A Tangled Web (46 page)

“You will not buy it, what are you thinking? It's yours, all of these are yours. You need not ask; take what you wish.”

“Thank you. Just this one. It makes me feel at home. That's where I'll hang it: in my own place.”

“Your own place?”

Still looking at the painting, Stephanie said, “I'm going to find a place to live in Cavaillon. I can't live with Max anymore.”

Léon drew in his breath. He turned her to him. “You're sure? You must not leave him because it is what I want.”

“You didn't tell me you wanted it.”

“No, of course not; how could I do that? I thought of it all weekend, but I knew it had to come from you. And you must be very sure, because you've lived with him and you feel loyal to him.”

“But I don't want to spend my life with him. I want to spend it with you.”

He studied her face, then sighed as if he had been holding his breath, and he kissed her, his mouth opening hers as his arms tightened. Stephanie felt their bodies fit together, shift and nestle in small adjustments until there was no space between them. She felt again the heat she had felt in the car, the dreamlike suspension, the brilliant colors exploding soundlessly around her. Heat and light
and colors were all inside her and enclosing her; she was open to everything, part of the hugeness of life. Her arms were around Léon, her hand on the back of his head as they kissed, and suddenly a fleeting image came, of a white hospital room and a fog of nothingness. But it vanished as soon as it had come: there was no room for it in what surged through her now: the unfathomable vivid wonder of loving and of being alive.

“We could delay lunch,” Léon murmured.

“Yes. Later.”

They moved together to the daybed in the corner and lay on it and took off each other's clothes, Stephanie's gauze skirt over bare legs and her sheer cotton blouse with a deep V neck, and Léon's duck pants and short-sleeved shirt. “Thank God for summer,” he said, “so little, and so easily removed.”

Stephanie laughed with the joy of their bodies touching. This time, with hours before them, they explored each other, tasted each other, learned the outlines of each other's body. Léon's hands, a painter's hands, moved over her body as if he were discovering and revealing her at the same time. And Stephanie's hands, which had learned to identify the carvings of antique furniture and jewelry by touch as well as by sight, curved around the muscles and bones and hollows of Léon's body, memorizing him, making him hers.

In the wash of white light that poured through the glass wall, every angle of their bodies was accentuated, every pore, every fine hair, every pale vein that pulsed beneath their touch. “This is what I am doing when I draw you,” Léon murmured, his mouth moving down Stephanie's body from her lips to her throat to her breasts. “I am kissing you and whispering to you and feeling the silk of your skin under my brush, and then”—he moved to lie on her—“I am inside you and you are pulling me deeper, making me one with you . . .”

A low laugh rippled in Stephanie's throat. “You can't do all that and go on drawing.”

“No. Which is why I am not drawing now.”

“I love you,” Stephanie said, and touched his face. And then their bodies moved together and spoke for them, and they were silent.

*  *  *

Max and Robert sat in the small motorboat, sharing sandwiches and a thermos of coffee. They could not make out each other's face in the faint light from the distant shore, but they talked casually, like good friends. The intense heat of the early evening had eased, and they sat back, in shirtsleeves and chino pants, breathing deeply of the fresh sea air.

“Thank you for being here,” Robert said. “I would have asked someone else, but my friend got sick so late, the time was getting short—”

“It's all right, Robert. You needed help and you knew I'd be here.”

“But you were on your way home.”

“I'll still go tonight; you know that. As soon as we've finished, we'll all drive back.”

“It's not difficult, you know, but it always goes more smoothly with two. So I do thank you, and so will Jana when she gets here; it is a great favor to both of us. Sabrina will be glad to see you; this has been a long trip, has it not?”

“Two weeks.”

“A long time away from her.”

“Too long. It's the damnedest thing: I think I go a little crazy without her. After a few days it gets hard to eat and sleep. I don't understand it; I act like a smitten adolescent.” He heard himself with surprise. It must be the darkness, he thought; otherwise I'd never have said that. But this is almost like talking to myself. And Robert is never judgmental. “Anyway, I won't leave her again. We may even go away.”

“You mean take a trip? No, that was not in your voice. What did you mean, Max?”

Max considered telling him, then decided against it. He
had changed some of his plans and made new ones in the two weeks just ended, so it was impossible that Denton or anyone else would know them, but still, the fewer who had any information at all—even including Robert—the safer he would feel. “I meant a trip. We haven't traveled together. Is that the freighter?”

“Ah. Yes. On time.”

They watched through binoculars as the freighter from Chile made its slow way toward them. “Five minutes,” Robert said. “Ten at the most.”

Max heard the tremor in his voice. “Why are you nervous? You just said it wasn't difficult. And you've done it often enough; it ought to be as simple as a game of croquet.”

“My friend, croquet is filled with snares for the unwary.”

“But you're not unwary.”

“No. And I'm not usually this nervous. I suppose it's because she's so small, almost like a child, and so I think of her as a child, as vulnerable as a child.”

“Robert, she's been teaching peasants how to fight for their rights in a country that tears people like her to pieces; she wanted to go there and you wouldn't have sent her if you'd thought she was as vulnerable as a child.”

“I know. But still, so small, in such a harsh world . . .”

“Which she thinks she can make better.”

“She is making it better. She knows that; they all do, all the young people who go off so bravely to wherever there is injustice. They all come from privileged families; have I told you that? They are wealthy, well educated, accustomed to luxury and the indulgences of a world that admires and rewards wealth more than poverty. But they find their way to me because they need something more, something they can point to and say, ‘I did this and in my own small way I made the world a better place.' ”

Max was silent, thinking of his life: smuggling and amassing wealth. The boat rocked gently; the freighter
was almost up to them. Robert leaned down and lit a lantern, shading it with his cap.

“And that is why you help me, my friend. So that you can say in the cold hours before dawn when all of us are most anxious about ourselves, ‘I did this and it helped Robert, who helps many others; in my own small way, I made the world a better place.' And now we must signal.” He looked back for a moment. “We're lined up with the last dock?”

“We're exactly where you wanted to be.”

“Then she will know where to look.”

He balanced the lantern on the gunwale of the boat and slid his cap across it and away, four times, then waited a moment and did it twice again. He and Max stowed the thermos and unfolded a large blanket. Robert repeated the signal with the lantern three times, and then they waited.

This was the first time Max had come with Robert to pick up one of the fugitives, though he knew of many of them, since they often hid in a Lacoste et fils crate when a piece of equipment was being returned to Marseilles. Max's people fitted the crate with a small amount of food and water, and evacuation bags, and when the freighter was at sea a bribed crew member would open it. Freighters always carried thirty or forty passengers—travelers willing to forgo the comforts of a regular sailing ship for a bargain price and whatever romance they found in traveling on a working freighter and eating with the captain and crew—and Robert's young people, staying quietly in the background, blended unobtrusively with them until, approaching France, it was time to rendezvous with Robert in his small boat.

But this night, as Robert handed Max the binoculars and then took them back to focus on the freighter, no figure slipped over the side; no one swam to them to be hauled into their boat and wrapped in the large blanket. Max took the binoculars from Robert, and when the freighter slid silently past and he turned to watch it, he saw uniformed men on the dock. “Something's wrong. We're going in.”

“A few more minutes.” Robert's voice trembled. “Give her a few more minutes.”

Max started the engine and kept it at a low idle while the freighter docked. He was furious. He was the one who bore all the risk: his company, his shipment, himself. “You're sure she left Chile?”

“I'm sure. I had a telephone call. You're right, Max, we must go in. My friend, don't be so angry yet. She may be hidden.”

“She damned well better be.” He revved the engine and swung the boat around. “What the hell made you think you could trust a girl to do something like this?”

“Max, she is a woman, not a girl, and of course I trust her. You yourself said she has been living a life of danger in a country where they tear people like her to pieces. Why should she not be successful as a stowaway?”

Max did not answer. They docked at the Lacoste et fils warehouse, and from there they went to a bar near the docked freighter. It was jammed with crews from freighters up and down the Marseilles dock, the air thick with cigarette smoke, the noise deafening. Robert, less noticeable and memorable than Max, slipped through the crowd, listening, asking questions. He returned to Max, who had bought two beers, and they found a place to lean against the wall. “Customs. They'll make a special search of the cargo. They choose at random; they chose this one. We have to—”

“They just happened to choose this one the night your girl is on board? How do we know they weren't tipped off?”

“We don't. But it would have had to come from Chile—”

“Or whomever they bribed on board.”

“Yes, but then they would be looking for a stowaway, and the police would be here. All they're talking about is a routine customs check. Well, not routine, but a more thorough one, and they do those often. At random. We have to think about—”

“Fuck it,” Max muttered.

“Max, this is not like you. You knew there was a risk; there's always been a risk, every time you've helped us bring someone out or in. Why is this night different from all other nights?”

“I don't know.”

But he did. He felt things were closing in. For the first time he wondered if going to Los Angeles was realistic, or Rio, or Buenos Aires, or anywhere else. Since October he had behaved as if he was living a normal life, married, working, relaxing in short car trips around Provence. Not hiding, not on the run. But it was all pretense. Nothing about his life was normal. He was not married, he was in hiding, and soon he would be on the run. He had brushed all that aside because he wanted what he wanted, and he had ignored reality.
Like a smitten adolescent.

Christ, he thought, I've got to get out of here.

And he meant all of it: Marseilles, Cavaillon, France, Europe.

While there was still time.

“We have to think about Jana,” Robert said. “But we have to know what they're planning. I'll be back.”

He made his way toward the bar again while Max stayed where he was, jostled by the crowd, watching through the swirling haze of smoke until two customs officers pushed into the room and fought their way to the bar. Robert stood near them, then motioned to Max to meet him outside.

“They're searching the cargo tomorrow; all they did tonight was stay with it until it was unloaded and locked in their warehouse. Max, she's in there, I know it. If we can get her out, no one will know. But of course the warehouse will be locked . . . and guarded.” He turned to look down the dock. “Do you know which one it is?”

“At the end. No, the other end, the farthest from mine. One entrance and one guard. We'd have to take care of him.”

Their eyes met. “I'll do that,” Robert said. “But first I need the key to your car.”

Max gave it to him. “I'll wait here.”

He walked around the corner and leaned against the wall, away from the entrance to the bar. When Robert returned, dressed in his cassock, his hair and beard neatly combed, Max's eyebrows rose. “This requires prayer?”

“My friend, prayer and clothing have nothing to do with each other. I have been praying since Jana failed to appear. But what I am going to do requires trust, and this garb inspires trust, even though, sadly, in this case it will be misplaced. Now, you will leave the guard to me and I will tell you when we are ready for the next step.”

Max put his hand on Robert's arm. “You'll be careful.”

“I try always to be careful. Thank you, Max, for your concern.”

They walked the length of the dock to a row of darkened warehouses, each with a lighted window beside the entrance. Robert went to the window, leaving Max behind. He pulled a bottle of cognac from beneath his cassock, took a drink, then struck the window with his knuckles and let himself fall just below it, flinging himself against the building.

The door swung wide and the guard stood in the opening. “Who's there?” He was short, with a broad chest and shoulders, hugely muscled arms and a paunch that hung over a wide belt. “What the hell . . . Father? Father, you shouldn't be here.”

“Just celebrating,” Robert said thickly. “Nothing wrong; just a little tired after all the celebrating.” He grinned at the guard. “Getting transferred to Paris.”