“What do you do when you have thirst?”
“In the service of the State it is necessary to control oneself.”
“It happens from time to time that one is thirsty.”
“One drinks a cup of coffee, upon payment.”
“Then may I have some coffee? But I should prefer water.”’
“There is the machine. For those who pay, there is coffee. There is also coca-cola.”
“I dislike coca-cola. But I should like the pleasure of offering you a cup of coffee.”
“That is polite. I shall accept. That is more money than the machine admits.”
“It will serve to buy flowers, to put upon your desk.”
“There is water. But it is reserved for the personnel of the administration.”
“I do not wish to infringe the regulations of the administration. But I have hope that the Commander will allow me to drink water.”
“I will take the responsibility upon myself. But you observe; it is imprudent to set a precedent. If all the public entered here to demand water …”
“That is very true.”
Half an hour later.
“Mount the stairway. Arrive at the third gallery. Room 332. Knock and demand permission. The Commander has been informed of your request.”
“There is the elevator?”
“There is the elevator, but it is reserved for the mutilated and the infirm. One must not waste the resources of the State.”
“That is very true.”
Room 332 was small, and contained a table and a middle-aged personage. His cap was on the table, and bore a captain’s insignia. She never learned whether this was Captain Barton, but on the whole she doubted it. This person was less diplomatic.
“State your business.”
“I would like to see the Commander.”
“That won’t do, you know.”
“Captain, it is my pleasure to meet you, and my misfortune that I can only state my business to the General.”
“I am his aide. You understand, one does not enter here as into a mill to buy flour.”
“I understand.”
“You may rely upon my discretion.”
“I am convinced of it. I am unhappily obliged to see the General.”
“One word – no.”
“I am a very patient person.”
“And you will find the door behind you.”
“And utterly harmless. But quite interesting.”
“And obstinate. And you try my patience.”
“It causes me pain,” humbly.
“You’re a journalist.”
“No.”
“Your documentación. All of it.” Humbly, she produced her identity papers.
“Perhaps you would not object to giving me your handbag.”
“I have nothing to hide.”
He opened the handbag, discovered the Laguiole knife, and raised his eyebrows. He spread papers out across his desk. Driving licences and the like.
“I speak no French. I can read it.”
“It is my regret that my Spanish is primitive.”
“What’s this for?” It was her card, signed by the former PJ Commissaire in Strasbourg, stating his knowledge of her activities. Unofficial, but useful. She always carried it.
“I have a small bureau, for advice and where possible help to those in perplexity or misery.”
“It says,” returning to other papers, “here that you are a housewife.”
“That is true, and I am proud of it.”
“Good! But people who meddle in the affairs of others are not necessarily welcome, wherever they go.”
“I am so well aware of this, Captain, that I refuse to meddle in any affairs of this country.”
“Good.” He pressed a bellpush and shuffled the papers in a heap. A clerk came in and stood.
“Take a look at these under the lamp, and tell me whether they are genuine.” He lit a cigarette, without offering her one. “And you think that we can help you?”
“It is a very simple matter that brings me here. I have no connection with the press. Or with any other body, official or unofficial. I am just me.”
“And what is your viewpoint, upon our administration?”
“Captain, if I manage to do the job I came for I shall be paid, I hope, a fee. So far I have been given an advance upon my expenses, of travel here, and a day or so’s stay. But I am certainly not going to be paid by anyone to hold viewpoints concerning any administration. Yours, or mine.”
“And you refuse to explain yourself to me.”
“That would be a foolish error. I have to say that a confidence was revealed to me, which I have not the right to break. For the same reason, I have nothing to say to the Embassy here, or the Consulate. I promised, you see.”
The clerk came back, laid her little heap of paper on the desk, said nothing, and went out again. The captain knocked ash off his cigarette and seemed to meditate.
“Señora, without wishing to be insulting – are you aware that you are ridiculous?”
“Oh yes,” said Arlette. “All honest people are ridiculous.”
He gave a short laugh, half cough. He picked up his telephone, and pressed buttons on it.
“I will give you your wish. You may regret my doing so.”
“But one does what one has to.”
“That is true. Señora Walther? I have a customer for you.” He put the phone down. There was a silence. He pointed to the handbag. “That stays here.” She nodded.
Señora Walther was a small, thin woman. She had coarse black hair with grey threads in it, a slight moustache, steel-rimmed spectacles.
“Will you accompany me, please?” she said politely.
They went to the end of the passage, where there was a large double-folding door of heavy tropical hardwood, much scuffed and scratched. Inside there was a very large room. Arlette looked around in surprise. Nobody lived in it, nor did it look used for anything. There was a lot of marble, and gilt. There was a huge chandelier. There were immense pier looking-glasses, and a large sunburst clock saying a quarter to three, with cherubs holding it up. There were stiff Empire chairs ranged along the walls, and an ornate Savonnerie carpet in the middle, like all the rest faded and spotted.
“Strip to the skin, please,” said Señora Walther in her polite monotone.
One does what one has to do. Arlette said nothing, avoided making a face, and undressed. Each thing she took off she handed to Señora Walther standing there for this purpose, who looked at things and laid them neatly on faded grey-green satin.
“Lift your arms, please. Turn around. Straddle your legs. Face me please, again.” Arlette caught sight of herself in the big mirror and could not stop making a face at it. The little woman smiled, very slightly. “You may dress. I am sorry. It is the rule.”
“Arms?”
“More likely, tape recorders. Anything at all.” She waited till Arlette was dressed, and said, “Please sit down. And wait for me.” She went through the set of double-doors at the far side. Arlette sat on an Empire chair which afforded no comfort, and rearranged her hair with her fingers.
The little woman came back, held the door, and said, “Please.” She closed the door behind Arlette and was no more seen.
She was in a room the same size as the one she had left, en suite with it, with three big windows looking out upon a courtyard, a formal garden and a fountain. The room was furnished as a comfortable private office, with leather sofas, bookshelves, a big desk set to catch the best of the light. A big man was standing, moving with the rapidity and quietness of many big men. He had a pipe between his teeth and was wearing an English tweed hacking-jacket. High forehead, higher by being a bit bald in front, healthily tanned. Bright blue eyes, set far apart. Pleasant expression. Looked, on the whole, like a retired footballer, who is now training the under-fifteens; schoolmasterly, severe look under the smiling, easy exterior.
Maybe Commissaire Maigret looked like this, but h
is office was not as large. On the desk was one of those angled plaques of clear plastic, with black lettering. It said ‘Colonel Oswaldo Suarez Palmer’.
“Good morning, Colonel Palmer.”
He smiled with the strong teeth that held the pipe, and said pleasantly,
“¡Pa que aprenda!” Expression translatable by, “That’ll teach you!”
‘Yes, I see.”
“Your Spanish I hear is very good. You might prefer to talk English?” in an English virtually unaccented: if anything, Cambridge University. She might have guessed Sandhurst, if she’d ever heard of it. English like Arthur’s.
“It’s true,” gratefully, “I’ve just about exhausted my Spanish.”
“Very well. You’ve asked to see me. Here I am. I must beg of you not to waste my time or your own. You have not, hitherto, been succinct. Be so now.”
“And this young man – does he engage in political activities?”
“I hope for his sake that he doesn’t.”
“That is succinct. And you call a spade a spade. So few people do so. I do, myself. You’ve heard of me. I’m the police chief, for the city. Ah, you think, the Chief Executioner. Nice fellow, big clean office. Goes down in the cellar, and Tortures people.”
“I have no information about this.”
“No, but you’ve read all about Amnesty International. Splendid people. Very necessary. They don’t of course know everything. So let’s not frig about. I have an English name, but I am not English. Look at this.” At the edge of the huge desk was an enormous globe. He switched on the lamp inside it, spun it, stopped it, took a desk pointer and tapped it.
“You see all this? Northern hemisphere. North America, Europe, Asia, Soviets, China, Japan. India. Great bulk of Africa. All the resources. All the history, all the economic progress, all the manpower. Now down here. Southern hemisphere. What’s there? Nothing. Small tail end of Africa. Scrawny little scrag end of America. Australia. New Zealand. Piffling, huh? All empty, no population, nothing. Look at Argentina. Five times the size of France, population less than one half, and France is the emptiest country in Central Europe. Why? Because this was an unimportant little place. In the colonial time, not even a vice-royalty, B.A. was founded a century after Lima, after Quito, after Ascencion – obscure provincial governorship.
“Now it has perhaps struck you that the northern hemisphere, after all these centuries of power and empire, is in something of a decline. Indeed in very considerable trouble. Rivalries, political, economic, the lot. And then at last people start casting an eye down here, saying Hey, that’s a pissy little corner, nothing but cows and sheep, but perhaps strategically important, if we get there before the others. Everybody with that idea, and not just Russians, not just Americans. Japanese, Germans. French too sleepy and selfsatisfied, if you’ll forgive. English too complacent and lazy. Yack about the Lycée Français or the Islas Malvinas, yoy. But the United States – they would be mighty interested. So all these people who get off the bus here, what are they after? It’s my job to know, and it’s a tough job, and it’s not always a nice job. And these people, sometimes they aren’t nice, either.
“We’ve got everything: space, food, minerals, water, electricity. Compare that to the other land masses in the hemisphere. Something like seven-tenths of Australia is desert. Southern Africa, magnificent land, but they can’t get over the conflict between owners and occupiers.
“So that we are very greatly privileged. But we’re too poor, too feeble to handle it. And they arrive, with arms outstretched, to help us. Kind of them!”
Arlette thought that perhaps he did protest too much, but kept her mouth shut. She was here to learn, to conjugate the verb ‘aprender’ – very well.
“However,” ripping his glasses off as though he hated them and throwing them on the blotter, “let’s see if we can throw a loop over this problem of yours. Christian name?”
“Gilles.”
“Gilles,” writing on a small piece of paper with neat small handwriting, “and you’ve a photograph? Good,” stapling it all together, “and a heroin rap in Paris. Let us see what we know,” pressing a buzzer. A girl secretary came in through the door on the far side: he handed her the paper and said, “Any form?” exactly like the Scotland Yard Inspector of Arlette’s imagination.
“Let nobody impose upon you,” taking the glasses off again and staring at her with the bright blue eyes, “I’m here to keep the young plants free of weeds. All the trash of the northern hemisphere gets vomited up here, from antiquated English colonialism to every barbarity ever born of industrial slums.” There must be something about the southern hemisphere, thought Arlette, that makes them sound like John Buchan characters. The wildly skidding wheels of her imagination threw her up the phrase from Ray Chandler, ‘breezy as a Britisher just in from a tiger-hunt’. His phone buzzed. The computer had come up with the O, because he said “No? Very well,” and put it down again. He relit his pipe, said, “Not within my scope. Concerns the intendencia.” He thought, and said, “There used – it’s thirty years ago, when I was a pipsqueak sublieutenant on a course in England – to be two comedians. Radford and Wayne, they had a sort of elderly civil servant act, very funny. At one moment they were respectively the Ministers for Foreign Affairs and the Home Office, and were dealing with people who had Seceded From the Crown. One says to the other ‘Aliens; that’s your department’ and the other replies ‘No no, they’re undesirable aliens, that’s your department’. The Governor might be able to help you: I’ll give you a chitty.” This old-fashioned expression, reminding her of Arthur, made her giggle. Colonel Palmer caught the giggle, and was pleased with it. Gave a touch to his picture of an extremely efficient Brigadier, of a crack commando outfit, putting up with no nonsense from Basil Seal. They were not so much Buchan as Evelyn Waugh characters. Colonel Palmer belonged in Bellamy’s Club.
He had been busy with his buzzer again; there was another girl secretary, with a shorthand pad.
“Take a letter. General Maurizio Renard. The lady who will identify herself by presentation of this note has approached me in a matter upon which I have at present no relevant word. You may be able to suggest to her some suitable course. Yours with respect. Give it me for signature, envelope for bearer; the lady here.
“I’m sending you to the top,” said Colonel Palmer with a schoolboyish sort of amusement. “It will be interesting what you make of General Renard. Or what General Renard makes of you – let us hope it isn’t hamburger,” with a gleam of teeth.
The girl came in with a sheet of heavily embossed paper. He looked at it, put ‘Palmer’ in the small neat writing, and handed it to be slipped in the long stiff envelope.
“I am greatly in, your debt, Colonel.”
“Honoured to be of service, Madame,” standing up formally, and then dropping the formality suddenly. “It’s nothing – amused me, the way you talked yourself in. Don’t forget what I’ve told you,” warning forefinger. And changing lightning-quick back to Bellamy’s Club, “Off you go, girl, twitch your mantle blue.” This was a password which to her great good fortune she recognized. Yet another debt owed to Arthur, who often said the same thing. The gentlemen known to Colonel Palmer, and of course the ladies too, not of course that they are allowed into Bellamy’s, have all learned Milton’s Lycidas in school.
“Is General Renard wood, or pasture?”
“Hohoho. You’ll find out. Ask him!” The girl had waited, to show her politely out, the way she had come.
“You can find your road, Señora?”
“He aprendido,” said Arlette, meaning it.
She walked quickly. Con mala persona el remedio – mucha tierra en medio. Put as much distance as you can between yourself and a bad person. But was he a bad person? It is also said: the devil stands at the foot of the cross.
She felt extremely tired, which she put down to acute hunger.
Chapter 29
De la sartén, en las brasas
An easy one in
English, sartén being a frying pan, and brasas being coals-of-fire. She had leisure to fabricate culinary metaphors, because she had been so hungry that she overate. Restaurants in governmental quarters as always tend to alternate between grand and very expensive places smelling of silence, panelled wood, and corpse-like head-waiters, and scruffy places where the help eats, smelling of fish and frying-fat: nothing in between, and the lorn lady didn’t fancy either much; uncomfortable all on her ownio.
She had great good fortune: turning corners to get away quick from the stinking pink palazzo, she fell upon a sort of spaghetti joint where she felt quite at home: porteno-napolitana accents, illegible menu with things like lionfish and roast lungs: everything nice and dirty and lashings of extremely good wine. Being rather drunk after clams, she had to eat the roast lung too – at least she didn’t know what it was: something asado with lots of salad. They thought her accent killingly funny and kept pressing her to eat more. She resisted both patatas and cake and could still walk, she was glad to find out. Nothing but a tiny fishy and a salad tonight, and yoghurt for breakfast. If, that is, I’m not in jail.
The new palazzo was in a terrible Teutonic style, reminding her strongly of the Rhinepalace back at home on the Place de la République. The corridors were dark and dracula-haunted, the concierge had black teeth and had had blood and raw garlic for lunch. But her grand letter earned her instant consideration: she was brought up only one flight of stairs and inserted in a little waitingroom made inside a large landing, a version of her own, in the Rue de l’Observatoire, but much grander, with moquette, and tweedy chairs, and a lovely lavatory where she brushed her teeth.
Waiting for her was a very polite young man, with a nice suit and rather long hair, who guided her. All the vast gloomy rusticated stonework had been covered in blonde wood, very pretty. The furniture was modern, fresh, clean. The police sneers at things like the Governorship of the Province as vaguely ‘Intendencia’, but this was higher altogether in the social scale. Where gloomy daylight struggled through neogothic stained-glass, there were large bright chromium lamps in great numbers. Almost a Dutch look: courtesy of Philips in Eindhoven. Nobody pounced upon her and stripped her to the skin, although the nice young man looked willing to try in a polite sort of way.
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