Hamilton, Donald - Novel 01 (18 page)

HE
WAITED UNTIL they shone the light on him from only a few feet away before he
admitted to being aware of their presence by sitting up abruptly, clutching the
coat as it threatened to slip off to the floor.

     
"Where is Paul?" Madame
Faubel's
voice demanded.

     
Branch swung his feet to the floor. After
a moment he looked up, squinting at the light. "How the hell would I
know?" he demanded uneasily. "We haven't seen him around here since
..." He stood up, looking about him in the darkness made darker by the
concentrated illumination of the flashlight. "All right," he said mildly.
"All right, where is she?"

     
"We were about to ask you," Mr.
Hahn said.

     
"I thought she was sitting in that
chair," Branch said.
"Seems I was mistaken.
She was there when I turned in." He grinned at the flashlight. "Maybe
they went off together, eh?"

     
A hand came out of the darkness and struck
him across the mouth.

     
"Paul wouldn't
... !
"
said Madame
Faubel's
voice sharply.

     
Branch licked his lips. "Hell he
wouldn't. He was ripe for taking her pants down when you stopped him upstairs.
You know damned well he was, or you wouldn't have told him to take a walk and
cool off."

     
"He wouldn't desert," the
woman's voice said. "He wouldn't betray us for a ..."

     
"As to that," Branch said.
"I wouldn't know." He grimaced at the light. "Do you have to
shine that thing
... ?"

     
Mr. Hahn's voice said, "What makes
you think
... ?"

     
"I don't think," Branch said
viciously. "According to you they're both missing. I merely suggested they
could have left together. For all I know you've got her upstairs with him
beating on her again."

     
A second flashlight joined the first, and
Madame
Faubel's
voice said. "Look around,
Georges. I do not like this."

     
Branch watched Mr. Hahn's flashlight move
away and called after it, "Watch out she doesn't pop out of the
w.c
. and brain you."

     
"The window is open." The
flashlight returned. "She tore her coat on the catch, climbing out,"
the chinless man said, displaying the scrap of fur.

     
"Paul must have heard her and
followed her," the woman said. "I hope he doesn't ..." Her voice
trailed off uneasily.

     
"What do you care?" Mr. Hahn
demanded. "Remember
Constance
."

     
The woman turned angrily.
"Nevertheless, I am in charge here, and I do not approve of..."

     
"Paul is Paul," Mr. Hahn said.
"I, for mine, hope he does. And strips her and makes her run naked and
barefooted through the woods, whipping her with a switch when she does not run
fast enough. I saw too many of their arrogant, well-fed women while I was
starving."

The
woman was silent, indicating displeasure by her silence. At last she said,
"Well, there is nothing we can do about it now. Let us take this one
upstairs where we can keep an eye on him."

     
It was cold in the living room and Branch
put on his coat and cap and sat down on the couch. Two thick, short candles set
in saucers that did not match, burned on the mantelpiece. A blackened aluminum
coffeepot stood on the hearth inside the fireplace where a fire was dying into
coals. He rose and picked up the coffeepot; it was half full and still warm,
and he took a cup from the end table and filled it. Mr. Hahn seized his arm.
"That is my cup."

     
"That's all right," Branch said.
"I can stand it."

     
"It's all right, Georges," said
Madame
Faubel
. "It's all right. There are more
cups in the kitchen. In the name of God sit down and be quiet."

     
She put a log on the fire and stirred with
the poker until flames began to lick at the rough bark; then sat down, pulling
her chair into the circle of heat, and rubbed her gloved hands together,
shivering. The chinless man seated himself in the other chair. Branch set the
cup and saucer down on the arm of the davenport and began to brush at the
cellar dust that mottled his uniform and raincoat.

     
"Sit down," said the woman
savagely. "Sit down! Be quiet. You make me nervous."

     
He sat down on the davenport and sipped
his coffee. He felt dirty and unshaven and uncombed. The coffee was lukewarm
and had suffered from being reheated. He swallowed it quickly, as if it were
medicine, and swung his legs to the davenport and lay back, tipping his cap
over his eyes to shield them from the candlelight. He could hear the small
crackling of die fire feeding on the new log, and feel the warmth of it against
his side.

     
His feet were jerked off the davenport
with enough violence that his body followed them to the floor. He sat up,
groping for his cap, and looked up at the woman. Out of the corner of his eye
he could see Mr. Hahn toying with the inevitable gun. It seemed to him they had
taken long enough to get around to it.

     
"Why did you not escape, also?"
the woman demanded. "Why did you stay behind?" She kicked him in the
hip. "Answer me!"

     
He seized the cushions of the sofa and
clawed himself up and away from the woman.

     
"Because I like it here," he
said angrily. "I've always loved the French.
Such a
polite and gentle nation."
He started to ward off her hand as she
slapped him, but thought better of it and felt the sting of the blow on his
cheek. "Why the hell do you think?" he cried, moving forward.
"Do you think I wouldn't have followed the bitch if I'd known what she was
doing?"

     
"Why would she leave you?" the
woman demanded. "Why would she go alone?"

     
"Goddamn it, how would I know?"
Branch shouted. "She didn't wake me up to tell me!"

     
The woman's eyes watched him warily from
her drawn pale face, around which the gray hair, under the hat she still wore,
had loosened to hang in wisps down her cheeks.

     
"I do not think you are the fool you
pretend to be, Mr. Branch," she said softly.

     
"I don't have to pretend,"
Branch sneered at
himself
. "It comes natural to
me."

     
The woman went on, heedless of the
interruption, "And I am not at all certain that you are either a coward or
a traitor. When we were questioning you, last night, you were commendably
stubborn; and I have all day been admiring the way you disregard the pain of
your feet. You came here unarmed...." She sat down on the davenport,
watching him. "And yet we are to believe that rather than face a little of
Paul's treatment you would compromise your pride and stubbornness and agree to
take us in the boat...."

     
"Don't be silly," Branch said.

     
She looked at him sharply.

     
He said, "He had twisted her arm and
hurt her dignity. By God, her dignity! I came here expecting to find her
hanging by the thumbs with her back whipped to ribbons or something similar;
and she has a run in her stocking! Me with my feet blistered up, I'm supposed
to worry about her dignity; and then to watch her quit after two minutes of no
worse than you'd get in a game of sandlot football. After that, I should get
myself beat up?" He laughed harshly. "Listen," he said, "I
was in love with the bitch. Last night I would have done anything for
her...."

     
The last sentence remained in the room,
like a sour note, and, writhing inwardly at the mistake, he watched the woman
seize on the thought and turn it over in her mind, but it was Mr. Hahn who
spoke:

     
"Then why
woukl
you not run the boat for her? Parks said
..
."

     
"I couldn't do that," Branch
said flatly. "Don't you see I couldn't do that?"

     
"You were in love with her, you
said," the woman murmured. "You would have done anything for her. And
you are running it for us."

     
"Don't you see?" Branch pleaded,
turning to face her. "You're on the right side. She isn't. And I'm an
officer in the U.S. Navy. I wouldn't have done it for you if she'd shown a
little
guts
, because I was in love with her, but I
couldn't do it for her because of this damned uniform. Don't think I didn't
want to, but I couldn't."

     
Madame
Faubel
smiled thinly. "You are trying to make us believe that your navy would
like for you to
... ?"

     
"The hell with what they like,"
Branch said irritably. "I'll probably be court-martialed for it if we get
caught. But then I'll be only an overzealous officer helping some enthusiastic
patriots catch a dirty collaborationist. It may be illegal, but it isn't
treason."

     
He turned and let himself down into the
chair the woman had vacated. His mouth was dry from talking and he wanted
another cup of coffee. He wanted to busy his hands with his pipe. But it was
not a time for stage business. We stretched out his legs and watched the fire.

     
"In
New York
," the woman said
presently "You were not giving much thought to your uniform in
New York
." He glanced at her
wearily and remembered that she probably did not know about the pictures. It
was hard to keep the various elements separate in his mind.

     
"Ah, go to hell," he said.
"Nobody's going to tell me who I can sleep with."

     
Mr. Hahn said quickly, "I thought you
didn't know what she was until we told you on the train."

     
"You didn't tell me on the
train," Branch corrected him. "You told me she was married on the
train. You didn't tell me what it was all about until the night I made a pass
at Constance, and by that time I was so sick of the bunch of you that all I
wanted was to throw a wrench in your works."

     
To explain your behavior to other people
it was necessary to use simple words like love or hate. But it was not as
simple as that, you merely went on doing what was easiest or most pleasant until
something said stop, this is far enough in this direction; try again, bud, this
isn't quite right. Not until you were pushed into a corner did you really
bother to think out a course of action that satisfied all the strange little
tabus
and prohibitions that were half-buried in your
subconscious, and the sense of what was right and just that you never examined
too closely because, while it never seemed quite to correspond with what other
people thought right and just, it was yours and you were stuck with it, when
they finally got you pinned in a corner.
When the chips were
down.
When you had to decide what to do instead of
letting the decision make itself.
Then you found that this man that you
had never examined very closely was you, and he did not hate or love anybody in
particular, but he had this sense of what was equitable, and a feeling for what
ought to be and what ought not to be allowed; and you weren't particularly
impressed with his intelligence or the logic of his line of reasoning but he
was you and you were stuck with him. He had grown this way while you were not
looking, and now you were stuck with him, all right. Goddamn right you were.

     
"She didn't think I had acted
right," he said softly, bringing them back in a circle to the beginning
again. "That's why she went off without me, I suppose. She said that while
Paul was beating her I just stood by and watched as if it were a burlesque
show. She said I was a coward." He grinned at them savagely. "You're
a nice boy, Phillip, she said, it's too bad you're a coward. I said, you're
some little heroine yourself, darling."

     
After a little the woman asked, "Why
didn't you say you had quarreled? Instead
of ..
." Her voice was petulant with weariness.

     
"Why didn't you ask me?" Branch
interrupted. "I mean, why
didn't you
ask me
instead of starting to shove me around. You people are always doing that. As
far as I'm concerned, the only difference between you and the Gestapo is the
side you're on. If it wasn't that
somebody'd
fish you
out and make trouble for me I'd take you out in the bay and drown you."