Kingdom of Shadows

The theatre lay deep in the heart of the Fifth Arrondissement. Originally, there’d been a plan for Montrouchet to stage his performances at the catacombs themselves, but the municipal authority had been mysteriously cool to the possibility of actors capering about in the dank bone-rooms beneath the Denfert Rochereau Metro stop. In the end, he had had to make do with a mural in the lobby: piles of clown-white skulls and femurs sharply picked out in black.

“What? You forgot? That night by the river?” Morath returned from dreamland to find Lust, typecast, maybe seventeen, whispering her line as she slithered on her belly across the stage. Cara took his arm again, gentle this time.

Morath did not sleep at the avenue Bourdonnais that night, he returned to his apartment in the rue Richelieu, then left early the following morning to catch the Nord Express up to Antwerp. This was a no-nonsense train, the conductors brisk and serious, the seats filled with soldiers of commerce on the march along the ancient trade route. Besides the rhythm of the wheels on the track, the only sound in Morath’s compartment was the rustle of newsprint as a turned-over page of Le Figaro was snapped into place.

In Vienna, he read, the Anschluss was to be formalized by a plebiscite-the Austrian voter now prone to say Ja in order not to get his nose broken. This was, Hitler explained in a speech on 9 April, God’s work.

There is a higher ordering, and we are all nothing else than its agents. When on 9 March Herr Schuschnigg broke his agreement then in that second I felt that now the call of Providence had come to me. And that which then took place in three days was only conceivable as the fulfillment of the wish and will of Providence. I would now give thanks to Him who let me return to my homeland in order that I might now lead it into the German Reich! Tomorrow may every German recognize the hour and measure its import and bow in humility before the Almighty, who in a few weeks has wrought a miracle upon us.

So, Austria ceased to exist.

And the Almighty, not quite satisfied with His work, had determined that the fuddled Doktor Schuschnigg should be locked up, guarded by the Gestapo, in a small room on the fifth floor of the Hotel Metropole.

For the moment, Morath couldn’t stand any more. He put the paper down and stared out the window at tilled Flemish earth. The reflection in the glass was Morath the executive-very good dark suit, sober tie, perfect shirt. He was traveling north for a meeting with Monsieur Antoine Hooryckx, better known, in business circles, as Hooryckx, the Soap King of Antwerp.

In 1928, Nicholas Morath had become half-owner of the Agence Courtmain, a small and reasonably prosperous advertising agency. This was a sudden, extraordinary gift from Uncle Janos. Morath had been summoned to lunch on one of the restaurant-boats and, while cruising slowly beneath the bridges of the Seine, informed of his elevated status. “You get it all eventually,” Uncle Janos said, “so you may as well have the use of it now.” Polanyi’s wife and children would be provided for, Morath knew, but the real money, the thousand kilometers of wheat field in the Puszta with villages and peasants, the small bauxite mine, and the large portfolio of Canadian railroad stock, would come to him, along with the title, when his uncle died.

But Morath was in no hurry, none of that race you up the stairs, grampa stuff for him. Polanyi would live a long time, that was fine with his nephew. The convenient part was that, with steady income assured, if Count Polanyi needed Nicholas to help him out, he was available. Meanwhile, Morath’s share of the profits kept him in aperitifs and mistresses and a slightly shabby apartment at a reasonably bonne adresse.

The Agence Courtmain had a very bonne adresse indeed but, as an advertising agency, it had first of all to advertise its own success. Which it did, along with various lawyers, stock brokerages, and Lebanese bankers, by renting an absurdly expensive suite of offices in a building on the avenue Matignon. More than likely owned, Courtmain theorized-the title of the societe anonyme gave no indication-“by an Auvergnat peasant with goatshit in his hat.”

Sitting across from Morath, Courtmain lowered his newspaper and glanced at his watch.

“On time?” Morath said.

Courtmain nodded. He was, like Morath, very well dressed. Emile Courtmain was not much over forty. He had white hair, thin lips, gray eyes, and a cold, distant personality found magnetic by virtually everybody. He smiled rarely, stared openly, said little. He was either brilliant or stupid, nobody knew, and it didn’t seem terribly important. What sort of life he may have had after seven in the evening was completely unknown-one of the copywriters claimed that after everybody left the office, Courtmain hung himself up in the closet and waited for daylight.

“We aren’t going to the plant, are we?” Morath said.

“No.”

Morath was grateful. The Soap King had taken them to his plant, a year earlier, just making sure they didn’t forget who they were, who he was, and what made the world go ‘round. They didn’t forget. Huge, bubbling vats of animal fat, moldering piles of bones, kettles of lye boiling gently over a low flame. The last ride for most of the cart and carriage horses in northern Belgium. “Just give your behind a good wash with that!” Hooryckx cried out, emerging like an industrial devil from a cloud of yellow steam.

They arrived in Antwerp on time and climbed into a cab outside the station. Courtmain gave the driver complicated instructions-Hooryckx’s office was down a crooked street at the edge of the dockside neighborhood, a few rooms in a genteel but crumbling building. “The world tells me I’m a rich man,” Hooryckx would say. “Then it snatches everything I have.”

In the back of the cab, Courtmain rummaged in his briefcase and produced a bottle of toilet water called Zouave, a soldier with fierce mustaches stared imperiously from the label. This was also a Hooryckx product, though not nearly so popular as the soap. Courtmain unscrewed the cap, splashed some in his hand, and gave the bottle to Morath. They rubbed it on their faces and reeked like country boys in the city on Saturday night. “Ahh,” said Courtmain, as the heavy fragrance filled the air, “the finest peg-house in Istanbul.”

Hooryckx was delighted to see them. “The boys from Paris!” He had a vast belly and a hairstyle like a cartoon character that sticks his finger in a light socket. Courtmain took a colored drawing from his briefcase. Hooryckx, with a wink, told his secretary to go get his advertising manager. “My daughter’s husband,” he said. The man showed up a few minutes later, Courtmain laid the drawing on a table, and they all gathered around it.

In a royal-blue sky, two white swans flew above the legend Deux Cygnes … This was something new. In 1937, their magazine advertising had presented an attractive mother, wearing an apron, showing a bar of Deux Cygnes to her little girl.

“Well,” said Hooryckx. “What do the dots mean?”

“Two swans …” Courtmain said, letting his voice trail away. “No words can describe the delicacy, the loveliness of the moment.”

“Shouldn’t they be swimming?” Hooryckx said.

Courtmain reached into his briefcase and brought out the swimming version. His copy chief had warned him this would happen. Now the swans made ripples in a pond as they floated past a clump of reeds.

Hooryckx compressed his lips.

“I like them flying,” the son-in-law said. “More chic, no?”

“How about it?” Hooryckx said to Morath.

“It’s sold to women,” Morath said.

“So?”

“It’s what they feel when they use it.”

Hooryckx stared, back and forth, from one image to the other. “Of course,” he said, “swans sometimes fly.”

After a moment, Morath nodded. Of course.

Courtmain brought forth another version. Swans flying, this time in a sky turned aquamarine.

“Phoo,” Hooryckx said.

Courtmain whipped it away.

The son-in-law suggested a cloud, a subtle one, no more than a wash in the blue field. Courtmain thought it over. “Very expensive,” he said.

“But an excellent idea, Louis,” Hooryckx said. “I can see it.”

Hooryckx tapped his fingers on the desk. “It’s good when they fly, but I miss that curve in the neck.”

“We can try it,” Courtmain said.