“And you?” asked D.
“Swimmingly. In ten days, I’ll have some interesting stuff for you. You’ll be pleased.”
“And me,” thought D, “I’m rudimentary, too… It took a whole historical epoch to mold me. At twenty-five I was just like him, minus the handsome face for charming the girls…”
“Walk with me, Alain. I’m so glad I ran into you.”
They went up the rue de Rome to the place de l’Europe, the traffic circle suspended high over the railroad tracks. Under the fine drizzle which now began to fall, the great airy intersection, true to its name, drew together arteries named for all the European capitals, arteries inseparable yet foreign to one another… “Here will do fine,” said D. Soft explosions of white vapor billowed up from the station. Paris’s pallor was serene. They stopped.
“We won’t be seeing each other anymore, Alain. Someone will contact you. You’ll receive instructions.”
D watched a nascent anxiety contract the young brown eyes.
“Yes, that’s how it is. I’m saying goodbye.”
“I don’t get it,” said Alain. “Listen… You have confidence in me. You can say a word, just a word. Has something happened? Something dangerous? Are you…”
Fear was pricking Alain, the kind of fear D knew the best (there are so many different kinds!): the fear of guessing right, the fear of confronting, of understanding, the incomprehensible…
“A suspect? No. I am the same person. I’m leaving. It’s finished for me, that’s all.”
“But that’s impossible!” the young man said in a very low voice.
Further words appeared to quiver on his lips, but were held back.
“I resigned,” said D sharply. “You’re to carry on under someone else.”
He was conducting an experiment on the boy, while operating alive on himself. Putting friendship to the test by a display of futile bravado. D became aware — odd, for such sentiments ought to have died out in him — of a wish to be understood. After all, he had shaped this youth’s very soul; Alain couldn’t fail to see that if he, D, was bailing out, if D himself couldn’t go along any longer, if even D was giving it up, then serious things must be happening which finally should be condemned. A man’s conscience is secondary in the battle for such a great cause — but now it’s essential. You cast off your whole life, you “drop” the Secret Service, you say no. I who am alone, disarmed, faithful after twenty years’ labor, today I say: No. The situation must be terribly grim for me to have arrived at that conclusion.
D opens his leather cigarette case. Cyclists flit across the square like mosquitoes, human mosquitoes. They know nothing of these problems. An engine puffs below street level. Autumn seeps into the marrow, as needling as the rain. Alain is bareheaded.
“You’ll catch cold, Alain,” D says affectionately. “Let’s go our ways. Goodbye.”
But he is watching. The young face has gone pale and looks sick, even nasty. If a woman flung back at him: “Go away, I love someone else!” he might be similarly dumbfounded. Alain sees D through a dull, disfiguring space. He sees a wrinkled old face, flesh wasting away so that the skull shines through. A death’s-head pretending to be alive. You don’t quit! You run away and you are hunted down and you are finished off, justly, because running away is treason.
“I didn’t expect this from you,” Alain murmurs.
His tone changes. Rising disappointment verging on contempt, growing almost insulting. Some of the color returns to his cheeks. He blurts out: “You know better than I do that…”
(The old spool unwinds by itself: that every apparently abominable deed perpetrated corresponds to a necessity, since they are perpetrated; that the Party, steered by supremely capable hands, stands above whatever it does; that if we start to doubt we’re doomed; that those who are killed are traitors, since they are killed — that YOU YOURSELF taught me all this! D understands the precision of these exact and unalterable formulas that could not be worded any other way, as though a machine were punching them out of metal. Against them he opposes, deep inside, nothing but a stony NO of liberation, a liberation difficult to justify. His shake of the head is barely perceptible; the confident, superior smirk he puts on comes out as a grimace. Isn’t this boy going to remember all that I have meant to him, the bits of my past I have shared, the person I am?)
Alain doesn’t know what to do with his hands. The right worries a button on his mackintosh. He’s stunned. Take him by the arm, look him straight in the eye, no holding back, say: “Take it easy, kid. I haven’t changed in any way. I’ve understood, I’ve made a judgment, it’s because I’ll never change that I can no longer bear what is happening. So many corpses, so many lies, so much poison brusquely poured into our souls, into our very souls, do you understand! Forgive me for using such a mystical term…” This is only a fleeting impulse for D. It’s not possible, he knows that. It’s always rash to be too human…
“You’re going to tear off that button, Alain.”
The young man’s distress spreads across his face in a madman’s grin.
“You are a…”
He breaks off and marches jerkily away, as though willing himself not to run. So, he couldn’t quite bring himself to say the word “traitor.” Was that because of a regret? A doubt? The smallest sense of what that word’s iniquitous, unbelievable implication would be?
“I don’t care,” D answers himself. “He’s a good sort, that boy. Perhaps he’ll understand too, when it’s too late. More likely he’ll be devoured a long time before. He’s the kind who believe with their eyes closed, obey, then take the rap and languish for years in the exercise yards of penitentiaries. After that the Service is in a bind about what to do with them, pay them, earn their silence, or eliminate them… In the future they won’t be dispatched to Mexico or Argentina, but to the great beyond. Much safer. Alain, just for having known me…
But let’s put this at a distance. I didn’t want this farewell. Alain is an enemy now. When he gets over the shock, he’ll be sorry he didn’t act sympathetic — who knows? — his old respectful understanding, just to keep contact. I would have believed in his youth, his concern. He would have led me into a trap. Rule: Trust nobody this side of heaven. Since those who were deserving of all our faith are dead. Defiled and dead. And when all is said and done, we did this to ourselves.
D cast a despairing glance over the place de l’Europe. The rain was falling softly.
This was no weather for visiting the Bois, but he had time to kill before his painful three o’clock rendezvous. He wasn’t hungry. There must be some direct link between physiology and psychology. But he was thirsty for the sight of trees, water, solitary places; the ideal would be a great sweep of young green saplings and faroff mountains, crisscrossed by birds in flight, scoured by monotonous winds, warmed by a tepid sun, one of those Siberian landscapes that lends a fresh alacrity to sadness (provided you’re not in captivity). And you know that a few hours’ trek would bring you to the banks of the Irtysh, sluggish river, vision of a vast, purposeless destiny… “To the Bois de Boulogne, driver, and there’s no rush.”