One Damn Thing After Another

by Nicolas Freeling

  The police, by its nature, wishes heartily that General Franco would arrive, and set the Nation to rights.

  Chapter 20

  The New Village

  It’s a funny place, Neudorf. Arlette had lived several years in Strasbourg without ever setting foot there. There is no reason for going there: it is totally without interest; as a part of the world it is both boring and hideous. If you are going towards Germany it is the inexplicably long and dreary stretch before you reach the river, the Europa Bridge, the frontier posts gay with flags. If you are coming from Germany you wonder impatiently when you will reach Strasbourg. The city was built five kilometres away from the river precisely because the land on this bank is lowlying and marshy, and the Rhine made a habit of flooding it. The problem was solved by a network of canals and harbours, giving a Dutch look to the whole of East Strasbourg and creating an impassable barrier. On the other, southern side of Neudorf the main road to Colmar, now an autoroute, makes equally a frontier. The whole ‘quarter’ is shaped like a literal quarter of a cake or cheese, with its central pointed end touching Strasbourg – one must cross yet another canal to reach the old city – and its outer perimeter the industrial terrains round the river-harbour. Between these rigid barricades, Neudorf asphyxiates.

  It is ridiculously named, being neither new, nor a village. It is small consolation that the neighbouring quarter on the south-west side, the Montagne Verte, is anything but green and even from river level far from being a mountain.

  Arthur Davidson was interested in Neudorf because, he said, being a sociologist means, supposedly, that you take an interest in society; a thing remarkably few sociologists do: as a rule they prefer statistics. Working as he did for the Council of Europe, an organization much like the United Nations, having no contact whatever with reality but feeding him with reams and reams of statistics about the consumption of patent medicines (subsection constipation remedies) in, say, Jugoslavia, he had a hunger for real life. This was one reason why Arlette had been urged to take up help-and-counsel work. Another was that the Council, and its incestuous kindred the European Parliament and the Court of Human Rights, is a toney affair, very well paid and with high prestige. It is all housed in the flossy northeastern quarter of Strasbourg; the pleasant wooded and watered district along the river Ill. The personnel naturally lives along here: asked where Neudorf was they’d look puzzled.

  It is the most ‘working class’ district of Strasbourg; the most urban, crowded, populous. And of course the most underprivileged; albeit the largest, the least represented on the city council, with no park or open green space whatsoever, and completely lacking any leisure or cultural amenity. You will look in vain here for any rest or refreshment apart from getting drunk. There are however two cemeteries, an orphanage and an abandoned gasworks.

  One interesting development is that up to twenty years ago there were tiny enclaves, almost rural. At the industrial edges along the canals and railway lines was a close huddle of grimy sheds and workshops, but in the middle were cottages and orchards; even a field or two where things grew. As the city had expanded Neudorf has become an inner suburb and these spaces have been seized for a population of petty-bourgeois white-collar flat-dwellers. There is no prestige to living here, but that need not stop the rents being high.

  Arlette had got to know the place well: it was fertile in her customers. Put Strasbourg in scale to New York and Neudorf would be its Brooklyn. Here one can just glimpse still the palimpsest of a village. How many generations ago was it possible to trace the outlines of the wooded ridges that Washington defended against the redcoats, before falling back across the East River to the Harlem Heights?

  Solange Bartholdi was just going out shopping. When she saw Arlette she put her bag down, her apron back on, suggested a cup of coffee.

  “Or would you rather a beer? I don’t drink it, but the boys … Pascal … I can see it in your face, what you’ve come to say. Nice of you. You could have written a little line. If that. Most people would think all right, if there’s nothing to say, say nothing, forget it. I’d have understood. You aren’t like that. But you needn’t, you know.” Arlette tried to struggle against this fatalism but her words were lame. No doubt of it, there was nothing useful she could suggest. Against Monsieur Thibault’s flat hard-edged words she had found no riposte: there was nothing to say to Solange. Somewhere away at the back of her mind was a wish to say that tunnels had curves imperceptible in the dark. Follow … but altogether too many people have used this metaphor: there is no way it can even be a joke any more. It is too saddening. People want to go on believing in a turn, in a patch of darkness paler than the rest, in a crumb of brightness one scarcely dares believe can be light. Something phosphorescent; or an optical illusion. There is no light, nor possibility of any. Go on, and at the end is a rockfall, a caving-in. The air is bad, here: turn around and go back, while you still have strength to put a foot before the other.

  “I never really believed there were anything, like. I never said to Pascal I was trying … he’d have said, Don’t waste your time. Or he’d have had some daft idea of going chucking a grenade or such …” The pathetic little kitchen, oil-painted and smelling of cabbage: the dark livingroom with its effort to be gay; flowery wallpaper, the dreadful glossy veneers on furniture, and brass trim that peeled off. She wished so badly there were something to say or to do, and everything she thought of would only serve to make matters worse.

  She sat in the car, and looked at the evil street. The world is very evil. This truism – she could hear Arthur’s tone, not altogether sarcastic. ‘The English Protestant Church dear, in which I was brought up; Hymns Ancient and Modern, number 226, freely after the De Contemptu Mundi, a poem composed by St Bernard of Clairvaux, I’m uncertain of the date, around eleven hundred would it be? – matters little, the Dark Age. Hora novissima, tempora pessima. Ever since, enlightenment has often been thought to be at hand. When it fails, as it always does, Saint Bernard is a person it’s good to keep in mind.’

  A few streets further, down towards the bottom of the sack, lived Sergeant Subleyras, whom one still saw, inevitably, as a Sergeant. Rather like Mr George in Bleak House. Around here Neudorf becomes hilarious. Out of the choked crammed streets one crosses all of a sudden a railway-line (the main line to Munich, to Salzburg, to Vienna) and comes out upon a large grassy field, actually with trees around its edge, stretching right across to the industrial terrain of the Rue de la Rochelle. And surely this would be suitable as the park so badly needed.

  Certainly. It is there at all because it is the old Strasbourg airfield and was kept intact (like much else; the Maginot Line is not far away) as Military Terrain. It has been kept as an airfield, for the convenience of the owners of private planes, who benefit, quite naturally, from the protection of those people whom God has placed in Authority over us. Amen.

  Subleyras lived just short of this phenomenon, in a block with actually a tree in front of the door. Planes taking off over his head when the wind was in the east diminished, slightly, the pleasures thus enjoyed.

  He was looking very civilian, in a darned old highnecked sweater and shapeless trousers, and Mexican sandals. He had the sort of hair that never did look untidy, so unlike her limp straggle or Arthur’s drooping English locks: it never even needs combing.

  “That’s a welcome surprise. Come on in then.”

  “I brought a bottle of plonk,” said Arlette.

  “Then come in twice as fast. The children are at school, Janine is at work. I’m painting. You don’t mind?”

  “Mind … what a silly word.”

  The livingroom had the extreme houseproud tidiness that can be so antipathetic; of places where cleanliness is an end unto itself and self-respect becomes arrogance and intolerance, a caste symbol. She had seen far too many of these in Holland, and they are frequent in France. Objects, like people in these rooms, are dragooned into tame acquiescence. The police are inclined to this kind of living, with a meek little wif
e scuttling about setting things straight on the mantel, quantities of starched lace curtain, children disciplined with a leather belt, and an off-duty God looking at the television with deep-rooted approval amid a holy silence. Arlette had a horrid feeling that she had mistaken herself utterly in her view of Subleyras. Luckily, before giving way to consternation, she looked at the other end of the room where the redecorating had not yet begun: the walls were full of children’s drawings.

  “This is very classic – the recently retired gentleman takes up the little domestic chores for which his wife has been clamouring, and which he was always going to do next week.” She sat in an armchair. To be sure it was the ‘good three-piece suite’ and intensely respectable, but not prissy. Dark green corduroy, good quality, well-worn, much-brushed, but the children had never been forbidden to sit on it.

  “Oh yes, very classic – when you get the house agent in and prospective buyers, you have the place dollied up smart: more money that way.” He was uncorking the bottle: she was just getting an ordinary Prisunic glass. Not something pretending to be cut crystal, and not with little mats under it. “There should be some peanuts somewhere, but we seem to have eaten them all.” Nothing stiff in the manner.

  “You’re selling? Not going to live any more in the lovely New Village? Here by the lyceum, such a Nice Neighbourhood.”

  “That’s right,” grinning, “ought to get a fairly good sale. We better, because it’s just about the only resource we have. We’ve been here a good few years, the mortgage is all paid up, so I’m taking pains: repaint, repaper, and make as professional a job as I can.”

  “What are you going to do?” curiously, raising her glass in answer to his toast, accepting the sort of cigarette one buys for guests when one doesn’t smoke oneself. Her eye fell on the bookshelves, full of books carefully dusted and neatly lined up, but very thoroughly read: heavy with technical and professional information, with school books, with what in France are called vulgarizations. Not a pejorative word: means simply a teach-yourself for the interested amateur. Physics, biology, chemistry. Absolutely nothing to be patronizing about. A man who keeps his tools sharp, oiled, and polished.

  “Good glass of wine this,” recorking the bottle carefully. “No, we’re not staying in good old-Neudorf. Buy, as cheap as I can, a house in the country, with a bit of space, something for a workshop. Bit of a garden I should hope, some vegetables, some animals. Janine’s good with that. The children gain something from that, if they lose something at school.” Arlette nodded, agreeing. She had moved into the town, to get a better school for Ruth. But she’d been widowed, and Ruth the only child left at school, and depending a lot on an academic success. With a man, and with younger children, the country every time …

  “I don’t know much. I’m fairly good with my hands, though; I’m strong, I’m healthy. So’s Janine. The important thing is – she backs me up, every step. We know it’ll be bloody hard. But if one can get past five years without borrowing from the bank …”

  Arlette was more than interested: sitting up and forgetting about the drink.

  “Never, never, never borrow from banks.”

  “I’m not sure it’s good economics, but I’m sure as hell it’s good practice. That’s my weakness though – book-keeping, business, selling; I know nothing about that. Have to say plenty of prayers. But I’ve picked up a lot of old iron. I like fixing up these old stoves and cookers. I want to make a bit of a forge. I don’t feel too sure of it. But it’s all I’ve got.”

  Arlette was thinking – but the New Village used to be like this. Small, simple houses. Yard with a pump, a shed for a workshop. Barn for a scrap of hay, a few potatoes, apples, maize hung up to dry, a half dozen chickens and a few rabbits. Space for logs and some rudimentary machinery. No ‘farming’ in any sense of the word. Simple metallurgy; bit of tinsmithing, electroplating, panel-beating. The French had this in their blood. But could you even do this in the backwoods, any more? You sure as hell couldn’t in Neudorf.

  Chapter 21

  Professional advice

  “I don’t want to talk about myself,” said Subleyras. “Rather hear what brings you this way. Wasn’t just to see how I was making out, was it?”

  “A goodish bit, all the same,” she answered. “People who’ll resign from a job, especially one like yours, and out of idealism yet – they’re pretty rare. And start again from scratch. They’re interesting, you know.”

  “Idealism yet – yock. Sounds too starry-eyed for me. Put it negatively rather, say there’s plenty people who vomit their jobs, who wouldn’t keep them another minute, only can they afford to throw them up? That’s rough. I’ve been here a fewish years. Ground here was real cheap then. These flats didn’t cost much. Nobody lived out here except real petty people, like me. Bus conductors, garage hands, gardeners, shoemakers. We bought on a low mortgage, with a government credit, three-four per cent stuff. These last years we could accelerate to pay it off. What’s now? – people with big cars and nice suits. Thirty years at twenty per cent, and they got to pay for the lift and the electric central heating. Fellow stuck with that, and with children to bring up, he might have ideals, but he better forget about them quick. Oy, Janine said I mustn’t forget to put the pressure cooker on. No, have another glass. I don’t want to chase you. And you got that look in your eye, of something you’d like to tell me and are hesitating whether or not. I can listen. You won’t take it amiss, if I keep the paintbrush in my hand? – just want to get this panel finished, before the children come.”

  Arlette unburdened her heart, on the subject of Commissaire Casabianca.

  Subleyras kept the serious, concentrated face and unhurried, even gestures of a painter, didn’t look at her, didn’t interrupt. When he spoke, it was in the same andante tempo.

  “Sounds a fairly typical police operation. You do all the work, have all the bother. We needn’t say worry, because he’s certainly right: this fellow you call the Friend is feeling you out. He doesn’t know where you stand, nor how pally with the PJ you might be. So he’s moving around real careful, feinting at you. Little bit of intimidation, little bit of tickle your ribs, bit of silence to shake you off balance. Are you a PJ informer or aren’t you? He’s not sure, and he won’t attack you or anything till he is. And you might be good for money. So worry, no: don’t be frightened.

  “But bother, yes, you’ve got to wait and let him come to you. And you take the risk – of failure: there’s no great physical risk because yes, Casabianca will look after you. He wouldn’t go to all this trouble unless he was prepared to: he wants this Friend. How badly I couldn’t say. Nor can I say how much clue he’s got. He may know the identity, all about him, but looking for a hold, legal hold, use you to mousetrap him.”

  “He admits as much.”

  “Yes, but when they use that Honest John act, they’re lying. Make no mistake, you do the job: they take the credit.

  “Notice – well, you have – how they’ve got you boxed in. Refuse to do it and you’re not a cooperative citizen. What d’you think, they’ll say, we give you this licence to work; and a gun and everything? So that you can be helpful, when we see occasion. A PJ cop never passes up a chance to acquire a good indicator. You hear all sorts of unlikely things: never know when some little information comes up useful. Like this drug thing you got into by accident, last year. Handy that was, for them.

  “But you aren’t a cop. Do what they want, and technically you’re illegal, not to speak of a morally and ethically dubious business. They’ve a comfortable hold on you. They know about your activities, make it clear they’re winking at any infractions you may commit; you’re in their debt, you’re in their pocket. Just what they like.”

  “You could be a bit prejudiced, couldn’t you? When you were on the urban force, the PJ weren’t necessarily your closest pals.”

  “It’s a fair point. There’s too many goddam police forces in this country and there’s a fair degree of suspicion and jealousy between them
all right, and a lot of manoeuvring about who gets the credit. You know about it, I reckon; we were urban cops, and in a town this size the Municip is organized to be sort of autonomous, in principle. The gendarmerie is another pair of shoes altogether, paramilitary, comes under Army. The Police Judiciaire is different again; it comes under Interior, has authority over the whole territory, and of course it’s élite, or supposed to be. In practice all this overlaps a lot. I didn’t like the PJ a whole lot, no. They get away with stuff, and protection, that we’d have got done for. But there’s good people in it.” He went and turned the pressure cooker down, came and took a sip from his glass.

  “What you got to understand about cops – any cops – they aren’t law-abiding.”

  “Fair enough; the law is a hass. No law-enforcement has much to do with law: I learned that with my first husband.”

  “I’d forgotten. Your first man was a city cop. Teach me to shut my big mouth. But did he fake evidence, or plant it?”

  “If he did, he didn’t tell me.”

  “No, of course not. And I don’t know how things are in Holland.”

  “Not much different. Some better, some worse. The police in Amsterdam didn’t have a very good reputation, and didn’t deserve one.”

  “We’ll leave your man out of it.”