The Dogs and the Wolves (23 page)

His immediate thought was of the bank. He hadn’t been there in over a week. For two years he had lived with a vague yet overpowering sense of foreboding, but – and this was what was so strange – not only did this state of fear, of muffled panic, not surprise him, it was as if he recognised it, just as a man returning to the seaside home of his childhood tastes the bitterness of the ocean on his lips even before he hears it. Instinctively, without knowing exactly what it was that he feared, he had employed all the defensive reflexes that make it possible to deal with anxiety. He knew which thoughts were acceptable and which had to be dismissed; he knew how to prepare his mind to be watchful in order to cover up the very thing that he would nevertheless have to admit one day and which was impossible to prevent. He had learned how to bear insomnia, apprehension and that sudden pounding of his heart every time the telephone rang unexpectedly, every time the doorbell rang. Learned? No! He had always known these things.

Women in pink dresses walked by beneath the trees; the men were laughing, the little burning ends of their cigars lighting up their peaceful, happy faces. They were his friends; he had never seen any difference between him and them. He now wondered if he hadn’t actually been mistaken, if they really understood him and how they would treat him if something terrible happened to him.

For he knew that something terrible had happened. He could sense it; he could feel it in the air, just as animals can smell a storm getting closer . . . It was all coming back to him: that icy hand clutching at his heart, the inability to breathe followed by the gasping for air, the thirst, the overwhelming sadness. Nothing
seemed surprising to him: not his silent resignation, nor his invincible hope. (‘It will take a lot of courage, a lot of work. Who else in this world can pride themselves on having as much or more courage and ability to work than me? And besides, it will pass. Everything has already happened, I don’t know where or when, but I have already lost everything and found it again. None of it is of any real importance. Death itself is of no real importance.’) He acknowledged all his fantasies, all his anguish. And, every now and again, he awoke as if from a dream and thought, ‘But what has actually happened? These people have been cold towards me, that’s all. Why is that so unusual? At least two of those women sent me invitations and I cancelled at the last minute, that’s all, that’s enough; and the man is a fool! . . . After all, I know I’m not guilty of anything. No, I haven’t done anything! I’m innocent!’

But had he ever felt that blessed certainty of being innocent, of being forgiven, of being loved? No! He had been born feeling guilty of a crime he had not committed, knowing that no one would intervene for him, no one would save him, that he would be alone with a fearsome god.

Suddenly, he could no longer bear his solitude. He stood up and joined the groups of people passing by. He listened to the women laughing; he walked to the lake, then went back to the house. Very few people were left. He wandered through the half empty reception rooms. He asked for his car. As he was crossing the terrace, he heard another voice behind him whisper, ‘Harry Sinner . . .’

He shivered. Who had spoken his name? He turned around, waited. But no one had called him. Someone was just talking about him. Everyone was talking about him tonight. He felt lost.

In his car, he sat up, calm and straight, but gradually his arms drooped, he lowered his head and hunched his shoulders. Thin and frail, rubbing his beautiful hands together, he swayed gently in the darkness, just as so many moneychangers standing behind
their counters, just as countless rabbis bent over their books, just as a multitude of immigrants standing on the bridges of innumberable boats had done before him. And, like them, he felt like an outsider, lost and alone.

How easy it is to disappear for a girl like Ada. She paid for the furnished room, packed her books into Ben’s little trunk, put some clothes into a suitcase, took down the pictures from the walls, folded the soft, warm blanket Harry had given her into an old hat box and left.

‘Aren’t you going to give me a forwarding address?’ the concierge had asked. ‘If the gentleman, you know who I mean, if he asks for you, what am I supposed to say?’

‘Say that I went away with my husband.’

‘Really?’

The concierge looked at her with pity. Presumably the police had already questioned her about Ben.

‘If he really wanted to find me,’ Ada thought, ‘the Immigration Office or the Prefect of Police could give him information, but he’ll think I’ve gone far away, to another country. He can’t leave France now to come and find me, and it’s better that way. It’s definitely better that way.’

She had gone into a post office and written a note to Harry:

‘I’m going with Ben. This is goodbye.’

What else could she say? Her heart was as heavy and cold as stone, even her mind, normally so quick and lively, seemed inert
and dull, or as if numbed by the cold. If only she could believe she would remain like that, the future might seem bearable, but she knew very well that she would wake up one day and realise exactly what she had lost.

For two days, she had walked back and forth past Laurence’s house. At first, she thought she would go to her, explain the situation as it was, make her understand that she was pretending to leave Harry, that she was sacrificing herself for Harry. She felt a rather base, though irrefutable, pleasure – the kind of pleasure you feel watching a play at the theatre – in imagining Laurence’s confusion, astonishment and admiration. For Laurence would have admired her . . . She walked along the scorching street (it was the end of August, and the days were unbearably hot) and looked up at the high, large windows with envy. How big and cool the rooms must be behind their closed shutters! She would be ushered in to see Laurence. ‘Take him back,’ she would say. ‘I’ve got what I wanted. I won’t ask for anything more. I do not wish him to lose everything because of me.’ She hated herself for bringing pride into her love; was pride really so deeply engrained in her heart, the ‘hardened heart’ that the Scriptures mention? And could she rid herself of it any more than she could rid herself of her own blood?

She was afraid that Laurence might have left Paris at this time of year, when all the windows in the rich neighbourhoods are locked and the apartments empty. But she had made enquiries: all of the Delarchers were still in the city, and this seemed a sign of hope to Ada. Not all the ties between Harry and his wife had been broken. Laurence still cared about Harry; she didn’t want to leave him. ‘Perhaps she made up some excuse to remain in Paris?’ thought Ada. A savage, almost maternal sadness tore through her when she imagined Harry feeling so abandoned, so alone; at such moments, she believed she might actually have the courage to go into Laurence’s house and drag her to Harry’s door. But she didn’t dare.
Forty-eight hours had already passed as if in a dark, terrifying dream.

‘I am leaving to go with my husband who has been deported from France,’ she wrote to Laurence. ‘You must understand that I will never return and that you can both forget me . . .’

But she stopped. She tore up the letter. It was essential that she hear from Laurence’s own lips that she would go back to her husband and, more importantly, that the elderly Delarcher would not abandon his son-in-law . . . And this was Ada’s secret hope. She would do anything in the world to save Harry. But what if that wasn’t possible?

At other times, she thought, ‘I’ll pretend to disappear. Everything will get sorted out, and then . . .’ But the danger was too great, too pressing: it could only be averted by completely sacrificing any possibility of happiness.

‘If I do that, God will punish me,’ she thought.

She would stop and look, from a distance, at the Catholic churches with their rows of lit candles, visible through the doors left open on such hot days. But it was the same as looking at Laurence’s house: all of that was a different world, a world she was not allowed to enter. She kept walking, endlessly walking. She was aching with thirst; she stopped for a few moments in a little square in the neighbourhood where Laurence lived: cool water flowed from a fountain. She wet her hands and face, then set off again.

Finally, on the evening of the second day, she saw Laurence coming out of her house. She had only seen her a few times before; up until now, she had thought of her without attributing to her any truly human characteristics: she was Harry’s wife. She was part of that brilliant circle who, ever since she and Harry were born, had come between them, dazzling her, as cold and blurred as the stars in the sky. Now she truly saw her: she was a young, beautiful woman, but neither her youth nor her beauty had that
other-worldly essence that Ada had imagined. She was not a goddess: she was a blonde whose complexion would quickly lose its bloom, and which was reddened by the heat. Ada was overwhelmed by fear and a physical sensation of jealousy that she had never felt before: fear because it occurred to her that Laurence might not have the power she attributed to her, and with this thought, all her ideas suddenly seemed flawed, all her hopes were lifted up and dashed, like wisps of straw carried off in a whirlwind. She doubted the superiority, the omnipotence of the French family. She had believed that all she had to do was return Harry to the Delarchers in order to save him, but was that really true? Weren’t there other powerful people she could go to for help? This was how her ancestors had spent their lives on earth: desperately seeking ever more influential, more highly placed protectors, but never finding them, constantly anxious about the ones they had found – these men who had once had God as their master but had forsaken Him. And to feel the great Laurence so close to her, so similar to an ordinary woman, she finally understood simple feminine jealousy: she could imagine Harry reconciled with his wife, which meant sharing her room, her bed, caressing her. Fierce loathing filled her heart.

‘Finally I can see Harry as the same as me,’ she thought, ‘truly the same as me, brought up on the same bitter bread, and I’m hesitating! I want to send him back to his wife, his child, his Canalettos in the dining room I hardly dare enter, back to his expensive leather books bearing the arms of French kings, back to everything that makes him a stranger to me? Never! Never!’

She was crying. Passers-by looked at her, but she had cried far more often in the streets, amid a crowd, than she ever had in private, behind closed shutters and drawn curtains; it wasn’t the first time. She wasn’t ashamed of her tears: she knew that no one really cared, that she could sob as much as she liked, collapsed on a bench, without causing any reaction other than a policeman
shrugging his shoulders and saying, ‘Come, come . . . you mustn’t get so upset. Come on, my girl . . .’

She cried for a long time beneath the trees on the wide avenue. Her hair was dishevelled and her cheek bruised by the iron bars of the gate she’d been leaning on; only one child stopped and looked at her with serious, kindly pity. She smiled at him through her tears.

‘Is your little boy sick?’ he got up the courage to ask her.

She shook her head. He was a young boy who was quite dirty, but his fat cheeks were rosy and soft. He walked over to her and stroked Ada’s knees with his dirty hands.

‘Do you have a child?’

‘Yes,’ she replied.

She had been afraid to ask herself that very question, but now that she had answered this strange little boy, she felt a sense of peace again. She dried her eyes.

Now that she had stopped crying, in the eyes of the child she turned back into a frightening and incomprehensible adult, like all grown-ups. He took a step away, and even though she called out to him, he didn’t move forward; he just continued staring at her with mistrust and fear. Ada felt as if her last friend had abandoned her. She stood up and went back to stand in front of Laurence’s house. It was nearly eight o’clock; the young woman had been wearing day clothes and would surely be coming home for dinner. She waited for a long time and finally saw Laurence. She had sensed her, even before recognising her, because of a strange, sudden pain in her heart. She walked quickly towards Laurence.

Laurence stopped; she started with a slight gesture of fear mixed with revulsion, thought Ada. Ada looked at her now without hatred, but with deep concentration, as if she were studying a model’s face.

‘I must guess what she has truly decided to do by watching her
eyes and not by what she says,’ Ada thought, ‘and then plan my life according to what I read in her expression.’

‘I’m going away in an hour,’ she said.

‘Oh?’ said Laurence, moving to one side as if trying to avoid her. But her movement was hesitant, slow and half-hearted, as when you dream you are struggling in deep water, in quicksand, in murky lakes that overwhelm you and carry you away.

‘I will never come back, Madame. I’ll never see Harry again.’

‘Please leave.’

Suddenly, Ada grabbed the stunned Laurence by the hand.

‘Listen to me,’ she said, ‘you are the only one who will know the truth. Harry thinks I’ve gone to be with my husband. It’s not true. I’m still here in Paris. I could choose either to go away or stay near him and try to get him back. But I swear to you that I will never go near him again, never remind him I even exist; I won’t speak to him or write to him, if you think that would save him.’

Laurence said nothing, but she didn’t try to leave. She too was concentrating on watching Ada’s face, hoping, no doubt, to read the thoughts of this strange foreigner.

‘Do you want to help him?’

Laurence nodded; making a scene right there in the street seemed to cause her pain, thought Ada, as if some unbearable vulgarity had been added to her resentment and suffering.

‘Poor Harry . . .’ she suddenly thought. ‘Unhappy with her, unhappy with me, caught between two burning fires, between two races, what will become of him?’

‘Are you in a position to help him?’

‘I’m not,’ she replied quietly, ‘but my father is.’

‘Yes, that’s what I thought. Would he be willing to do it?’