“Bastard!” Antonopoulos was roaring.
His heavy face, his sagging jowls were flushed with rage and his eyes bored savagely into Albert as though to split his skull. Having stunned his target, the Greek turned around and sat down heavily on the splintered timber, his huge ass pressing the board against Albert’s chest while he grabbed his hair. Now that he had straddled his prey, he lashed out with his free hand, punching Albert in the face.
The first blow split Albert’s brow, the second gashed his lips, he tasted blood in his mouth, he could not move for the weight of the Greek who went on roaring abuse, punctuating each word with another clout. One, two, three, four, Albert held his breath, he heard screams and tried to turn when his head exploded from a vicious blow to the temple. He blacked out.
Noises, voices, a commotion all around him . . .
Passers-by had intervened and managed to push the Greek off and roll him onto his back—something that took three men—and eventually to free Albert and lay him on the pavement. Someone talked of calling the police, and the Greek bridled, he did not want the police involved, what he wanted—as was obvious from the way he continued to shake his fist and scream “Bastard!”—was to beat the life out of the unconscious man lying in a pool of blood. There were appeals for calm, the women backed away, staring in horror at the bleeding unconscious man. Two men, heroes of the pavement, managed to keep the Greek on his back, like a tortoise unable to right itself. Orders were shouted, no one knew who was doing what, already some had started to chatter. I heard there’s a woman involved, can you believe it? Keep hold of him! Keep hold of him? That’s rich coming from you, why don’t you come over here and help me! The problem was the Greek exerted a lot of strength as he tried to turn over, he was a whale of a man, but too flabby to pose any real danger. For Christ’s sake, someone said, I wish the police would get here!
“No, not police!” the Greek roared, waving his arms.
The mere mention of “police” gave him the rage and the strength of ten. With a flick of his arm, he knocked one of the good Samaritans onto his back. As one, the assembled ladies gave a shriek of excitement and took a step back. Knowing nothing about the reason for the quarrel, distant voices began to speculate: “A Turk?”—“Don’t be ridiculous, he’s speaking Romanian!”—“No, no, no,” interrupted an educated man. “Romanian sounds similar to French, that’s definitely Turkish.”—“Aha!” the first man said triumphantly, “A Turk, just like I said!” at which point two police officers arrived—what’s going on here, then?—an idiotic question since it was patently clear they were trying to stop one man from beating the other to death. Well, well, well, said the policemen, we’ll see about that. In fact, no one saw anything, because events took an abrupt turn. The passers-by who had been restraining the Greek relaxed their grip when they saw the officers. This was all it took for him to roll onto his belly, struggle to his knees, and get to his feet by which time there was nothing to be done, he gathered speed like a freight train, anyone trying to stop him risked being crushed, but no one tried, least of all the police. The Greek rushed at Albert who, though barely conscious, must have sensed the danger since, just as Antonopoulos reached him, Albert—or rather his body, since his eyes were closed and his head nodding gently like a sleepwalker—Albert also rolled onto his belly, scrambled to his feet and took off, zigzagging down the pavement, with the Greek hot on his heels.
The assembled crowd was disappointed.
Just as the action was about to start, the protagonists were disappearing. They had been cheated out of an arrest, an interrogation, after all they had played their part, the least they deserved was to know how the story ended. Only the policemen were not disappointed; helplessly, stoically they held up their hands,—what can you do?—hoping that the two men would keep running for a little while longer, since, once they crossed the rue Pasquier, it would not be their beat.
In fact, the chase came to nothing. Albert wiped his face with his sleeve so that he could see properly, he ran like a man possessed, he was much faster than the heavyset Greek, and before long he had outdistanced him by two, three, then four streets, he turned right, then took the next left, and short of doubling back and running into Antonopoulos, he managed to get off with no more than a fright, if one did not count the two smashed teeth, the cut above his eye, the bruises, the aching ribs, the abject terror, etc.
It would not be long before this stumbling, bleeding man attracted the attention of the police again. Already, pedestrians stepped aside, staring at him in alarm. Albert, confident that he had put enough distance between himself and his attacker, and knowing that he must look a sight, stopped at a fountain on the rue Scribe and splashed water on his face. Only then did he start to feel the pain from his injuries. Especially the wound over his eye. He could not stop the bleeding, even with his sleeve pressed against the gash, the blood kept streaming everywhere.
A young woman in a hat and elegant outfit was sitting alone, clutching her handbag tightly. She turned away as soon as Albert stepped into the waiting room, but it was difficult not to be seen since they were alone and the only two chairs faced each other. The woman fidgeted, looked out of the window though there was nothing to be seen, coughed so that she could bring her hand up to her face, more anxious at the thought of being noticed than of looking at this man who was bleeding profusely—he was already covered in blood—and whose face clearly indicated he had taken a beating. Seconds ticked past before, from the back of the apartment, they heard footsteps, then a voice, and Docteur Martineau finally appeared.
The young woman quickly got to her feet up, then immediately stopped. Seeing the state Albert was in, the doctor beckoned to him. Albert walked down the hallway, the young woman returned to her chair and sat down without a word, as though she had been scolded.
The doctor asked no questions, he inspected the damage and pressed his fingertips here and there before gravely offering his diagnosis. “Someone’s obviously given you a good hiding . . .” He staunched the bleeding gums with cotton balls, recommended that Albert see a dentist, and stitched the gash above his eye.
“Ten francs.”
Albert turned out his pockets, got down on all fours to pick up the coins that had rolled under the chair, the doctor grabbed the money; there was less than ten francs, much less, he shrugged wearily and showed Albert out.
Albert felt panic overtake him. He clung to the handle of the front door, the world started to spin, his heart was hammering, he felt the urge to vomit, felt as though he was melting or sinking into quicksand. A terrifying wave of dizziness. He stood, wide eyed, clutching at his chest like a man in the throes of a heart attack. The concierge appeared from nowhere.
“You’re not going to throw up on my clean doorstep, are you, boy?”
Albert could not answer. The concierge looked at the freshly stitched eyebrow, she nodded and rolled her eyes to heaven; men never could stand pain.
The panic attack was short lived. Brutal but brief. He had suffered similar episodes in November and December 1918, in the weeks after he was buried alive. Sometimes at night he would wake up to find himself covered by earth, dead, suffocated.
As he walked on, the street seemed to dance, everything seemed new minted, realer than real, more hazy, dancing, shimmering. He staggered toward the métro station, every sound, every bang made him start; twenty times he whipped around, expecting the looming figure of Antonopoulos to appear. What rotten luck. In a city like Paris you could go twenty years without running into an old friend; he had run slap bang into the Greek.
His teeth began to ache.
He stopped at a café for a calvados but remembered, just as he ordered, that he had given his last centime to Docteur Martineau. He left the bar, tried to catch the métro, but the enclosed atmosphere felt suffocating, a new wave of panic rushed over him; he went back up to the street and set off walking. He arrived home exhausted and spent the rest of the day trembling with fear as he went over every detail of w
hat had happened.
There were moments when he felt a terrible rage. He should have killed that fucking Greek bastard the first time! Most of the time he considered his life an unspeakable disaster, the sheer wretchedness was heart scalding, and he knew he might never escape it, something in his will to fight had been destroyed.
He looked at himself in the mirror, his face had swelled to impressive proportions, the bruises were turning blue, he looked like a convict. Once upon a time his friend had gazed into a mirror and contemplated his ruin. Albert calmly smashed the mirror on the floor, picked up the broken shards, and threw them into the trash.
The following day, he did not eat. He spent all afternoon going around and around the living room like a fairground pony. Every time he thought back to what had happened, he was gripped by fear. And by foolish notions: the Greek had found him, he could make inquiries, talk to Albert’s employer, track him to his apartment, demand his money, kill him. Albert rushed to the window, but he could see only a street where at any moment Poulos might appear, only the owner’s house, where, as always, Mme Belmont was at her window, staring into space, lost in her memories.
The future seemed black. No work, the Greek on his tail, he had to move, to find a new job. As though that would be easy.
Then he would reassure himself. It was ridiculous to think the Greek would come looking for him here, it was a fantasy. How would he even do it? He was hardly likely to rally his family and all his drug-dealing friends to track down a carton of morphine ampoules, the contents of which had long since been used. It was preposterous.
But if Albert’s mind was capable of such thoughts, his body did not share them. He could not stop trembling, his fear was irrational and impervious to argument. The hours passed, night began to draw in and with it specters and terrors. Magnified by the darkness, his fears destroyed what little lucidity he could muster, and panic once more took hold.
Alone, Albert wept. There is a history to be written of the tears in Albert’s life. These shifted from grief to dread according to whether he contemplated his present life or his future. He had cold sweats, bursts of depression, palpitations, black thoughts, a feeling of suffocation, of vertigo; never again, he thought, never again would he leave this apartment, and yet he could not stay here. He sobbed harder. Escape. The word rumbled suddenly in his mind. Escape. In the darkness, this notion swelled until it eclipsed all other thoughts. He could no longer imagine a future here, not simply in this room, but in this city, this country.
He ran to the dresser, took out the photographs and the postcards of the colonies. Start again from scratch. In the next flash, he saw Édouard. Albert rushed to the wardrobe and took out the horse’s head mask. Carefully, as though handling a precious antique, he slipped it on. And immediately he felt safe, protected. He wanted to see himself; he rummaged in the trash for a shard of mirror large enough, but it was impossible. He looked for his reflection in the window, and seeing himself as a horse, his fears subsided, a gentle warmth washed over him, his muscles relaxed. As he adjusted the mask, he looked down into the courtyard at Mme Belmont’s window. She was not there. He could see only a dim glow from some distant room in the house.
And suddenly everything was clear, it was obvious.
Albert took a deep breath before removing the mask. He felt an unpleasant coldness. In the way that a stove stores up heat and remains warm long after the fire has burned out, Albert had sufficient reserves of strength to open the door, his mask tucked under his arm, slowly go down the stairs, lift the tarpaulin, and see that the shoebox containing the ampoules was gone.
He crossed the courtyard, took a few steps out onto the pavement. It was pitch black, now; he hugged his horse head mask to him and rang the doorbell.
It was some time before Mme Belmont answered. When she recognized Albert, she did not say a word, but opened the door; Albert followed her down the hall to a room with its shutters closed. In a child’s crib, too small for her, Louise was sound asleep, her legs drawn up. Albert bent over her. In sleep, the child was astonishingly beautiful. On the floor next to her, covered by a white sheet made ivory in the half-light, lay Édouard, his eyes open, staring up at Albert. Next to him, the box of morphine ampoules. With an expert eye, Albert immediately noticed that the stock had not been much depleted.
He smiled to free himself, slipped on the horse head mask and offered him his hand.
Toward midnight, Édouard was sitting by the window with Albert next to him, thoughtfully cradling the sketches for memorials in his lap. He had seen the state of his friend’s face. A savage beating.
“Okay, try explaining it to me again, this thing with the memorials,” Albert said. “How do you see it working?”
While Édouard wrote on a new conversation pad, Albert leafed through the designs. They studied the question. Most of the problems with the scheme were solvable. There was no need to set up a ghost company, only a bank account. No offices, just a post office box. The idea was to offer an attractive promotion for a limited time, to collect all the advance payments on the orders . . . and take off with the money.
There was, perhaps, one problem, but it was a big one: to set the scheme in motion, they needed money.
Édouard could not understand why this question of funds, which only recently had left Albert furious, was now seen as merely a minor obstacle. It obviously had something to do with his physical state, the bruises, the gash above his eye, the black eye . . .
Édouard thought back to Albert’s “assignation” a few days earlier, his disappointment when he had come home; he had presumed there was a woman involved, a thwarted love affair. Perhaps Albert was making this decision in a fit of pique, he thought. Might he not change his mind tomorrow or the next day? But Édouard had little choice if he wanted to launch his scheme (and God knows he wanted it badly); he had to assume that his friend had come to a considered decision. And keep his fingers crossed.
All through their conversation, Albert seemed normal, rational, everything he said seemed sensible, but in midsentence he would suddenly be trembling from head to foot and begin to sweat despite the bitter cold. At such moments, he was like two distinct men: the ex-soldier, buried alive, quivering like a rabbit, and the former bank clerk, thinking, calculating.
So how were they to come up with the money to run this scheme?
Albert stared at the horse head mask, which calmly gazed back at him. It was encouraging, that gentle, placid gaze.
He got to his feet.
“I think I can find the money . . . ,” he said.
He walked over to the table and slowly cleared away the clutter.
He sat down with a sheet of paper, an inkwell, and a nib, thought for a long time, then, having inscribed his name and address in the top right corner, he wrote:
Monsieur,
You were kind enough, when I came to visit you, to offer me a job as an accountant with one of your businesses.
If that offer still holds, you should know that . . .
MARCH 1920
26
Henri d’Aulnay-Pradelle, whose mind dealt only in black and white, acknowledging no shades of gray, often got the better of his interlocutors because his bluntness discouraged reasoned argument. For example, he could not but assume that Léon Jardin-Beaulieu, who was shorter than he, was also less intelligent. This was plainly absurd, but since Léon had a complex about his height that made him awkward, Pradelle invariably won the argument. In his sense of superiority, there was the matter of height, but there were two other factors named Yvonne and Denise, respectively Léon’s sister and his wife, both Henri’s mistresses. The former for more than a year, the latter since two days before her wedding. Henri would have found it even more piquant to have taken her on the eve of the ceremony, or better yet the morning it took place, but circumstances had not been propitious and two days before was still a fine result. Since that day, he would often say to intimate acquaintances, “In the Jardin-Beaulieu family, I am missing only
the mother.” The joke was particularly appreciated because Mme Jardin-Beaulieu was not one to excite the passions and was a woman of great modesty. Henri, with his customary boorishness, never failed to add that “she had much to be modest about.”
In Ferdinand Morieux, a perfect fool, and Léon Jardin-Beaulieu, paralyzed by his inhibitions, Henri had recruited two business associates for whom he had nothing but contempt. Until now, he had had complete freedom to conduct his business in his own inimitable style—impetuous and expeditious, as we have seen—while his “associates” were content to collect their dividends. Henri did not keep them informed about anything; this was “his” business. Many obstacles had been overcome without his having to explain himself; he was not about to begin now.
“The problem is . . . ,” said Léon Jardin-Beaulieu, “this time it is rather embarrassing.”
Henri looked the man up and down. In their discussions, he always arranged matters so that he was standing, forcing Léon to tilt his head back as though staring at the ceiling.
Léon blinked rapidly. He had important things to say, but he was frightened of this man. And he despised him. It had grieved him to find that his sister was sleeping with Henri, but he had smiled wryly as though he had been complicit, perhaps even the instigator. When he heard the first rumors about Denise, his wife, it was a very different matter. He felt so humiliated he wanted to die. He had been able to marry a beautiful woman because of his fortune; he labored under no illusions as to her fidelity, present or future, but that confirmation had come from Aulnay-Pradelle was particularly painful. Denise herself had always treated Léon with disdain. She resented the fact that he had got what he wanted because he had the means. From the beginning of their marriage she had been condescending, and he could find nothing to oppose her decision to sleep in a separate room and lock her door every night. He did not marry me, she thought; he purchased me. She was not cruel by nature, but one must understand that this was a period when women were denigrated.
The Great Swindle Page 27