We have finished with Madeleine and Blanche. They have just spoken to Jean for the last time, and now he is aware of exactly how alone and ignored he is in this gathering. The author would like to add a footnote here. It may be, in truth, that we have shown a Jean too composed and too sure of himself. Let us not forget that he is only twenty-two and that he has already had his fair share of struggles, been aided by fortune, harmed by misfortune. He is beginning to form a more accurate idea of the world confronting him, and in which he must, at this moment, survive. He has responded to Julius’s judgement on him with impudence, but impudence cannot hide an intelligent anxiety about his fate. His throat is tight. He has never found himself in such a tight spot, and is thinking about everything that will soon change around him, about Claude whom he will be forced to abandon, about Nelly whom he will not be able to see again, at the same time as scanning the room for the man who is responsible here for carrying out Julius’s orders. We shall add that he has no regrets. It was a fine adventure, and he has savoured the trips to Portugal, even Urbano’s unexpected friendship. But everything is crumbling: the way to Claude is barred to him, Nelly at this precise moment is perhaps already in bed with her fool, and he will never see the money he carefully deposited in a secret account in Lisbon.
He drank several glasses of champagne and thought of Antoine du Courseau and their last night before abandoning La Sauveté to the Longuets. Palfy touched his elbow.
‘Are you dreaming?’
‘I’m afraid my goose is cooked.’
‘Marceline will be here in a minute. I’ve just telephoned her.’
‘Then what?’
‘We’ve confected a little stratagem. Be patient. Talk to someone. Julius is watching you.’
Palfy left him. The only person Jean felt like talking to was the butler, the one person worthy of the occasion, but the butler would not compromise himself by mixing with the guests. Polo walked over and collected two glasses.
‘So, Monsieur Arnaud, you look rather out of sorts.’
He rolled his ‘r’s. It was an accent he claimed to have acquired as a boy, in his primary school in the Auvergne. He even occasionally came out with a ‘Fouchtra!’ which he felt sounded very local, but which left any listener who really came from the Auvergne baffled.
‘No, I feel excellent, thank you. I just know hardly anybody here.’
‘Ah, the who’s who of Paris! So difficult to break into!’
‘Even more so if you can’t really be bothered.’
Polo looked surprised. Since his ascent he felt at ease everywhere. This young man looked unconcerned.
‘I’m delighted to have bumped into you — I wanted to give my wife a little painting. A very little one. On canvas. That you can roll up. I’ll drop into your gallery tomorrow. I’m sure you can find something suitable for me. And don’t fleece me on the price; I’m a friend of Julius’s and Constantin’s …’
He moved away, smiling, happy to have revived the young man’s gloomy spirits with the thought of a painting. A very small painting that could be rolled up and slipped in a handbag for a journey to Switzerland or Spain. There was a stir: Marceline was entering the drawing room, a head taller than the women and almost all the men. In recent weeks she had filled out and looked practically voluptuous in a blue satin dress, in her hand a very large bag that she left on an armchair before walking over to Madeleine and saying in a voice both earnest and joyful the phrase Palfy had taught her and that people now expected from her, while restraining themselves from giggling: ‘My own two in your dear ones,’ and shaking both hands as she did so, surprising those who did not know her and were astonished by this impulsive irruption of a she-bull in a china shop. Jean did not smile. He had a soft spot for the ridiculous Marceline, so at ease with herself. After gushing greetings to Madeleine and others she moved in his direction, picking up a glass of champagne from the butler on the way. She smelt strongly of a cheap perfume that Palfy had identified as patchouli. Crossing the drawing room, she ignored Blanche, who was looking daggers at her. From her private convictions Madame Michette derived a poise that nothing could alter. Her activity, hilarious to start with, then by chance branching into genuine clandestine undertakings, had developed and magnified her authority. In all innocence she had believed she was working for Palfy from the moment she had informed him of her desire to serve, and it had not occurred to her for a second that he might have launched her on an unsuspecting Paris as a joke. That evening she was about to play her most important role: to extricate Jean from this trap, to spirit him away from Julius’s agents.
‘I’m getting you out of here, young man,’ she said, speaking out of the side of her mouth, as if the slightest word might be read on her lips and give them away.
‘How?’
‘Go into the hall, discreetly. I’ll be in Madeleine’s bedroom. But quickly. There’s no time to lose.’
He would have believed anyone at that moment. He slipped out without being seen and found Marceline in the bedroom. She was already undressing. She was wearing two dresses, one on top of the other, two pairs of stockings, two necklaces.
‘Put these on!’ she ordered.
In her bag she had a pair of high heels and a floppy hat.
‘I’ll never be able to walk in these.’
‘I’ll tell them you’re drunk.’
He did as he was told, hid his suit in Madeleine’s wardrobe, and let Marceline apply lipstick and eye shadow.
‘For once it’s useful to be a pretty boy,’ she said.
Looking at himself in Madeleine’s mirror, he felt he looked grotesque, no better than a clown.
‘I shan’t fool anyone.’
She placed a wig on his head and the floppy hat. She stood back.
‘Perfect!’ she announced. ‘Time to slip away.’
She took his arm, supporting him as if he were a tipsy girl, and they reached the street door. There were cars lined up along the pavement. In one of them sat four men in black. The driver turned to look at them, but Avenue Foch was deep in shadow and he saw only two women built like prizefighters.
‘Female wrestlers,’ he said to his companions, whose laughter wounded Marceline enough for her to hesitate, on the point of turning round and slapping the man. Her sense of duty won out. She shrugged, pulling Jean along with her. His ankles were buckling. They crossed the Étoile and turned into Rue Troyon. Two prostitutes stationed outside a dingy hotel sniggered.
‘Look at the queens!’
Marceline retorted with an obscenity so vulgar that the girls, awestruck, were silenced.
They walked for five minutes more, until they arrived at a barred gate opening onto a private path that led to small ivy-covered houses like the one where Claude’s mother lived. Marceline knew the way. In the darkness she located a well-concealed entrance. She knocked three times and the door was opened by a man in braces, his feet in worn slippers. A dim light lit a table at which a woman put down her crochet work to observe them.
‘He’s a friend,’ Marceline said. ‘He needs a quiet place for the night to sort out his next move.’
‘Has she got coupons?’ asked the woman.
The man dismissed the ill-mannered question with a gesture.
‘I said a man friend,’ Madeleine corrected her, lifting off Jean’s hat and wig.