, to get her used to living at home once more. He was determined she could do it. Never have I seen a man so convinced.’
‘And afraid of what the Occupier might well do to your patients?’
‘Yes.’
But had Madame de Bonnevies decided to put a stop to things? After all, it was her money they were living on and she had been forced to look after the mother. Had the beekeeper’s death then really little or nothing to do with Frau Schlacht? If so, then why the fear of our discovering that one name among all others in the husband’s little book, particularly if the poison had really been meant for herself?
De Bonnevies had never allowed Danielle to visit her aunt. ‘Madame, of course, has never visited,’ Lemoine had said. ‘Nor has her son — I understand it was not his child and therefore of no relation.’
‘And Father Michel, their parish priest?’ he had asked.