Another night in the hotel. I spent it in a fitful sleep, eyes closed but mind spinning like a motor. I woke famished – I hadn’t eaten since the previous morning. I headed out with my suitcase to find some food, into another morning of golden fog laced with the sting of petroleum. The rumble of distant artillery was louder than the previous evening’s. Outside the locked gate of the Gare de l’Est, an old toothless woman sold me a boiled potato, ungarnished. A vendor standing nearby was selling a newspaper I’d never seen before, L’Édition parisienne de guerre. I bought a copy. Retreat, panic – finally the headlines were coinciding with reality. It was almost eight o’clock – two hours until my appointment.
I walked down a hushed Boulevard de Strasbourg, rendered sepia by the smoke; it was as if I’d stepped into a Marville daguerreotype. Remembering the singer’s words of the previous night, I looked around to see if I was being followed. A figure in a black hat and cape, possibly a priest, was half a block behind me. I turned left into the Passage du Désir as far as the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Martin. Every shop was locked and shuttered. I turned south again as far as the Passage Brady. The man in the black cape was nowhere to be seen. It occurred to me that I might thread together all the arcades on the way to Saint-Eustache – a good way to kill time and shake a tail.
I crossed the street diagonally into the Passage de l’Industrie and looked over my shoulder; my heart skipped a beat. There, stepping into the Passage Brady, was the figure in black. Was it just coincidence? I waited to see if he would reappear, but there was no further sign of him. I hurried on, left into the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis, left again into the Passage du Prado, following its rightward turn until I emerged next to the Porte Saint-Denis, where the walls of the old city had stood in the time of Louis XIV. I pressed onward, sweating now in the morning heat, shoulders aching from carrying my suitcase, threading together the Passages Lemoine and Ponceau, dedicated almost entirely to Jewish textile merchants; next was Passage du Caire, the longest of them all; I turned back at Réaumur to Passage Basfour and Passage de la Trinité, hardly arcades so much as back alleys with their usual ammoniac stench; down to the neighbourly Passage de l’Ancre; and finally through the stately Passages du Bourg l’Abbé and du Grand-Cerf, two of the finest arcades in the city, more luminous than ever in the golden light streaming through their glass roofs. The few passers-by I came across seemed dumbstruck, walking as if underwater.
At the approach of ten o’clock I made my way to Saint-Eustache, quite sure that, if I’d been followed by the man in black, I had by now long since lost him. The mid-morning heat was becoming oppressive. It would soon rain. I stepped into the church as into a great cool grotto. Its interior was more sombre than usual. The recesses of the stained-glass windows had been filled in with sandbags to guard against a bombardment that had never come. Flickering candles were the only light, and it took a few moments to adjust. I approached the altar. Every little sound, every footfall, echoed in the silence. Finally I spotted the widow, dressed in black weeds, her face veiled, kneeling in prayer in the front pew. I slumped into the pew behind her, overcome by exhaustion. A headache was sprouting behind my eyes. After a few moments, the widow stood and left the church. As I stepped outside, the sunlight blinded me. I took my suitcase and followed her from a discreet distance towards the slums of Beaubourg. She turned into Rue Quincampoix and then into an antiquaire on the corner. The shop’s shutters were drawn almost completely shut. The jiggle of a bell above the door announced my entrance. In the shadows at the back of the shop, I saw an open doorway and a stairwell behind it. I climbed it to the first floor into a room as full of antiques as the shop below. There was no sign of the widow. I thought I’d been left alone until I heard the rustle of a body beside mine. I turned and there was the widow, lifting her veil to reveal the face it had hidden, the face of Madeleine. She approached me without saying a word, curled her arms around my neck and kissed me with trembling lips.
‘I’d given up on ever seeing you again,’ she said.
‘Why did you leave?’ I said, kissing her neck, drinking in the scent of sandalwood.
‘Because you didn’t believe me.’
‘Do I need to believe you to love you?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, darling. You must.’
We spent several hours lying side by side on an antique divan in the upper room of that little antique store, among Savonnerie carpets, Louis XV clocks, Pompeiian lamps, armchairs resting on feet of bronze sphinxes, porcelain japonaiseries encased behind pearwood vitrines, and candelabras that on closer inspection turned out to be coiled snakes.
‘I want to try again,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘Crossing.’
Madeleine hesitated. ‘You want certainty. You want to be free of doubt. But even if we cross, it won’t be enough. You’ll never be certain. It’s in your nature to doubt.’
‘I need to try. I need to be sure.’
‘Not yet. You need to rest. Your mind is racing. You’ll get distracted.’
‘How can I sleep when you are here beside me?’
‘Here’s how,’ she said, and kissed me again.
I opened my eyes and there she was, lying next to me on the divan with one leg curled across my body, her head propped up on an elbow, looking down at my face, stroking my cheek with the back of her fingers. Other than a lamp lit in a corner of the room, it was dark.
‘What happened?’
‘You fell asleep.’
‘Why didn’t you wake me up?’
‘I tried, but you were so tired, you wouldn’t be woken.’
‘What time is it?’
She looked up. There were several clocks in the room. ‘Four.’ She lowered her head onto my chest.
‘So why is it so dark?’
‘It’s four in the morning. Thursday morning.’
‘Four in the morning! How long was I asleep?’
‘Eleven, maybe twelve hours.’
‘Well, at least I wasn’t woken by a nightmare.’ I stroked her hair for a while until she raised her head.
‘I want you to look into my eyes without getting distracted,’ she said. ‘Do you think you can manage that?’ I nodded, searching out her lips to kiss. ‘That means no kissing,’ she smiled, pulling her head away.
‘All right.’
‘All that is required is the willing suspension of disbelief.’
There was something in her gaze that had not been there previously, a kind of openness. I returned it without equivocation, keeping my eyes locked on hers until they were the only thing I saw, those bottomless wells of love and sadness. We held that gaze without moving or speaking, losing all sense of time. Gradually, I began to feel germinating in me a tingle of joy that continued to blossom, spreading over my entire being until I felt myself starting to dissolve like an aspirin effervescing in a glass of water, as if every part of me that was solid matter was dissipating into the air, only instead of becoming nothing I was becoming something else, something rarefied and euphoric, pure existence. Every time my mind wavered, every time doubt threatened to puncture the precarious perfection of the moment, I nudged it back into that space of pure existence. At the very instant I seemed to have finally passed through the threshold of that purity, it began to recede, or perhaps it was I who began to recede, moving back into corporeality, contracting, solidifying, materialising, until I was once again peering into a pair of eyes, only they weren’t the dark eyes I’d been looking into moments ago but the ocean-grey eyes I’d been staring at in the mirror all my life. It was my own face I was now looking into, my own eyes, and this face of mine was looking back at me. This face leaned towards me and I felt my own lips, which were no longer my lips but another’s, brushing against my new lips, embracing with this new mouth, and the stubble of that other face, which was after all my own stubble, bristled against my soft new skin. The moistness of my old tongue flickered against that of my new tongue. Both bodies, the former and the current, the old and
the new, took up that familiar rhythm, the gift and receipt of love, except that nothing was familiar, every sensation was novel and strange. I felt a presence entering me where once I would have entered. Tendrils of shuddering pleasure extended throughout this new body of mine from one end to the other, over and again, as we explored the limits of our bodies, until the body that had been mine for so long came to the natural resolution of its efforts and collapsed upon me, and deep inside I felt it release the expression of itself. We lay next to each other for some time, breaths intermingling, lulled into blissful rest, the light coming through the shuttered window brightening as a new day dawned. Then, looking into each other’s eyes again, we began the journey in the opposite direction.
When we had returned to the point of departure, Madeleine roused herself and sat up. ‘Now you know how it’s done,’ she said, slipping on my shirt just as she had in my apartment. She walked to the window and swung the shutters open, letting in a waft of cool morning air. She leaned out and studied the sky. ‘It’s going to rain.’ She turned and took the packet of cigarettes, lighting one.
‘Why am I able to remember everything?’
‘Because I made sure of it.’
‘Can I do that?’
She sighed. ‘No. I wish you could. But you can’t. That’s why you need to write all of this down. You need proof. Evidence. Will you do that?’
I nodded.
‘Promise?’
‘I promise.’
‘You must be hungry,’ she said. ‘You haven’t eaten since yesterday morning.’ She disappeared for a moment, and naturally my first thought, upon being alone, was to wonder at what had just occurred. Something had happened – of that there was no doubt. I was even willing to call it a crossing. But what precisely was it? Had I been tricked somehow – or had I tricked myself? Was it possible for a mind to deceive itself thus? To be so malleable, so suggestible? I sighed. Madeleine had been right: I had my answer, but – just as she’d foretold – it wasn’t enough: my doubts were still niggling away at me, pushing me to know more, to understand, to be sure. But about love she had been wrong. I didn’t need to believe her to love her. I loved her now more than ever. That was an illusion about which I had not a shred of doubt.
She returned with a glass of water and a bowl full of black cherries. ‘It was all they were selling at the market.’ I drank the water all at once and began devouring the cherries, the sweet dark juice exploding in my mouth with every bite.
‘What happened with Chanel?’
‘I went to see her,’ I said between mouthfuls, ‘just as you asked. I couldn’t . . .’
‘I know.’
‘I had her, in a room, with the gun in my hand . . .’ I raised my hand as if it were holding a gun. ‘But a gun without a bullet . . .’ My fingers squeezed an imaginary trigger.
‘I know.’ She looked away. ‘Where’s the gun now?’
‘Massu has it.’
‘Who’s that?’
‘He’s with the police – the Brigade Spéciale at the Quai des Orfèvres. He knows about Chanel. He’s been keeping an eye on her for years. And he knows the tale of the albatross – although don’t worry, he doesn’t know anything about you. But he could be a friend for you, if you ever need one. It’s always useful to have a policeman for a friend. Just tell him I sent you. Tell him you know how the story ends.’
‘I will.’
‘And the nightclub?’ I asked.
‘What about it?’
‘Is that where you went, every night, when we were together?’
‘Yes. I worked there. Lately it has become too dangerous.’
‘And the singer – do you love her?’
Right on cue, there was a knock at the door downstairs – two loud knocks followed by three softer, quicker ones. Madeleine rushed to the window and leaned out. ‘That’s her now.’ She scurried down the stairs and opened the door. I heard the two of them murmur a few minutes before Madeleine returned alone, holding a boltcutter. She went to an armoire, pulled open a drawer and took out a bundle of banknotes.
‘There’s a train departing the Gare d’Austerlitz in a little under an hour,’ she said, approaching me and pressing the money and boltcutter into my hands. ‘If we hurry we can make it.’
We walked through a drifting golden fog towards the Île de la Cité. The rumble of battle was very near now, punctuated by the occasional explosions of suburban petrol depots. Along the way we saw stray dogs and cats, freed by their fleeing owners and scrounging for food. We even saw a cow that must have wandered into town from the suburbs in search of pasture. At the Quai de la Tournelle, we stopped at Vennet’s bookstall. While Madeleine stood watch, I took the boltcutter. I was about to clamp its jaws around the lock when from around a corner appeared a mounted Republican Guard. Madeleine slid between me and the boltcutter, threw her arms around my neck and kissed me until the horse had passed, as if Paris were still a city where two lovers might embrace by the river. With my arms reaching around her, I squeezed the handles of the boltcutter and felt the lock give way. When the mounted policeman had disappeared, we opened the green wooden lid of the stall.
There it was, the leather satchel Vennet had been carrying as he ambled away from the auction house towards his own demise, not so long ago. I looked inside and gushed with relief to see the slim red leather volume with the words embossed in gold: The Education of a Monster, Ch. Baudelaire. We set off again in the direction of the station.
As we reached the Gare d’Austerlitz, the first drops of rain fell from the orange sky. The station’s entrance gate was locked, and refugees were camped on the pavement. Taking a train ticket out of her purse, Madeleine spoke to a guard, who opened the gate for us. Inside, there were few people and even fewer signs of the tumult that, until yesterday, had reigned for weeks here. The only clue to that time of panic was the litter strewn across the lobby: a stray sock, a teaspoon, cigarette butts, a sheet of yellowing newsprint flapping in the breeze. It would be swept up before the end of the day and every trace of the great exodus would soon be erased. We walked past shuttered ticket counters onto a concourse strewn with more such detritus. Under the roof above, several canaries and parakeets were flying to and fro, enjoying the freedom granted by their departing owners. And on the furthest platform a locomotive to which several carriages were attached was hissing. I lunged forward, one hand carrying my suitcase, the other hand holding Madeleine’s, but then I felt her slip away. I turned to her. She was wearing the same dress she’d worn when we first met – the black one with the prints of red hibiscus.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘You have to go without me,’ she said. ‘I can’t leave Paris.’
‘But I can’t leave without you.’
‘For you to remain would be suicide. But I must stay.’
I remembered the singer’s words at the nightclub. ‘Does this have something to do with . . .?’ I couldn’t finish the sentence.
‘With Chanel? Of course. I must stay close to her. I am responsible for her, in a way. I have to follow her, watch her. I have to make sure she doesn’t do any more harm.’
‘You’ve done everything you can.’
‘And it hasn’t been enough. I have to finish what I started. It’s my duty. To make up for breaking the Law. She’s . . . my twin, my destiny.’
‘I can’t leave you behind.’
‘You must. You must get away. You must write down everything you know about crossing – everything I’ve told you, everything you’ve lived through yourself, and the manuscript too, you must include that. Make a book, a book about the crossing, a book that will remind you of who you are when you have forgotten. Once you’ve done that, you must make a crossing yourself. Then, when the war is over, when Paris is free once more, come find me. I’ll be waiting.’
She who had been so close to me only moments ago was now unreachably far away. Perhaps sensing my despair, Madeleine closed her eyes, threw her arms around my neck and kissed me repeat
edly on my lips, my cheeks, my neck. ‘Promise me you’ll write it all down. Promise me you won’t forget.’
‘I promise,’ I said, in between kisses that tasted of sandalwood. I remembered something I’d been meaning to tell her. ‘There’s something you ought to know about Chanel – she knows your name.’
‘How do you know?’
‘She let it slip when we spoke.’
‘Did you tell her?’
‘Of course not.’
‘What about your name?’
‘As far as she knows, my name is Arthur Koestler.’
‘Who’s that?’
‘My old neighbour.’ Madeleine nodded. I looked at her, drinking in her face, her mouth, her eyes. ‘When will I see you again?’
‘If not in this life, then in the next.’ We kissed one last, lingering time, until the shriek of a locomotive whistle shattered our union. She pulled back and her eyes were brimming over with tears. ‘You must go,’ she said, as I took a handkerchief from my jacket pocket and wiped her eyes dry.
‘Where will I find you?’
‘In the cemetery, darling. I’ll be visiting Baudelaire’s grave every day, waiting for you.’
The locomotive shrieked again. I looked around. The platform was deserted other than a conductor waving at us to hurry. We ran to the furthest platform, the only stragglers, and reached it just as the train shuddered to life and began to creep forward. I stepped onto the railing with my black suitcase in hand and the leather satchel slung over my shoulder and turned to wave goodbye. She stood perfectly still, with her hands clasped in front of her. I waved until she was no more than a smudge of black and red in the distance, and then, reluctantly, I turned to go inside.
The train was only half-full. Most of the passengers were well-dressed men – government officials, I suspected, railways administrators, perhaps, maybe some diplomats from countries hostile to the Germans, no doubt a sprinkling of spies among them, and a few of their wives, all making a last-minute exit on the last train to leave a free Paris. I did not speak to anyone for fear of betraying my accent. As the train made its way through the southern suburbs, the dusty window was streaked with thick, oily orange raindrops.
Crossings Page 13