Kingdom of Shadows

Morath shook his head.

“So, God willing, it’s only a bank robbery.”

“Love affair,” Morath said.

“Six hundred,” Mitten said.

“All right. Six hundred. I’ll give you money for the furniture.”

“Furniture!”

“What kind of love affair is this?”

They were, to Morath’s surprise, good at it. Quite good. Somehow, in a week’s time, they managed to unearth a selection of love nests. To start, they took him up to Mistress Row, the avenue Foch area, where gorgeous shop girls luxuriated on powder-puff sofas, behind windows draped in pink and gold. In the apartment they took him to, the most recent affaire had evidently ended abruptly, an open tin of caviar and a mossy lemon left in the little refrigerator.

Next, they showed him a large room, formerly servant’s quarters, up in the eaves of an hotel particulier in the Fourth Arrondissement, where nobody ever went. “Six flights of stairs,” Mitten said.

“But very private.”

And for an actual love affair, Morath thought, not the worst choice. A quiet neighborhood, last popular in 1788, and deserted streets. Next, a taxi up to Saint Germain-des-Pres, to a painter’s atelier on the rue Guenegaud, with a pretty blue slice of the Seine in one of the windows. “He paints, she models,” Szubl said.

“And then, one afternoon, Fragonard!”

Morath was impressed. “It’s perfect.”

“For a Parisian, I’m not so sure. But if the lovers are, perhaps, foreign, well, as you can see, it’s pure MGM.”

“Tres chic,” Szubl said.

“And the landlord’s in prison.”

Their final choice was, obviously, a throwaway. Perhaps a favor for a friend-another Szubl, a different Mitten, penniless and awash in a Gallic sea. Two rooms, barely, at the foot of the Ninth Arrondissement, near the Chaussee d’Antin Metro stop, halfway down the side street-the rue Mogador-just behind the Galeries Lafayette department store. The streets were full of people, shopping at the Galeries or working there. At Christmas, children were brought here to see the mechanical pere Noel in the window.

The apartment was on the third floor of a nineteenth-century tenement, the exterior dark with soot and grime. Inside, brown walls, a two-burner stove, toilet in the hall, limp net curtains, yellow with age, a table covered with green oilcloth, a couch, and a narrow bed with a page of an illustrated Hungarian calendar tacked to the wall above the pillow-Harvest in Esztergom.

“Well, Morath, here it is!”

“Gives you a stiff pencil just to see this bed, right?”

“Ma biche, ma douce, that army blanket! That coat rolled up for a pillow! Now is our moment! Undress-if you dare!”

“Who’s your friend?”

“Laszlo.”

“Nice Hungarian name.”

“Nice Hungarian man.”

“Thank him for me-I’ll give you some money to take him to dinner.”

“So then, it’s the first one, right? The pink boudoir?”

“Or the atelier. I have to think it over.”

They left the apartment and walked downstairs. Morath headed toward the street door but Mitten took his elbow. “Let’s go the other way.”

Morath followed, through a door at the opposite end of the hallway, across a narrow courtyard in perpetual shadow, then through another door and down a corridor where several men and women were talking and smoking cigarettes.

“Where the hell are we?”

“The Galeries. But not the part the public sees. It’s where the clerks go for a cigarette. Sometimes it’s used for deliveries.”

They came to another door, Szubl opened it and they were on the street floor of the department store, amid crowds of well-dressed people carrying packages.

“Need anything?” Szubl said.

“Maybe a tie?”

“Salauds!” Morath was smiling.

“Laszlo wants twenty-five hundred.”

Balki called him a week later.

“Perhaps you’d like to meet a friend of mine.”

Morath said he would.

“So tomorrow. At the big cafe on the rue de Rivoli, by the Palais Royal Metro. Around four. She’ll be wearing flowers-you’ll know who she is.”

“Four o’clock.”

“Her name is Silvana.”

“Thank you, Boris,” Morath said.

“Sure,” Balki said, his voice hard. “Any time.”

The cafe was exceptionally neutral ground; tourists, poets, thieves, anybody at all could go there. On a steaming day in July, Silvana wore a dark suit with a tiny corsage pinned to the lapel. Back straight, knees together, legs angled off to one side, face set in stone.

Morath had very good manners-not once in his life had he remained seated when a woman came to a table. And a very good heart, people tended to know that about him right away. Even so, it did not go easily between them. He was pleased to meet her, he said, and went on a little, his voice quiet and cool and far more communicative than whatever words it happened to be saying. I know how hard life can be. We all do the best we can. There is nothing to fear.

She was not unattractive-that was the phrase that occurred to him when he first saw her. Thirty-five or so, with brass-colored hair that hung limp around her face, an upturned nose, generous lips, and olive, slightly oily skin. Not glamorous particularly, but sulky, that kind of looks. Prominent breasts, very pert in a tight sweater, narrow waist, hips not too wide. From somewhere around the Mediterranean, he guessed. Was she Marseillaise? Maybe Greek, or Italian. But cold, he thought. Would Von Schleben actually make love to her? For himself, he wouldn’t, but it was impossible to know what other people liked in bed.

“Well then,” he said. “An aperitif? A Cinzano-would that be good? With glacons- we’ll drink like Americans.”

She shook a stubby Gauloise Bleue loose from its packet and tapped the end on her thumbnail. He lit a match for her, she cupped the back of his hand with hers, then blew out the flame. “Thank you,” she said. She inhaled eagerly, then coughed.

The drinks came-there was no ice. Looking over Silvana’s shoulder, he happened to notice that a little man seated at a corner table was watching her. He had thin hair combed flat and wore a bow tie, which made him look like-Morath had to search for it-the American comedian Buster Keaton. He met Morath’s eyes for a moment, then went back to reading his magazine.

“My friend is German,” Morath said. “A gentleman. From the nobility.”

She nodded. “Yes, Balki told me.”

“He would like you to join him for dinner, tomorrow night, at the Pre Catalan. At 8:30. Of course he’ll send his car for you.”

“All right. I stay at a hotel on the rue Georgette, in Montparnasse.” She paused. “It’s just the two of us?”

“No. A large dinner party, I believe.”

“And where did you say?”