"From Geneva?"
"Yes, nearer to Geneva."
"Geneva is the capital of Switzerland, Yvonne."
Yvonne did not raise her head.
"You are happy today, Yvonne? You have spoken to Thomas? You must speak to him every day. When one is engaged to be married, it is normal."
And at around eleven, when the disco hotted up, Jonathan was once more there to lend a hand. The shows before eleven were mere displays of nudity, but after eleven the acts became more animated and the girls gave up putting on their clothes between turns, except for a tinselly apron for their cash and maybe a gown they didn't bother to fasten. When they opened their legs for you for an extra five dollars ― a personal service performed at your table, on a stool that the house provided for the purpose ― the effect was of a furry burrow belonging to some artificially illuminated night animal.
"You like our floor show, Jacques? You find it cultural? It stimulates you a little, even you?"
"It's very effective, madame."
"I am glad. We should not deny our feelings."
Fights were seldom and had the sporadic quality of skirmishes between puppies. Only the worst of them ended in expulsion. A chair would shriek, a girl would skip back, there was the smack of a fist or the strict silence of two men wrestling. Then out of nowhere Andre Latulipe was between them like a little Atlas, holding them apart until the company settled again. The first time this happened, Jonathan left him to handle matters in his own way. But when an oversized drunk started to take a swing at Latulipe, Jonathan locked the man's spare arm behind him and led him to the fresh air.
"Where did you learn that stuff?" Latulipe asked as they were clearing bottles.
"In the army."
"The Swiss have an army?"
"It's obligatory for everyone."
One Sunday night the old Catholic cure came, wearing a soiled dog collar and a patched frock. The girls stopped dancing and Yvonne ate lemon pie with him, which the cure insisted on paying for out of a trapper's purse bound with a thong. Jonathan watched them from the shadows.
Another night a mountain of a man appeared, with cropped white hair and a cuddly corduroy jacket with leather elbows. A jolly wife in a fur coat waddled at his side. One of Latulipe's Ukrainian waiters gave him a table by the floor; he ordered champagne and two plates of smoked salmon and watched the show with fatherly indulgence. But when Latulipe looked round for Jonathan, to warn him that the superintendent would not expect a bill, Jonathan had vanished.
"You got something against police?"
"Until my passport comes back, yes."
"How come you knew he was police?"
Jonathan smiled disarmingly but offered no reply that Latulipe could afterwards remember.
* * *
"We should warn him," Madame Latulipe said for the fiftieth time as she lay sleeplessly in bed. "She is provoking him deliberately. She is up to her old tricks."
"But they never speak. They never look at each other," her husband protested, putting down his book.
"And you don't know why? Two criminals like them?"
"She's engaged to Thomas, and she will marry Thomas," said Latulipe. "Since when was no crime a crime?" he added gamely.
"You are speaking like a barbarian, as usual. A barbarian is a person without intuition. Have you told him he mustn't sleep with the disco girls?"
"He shows no disposition to."
"There you are, then! Perhaps it would be better if he did."
"He's an athlete, for Christ's sake," Latulipe burst out. his Slav temper getting the better of him. "He has other outlets. He goes running. He treks in the bush. He sails. He hires motorbikes. He cooks. He works. He sleeps. Not every man is a sex maniac."
"Then he is a tapette," Madame Latulipe announced. "I knew it the moment I saw him. Yvonne is wasting her time. It will teach her a lesson."
"He's not a tapette! Ask the Ukrainian boys! He is entirely normal!"
"Have you seen his passport yet?"
"His passport has nothing to do with whether he is a tapette! It has gone back to the Swiss Embassy. It has to be renewed before Ottawa will stamp it. He is being tossed back and forth between bureaucracies."
" 'Back and forth between bureaucracies'! Such words always! Who does he think he is? Victor Hugo? A Swiss doesn't talk that way!"
"I don't know how Swiss talk."
"Ask Cici, then! Cici says Swiss are crude. She was married to one. She knows. Beauregard is French, I am certain of it. He cooks like a Frenchman, he speaks like a Frenchman, he is arrogant like a Frenchman, he is cunning like a Frenchman. And decadent like a Frenchman. Of course he is French! He is French, and he is a liar."
Breathing heavily, she stared past her husband at the ceiling, which was sprinkled with paper stars that glittered in the dark.
"His mother was German," said Latulipe, attempting a calmer tone.
"What? Nonsense! Germans are blond. Who told you?"
"He did. Some German engineers were in the disco last night. Beauregard spoke German with them like a Nazi. I asked him. He speaks English too."
"You must talk to the authorities. Beauregard must be regularised, or he must go. Is it my hotel or his? He is illegal, I am sure of it. He is too conspicuous. C'est bien sur!"
Turning her back to her husband, she switched on her radio, then contemplated her paper stars in fury.
* * *
Jonathan collected Yvonne on his Harley-Davidson from the Mange-Quick on the highway north, ten days after Yvonne had dressed him in his whites. They had met in their attic corridor by seeming accident, each having heard the other first. He said it was his day off tomorrow; she asked what he would do with it. Hire a motorbike, he replied. Maybe I'll take in a few lakes.
"My father keeps a boat at his cottage," she said, as if her mother did not exist. Next day she was waiting as arranged, pale but resolute.
The scenery was slow and majestic, with rolling blue forest and a drained sky. But as they pressed north the day darkened and an east wind turned to drizzle. It was raining by the time they reached the cottage. They undressed each other, and a lifetime passed for Jonathan in which for a long while there was no appeasement and no release as he made up for months of abstinence. She fought him without taking her eyes from him except to offer him a different attitude, a different woman.
"Wait," she whispered.
Her body sighed and fell again, then rose, her face stretched and became ugly but did not burst. A cry of surrender escaped her, but from so far off it could have come from the drenched forests that surrounded them or the depths of the grey lake. She mounted him and they began the climb again, peak to peak until they drowned together.
He lay intently beside her, watching her breathing, resenting her repose. He tried to work out whom he was betraying.
Sophie? Or just myself as usual? We're betraying Thomas. She rolled onto her side, turning her back to him. Her beauty added to his loneliness. He began caressing her.
* * *
"He's a good man," Yvonne said. "Into anthropology and Indian rights. His father's a lawyer working with the Cree. He wants to follow in his footsteps." She had found a bottle of wine and brought it back to bed. Her head was resting on his chest.
"I'm sure I'd like him very much," Jonathan said politely, picturing an earnest dreamer in a Fair Isle pullover penning love letters on recycled paper.
"You're a lie," she said, distractedly kissing him. "You're some kind of lie. You're all truth, but you're a lie. I don't understand you."
"I'm on the run," he said. "I had a problem in England."
She clambered up his body and put her head beside his. "Want to talk about it?"
"I've got to get hold of a passport," he said. "That stuff about being Swiss is junk. I'm British."