“To attach yourself to him is like eating the wrong kind of food, Renette. I say this as a warning, as a threat. But not from me. From Jesso.”
She listened because she understood. Her brother hadn’t talked to her, come close, since-It didn’t matter. She understood him and the old attachment was still there. Not like a chain this time, but simply there.
“I’m sure you think he’s done nothing but good where you have been concerned,” he went on. “I’m sure you think that no matter how perverse, how rotten this man is, somehow he had it in him to be for once, with you, only good.” Kator made a tired gesture and smiled as if he weren’t sure. “You know, Renette, I like to think you feel that way about your brother, because I, I truly live two lives, Renette. One for my work, and one for you.” He suddenly frowned and his face turned to stone. “But I was talking about Jesso. With him you are part of his schemes. Tell me,” and Kator suddenly jabbed one finger at Renette, “did he ever ask you about me?”
Jesso had, and Renette knew that Kator knew it. She had told him. But now the question was ominous.
“And has he ever asked about my business? We both know he has and I refrain from guessing at what moments of your intimacy he has asked. Now more. Did he make you promise to help him get a passport? And finally, Renette, did he not leave you behind?”
“I didn’t want to go,” she said.
“I’m proud of you. But you see, my dear, he didn’t try to force you, did he? A man like Jesso, and he did not insist!”
Kator stopped, as if at the end of a triumphal march, and then he summed it up, making it casual. “You see, my dear, from your first meeting to the very last, each thing he did served one purpose only. It served Jesso. Anything else he might have done was nothing but the bait to serve the moment of his advantage. And you, Renette, have been his tool.” There was silence and he was through. He stopped because he knew the spell of his words was there, Renette had heard, and, judging her by himself, he knew he’d given her the clues that she might need to break with Jesso. One thing he didn’t know: that Jesso had not been a man to her, a person, but a force; that she had gained by that force, made it her own.
“And now, Johannes?”
“What do you mean?”
“Before you advised me about Jesso, it was the Zimmer affair you talked about.”
“Oh, yes.” Kator thought the switch was very rapid, but so much the better. “Young Zimmer will be at a party. I’ll give you the details. I want you-“
“Johannes,” she said, “I told you no,” and when nobody answered she got up, excused herself, and left the room.
Kator did not see how he could have failed. Nor did he know that Renette had been impressed with many of the things he’d told her. They meant to her that Kator was a cold and clever man. They also meant that Kator was trying to be kind. They meant that Jesso had set her free from both those things, and even from himself, and that her brother did not see any of it. No one did, only Renette.
Chapter Twenty-three
Jesso kept watching the torn clouds race by because it made the movement faster. But not until they circled Paris did it all become real to him. A few more hours and Renette. Perhaps Kator was waiting like a cat that knew there was just one way out for the mouse in the corner, but even that worry turned simple. Jesso got out in Paris, let the rest of his flight go chase itself through the wild blue yonder, and changed to an Air France liner that went straight to Berlin. It had one halfway stop, Hannover. That’s how Jesso got to town.
The villa still sat behind the wall like an ornate tomb and the only sound was the constant rustling of the trees in the Allee. The light was failing and pretty soon the damp day would be a damp night. Jesso sent his taxi off and for a moment the sound of the old motor was the worst noise in the world. Then just the villa again and the mumble from the old trees.
He didn’t ring the bell and he didn’t wait for Hofer to do any honors. He walked through the two front doors, and he was halfway across the hall when the library door opened and a shaft of light cut toward him. And there stood Kator.
Each knew the other as if he had expected it this way. The door came shut, the light was gone, and very slowly Kator came across the hall. It took Jesso a while to place the queer thing, but then he realized that Kator walked without the sharp click of his heels.
“You’re back.”
“The last time, Kator.”
“I know that, Jesso.”
“So move,” but nothing moved.
As once before, after Delf, when they had held each other with a grip that meant one of the two had to break and die, nothing happened. A door opened upstairs and they both turned. Then the door shut again, the moment went. Jesso didn’t know about Kator, but Jesso had to move right then. He turned toward the stairs and took them two at a time. Neither corridor showed a light. He went right, turned the bend, and then he opened the door to Renette’s rooms.
The bed was there, her clothes, and the decanter with the liqueur stood on a little table where the seat faced the window. She hadn’t moved the seat since that time. There wasn’t any noise from the shower, but he went in there just the same. If he hadn’t maybe the noise from the corridor might have reached him.
That same door had clicked again, only this time it flew open, hit the wall, and stayed there. Then Renette came out. She walked so that her hair bounced and dipped over the back of her neck, and there was nothing calm or gracious in her face. The eyes seemed to slant with anger and her parted lips showed her teeth. She headed for the stairs. Helmut von Lohe was close behind her, looking sharp in his riding clothes and making a tinkle with the spurs on his polished boots. His hair was combed over the skull the way he wanted it and his small red mouth had a new sharp cut to it. He followed Renette down the stairs.
So Jesso missed them. He saw that the bath was empty, the bedroom, the sitting room, and nothing in the dressing room. Her clothes were there; he checked her coats and furs, and it looked as if she had to be somewhere in the house. He started for the stairs as if he felt she had been calling.
It turned out there were plenty of rooms he hadn’t seen before. They were furnished for different moods with different doodads, but all Jesso saw was that they were empty. Once he passed Hofer, but Hofer was just a moving doodad, and then another room with furniture, walls, windows, portraits.
He saw them across an angle from one part of the house to another, behind the glass of the solarium, where the fat plants stood in the heat. Jesso couldn’t hear a word where he stood by the window, but the Baron’s face was working and his hands were making quick flutters. Then Jesso saw Kator. He stepped into sight, looked stolid. He reached out with both hands, seemed to talk in the same back-and-forth rhythm with which he pulled and pushed with his arms whatever he held there. That’s when Jesso saw Renette. Because of the plant Jesso never saw all of her, but the plant was shaking.
The only way to the solarium was back through the rooms that made the angle of the house. Jesso was breathing hard when he hit the salon with the silk and needle point, but racing to get there had taken none of the temper out of him. It made it worse, worse than in the plane with Kator, worse than in the hall a while ago. There wasn’t just Kator. There was Helmut, there was Renette, and Jesso slowed down when he got to the silk place because he didn’t know which way to jump first.
“He’s lying!” he heard Renette say. “Johannes, he’s making it up from spite. I said nothing to Jesso to cause this thing. His own failure-“
When Jesso burst through the door, they all turned.
“You all right?” he said without looking at her. He had stopped and was looking at Kator, feeling the same harsh pull come back, and it was only a question of five, six steps along the passage between tall plants and they would lock into each other like traps that couldn’t let go.
“Stay there,” she said. “I’m all right, Jesso.”
He walked around the little fountain and stopped.
“Did you touch her, Kator?”
