“More of the same. I’ll run around like a chicken with its head cut off, like half the people in Europe, while the other half tries to hide them, and the other half is looking for them.”
“Ah, Russian mathematics.”
“Na zdorov’ye.”
“You’re very popular, this week,” Ulzhen said.
Serebin was at the IRU office to help with the newsletter-everything from correcting spelling to advice and sympathy for the tiny lady who tried to work the mimeograph machine. A small crowd stood around her as the blotchy purplish copies came through, all of them creased strangely at the upper right corner. “Fucking devil, ” Ulzhen said under his breath. The tiny lady had moist eyes, wore a cross around her neck, and was known to be devout.
“It’s the feeder bar,” she said in despair. “The tension!”
“Popular?” Serebin said to Ulzhen. Ulzhen was not precisely chilly, lately, something else. Wary, perhaps. Anyhow different, since the afternoon at the Brasserie Heininger. Well, add that to the list of things in the world he could not fix, a list that only seemed to grow.
Ulzhen took off his jacket and turned his cuffs up, a brawl with the mimeograph machine was guaranteed to be filthy business. Serebin’s heart sped as he waited for an answer-he knew why Ulzhen had said that, and wondered only why Marie-Galante had chosen to make contact through the office.
“He called himself Jean Paul,” Ulzhen said.
“Who?”
“Jean Claude, is it? No, Jean Marc. There’s a message in your mailbox.”
Serebin went over to the wooden frame divided into boxes, found a poem for The Harvest, an announcement for a meeting of the Stamp Club, and a sheet of stationery from the Hotel Bristol with a phone number and a message, asking him to telephone so that they could arrange to meet and signed Jean Marc.
For a moment, Serebin had no idea, then he recalled the balcony of the hotel in Switzerland, and Ivan Kostyka’s homme de confiance. Disappointed, he headed for the IRU telephone.
Staying at the luxurious Bristol, Jean Marc had chosen a curious place for a meeting, a cafe in a small street in the 19th Arrondissement, by the St.-Martin canal-the abattoir district. Still, Serebin thought, watching unfamiliar Metro stops slide past, there wasn’t a square foot of Paris that didn’t have cachet for somebody. For those with a particularly elevated approach to their slumming, the onion-soup bistros over at the Halles markets had become passe, and, before the occupation had redrawn the social geography of the city, tuxedos and gowns had begun to appear at dawn in the neighborhood.
Serebin had a hard time finding it-even the streets liked to change their names up here. A common, local cafe, a bar, really, narrow and unlit, and virtually empty. Only two Arab men, drinking milky pastis, the proprietor, reading a newspaper by the cash register, and Jean Marc, sitting at a corner table in the back. He was as Serebin remembered him: young and handsome, tall, with an aristocratic stoop, face cold and aloof. “I hope you don’t mind this place,” he said, standing to greet Serebin. “It’s private, and I’m meeting friends later on, at Cochon d’Or. Good steaks from the district, and the Germans haven’t found it yet.”
When Serebin ordered a glass of wine, Jean Marc held up a hand. “They have scotch whiskey here, of course you’ll join me.”
“They do?”
“A good marque as it happens.” A sudden smile, all warmth and charm, as he rested the hand on Serebin’s arm. “A Parisian discovery, eh? Don’t go telling the world.”
“Two scotch?” the proprietor said.
“Oh, bring the bottle,” Jean Marc said.
A good idea for a February night, Serebin realized, the taste dry and smoky, anything but sweet.
“Baron Kostyka sends his regards,” Jean Marc said. “And hopes his, contacts in Roumania have turned out to be worthwhile.”
“Some of them, certainly. He’s in London?”
“He is. And delighted to be English, a new man. You’d be surprised how much he’s changed.”
Serebin had imagined, on getting Jean Marc’s note, that he’d been stationed on the continent, in charge of Kostyka’s European office. But, clearly, that wasn’t the case. “You came here from London?” he said.
“Long way round. The only way to do it, these days. Passenger steamer to Lisbon, then up from Spain. No problem-as long as you don’t get torpedoed. You do have to have British connections to get a place on the ship, and German connections to get into Paris, but, for Kostyka, everything is possible. It’s commerce, you know, both sides need it, so, at least for the moment, business transcends war.”
Serebin was impressed. From his own experience, he knew what it took to move around Europe, but this was a level of freedom well beyond that.
“I’m here for a week,” Jean Marc said, “then off to Geneva and Zurich-those meetings will go on for a while- and, eventually, back to London. What about you, will you stay in Paris?”
“For the time being.”
“Not so bad, is it?” Jean Marc refilled his glass, then Serebin’s.
“Can be difficult-it seems to depend on how the Germans are doing. When they’re content, when they think they’re winning, life gets easier.”
That made sense to Jean Marc. “But now, as I understand it, you’re about to make them feel a great deal less content.”
Serebin shrugged. “Oh, who knows,” he said.
“No, really,” Jean Marc said. “If your operations in Roumania work out, they’ll be in some considerable difficulty.”
“Well, it’s not up to me,” Serebin said. He began to feel, for no particular reason, the first stirrings of some vague, intuitive resistance.
“I can’t imagine why they’d call it off,” Jean Marc said, “after all this time and effort. Germany runs on that oil. If I were in charge, I wouldn’t stop until I’d done something about it.”
“Well,” Serebin said. It was all very complicated, wasn’t it. “Anyhow, the war goes on. Now there’s something they call the Afrika Korps, to campaign in North Africa. That’s been in the newspapers.”
“Yes, with Rommel in charge-which means they’re serious.”
Again, time for more scotch. Had the bottle been full when they started? It seemed that Jean Marc was in no hurry to meet his friends. Not a bad drinking companion, when all was said and done, the whiskey had a good effect on him, made him less guarded and distant. “I grew up in this city,” he told Serebin. “In the Seventh. A soft life, you would think, but not really.” What made it difficult, he explained, was that people envied privilege. And, in truth, why shouldn’t they? They saw a fine house in Paris, a chateau in the countryside, a stable, a cellar of old vintages, aristocracy. “Everything but money,” he said, “which is why I work for Ivan Kostyka.” Still, nobody knew about that, and one had to keep up appearances, one had to play the part. Which meant you had to think before you spoke, you had to be conscious, always, of who you were and what that meant. Really, you couldn’t trust people, that was the lesson learned by generations of nobility. People took advantage, didn’t they. Once they thought you were rich and powerful, it was your obligation to help them out. Not only with money, with influence, connection. Suddenly, you were their best friend.
Now maybe it didn’t matter so much, day by day, just something you learned to live with, and who really cared. But, when women were involved, well, then it was different, because the heart, the heart, had its own reasons.
Yes, they would drink to that. To women. To the heart.
What else, Jean Marc asked the world, made life worth living? What else mattered, compared to that? Yet even there, in that most private chamber-forgive the double entendre — even there, spontaneity, that wondrous, uncaring, ah, freedom, abandon, proved difficult to reach. So then, in those affairs, you paid for who you were, for what you were. For what you had to be. For example, Nicolette…
Serebin followed along. Yes, he understood. Yes, that was the way things were. Outside the cafe was Europe and all its sorrows, but Serebin tried not to think about it. After all, even with everything that went on out there, people still struggled with matters of the bed, matters of the heart.
Had he been in love with Nicolette? Jean Marc wasn’t sure. Well, maybe, in a way. At what point did desire become something more? She wasn’t the stableman’s daughter, far from it. Still, they belonged to different worlds,
