The Janeites (8 page)

“Marky has told me about you. Name of Valdez, you Peruvian or something?”

“Something. I’m a famous writer. Nobel Prize, magical realism.”

“And a Jesuit – Witchdoctor!” Deep voice, rare in French women.

“Mutter charms. Blow the candle out but put a pinch first of the Devils Foot on the wick – make you see things.” Parisian crosschat; if you can’t make me laugh you’re a bum.

“Come from Strasbourg – provincial puddingdom.”

“I hear this all the time – in Paris or London – the world revolves around us; now that Is provincial.” She rearranged herself a little pettishly.

“I’m not very clear about this. Come to give me a talking-to, about God?”

“Hardly. God can be a bit of an old fraud now and then.”

Laugh, rather a good one, deep in the throat.

“Jesuitical thing to be saying.”

“Most doctors would agree that God has a way of not being around when most needed.”

“Heresy.”

“Just unsentimental. The commonplace claim is that God can’t exist, or He wouldn’t allow horrible sufferings and injustices. That’s to have an over-inflated idea of our importance. Saying that God made a lousy job of it strikes me as arrogant.”

“So we are arrogant. As Marky says – I am an entity; they are nonentities.”

“How d’you think a doctor survives? Drowned in shit all day. I’ve no time to feel sorry about the horrors. That’s God’s business, so I’ll get on with my own.”

“Man, you are boring me. You’ve been taking up with William as I hear; that what all this is about?”

“You didn’t hear that William’s been seen in bad company?”

“Your own, no doubt.”

“Better said, the bad company’s been seen with William. Little touch of
the Crab but awkwardly placed… Ah, the Marquis
hadn’t told you that.” She sat upright; the eyes went twice the size.

“Not possible! William… but he’s the toughest thing out… physically… He’s no age. And all that boxing and volleyball.”

“Yes, the crab can be very puritanical about denying us these little pleasures.”

“Oh God.”

“Oh dear, there’s God again.”

“That is what Marky meant, making jokes about the Cancer Man, he’s talking about you.”

“What is it you call him in bed?”

“Jesus, who’ll be next? I’m going out today to get my tits X-rayed. I’m going to have a drink and don’t tell me it’s too early,” leaping up and rushing out to the kitchen. She came back with two glasses, pushed the bottle at him. “Open it.”

“Madame… by the way, my name is Ray,” untwisting the wire.

“And a cervical smear. Joséphine will do. What else should I have? That snide remark – that’s bloody rude.” She took a big swig and it calmed her.

“I am bloody rude. This the best you can do, getting in a fuss?”

“Oh all right. Slight shock, someone you know.”

“That sounds accurate, as far as it goes. Your turn to pour.”

“I’ve got this nasty feeling you’ll be on about God again if I’m not careful. Well, I am careful. I care also about William.”

“But you don’t love him, is that what you’re telling me?”

“Not at all. I did, or thought I did. I was mistaken. A clear conscience, about that. I tried.”

“Yes, it’s a word to be careful with. ‘In all conscience’ we say, or perhaps ‘speaking as a conscientious woman’. Tcha, if the human being were something we could pour water in at the top, and be satisfied when urine comes out at the bottom, we could treat illness with a few plants, champagne for instance. Could you say why, do you think, or don’t you know?”

“He’s much too good.” Quite sadly and seriously. “It drove me bats. I’m not good at all. I wanted to claw him.” There would be more, plenty more … but it was a moment of lucidity.

“Like the man said, daylight and champagne could not be clearer. Not too sure about the daylight nowadays.”

“The champagne isn’t what it was either. One thought life would be more fun, somehow.”

“I didn’t come here to pester you. Only to know where you stood. Then I know where I stand. I’ll take myself off.”

“We could have lunch together. If you liked.” And that too told him something. He’d have enjoyed it too; this girl with the lovely long legs. ‘I am tempted, Scaramouche’ and the answer come pat – ‘Always yield to temptation, master.’ Sadly, life isn’t simple any more. Nice little place round the corner, let’s have coffee back at home, and you can spend the afternoon in bed with her. “Back on the shuttle?” she asked. “I see. But I rather imagine you’ll be back.”

“Paris is not far.” And the distance is speedily lessened.

A tormenting female. Just the sort the Marquis would like. So he thought about the old man, while banging through the lunchtime traffic saying ‘It’s time for the apéro.’ Meaning that he should stop for lunch.

The old man was making a virtue of being old. ‘Can’t be bothered with all this computer bullshit.’ Internets and e-mails; accepts that life has gone past him, but trying hard still to enjoy girls.

Raymond hasn’t felt frightened since being in Paris; hadn’t had time? Too much else on his mind: himself is not important enough.

When younger he had known and greatly loved an old lady. Russian; a poet, along with much else. Long after he had lost sight of her he had learned that when coming towards the end of her life she had written memos of people she had known, and among them himself. By now Doctor Valdez is quite high on self-awareness, reckons he knows himself pretty well. In that script, a few pages of scrawly handwriting, was a passage he thought summed-up the matter.

‘He was a type one has known more of, afraid only of being afraid. It is good to see a young man in love with his own honour. He accused himself of physical cowardice; full of a reckless nervous courage. He said once that if he saw a man, or even a child, fallen in
the Seine he would be frightened to jump in. The speed of imagination is such that he saw himself drowning while incapable of saving another, since he was a poor swimmer. Adding that he wouldn’t jump in the Seine anyhow since any doctor knows the extent of chemical and bacteriological hazard. I told him that he would have gone in to a fire. No no, he said; afraid of pain. I treated that with contempt. He would laugh at pain, and even while shouting for morphia. Proud as Satan, what he could not bear was that another should think him afeared.’ Not a bad reading, one would admit.

He has been thinking about words – ‘Sweet of you’ he’d said to her invitation. In French
gentil
but the English would not say ‘gentle of you’. Miss Joséphine is not very sweet, but she has her gentle side. The Marquis would probably add that gentility had nothing to do with being a gentleman (a word the French associate with good manners); he enjoys these ‘little phrases’.

The airport check-in girl has not her mind on her work. Her little radio was only mouthing commercials.

“What is it?”

“Crash on the autoroute,” managing to be distant, rude and patronizing in those few syllables. Tornado in Arkansas, mass destruction, hundreds homeless, but on the midday news it’s ‘Is that all?’ On the Western Front, nothing to report; General Haig is said to be preoccupied. Here, now, is a police mouthpiece saying (being French) that a certain-number-of-questions have been raised, calling-for-clarification. Quite. Such as, why are human beings inhuman? Ray crawls into a corner, suffering from depression.

Before the flight was even called he has heard it all from the neighbours. Chap overtaking, another has the same idea; big truck brakes too hard and goes crossways; six more go barrelling straight into him. Before you can say Air Bag. Yes and it could have been me. But not in the Café de Commerce, which is here. ‘What I always say Is…’ The poor lunk who suggests people ought to drive slower is howled down by Our Individual Liberties.

La
France
Moisie
;
it will translate as musty, mouldy, mildewed. Never quite submerged. Much is submerged, much of the time, so that nobody ever quite knows how much there really is. But a lot. It
was happy through most of the nineteenth century; perturbed by 1848 – much more by the Commune. The twentieth was less good: it is still having a dreadful time trying to hold down the memory of ’40 to ’44. Mildew-France hates everyone but particularly Jews, blacks, Brits, Germans, the neighbours, Europe, and the State. Doctor Valdez, like all his profession, can put his sense of smell in abeyance at will, more or less, but there’s a fearful stink in the afternoon shuttle.

Quite a different atmosphere from this morning (heavy with the sense of doom, guillotines-at-dawn). This crowd got it Done-by-lunchtime, hilarious when the Presentation went well; not going back to the office, neither: boss expects you to be on call up to eleven at night, and fuck that. Raymond’s neighbour is chatty. Asked his racket Ray says ‘Endocrinologist’ but this stopper does not always work. His new-pal gets into athletics, alarmingly. ‘These Tour de France riders, stuff they have, dope no? Increase your red corpuscles, doesn’t show up in the weewee.’ Raymond to his sorrow knows about this, is led (to the greater) to speak of it. To make it work you inject a lot of iron, more than the metabolism copes with. By the end of your career you’ve a simply lovely little liver-cancer all set up and waiting for you. No, he doesn’t know what can be done about it.

Discontent; certaintly thinking Endocrinwhatsit, all worn out from getting his golf handicap down.

“Just settling into our landing pattern,” said the loudspeaker. Crossing the Mont Saint Odile, famous in myth and history. A shuttle once chose to crash here. Middle of the night, of the winter, of thick forest, of deep snow; inconvenient. After many-many boards of enquiry there was still nobody who knew why.

Bump, whizz. “There’s no point in Rushing,” said the stewardess. Quite as usual, Raymond cannot recollect where he has left the car.

An ordinary day, filled with violence – roads, planes, people – but no more than usual. Not going to squawk like a jay but inclining to gibber, Raymond went to the office. Silvia – fat, lovely, comforting, competent – knows him in this state, shields him from an evil world. When he jerks out ‘Tea’ like that, and shuts himself in the stuffy little office (before you get to the air scrubbed and filtered) she
obeys. Tea green and gunpowdery is stowed in a padded basket. He won’t come out, and she’ll let nobody in.

Doctor Valdez Consults. In the polite world of medicine, formal and
protocolaire,
tight-mouthed about fees undeclared to nosy tax officials, this is well understood. Idea-man. What – today’s topic – do athletes mean by ‘form’? Dope left aside (boring topic at best) what makes a footballer score goals, a skier gain a yard of speed, a tennis player see the ball earlier?

What makes William Barton, so harmonious a figure in that extravagant Paris household, so disjointed here upon a bed of roses? The Crab had reached out, given him a nip. That can happen to anyone but there’s more than an extraordinary chance.

The wife; one always suspects the wife, but Valdez is wary of an argument that facile. A football trainer buys a player; a wonderful talent costing millions. Everything points to his fitting in perfectly – and he turns out utterly useless; sullen, awkward and unhappy. The wife – but no; there isn’t any wife.

William had felt himself bought?

This woman; had she invested too much – never mind the money – of hope and delight and pride? That this marriage should turn so sour after so few months, leaving a cancer lodged in William’s gut, and who could tell what bitter misery in hers – that is not only an evil and unhappy chance.

There’s a factor, Valdez, that you would prefer to disregard. Just tell me, would you, why you found this woman so sudden and so violent an intoxication?

You ran like a rabbit. Five more minutes and you’d have been propped there on your back legs with your eyes gone glassy, while the predator danced. About to make a meal of you, whenever it shall choose.

You don’t need these Vast quantities of water. Enough for it to swim in. You put a little salt, a splosh of oil, stops it sticking. Keep the pot boiling quite gently, stir it with a fork so the strands stay loose, respect the time it says on the packet. Choose thick spaghetti, not that skinny stuff, this is number-seven.

They are together in Raymond’s flat. William has invited himself to dinner. Asking for a cookery lesson; things for when you live by yourself and are sick of sardines off the corner of the table.

“I only know about ten things, oh all right, twenty. But I do those really well. My spaghetti is Famous,” preening ostentatiously.

“I’m writing it all down,” said William humbly.

They’ve already made the Bolognese. (‘I know four ways but this is the easiest.’) Demonstration of this great brilliance. Only cooks and doctors have a really sharp knife.

“Difference is that cooks don’t sterilize it. Wash your feet but not the rice. Learn to be a bit dirty.”

“What kind of cheese?”

“Oh I don’t know, Czech Emmenthaler. Parmesan is for when you keep it separate. This you strew over, and we’ll bake it in the oven, all gold and crunchy. There. About a quarter of an hour. Time now to have a real drink. While we make the salad.” All sorts of greenery. “Good for your bowels,” said Dr Valdez.

“I have to take my pill.”

“Yes, poor you. Filthy chemicals. Let’s see. You aren’t really supposed to drink, with this, but we pay no attention. I’m going to get
you off all these pills. Little girl instead to massage you. Spray you with cold water so you don’t get the horn. Right, let’s lay the table.” William said, “This is good. Oh Yaysus-Gott. Give me some more. Three star.” Wiping his mouth for a long drink of red plonk.

“I’ve never been to a real three-star restaurant.”

“I have and often. My masters, getting in was one of our perks. Monsieur-le-Marquis was addicted to them. Liked his tumtum. You say then, thank you Baby-Jesus in the little red velvet waistcoat.”

“It’s immoral to spend a month’s wage on a meal.”

“Yes, that’s what’s so nice when it’s free. You’re right, these people are awful. Caillera.” A good word. Backslang for riff-raff.

“Green tea tomorrow. Vegetables and fruit, I’m taking you off meat. Fish, but not the Bar en croûte Sauce Choron.”

“You sound like a judge of instruction.”

“Proust remarked that in a priest as in an alienist – and I’m a bit of both – you will find something of the judge of instruction.”

“This is you working for me. Now,” said William seriously, “here is me working for you. Let’s have a talk about the fellow who busted you.”

“You setting up as my guard?”

“I’ll do the exercises you prescribe. Physically limber. Mentally too – your damn Jane. Not ‘Guard’ – that’s a monarchist word we refuse.”

“If not a guard,” said Ray, “then perhaps an angel”.

William had been struck by the simplicity of the flat.

“This your vow of poverty?” teasing him.

“Nonsense.” Ray rather cross. “Everything I want, and in perfect comfort. I like it this way. I’m afraid I don’t pay much attention to vows of poverty.”

“Nor chastity? I rather thought not. She left a lipstick in the bathroom.”

“Ay de mí. The police are on my track… That’s Janine.”

“I know how to be discreet,” said the angel,” and I intend also to know the joker who clonked you, and why.”

“Really,” rather helpless. “I know very little about Janine.”

“But one can find out.”

“I’m sure you can… Dumas says somewhere ‘It isn’t always the one with the key who enters the house’.” Raymond was feeling the same sudden exhaustion as attacks him when there is a violent meaningless quarrel with Janine whom he loves and can’t help it.

One passes through the world, knowing scarcely anything – probably nothing important – about people who are intimate friends. There used to be a euphemism, ‘intimacy’ meaning you’d slept together. Now they just ‘have sex’ which is about as intimate as being squashed together on a rush-hour train. Not Ray though.

Somebody at a ‘party’ had put on an old Kansas-City record and Ray said ‘Lovely thing’.

‘So you like a Beeg swing band’ said the girl taunting him. ‘Isn’t that a bit antediluvian? Benny Goodman in all his pomp?’

‘No no that’s just loud. Vitality but crude, noisy, obvious, incurably vulgar.’ He was drunker than he thought.

‘Oh I do so agree. I do so love Ellington.’

‘Like my father. My grandfather too, probably. Conveys thought, that’ll never do nowadays.’

‘Pom de pom pom’ singing the piano chords of a famous introduction. Yes, back when it started in 1940 ‘Take the A-train’ had been soft and relaxed – tender.

But this was the Count; the bounce he gives the orchestra has the lightness – swift, airborne, articulate – she was still there.

‘The Count – Freddy Green – Walter Page – Jo Jones; you’ve the best rhythm section there ever was.’

‘Add in the Prez’ with her eyes shining.

‘So let’s go home and listen to Lester.’ As a master of slipping sliding piano chords says – ‘Maybe it happens this way’.

“Whose house was the party?” asked William.

“Roger. Is his name Blessington? – doesn’t sound quite right.”

Doctor Roger was quite easy; a big jovial man with a general practice, wide among the Council-of-Europe crowd because he speaks good English (he is English; name of Pilkington). A man with golf clubs in the back of the car and pills in the pocket for all occasions,
a man who makes you feel better straight away. He thought he knew Janine but rather-thought the name sounded wrong.

“Not one of my patients.” It’s going to be one of those days, William told himself, when everyone has another name. “If it’s the one I’m thinking of. Decorative girl but have it in my mind she’s called Mireille. Wait a moment, did she come accompanied – well sorry, it was that kind of gathering.” With a sudden shrewd glance, “I know now but I didn’t say this, it doesn’t do to repeat gossip so you didn’t hear it from me; it was PermRep.”

William is quite at home in this world. Strasbourg is one of the diplomatic cities. What with the Council, the Parliament, floods of Funcs, Ministers forever popping in and out, Community countries have accredited missions here, the Permanent Representatives with a vaguely ambassadorial status. This one has an exalted view of his own importance; the name of PermRep attaches to him. Dr Barbour (doctorate of what? – nobody knows) is a tall thin man of much greyish distinction. His teeth and fingernails glitter, the lenses of his glasses flash like lasers, his shirts are very white and the cuffs show off long flexible busy hands; a silvery tie goes with his hair and he has suits the colour and texture of cigar-ash. Oh yes and he’s a secret football-fan. William finds out a lot more but most of it irrelevant.

William doesn’t lurk and neither does he stalk; it gets noticed. Incompetent and illegal, and he has no intention of disturbing Doctor Holier-than-thou – or not for the moment; that’s the fellow would be quick to make a complaint and he’s no longer a serving cop: status dodgy. He’ll pounce though, on poor ‘Mireille’. A grin there, thinking of the Marquis, one of whose techniques was getting names wrong. ‘You – Francine – or are you Muriel?’. She’s easy to spot; the studio (that’s what they call a one-room flat) is in the Robertsau quarter for ‘prestige’ and she has a little Spider, Italian racing red, old but bold. She’s also very pretty – really Ray has good taste, he thinks when she looms. He looms too, large and cop-like.

“Now my girl, you’re being conspicuous. You’ve been attracting my attention.”

“Who are you? Oh – you’re some sort of police.”

“Putting it in a nutshell. You can call it that.”

“I don’t believe a word of it.” The card with the tricolour stripe in a little plastic folder is old but has been genuine.

“Less backchat, girl, unless you want to be brought down to the House.”

“No. I have to do my shopping.”

“What you need my dear is a talking-to, so we’ll just walk into this café here where it’s nice and quiet, and drink a cup of their delicious coffee.”

“I’m not your dear and keep your hands off me.”

“Quite enough that you’re Doctor Barbour’s dear… Now that’s diplomacy for you. Important foreign power, authority is sensitive to such things.” When you pounce make it a good one and be sure it’ll stick. “It won’t do, my dear.” Paternally, dislodging, sitting her down. She is not about to scream.

Continuing to fix her with the eye – Two coffees please miss. – William is about to switch on the kindness but makes sure of the demolition first. Janine has taken a cigarette out of her bag and is lighting it, giving herself a countenance. Thinking.

“What’s he been saying? He’s got no cause for a complaint.”

“Nothing, he’s made no complaint. But you’ll do well not to ask. You’re also very friendly with another doctor – eminent research scientist.”

“That’s right, we’re friends.”

“Quite so, you clean his flat for him and leave your lipstick in the bathroom.”

“Is that where it got to? – I thought I’d lost it.” Perky.

“Understand this little chat” getting omens into the voice, “Somebody attacked Doctor Valdez outside his house. Nasty thing that was and we want to know more about it. Now would you want me to dress you up a Verbal-Process? Make you eat it too, and without any mayonnaise.”

“No truly I know nothing about it. Please, that’s the truth.”

“So you can tell me the nothing in detail, for as long as it takes, if need be we’ll eat lunch here together. Each pays his own” with the tiger-shark smile.

Like all European towns Strasbourg is made up of villages. The old walled city was also moated; and a loop of water – the Faux Rempart – was led around and rejoins the river Ill, making quite a distinctive passage over to the ‘new’ town built in the nineteenth century. Indeed the river splits into several streams which meander before tipping themselves into the Rhine, dividing land areas each with a little village centre of its own. Until 1945 the city came to an end at the canal which links the Rhine to the Marne, rather a bold engineering feat. Here, bordering the waterway, they put the complex of quite hideous buildings which make up the Palace of Europe and house the Parliament, the Council, the Court of Human Rights; all of it peopled by a monstrous swarm of bureaucrats. The grandest of these functionaries found themselves housing in the pleasant villa district surrounding. Minor funcs had nowhere to go until they crossed the canal and invaded the village immediately beyond; this is the Robertsau.

It was known, famous, for the quality of alluvial soil which had built up a bank between the marshy bits; it was Strasbourg’s market garden. Since it is no distance cartloads came daily, beautifully fresh, to the city markets, along with chickens, and fish from the river.

William’s authority for these historic details is of course Albert, a real Strasbourgeois who remembers these good times.

A horrible change has overtaken this peaceful and civilized area. The speculating builders offered the price-you-can’t-resist to the small farmer, drowned the little fields of carrots and onions under a flood of concrete and threw up desirable-residences for funcs who could afford much higher rents than other people, and were pleased to find themselves handily placed for the job. The Robertsau gardens are now dinky apartment blocks with ‘standing’, a French word meaning nasty-but-expensive. People like Janine live there in cramped conditions but happy to have an address with prestige… There are a few old houses remaining, and the church, but the main street is now the bus route out to La Wantzenau where the chickens used to come from, and is choked with diesel exhaust. As for the carrots they all come now from Morocco.

And even the pubs have become tea-shoppes with little calorie-reduced menus for the weight-watching func wives.

William worked on this girl. It wouldn’t occur to him to say ‘hard’. A professional would know what he means when he says ‘Could do with a drink’. No need to explain, he has turned her inside-out like a glove.

He sat back, caught the waitress’s eye and said “
Un
quart
de
rouge
.”

“A what?”

“
Un
pichet.
Anything but Bordeaux.”

“We don’t have little jugs, we’ve only bottles.” This is the point (Albert would have said) of explaining how an honest village becomes a toffee-nosed suburb. There must be a real pub left somewhere for the old men to play cards in, but you’d have to know where to find it.

“Oh all right then, a glass. What have you got?”

“Hold on then,” said Janine in a very small voice. “I could do with one myself.”

“What d’you want?” asked Kind Uncle.

“What I was thinking, d’you know, suppose we were to share a bottle of crémant.” Alsace champagne, and when good can equal the stuff from Reims. It won’t be that good here but it won’t be that naughty price either.

“Right” said William, “and bring two menus”. Now he’s in a way to get a few things straight and more reliably: Janine can’t open her mouth without lying but now they’re beginning to understand one another. It’s much too grand to talk about Stockholm syndrome but the principle is the same; a kind of human relationship begins to instil itself. If, interrogating people, you can get to a point where they begin to find you sympathetic, you can do without a lot of threats and bullying. You’ve some idea of the level of disbelief applicable, and you’ve a little list of the facts and opinions you want to verify. And if you’re William this is the moment to gain her confidence.

Raymond Valdez

Janine has vanished. Janine doesn’t live here any more. I’ve rung her
number, got the machine, left a word. No reaction. I know what that means. I’m not going to ask any questions.

‘I only know that he who forms a tie is lost. The germ of corruption has entered into his soul.’ Epigraph to a Greene book. A good writer; nobody like him at throwing the noose around your neck. Old Hangman Greene.

I am a Jesuit? A consecrated man? Awful word, next door to castrated. No wonder that people see one as a weirdy. A suspected pederast. I can be respected, even admired, but at the back of their minds I am a poor thing, unable to love or fulfil a woman. I’m like anybody else. I am Monsieur Tout-le-Monde.