“Are you all right?”
Suddenly, the shaking stopped, and to his surprise Lewis saw tears, large, syrupy tears well up in the stranger’s eyes and roll down his rough cheeks and into the bush of his beard.
As if ashamed of his display of feelings, the man turned away from the light, making a thick noise of sobbing in his throat, and exited. Lewis followed, more curious about this stranger than nervous of his intentions.
“Wait!”
The man was already half-way down the first flight of stairs, nimble despite his build.
“Please wait, I want to talk to you.” Lewis began down the stairs after him, but the pursuit was lost before it was started. Lewis’ joints were stiff with age and the cold, and it was late. No time to be running after a much younger man, along a pavement made lethal with ice and snow. He chased the stranger as far as the door and then watched him run off down the street; his gait was mincing as Catherine had said. Almost a waddle, ridiculous in a man so big.
The smell of his perfume was already snatched away by the north-east wind. Breathless, Lewis climbed the stairs again, past the din of the party, to claim a set of clothes for Phillipe.
The next day Paris woke to a blizzard of unprecedented ferocity. The calls to Mass went unrequited, the hot Sunday croissants went unbought, the newspapers lay unread on the vendor’s stalls. Few people had either the nerve or the motive to step outside into the howling gale. They sat by their fires, hugging their knees, and dreamt of spring.
Catherine wanted to go to the prison to visit Phillipe, but Lewis insisted that he go alone. It was not simply the cold weather that made him cautious on her behalf; he had difficult words to say to Phillipe, delicate questions to ask him. After the previous night’s encounter in his room, he had no doubt that Phillipe had a rival, probably a murderous rival. The only way to save Phillipe’s life, it seemed, was to trace the man. And if that meant delving into Phillipe’s sexual arrangements, then so be it. But it wasn’t a conversation he, or Phillipe, would have wanted to conduct in Catherine’s presence.
The fresh clothes Lewis had brought were searched, then given to Phillipe, who took them with a nod of thanks.
“I went to the house last night to fetch these for you.”
“Oh.”
“There was somebody in the room already.”
Phillipe’s jaw muscle began to churn, as he ground his teeth together. He was avoiding Lewis’ eyes.
“A big man, with a beard. Do you know him, or of him?”
“No.”
“Phillipe—”
“No!”
“The same man attacked Catherine,” Lewis said.
“What?” Phillipe had begun to tremble.
“With a razor.”
“Attacked her?” Phillipe said. “Are you sure?”
“Or was going to.”
“No! He would never have touched her. Never!”
“Who is it Phillipe? Do you know?”
“Tell her not to go there again; please, Lewis—” His eyes implored. “Please, for God’s sake tell her never to go there again. Will you do that? Or you. Not you either.”
“Who is it?”
“Tell her.” “I will. But you must tell me who this man is, Phillipe.”
He shook his head, grinding his teeth together audibly now.
“You wouldn’t understand, Lewis. I couldn’t expect you to understand.”
“Tell me; I want to help.”
“Just let me die.”
“Who is he?”
“Just let me die… I want to forget, why do you try to make me remember? I want to—”
He looked up again: his eyes were bloodshot, and red-rimmed from nights of tears. But now it seemed there were no more tears left in him; just an arid place where there had been an honest fear of death, a love of love, and an appetite for life. What met Lewis’ eyes was a universal indifference: to continuation, to self-preservation, to feeling.
“She was a whore,” he suddenly exclaimed. His hands were fists. Lewis had never seen Phillipe make a fist in his life. Now his nails bit into the soft flesh of his palm until blood began to flow.
“Whore,” he said again, his voice too loud in the little cell.
“Keep your row down,” snapped the guard.
“A whore!” This time Phillipe hissed the accusation through teeth exposed like those of an angry baboon.
Lewis could make no sense of the transformation.
“You began all this—” Phillipe said, looking straight at Lewis, meeting his eyes fully for the first time. It was a bitter accusation, though Lewis didn’t understand its significance.
“Me?”
“With your stories. With your damn Dupin.”
“Dupin?”
“It was all a lie: all stupid lies. Women, murder—”
“You mean the Rue Morgue story?”
“You were so proud of that, weren’t you? All those silly lies. None of it was true.”
“Yes it was.”
“No. It never was, Lewis: it was a story, that’s all. Dupin, the Rue Morgue, the murders…”
His voice trailed away, as though the next words were unsayable.
“…the ape.”
Those were the words: the apparently unspeakable was spoken as though each syllable had been cut from his throat.
“…the ape.”
“What about the ape?”
“There are beasts, Lewis. Some of them are pitiful; circus animals. They have no brains; they are born victims. Then there are others.”
“What others?”
“Natalie was a whore!” he screamed again, his eyes big as saucers. He took hold of Lewis’ lapels, and began to shake him. Everybody else in the little room turned to look at the two old men as they wrestled over the table. Convicts and their sweethearts grinned as Phillipe was dragged off his friend, his words descending into incoherence and obscenity as he thrashed in the warder’s grip.
“Whore! Whore! Whore!” was all he could say as they hauled him back to his cell.
Catherine met Lewis at the door of her apartment. She was shaking and tearful. Beyond her, the room was wrecked.
She sobbed against his chest as he comforted her, but she was inconsolable. It was many years since he’d comforted a woman, and he’d lost the knack of it. He was embarrassed instead of soothing, and she knew it. She broke away from his embrace, happier untouched.
“He was here,” she said.
He didn’t need to ask who. The stranger, the tearful, razor-wielding stranger.
“What did he want?”
“He kept saying ‘Phillipe’ to me. Almost saying it; grunting it more than saying it: and when I didn’t answer he just destroyed the furniture, the vases. He wasn’t even looking for anything: he just wanted to make a mess.”
It made her furious: the uselessness of the attack.
The apartment was in ruins. Lewis wandered through the fragments of porcelain and shredded fabric, shaking his head. In his mind a confusion of tearful faces: Catherine, Phillipe, the stranger. Everyone in his narrow world, it seemed, was hurt and broken. Everyone was suffering; and yet the source, the heart of the suffering, was nowhere to be found.
Only Phillipe had pointed an accusing finger: at Lewis himself.
“You began all this.” Weren’t those his words? “You began all this.”
But how?
Lewis stood at the window. Three of the small panes had been cracked by flying debris, and a wind was insinuating itself into the apartment, with frost in its teeth. He looked across at the ice-thickened waters of the Seine; then a movement caught his eye. His stomach turned.
The full face of the stranger was turned up to the window, his expression wild. The clothes he had always worn so impeccably were in disarray, and the look on his face was of utter, utter despair, so pitiful as to be almost tragic. Or rather, a performance of tragedy: an actor’s pain. Even as Lewis stared down at him the stranger raised his arms to the window in a gesture that seemed to beg either forgiveness or understanding, or both.