‘I’m listening,’ he said.
Julius, insensitive to such nuances, told him that one did not withdraw without risk from an undertaking such as the one he had been entrusted with. Of course he understood the young man’s motives, his scruples, his fear of arrest by the Portuguese police and handover to a foreign intelligence service, but that was part and parcel of the mission. He had not been chosen for an easy task. Since he had accepted the rewards, so he must one day accept the risks. Men of his age were dying in their thousands on the Eastern front to root out for ever the Marxist canker from Russia. Those who had the good luck not to be combatants owed it to the rest to possess strong nerves.
‘I’ve carried out the mission I was given,’ Jean said, ‘but not in the name of anti-Marxism. In any case I hardly know what Marxism is, and even less what anti-Marxism might be.’
‘Perhaps it’s time you started being interested in ideas.’
‘I occasionally have them. As luck would have it, they’re not usually generalisations …’
Julius smacked the table. The conversation had taken a wrong turn and he regretted having shown so little severity until now that Jean felt able to make fun of him openly.
‘French irony has its charm, I don’t deny it, and I congratulate you on possessing it. But we’re dealing with something else here: you’re withdrawing from a mission whose secrecy is its strength. I’m warning you now: it’s impossible. If you withdraw I shan’t cover you. Not even knowing the affection Madeleine has for you.’
Jean believed him. Julius’s bald statement might have thrown him into a panic. As it happened, it came at exactly the right moment. He studied Julius closely, as if wanting to imprint on his memory the features, hardened by severity, that so ill suited this supposedly decent man mixed up in serious affairs who this evening was at home, having invited everyone who was anyone in the occupation to hear a performance of his two favourite Mozart sonatas. He understood that the time for games was over. The reality of the danger had not yet sunk in, but he sensed it nevertheless, and decided he needed a day’s grace to ensure his freedom.
‘I’m expressing myself badly,’ he said. ‘I need to think, that’s all. I have an idea to put to you. I need twenty-four hours to see if it’s workable.’
Julius was not easily deceived. There was too much at stake financially for him to allow Jean any leeway.
‘What is it, this idea?’
‘Give me till tomorrow and I’ll give you not just an idea but a plan.’
‘I can’t run that risk.’
‘In that case I’ll leave you.’
Julius got to his feet, his face relaxed. The justice he had meted out satisfied him entirely. He stifled a surge of pride, came to Jean and put his hand on his shoulder.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
‘So am I. Will you do me a favour?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘If your guests haven’t cleaned out the buffet, I’d like to try your foie gras.’
‘With the greatest of pleasure!’
They returned to the drawing room. Madeleine had been keeping an eye out for them. When she saw Julius smiling and holding Jean’s arm, her anxieties vanished.
‘Jean, I’ve kept you a cold plate and a bottle of champagne.’
‘I’m leaving you in good hands,’ Julius said as he walked away.
Jean tried to see who he was making for, who in this varied and chattering throng, released after the concert like a flock of birds, would detain him at the exit, but Madeleine was urging him towards the buffet, where several guests were still lingering. At a sign from her a butler bent down and extracted from beneath the table a plate attractively heaped with foie gras and cold veal.
‘Madeleine,’ Jean said after his first mouthful, ‘your Julius has just warned me I’m in danger. I need to leave here without being seen. He assured me you’d help.’
She opened her eyes wide in astonishment. Her lover had never involved her in his affairs, and if a word out of place was ever uttered in her presence she pretended not to have heard.
‘What? You want to leave without anyone seeing you?’
‘Exactly.’
Madeleine’s face tensed. She did not understand. Colour flooded her throat. Suddenly she was afraid, a defenceless woman in a world where, until now, her safety had always been guaranteed. Was it about to start all over again, the way it had been before, a life of obscure threats like those that had oppressed her during her hard life as a woman of the street? Moved by her disarray, Jean tried to calm her. ‘It’s nothing, absolutely nothing!’ What good did it do to alarm her, to tell her the truth about the milieu in which she had blossomed so innocently, believing herself, in good faith, saved? The mirror over the buffet reflected a part of the drawing room in which the guests, glass in hand, spoke in small, languid groups, still slightly listless after the concert which, the Germans excepted, had rather bored them. In the centre of the mirror was Julius. He had taken Palfy by the arm and was speaking in his ear. When he looked up and caught sight of Jean and Madeleine together, acute annoyance appeared on his face. His expression hardened. Palfy seemed not to have noticed and had his head half turned, observing another part of the drawing room. Doubtless Julius had told Palfy what was going on. But what could he expect from Palfy? His friend’s present course of action allowed no room for error. He was accumulating a fortune and would not sacrifice his ambitions for anything.
‘What are you looking at?’ Madeleine asked, curious at his sudden silence.
‘Julius, in a mirror.’
She clasped her hands.
‘I daren’t do anything without him,’ she said, sighing.
Her immaculately made-up face betrayed a moment’s weariness. Her easy, sheltered life had relaxed her. The resurgence of problems hollowed her features, emphasising a dark shadow under her eyes.
‘Sometimes when I wake up in the morning, I tell myself it’s not real and that if I pinch myself the dream will evaporate,’ she added.
With a gesture she took in her thirty or so guests, who in truth cared little for their hostess and spoke a language that was still largely foreign to her, though she tried valiantly to understand them. Yet she clung to them, for they symbolised her social rise. The dry pop of a champagne cork, eased out by the butler’s fingers, attracted attention. Two couples rushed to the buffet, jostling Madeleine, as indifferent to the mistress of the house as if she had been the lavatory attendant.
‘Nelly didn’t come,’ Madeleine said awkwardly.
Generously he lied.
‘She’s working tonight.’
‘Well, of course, that’s more important than anything … What’s she performing?’
‘Musset.’
Madeleine was not very sure whether Musset was a play or an author. She made a note to ask Blanche next day and assumed a knowing and admiring expression.
‘Are you and she still getting on?’
‘Yes, very well.’
He pictured Nelly in a restaurant on Rue de Beaujolais, for that was where she was, opposite Jérôme Callot who had managed to get away to see her for an evening. It was good that she had found an opportunity to be alone with her ham of a co-star and to see him in real life, away from the theatre, in his tight-fitting suburban clothes. She needed to be disappointed. She would be. Afterwards everything would be better.