Midnight in Europe (6 page)

The French had a very sensible theory that the office and the dinner table should be kept separate, but Ferrar could not stop himself from going back over his meeting with Molina. He had seemed genial and forthcoming, but he was a diplomat and it was his job to seem so. What was the old joke? Ferrar had to reconstruct the logic but soon enough he had it right. “When a lady says ‘no’ she means ‘maybe.’ When a lady says ‘maybe’ she means ‘yes.’ But if a lady says ‘yes’ she’s no lady. When a diplomat says ‘yes’ he means ‘maybe.’ When a diplomat says ‘maybe’ he means ‘no.’ But if a diplomat says ‘no’ he’s no diplomat.” Ferrar wondered idly what it would be like to do what Molina did—would he be content with that kind of work? He took the last sip of wine in his glass and reached for the carafe. The woman in the black beret, he saw, was having an apple for dessert. Eyes on her magazine, she cut slices from the apple and ate them with her fingers. What was she, thirty-five? A little older? Small and fine-boned—
petite
was the word people used.

Suddenly she raised her head and caught him looking at her. She met his eyes, then, for a bare instant, an impish smile lit her face and she was gone, back to reading. Was that for him? No, she was just amused, it wasn’t flirtation.

What was he doing? Oh yes, pouring wine. The carafe was made of thick, heavy glass, he supposed it would last longer that way, used and washed and used again. Now he tried to be covert, had a brief glance at her, only to discover that she had beckoned
the waitress to her table. Was she asking for the check? Yes, only the apple core was left, she was done with dinner. The waitress acknowledged the request and turned away to get the check.
Oh well
. As Ferrar drank from his glass, the waitress stopped, the woman said something, the waitress answered, then hurried off.

Now what? Ferrar ate a bite of potato and waited for developments. And moments later the waitress returned with a coffee. The woman in the black beret had changed her mind, she would linger awhile over coffee. Ferrar didn’t want to get caught again and lowered his eyes. Lowered his eyes for a few seconds, then looked up. Now he’d caught
her
, peering at him over the cup as she drank. In a small face, large eyes, dark, with long lashes.
Like dogs’ eyes
, he thought.
What a compliment!
Mentally, he laughed at himself. But the silent laugh rose to the surface as a smile.

This time returned.

Ferrar had eaten most of his dinner, did he really want the rest? He signaled to the waitress and, when she came to the table, he looked at his watch, spread his hands in the
nothing to be done
position, and said,
“L’addition, s’il vous plaît.”

Ferrar paid the check, then bided his time. When the woman in the beret rose from her chair he could see all of her. She
was
petite—maybe two inches over five feet tall—but well shaped in a chocolate-brown wool dress cinched by a narrow belt. As she headed for the coat tree he followed her, arriving just as she took her overcoat off the peg. Ferrar, reaching for his coat, said, “Cold tonight, do you have a long way home?”

“Oh, it’s not all
that
far.” Her voice, low and resolute, suggested that it
was
far.

“I was thinking, there’s a taxi stand a little way up Cherche Midi, I’d be happy to give you a ride home, if you like.”

“Why that is so kind of you. What if I said ‘yes’?”

“It would be my pleasure. My name is Cristián.”

“And I am Chantal.” She slid her arm into the sleeve of her coat, then said
“Merde!”
and made a face, pulling her arm back out of the sleeve with an oatmeal-colored wool scarf in her hand. “I never fail to stuff my scarf in the sleeve so I don’t forget it, and I never fail to forget it’s there.”

She wound the scarf around her neck, looping it over and under in the style favored by Parisian women, put on her coat, and led him to the door. Walking toward the taxi stand she said, “I have always liked Chez Lucette,” and went on for a time about the restaurant, puffs of steam coming from her mouth as she spoke. There
was
a taxi waiting—
thank heaven
—the driver starting the engine as they approached. Ferrar held the door open as Chantal climbed in, then went around and got in the other side. “I live on the avenue Bourdonnais,” she said. “Number fourteen, the far end.”

As the taxi wove its way through narrow streets, they were silent; what had gone on between them in the restaurant had been replaced by a certain tension. Outside, Paris was wintry and deserted. As the taxi neared the avenue Bourdonnais, Chantal suddenly looked at her watch, then covered her face with her hands. “Oh I have been stupid,” she said.

“What did you do?”

“I have loaned my apartment to a friend and her lover; they had nowhere to be alone. But I said I would not be back before midnight and it’s a long time until then. Perhaps we could find a café where I can wait.”

“Why not wait at my place?”

“Oh no, I …”

“Yes you can, why not? I have some brandy … I think.”

“You have already been so thoughtful, I …”

“Please, Chantal. I would enjoy the company.”

“Well …”

“Driver, a change of plans, we’re going to the Place Saint-Sulpice, number five.”

The driver nodded and, as he turned into the next street, kept nodding, as though to himself:
Yes, my dear, why not wait at my place
.

When Ferrar had purchased his apartment, the former owner had left a few pieces of furniture and they were still there. One of them, in the room Ferrar used as a study, was a kind of love seat, called a tête-à-tête, and curved in such a way that the seats faced in opposite directions—thus a chaperoned couple could have intimate conversation. A dreadful thing, upholstered in plush velvet of a deep plum color. Ferrar supposed it was meant to be in the middle of a large room but, having no such room, he had pushed it up against the wall, where one side functioned as a chair, while on the blocked side he’d stacked books that wouldn’t fit on his shelves. Chantal sat there, Ferrar slid his reading chair over so he could face her. There
was
a living room, with a proper sofa, but it was underheated; more comfortable to settle in the study.

It turned out that Ferrar did have brandy, even brandy glasses, and as they talked and drank the atmosphere between them warmed nicely. She was a teacher, she said, at a private academy for girls up in the Sixteenth Arrondissement. Her family was from a little village in Burgundy, where her father had worked at one of the wineries. She loved living in Paris, she went to the cinema whenever she could. Did he like the Marx Brothers? Yes? “Grou-
sho
,” she said, the French version of Groucho, “is such a funny man, that silly walk he does.”

His turn. He rattled on for a time, Barcelona, the law office, but the three feet between them began to feel like an abyss. Finally the conversation slowed, and threatened to stop. Ferrar was growing desperate, he wanted to see what lay beneath the wool dress. Then, coming to the rescue, Chantal stretched her arms out and said, “I am tired of sitting, may I see the rest of your apartment?”

He showed her the tiny kitchen, then the living room where
French doors led out to a narrow balcony with a waist-high balustrade of ornamental ironwork. It was meant to decorate the building’s exterior but Ferrar liked to have a cigarette out there on warm nights. “Would you care for a breath of fresh air?” he said.

He opened the French doors, stepped out on the balcony, then took her hand to help her over the three-inch threshold. They stood side by side and, because Ferrar’s apartment was on the fifth floor, looked out over the rooftops of the city. “It is so beautiful,” she said.

“Paris,” he said.

The cold night reached them, Ferrar put his arm around her and she leaned against him and said, “That’s better.” When he pressed gently on her shoulder she turned to face him and they kissed. A formal kiss, nothing fancy, and once again. Her arms circled his waist and she held him tight, her head on his chest. What happened next was unplanned, spontaneous, Ferrar didn’t think about it, simply found himself doing it. He slid a hand down the soft wool of her dress, reached under the hem, rested the hand on her leg, and after a few seconds moved it slowly up the back of her thigh, waited at the top, then continued, working his fingers beneath her panties and running his hand over the silky skin of her bare bottom.
“Tiens,”
she said, breathing hard. The word meant
well, well
—mock surprise. And now they kissed again, and this time they meant it.

The poetry of lust describes many inspirations: the moon, a stray wisp of hair; but only now and then cites
haven’t done it for a long time
. Thus Chantal and Cristián, heading for the bedroom in a hurry—he barely remembered to close the French doors. Once there, she started to undress, until he said, “Could I do that? I really like it.” She let her arms hang down, eyes closed, a sweet smile on her face, as he did his awkward best at stripping her naked. That done, she turned slowly in a pirouette so he could look at her. Then
she took his clothes off, much better at this game than he was, and they got in bed. Where she asked him, voice tightening with anticipation, to lie on his back.

Greedily she pushed his knees apart, getting him out of her way, and took him in her mouth, thumb on the bottom, two fingers on top. Ferrar felt both a rush of pleasure and a stab of anxiety; if this continued he wouldn’t last long. A ten-second lover? Oh no, not that. He believed in foreplay and lots of it, but she had other things in mind. Sensing his predicament, she let him go, lay on top of him, and whispered in his ear, “Let me have my way.” Well, all right, chivalry took many forms. And, after a Gitane, he had his way with her: low moans that grew louder and longer, then a sharp gasp.

They talked. She had been married for a time, “but he went away.” He too had been married, a disastrous, fourteen-month marriage when he was twenty-two. She came from another émigré family, was very seductive and sexy until the wedding night, when she froze. And, despite all the patience and tenderness he could muster, stayed frozen. Eventually they divorced, he heard that she had remarried, he wished her nothing but happiness, perhaps he’d just been the wrong man for her.

They were quiet for a bit, then she said, “There is something I should confess, Cristián, I hope you will forgive me.”

“Oh?”

“I lied to you in the taxi.”

“You did?”

“There was no friend who needed a place to make love. I live with my sister and we share a bedroom. I knew you wanted me, and I surely wanted you, so I made up a story, trying to get you to take me back here.”

“I am glad you did it.”

“Yes? I was afraid you’d tell me I’d been a bad girl.”

In the darkness, their eyes met once again, and the night went on.

•

At seven in the morning he walked her across the square to the taxi stand by the rue Bonaparte. The January dawn was just arriving, two angry red streaks across black clouds. “Will you have time to change?” he said.

“Just, if I’m quick about it, I don’t teach until nine. Of course, I should have spent last night correcting homework.”

“They won’t mind, will they?”

“I think not,” she said. Then gave a single snort of laughter and said, “Maybe I will tell them exactly how I passed the evening—just to see the looks on their angelic little faces.”

They reached the center of the square, and a flock of pigeons, which had been feeding on baguette crumbs, took off into the sky. “Cristián?”

“Yes?”

“You’re not involved in that horrible war in Spain, are you?”

He shook his head. “I’m not. Why do you ask?”

“I don’t know why. Since you told me you were Spanish I’ve been wondering about it.”

“
All
the time?”

“Don’t tease me, I am someone who worries. And it’s a frightening war … those awful scenes in the newsreels.”

“It is very bad. There is nothing worse than a civil war. In time they stop fighting and someone declares victory, but a civil war never ends.”

When they reached the taxi stand he said, “What is a good time to telephone?”

“These days I don’t get home until seven—I’m directing the school play.”

“Then I will call after seven.”

He held the taxi door for her, they kissed goodby, one cheek then the other, and she climbed into the backseat. As the taxi chugged off he waited until it turned the corner. Heading back to
his apartment he thought,
Should I have told her the truth?
Because he was in fact going to involve himself in “that horrible war,” at least on what he put to himself as
the Paris Front
. Surely not dangerous, yet still he had lied, had known it was wiser to lie. This bothered him and ruined his walk across the square.

11 January, 1938. His appointment with the head of security at the embassy, Colonel Zaguan, had been set for six in the evening, after work on a normal day. The Spanish embassy, on the avenue George V, had been the grandest of mansions, all columns and turrets in pale stone, given to Spain as a gift by King Alfonso XIII before his abdication in 1931. An embassy clerk took him upstairs, knocked at a door with no number or title on it, then led him into the office.

Colonel Zaguan, in military uniform, rose from his chair, addressed him as
señor
, and thanked him for coming. The colonel had a narrow face, cheeks lightly pitted, and small, quick eyes—very dark, almost black, which made him look cunning—slicked-down black hair, and a thin mustache above thin lips. After Ferrar was seated, Zaguan held out a silver cigarette case and said, “Would you care for a Ducado? I get them from Spain.”

Ferrar took one and lit it.

“I will require some information from you,” the colonel said. “For the records … as a lawyer you will understand the importance of records.”

“Of course.”

“May I see your passport, señor?” Ferrar, like all the Paris émigrés, always carried his passport because the police, once they got you to say something in French, demanded to see it. And if you didn’t have it with you, deportation could be fast and brutal. Clearly the colonel was aware of this.