by J. G. Sandom
They arrived at last. Mariane struggled with the lock to the front door while Koster paid the cab. He had been to her apartment several times over the last few weeks, but never at this hour, and never when the pink haze of a champagne magnum hovered all about them. The cab droned off, distant. The front door closed and there was a moment in the darkened corridor as Mariane fumbled for the light switch. Koster pulled her toward him, wrapping his arms about her from behind. He could feel the warmth of her skin through her coat. Then the light came on, and she pulled herself away.
Mariane’s apartment was on the second floor. They climbed the last few steps as if they had just ended a long journey. Then the light went out again and Koster heard her click her tongue impatiently; the lights were tied to timers in a conservation effort, and they had dawdled on the stairs.
Koster wrapped his arms about her once again. She laughed, freeing the key from the lock, and kicked the door open. Mariane said that Guy was playing chess that night with Father Marchelidon. They were alone, caught in the doorway in the dark, pressed together like a shipwrecked pair at sea.
She shivered and Koster kissed her lightly on the neck. Her skin felt cool and moist.
After a moment his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, and he could see Mariane as she walked slowly toward the sitting room, taking her coat off on the way and dropping it on the floor. He followed her, reached out, and slipped his arms about her as he had done before. She leaned her head against his shoulder. Her hair smelled of the evening rain. She was wearing a necklace. Koster let his hands slip down her sides only to pull them up again slowly, massaging her skin beneath the dress, cupping the full breasts. He pressed himself against her. Then he reached behind her neck and found the zipper of her dress. It glided down her back like butter. She shook the material from her hips and kicked it to the side.
“Joseph,” she whispered as he slipped his fingers slowly inside her bra, forcing it up. Her breasts felt so soft, so much fuller in his hands than they had ever looked in her simple clothes. “Joseph,” she repeated.
“What is it?” She was breathing heavily now. He ran his right hand slowly over her stomach, down, probing with his fingertips, drawing a shallow line along her inner thigh with his nails. The material of her panties was soaked through.
“What about Guy, Joseph? What if he comes home?” She began to pull away but Koster held her tight.
“He won’t be back for hours.”
“But it’s already late. And this is wrong,” she added, slipping from his arms. She was gone, lost in the darkness. The warmth of her body faded from his skin. A light flashed on.
Mariane stood in the far corner of the room, wearing nothing but her bra and panties and a simple necklace. Her arms were crossed above her breasts.
“It’s always Guy,” said Koster. “Isn’t it?”
“Don’t say that, Joseph. Please.”
She picked her purse up from the floor and walked over to the window. Other than an old overstuffed couch and a small coffee table, the sitting room was empty of furniture. But the walls were covered with photographs, dozens of black-and-whites in identical wooden frames, portraits and places.
“Guy isn’t like you and me,” she said. “You know he isn’t. Someone has to be there for him. Someone has to look after him. He’s my brother. And he’ll still be here, long after you’ve gone back to New York. So don’t make me choose between you, Joseph.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I know what you meant,” she said quietly. “Besides, I wasn’t talking about Guy. I was talking about us. This is just wrong, Joseph.”
She pulled a pack of cigarettes from her purse and Koster watched her light up, the way she put the filter in her mouth, the way she shook the match like a thermometer. Then she opened the window beside her and blew the smoke into the night. “I’m sorry, Joseph,” she said. “I thought I could, but I can’t.”
Koster unbuttoned his coat and took it off. “What’s so wrong with this? I’m in love with you, Mariane. What’s wrong with that?”
“You don’t even know me.” She shivered as the wind blew through the open window.
Koster walked over to wrap his arms about her, but she pushed him away once again. “You seemed to enjoy my touch before,” he said sourly.
“That’s not fair. Don’t you think I want to sleep with you?” she said. “Sometimes I think your idea of a relationship is just a series of tests to see how quickly, how easily you’ll be betrayed. I won’t betray you, Joseph. You have to know that. But at the same time, I can’t sleep with you. Even if it means losing you. Not yet, anyway. Don’t you understand? Not again.”
She clutched at her necklace and Koster saw it clearly for the first time. It looked like a small stone medallion, strangely carved. “He gave that to you, didn’t he?”
“Who?”
“You know who.” Koster loosened his tie. He sat down on the couch. “Your lover, Maurice. Guy told me all about him. How he left you cold. He was a fool.”
“I loved him, Joseph.”
“Then he was doubly foolish.”
“It wasn’t his fault. He had bad friends.”
“Is that all it takes to be forgiven?”
Mariane took another drag off her cigarette. “Why do you say such things, Joseph? You know how I feel.”
“No, I don’t. All I know is you’re always pulling away from me.” He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees.
“Joseph, please.” She flung the stub of her cigarette through the open window, into the street. “It’s just that I feel like this has all happened before: the dinner and the stars, the same drive home, the same stairs. With him, you’re right. With Maurice. And when it was all over, instead of having something, instead of getting something from it, as I thought I would, all I felt was a loss. And for what, Joseph? He didn’t write me once after he left. Not a word. And now it’s too late.”
She walked over to the little pile of clothes beside the couch and began to dress. “And sometimes, Joseph, when you touch me …” She paused for a moment. “I don’t know. It’s like you’re doing what you think is right, what works, instead of what you feel. You’re so—detached.”
Koster laughed bitterly. “I thought so,” he replied. “You sound just like Priscilla.”
“I do? Am I really like your wife?”
“My ex-wife. We’re not married anymore, Mariane. I’m not married.”
“Why do I sound like her?”
“I’d rather not talk about her.”
“Did she say that too, that you’re detached?”
Koster shifted to the edge of the couch. Mariane had finished dressing and his excitement was suddenly gone, replaced by a dull pain. “In the end,” he said. “It’s funny, I always thought that sex was the best part of our relationship. It was for me anyway. But one day she told me she was tired of my fantasies. We used to—you know—plan things out. She was good at it. Then something happened. She began to sleep around. You know the story. The bitter, unstable wife. The insipid husband with the surprised, almost comical expression on his face as he stops short at the bedroom door. It’s as old as the hills.”
Mariane walked around the couch. “You don’t have to plan things out with me,” she said. “Things will happen. I know they will.” She reached out and stroked his hair. “But you can’t plan the human heart.” She kissed him softly on the head and he looked up, to the side, askew. He would not look at her.
“I’m sorry about before,” he said. “What I said about Guy. Maybe I ought to go.” He stood up and reached for his coat. It was badly wrinkled, he noticed. It would have to be pressed. He dropped it across one arm and started for the door. Then he stopped, and with his back to her said, “I know I don’t seem spontaneous sometimes. I know that. But that’s just who I am, Mariane. I’ve always been that way. But you have to be sure. You have to know what’s out there before you can respond. There are so many variables, so many unknowns.”
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br /> He paused for a moment, his hand on the doorknob. “You know, Mariane, after the robbery at the hotel, I really felt like leaving Amiens, just abandoning the book and getting out. But I didn’t.”
“I’m glad you didn’t.”
“But I don’t know why I didn’t.” He finally turned to look at her again. “I mean did I do it because I love you, or because to have left you would have been like leaving love behind. The chance for love. My chance.”
She laughed softly. “I don’t care why you stayed,” she said. “Honestly, I don’t. You make it sound like an algebra problem. All I care about is what I feel.”
He tried to answer but the words eluded him. Finally, after a long while, he said, “Thanks for the dinner. Really. I’m sorry if I upset you. I guess I’ll see you at the store tomorrow.” With that he opened the door and ducked into the outer hall.
There was a skylight in the ceiling. It had started to rain once more, the gentle patter like the drumming of impatient fingers on a table. The champagne haze was all but gone now. He walked down the stairs in the dark, guided by the rectangle of light which marked the front door leading to the street. The rain was very cold, but it was too late to call a cab, and he didn’t care. He walked on through the deserted streets, only the puddles glistening, saucers of street light. No one was about. They were all inside their living rooms watching television, or fast asleep. He could hear a main road humming in the distance.
Mariane was right, he thought. He was a fool, and love was an impossible equation.
The black Solara GLS rumbled up the country road, cutting through a copse of trees and the falling rain. The narrow valley with its spinal stream meandered mile on mile until Le Blanc, the only town of any size in the province. But the Solara did not even slow down as the houses grew more frequent. It was a cruel night. There was no one on the road in this foul weather. Soon the town was passed and the car plunged on through greater forests still, the amber headlights probing at the darkness.
Inside the car, pressed into the puffy, honey brown leather of the contoured rear seat, Archbishop Grabowski watched the landscape stutter past the window. Mile ran on to rain-swept mile; the forests were replaced by plains of heather and stunted pine. This was the Pays des Milles Étangs, the Land of a Thousand Ponds, and periodically the shallow lakes appeared across a hedge or round a hill, black and forbidding. The car hummed, churning up the road. Grabowski saw a small chateau rise up between two trees a few kilometers from the road on a hill, the windows glazed with light. Then it was gone. He saw the scattered forest undulate, watched it scurry across the landscape past the ponds, alive with thick carp sleeping, past rain-soaked branches pointing down, past chanterelles and black oak mushrooms waiting to be picked. But every image that he gathered from the woods, each new detail served only to return him to his office once again, back to St. Peter’s Square in Rome, to Marone and his compact proposition. A good business deal is like a rose, Scarcella had once told him years before—a thing of beauty, with a thorn for every compromise.
The archbishop closed his eyes, remembering Marone’s meaty lips against his ring, remembering his own words of agreement at their second meeting. “As long as there is no more violence, no more,” he had said with rigid emphasis, thinking even then how sub-stanceless his words were, how meaningless the condition. “Then I’ll find the Gospel of Thomas for you.” The car turned sharply to the right and Grabowski opened his eyes.
The Benedictine monastery of Fontgombault was almost invisible in the dark. A stand of fruit trees lined the drive on one side, while a field stretched into blackness on the other. He reached for his briefcase and pulled it up onto his lap. Yet he had really had no choice, he told himself. If Wovyetski were correct, if the gospel were truly that dangerous, no price could be too high, no act unjustified. In the distance the lights of the Romanesque church burned hypnotically. After all, who could have faith in a Church which was founded on a lie? Faith was the keystone in the arch. If it were shaken, all would fall, one stone against the other: the image of Christ; the Church; the IOR. Grabowski felt the car slow down. He felt the brake pads rubbing. He felt his own mind veer away, shunning the conclusion of his fears, like a man who cannot see the spot on his own X ray. There was nothing without faith, nothing but a lifetime of thorns, five decades dedicated to a lie, two thousand years…
It had been a long, hard drive from Paris and when the Solara finally pulled up at the curb, the hood began to throw off little clouds of condensation like a sweating horse. The door of the monastery swung open and a monk carrying an umbrella ran up to the car. Grabowski thanked the driver. Then he stepped out through the open door and dashed across the courtyard to the entrance of the monastery.
The abbot, Huvelin, stood just inside the main hall by a rack of tourist pamphlets. “Welcome to Fontgombault, Your Excellency,” he said.
Grabowski wiped the water from his head.
The abbot looked briefly at the monk with the umbrella. It was dripping all over the floor. “Please,” he added. “Follow me.”
Huvelin’s office was on the far side of the monastery, near the sleeping quarters. Grabowski followed him through the passageways, barely glancing at the tapestries on the walls, the plaster saints, a gilded cross, an ebony Madonna.
When they reached the office, the abbot pointed to a set of chairs before a sandstone fireplace, but the archbishop ignored them.
“I’m sorry this is so sudden,” Grabowski said. “I had been planning to go to Colorado on retreat.”
“We’re honored to have you, Your Excellency. How long do you plan to stay, if I may ask?”
Grabowski walked over to the fireplace and began to rub his hands together above the dull flames in the brazier. The room was frigid despite the fire. “Officially, for two weeks. But I’m here on business, delicate business. In fact I plan to leave day after tomorrow.”
“I’m sorry. Day after tomorrow?”
“That’s right. Of course, as far as the world is concerned, I’ll still be here on retreat. I’m sure you understand. One has to keep working, and there are times when the business of the Church simply cannot be disturbed, especially by the press. Now, if you don’t mind. I’ve been on the go since early morning.” With that he turned and headed out the door.
Chapter XII
AMIENS
September 19th, 1991
THE ANTIQUE SHOP WHICH JACQUES TELLIER HAD OPERATED before his disappearance was situated on the rue Dupuis, just east of the cathedral and the Bishop’s Palace. It was a crumbling stone structure, wedged in between two other houses, and it reminded Lyman of a weary hooker between props, waiting for the final whistle of the game. Two storeys at the edges, it was but a storey and three quarters at the center. For the years had weighed it down, bending the facade, and even the swallows no longer made their nests under the eaves, sensing perhaps the imminent collapse. Lyman crossed the cobbled street and entered.
There was a fusty smell about the shop. Despite the window looking out onto the street and a dim desk lamp in the back, the room was full of shadows. Lyman paused by the door until his eyes had adjusted to the dark. Then there were inlaid desks and bureaus, carved figures from the East beside medieval hauberks, paintings, hairpins. All the objects seemed to have been thrown together as if by chance rather than design, like the remnants of a mud slide. A stuffed eagle, missing one eye, posed at Lyman’s elbow. A hidden clock ticked softly to his left. There were maps and model ships, a French Revolutionary flag, and bows and arrows from Guiana.
“Monsieur Lyman?”
Lyman turned and found himself looking down on a shrunken little man wearing a dark wool suit and a tiny red bow tie. “I’m Paul Tellier,” the man continued. “We talked on the telephone.”
Lyman stepped forward and they shook hands. “A pleasure to meet you,” he said, pulling his hand away. Tellier’s fingers were ice cold and soft as cooked asparagus. Lyman tried to guess his age. He wasn’t exactly old. He just app
eared to be because of his crouched, diminished form.
“As I told you on the phone,” Paul Tellier continued, “Uncle Jacques is the one who actually owns the store. We only came up here to keep it going in his absence. You know. Until he can be found. We have no designs on it ourselves, believe me.” He rolled his eyes.
“Quite. About the room…”
“Yes, yes.” Tellier turned and started for a wooden staircase at the back. “My wife and I have a new house over in the Henri Ville section. Frankly, I don’t understand how Uncle Jacques could stand living here. The place is falling apart. I mean, look at it. I’d sell it in a minute if someone were to make me a decent offer.”He stopped at the foot of the stairs and glanced sheepishly at Lyman. “On behalf of my uncle, of course.”
“Of course.”
They climbed the stairs and Tellier took a key chain from his bulging pocket, shaking it to order. “Captain Musel told us not to disturb the room. But sometimes Anna—that’s my wife—sends the girl over to clean up a little.” He selected a key and opened the door closest to the stairwell. It was dark inside. The curtains had been drawn. Tellier crossed through the shadows and flung them open. Billows of dust clouds welled up and curled through the sudden sunlight. Tellier waved a white hand. “I’m afraid it’s been a while,” he added with a frown.
“I’m sure it’s fine,” said Lyman. “You needn’t stay. I’ll manage. And thank you, you’ve been very helpful.”
Tellier smiled skeptically. “Always happy to be of service to the police. Call me if you need anything else.”
“I’ll do that.” Lyman looked pointedly at the door and Tellier scurried out.
It was odd, thought Lyman, how with a glance you could tell the room belonged to someone who had once spent time in jail. It had the economy of a prison cell, the same diversity of small conveniences so close at hand, like the room of an invalid. One wall angled in and Lyman had to duck a little as he made his way toward the desk at the back.