table and took his hand. “Forgive me, Nicholas. Forgive, forgive. Try and forgive the world for being what it is. Maybe next week Hitler drops dead and we all go out to dinner.”
“And you’ll pay.”
“And I’ll pay.”
In April, the
The city didn’t mind its gray-found all that bright and sunny business in late winter a little too cheerful for its comfort. For Morath, life settled into a kind of brooding peace, his fantasy of
Mary Day wrote for an hour or two every night, on a clackety typewriter, wearing a vast, woolly sweater with its sleeves pushed up her slim wrists. Morath would look up from his book to see her face in odd contortions, lips pressed together in concentration, and schemed for his own glimpse, which was easy to come by when writing was done for the night.
The world on the radio drifted idly toward blood and fire. Britain and France announced they would defend Poland if she was attacked. Churchill stated that “there is no means of maintaining an eastern front against Nazi aggression without the active aid of Russia.” A speaker in the House of Commons said, “If we are going in without the help of Russia, we are walking into a trap.” Morath watched as people read their newspapers in the cafes. They shrugged and turned the page, and so did he. It all seemed to happen in a faraway land, distant and unreal, where ministers arrived at railroad stations and monsters walked by night. Somewhere in the city, he knew, Ilya hid in a tiny room, or, perhaps, he had already been beaten to death in the Lubianka.
The chestnut trees bloomed, white blossoms stuck to the wet streets, the captain peeked through Suzette’s keyhole as she brushed her long blond hair. Leon, the artist from the Agence Courtmain, went to Rome to see his fiancee and returned to Paris with a bruised face and a broken hand. Lucinda, the baroness Frei’s sweetest vizsla, gave birth to a litter of puppies and Morath and Mary Day went to the rue Villon to eat Sacher torte and observe the new arrivals in a wicker basket decorated with silver passementerie. Adolf Hitler celebrated his fiftieth birthday. Under German pressure, Hungary resigned from the League of Nations. Morath went to a shop on the rue de la Paix and bought Mary Day a silk scarf, golden loops and swirls on a background of Venetian red. Wolfi Szubl called, clearly in great distress, and Morath left work and journeyed out to a dark little apartment in the depths of the 14th Arrondissement, on a street where Lenin had once lived in exile.
The apartment smelled like boiled flour and was everywhere corsets. Violet and lime green, pale pink and rose, white and black. A large sample case lay open on the unmade bed.
“Forgive the mess,” Szubl said. “I’m taking inventory.”
“Is Mitten here?”
“Mitten! Mitten’s rich. He’s on location in Strasbourg.”
“Good for him.”
“Not bad.
“Which were-”
“Murders. Herbert is stabbed to death in the first ten minutes, so it’s not a big part. With a knitting needle. Still, the money’s good.”
Szubl picked up a typed sheet of yellow paper and ran his finger down the page. “Nicholas, there’s a bustier on the radiator, can you see the name?”
“This?” It was silver, with buttons up the back and garter snaps on the bottom. As Morath looked for the label he thought he smelled lavender bath powder. “Marie Louise,” he said.
Szubl made a check mark on the list.
“Women try these on? The samples?”
“Now and then. Private fittings.” He began to count through a small mound of girdles on the edge of the bed. “I just heard they want to promote me,” he said.
“Congratulations.”
“Disaster.”
“Why?”
“The company is in Frankfurt, I’d have to live in Germany.”
“So turn it down.”
“It’s the son-the old man got old and the son took over. ‘A new day,’ he says. ‘New blood in the home office.’ Anyhow, him I can deal with. This is why I called.”
He took a folded paper from his pocket and handed it to Morath. A letter from the
“Why this?” Szubl said.
“An investigation-but they don’t know anything. However, they
“They don’t have to try. What should I say?”
“Don’t know, wasn’t there, never met him. You aren’t going to make them like you, and don’t start talking to fill up the silence. Sit.”
Szubl frowned, a pink girdle in his hand. “I knew this would happen.”
“Courage, Wolfi.”
“I don’t want to break rocks.”
“You won’t. You’ll have to keep the appointment, this time, because they sent you the letter, it’s official. But it won’t go on. All right?”
Szubl nodded, unhappy and scared.
Morath called Polanyi and told him about it.
Count Janos Polanyi sat in his office in the Hungarian legation. It was quiet-sometimes a telephone, sometimes a typewriter, but the room had its own particular silence, the drapes drawn over the tall windows keeping the weather and the city outside. Polanyi stared down at a stack of cables on his desk, then pushed them aside. Nothing new, or, at least, nothing good.
He poured some apricot brandy in a little glass and drank it down. Closed his eyes for a moment and reminded himself who he was, where he came from.
Count Janos Polanyi had two personal telephone books, bound in green leather. A big one, which stayed in his office, and a small one, which went wherever he did. It was the small one he opened now, and placed a telephone call to a woman he knew who lived, in very grand style, in an apartment in the Palais Royal.
As the phone rang he looked at his watch. 4:25. She answered, as she always did, after many rings- condescended to answer, from the tone of her voice. There followed an intricate conversation. Oblique, and pleasantly devious. It concerned certain friends she had, women, some a little younger, others more experienced. Some quite outgoing, others shy. Some ate well, while others were slim. So varied, people nowadays. Fair. And dark. From foreign lands, or the 16th Arrondissement. And each with her own definition of pleasure. Miraculous, this world of ours! One was stern, prone to temper. Another was playful, didn’t care what as long as there was a laugh in it.
Eventually, they came to an agreement. A time. And a price.
