The man dropped to the ground.
Nicholai knelt beside him, felt his pulse, and cursed himself for striking too hard. His skill had not returned to the point where he could precisely calibrate the force of a blow, and the man was dead. This was unfortunate, because he would have liked to question him to find out who had sent him and why.
Clumsy, Nicholai told himself, clumsy and imprecise.
You will have to improve.
He went back into the house and used the telephone to dial the number that Haverford had given him for emergencies. When the American answered, Nicholai said, “There are two corpses in the garden. I imagine you will want to remove them.”
“Stay inside. I’ll have a cleanup team there right away.”
Nicholai hung up. Solange was standing in the doorway, looking at him. She wore a simple white silk robe, held in place by a wide silk belt tied in a bow that begged for tugging. A kitchen knife was clutched in her right hand, held low by her thigh, and her amazing green eyes blazed. She looked to Nicholai as if she were indeed ready to kill someone.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“I’m fine. A bit more winded than I’d like to be, perhaps.” He wondered at his lack of emotion, then decided that the adrenaline surge had yet to recede and was masking whatever he might feel about his close call, and the killing of two men.
Nicholai looked at the knife in her hand and asked, “Were you going to use that?”
“If I had to,” she answered. “Are they dead?”
“Yes.”
“You are sure.”
“Quite sure.”
Solange walked into the kitchen and came back with two squat glasses of whiskey. “I don’t know about you, but I need one.”
Nicholai took the drink and knocked it back in one swallow. Perhaps, he speculated, I feel a bit more than I thought.
“You are trembling a little,” she said.
“Perceptions to the contrary,” Nicholai answered, “I am not a practiced killer.”
It was true. He had killed Kishikawa-san out of love – something a Western mind would struggle to understand. But that act of mercy could not inure him against the professional dispatching of two sentient beings, who, despite the fact that they tried to kill him first, were still human. As the adrenaline faded, he felt an odd, contradictory mix of elation and regret.
Solange nodded her understanding.
The “cleanup” crew arrived before Nicholai and Solange could finish a second drink. Haverford, uncharacteristically dressed in an untucked shirt and blue jeans, came in through the kitchen door. “My God, are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Nicholai answered.
“What the hell happened?” Haverford asked.
Nicholai told him about the assault, omitting the details of his counterattack, only saying that he was sorry to have killed the second man. He could hear the soft sounds of the crew working outside, removing the bodies, wiping up the blood, restoring the pebbled paths to their pristine order. As if, he thought, nothing had ever happened.
The head of the crew came in, whispered something to Haverford, and left.
“They were Japs,” Haverford said.
Nicholai shook his head. “Chinese, or at least in the employ of the Chinese.”
Haverford looked at him curiously.
“The Japanese don’t use hatchets,” Nicholai explained. “The Chinese do, and only Chinese tongs, typically. Besides, no Japanese assassin would have fallen so easily for “The Angry Monk Paints the Wall.” Someone in China wants me – or Michel Guibert – dead.”
“I’ll get on it,” Haverford answered. “And I’ll increase security around here.”
“Don’t,” Nicholai said. “Security will only draw attention. The interesting question is, How did they know where I was.”
Haverford frowned and Nicholai enjoyed his discomfiture, a welcome crack in the wall of his confidence, almost worth a near death to see. The agent said, “We should probably move you.”
“Please don’t,” Nicholai answered. “It’s pleasant here and there’s really very little danger. If the assassins were Japanese, they would try again and again until they succeeded. But the Chinese think differently, they would never repeat a failed stratagem. I’m safe until I leave here.”
Haverford nodded. “Could I have some of that scotch?”
After Haverford and the cleanup crew left, Nicholai and Solange went to bed but did not make love. Neither of them felt particularly sexual after the events of the evening. They lay in silence for a long time until Nicholai said, “I am very sorry. Please accept my apology.”
“What for?”
“For bringing bloodshed into your home.”
Solange could see the shame on his young face. Truly, it was the end of youth, this killing business. She knew that any decent person who still had a soul felt revulsion at the taking of life. And she knew that she couldn’t remove his pain, only share it with him, make him know that he was not a monster, but a flawed human being trying to exist in a flawed world.
“Do you think,” she asked, “I have not seen bloodshed before?”
Her head on his chest, his arm around her, she told him her story.
She was a beautiful child, the pride of the quartier. Even as a little girl her skin, her eyes, her hair, the perfect bone structure of her face made her a treasure. As she grew into adolescence, the men of the neighborhood stole shamed, sidelong glances while strangers in the city at large were not so polite, verbally expressing their desires in graphic terms.
Mama guarded her daughter’s virtue zealously. She gave her a cultured, religious education with the sisters, took her to church every Sunday and on all days of holy obligation. Most of all, she went to great lengths to keep from Solange the knowledge of how her nice clothes and new pairs of shoes were paid for.
There was sometimes a little money left over for Solange to go to the cinema, and she would sit in the lovely, cool darkness, watch the silver fantasies play in front of her, and dream of one day becoming an actress herself.
Everyone said that she was certainly pretty enough.
Her mother disapproved – actresses were little better than whores.
Solange met Louis at a formal dance held between their two schools, and she found him distressingly attractive. He was tall and thin, with wavy brown hair and warm brown eyes, and he was intelligent and charming. The son of a prominent city doctor, he was relatively rich but nevertheless a passionate Communist.
He was also passionate about Solange. He truly cared for her, but could not help but test her virtue as they sat under trees along the banks of the canal, or in the cinema, or even at his house at the rare times his parents weren’t home, or at her apartment when her mother was “out.”
Mama was terrified at the beauty she had become. Proud, yes, but fearful, and she began to lecture her incessantly on the evils of men. “They only want sex,” she harangued, “and your precious Louis is no different. But don’t give in – only a salope sleeps with men without marriage.”
One night Louis walked her past a large four-story house.
“What is it?” Solange asked.
“It’s a brothel,” Louis said, at the very moment the door opened and Solange saw her mother step out to take a smoke. Her black hair was disheveled, her lips were puffy. She lit her cigarette and turned to see Solange staring up at her.
“Go home,” she said, her voice breaking. “Please, Solange, go now.”
But Solange just stood there in shock.
Finally, Louis took her by the arm and led her away.
The Nazis came to the south of France later that year, after the Allies invaded North Africa. German soldiers occupied the city, the police helped them locate Jews, La Résistance organized, and the Gestapo came in to track them down.