“And… one week later… she committed suicide.”
“But, Moishe…”
“Oh, I know! I know, Claude! It had nothing to do with me. I wasn’t that important in her life. A coincidence; I know that. But I felt I had to do something. I had failed to show that I was not like the other men. And now I had to do something, to show that I had affection. Then I thought of the daughter.”
“So you arranged to have the girl taken into Ste. Catherine’s. How did you find the money?”
“That’s when I began to sell out the business to David. Bit by bit, as she needed money for school, for clothes, for vacations, I arranged for a summer in Europe, and later for a loan to start her language school.”
“And all this time you never talked to the girl? Never let her know what you were doing for her?”
“That wouldn’t have been right. I wanted to do something. A gesture of love. If I had accepted the daughter’s gratitude, even affection maybe, then it would not have been a pure gesture of love. It would have been payment for value received. It was a sort of game—staying in the background, looking after her, taking pride in her accomplishments. And she has turned out to be a wonderful woman. Hasn’t she, Claude?”
LaPointe’s voice has become fogged over. He clears his throat. “Yes.”
“When you think of it, it’s ironic that you have met her, while I have not But I know what a wonderful woman she has become. Look what she is doing for others! A school to teach people how to communicate. What could be more important? And she is a loving person. A little too loving, I’m afraid. Men take advantage of her. Oh, I know that she has had many lovers. I know. I have kept an eye on her. In my day, or yours, to have lovers would have been the mark of a bad girl. But it’s different now. Young people aren’t afraid to express their love. Still… still… there are some men who take a girl’s body without loving her. These people sin. They defile.
“I used to go to Carré St. Louis often at night and keep an eye on her. I came to recognize the men. When I could, I checked up on the ones who visited often. That was a game too, checking up on them. It’s amazing how much you can find out by asking a little question here, a little question there. Especially if you look like me—mild, unassuming. Most of the men were all right. Not good enough for her, maybe. But that’s how a father always thinks. But some of them… some of them were sinning against her. Taking her love. Taking advantage of her gentleness, of her need for love. The first one was that university professor. A teacher! A teacher taking advantage of an innocent student fresh from convent school! Think of that. And a married man! Would you believe it, Claude, I saw him come to her school again and again for more than a year before it occurred to me that he was taking her love… her body. Inexperienced as I am, I thought he was interested in her school!
“Then there was that American. He had a wife in the United States. And from the first day, he was lying to her. Did you know that he used a false name with her?”
“Yes, I learned that.”
“And finally there was this Antonio Verdini. When I found out about his reputation on the Main…”
“He was a bad one.”
“An animal! Worse! Animals don’t pretend. Animals don’t rape. That’s what it is, you know, when a man takes the body of a woman without feeling gentleness or love for her. Rape. Those three men raped her!”
The room is quite dark now; a ghost of gloaming still haunts the vacant lot where children play at falling down dead, and the lone girl watches soberly.
On the billboard, the woman in a short tartan skirt smiles provocatively. She’ll give you everything she has, if you will smoke EXPRESS “A.”
While Moishe sits unmoving, calming his fury, LaPointe’s mind is flooded with scraps and fragments. He recalls Moishe’s wonderful skill with a knife when cutting fabric. David once said what a surgeon he would have made, and Father Martin made a weak joke about appendices being made of damask. LaPointe remembers the long discussions about sin and crime, and about sins against love. Moishe was trying to explain. Then a terribly unkind image leaks into LaPointe’s mind. He wonders if, when he made love to Yo-Yo, Moishe grunted.
“Tell me about her,” Moishe says quietly.
It takes LaPointe a second to find the track. “About Mlle. Montjean?”
“Yes. One of my daydreams has always been that I meet her somehow and we spend a few hours talking about this and that… not revealing anything to her, of course, but finding out how she thinks, what values she holds, her plans, hopes, outlook, Weltanschauung.” Moishe smiles wanly. “It doesn’t look as though that will happen now. So why don’t you tell me about her. She’s an intelligent girl, eh?”
“Yes, she seems to be. She speaks Latin.”
“And did you find her sensitive… open to people?”
“Yes.”
“I knew she would be! I knew she would take that quality from her mother. And happy? Is she happy?”
LaPointe realizes what trash it would make of all that Moishe has done, if the girl is not happy.
“Yes,” LaPointe says. “She’s happy. Why shouldn’t she be? She has everything she could want. Education. Success. You’ve given her everything.”
“That’s good. That’s good.” The sky is dark and is no longer reflected in Moishe’s glasses. His eyes soften. “She is happy.” For a time he warms himself with that thought. Then he sighs and lifts his head, as though waking. “Don’t worry about it, Claude.”
“About what?”
“This business, it must be awkward for you. Painful. After all, we are friends. But you won’t have to arrest me. I will handle everything. A thousand times when I was in the camp, I cursed myself for letting them take me. I regretted that I hadn’t killed my body before they could degrade and soil my mind. So, after I got out, I managed to purchase some… medicine. You would be surprised how many people who have survived the camps have—hidden somewhere—such medicine. Not that they intend to use it. No, they hope and expect that they will never have to use it. But it is a great comfort to know it is there. To know that you will never again have to surrender yourself to indignities.
“I shall take this medicine soon. You won’t have the embarrassment of having to arrest me.”
After a silence, LaPointe asks, “Do you want me to stay with you?”
Moishe is tempted. It would be a comfort. But: “No, Claude. You just go do your rounds of the Main. Put the street to bed like a good beat cop. I’ll sit here awhile. Maybe have another glass of schnapps. There’s only a little left. Why should it go to waste?”
LaPointe sets down his empty glass and rises. He doesn’t dare follow his impulse to touch Moishe. Moishe has it under control now. Sentiment might hurt him. LaPointe presses his fists deep into his overcoat pockets, grinding his knuckles against his revolver.
“What will become of her?” Moishe asks.
LaPointe follows his glance down to the adolescent girl standing alone with her back against the scabby brick wall. “What becomes of them, Claude?”
LaPointe leaves the room, softly closing the door behind him.
It is snowing on the Main, and the shops are closing; metal grids clatter down over display windows, doors are locked, one or two lights are left on in the back as deterrents to theft.
The sidewalks are thick with people, pressing, tangling, fluxing, their necks pulled into collars, their eyes squinting against the snow. At street corners and narrow places there are blockages in the pedestrian swarm, and they are pressed unwillingly against one another, threading or shouldering their way through the nuisance of these faceless and unimportant others, the wad.