The Far Arena (47 page)

Lew McCardle had to charter a plane to get to Paris. By phone Public Affairs in Houston had gotten him the small jet, in less than forty-five minutes, and assured him that what he wanted would be there in the morning, somehow.

They would give him the address at the Hotel Lutetia, where he bad a room.

'You people are amazing,' Lew had said. 'How on earth did you dig up a fencer so quickly? Is there anything you can't do?'

'Yes. Please Mr Laurie.'

And Lew heard his contact laugh over the phone.

'Seriously, the jet was more trouble than the fencer. And you'll find out what I'm talking about, and good luck with whatever you're doing, Mr McCardle, sir.'

That little 'sir' meant Mr Laurie was approving what was being done. At first Lew had thought he was as bad a personnel choice as the young superintendent back at the site. Now he knew he wasn't Perhaps Mr Laurie was a better judge of Lew McCardle than Lew was himself.

Lew liked the room with the highly polished wood clothes closet,
a
night view of the Boulevard Raspail, a bathroom with
a
deep tub, toilet, and bidet and an elegant little writing desk at the big bay window. He had been in Paris once when he was young with Kathy, and they lived on sweet crepes and cheap wine and slept in
a
cold flat owned by someone she had known at school She was pregnant, and she had said she had wanted to see Paris one more time before she was a mother. It was winter then, and they had seemed to be unable to get enough of each other's bodies. A long time ago, when he was young.

He had the operator put in a call to his home in Houston, Texas, USA. He took a warm bath because he was tired. What luxury,
a
tub big enough for him, with warm water all over.

He remembered the showers at high school; he had spent so much time in them an assistant coach thought he was a homosexual, the coach not knowing those were the only showers he got. He didn't have his first hot shower until his freshman year on the football team. He had thought it was such a luxury then, coming from buckets of well water so hard the soap barely lathered. Once when he had taken Kathy into an intimate shower with him, she had turned on the cold water at the end of it, at the end of the hot lather and the lovemaking when he held her so comfortably and so naturally to him. It ruined everything for him, and she couldn't understand, because a brisk brush of cold water against the skin invigorated the blood. Physiologically, she was right. But when you had had to dump cold buckets of water over your head to get clean so other students wouldn't laugh at you, you did not turn on cold water for health reasons, even many years later with the woman you married.

The warmth was good and his body was tired. It had been a long day. He had left Norway looking for something and had found it in Rome. Now he would prove what he knew to Sister Olav and Semyon.

He would rent a cabin sufficiently secluded, with hot baths of course. And television. And cases of beer and scotch. He was not a quitter. No matter how much it hurt in the fourth and final quarter, he never dogged it

As the Maky coach had said: if you quit on this field, you'll quit on life. They put walls around stadiums only to make people think life isn't as hard and dirty as it is on the playing field. Well, it's dirtier, boys. And when you quit here, you quit everywhere.' The old Maky coach. It was a dramatic speech and it preceded the game in which Lew twisted the knee that thereafter pained him before all storms; and sometimes when he was physically very tired it locked, reminding him that when they separated the men from the boys, he had gone with the men, and paid.

The phone was ringing, and he forced himself from the bath, grabbing a handful of towel. It was Houston on the phone. His call had gone through. His daughter, Tricia, had accepted the call.

'You're in Paris. And you didn't send for us? Thanks a lot Thanks a lot, Dad.'

'Let me speak to your mother, Tricia,'

'Go fuck yourself.'

And that was his daughter who wanted to save the world. And she had hung up. He would have tried to reach Kathy again, but he knew she would not have all that different a response, and he was tempted to call James Houghton Laurie just for a kind word. Or his old coach to hear somebody say something nice. But the old coach was dead. And maybe it was good that he couldn't reach the man. Because Lew McCardle knew that if the old man had said, 'Lew who ?' and Lew had to say, 'Your right tackle from '43 to '45,' there would have been a wound so deep that night in Paris there would be no recovering.

So why was he feeling sad ? He was in Paris, and he was rich -at least rich by a geologist's standards and everyone knew what Paris was good for. He dressed and got a taxi to a place he'd always wanted to see.

He wanted to see the Crazy Horse Saloon, which the driver knew of right away, and Lew paid vast amounts for little drinks, and when he had gone through two hundred dollars in drinks which would have been less than fifteen dollars in a bar back home although the bar back home wouldn't have had beautiful young women dancing nude, nor a table so small the top could balance on your left knee, Lew McCardle left and got one of the taxi-drivers outside, all of whom were pimps, and proceeded to purchase an act of sex.

She was a pale little thing who talked of making love, and Lew kept telling her 'not love, fucking'.

'Fucking, yes?' she said. And Lew tried, but it didn't quite work, and he paid her. Still doing her part, she told him he was a wonderful man, and would she love to have such a wonderful man inside her when he had less wine, yes ?

'You really think I'm nice ?' asked Lew.

'Oh, yes. Yes, of course.'

Thank you,' said Lew. That's what I really wanted anyhow.
’
And the operator woke him in the morning, the phone being a jarring rasp at his ears and not stopping until he picked it up and said thank you for the service. She also had the address he wanted in Paris.

He got a wake-me-up shot of liquor at the bar around the corner along with his coffee and the international edition of the
Herald Tribune.

Unjarred, he faced the day, and whomever and whatever was coming up. He kept the appointment with the French firm - consultants in electrical engineering. He thought there must have been a mistake.

He apologized to the president of the firm, Monsieur Pierre d'Ouelette, a man so impeccably dressed that reasonable men would have to realize clothing itself was a craft and not a function of staying warm or safe from the weather.

'My apologies,' said Lew. 'We don't need an electrical engineer. I'm looking for a fencer, and I guess our Public Affairs Department fouled up.'

'No, ours has. You do not associate our name with fencing, no ?'

‘
Well, no.'

'Well, then, hundreds of thousands of francs have gone to the air in smoke. Unless of course one appreciates the sword.'

At that moment, in the modern office with the expensive wood-grain desk, clear of everything but d'Ouelette sitting on it, one leg on the floor, two hands clasped over the resting knee - like a photograph for a clothing store - Lew McCardle realized that this man was a source for fencers. He was not the fencer himself.

'You sponsor fencing ?'

'Yes,' said d'Ouelette laughing broadly. 'You just might say with an awful lot of emphasis. We have brought two gold and four silver and seven bronze medals to France in the last eighteen years. The Hungarians hate us. Hate us.' 'I am looking for a fencer.'

D'Ouelette smiled, nodding. He had one of those sharply lined faces that looked so sophisticated on Europeans, and so haggard on Americans.

'First let me say, I am happy to do a favour for Houghton Oil, with whom we have had a wonderful, lasting business relationship, which we treasure. Treasure. Secondly, asking someone for a fencer is like buying an airplane by writing McDonnell Douglas or Dessault or Boeing, "please send me an airplane".'

There were, of course, many kinds of fencers and many kinds of swords. There was the epee, the foil, the sabre, each one requiring different skills.

D'Ouelette refused interruptions as he explained the nuances of each weapon and each requirement and how each was scored. Lew sensed he had the man's cooperation because of Houghton, but that Houghton Oil's influence could not buy this enthusiasm. He followed carefully.

Over lunch, served in the office, but with an elegance Lew had not seen in private homes, Lew explained he wanted someone to show someone else he was not good with a sword.

'A braggart, yes?' said D'Ouelette.

'Not exactly. Someone whose memory has been injured. It's a demonstration for his friends to bring them to their sense
s.' 'Before he is hurt, correct?’

'In a way. I don't want him hurt though. Under no circumstances must he be hurt.'

D'Ouelette understood. There were always people who thought it looked easy until they tried it. Just outside of Paris was their school. Would Dr McCardle care to look ?

Lew did not dare dampen the man's enthusiasm. He cancelled the afternoon flight. He went to th
e school in the back of a chauff
eur-driven Citroen with d'Ouelette, who did not stop talking about matches in different cities.

'Monsieur d'Ouelette, you are lucky I am not your auditor, because I know you do not have fencers to make your firm famous. You have your firm in order to sponsor your fencers.'

'So true. So very true. It shows too much. Too much. An obvious thing is never a good thing, yes ?'

Lew nodded although he was not sure what d'Ouelette meant

There was training as for any other sport, but additional tasks for reflexes and nerves. In one room with dull light coming through metal-laced windows, Lew pointed to one man off by himself in a room of men in white fencing padding.

'Why did you pick him ?' asked d'Ouelette.

'Because you gave me a choice.'

'No. Why that particular one?'

'I don't know. He looked good. I don't need anyone special. I know what I need.'

'Well, unfortunately you have chosen someone very, very special.'

And Lew had to sit through a very bad thirty-minute movie, called
Man and the Arms,
and there was the boy he had picked. In front of d'Ouelette conduits and fixtures, the young man was shown fencing, talking, exercising.

He had short hair, high cheekbones, and brown eyes that seemed to flicker like hummingbirds.

He was five feet nine inches tall, weighed one hundred and fifty-eight pounds, was twenty-eight years old, and was the finest with epee in the world, according to the last Olympics, and, d'Ouelette assured, the next His name was Ferdinand d'Ouelette.

'Your son?'

'Legally, my son. Yes.'

'You adopted him and raised him. Well, that was a pleasant surprise that he turned out to be so good.'

'No. The good came first'

'I see. Is that a common French practice?'

'No. No. Not at all. But we are not a common French family. Now you know why I was so shocked when you failed to associate our name with fencing. You see, it would be like me saying I am Babe Ruth and you saying "so sorry, I need baseball players." '

'Yeah. I see. I guess you have the Super Bowl champion.'

‘
Whatever that is, yes.'

Ferdinand did not speak English. He would go with a coach in two days. There was a contest tomorrow in Paris, which was why all the fencers were at the school.

'Could I get someone a little less famous?' 'No. I insist.'

'I would prefer someone who would not necessarily attract a crowd.' 'A crowd, no. Recognition, yes.
’
'I'd like someone else.'

'No,' said d'Ouelette, with the same passion with which he had dismissed secretaries talking about business. 'On this I have made up my mind.' There was no use trying to get someone less famous, although an average fencer would have proven Lew's point better. Still, Lew knew this could work.

'Every fencer has a flaw, but Ferdinand's only flaw is that he has never had anyone to make him excel. He has a temper, but it doesn't matter. There is no one good enough to punish him for it.'

'Please, I ask only that my subject not be hurt'

"There is all sorts of padding. You wish him embarrassed, not damaged, correct?'

'I wish to show he cannot use a sword. That is all.'

'That is most simple and guaranteed,' said d'Ouelette.

Lew's leg locked that afternoon and required a yanking out. He had to be helped on to the plane back to Oslo.

There he spent a full day renting a cabin and stocking it. He told Sister Olav that he wanted to see her, the patient, and Semyon on the morrow.