at any other time you will telephone to the Commissaire.”
“But I have to leave on Saturday morning for Paris. I am expected to start the new term on Monday.”
“You will stay until you have permission to go. Also you will make no attempt to get into touch with anyone outside the Reserve except the police.”
A sickening sense of helplessness crept over me.
“I shall lose my job.”
Beghin got up and stood over me.
“Listen, Vadassy,” he said; and in his absurd voice there was an ugly note far more menacing than the Commissaire’s bluster. “You will stay at the Reserve until you are told to go. If you try to leave before then, you will be re-arrested and I shall make it my personal business to see that you are deported by steamer to Dubrovnik and that your dossier is handed to the Yugoslav police. And get this into your head. The quicker we find out who took those photographs the sooner you can go. But don’t try any tricks and don’t write any letters. Either you do what you are told or you will be deported. You will be very lucky if you avoid deportation, anyway. So be careful. You understand, eh?”
I did-clearly.
An hour later I walked back along the road from the Commissariat to the village. The Contax was slung over my shoulder. When I put my hand in my pocket I could feel a small piece of paper with a list of the guests at the Reserve typed on it.
Koche was in his office when I got there. As I passed by to go to my room he came out. He was in blue jeans, sandals, and a maillot, and, to judge from his wet hair, had just been swimming. With his tall, thin, stooping figure and his sleepy manner he looked very unmanagerial.
“Ah, Monsieur,” he said with a faint smile. “You are back. Nothing serious, I hope. The police came here this morning. They said they had your permission to take your passport.”
I looked as disgruntled as I could.
“No, nothing serious. A question of identity and a mistake which they took a fantastic time to discover. They were apologetic, but what can one do? The French police are wholly ridiculous.”
He looked serious, professed amazement and indignation, complimented me on my forbearance. He was clearly unconvinced. I could scarcely blame him. I was feeling too weak to play the outraged citizen with any hope of success.
“By the way, Monsieur,” he said casually, as I made for the stairs, “it is Saturday morning that you are leaving, I believe?”
So he wanted to get rid of me. I affected to consider the question.
“I had thought of doing so,” I said; “but I may decide to stay a day or two longer. That is,” I added, with a wintry smile, “if the police have no objection.”
He hesitated barely a second.
“A pleasure,” he said, but without enthusiasm.
As I turned again to go, it may have been my fancy, but I thought that his eyes were on the camera.
4
I find it difficult now to remember much of the next two hours. But I do know that when I reached my room there was for me only one question in the world-was there a train from Toulon to Paris on Sunday afternoon? I remember that I rushed to my suitcase and searched feverishly for the timetable.
You may find it odd that, faced with utter and complete disaster, I should be concerned about so trivial a matter as the train services to Paris. But human beings do behave oddly in times of very great stress. Passengers in a sinking ship will go back to their cabins as the last boat is casting off from the side, to save trifling personal possessions. Men on the point of death worry about small unpaid bills as they go forward to eternity.
What worried me was the prospect of being late on the Monday morning. Monsieur Mathis was very strict on the score of punctuality. Latecomers, whether pupils or teachers, incurred his grave displeasure. This was expressed in biting terms and a very loud voice at a moment when the additional embarrassment of an audience had to be suffered. The denunciation, moreover, usually followed some hours after the commission of the crime. The suspense could be very wearing.
If, I reasoned, I could catch a train from Toulon on Sunday afternoon and travel overnight to Paris, I might be at the school on time. I remember the feeling of relief I experienced on finding that there was a train which reached Paris at six o’clock on the Monday morning. My mind was working in a fog. Beghin had said that I should not be able to leave on Saturday. Terrible! Monsieur Mathis would be angry. Could I get to Paris in time if I left on Sunday? Yes, thank God, I could! All was well.
I think that if anyone had suggested to me at that moment that I should not be able to leave on the Sunday, I should have laughed disbelievingly. But there would have been hysteria in that laugh for, as I sat on the floor beside my open suitcase, fear was clutching at the mechanism inside my chest, making my heart thud and my breathing short and sharp, as though I had been running. I kept swallowing saliva, feeling for some curious reason that by doing so I would stop my heart beating so. It made me terribly thirsty and after a while I got up, went to the washbasin, and drank some water out of the tooth glass. Then I went back and pushed the lid of my suitcase down with my foot. As I did so I felt the piece of paper Beghin had given me crackle in my pocket. I sat down on the bed.
I must have sat staring blankly at Beghin’s list for well over an hour. I read it and re-read it. The names became ciphers, meaningless arrangements of shapes. I shut my eyes, opened them, and read again. I did not know these people. I had spent one day in the hotel. It was a hotel with large grounds. I had exchanged nods with them at mealtimes. No more. With my bad memory for faces I could probably have passed all of them in the street without recognizing one. Yet one of the persons represented by those names had my camera. One of those who had nodded to me was a spy. One of them had been paid to make his or her way secretly into military zones, to take photographs of reinforced concrete and guns so that some day warships out at sea might safely and accurately fire shells to smash to pieces the concrete and the guns and the men who served them. And I had two days in which to identify that person.
Their names, I thought stupidly, looked very harmless.
Monsieur Robert Duclos
French
Nantes
Monsieur Andre Roux
French
Paris
Mademoiselle Odette
Martin
French
Paris
Miss Mary Skelton
American
Washington, D. C.
Mr. Warren Skelton
American
Washington, D. C.
Herr Walter Vogel
Swiss
Constance
Frau Hulde Vogel
Swiss
Constance
