Kingdom of Shadows

“Pre Catalan. In the Bois de Boulogne. It’s very fin-de-siecle. Champagne, dancing till dawn.”

Silvana was amused. “Oh,” she said.

Morath explained about Szubl and Mitten, the apartment, the money. Silvana seemed a little detached, watching the smoke rise from the end of her cigarette. They had another Cinzano. Silvana told him she was Roumanian, from Sinaia. She’d come to Paris in the winter of ‘36 with “a man who made a living playing cards.” He’d gotten into some sort of trouble, then disappeared. “I expect he’s dead,” she said, then smiled. “Of course, with him you never know.” A friend found her a job in a shop, selling candy in a confiserie, but it didn’t last. Then, down on her luck, she’d been hired as the hatcheck girl at the Balalaika. She shook her head ruefully. “Quelle catastrophe.” She laughed, exhaling Gauloise smoke. “I couldn’t do it at all, and poor Boris got the blame.”

It was the end of the afternoon, cool and dark beneath the arches that covered the rue de Rivoli. The cafe was jammed with people and very loud. A street musician showed up and started to play the concertina. “I think I’ll go home,” Silvana said. They stood and shook hands, then she unchained a bicycle from the lamppost on the corner, climbed on, waved to Morath, and pedaled away into traffic.

Morath ordered a scotch.

An old woman came around, selling newspapers. Morath bought a Paris-Soir to see what was at the movies. He was going to spend the evening by himself. The headlines were thick and black: GOVERNMENT DECLARES COMMITMENT TO DEFEND CZECHOSLOVAKIA “INDISPUTABLE AND SACRED.”

The little man who looked like Buster Keaton left the cafe, giving Morath a glance as he went. Morath thought, for a moment, that he’d nodded. But, if it happened at all, it was very subtle, or, more likely, it was just his imagination.

Juillet, Juillet. The sun hammered down on the city and the smell of the butcher shops hung like smoke in the dead air.

Morath retreated to the Agence Courtmain, not the first time he’d sought refuge there. On the run from summer, on the run from Uncle Janos and his politics, on the run from Cara, lately consumed by vacation manias. The sacred mois d’Aout approached-one either went to the countryside or hid in one’s apartment and didn’t answer the phone. What troubled Cara was, should they go to the baroness Frei up in Normandy? Or to her friend Francesca and her boyfriend, in Sussex? It wasn’t the same, not at all, and one had to shop.

At Agence Courtmain they had big black fans that blew the heat around, and sometimes a breeze from the river worked its way up avenue Matignon and leaked in the window. Morath sat with Courtmain and his copy chief in her office, staring at a tin of cocoa.

“They have plantations in Africa, at the southern border of the Gold Coast,” the copy chief said. Her name was Mary Day-a French mother and an Irish father. She was close to Morath’s age and had never married. One line of gossip had it that she was religious, formerly a nun, while another speculated that she made extra income by writing naughty novels under a pen name.

Morath asked about the owner.

“It’s a big provincial family, from around Bordeaux. We deal with the general manager.”

“A Parisian?”

“Colonial,” Courtmain said. “Pied-noir, with barbered whiskers.”

The tin had a red label with CASTEGNAC printed in black across the top. Down below it said CACAO FIN. Morath pried up the metal cap, touched a finger to the powder and licked it. Bitter, but not unpleasant. He did it again.

“It’s supposedly very pure,” Mary Day said. “Sold to chocolatiers, here and in Turin and Vienna.”

“What do they want us to do?”

“Sell cocoa,” Courtmain said.

“Well, new art,” Mary Day said. “Posters for bakeries and grocery stores. And he told us that now, with the war winding down, they want to sell in Spain.”

“Do Spaniards like chocolate?”

She leaned forward to say of course, then realized she didn’t know.

“Can’t get enough,” Courtmain said. They do in this agency.

Morath held the tin up to the window. Outside, the sky was white, and there were pigeons cooing on a ledge. “The label’s not so bad.” There was a decorative strand of intertwined ivy leaves around the border, nothing else.

Courtmain laughed. “It’s perfection,” he said. “We’ll sell it back to them in ten years.”

Mary Day took several sheets of art paper from a folder and pinned them up on the wall. “We’re going to give them Cassandre,” she said. A. M. Cassandre had done the artwork for the popular Dubo/Dubon/Dubonnet image in three panels.

“In-house Cassandre,” Courtmain said.

The art was sumptuous, suggesting the tropics. Backgrounds in renaissance ochres and chrome yellows, with figures-mostly tigers and palm trees-in a span of Venetian reds.

“Handsome,” Morath said, impressed.

Courtmain agreed. “Too bad about the name,” he said. He made a label in the air with his thumb and index finger. “Palmier,” he suggested, meaning palm tree. “Cacao fin!”

“Tigre?” Morath said.

Mary Day had a very impish smile. “Tigresse,” she said.

Courtmain nodded. He took an artist’s chalk from a cup on the desk and stood to one side of the drawings. “That’s the name,” he said. “With this tree,” it curved gently, with three fronds on top, “and this tiger.” A front view. The animal sat on its haunches, revealing a broad expanse of white chest.

Morath was excited. “Do you think they’ll do it?”

“Not in a thousand years.”

He was at Cara’s when the telephone rang, three-thirty in the morning. He rolled out of bed, managed to fumble the receiver free of the cradle. “Yes?”

“It’s Wolfi.” Szubl was almost whispering.

“What is it?”

“You better go to the apartment. There’s big trouble.”

“I’ll be there,” Morath said, and hung up the phone.

What to wear?

“Nicky?”

He’d already put on a shirt and was trying to knot his tie. “I have to go out.”

“Now?”

“Yes?”

“What’s going on?”

“A friend in trouble.”

After a silence, “Oh.”

He buttoned his pants, shrugged a jacket on, forced his feet into his shoes while smoothing his hair back with his hands.

“What friend?” Now the note was in her voice.

“A Hungarian man, Cara. Nobody you know.”

Then he was out the door.

The streets were deserted. He walked quickly toward the Metro at Pont d’ Alma. The trains had stopped running two hours earlier, but there was a taxi parked by the entrance. “Rue Mogador,” Morath told the driver. “Just around the corner from the Galeries.”

The street door had been left open. Morath stood at the foot of the staircase and peered up into the gloom. Thirty seconds, nothing happened, then, just as he started up the stairs, he heard the click of a closing door, somewhere above him. Trying not to make a noise. Again he waited, then started to climb.