by Jay Hopler
“This report is less favorable than the last, is it not?”
“I have not the previous report here, M’sieur.”
“Is there a doctor there? Could I speak with a doctor, perhaps?”
“I am a doctor, M’sieur.”
“Oh. Then this report—whether you have the old one or not—is not a good one, is it?”
Like a textbook, she said, “This is a potentially dangerous condition involving lowered resistance. …”
Jonathan had telephoned from his shop. He had turned his sign to FERMÉ and drawn his door curtain, though he had been visible through the window. Now, as he went to remove the sign, he realized he hadn’t locked his door. Since no one else was due to call for a picture that afternoon, Jonathan thought he could afford to close. It was five to five.
He walked to Dr. Périer’s office, prepared to wait more than an hour if he had to. Saturday was a busy day, because most people didn’t work and were free to see the doctor. There were three people ahead of Jonathan, but the nurse asked if he would be long, Jonathan said no, and the nurse squeezed him in with an apology to the next patient. Had Dr. Pérrier spoken to his nurse about him? Jonathan wondered.
Dr. Périer raised his black eyebrows at Jonathan’s scribbled notes, and said, “But this is incomplete.”
“I know, but it tells something, doesn’t it? It’s slightly worse—isn’t it?”
“One would think you want to get worse!” Dr. Prier said with his customary cheer, which now Jonathan mistrusted. “Frankly, yes, it is worse, but only a little worse. It is not crucial.”
“In percentage—ten percent worse, would you say?”
“M. Trevanny, you are not an automobile! Now, it is not reasonable for me to make a remark until I get the full report Tuesday.”
Jonathan walked homeward rather slowly, walked through the Rue des Sablons just in case he saw someone who wanted to go into his shop. There wasn’t anyone. Only the launderette was doing a brisk business. People with bundles of laundry were bumping into each other at the door. It was nearly six. Simone would be quitting the shoe shop sometime after seven, later than usual, because Brezard wanted to take in every franc possible before closing for Sunday and Monday. And Wister was still at L’Aigle Noir. Was he only waiting for him, waiting for him to change his mind and say yes? Wouldn’t it be funny if Dr. Périer was in conspiracy with Stephen Wister, if between them they might have fixed the Ebberle-Valent Laboratoires to give him a bad report? And if Gauthier were in on it, too, the little messenger of bad tidings? Like a nightmare in which the strangest elements join forces against—against the dreamer. But Jonathan knew he wasn’t dreaming. He knew that Dr. Périer wasn’t in the pay of Stephen Wister. Nor was Ebberle-Valent. And it was not a dream that his condition was worse, that death was a little closer, or sooner, than he had thought. It was, however, true of everyone who lived one more day, Jonathan reminded himself. Jonathan thought of death, and the process of aging, as a decline, literally a downward path. Most people had a chance to take it slowly, starting at fifty-five or whenever they slowed up, descending until seventy or whatever year was their number. Jonathan realized that his death was going to be like falling over a cliff. When he tried to “prepare” himself, his mind wavered and dodged. His attitude, or his spirit, was still thirty-four years old and wanted to live.
The Trevannys’ narrow house, blue-gray in the dusk, showed no lights. It was a rather somber house, and that fact had amused Jonathan and Simone when they had bought it five years ago. “The Sherlock Holmes house,” Jonathan used to call it when they were debating against another in Fontainebleau. “I still prefer the Sherlock Holmes house,” Jonathan remembered saying once. The house had an 1890 air, suggestive of gaslights and polished banisters, though none of the wood anywhere had been polished when they moved in. The house had looked as if it could be made into something with turn-of-the-century charm, however. The rooms were small but interestingly arranged, the garden a rectangular patch full of wildly overgrown rosebushes, but at least the rosebushes were there, and all the garden had needed was a clearing out. And the scalloped glass portico over the back steps, its little glass-enclosed porch, had made Jonathan think of Vuillard, Bonnard. Now it struck Jonathan that five years of occupancy hadn’t really defeated the gloom. New wallpaper would brighten the bedroom, yes, but that was only one room. The house wasn’t yet paid for: they had three more years to go on the mortgage. An apartment such as they’d had in the first year of their marriage would have been cheaper, but Simone was used to a house with a bit of garden—she’d had a garden all her life in Nemours—and as an Englishman, Jonathan liked a bit of garden, too. He had never regretted that the house took such a hunk of their income.
What Jonathan was thinking of as he climbed the front steps was not so much the remaining mortgage but the fact that he was probably going to die in this house. More than likely, he would never know another, more cheerful house with Simone. He was thinking that the Sherlock Holmes house had been standing for decades before he had been born, and that it would stand for decades after his death. It had been his fate to choose this house, he felt. One day they would carry him out feet first, maybe still alive but dying, and he would never enter the house again.
To Jonathan’s surprise, Simone was in the kitchen playing some kind of card game with Georges. She looked up, smiling; then Jonathan saw her remember: the Paris laboratory this afternoon. He had told her he was going to call, to try to speak to Moussu again. But she couldn’t mention that in front of Georges.
“The old creep closed early today,” Simone said. “No business.”
“Good!” Jonathan said brightly. “What goes on in this gambling den?”
“I’m winning!” Georges said in French.
Simone got up and followed Jonathan into the hall as he hung his raincoat. She looked at him inquiringly.
“Nothing to worry about,” Jonathan said, but she beckoned him farther down the hall to the living room. “It seems to be a trifle worse, but I don’t feel worse, so what the hell? I’m sick of it. Let’s have a Cinzano.”
“You were worried because of that story, weren’t you, Jon?” “Yes. That’s true.”
“I wish I knew who started it.” Her eyes narrowed bitterly. “It’s a nasty story. Gauthier never told you who said it?”
“No. As Gauthier said, there was some mistake somewhere, some kind of exaggeration.” Jonathan was repeating what he had said to Simone before. But he knew it was no mistake, that it was a quite calculated story.
5
Jonathan stood at the first floor bedroom window, watching Simone hang the wash on the garden line. There were pillowcases, Georges’s sleep suits, a dozen pairs of Georges’s and Jonathan’s socks, two white nightdresses, bras, Jonathan’s beige work trousers—everything except sheets, which Simone sent to the laundry, because well-ironed sheets were important to her. Simone wore tweed slacks and a thin red sweater that clung to her body. Her back looked strong and supple as she bent over the big oval basket, pegging out dishcloths now It was a fine, sunny morning with a hint of summer in the breeze.
Jonathan had wriggled out of going to Nemours to have lunch with Simone’s parents, the Foussadiers. He and Simone went every other Sunday as a rule. Unless Simone’s brother Gérard fetched them, they took the bus to Nemours. Then, at the Foussadiers’ house, they had a big lunch with Gérard and his wife and two children, who also lived in Nemours. Simone’s parents always made a fuss over Georges, always had a present for him. Around three, Simone’s father, Jean-Noёl, would turn on the TV. Jonathan was frequently bored, but he went with Simone because it was the correct thing to do, and because he respected the closeness of French families.
“Do you feel all right?” Simone had asked when Jonathan had begged off.
“Yes, darling. It’s just that I’m not in the mood today, and I’d also like to get that patch ready for the tomatoes. So why don’t you go with Georges?”
So Simone
and Georges went on the bus at noon. Simone had put the remains of a boeuf bourguignon into a small red casserole on the stove, and all Jonathan had to do was heat it when he felt hungry.
Jonathan had wanted to be alone. He was thinking about the mysterious Stephen Wister and his proposal. Jonathan was very much aware that Wister was still there, at L’Aigle Noir, not three hundred yards away. He certainly had no intention of getting in touch with Wister, though the idea was curiously exciting and disturbing, a bolt from the blue, a shaft of color in his uneventful existence, and he wanted to observe it—to enjoy it, in a sense. Jonathan also had the feeling (it had been proved quite often) that Simone could read his thoughts, or at least knew when something was preoccupying him. If he appeared absentminded that Sunday, he didn’t want Simone to notice it and ask him what was the matter. So Jonathan gardened with a will, and daydreamed. He thought of forty thousand pounds, a sum which meant the mortgage could be paid off at once, a couple of installment items taken care of, the interior of their house painted where it needed it, a television set acquired, a nest egg put aside for Georges’s university, a few new clothes for Simone and himself—ah, mental ease! Simply freedom from anxiety! He thought of one—maybe two Mafia figures—burly, dark-haired thugs exploding in death, arms flailing, their bodies falling. What Jonathan was incapable of imagining, as his spade sank into the earth of his garden, was himself pulling a trigger, having aimed a gun at a man’s back, perhaps. More interesting, more mysterious, more dangerous was how Wister had got hold of his name. There was a plot against him in Fontainebleau, and it had somehow got to Hamburg. Impossible that Wister had him mixed up with someone else, because even Wister had spoken of his illness, of his wife and small son. Someone, Jonathan thought, whom he considered a friend, or at least a friendly acquaintance, was not friendly at all toward him.
Wister would probably leave Fontainebleau around five this afternoon, Jonathan thought. By three, Jonathan had eaten his lunch, and had tidied up papers and old receipts in the catchall drawer of the round table in the center of the living room. Then—he was happily aware that he was not tired at all—he tackled with broom and dustpan the exterior of the pipes and the floor around their oil furnace.
A little after five, as Jonathan was scrubbing soot from his hands at the kitchen sink, Simone arrived with Georges, her brother Gerard, and his wife Yvonne, and they all had a drink in the kitchen. Georges had been presented by his grandparents with a round box of Easter goodies, including an egg wrapped in gold foil, a chocolate rabbit, and colored gumdrops—all under yellow cellophane and as yet unopened because Simone had forbade him to open it, in view of the other sweets he had eaten in Nemours. Georges went with the Foussadier children into the garden.
“Don’t step on the soft part, Georges!” Jonathan shouted. He had raked the turned ground smooth, but left the pebbles for Georges to pick up. Georges would probably get his two friends to help him fill the red wagon. Jonathan gave him fifty centimes for a wagonful of pebbles—not ever full, but full enough to cover the bottom.
It was starting to rain. Jonathan had brought the laundry in a few minutes ago.
“The garden looks marvelous!” Simone said. “Look, Gérard!” She beckoned her brother onto the little back porch.
By now, Jonathan thought, Wister was probably on a train from Fontainebleau to Paris, or maybe he’d taken a taxi from Fontainebleau to Orly, considering the money he seemed to have. Maybe he was already in the air, en route to Hamburg. Simone’s presence, the voices of Gerard and Yvonne seemed to erase Wister from the Hotel de L’Aigle Noir, seemed to turn Wister almost into a quirk of Jonathan’s imagination. Jonathan felt a mild triumph in the fact that he had not telephoned Wister, as if by not telephoning him he had successfully resisted some kind of temptation.
Gérard Foussadier, an electrician, was a neat, serious man a little older than Simone, with fairer hair than hers, and a carefully clipped brown mustache. His hobby was naval history, and he made model nineteenth-century and eighteenth-century frigates in which he installed miniature electric lights that he could put completely or partially on by a switch in his living room. Gérard himself laughed at the anachronism of electric lights in his frigates, but the effect was beautiful when all the other lights in the house were turned out and eight or ten ships seemed to be sailing on a dark sea around the living room.
“Simone said you were a little worried—as to your health, Jon,” Gérard said earnestly. “I am sorry.”
“Not particularly. Just another checkup,” Jonathan said. “The report’s about the same.” Jonathan was used to these clichés, which were like saying, “Very well, thank you,” when someone asked you how you felt. What Jonathan said seemed to satisfy Gerard, so evidently Simone had not said much.
Yvonne and Simone were talking about linoleum. The kitchen linoleum was wearing out in front of the stove and the sink. It hadn’t been new when they bought the house.
“You’re really feeling all right, darling?” Simone asked Jonathan when the Foussadiers had left.
“Better than all right. I even attacked the boiler room. The soot.” Jonathan smiled.
“You are mad. … Tonight you’ll have a decent dinner, at least. Mama insisted that I bring home three paupiettes from lunch and they’re delicious!”
Then close to eleven, as they were about to go to bed, Jonathan felt a sudden depression, as if his legs, his whole body had sunk into something viscous, as if he were walking hip-deep in mud. Was he simply tired? But it seemed more mental than physical. He was glad when the light was turned out, when he could relax with his arms around Simone, her arms around him, as they always lay when they fell asleep. He thought of Stephen Wister (was that his real name?) maybe flying eastward now, his thin figure stretched out in an airplane seat. Jonathan imagined Wister’s face with the pinkish scar, puzzled, tense; but Wister would no longer be thinking of Jonathan Trevanny. He’d be thinking of someone else. He must have two or three more prospects, Jonathan thought.
The morning was chill and foggy. Just after eight, Simone went off with Georges to the École Maternelle, and Jonathan stood in the kitchen, warming his fingers on a second bowl of cafe au lait. The heating system wasn’t adequate. They’d got rather uncomfortably through another winter, and even now in spring the house was chilly in the morning. The furnace had been in the house when they bought it, adequate for the five radiators downstairs, but not for the other five upstairs which they had hopefully installed. They’d been warned, Jonathan remembered, but a bigger furnace would have cost three thousand new francs, and they hadn’t had the money.
Three letters had fallen through the slot in the front door. One was an electricity bill. Jonathan turned a square white envelope over and saw “Hôtel de L’Aigle Noir” on its back. He opened the envelope. A business card fell out and dropped. Jonathan picked it up and read “Stephen Wister chez,” which had been written above:
REEVES MINOT
159 AGNESSTRASSE
WINTERHUDE (ALSTER)
HAMBURG 56
629-6757
There was also a letter.
April 1st
Dear Mr. Trevanny,
I was sorry not to hear from you this morning, or so far this afternoon. In case you change your mind, I enclose a card with my address in Hamburg. If you have second thoughts about my proposition, please telephone me collect at any hour. Or come to talk to me in Hamburg. Your round-trip transportation can be wired to you at once if I hear from you. In fact, wouldn’t it be a good idea to see a Hamburg specialist about your blood condition and get another opinion? This might make you feel more comfortable.
I am returning to Hamburg Sunday night.
Yours sincerely,
Stephen Wister
Jonathan was surprised, amused, annoyed all at once. More comfortable. That was a bit funny, since Wister was sure he was going to die soon. If a Hamburg specialist said, “Ach, ja, you have just one or two more months,” would that make him feel more
comfortable? Jonathan pushed the letter and the card into a back pocket of his trousers. A return trip to Hamburg gratis. Wister was thinking of every enticement. Interesting that he’d sent the letter Saturday afternoon, so that he would receive it early Monday, though Jonathan might have rung him at any time Sunday. There was no mailbox collection on Sunday.
It was 8:52 A.M. Jonathan thought of what he had to do. He needed more mat paper from a firm in Melun. There were at least two clients he should write a postcard to, because their pictures had been ready for more than a week. Jonathan usually went to his shop on Mondays and spent his time doing odds and ends, though the shop was not open since it was against French law to be open six days a week.
Jonathan got to his shop at nine-fifteen, drew the green shade of the door, and locked the door again, leaving the FERMÉ sign on it. He puttered about, still thinking about Hamburg. The opinion of a German specialist might be a good thing. Suppose he accepted Wister’s offer of a round trip? (Jonathan was copying an address onto a postcard.) But then he’d be beholden to Wister. Jonathan realized he was toying with the idea of killing someone for Wister—not for Wister, but for the money. A Mafia member. They were all criminals themselves, weren’t they? Of course, Jonathan reminded himself, he could always pay Wister back if he accepted his round-trip fare. The point was, Jonathan couldn’t pay for the trip himself just now; there wasn’t enough money in the bank. If he really wanted to make sure of his condition, Germany (or Switzerland, for that matter) could tell him. They still had the best doctors in the world, hadn’t they? Jonathan put the card of the paper supplier of Melun beside his telephone to remind him to call tomorrow, because the paper place wasn’t open today either. And who knew, mightn’t Stephen Wister’s proposal be feasible? For an instant, Jonathan saw himself blown to bits by the crossfire of German police officers: they’d caught him just after he fired on the Italian. But even if he was dead, Simone and Georges would get the forty thousand quid. Jonathan came back to reality. He wasn’t going to kill anybody, no. But Hamburg—going to Hamburg seemed a lark, a break, even if he learned some bad news. He’d learn facts, anyway. And if Wister paid now, Jonathan could pay him back in a matter of three months, if he scrimped, didn’t buy any clothes—not even a beer in a café. Jonathan rather dreaded telling Simone, though she’d agree, of course, since it had to do with seeing another doctor, presumably an excellent doctor. The scrimping would come out of Jonathan’s own pocket.