by Todd Babiak
Kruse waved at the man directly across from him. “Excuse me, sorry. I’m hard of hearing in my left ear. Would it trouble you terribly to trade places with me?”
“Not at all.”
The interrupted host crossed his arms and watched them walk around the opposite side of the table and take their new places. Servants followed with their glasses. From here, Kruse would be easily trapped but at least he could watch the two doors. Alibert waited an extra ten seconds, after Kruse was in his place, to recommence.
“I grew up, as most of you know, in Gascony.”
A small team of servers, men and women in white and black, came through the swinging door behind Alibert with bottles of white wine. As Alibert explained the history and provenance of the wine, and its significance in his life, Kruse watched the man who filled his glass. Servers had come from both directions. His was the first splash from a fresh bottle, and the other glasses were full by the time his waiter was finished with him. The man departed with a full bottle, less a glass.
The first toast was to Gascony. Kruse raised his glass with the others but did not drink. Alibert watched him with half a smile on his shivering lips. Over the table, elegantly hidden in the base of the dragonflies-and-swirls chandelier, was a video camera. The dining room door slid open again and another gentleman in a suit stepped in. There were many sorts of bodyguards but most were like this: men with giant chests and arms and necks, steroid men who ate carefully and spent three hours in the gym every day until they stopped and turned fat, slow, clumsy, angry. This bodyguard against the wall was in the middle of his transition, from a powerlifter to what a powerlifter becomes. Kruse was no statistician but he had noticed a high suicide rate in his business, as young fighters moved into middle age.
Alibert’s guests were wealthy and well educated, powerful in their worlds, with the shine of happiness and confidence about them. But if he were to spend an hour with anyone in the room, he would choose this bodyguard with smart but melancholy eyes.
The first course arrived. Alibert watched Kruse watch the bodyguard. He waited for Kruse’s attention before he introduced the plates of fresh oysters from the Arcachon Basin, where he had hunted for his own as a boy. These came out on platters, for diners to share, so Kruse ate one—the explosion of salt and slippery muscle and sweetness that would never taste the way it tasted to Alibert, like home.
When the swinging kitchen door opened he could see more men, some dressed in black bomber jackets instead of suits and tuxedos. They watched him. Two of them he recognized from their photographs. They were not hiding: Karl Handke and Victor Nodier.
One of the diners, a woman with the flesh of her face yanked surgically toward her ears, lifted her glass. “There may be a better time for this, my friends, or a better person to say it. But here is to the splendid Henri Alibert on the occasion of his birthday.”
They raised their glasses once more, and once more Kruse did not drink. The next course was salad, also filled with memories and meaning from the southwestern corner of the country. Alibert used flash cards to remember his points as he presented the food and wine. The deep red Bordeaux arrived with the foie gras, the bread, the capon—a castrated rooster, the source of the odour in the house when Kruse had arrived.
There was a theme to the southwestern dinner. All of it, in some way, was in danger of being lost. Protesters disliked foie gras, oysters were being poisoned and harvested by foreign companies, and the Brits and Americans and Aussies were buying up the wineries. Alibert had read in Le Monde—why was he reading Le Monde? Good question!—that a socialist senator wanted to make it illegal to emasculate a rooster in your own damn country.
Kruse had not taken any wine yet he could feel the temperature in the room change. The guests’ eyes went rheumy and they leaned more deliberately into each other, they laughed, they touched one another’s arms.
“Tell us about yourself, Monsieur Meisels.” Henri Alibert, whose eyes were no less rheumy than those of his guests, continued to watch him, but the anxiety had passed away. A team of men in bomber jackets waited in the kitchen to eliminate the foreigner. The main bodyguard had whispered good news into his ear. Kruse was sure they would not do anything with Alibert’s best friends assembled in the same room but they would pounce the moment he left. There was a faint but jolly slur in Alibert’s voice. “This mysterious stranger who has joined my birthday celebration. What brings him to France from his homeland?”
“Americans don’t have a homeland.”
“No?”
“It’s an ugly idea.”
“Tell us how a homeland is an ugly idea.”
“Sacred space for special people. This is ugly to me.”
Alibert repeated it, with Kruse’s accent. “For special people. Now, please tell us why.”
“I was lucky enough to grow up without any real ethnic feeling, of rituals and traditions. I can feel at home anywhere, if I am welcomed.”
“Your real name, Kruse. Is it not German?”
“My real name?”
“Allez.”
“My ethnicity is irrelevant.”
Alibert sat back in his chair. “You call this lucky, to feel rootless.”
“I enjoy the freedom to focus on the future.”
“So the past means nothing to you.”
“I can choose to find meaning in it, if I like.”
Again, the temperature in the room changed. The guests drank nervously. The flamboyant man with the wild eyebrows raised his glass, to make a toast to their new American friend, whatever his name is, but when Alibert did not follow along he faked a coughing fit and shrank back into himself, whispered an apology to his wife. Waiters and waitresses asked the guests for their serviettes, gathered them up.
“I am not a subtle thinker.” Alibert pushed back his chair. “You’re saying an American has an advantage over a Frenchman because—”
“Monsieur, I can only speak for myself.”
“You have an advantage.”
“I will not be undone by nostalgia.”
“There is nothing in your history, in your culture, you would fight to protect?”
“I don’t have a culture.”
“Is it not painful, an abomination, when what you love, those whom you love, are taken from you?”
Kruse often felt he was falling behind, in not-so-hidden assertions and emphasis. “I am not a subtle thinker either, as it happens. Are we still talking about France for the French? If you’re threatening those whom I love in some way, I have a rule about that.”
“A rule.” The industrialist watched Kruse for so long, without a word, that the quartet outside the dining room had time to finish one old song and begin another. “I know where you live and whom you love. I know exactly who you are. Who you really are.”
“Tell me. I’ve been having some trouble with that myself.”
A few of the guests started to laugh and stopped. Others gulped wine.
“You work for the mayor of Paris.” He spoke to the room. “The former prime minister of France hires secret agents to stop citizens, active citizens, leaders, from campaigning against him and his plans to destroy the republic. My friends, you won’t find this man, Christophe Kruse, on any list of employees. He doesn’t exist. He is an assassin, sent to Nancy to destroy me and my cause.”
“What cause is that, Monsieur Alibert? What cause justifies blowing up a restaurant in Paris?”
The man with the eyebrows, no longer chastened by the failure of his previous toast, asked if this were un spectacle—a performance of some sort. He had heard of “murder mystery dinners” in which a diner is “killed” and for the rest of the evening the guests must work together to find the criminal among them. It seemed only correct to bring in a stranger, a foreigner, to kill off. At Henri’s birthday party anyway.
Alibert ignored his friend and continued to stare at Kruse. “What are you talking about?”
“Chez Sternbergh, on the Rue des Rosiers.”
&nb
sp; “Yes.”
“One of your men blew it up.”
“What man?”
A woman who had been drinking her wine too quickly, in a red sequin dress, applauded. “If you are an actor, professional or not, I say bravo. Your grammar is quite impeccable for a foreigner. Bravo two times.”
“Monsieur Alibert, I will leave you to your celebration if you will speak to me alone for ten minutes.”
“This is not the time.” He gestured behind him, at the kitchen. “And besides, I don’t think you’re in any position to dictate terms. Your accusation is, frankly, insane. Your very presence here, the audacity of it . . .”
Guests were beginning to whisper nervously to one another. A woman took out a fan.
“The mayor of Nancy, Pierre Cassin. Why were your men harassing him?”
“Because he was trying to destroy France. Cassin and your idiot patron. But neither me nor my men tried to kill them. Who told you this?”
Kruse felt the way he had felt in Spain. “Monsieur Cassin’s tormenters are among your men, in the kitchen. Perhaps we could ask them.”
New smells entered the dining room. A man came through with fresh serviettes for everyone. The host took in a deep breath and with his exhalation addressed himself not to Kruse but to the rest of his guests. “For hundreds of years, in the region of my birth, families have grown grapes and bottled wine. They have found oysters. They have raised cocks and chickens and geese. They have perfected foie gras. And, most singularly, they have captured a tiny songbird called the ortolan bunting for occasions like these.”
With the words ortolan bunting a few of the guests gasped. Someone applauded and the others joined in. The man with the eyebrows declared the birds were endangered, as though it were the most splendid news. Three of the servers, all of them men, brought long white platters into the dining room. On each of them there was a line of small birds, plucked and browned, sizzling and steaming. The obese chef, who slipped into the dining room in his white smock to address the diners, had not removed the birds’ heads.
Alibert watched Kruse as the chef explained how he had cooked the birds, each the size of an oblong potato. They had arrived in a box, still alive, where they had been overfed with millet; the dark confuses the ortolans, encourages them to eat and eat and eat. Then, less than two hours earlier, the chef had drowned them in Armagnac. He then spiced them and roasted them. He instructed the guests to hold each bird by the neck and to bite into it, eating everything but the head. Alibert lifted and unfolded his serviette. He reached for a bird and winked at Kruse, mouthed “Au revoir” and placed the serviette over his head. The rest of the guests followed along. The chef watched Kruse, and when all the others had covered their heads he pointed to the ceiling.
“We wear the serviette, Monsieur, so God will not witness the act.”
“Because it is shameful?”
The chef shrugged. “Perhaps it is to trap and concentrate the aromas, but the first man to do it was a priest. Me, I simply follow the rules.”
“The roof, the insulation, the ceiling, this is all transparent. But the serviettes, God somehow can’t see through those.”
The chef put his hands over his belly, like a pregnant woman near her term. “As you like, Monsieur.” He retreated back through the swinging door.
Even over the music Kruse could hear the slurping and scrunching of the other guests, sighs of pleasure under the serviettes. He thought of photographs of Klansmen and of watching It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown with Lily, the day she died. It was on television, dubbed into French. Charlie Brown and his friends throw sheets over their heads and cut out two—or twenty—eyeholes. Kruse tucked the serviette on his lap and put the bird in his mouth and bit into it, the fat and brittle bones. It exploded with heat, the salt and oil and flesh. The powerlifter in charge shook his head; Kruse was supposed to be under the serviette. He was not supposed to be here at all, ruining the boss’s birthday. The bodyguard pushed himself off the wall, knocked once on the swinging door, and walked around the table. The two men from the photographs, the wine-store men, Karl and Victor, entered the dining room and followed him.
Both had handguns.
Kruse was not finished chewing when he pushed back his chair, stood up, and placed his serviette on the table. It was like foie gras, only sweeter and juicier and crunchier. When the thought arrived that he was eating the heart of a little bird he shoved it away.
“Let’s allow these people to eat.” The powerlifter stopped at the corner and invited Kruse, as a maître d’ invites new diners, to follow him out of the room.
He lifted his hands, swallowed a little. “Monsieur Alibert has not yet answered any of my questions.”
Behind the powerlifter, the Austrian—whose accent was stronger than Kruse’s—spoke just above a whisper. “You will be the one answering.”
Kruse did not move.
“Let’s go. Last chance.”
It felt wrong to do what he had so often cautioned his daughter against: talking with his mouth full. “Back away and take Monsieur Alibert with you.” He lifted his finger, paused them. “We can the four of us retire to a salon and talk about this, fifteen minutes, with more wine or even an Armagnac. But I’m not leaving until we do.”
A powerlifter cannot fake or feint, especially when he’s gone chubby. By the man’s stance Kruse could tell he was going to lead with a right cross. If it hit him it would kill him, but it would not hit him, and neither of the other men would use their weapons—not in here. The powerlifter swung and his eyes squeezed shut with the effort. Kruse lifted his elbow and aimed it at the big man’s fist, accepted the blow with it. The powerlifter’s knuckle, at least one, crunched and he yelped with pain and cussed and stepped back into the smaller men. The guests emerged from under their serviettes and cried out, squeaked. Someone applauded. “It’s starting!” Kruse grabbed a brass candlestick from the table and slammed it into the big man’s nose. With a burst mouse of blood on his face he fell back entirely into the wine-store thugs and a credenza; there was nowhere else to go. With the candlestick, Kruse stunned the Austrian and the Frenchman as they crawled out from under the wailing powerlifter. He disarmed them.
The handguns were heavy and so new they had not yet been scratched. Kruse emptied the magazines. It had all happened quickly and without excessive shouting, so not all of the guests had witnessed the fight. The man with the eyebrows had not finished chewing but he had emerged from under the serviette. “Is this supposed to be happening? Shall I phone the police?”
“Absolutely not.” Alibert turned to the chef, who had opened the door from the kitchen. “Is that all of them?”
“More are coming, Monsieur.”
Alibert tossed his serviette on the table, stood, and picked up another of the ortolans. “God damn it. Follow me, Kruse.”
Alibert bit off the bird’s head and spit it on the floor, opened the sliding door into the hallway past the quartet. He put the body in his mouth all at once, like a marshmallow. All of the musicians looked away. In the foyer, the bodyguards Kruse had moved through on his way into the house reposed on chairs. One lay on the floor, conscious but barely. Others sat holding their ruined arms. Kruse had great sympathy for them; a security man who fails at securing a home can only stew in misery.
Still, only one of the men stood to greet him.
“Aha,” said Alibert.
The man lifted his hands like a boxer and walked in a semicircle. Alibert gave him instructions. Kruse was smaller and thinner; why not just grab the fucker and choke him to death?
“He won’t let me grab him,” said the guard. “But I can hit him.” He walked in and swung. Kruse ducked it and danced away, and the others cheered on the guard. One tried to trip Kruse, so he turned and kicked the guard in the face. His head slammed against the wall behind him and slowly he slumped forward.
Alibert laughed, though not because it was funny.
Kruse moved in closer to the big, bald guard wit
h long eyelashes and faked a kick. Then he jabbed him, just once, in the nose. The guard fell on his ass and tried to stand, the first pill of blood dropping from his nostril.
“Don’t stand up.” Kruse put his hands down. “If you didn’t see that one coming, you’re not going to see any of them.”
The guard looked at Alibert, who shook his head.
“It’s a lovely house, Monsieur Alibert. Congratulations on all your success.”
“Fuck you,” Alibert said, in English, his full mouth juicy with bird. He opened a heavy door and they entered an office decorated like a law library, with gold-embossed leather books from floor to ceiling. A stand in the corner held a selection of spirits in decanters. The host slammed the door and poured something that looked like whisky into a highball glass and sat behind a heavy old desk. He was still chewing. “I’d offer you something to drink but, at the risk of repeating myself, fuck you.”
“What was your relationship with Pierre Cassin?”
“No relationship of any sort.”
“That seems odd. I just read, in your office yesterday, you’re the richest man in Lorraine. Was he not your mayor? In my country—”
“A mongrel.” Alibert swallowed, his eyes closed, and took a moment to open them again. “Two ortolans is one too many. You end up feeling gluttonous. And I’m not the richest man in Lorraine. My father was, before the war.”
“A mongrel?”
“Cassin was a socialist microcosm of the future Frenchman.”
“I thought he was conservative.”
“Not a real conservative.”
Evelyn, who had spent her adult life studying conservatism, adored lines like these. It was not so different from fighting, the way she drew her debating opponents into saying something stupid like “not a real conservative.”
In a fight, he drew his opponent into making an error. And then he attacked. A real conservative.
“You’re an outsider, Monsieur Kruse. You can’t see the way we see.”
“We?”
“The French. The genuine French. To you, Cassin must have looked French. He must have sounded French. It’s a French-sounding name, isn’t it?”