Shibumi (5 page)

“Stop!” called Mr. Diamond, startling Miss Swivven, who had never heard him raise his voice before.

The girl on the screen froze, a blow-back douser dimming the image to prevent the frame from burning.

“See that girl. Starr?”

“Sure.”

“Can you tell me anything about her?”

Starr was confused by this seemingly arbitrary demand. He knew he was in trouble of some sort, and he fell back on his habit of taking cover behind his dumb, good-ol’-boy facade.

“Well… let’s see. She’s got a fair set of boobs, that’s for sure. Taut little ass. A little skinny in the arms and waist for my taste but, like my ol’ daddy used to say: the closer the bone, the sweeter the meat!” He forced a husky laugh in which he was joined by the Arab, who was anxious to prove he understood.

“Starr?” Diamond’s voice was monotonic and dense. “I want you to do something for me. For the next few hours, I want you to try very hard to stop being an ass. I don’t want you to entertain me, and I don’t want you to supplement your answers with folksy asides. There is nothing funny about what is going on here. True to the traditions of the CIA, you have screwed up, Starr. Do you understand that?”

There was silence as the Deputy considered objecting to this defamation, but thought better of it.

“Starr? Do you understand that?”

A sigh, then quietly, “Yes, sir.”

The Deputy cleared his throat and spoke in his most authoritative voice. “If there’s anything the Agency can—”

“Starr? Do you recognize this girl?” Diamond asked.

Miss Swivven took the photograph from its folder and sidled down the aisle to Starr and the Arab.

Starr tilted the print to see it better in the dim light. “Yes, sir.”

“Who is it?”

“It’s the girl up there on the screen.”

“That’s right. Her name is Hannah Stern. Her uncle was Asa Stern, organizer of the Munich Five. She was the third member of the commando team.”

“Third?” Starr asked. “But… we were told there were only two of them on the plane.”

“Who told you that?”

“It was in the intelligence report we got from this fella here.”

“That is correct, Mr. Diamond,” the Arab put in. “Our intelligence men…”

But Diamond had closed his eyes and was shaking his head slowly. “Starr? Are you telling me that you based an operation on information provided by
Arab
sources?”

“Well, we… Yes, sir.” Starr’s voice was deflated. Put that way, it did seem a stupid thing to do. It was like having Italians do your political organization, or the British handle your industrial relations.

“It seems to me,” the Deputy injected, “that if we have made an error based on faulty input from your Arab friends, they have to accept a goodly part of the responsibility.”

“You’re wrong,” Diamond said. “But I suppose you’re used to that. They don’t have to accept anything. They own the oil.”

The Arab representative smiled and nodded. “You reflect exactly the thinking of my president and uncle, who has often said that—”

“All right.” Diamond rose. “The three of you remain on tap. In less than an hour, I’ll call for you. I have background data coming in now. It’s still possible that I may be able to make up for your bungling.” He walked up the aisle, followed closely by Miss Swivven.

The Deputy cleared his throat to say something, then decided that the greater show of strength lay in silence. He fixed a long stare on Starr, glanced away from the Arab in dismissal, then left the theater.

“Well, buddy,” Starr said as he pushed himself out of the theater seat, “we better get a bite to eat while the gettin’s good. Looks like the shit has hit the fan.”

The Arab chuckled and nodded, as he tried to envision an ardent supporter of sports fouled with camel dung.

For a time, the empty theater was dominated by the frozen image of Hannah Stern, smiling down from the screen. When the projectionist started to run the film out, it jammed. An amoeba of brown, bubbly scab spread rapidly over the young lady and consumed her.

Hannah Stern sat at a café table under the arcade surrounding the central place of Tardets. She stared numbly into the lees of her coffee, thick and granular. Sunlight was dazzling on the white buildings of the square; the shadows under the arcade were black and chill. From within the café behind her came the voices of four old Basque men playing
mousse,
to the accompaniment of a litany of
bai… passo… passo… alla Jainkoa!… passo… alla Jainkoa…
this last phrase passing through all conceivable permutations of stress and accent as the players bluffed, signaled, lied, and called upon God to witness this shit they had been dealt, or to punish this fool of a partner with whom God had punished them.

For the last seven hours, Hannah Stern had alternated between clawing through nightmare reality and floating upon escapist fantasy, between confusion and vertigo. She was stunned by emotional shock, spiritually evacuated. And now, teetering on the verge of nervous disintegration, she felt infinitely calm… even a little sleepy.

The real, the unreal; the important, the insignificant; the Now, the Then; the cool of her arcade, the rippling heat of the empty public square; these voices chanting in Europe’s most ancient language… it was all indifferently tangled. It was all happening to someone else, someone for whom she felt great pity and sympathy, but whom she could not help. Someone past help.

After the massacre in Rome International, she had somehow got all the way from Italy to this café in a Basque market town. Dazed and mentally staggering, she had traveled fifteen hundred kilometers in nine hours. But now, with only another four or five kilometers to go, she had used up the last of her nervous energy. Her adrenaline well was empty, and it appeared that she was going to be defeated at the last moment by the caprice of a bumbling café owner.

First there had been terror and confusion at seeing her comrades shot down, neurasthenic incredulity during which she stood frozen as people rushed past her, knocking against her. More gunshots. Loud wailing from the family of Italians who had been awaiting a relative. Then panic clutched her; she walked blindly ahead, toward the main entrance of the terminal, toward the sunlight. She was breathing orally, shallow pants. Policemen rushed past her. She told herself to keep walking. Then she realized that the muscles in the small of her back were knotted painfully in anticipation of the bullet that never came. She passed an old man with a white goatee, sitting on the floor with his legs straight out before him, like a child at play. She could see no wound, but the pool of dark blood in which he sat was growing slowly wider. He did not seem to be in pain. He looked up at her interrogatively. She couldn’t make herself stop. Their eyes locked together as she walked by. She muttered stupidly, “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”

A fat woman in the group of waiting relatives was hysterical, wailing and choking. More attention was being paid to her than to the fallen members of the family. She was, after all, Mama.

Over the confusion, the running and shouting, a calm, singsong voice announced the first call for passengers on Air France flight 470 for Toulouse, Tarbes, and Pau. The recorded voice was ignorant of the chaos beneath its loudspeakers. When the announcement was repeated in French, the last fragment stuck to Hannah’s consciousness. Gate Eleven. Gate Eleven.

The stewardess reminded Hannah to put up her seat back. “Yes. Yes. I’m sorry.” A minute later, on her return down the aisle, the hostess reminded her to buckle her seat belt. “What? Oh, yes. I’m sorry.”

The plane rose into thin cloud, then into crisp infinite blue. The drone of engines; the vibration of the fuselage. Hannah shivered with vulnerability and aloneness. There was a middle-aged man seated beside her, reading a magazine. From time to time his eyes slipped over the top of the page and glanced quickly at her suntanned legs below the khaki shorts. She could feel his eyes on her, and she buttoned one of the top two buttons of her shirt. The man smiled and cleared his throat. He was going to speak to her! The stupid son of a bitch was going to try to pick her up! My God!

And suddenly she was sick.

She made it to the toilet, where she knelt in the cramped space and vomited into the bowl. When she emerged, pale and fragile, the imprint of floor tile on her knees, the stewardess was solicitous but slightly superior, imagining that a short flight like this had made her airsick.

The plane banked on its approach to Pau, and Hannah looked out the window at the panorama of the Pyrenees, snow-tipped and sharp in the crystalline air, like a sea of whitecaps frozen in midstorm. Beautiful and awful.

Somewhere there, at the Basque end of the range, Nicholai Hel lived. If she could only get to Mr. Hel…

It was not until she was out of the terminal and standing in the chill sunlight of the Pyrenees that it occurred to her that she had no money. Avrim had carried all their money. She would have to hitchhike, and she didn’t know the route. Well, she could ask the drivers. She knew that she would have no trouble getting rides. When you’re pretty and young… and big-busted…

Her first ride took her into Pau, and the driver offered to find her a place to stay for the night. Instead, she talked him into taking her to the outskirts and directing her to Tardets. It must have been a hard car to shift, because his hand twice slipped off the lever and brushed her leg.

She got her next ride almost immediately. No, he wasn’t going to Tardets. Only as far as Oléron. But he could find her a place to stay for the night…

One more car, one more suggestive driver, and Hannah reached the little village of Tardets, where she sought further directions at the café. The first barrier she met was the local accent,
langue d’oc
with heavy overlays of Soultine Basque in which
une petite cuillè
has eight syllables.

“What are you looking for?” the café owner asked, his eyes leaving her breasts only to stray to her legs.

“I’m trying to find the Château of Etchebar. The house of M. Nicholai Hel.”

The proprietor frowned, squinted at the arches overhead, and scratched with one finger under the beret that Basque men take off only in bed, in coffin, or when adjudicating the game of
rebot.
No, he did not believe he had ever heard the name. Hel, you say? (He could pronounce the
h
because it is a Basque sound.) Perhaps his wife knew. He would ask. Would the Mademoiselle take something while she waited? She ordered coffee which came, thick, bitter, and often reheated, in a tin pot half the weight of which was tinker’s solder, but which leaked nevertheless. The proprietor seemed to regret the leak, but to accept it with heavy fatalism. He hoped the coffee that dripped on her leg had not burned her. It was not hot enough to burn? Good. Good. He disappeared into the back of the café, ostensibly to inquire after M. Hel.

And that had been fifteen minutes ago.

Hannah’s eyes dilated painfully as she looked out toward the bright square, deserted save for a litter of cars, mostly
Deu’ches
bearing ‘64 plates, parked at random angles, wherever their peasant drivers had managed to stop them.

With deafening roar of motor, grinding of gears, and outspewing of filthy exhaust, a German juggernaut lorry painfully navigated the corner with not ten centimeters to spare between vehicle and the
crepi
facades of the buildings. Sweating, cranking the wheel, and hiss-popping his air brakes, the German driver managed to introduce the monster into the ancient square, only to be met by the most formidable of barriers. Waddling side by side down the middle of the street, two Basque women with blank, coarse faces exchanged gossip out of the corners of their mouths. Middle-aged, dour, and vast, they plodded along on great barrel legs, indifferent to the frustration and fury of the truck driver, who crawled behind them muttering earnest imprecations and beating his fist against the steering wheel.

Hannah Stern had no way to appreciate this scene’s iconographic representation of Franco-German relations in the Common Market, and at this moment the café owner reappeared, his triangular Basque face abeam with sudden comprehension.

“You are seeking M. Hel!” he told her.

“That’s what I said.”

“Ah, if I had known it was M.
Hel
you were seeking…” He shrugged from the waist, lifting his palms in a gesture implying that a little more clarity on her part would have saved them both a lot of trouble.

He then gave her directions to the Château d’Etchebar: first cross the
gave
from Tardets (the
r
rolled, both the
t
and the
s
pronounced), then pass through the village of Abense-de-Haut (five syllables, the
h
and
t
both pronounced) and on up through Lichans (no nasal,
s
pronounced), then take the right forking up into the hills of Etchebar; but not the left forking, which would carry you to Licq.

“Is it far?”

“No, not all that far. But you don’t want to go to Licq, anyway.”

“I mean to Etchebar! Is it far to Etchebar!” In her fatigue and nervous tension, the formidable task of getting simple information out of a Basque was becoming too much for Hannah.

“No, not far. Maybe two kilometers after Lichans.”

“And how far is it to Lichans?”

He shrugged. “Oh, it could be two kilometers after Abense-de-Haut. You can’t miss it. Unless you turn left at the forking.
Then
you’ll miss it all right! You’ll miss it because you’ll be in Licq, don’t you see.”

The old
mousse
players had forsaken their game and were gathered behind the café owner, intrigued by all the confusion this foreign tourist was causing. They held a brief discussion in Basque, agreeing at last that if the girl took the left forking she would indeed end up in Licq. But then, Licq was not such a bad village. Was there not the famous story of the bridge at Licq built with the help of the Little People from the mountains who then…

“Listen!” Hannah pled. “Is there someone who could drive me to the Château of Etchebar?”

A quick conference was held between the café owner and the
mousse
players. There was some argument and a considerable amount of clarification and restatement of positions. Then the proprietor delivered the consensus opinion.

“No.”

It had been decided that this foreign girl wearing walking shorts and who had a rucksack was one of the young athletic tourists who were notorious for being friendly, but for tipping very little. Therefore, there was no one who would drive her to Etchebar, except for the oldest of the
mousse
players, who was willing to gamble on her generosity, but sadly he had no car. And anyway, he did not know how to drive.

With a sigh, Hannah took up her rucksack. But when the café owner reminded her of the cup of coffee, she remembered she had no French money. She explained this with expressions of lighthearted contrition, trying to laugh off the ludicrousness of the situation. But he steadfastly stared at the cup of unpaid-for coffee, and remained dolefully silent. The
mousse
players discussed this new turn of events with animation. What? The tourist took coffee without the money to pay for it? It was not impossible that this was a matter for the law.

Finally, the proprietor sighed a rippling sigh and looked up at her, tragedy in his moist eyes. Was she really telling him that she didn’t have two francs for the coffee—forget the tip—just two francs for the coffee? There was a matter of principle involved here. After all,
he
paid for his coffee;
he
paid for the gas to heat the water; and every couple of years
he
paid the tinker to mend the pot. He was a man who paid his debts. Unlike some others he could mention.

Hannah was between anger and laughter. She could not believe that all these heavy theatrics were being produced for two francs. (She did not know that the price of a cup of coffee was, in fact,
one
franc.) She had never before met that especially French version of avarice in which money—the coin itself—is the center of all consideration, more important than goods, comfort, dignity. Indeed, more important than real wealth. She had no way to know that, although they bore Basque names, these village people had become thoroughly French under the corrosive cultural pressures of radio, television, and state-controlled education, in which modern history is creatively interpreted to confect that national analgesic,
la vérité à la Cinquième République.

Dominated by the mentality of the
petit commercant,
these village Basques shared the Gallic view of gain in which the pleasure of earning a hundred francs is nothing beside the intense suffering caused by the loss of a centime.

Finally realizing that his dumb show of pain and disappointment was not going to extract the two francs from this young girl, the proprietor excused himself with sardonic politeness, telling her be would be right back.

When he returned twenty minutes later, after a tense conference with his wife in the back room, he asked, “You are a friend of M. Hel?”

“Yes,” Hannah lied, not wanting to go into all that.

“I see. Well then, I shall assume that Mr. Hel will pay, should you fail to.” He tore a sheet from the note pad provided by the Byrrh distributors and wrote something on it before folding it two times, sharpening the creases with his thumbnail. “Please give this to M. Hell,” he said coldly.

His eyes no longer flicked to her breast and legs. Some things are more important than romance.

Hannah had been walking for more than an hour, over the Pont d’Abense and the glittering Gave de Saison, then slowly up into the Basque hills along a narrow tar road softened by the sun and confined by ancient stone walls over which lizards scurried at her approach. In the fields sheep grazed, lambs teetering beside the ewes, and russet
vaches de pyrénées
loitered in the shade of unkempt apple trees, watching her pass, their eyes infinitely gentle, infinitely stupid. Round hills lush with fern contained and comforted the narrow valley, and beyond the saddles of the hills rose the snow-tipped mountains, their jagged arêtes sharply traced on the taut blue sky. High above, a hawk balanced on the rim of an updraft, its wing feathers splayed like fingers constantly feeling the wind as it scanned the ground for prey.