“My help does not depend on what he did or did not do. He helped me in a strange city. A lonely man who understands the loneliness in others.”
“Are you lonely, Mrs. Marais?”
Her expression didn’t change, she had no outward mannerisms, but I sensed a faint change in her whole body. Something in her bright eyes that considered me, probed behind my face. She smoothed her skirt-the universal gesture of a woman aware of herself, of her body. Touched herself.
“My husband was a soldier, a patriot, a man of loyalty and courage and devotion,” she said slowly. “All of this he put into the cause of France, and France lost. That hurt him, but it was not the worst. He came to believe that France had deserved to lose, that the world of France and honor was dead, and now he has no world he can understand. He cannot believe in France, or America, or China, or any country or cause. No pride, no destiny, no purpose.”
“Is he a man who needs a purpose?”
“Most men are. Even you, I think, if only to do your work well. Claude has no work to do well. He works to keep us alive, no more. Sometimes I am sure he does not even know where he is-here or Saigon; Paris or the jungle.” Her eyes seemed to look into me from a hollow inside herself. “He is alone, Dan, can feel nothing. Not war or peace, hate or love.”
Her face told me that she knew she had called me Dan. My mouth was dry. Maybe because of Marty, but I wanted this woman, and in her own way she was saying that her loneliness needed help. What kind of help maybe she wasn’t sure herself.
I said, “How long have you been married, Li?”
“Eighteen years.” She watched me. “I was twelve when I married Claude. A few months before Dienbien- phu. It is not uncommon in Vietnam, as your own soldiers have found. A child is a good wife for a soldier. Better than the brothels, or older women who want only his money and disappear when he goes to fight. A child will not leave him. Children die so easily in Asia, have no food, no medicine, no doctors, no homes. A child must work early, is easily lost in war. Vietnamese love children, and to be married is to be safe, fed, even happy. It is better for a child to be a wife than an ox.”
“Afterward? When you weren’t twelve anymore? Now?”
“I was Madame Marais, I was content. We lived many places, and Claude fought and worked for France. Now he is wasted as the land is wasted, burned out like the villages of Vietnam.”
Her small hands lay flat on her thighs, squeezed.
“Why did you hire me to stop Gerd Exner that night?”
“I hoped you would make him go away, leave the country. He hates to be noticed, watched. I hoped you would scare him.”
“I scared him, but he stayed around. Why? Who is Exner? Is there something he wants from Claude?”
“He is an ex-Legionnaire. Claude worked with him in Vietnam and Africa-trading, arms smuggling, black market. I do not know why he stays. I only wanted to help Claude. Eugene once said that Claude must wipe the past away, forget and start over. I had hoped to make Exner go away, make Claude forget.”
What she had hoped was to have her man back. If it wasn’t too late.
“Could Eugene have gotten in Exner’s way somehow? Maybe gotten in Claude’s way?”
I saw that the thought had occurred to her too. A shadow of possible motives she didn’t want to think about. I saw more on her face-an awareness of me. But she said nothing, only sat like some earth-mother who could only wait, had always waited, silent and still, for what would be done to her.
After a time I got up and left.
8
In her black dress, Viviane Marais stood at the door of the old frame house in Sheepshead Bay with a glass of wine in her hand.
“So?” the widow said. “Come in, Mr. Fortune.”
She took me into the spotless living room where everything shined as if she’d spent each day since Eugene Marais had died cleaning. She offered me a glass of the wine-La Tache, a fine, heavy Burgundy. I didn’t say no. I sat, sipped.
“You’re not surprised to see me?” I said.
“No.”
“You don’t believe Jimmy Sung killed Eugene?”
“One can tell a man who will steal. Jimmy Sung would not. Too much pride. If he did not steal, what reason is there?”
“Why didn’t you say that when I told you Jimmy was accused?”
She drank her glass empty, poured a fresh glass. “Eugene always said that only a man’s will counted-to do something for yourself, not for others or for gain. If I had told you to go on it would have been a job, for money. I wanted to see if you would come to me from your own doubts.”
“You know your sister-in-law hired a lawyer for Jimmy?”
“Li is a strong woman, she has her beliefs.”
“And her troubles?”
“Yes, and her troubles.”
“With Claude her main trouble?”
She tasted her wine as if it were thick enough to chew, savored it. “Eugene said once that Claude is like a man who has done some awful crime and now waits for his punishment-paralyzed. He treats Li like a sister, a daughter. What woman can live like that? Married eighteen years and not yet thirty-one?”
“She needs a husband again,” I said.
“So?” Viviane Marais said. “She has let you see that?”
“Doesn’t she usually let anyone see that?”
“No,” the widow said, watched me. “Treat her well, Mr. Fortune. She is a warm woman, loyal. A man who finds her with him will be lucky.”
I thought so too, and Marty was off somewhere making her decision, but I changed the subject for now.
“Some crime Claude had on his mind, Eugene said,” I said. “Could Eugene have meant some real crime? In Claude’s past?”
“I don’t know,” Viviane Marais said. “At the time I thought Eugene meant it only as a metaphor, but now-?”
“Could Claude be involved in something illegal? Some deal Eugene might have discovered, maybe tried to stop?”
“What Claude might be doing I can’t know,” the widow said. “But Eugene would not try to stop anything. He had seen too much of the horror caused by righteous men who think that they must stop other men for some abstract truth, for some principle.”
“What if he found that Claude was using him in some way?” I said. “Had involved him in some scheme?”
“Eugene would not have permitted that, but he would not have done anything against Claude, either.”
“Maybe Claude, or Gerd Exner, didn’t know that,” I said.
She thought, sipped her good wine, shrugged. There were too many “ifs,” but the possibility hung in the room.
“This Paul Manet,” I said. “You said Eugene had known him in the past in Paris?”
“Eugene knew the Manet family. I do not know if he knew Paul or not, or how well. Paul Manet was active in the Resistance, Eugene was not.”
“What is Vel d’Hiv?” I said. “Why would Paul Manet not want to talk about it? Why would it make him jumpy?”
“How do you know Paul Manet did not want to talk about it?”
“Claude said that to Eugene the day he was killed.”
She finished her wine again, did not refill her glass this time. She watched the far wall. “On the night of July
