Century Rain

by Alastair Reynolds

“Don’t worry about it. It’s not as if…” Hisvoice trailed off.

  “Not as if it’ll be for ever?” she finished for him. “No. You’re right. It won’t be.”

  “I didn’t mean to sound callous.”

  “It’s all right.” Now she sounded cross with herself. “I’m taking it out on whoever’s within firing range. You don’t deserve this.”

  “Don’t worry about it. You’re doing a pretty swell job from where I’m standing. How is Marguerite today?”

  Greta spread honey on to a slice of buttered toast. “About the same as yesterday, according to Sophie. The doctor’s already given her a shot of morphine for the day. I don’t know why they can’t give it to her later, so that she could at least get a good night’s sleep.”

  “Maybe they’re worried that she’d get too good a night’s sleep,” Floyd said.

  “That wouldn’t be such a bad thing,” Greta said quietly. She was dressed all in white today, her black hair tied back in a white bow. The bow shone luminously, like something in a washing-powder commercial. Greta passed him the toast, then licked her fingers clean with girlish little pops of her lips. “Thanks for staying with me last night, Wendell,” she said. “It was kind.”

  “You needed the company.” He bit into the toast, tilting it to avoid spilling honey on his shirt. “About Marguerite. Would it be all right if I said hello to her? I know what you said last night, but I really would like her to know that I care.”

  “She may not even remember you.”

  “I’m ready for that.”

  “Well, all right,” Greta said heavily. “I suppose she’s as sharp now as she’ll ever be. But don’t stay too long, will you? She gets tired very easily.”

  “I’ll keep it brief.”

  She led him upstairs, Floyd finishing off the toast as he went. The floorboards creaked as he made his way across the landing. Greta eased open the bedroom door, slipped inside and spoke very softly to Marguerite. Floyd heard the old woman answer in French. She spoke nothing else, not even German. She had been born in the Alsace region, Greta had told him once, and had married a German cabinet-maker who had died in the mid-thirties. At home they had spoken only French.

  When things became difficult for Greta’s family in Germany—Greta was Jewish on her mother’s side—they had dispatched her to live with Marguerite. She had arrived in Paris in the summer of 1939, when she was nine years old, and had lived in the city for most of the last twenty years. There had been a great deal of anti-German sentiment after the failed invasion of 1940, but Greta had weathered most of it, speaking French with a pronounced Parisian accent that revealed nothing of her true origins. On first meeting her, Floyd had never guessed that she was German. The disclosure of that secret to him had been the first of many intimacies, each of which had brought a small, stabbing thrill of mutual trust.

  She called to him from inside the room. “You can come in now, Floyd.”

  The door opened wider to reveal Sophie, who was just leaving, carrying a tray with her. He stepped aside to let her pass, then walked into the shuttered quiet of the bedroom. There were subtle squares and oblongs on the walls where paintings, photographs and mirrors had been taken down. The bed had been made neatly around Marguerite, presumably in readiness for the doctor’s visit, and the old lady was now sitting almost upright, supported by three or four plump pillows. She wore a high-collared, long-sleeved floral nightgown that seemed to belong to the nineteenth century. Her white hair had been combed back from her brow and her cheeks dabbed lightly with rouge. Floyd could just about make out Marguerite’s face in the muted light, but what he saw was a thin, cursory sketch of the woman he had known. He thought it would have been easier if there had been no similarity at all, but she was recognisable, and that made it all the more difficult.

  “This is Wendell,” Greta said gently. “You remember Wendell, don’t you, Aunt?”

  Floyd presented himself, holding his fedora in both hands like an offering.

  “Of course I remember him,” Marguerite said. Her eyes were surprisingly bright and clear. “How are you, Floyd? We always called you Floyd rather than Wendell, didn’t we?”

  “I’m… doing swell,” he said, shuffling his feet. “How are you feeling?”

  “I am all right now.” Her voice was a rasp. He had to concentrate to make out her words. “But the nights are difficult. I never imagined sleeping could take so much energy from me. I’m not sure how much I have left.”

  “You’re a strong lady,” he said. “I’m sure you’ve got a lot more energy than you think.”

  She placed one of her thin, birdlike hands atop the other and rested them on her stomach. The newspaper was spread across her lap like a shawl, open at the Parisian news pages. “I wish I felt that were true.”

  She knows, Floyd thought. She might have been frail and she might not always have quite this good a grip on what was happening around her, but she knew perfectly well that she was ill, and that her illness was never going to let her leave this room.

  “What’s it like outside, Floyd?” Marguerite asked. “I listened to the rain all night.”

  “It’s clearing up a bit,” he said. “The sun’s coming out and…” His mouth suddenly felt dry. Why had he insisted on this visit? He had nothing to say to Marguerite that she must not already have heard a hundred times before, from similarly well-intentioned visitors. He realised, with a spasm of shame, that he hadn’t come up here to make her feel better, but to make himself feel better instead. He was going to stand before her and never once allude to the fact that she was terminally ill, as if there was an elephant in the room that no one dared acknowledge. “Well,” he said, fumbling for words, “it’s beautiful when the sun comes out. The whole city looks like a painting.”

  “The colours must be beautiful. I’ve always loved the spring. It’s nearly as breathtaking as the autumn.”

  “I don’t think there’s a time of year when I don’t love this city,” Floyd said. “Except perhaps January.”

  “Greta reads the paper to me,” Marguerite said, patting the pages spread before her. “She only wants to read the light news, but I want to know it all—the bad as well as the good. I don’t envy you young people.”

  Floyd smiled, trying to remember the last time anyone had called him young. “Things don’t seem too bad to me,” he said.

  “You weren’t here in the thirties, were you?”

  “No, I wasn’t.”

  “Then—with all due respect—you probably have no idea what it was really like.”

  Greta glanced at him warningly, but Floyd shrugged good-naturedly. “No. I have no idea.”

  “It was good, in many ways,” Marguerite said. “The Depression was over. We all had more money. There was more to eat. Nicer clothes. Music we could dance to. We could afford a car and a holiday in the country once a year. A wireless and a gramophone, even a refrigerator. But there was also a meanness to those times. There was always an undercurrent of hatred bubbling just beneath the surface.” She turned her head towards her niece. “It was hatred that brought Greta to Paris.”

  “The Fascists got what they deserved,” Floyd said.

  “My husband lived long enough to see those monsters come to power. He saw through their lies and promises, but he also knew that they spoke to something nasty and squalid in the human spirit. Something in all of us. We want to hate those who are not like us. All we need is an excuse, a whisper in the ear.”

  “Not all of us,” Floyd said.

  “That’s what a lot of good people said in the thirties,” Marguerite replied. “That the message of hatred would only be heeded by the ignorant and those who were already filled with bile. But it wasn’t like that. It took strength of mind not to let yourself be poisoned by those lies, and not everyone had that strength. Even fewer people had the courage to do something about it; to actually stand up to the hatemongers.”

  “Was your husband one of those brave people?” Floyd asked.

/>   “No,” she said. “He wasn’t. He was one of the millions who said and did nothing, and that’s how he went to his grave.”

  Floyd did not know what to say. He looked at the woman in the bed, feeling the force of history streaming through her like a current.

  “All I’m saying,” she continued, “is that the message is seductive. My husband said that unless those hatemongers were annihilated—wiped from the Earth, along with all their poison—they would always come back, like weeds.” She touched the newspaper on the bed. “The weeds are returning, Floyd. We mowed the lawn in nineteen forty, but we didn’t put down the weedkiller. Twenty years later, they’re back.”

  “I know there are a lot of people saying bad things,” Floyd said. “But no one really takes them seriously.”

  “No one took them seriously in the twenties,” she countered.

  “There are laws now,” Floyd said. “Anti-hate laws.”

  “Which aren’t enforced.” She tapped the paper with one sharp-nailed finger. “Look at this story: a young man was beaten to death yesterday because he dared to speak up against the hatemongers.”

  Floyd’s voice suddenly sounded as weak as Marguerite’s. “A young man?”

  “By the railway station. They found his body last night.”

  “No!”

  Greta slipped her hand around his sleeve. “We should be going now, Floyd.”

  He couldn’t say anything.

  Marguerite folded the paper and pushed it from the bed. “I didn’t mean to lecture you,” she said, with a kindness that cut him to the core. “I just wanted to say how little I envy you now. There were storm clouds on the horizon twenty years ago, Floyd, and they’re gathering again.” Almost as an afterthought, she said, “Of course, it’s not too late to do something about them, if enough people care. I wonder how many people walked past that poor young man last night, when he was in need of help?”

  Greta edged him away from the bed. “Floyd has to go now, Aunt Marguerite.”

  She reached out and took his hand. “It was nice of you to come up and see me. You’ll come back, won’t you?”

  “Of course,” Floyd said, forcing a smile to disguise his discomfort.

  “Bring me some strawberries, won’t you? This room could do with brightening up.”

  “I’ll bring you some strawberries,” he promised.

  Greta led him downstairs, still holding his arm. “That’s how it is with her,” she said, when they were safely out of earshot. “She’s sharp as a tack about the news, but she doesn’t even know what time of year it is. You’re lucky she remembered who you were. Let’s just hope she doesn’t remember asking for strawberries.”

  “I’ll find her something.”

  “At this time of year? Don’t worry about it, Floyd. She most likely won’t remember a thing about it the next time you go up there.”

  If she sounded cruel, Floyd thought, it was only because she loved Marguerite so much.

  They sat down in the kitchen again. A pigeon was cooing on the windowsill. Greta picked up a piece of stale bread and threw it at the glass, scaring the bird away in a bustle of grey feathers.

  “It might not be the same young man,” she said, guessing what was on Floyd’s mind. “Maybe you don’t read the papers these days, but people are always getting beaten up.”

  “We both know it was the same kid, so why pretend otherwise?”

  “We went over this last night. If you’d tried to do anything, they’d have cut you up.”

  “The old me might have tried.”

  “The old you would have had more sense.”

  “You’re just trying to make me feel better about it.” Floyd looked up at the ceiling, picturing the bedroom he had just visited, the ordered placement of its furniture and the stillness of its occupant. “She might not have much of a grip on the time of year, but she knows how things are going.”

  “Maybe it’s not as bad as she fears. Old people always think the world’s going to ruin. It’s their job.”

  “Maybe they’re right,” Floyd replied.

  Greta bent down to pick up the bread she had just thrown at the pigeon. “Perhaps they are. And maybe that’s as good a reason as any to think about leaving Paris.”

  “Nice segue.”

  “I don’t suppose you’ve given any more thought to what we talked about?”

  “I mentioned it to Custine,” Floyd said.

  “How did he take it?”

  “He took it well. The same way he takes everything.”

  “André’s a good man,” Greta said. “I’m sure he’d do a fine job of running the agency.”

  “He’d probably have Paris eating out of his hand within the year.”

  “So why not give him the chance?”

  “I’ve been here twenty years,” Floyd said. “If I leave now, am I saying that the last twenty years of my life were a mistake?”

  “Only if you want to think of them that way.”

  “I’m not sure there’s any other way.”

  “It’s not the same city you arrived in,” Greta said. “Things have changed, and not many of them for the better. It wouldn’t be an admission of defeat. How old are you now, Floyd? Thirty-nine? Forty? It’s not so old. Not if you don’t want it to be.”

  “Have you had a chance to look at the papers in that box?”

  “Nice segue yourself,” she said, allowing him a tolerant smile. “All right. We’ll talk about it later. Yes, I have looked in the box.”

  “Anything you can tell me?”

  “Can we talk about it somewhere else?” Greta asked. “This place is getting to me. Sophie’s here for the rest of the morning. I could really use some fresh air.”

  Floyd reached for his fedora. “Then let’s go for a stroll.”

  Floyd found a place to park the Mathis on rue de Rivoli, near the Louvre. The rain had given up for now, although the clouds on the edge of the city had the inky look of thunder about them. But it was pleasant enough on the Right Bank, with the sun doing its utmost to dry the pavements and provide some late-season business for the ice-cream vendors. It was one of those autumn days that Floyd never took for granted, knowing that there might not be another like it before winter stole slyly in.

  “Well,” he said, feeling his mood improve. “What’s it going to be: culture or a stroll in the Tuileries?”

  “Culture? You wouldn’t know culture if it bit you on the nose. Anyway, I said I wanted some fresh air. The paintings can wait. They’ve been there long enough.”

  “Suits me. More than half an hour in any public institution and I start feeling like one of the exhibits.”

  Greta took the biscuit tin with her, tucking it under one arm as they walked. The Tuileries Gardens ran between the museum and place de la Concorde, stretching in an elegant formal ribbon along the Right Bank. They had been part of the city since the time of Catherine de Medici, four hundred years earlier. It always amazed Floyd to think of these geometric green spaces enduring through all the changes that had overtaken Paris in that time. The gardens were one of Floyd’s favourite places in the city, especially on a quiet morning in the middle of the week.

  Deckchairs had been positioned around the large octagonal basin at the western end of the gardens. Greta and Floyd found themselves a pair of adjacent chairs and started scattering the scraps of stale bread she had rescued from the kitchen.

  “I don’t know what you want me to make of this,” Greta said, tapping the tin. “I mean, if you go looking for something odd or unusual, you’re almost bound to find it.”

  “Tell me what you have. I’ll worry about making sense of it.”

  “What was the name of the woman again? Susan something? I have her Christian name on the postcard, that’s all.”

  “Susan White,” Floyd said. “If that was her real name.”

  “You’re really convinced she was up to something?”

  “More than I was yesterday. Custine’s still trying to make sense of what
she did to the wireless set in her room.”

  “Well,” Greta said, “I don’t mind admitting that this is as good a way as any to take my mind off my aunt.”

  “Whatever helps.” Floyd tore off a chunk of stale crust and tossed it to a gathering of anxious, squabbling male ducks. “Come on, then, what have you got for me?”

  “I can’t help you with the maps and sketches, but I might be able to shed some light on this.” She fished in the tin until she found the letter printed on headed paper.

  “That’s the one from the steelworks in Berlin?” Floyd asked.

  “Kaspar Metals, yes.”

  “So what’s it all about?”

  “All I have to go on is this one letter,” Greta said, “so there’s necessarily some guesswork involved. But it looks to me as if Susan White got wind of a contract that Kaspar Metals was handling.”

  “Not one she had a role in herself?”

  “No. Definitely looks as if there’s a third party involved. Judging from the letter, White must have already dug up some information about this contract, enough that she wouldn’t look like a complete outsider.”

  A small, formal party approached the duck pond. There were eight or nine suited men, all wearing trilbies, surrounding an elderly man in a wheelchair who was being pushed along by a sturdy nurse.

  “Tell me about the contract,” Floyd said.

  “Well, it doesn’t go into any great detail—that must have been covered in an earlier letter—but it looks as if the firm was being asked to cast a big, solid chunk of aluminium. Three big chunks, actually—and the quote talks about additional costs for machining to the desired spherical shape.”

  Floyd watched the old man in the wheelchair throw bread into the pond with trembling hands, drawing the ducks away. “There was a diagram in the tin,” he said. “Something round. Must have been part of the same caboodle.”

  “You look disappointed,” she remarked.

  “Only because I thought we might be on to something, that maybe the plan was for a bomb. But if the casting is solid…” He shrugged.

  “There’s some talk about the objects forming part of an artistic installation, but that could be a cover.”