Kingdom of Shadows

look at the girls. He told his story to the flics standing just outside the Jardin du Luxembourg, then to the detectives at the prefecture, then to a reporter from the Paris-Soir, then to two men from the Interior Ministry, and, finally, to another reporter, who met him at his local cafe, bought him a pastis, then another, seemed to know more about the event than any of the others, and asked him a number of questions he couldn’t answer.

He told them all the same story, more or less. The man sitting across from the sailboat pond, the man in the blue suit and the steel-rimmed spectacles who approached him, and the shooting. A single shot and a coup de grace.

He did not see the first shot, he heard it. “A sharp report, like a firecracker.” That drew his attention. “The man looking at his watch dropped it, then leapt to his feet, as though he had been insulted. He swayed for a moment, then toppled over, taking the chair with him. His foot moved once, after that he was still. The man in the blue suit leaned over him, aimed his pistol, and fired again. Then he walked away.”

M. Coupin did not shout, or give chase, or anything else. He stayed where he was, motionless. Because, he explained, “I could not believe what I had seen.” And further doubted himself when the assassin “simply walked away. He did not run. He did not hurry. It was, it was as though he had done nothing at all.”

There were other witnesses. One described a man in an overcoat, another said there were two men, a third reported a heated exchange between the assassin and the victim. But almost all of them were farther away from the shooting than M. Coupin. The exception was a couple, a man and a woman, strolling arm in arm on a gravel path. The detectives watched the park for several days but the couple did not reappear, and, despite a plea in the story that ran in the newspapers, did not contact the prefecture.

“Extraordinary,” Count Polanyi said. He meant a soft waffle, folded into a conical shape so that a ball of vanilla ice cream rested on top. “One can eat it while walking.”

Morath had met his uncle at the zoo, where a glacier by the restaurant offered the ice cream and waffle. It was very hot, Polanyi wore a silk suit and a straw hat. They strolled past a llama, then a lion, the zoo smell strong in the afternoon sun.

“Do you see the papers, Nicholas, down there?”

Morath said he did.

“The Paris papers?”

“Sometimes Figaro, when they have it.”

Polanyi stopped for a moment and took a cautious taste of the ice cream, holding his pocket handkerchief under the small end of the waffle so that it didn’t drip on his shoes. “Plenty of politics, while you were away,” he said. “Mostly in Czechoslovakia.”

“I read some of it.”

“It felt like 1914-events overtaking politicians. What happened was this: Hitler moved ten divisions to the Czech border. At night. But they caught him at it. The Czechs mobilized-unlike the Austrians, who just sat there and waited for it to happen-and the French and British diplomats in Berlin went wild. This means war! In the end, he backed down.”

“For the time being.”

“That’s true, he won’t give it up, he hates the Czechs. Calls them ‘a miserable pygmy race without culture.’ So, he’ll find a way. And he’ll pull us in with him, if he can. And the Poles. The way he’s going to sell it, we’re simply three nations settling territorial issues with a fourth.”

“Business as usual.”

“Yes.”

“Well, down where I was, nobody had any doubts about the future. War is coming, we’re all going to die, there is only tonight …”

Polanyi frowned. “It seems a great indulgence to me, that sort of thing.” He stopped to have some more ice cream. “By the way, have you had any luck, finding a companion for my friend?”

“Not yet.”

“As long as you’re at it, it occurs to me that the lovebirds will need a love nest. Very private, of course, and discreet.”

Morath thought it over.

“It will have to be in somebody’s name,” Polanyi said.

“Mine?”

“No. Why don’t you ask our friend Szubl?”

“Szubl and Mitten.”

Polanyi laughed. “Yes.” The two men had shared a room, and the hardships of emigre life, for as long as anyone could remember.

“I’ll ask them,” Morath said.

They walked for a time, through the Menagerie, into the gardens. They could hear train whistles from the Gare d’Austerlitz. Polanyi finished his ice cream. “I’ve been wondering,” Morath said, “what became of the man I brought to Paris.”

Polanyi shrugged. “Myself, I make it a point not to know things like that.”

It wasn’t hard to see Szubl and Mitten. Morath invited them to lunch. A Lyonnais restaurant, he decided, where a grand dejeuner would keep you going for weeks. They were famously poor, Szubl and Mitten. A few years earlier, there’d been a rumor that only one of them could go out at night, since they shared ownership of a single, ash-black suit.

Morath got there early, Wolfi Szubl was waiting for him. A heavy man, fifty or so, with a long, lugubrious face and red-rimmed eyes and a back bent by years of carrying sample cases of ladies’ foundation garments to every town in Mitteleuropa. Szubl was a blend of nationalities-he never said exactly which ones they were. Herbert Mitten was a Transylvanian Jew, born in Cluj when it was still in Hungary. Their papers, and their lives, were like dead leaves of the old empire, for years blown aimlessly up and down the streets of a dozen cities. Until, in 1930, some good soul took pity on them and granted them Parisian residence permits.

Morath ordered aperitifs, then chatted with Szubl until Mitten returned, the skin of his face ruddy and shining, from the WC. Good God, Morath thought, he hadn’t shaved in there, had he? “Ah, Morath,” Mitten said, offering a soft hand and a beaming theatrical smile. A professional actor, Mitten had performed in eight languages in the films of five nations and played always the same character-best defined by his most recent appearance as Mr. Pickwick in a Hungarian version of The Pickwick Papers. Mitten had the figure of a nineteenth-century cartoon, wide at the middle and tapering on either end, with hair that stood out from his head like a clown wig.

They ordered. Copiously. It was a family restaurant-thick china bowls and heavy platters. Bearing sausage, some of it in oil, slices of white potato fried in butter, fat roasted chickens, salads with haricots blancs and salads with lardoons of bacon. Mont d’Or cheese. And strawberries. Morath could barely see the tablecloth. He spent money on the wine-the ‘26 burgundies-exciting the red-faced patron to smiles and bows.

They walked afterward, down the dark streets that ran from the back of the 5th to the river. “An apartment,” Morath said, “for a clandestine love affair.”

Szubl thought it over. “A lover who won’t rent his own apartment.”

“Very romantic,” Mitten said.

“Very clandestine, anyhow,” said Szubl.

Mitten said, “What are they, prominent?”

“Cautious,” Morath said. “And rich.”

“Ah.”

They waited. Morath said, “Two thousand a month for the love nest. Five hundred for you. One of you signs the lease. If they need a maid, you hire her. The concierge knows you, only you, the friend of the lovers.”

Szubl laughed. “For the five hundred, do we have to believe this?”

“For the five hundred, you know better.”

“Nicholas,” Mitten said, “people like us don’t get away with spying.”

“It isn’t spying.”

“We get put against a wall.”