Harold and Barbara found themselves separated from Sabine and Eugène. Barbara whispered something that Harold could not hear, because of the train noise. He put his head down.
“I said ‘I think we’d better go to the Vouillemont.’ ”
“So do I. But I’m a little worried. It’s after eleven o’clock, and we have no reservations.”
“If there’s no room at the Vouillemont, we can go to some other hotel,” she said. “I’d rather spend the night on a park bench than put up with this any longer.”
“But why did he ask us?”
“Something is wrong. He’s changed his mind. Or perhaps he enjoys this sort of thing.”
“The son of a bitch. You saw what happened when I asked him where to go about the big suitcases?… The only reason I hesitate at all is Alix and Mme Cestre. I hate to have them know we were—”
“He may not tell them what happened.”
“But Sabine will.”
The train rushed into the next station. They peered through the window and saw the word Concorde. Over the intervening heads, Eugène signaled that they were to get off.
Harold set the suitcases down and extended his hand. “We’ll leave you here,” he said stiffly. “Good night.”
“But why?” Eugène demanded, astonished.
“The hotel is near this station, and we don’t want to put you to any further trouble. Thank you very much.”
“For what?”
“For taking care of us on the way up to Paris,” Harold said. But then he spoiled the effect by blushing.
There was a brief silence during which both of them struggled with embarrassment.
“I am extremely sorry,” Eugène said, “if I have given you any reason to think—”
“It seemed to us that you are a trifle distrait,” Harold said, “and we’d rather not put you to any further trouble.”
“I am not distrait,” Eugène said. “And you are not putting me to any trouble whatever. The apartment is not being used. There is no need for you to go to a hotel.”
A train drew in, at that moment, and Harold had the feeling afterward that that was what decided the issue, though trains don’t, of course, decide anything. All decisions are the result of earlier decisions; cause, as anyone who has ever studied Beginning Philosophy knows, is another way of looking at effect. They got on the train, and then got off several stations farther along the line, at the Place Pierre-Joseph Redouté. A huge block of granite in the center of the square and dark triangular buildings, with the streets between them leading off in six directions like the rays of a star, were registered on Harold’s mind as landmarks he would need to know if they suddenly decided to retrace their steps.
Sabine took her suitcase from Eugène. Then she shook hands with Barbara and Harold. “I am leaving you here,” she said, and walked off down a dark, deserted avenue.
The other three turned into a narrow side street, and the Americans stopped when Eugène stopped, in front of the huge door of an apartment house. The door was locked. He rang the bell and waited. There was a clicking noise and the door gave under the pressure of his hand and they passed through a dimly lighted foyer to the elevator. Eugène put the suit cases into it, indicated that Harold and Barbara were to get in also, pressed the button for the sixth floor, and stepped out. “It only holds three,” he said. “And with the suitcases it would not rise.”
He shut the elevator door, and as they went up slowly, they saw him ascending the stairs, flight after flight. He was there in time to open the elevator door for them. He let them into the dark apartment with his key and then proceeded down the hall, turning on lights as he went, to the bedroom they were to occupy. “It is our room when Alix is here,” he explained.
“But we don’t want to put you out of your room,” Harold protested.
“During the summer I prefer to sleep in the study,” Eugène said.
He showed them the toilet, in a separate little room off the hall, and the bathroom they were to use. The gas hot-water heater was in the other bathroom, and he led them there and showed them how to turn the heater on and off when they wanted a bath.
They went back to the room that was to be theirs, and Eugène opened the window and unlatched the metal shutters and pushed them outward, letting in the soft night air. They saw that the room opened onto an iron balcony. Eugène removed the pillows from a big studio couch, and then he drew the Kelly-green bedspread off and folded it and put it over the back of a chair. They watched him solemnly, as if he were demonstrating the French way to fold a bedspread. He showed them how to unhook the pillow covers and where the extra blankets were, and then he said good night. During all this, everybody was extremely polite, as if they had tried everything else and found that nothing works but politeness and patience.
Chapter 13
IN THE FIRST LUMINOUS QUARTER-HOUR of daylight, the Place Pierre-Joseph Redouté in the 16th arrondissement of Paris was given over to philosophical and mathematical speculation. The swallows skimming the wet rooftops said: What are numbers?
The sky, growing paler, said: What is being when being becomes morning?
What is “five,” asked the birds, apart from “five” swallows?
The French painter and lithographer who belonged in the center of the Place and who from his tireless study of natural forms might have been able to answer those questions was unfortunately not there any more; he had been melted down and made into bullets by the Germans. The huge block of rough granite that was substituting for him said: Matter is energy not in motion, and the swallows said: Very well, try this, then, why don’t you … and this … and this …
Though proof was easy and the argument had long ago grown tiresome, the granite refrained. But it could not resist some slight demonstration, and so it gave off concentric circles of green grass, scarlet salvia, curbing, and cobblestone.
The wide, wet, empty streets that led away from the Place Redouté like the rays of a star or the spokes of a wheel also at the very same time returned to it—returned from the Etoile, the Place d’Ièna, the Place Victor Hugo, the Trocadéro, and the Bois de Boulogne. The sky went on turning lighter. The pissoir, ill-smelling, with its names, dates, engagements, and obscene diagrams, said: Everything that happens, in spite of the best efforts of the police, is determined by the space co-ordinates x, y, and z, and the time co-ordinate t.
God is love, said the leaves on the chestnut trees, and the iron church bell filled the air with a frightful clangor.
Across an attic window in the rue Malène a workshirt hanging on a clothesline to dry grew a darker blue as it absorbed the almost invisible rain.
On the other side of the street, at the same sixth-floor level, a pair of metal shutters folded back gave away the location of a bedroom. The sleepers, both in one bed, were turned toward each other. She moved in her sleep, and he put his hand under her silken knees and gathered them to his loins and went on sleeping. Shortly afterward they turned away from each other, as if to demonstrate that in marriage there is no real resting place. Now love is gathered like great long-stemmed summer flowers, now the lovers withdraw from one another to nourish secretly a secret life. He pulls the blanket and sheet closer, shutting off the air at the back of his neck. She has not committed the murder, the police are not looking for her, and there is just time, between the coming and going of the man in the camel’s-hair coat and the footsteps outside the door, to hide the papers. But where? If she puts them inside a book, they will be found, even though there are so many books. She will explain and they will not listen. They will not believe her. And he is asleep, dreaming. She has no one to stand by her when they come. She goes to the closet and finds there the camel’s-hair coat worn by the murderer, who knew she was innocent and good, and slipped in and out of the apartment without being seen, and so who will believe her?… Help! Help! takes the form of a whimper.