D had the driver stop in front of a small café in Neuilly. Sitting at a white marble table, he ordered some ham and a glass of wine. His depression was lifting. A mysterious ballet where dark thoughts, beams of light, and profound instincts choreographed by an unknown director played out in his mind: physiology plus the spiritual X. The taxi driver, drinking at the bar, was discussing with the patron the finer points of cooking hare in white wine. D felt a rush of friendship toward these two men. Enough of this cerebral debauchery! The noose has been cut. Now to overcome the effects of my overwrought nerves. A little pride, old man, you’re one of the strong type. (It’s worth telling yourself this from time to time, if only as a means of autosuggestion…) He mentally reread the letter he had addressed the day before to the Special Envoy, twenty lines of calculated platitudes, yet containing this clear and honest passage:
…So deeply do I disapprove of what is happening that I find it impossible to carry out duties which are incompatible with doubt and blame. You know of my absolute commitment, repeatedly borne out by my actions. I can only assure you of my definitive retirement into private life, that I vow to say and do nothing that might harm our cause…
A brief memo had followed regarding bank accounts, cases in progress, and liaisons with second-tier agents. It occurred to D that the concepts of disapproval, doubt, and blame (just one would have sufficed) canceled out the “absolute commitment” and the promise. They opened a thousand doors onto problems. They stood in judgment over the Party, the system, the Organization; any individual who judges the group, by the mere fact of such temerity, places himself outside the law. “After all, I was never afraid of being killed.” But now the seriousness of the risk amounted to near-certainty, even as its significance was humiliatingly trivialized. To embrace risk for the sake of the group required no justification. But a risk incurred for oneself? He told himself coarsely: “To live only for oneself is barren — like masturbation.”
“…nicely marinated in white wine,” the driver was repeating. “The onions browned separate. A clove of garlic, nutmeg…” Another voice, slurred and hearty, finished describing the recipe with an appreciative cluck of the tongue: “That, Monsieur, is what I call fine cooking!” “And hare stew?” D broke in happily. “Let me tell you,” said the patron, who was a dab hand with a shotgun. D listened to the instructions without taking them in. How good it would have been to exchange cordial handshakes with these fellows, to meet up for a Sunday’s shooting at Suresnes, to drink Beaujolais together! D’s gloom returned as he paid the bill. The difficult hour of his rendezvous with Nadine was approaching.
“No adulterers in sight today,” D said with a smile, when they were alone in the discreetly luxurious tearoom.
There was a lovely fold to her eyelids. Her cheeks were full and dimpled, her mouth richly outlined in scarlet. She had a sidelong way of looking you straight in the eye that was at once demure and forthright, the tough candor of a peasant girl from the steppes who has just stepped out of a smart hairdresser’s on the rue Saint-Honoré. Nadine offered her cheek, not her lips: displeased.
“Are you all right, Nadine? No one knows about your return to Paris, do they? Did you follow my instructions without fail — to the letter?”
“Oh, of course I did, what do you think?”
Her voice betrayed irritation.
“It’s extremely important, actually.”
“Well, not more than usual, is it? Sacha, I really hate it when you treat me like a child.”
He insisted: “It’s infinitely more important than you think. So, you didn’t phone anyone?”
The waitress took their order: tea with lemon and pastries. She was hard put to classify these two. Foreign? Lovers, married? She put her money on a heavy breakup scene, with a sprinkling of sentiment over the top like confectioner’s sugar on yesterday’s buns, plus a modest check to prevent hard feelings.
At very bad moments, D would feel muscles cramping while a chill crept over his skin, as though his energies were being sucked deep inside, the better to be healed, the better to pounce. His pupils shrank to pinpoints then. Nadine pulled off her gloves. Knowing him through and through — as she thought — she said, “Don’t make those eyes at me, Sacha. By now you don’t have any lessons to teach me about being careful. And what if I did call Sylvia — surely it doesn’t matter?”
“Ah.”
The stupid mistake. Like a tightrope walker who trips over a bit of orange peel in the street, when at thirty feet up with the drums rolling, he would never have made a false move. One fractured shin bone and that’s the end of the beautiful, brilliant acrobat. Shit!
“You did that?”
Nadine was sincerely bewildered.
“So now I’m to be suspicious of Sylvia, am I? Or perhaps Sylvia’s being watched? Sacha you’re out of your mind.”
He chewed on a slice of lemon. He had traveled, in the past, with a cyanide capsule glued to his scalp. He would have chewed that in the same way under the nose of the detectives. Twice: in China, in Germany…
“How did you get here? By car?”
“I changed taxis at Porte Maillot…”
“Good. Now please try to understand and try not to judge me. We’re going to America, it’s all fixed. I thought of everything except you calling Sylvia. I’ve broken with them, Nadine.”
Nadine thought in shattered images and disjointed phrases. As soon as an image became too upsetting it vanished, like it was torn up. The sentence trailed off, its gist telegraphed to minimize the disturbance. Everything that concerned her personally remained indelibly printed on a lower register. Departure — America, that’s nothing, we’ve traveled so much already! The word “broken” hit her like a nail bomb. Nadine glimpsed the broad flat nose of old Sémen — shot. She saw the fake but costly pearl necklace on Elsa’s white, nervous throat — Elsa, disappeared. The deep bluish hollows around Emmy’s eyes, eyes she’d always envied for their bewitching quality, very like hers, except that hers were not so bewitching — disappeared, Emmy who adored confectionery, Paris gowns, gloves, and handsome cads. Stout Kraus, saluting her as former officers do, click heels, bow low, kiss hand — gone, the fat malicious, twice-decorated ex-convict, et cetera, how, we’ll never know. The Poluyanovs, a young couple full of promise, thoroughly worldly to all appearances, fluent in four languages, thoroughly Anglicized, and shot, according to an unverifiable rumor. Bald Alexis, the one involved in that dreadful Ploesti business, the tortured hero who got out of prison six months ago — killed himself on being arrested they say, but it’s possible he was gunned down like a dog because he shot off his mouth (no noise allowed at night in apartment houses; and if there is noise, a pistol shot does less harm than an indignant voice). Nadine shook off these ghosts. Several others, on the point of appearing, hovered at the edge of memory. A ghastly exhalation steamed from a black pit toward her nostrils.