“They aren’t telling us how to run our country. Just not to fight any more wars or put people in concentration camps.”
“Education Centers. Nobody’s business but our own. Anyway, I see you wouldn’t work with the English.”
“That isn’t exactly true. Let’s say I couldn’t go all the way with them. But don’t fool yourself: as between the Third Force and the Defenders, I pray the Third Force beats you.”
“But you don’t pray hard enough to do something?”
“Treason is an ugly word, even when you can argue that it isn’t treason.”
“Look, Mrs. F, you lose me with fancy talk. Let me lay it on the line. All we want you to do is your duty to your country: Give us the names; nobody’s going to get mussed up, I swear, and anyway, what could we do to them? We need them because the war hurt us, even if it hurt the Russians worse, and they need us because a refugee is only half a man. Go back to London and say you’ve changed your mind and you’ll work with them. Just tip us off to what they’re doing. That’s all; no fireworks, no rough stuff, nobody hurt on either side, everything settled nice and smoothly.”
“And the Defenders will continue to run the United States as a dictatorship?”
“There’s still a vote, isn’t there? And Congress can yak.”
“And pass laws which the Defender-in-Chief supersedes with new Regulations.”
“The Defender-in-Chief isn’t going to resign and turn the job over to you, if that’s what you want, but there’s bound to be some easing up.”
“All through now?”
“Let’s say I’ve reached a comma.”
“All right. No.”
“Now, let’s not paint ourselves into corners—”
“Good-by. I can’t say it’s been nice knowing you, because it hasn’t. Or that you’ve clarified my thinking, because I’m afraid it’s as soupy as ever. But good-by, anyway.”
The greedy fingers closed over hers. “You’re hysterical, kid. You’re making a mistake and you — somehow, somewhere, in your subconscious—”
Maggie winced. She didn’t mean to, but she couldn’t help it. “Unconscious,” she corrected, hearing in the primness of her voice an echo of exactly what made the opponents of the Defenders ineffective.
“O.k., o.k. In your unconscious, you know it. What you need is to simmer down and look at things coolly. Let’s go somewhere quiet — I hate these frog sidewalk joints — and talk everything over. Have a real get-together. I’ve got a room…”
She could visualize the whole scene. If he tried— If he raped her, she would lie still and docile. Maybe afterward she would kill him (how?), Judith — or was it Jael? — and Holofernes. But during the act she would be complacent.
His hand jerked away. ‘The damn frogs are coming back and they have the makings of an army with them.”
She looked over her shoulder. A crowd, a mob, not led— no, certainly not led, but he was there, near the front, thrown up and forward — by the beautiful young man. His older, calmer friend wasn’t in evidence. Clearly they had been assembled, drilled, directed, outfitted, rehearsed by some demented escapee from the lushest days of Hollywood; some man with a limp and milky eye, gray stubble and beret, who in a Montmartre garret made nightly obeisance with a lipped cigarette to Griffith and Von Stroheim. There was a United Nations flag — a faded one whose tatters had been mended with coarse thread — tied to a bamboo stick (now I know what happens to the poles those old men fishing along the Seine use; they become implements of riot) and a large placard, VIVE LA FORCE TROISIEME.
They didn’t seem in a particularly ugly or vicious mood. Rather they were like adolescents escaping boredom for some pointless horseplay. The bearer of the UN flag had a broken front tooth against which he kept thrusting his tongue; he looked bewildered and innocent. The man beside him was wall-eyed; Maggie wished profoundly he could take some position where both eyes looked at her simultaneously.
The angelic leader stepped forward, epauletted with importance. “You ‘ave not finish your beer, Madame?”
Now what happens? Does my compatriot with the Kenya passport produce a paper signed by the president of the republic attesting him a double-agent of long standing, who is loyal not only to la patrie but to la reine brittanique and the whole droning list of allies glorieux? Or does he whip out two Smith and Wessons from shoulder holsters and cow the whole mob until the US cavalry (read: paratroopers) comes to the rescue? She shifted her gaze slightly; the agent had vanished.
The leader took her glass and brought it to his carven, pouted mouth. She saw she had left a lipstick smear on the rim and that he had carefully turned the glass so he would be drinking from the same spot. The ruling spirit, she thought, but not in death; this is farce, not drama. “What is it this time, Chester?”
He took a full breath. “A bas les Etats Unis,” he shouted, and then translating for her benefit in a more confidential tone, “To ‘ell weeth Americains.” He swallowed what was left of the beer in a gulp.
She pushed her chair back. “Excuse me.”
“A minute, Madame.”
Ceremony, ceremony, thought Maggie; it’ll be the death of me. The Queen opens Parliament, the President reviews the Republican Guard on the Champs de Mars, the ruler of Holland sticks her finger in the dike. You can’t even blame it on foreigners: the bailiff knocks subserviently on the jury room door to ask, What is your pleasure? The chairman inquires, For what purpose does the delegate from the Canal Zone arise? The Flag comes tenderly down as the bugle sounds Retreat and the Nation’s might yields to the inexorable processes of Nature.
He caught her wrist. “Raymond! Içi!”
Raymond was lantern-jawed, self-conscious, in constant danger of stumbling over his own feet as he advanced holding in his hands an American flag as aged as the UN banner. Though it was folded, she could see from the alignment of the stars that it dated before 1959. Raymond smiled at her deprecatingly. The leader took it and thrust it at her. “Speet, Madame,” he invited.
She almost smiled at the theatricalism of it. Presumably if she made the gesture she would convince them of her political purity. Demonstrating indifference or contempt for the rectangle of red, white and blue material would establish her position in their eyes more firmly than the most fervent protestations or solemn oaths. The agent shouldn’t have run off; he would certainly have spat with zeal. And why not?
“Thanks. You just drank my beer and my mouth is dry.” She tried to slide her wrist out of his grasp, but it was too tight.
“You loaf these Defenders? These fascists?”
‘They killed my husband.”
“Alors!” He turned, speaking so rapidly she couldn’t follow him, hearing only the words, “mari. . assassine.” The crowd applauded rather listlessly.
He shook out the ensign with elaborate deliberation. She saw again the posters in the history museum, Remember December 7, with the colors coming down in unmistakable, unbelievable surrender. This is utterly ridiculous, she thought, ridiculous, pointless, futile. Such an allegedly logical people confusing cause and effect. Indulging in sympathetic magic, making the tableau to induce the events leading up to what it represented.
The man threw the flag on the pavement and smeared his foot over the field of stars. “Oh, you mustn’t do that,” she cried, in a high, little girl’s voice of shock at impropriety. “You mustn’t!”
She hurried forward and snatched up the bunting, clutching it to her. The kicking did not really hurt intolerably. Sol had been hurt much, much worse than this. Only her jaw, and her eye, and now her stomach…