The Great Swindle

by Pierre Lemaitre

  “Trading in what?”

  “I thought maybe tropical hardwoods.”

  Pauline froze, a forkful of leek vinaigrette hovering a few inches from her lips.

  “What?”

  Albert immediately started to backtrack:

  “Or vanilla, or coffee, or cocoa perhaps, that sort of thing . . .”

  Pauline nodded gravely, as she always did when she did not understand. Pauline Maillard, Vanilla & Cocoa, she did not much care for the sound of it. Nor could she imagine who might be interested.

  Albert realized he had taken the wrong tack.

  “It was just a thought . . .”

  And so, one thing leading to another, tripping over his own arguments, he gradually trailed off, he gave up; he could sense Pauline slipping away from him, he hated himself, he felt a desperate urge to get up, to leave, to bury himself somewhere.

  Dear God, he wanted the ground to open up and swallow him . . .

  It always came back to that.

  41

  The chain of events that began on July 13 could feature on the syllabus of fireworks manufacturers or bomb disposal experts as the perfect example of an explosive situation that starts with a slow burn.

  When the morning edition of Le Petit Journal appeared at about 6:30 a.m., it was merely a single guarded paragraph, albeit on the front page. The headline was merely conjecture, but it was tantalizing:

  War Memorial Fraud . . .

  An Impending National Scandal?

  Though it was a brief paragraph, the article nonetheless attracted attention, sandwiched as it was between damps squibs such as SPA CONFERENCE SHOWS NO SIGN OF REACHING AGREEMENT, an account of the death toll of the war: EUROPE HAS LOST 35 MILLION MEN, and the meager SCHEDULE OF JULY 14 CELEBRATIONS, which made much of the fact that obviously this year’s celebrations could not possibly rival those of July 14 last year.

  What did the article actually say? Nothing. That was its strength: it left ample room to the collective imagination to fill the gaps. There were no facts, but there were rumors that “maybe” some towns and villages “might have” commissioned war memorials from a company “some feared” might be a “straw” company. It could not have been more guarded.

  Henri d’Aulnay-Pradelle was among the first to read it. Emerging from his taxi, he bought Le Petit Journal and while waiting for the printworks to open (it was not yet seven o’clock), stumbled on the article, nearly threw the paper into the gutter in a rage, but calmed himself. He read and reread it, weighing every word. He still had a little time, and that reassured him. But very little, which made him angrier still.

  A man in overalls came and opened up with Henri already on his heels, good morning—he fluttered the Patriotic Memory catalog—you printed this, I need some information about the clients. The man explained that he was not the manager.

  “Look, here he comes now.”

  The manager—a man about Henri’s age carrying a lunch bucket and looking like a foreman who had married the owner—held in his hand a rolled-up copy of Le Petit Journal but, mercifully, had not yet read it. Men like this were always impressed by Henri since everything about him said “gentleman,” the sort of rich, fastidious client who never asks the price. And so, when Henri asked if he might have a quiet word, the old hand said by all means, and as the typographers, printers and compositors began their day, he gestured to the glass door of the office where he received clients.

  The shop floor workers were eyeing him surreptitiously; Henri turned his back so he could not be seen and immediately laid a two-hundred-franc bill on the desk.

  The staff could see very little—the customer’s back, his unruffled manner—and he left quickly, the meeting was cut short, a bad sign, since it meant he had not placed an order. But when he came to join them, the boss had a smug smile, which was surprising since it galled him not to close a deal. He had just earned four hundred francs—he could hardly believe it—simply for telling this gentleman that he had no name for the client, a man of average height, nervous, worried even, who had paid fifty percent up front in hard cash and the balance the day before delivery; had no delivery address for the catalogs since a messenger had come to fetch them, a man with a hand cart, only one arm, but a strapping man.

  “I’ve seen him around here.”

  This was all Henri had managed to discover. No one knew him personally, the man with the cart, but he had been seen around. A one-armed man was hardly unusual these days, but one who pulled a handcart was rare enough.

  “Maybe not from around here exactly,” the printer had said. “I mean, not from the quartier, but he must live somewhere nearby . . .”

  It was 7:30 a.m.

  In the lobby, breathless, ashen, on the verge of apoplexy, Labourdin rushed up to M. Péricourt.

  “Monsieur le président, monsieur le président” (not even a “good morning”), “I swear on my life that this has nothing to do with me!”

  He held out Le Petit Journal gingerly as though it were ablaze.

  “It’s a disaster, monsieur le président! But upon my word . . .”

  As if Labourdin’s word had ever counted for anything.

  He was close to tears.

  M. Péricourt snatched the newspaper from his hands and shut himself away in his office. Unsure what to do next, Labourdin loitered in the hall—should he leave? was there something he could do to help? Then he remembered that the président had always told him, “Never take any personal initiative, Labourdin, always wait to be told what to do . . .”

  He decided to await orders and settled himself in the drawing room. The housemaid appeared, the coquettish little brunette whose tits he had squeezed a few weeks ago. She kept her distance as she inquired whether there was anything he would like.

  “Some coffee,” he said, with weary resignation.

  Labourdin did not have the stomach for anything more.

  M. Péricourt read the article again. The scandal would break tonight, at latest tomorrow. He left the paper on his desk, without anger, too late. With each new piece of bad news, he seemed to shrink, his shoulders sagged, his backbone bowed, he grew physically smaller.

  As he sat down at his desk, he glanced at the upside-down newspaper. This article was spark enough to light the fuse, he thought.

  And he was right: no sooner had they read the article in Le Petit Journal than reporters from Le Gaulois, L’Intransigent, Le Temps, and L’Écho de Paris leapt into action, summoning taxis, calling informants. The government refused to comment, which proved there was something going on. Every reporter in the city waited, poised for action, convinced that when the story exploded, the spoils would go to those on the front lines.

  The night before, as he had opened the lavish box from Le Bon Marché, unwrapped the tissue paper, and saw the ludicrous outfit Albert had bought for him, Édouard had let out a cry of joy. It was love at first sight: knee-length shorts in khaki twill, a beige shirt, a belt with the sort of fringes one saw on the jackets of cowboys in illustrations, ivory-colored knee-length socks, a pale-brown jacket, safari boots, and a hat with a preposterously large brim intended to protect the wearer from a sun, from which there was much to fear. A safari costume for a masked ball. All he needed was a cartridge belt and a hunting rifle, and he could be Tartarin de Tarascon. He had put it on right away and roared with laughter as he admired himself in the mirror.

  It was in this bizarre getup that the bellboy from the Lutetia saw him when he came with room service: a lemon, a bottle of champagne and some vegetable bouillon.

  He was still wearing it as he injected the morphine. He knew nothing of the effects of taking morphine, then heroin, then morphine—catastrophic perhaps, but just now, he felt calm, serene, relaxed.

  He turned toward the steamer trunk—the globe-trotter model—then threw the window wide. He had a particular love of the skies over the Île-de-France, which, he felt, could surely have few equals. He had always loved Paris, had left it only to go to war, and had never th
ought of living elsewhere. Even today, it was strange. The effect of the drugs, probably: nothing was entirely real, nothing was entirely certain. What you see is not exactly reality, your thoughts are ever shifting, your plans are like illusions, you live in a dream, in a story that is never quite your own.

  And there is no tomorrow.

  Albert, whose mind of late had been preoccupied with other things, was utterly enraptured. Imagine: Pauline sitting on the bed, a taut stomach leading upward to a flawlessly defined navel, perfectly rounded breasts, pale as snow, nipples of a pink so delicate it could make you weep, and, between them, the little gold crucifix, swinging, swaying, never at rest . . . The sight was all the more moving since she herself was completely oblivious, distracted, her hair still tousled, because a moment earlier she had jumped on Albert in the bed. “This is war!” she shouted, laughing, and had launched a full frontal attack, bold and fearless, she had quickly outflanked him, and before long he surrendered, beaten, happy in defeat.

  They had not had many days like this, when they could afford to lounge in bed. Twice, three times, perhaps. Pauline often worked impossible hours at the Péricourt residence, but not today. Albert was officially “on leave.” “The bank gives all the staff a day off to celebrate July 14,” he had explained. Had Pauline not spent her whole life as a maid of all work, she might have been shocked to hear of a bank giving its staff anything, instead she supposed it was a manager’s chivalrous gesture.

  Albert had gone down to get some pains au lait and the newspaper; the landlady permitted tenants to have a gas ring “strictly for the making of hot beverages,” they could make coffee.

  Pauline, naked as the day she was born, glistening from the exertions of battle, sipped her coffee and read out the celebrations that were to take place the following day. She had folded the newspaper to read the list.

  “‘Monuments and public buildings will be hung with bunting and illumination.’ That will be pretty . . .”

  Albert was finishing shaving; Pauline liked a man with a mustache—in those days, there was no other kind—but hated stubble on his cheeks. It scratches, she said.

  “We’ll need to set off early,” she said, hunched over the newspaper. “The parade starts at eight o’clock, and Vincennes, and that’s not exactly around the corner . . .”

  In the mirror, Albert observed Pauline, devastatingly beautiful, shamelessly youthful. We’ll go to the parade, he thought, then she’ll go off to work, and I’ll leave her forever.

  “At les Invalides and Mont Valérien, cannons will be fired!” she said, taking a gulp of coffee.

  She would search for him, would come here, ask for Albert, no, no one has seen M. Maillard; she would never understand, she would suffer the most terrible grief, invent all manner of reasons for his sudden disappearance, unable to bring herself to believe that Albert had lied to her, no, impossible, there must be a more romantic explanation, he had probably been kidnapped, perhaps even killed somewhere, his body, never found, had been dumped in the Seine; Pauline would be inconsolable.

  “Oh,” she said, “Just my luck: ‘The following theaters are offering free admission to matinée performances: the Opéra, the Comédie-Française, the Opéra-Comique, the Odéon, the Porte-Saint-Martin . . .’ I start my shift at one o’clock.”

  Albert liked this fiction in which he mysteriously disappeared, Pauline would give him a romantic nonspeaking role rather than the venal reality.

  “And there’s a ball being held at the place de la Nation! I don’t finish work until ten-thirty, so by the time we got there it would be almost over . . .”

  She said it without regret. Seeing her sit on the bed, devouring the sweet buns, Albert wondered: is this really a woman who would be inconsolable? No, you only had to look at her magnificent breasts, her voluptuous mouth, she was temptation incarnate . . . It reassured him to think that, though she would be hurt by his going, it would not be for long; he took a moment to consider the idea that he was the sort of man a woman would get over.

  “Oh, my God,” Pauline said suddenly, “How awful! How wicked!”

  Albert whipped his head around, cutting his chin.

  “What?” he said.

  He was fumbling for a washcloth, a nick like that could bleed badly. Did he have an styptic pencil somewhere?

  “Listen to this,” Pauline said. “There are these people who have been selling war memorials . . .” (She looked up from the paper, she could hardly believe it.) “Fake memorials!”

  “What? What?” Albert said, coming back to the bed.

  “They’ve been selling memorials that don’t even exist!” Pauline expanded, poring over her paper. “Careful, darling, you’ve cut yourself, you’ll get blood everywhere!”

  “Let me see! Let me see!” Albert howled.

  “But chéri . . .”

  She set down the paper, moved by Albert’s reaction. She understood. He had been to war, he had lost friends, comrades, of course he would be sickened at the idea that people might stoop to such a cruel scheme, but even so . . . She dabbed his bleeding chin while he read and reread the brief article.

  “Come on, chéri, pull yourself together! It’s not good for you, getting yourself into a state!”

  Henri spent the day wandering the arrondissement. Someone had mentioned a messenger who lived at 16—or perhaps it was 13—rue Lamarck, but there was no one of that name at either house. Henri took taxis everywhere. Someone else thought they knew someone with a handcart who ran errands from a shop at the far end of the rue de Caulincourt, but the place had long since been shut down.

  Henri went into a café on the corner of the street. It was 10:00 a.m. A one-armed fellow who pulls a handcart? No, the description rang no bells with anyone. He walked down the even-numbered side of the street, then he would walk back on the odd-numbered side and comb every street and back alley in the arrondissement if he had to, but he would find the man.

  “A one-armed man? Really? Can’t be easy lugging a handcart, are you sure?”

  Shortly before eleven o’clock, Henri turned into the rue Damrémont, having been assured that the coalman on the corner of the rue Ordener had a handcart. As to the number of his arms, no one could say. It took Henri more than an hour to scour the length of the street, but finally, as he came to the junction with Montmartre Cemetery, he happened upon a laborer who said cheerily: “’Course I know him! A real character, that one! Lives on the rue Duhesme, number 44. I know on account of he’s neighbor to a cousin of mine.”

  But there was no longer a 44, rue Duhesme, the place was now a building site and no one could say where the coalman lived now, though they seemed certain he had both his arms.

  Albert rushed into Édouard’s suite like a flurry of wind.

  “Look, look, read this!” he yelled, brandishing the crumpled newspaper under Édouard’s nose as he struggled awake.

  At eleven o’clock in the morning! Albert thought, then, seeing the syringe and the empty morphine vial on the table, realized time had little to do with Édouard’s tiredness. Having spent two years studying his friend, Albert had enough experience to be able to tell at a glance the difference between a mild dose and one likely to do damage. From the way Édouard was shaking himself awake, he could tell that this one had been calmative, to alleviate the worst of the withdrawal symptoms. But how many shots had there been, since the massive dose that had so terrified him and Louise?

  “Are you all right?” he asked worriedly.

  Why was Édouard wearing the colonial outfit from le Bon Marché? It was not at all appropriate to Paris, in fact it looked faintly ridiculous.

  Albert did not ask any questions. All that mattered was the newspaper.

  “Read it!”

  Édouard sat up, read the article and, now completely awake, tossed the paper aside and let out a hoarse rrââââhhh, which in his language, was a sign of jubilation.

  “B . . . but you don’t seem to realize,” Albert stammered. “They know everything, they
’ll track us down.”

  Édouard leapt out of bed, grabbed the bottle of champagne from the ice bucket on the table and poured a prodigious quantity into his throat—the noise it made . . . He started to cough violently, clutching his stomach, but still he danced about, howling rrââââhhh!

  As in many couples, sometimes roles are reversed. Seeing his friend’s distress, Édouard picked up the conversation pad and wrote:

  “Don’t worry, WE’RE LEAVING!”

  He truly has no sense of responsibility, Albert thought. He waved the newspaper.

  “Read it! Good God Almighty!”

  At these words Édouard feverishly made the sign of the cross several times; it was one of his favorite jokes. Then he picked up the pencil again.

  “They know NOTHING!”

  Albert hesitated, but he was forced to acknowledge that the article was vague in the extreme.

  “Maybe,” he conceded, “but time is not on our side.”

  This was something he had witnessed at La Cipale before the war: cyclists racing after one another, impossible to tell who was chasing who, it electrified the spectators. Now he and Édouard had to run as fast as possible before the wolf’s jaws snapped their spines.

  “We have to go now! What are we waiting for?”

  Weeks he had been saying the same thing. Why wait? Édouard had reached his million, so why?

  “We’re waiting for the boat,” Édouard wrote.

  It was obvious, though it had not occurred to Albert: even if they left for Marseille immediately, the steamship would not weigh anchor two days early.

  “Then we’ll change the tickets,” Albert said, “We’ll go somewhere else.”

  “Draw attention . . .” Édouard scrawled.

  It was cryptic, but clear. With the police searching for them and the papers filled with stories about this affair, could Albert really afford to say to the clerk at Messageries Maritimes: “I was supposed to be going to Tripoli, but if you’ve got something leaving for Conakry earlier, I’ll take it, I can pay the difference in cash”?