“Me?” He was startled at her impudence.
“Yes. Your father, what did he do?”
Petrescu stared at her, his mouth worked as though something was stuck between his teeth. “We are from the countryside.”
“Ahh,” Marie-Galante said, sentimental for the land.
Troucelle laughed-how pleasant to have a good conversation!
Petrescu needed time to think. He reached for a buttered toast. Serebin could hear him eating it.
“Delicious, don’t you think?” Marie-Galante said.
“Tell me, domnul,” Serebin said, “is there a particular aspect of the peasant crafts that interests you?”
Petrescu put the remainder of the toast triangle back on his plate and patted his lips with a napkin. “Wood carving,” he said.
“I seem to recall,” Troucelle said, “that you were contemplating a visit to Ploesti.”
Serebin and Marie-Galante looked at each other. Us? We were? “I believe it was you who mentioned it,” Serebin said. “No?”
“You need permission to go there, don’t you?” Marie-Galante said.
“You do?” Troucelle said.
“Didn’t someone tell us that?” she asked Serebin.
“It’s no problem,” Petrescu said. “Really, you should go. The craftsmen there are known to do excellent work, and I can help you get a pass, if you like.”
“Something to think about,” Marie-Galante said to Serebin.
“It’s an interesting city,” Troucelle said.
“Maybe on our next trip,” Serebin said.
“But it’s very kind of you to offer to help us,” Marie-Galante said. She looked at her watch, then said to Serebin, “My dear?”
“Yes, you’re right,” Serebin said. He stood, so did Troucelle and Petrescu. “I regret our visit had to be brief, but we really must leave.”
“I hope I shall have the pleasure of meeting you again,” Petrescu said.
“Well, he did it,” Marie-Galante said, back in the room.
“Why?”
“To improve his position here? I don’t know. Il faut se defendre — it’s an article of faith, for some. ‘First above all, watch out for yourself.’”
“What was all that Russian business?”
“Your accent. Troucelle told them about it.”
“They think we’re Russian spies?” Serebin sat on the edge of the bed and began to take off his shoes.
“They might.”
Serebin unbuttoned his shirt.
“They’re scared of the Russians,” she said. “They’ll be cautious, if they think they’re dealing with Moscow.”
“Didn’t seem cautious.”
She opened the armoire, took out a daytime dress on a hanger, then put it back. “When you get dressed,” she said, “put on whatever you want to keep.”
By wireless telegraph:
18:10 14 January, 1941
Buro di Posta e Telegramma / Strada Traian / Bucuresti / Romania
Saphir / Helikon Trading / Akdeniz 9 / Istanbul / Turkiye
Confirm receipt your order #188
Carlsen
The Hotel Luna.
On a sign above the door, a naked wench sat cross-legged in the curve of a quarter moon, smiling down on a street of bars and women in doorways. The hotel of the moon. Serebin paused in the doorway and stared up at the wench. Like a mermaid with legs, he thought; rosy, prominent tummy, cascade of golden hair that covered her breasts, and a certain smile-demanding and forgiving, yes, both, and mysterious. The model was probably the artist’s girlfriend, but Serebin knew a muse when he saw one.
Marie-Galante, waiting at the door, said, “Somebody you know?”
The desk was in the vestibule. To the clerk, they were only one more couple, coming in out of the night. Marie-Galante in her Persian lamb hat, Serebin dark and studious in his steel-rimmed glasses, maybe from different worlds but Eros couldn’t care less about that and, for a few hundred lei, neither did the clerk at the hotel of the moon. No bag for the porter to carry, key for Room 38, staircase over there, carpet as far as the first floor.
It had been a leisurely flight from the Athenee Palace. In the room, Marie-Galante made two calls to the number that never answered, counting on her fingers as it rang. One last look around, then a ride in the elevator, and a casual walk through the lobby. They stopped at the desk, picked up a letter, and strolled out the door. Next they took trams and taxis, here and there, into quiet neighborhoods with empty streets. Once they were sure they weren’t being followed, they went to a cafe where, in the WC, Serebin picked up an envelope from the young officer. Inside, a new identity: Carlsen, a Danish passport with travel permissions from the Gestapo office in Copenhagen. Finally, a visit to a post office in the strada Traian for the wire to Polanyi-Marie-Galante explaining that 188 meant it was time for them to get out. From there, they walked to the Hotel Luna.
Small room, sagging bed, rust-stained sink, and a line of pegs on the back of the door where they hung their clothes. Beneath the window, an ancient radiator hissed and banged, warming the room to a point where they could walk around in their underwear.
“Your best?” Serebin said. Her bra and panties were ivory silk, snug and expensive-looking, that favored the warm color of her skin.
“From Paris, I think. Can you see?”
He turned the hem down in back and squinted at the label. “‘Suzi,’ it says.”
“Rue St.-Honore.”
He stretched out on the bed and clasped his hands beneath his head. “How long do we stay here?”
“We’ll know when the wire comes.”
“What if it doesn’t?”
She settled herself beside him. “We languish.”
“Oh.”
“Forever, ours. A new life, just you and me.”
Serebin was taken by a sudden fit of elation. He stared up at the yellowed ceiling; lightbulb on a cord, cracks in the plaster, spiderweb in the corner. Nobody in the world knew where they were.
“You’re having thoughts,” she said.
True.
With the light out and the window shade up, Room 38 was lit blue by the neon sign of a bar across the street. There was a jazz band playing in the bar, guitar and violin, maybe the local Django and Stephane, who never made it to Paris.
“Do you know this song?” she said.
He waited a moment for the refrain. “Yes. ‘I don’t stand, a ghost of a chance, with you.’” He almost sang, the English words rough in his Russian accent.
“Ghost? A specter?”
“An idiom. Almost no chance.” The band spent a long time with the song, the guitar improvised, then the violin.
“What’s it like for you,” Serebin said, “in Neuilly?”
She thought for a while. “The apartment is just so. Very proper, everything exactly as it should be. It seems cold, to me, haute bourgeois, stuffy, but that’s by necessity. Labonniere has to entertain there, diplomatic dinners, things like that.”
“Boring?”
She nodded. “One says nothing, but it must be said cleverly.”
