The Foreign Correspondent

level of, well, beasts.”

“But he murdered his paramour. Was it, do you think, romantic passion that drove him to do such a thing?”

“I don’t believe that.”

“What then?”

“I suspect this crime was a double murder, not a murder/suicide.”

“Committed by whom, Monsieur Weisz?”

“By operatives of the Italian government.”

“An assassination, then.”

“Yes.”

“With no concern that one of the victims was the wife of an important French politician.”

“No, I don’t think they cared.”

“Was Bottini, then, to your way of thinking, the primary victim?”

“I believe he was, yes.”

“Why do you believe that?”

“I think it had to do with his involvement in the antifascist opposition.”

“Why him, Monsieur Weisz? There are others in Paris. Quite a number.”

“I don’t know why,” Weisz said. It was very hot in the room, Weisz felt a bead of sweat run from beneath his arm down to the edge of his undershirt.

“As an emigre, Monsieur Weisz, what is your opinion of France?”

“I have always liked it here, and that was true long before I emigrated.”

“What exactly is it that you like?”

“I would say,” he paused, then said, “the tradition of individual freedom has always been strong here, and I enjoy the culture, and Paris is, is everything that’s said of it. One is privileged to live here.”

“You are aware that there are disputes between us-Italy claims Corsica, Tunisia, and Nice-so if, regrettably, your native country and your adopted country were to go to war, what would you do then?”

“Well, I wouldn’t leave.”

“Would you serve a foreign country, against your native land?”

“Today,” Weisz said, “I don’t know how to answer that. My hope is for change in the government of Italy, and peace between both nations. Really, if ever there were two countries who ought not to go to war, that would be Italy and France.”

“And would you be willing to put such ideals to work? To work for what you believe should be harmony between these two nations?”

Oh fuck you. “Truly, I cannot imagine what I could do, to help. It all takes place high up, these difficulties. Between our countries.”

Pompon almost smiled, started to speak, to attack, but his colleague, very quietly, cleared his throat. “We appreciate your candor, Monsieur Weisz. Not so easy, these politics. Perhaps you’re one of those who in his heart thinks that wars should be settled by diplomats in their underwear, fighting with brooms.”

Weisz smiled, intensely grateful. “I’d pay to watch it, yes.”

“Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that. Too bad, eh? By the way, speaking of diplomats, I wonder if you’ve heard, as a journalist, that an Italian official, from the embassy here, has been sent home. Persona non grata, I believe that’s the phrase.”

“I hadn’t heard.”

“No? You’re sure? Well, maybe a communique wasn’t issued-that’s not up to us, down here in the trenches, but I’m told it did happen.”

“I didn’t know,” Weisz said. “Nothing came to Reuters.”

The cop shrugged. “Then better keep it under your hat, eh?”

“I will,” Weisz said.

“Much obliged,” the cop said.

Pompon closed his file. “I think that’s all, for today,” he said. “Of course we’ll be speaking with you again.”

Weisz left the ministry, a lone figure amid a stream of men with briefcases, circled the building-this took a long time-at last left its shadow, and headed toward the Reuters office. Going back over the interview, his mind spun, but in time settled on the official sent back to Italy. Why had they told him that? What did they want from him? Because he sensed they knew he’d become the new editor of Liberazione, had expected the pro forma lie, then tempted him with an interesting story. Officially, the clandestine press did not exist, but it was, potentially, useful. How? Because the French government might wish to make known, to both allies and enemies in Italy, that they had taken action in the Bottini affair. They had not issued a communique, did not want to force the Mussolini government to send home a French official, the traditional pawn sacrifice in diplomatic chess. On the other hand, they could not simply do nothing, they had to avenge the wrong done to LaCroix, an important politician.

Was this true? If it wasn’t, and the story appeared in Liberazione, they would be very annoyed with him. Keep it under your hat, eh? Best to do that, if you valued the head that wore it. No, he thought, leave it alone, let them find some other newspaper, don’t take the bait. The French allowed Liberazione and the others to exist because France publicly opposed the fascist government. Today. Tomorrow, that could change. Everywhere in Europe, the possibility of another war forced alliances governed by realpolitik: England and France needed Italy as a partner against Germany, they couldn’t have Russia, and they wouldn’t have America, so they had to fight Mussolini with one hand, and stroke him with the other. The waltz of diplomacy, and Weisz now invited to join the dance.

But he would decline, with silence. He’d been summoned to this meeting, he decided, as the editor of Liberazione-an assignment for Inspector Pompon, the new man on the job: Would he spy for them? Would he be discreet on the subject of French politics? And we’ll be speaking with you again meant we’re watching you. So then, watch. But the answers, no, and yes, would not change.

Now Weisz felt better. Not such a bad day, he thought, the sun in and out, big, fancy clouds coming in from the Channel and flying east over the city. Weisz, on his way to the Opera quarter, had left the ministry neighborhood and returned to the streets of Paris: two shop girls in gray smocks, riding bicycles, an old man in a cafe, reading Le Figaro, his terrier curled up beneath the table, a musician on the corner, playing the clarinet, his upturned hat holding a few centimes. All of them, he thought, adding a one-franc coin to the hat, with dossiers. It had shaken him a little to see his very own, but so life went. Still, triste in its way. But no different than Italy, the dossiers there called schedatura-someone presumed to have a police file termed schedata-where they had been compiled by the national police for more than a decade, recording political views, the habits of daily life, sins great and small, everything. It was all written down.

By ten-fifteen, Weisz was back in the office. To, once again, a certain look from the secretary: What, not in chains? And she had, as he’d feared, told Delahanty about the message, because he said, “Everything allright, laddie?” when Weisz visited his office. Weisz looked at the ceiling and spread his hands, Delahanty grinned. Police and emigres, nothing new there. The way Delahanty saw it, you could be a bit of an axe murderer, as long as the foreign minister’s quote was accurate.

With the interview behind him, Weisz treated himself to a gentle day at the office. He put off a call to Salamone, drank coffee at his desk, and, a cruciverbiste, as the French called it, fiddled with the crossword puzzle in Paris-Soir. Making little headway there, he found three of the five animals in the picture puzzle, then turned to the entertainment pages, consulted the cinema schedules, and discovered, in the distant reaches of the Eleventh Arrondissement, L’Albergo del Bosco, made in 1932. What was that doing out there? The Eleventh was barely in France, a poor district, home to refugees, one heard more Yiddish, Polish, and Russian than French in those dark streets. And Italian? Perhaps. There were thousands of Italians in Paris, working at whatever they could find, living wherever rent was low and food cheap. Weisz wrote down the address of the theatre, maybe he’d go.