The Watchers (38 page)

‘Wow. Which bell was that?’

‘La Lombarde. She rings after Marie for five minutes at noon. She lives upstairs with the other bells. Do you want to see?’

‘Why do you call the bells “she”?’

‘Because that’s what they are. Do you want lunch now?’

‘Yeah, but are you sure nobody will come up here while you’re gone?’

‘Monsieur Taroni closed the tower to visitors because the snow and ice could make the balcony stones slippery.’

‘And Monsieur Taroni is …?’

‘The caretaker of the cathedral, he tells me what to do.’

‘Is he like the other ones?’

‘Monsieur Taroni’s not dead yet. He lives in nowtimes.’

‘Nowtimes. And that would be the opposite of …’

‘Beforetimes.’

‘That’s good, seeing that this Taroni guy tells you what to do and all. What about the guy you said works on Sundays?’

‘Monsieur Buhlmann.’

‘Yeah, him.’

‘Not dead yet.’

‘And there’s no chance any of these guys’ll come up here in … nowtimes.’

Rochat stood and took the ring of skeleton keys from the hook on the back of the door.

‘I have the only keys to the tower, and you can stand on the balcony and watch me go down Escaliers du marché and come back up. You can see the café from the balcony. Do you want to come outside and see?’

‘No, I’ll stay inside and wait.’

He shuffled by her and reached above the bed. He fiddled with the buttons and dials of the old radio.

‘You can listen to this radio. This is the button to turn it on, and this is the dial to find places in the air. It turns, like this.’

‘No, that’s all right, I’ll just sit here.’

Rochat reached behind the radio, pulled Monsieur Booty from his hiding place, where he was enjoying a nap.

Mew
.

‘Oh, be quiet, you miserable beast.’

Rochat held the cat out to Katherine, its legs dangling like furry noodles.

‘What am I supposed to do with your cat?’

‘I imagined Monsieur Booty can be me when I’m gone.’

Katherine opened her arms and received the cat, who promptly nestled in her lap and went back to sleep. Rochat opened the small window that looked out to Clémence.

‘And I’ll leave this window open in case he needs to go out and do cat business. Just tell him not to scratch the timbers or eat the birds.’

‘No eating the birds, got it.’

‘I’ll get lunch now.’

He lifted his overcoat from an iron peg in the wall and slipped it on. He stuffed the keys in the pocket. He saw the look on her face.

‘Are you afraid to be alone in the cathedral?’

‘I’ll be all right. Just don’t forget to come back.’

‘You can call a friend if you want. The telephone’s old, like the radio. You have to turn the numbers wheel.’

She saw the telephone. Wood box with a mouthpiece and a rotary dialler, black receiver hanging on a hook, two tiny steel bells on top.

‘What a funny old thing.’

‘Sometimes it’s hard to hear because it’s so old, but you can call someone if you’re afraid to be alone.’

‘No, I can’t call anyone.’

‘
D’accord
.’

He turned around, opened the door. Sunlight flooded by him, blinding her eyes.

‘Marc, wait.’

Rochat turned back. ‘
Oui?
’

‘You won’t be long?

‘I won’t be long.’

‘OK.’

He watched the sunlight cross her face, her eyes catching the light and reflecting sparkly colours. She didn’t move.

‘Are you thinking about something?’ Rochat asked.

‘Yeah, I’m thinking there’s something I have to tell you.’

‘Do you want to tell me now?’

‘Not really.’

‘
D’accord
.’

He turned to leave.

‘No, Marc, wait.’

He turned back again and waited.

‘What I meant is, I don’t want to tell you now or ever. But I have to, right now. Those men you saw last night?’

‘From the bad shadows.’

‘The what?’

‘They came from the bad shadows.’

‘Yeah, those bad-shadow guys. They said they’d find me wherever I went, they said they’d kill anyone who helped me.’

Rochat stared at her. It took a long time to understand the words, no one had ever said such a thing to him.

‘Oh.’

‘That’s all you have to say?’

Rochat scratched his head and shuffled into the loge. He took his lantern from a shelf and set it on the table. He lit a match, set the lantern alight, shuffled back to the doorway and faced her.

‘It’s my duty to protect you.’

He pulled the door closed.

Katherine watched the flame in the lantern. She heard sounds in the quiet. Above the world, middle-of-the-sky sounds. The breeze moving through the timbers and circling the tower. Footsteps crossing the far-below esplanade. A trolley bus rolling over Pont Bessières, the whistle of the ferry crossing the lake. There was the briefest moment of tranquillity, before reality hit her over the head.

‘You really got yourself screwed nine ways to Sunday this time, girl.’

She looked at the wreck of a telephone on the wall. Damn, if only there was someone to call. She went through her contacts. Forget it. Daily gossip sessions meant Simone had the names of all her clients, Stephan at LP’s and Lili at her sculpture studio, her family in the States, her favourite restaurants and haunts. Need an escape plan. Go to the Swiss cops or the US Embassy in Geneva? Oh yeah, there’s an idea. Hi, my name’s Katherine, but you can call me Kat, and I’m a dope-smoking hooker from California with hobbies in international money laundering, insider trading and eight years’ worth of tax fraud under my belt, and I was wondering if you could help me, please? Couldn’t stay in a belfry for ever. Think what it’d be like asking her roomie to pick up a box of tampons with lunch. She stroked Monsieur Booty’s fluffy coat.

‘This is what you call being up the creek without a paddle, fuzzface.’

The beast looked up to her.

Mew
.

‘I get it. Your boss talks to bells, you talk to people.’

Mew
.

She stood with Monsieur Booty in her arms and looked through the small square window above the table. Yup, big bell still hanging in the criss-crossed timbers, narrow stone balcony, pillars and arches opening to the sky. She could just see bits of way-down-there Lausanne and the snowy hills forming the border with France.

She turned to the small window facing east. She saw the long retiled roof of the cathedral with a conical tower at the far end, then the snow-covered vineyards beyond Lausanne and the lake bending to Montreux and down to Italy where the ice-bound Alps rose to the blue sky. Hell of a view, she thought, like sitting on the edge of a cloud.

She opened the window, pigeons fled from the timbers in a blur.

The cat’s ears twitched.

Merroow
.

‘Hey, you heard the boss. Lay off the birds.’

Merrrroooow
.

She dropped the cat from her arms.

It scratched at the wood floor.

Merrrroooow
.

‘Scat!’

Monsieur Booty hopped up to a stool, jumped on the bed.

Katherine rose on her tiptoes, stretched her neck through the small window to see Marie-Madeleine. The bell was as tall as the loge ceiling and twice as wide.

‘No wonder it’s so damn loud.’

She closed the window, looked about the room.

There was a shelf along the wall, with a photograph of a young man and a beautiful young woman on a cliff. She saw his face in the both of them, had to be Mommy and Daddy. A stack of tall, thin books behind the photo. She pulled one down, saw the words
loge de guet
written in childlike scribble on the cover. She sat at the table and opened the book. Inside were pictures of the very room she was in, drawn as detailed studies. The burning lantern on the table with a floppy hat, water jugs and candles, the empty bed. There was a name at the bottom of each page, written in the same childlike scribble: ‘rochat’.

‘Hey, not bad.’

She took down another book,
les eveques du morts
, and opened it. She thumbed through a series of marble tombs. Clerics from the Middle Ages in stoneful repose, their marble faces worn away to almost nothing but looking as if they just might sit up and talk.

‘Not bad at all.’

She took down another book,
piratz
. It was a story, like a comic book, with a wizard in a pointed hat, resembling the conical tower outside her window – even had the weathercock on top. And the wizard was flying through the night, lighting the sky with the huge diamond hanging around his neck. And he lived in a castle of ice, on an island in the middle of a boiling sea. Then there was a gang of goofy-looking pirates with wood swords and paper hats, riding on the back of a giant caterpillar, flying over the boiling sea and circling the castle. The wizard and the pirates shouting at each other: ‘Pooh on you, you big mean wizard!’ ‘No, you take it back, you dumb pirates!’ ‘Oh, yeah?’ ‘Yeah and double yeah!’

‘Jesus, he’s really good.’

She reached for the last book,
l’ange de lausanne
. She heard footsteps on the balcony and quickly replaced the books on the shelf. She sat still on the bed and listened. There was nothing but the sound of pigeons scurrying outside the loge. Monsieur Booty took the opportunity to crawl over and curl up in her lap. She scratched the beast behind his ears.

‘False alarm, Monsieur Booty. Just the pigeons.’

Merroow
.

‘No, you still can’t eat them.’

Merrrooow
.

‘Yeah, yeah. Life’s a bitch.’

Katherine sat quietly, looked around the loge again. The odd angles of the walls and ceiling like lines of perspective squeezing down to the door the other end of the loge. Weird, she thought, the wood door was only six or seven steps from where she sat with a cat in her lap. But with the lines of perspective and the way it was set between two heavy timbers, with a huge cross-beam above, the door looked like the gateway to a rabbit hole leading to a dark and scary place. Come to think of it that’s just what was the other side of the fucking door. Better off above the world in the middle of the sky with a crooked, brain-damaged guy who thought it was his duty to protect you. Damn good thing there’s still someone left you can squeeze a favour from, she thought. Her mind came to a screeching halt. Jesus, maybe he wasn’t the only one. She lifted Monsieur Booty’s face to hers.

‘Hey, fuzzface, where’s your boss hide the phone book?’

Monsieur Dufaux was snapping his dish towel on tabletops and pounding breadcrumbs to the floor when Rochat came into the café.

‘Marc Rochat! Where have you been?’

‘
Salut, monsieur, ça va?
’

Monsieur Dufaux tucked the dish towel in his apron strings and shook Rochat’s hand.

‘I’m fine, Marc. But everyone’s been talking in the café. Madame Budry says you must have found a girl to cook for you in the tower. You know, you are looking a little pink in the cheeks.’

Rochat watched the cigarette bounce on Monsieur Dufaux’s lip as he talked.

‘Well, come on, Marc. Who is she?’

Rochat didn’t know what to say.

Monsieur Dufaux smiled.

‘I’m teasing, Marc. What can I do for you?’

‘I’d like two
plats du jour
to take to the tower, and a block of fondue cheese for later. I’ll return the dishes tomorrow.’

‘
Deux magrets de canard avec frites et salade verte, c’est bon?
Wait, did you say
two
plates?’

‘
Oui
.’

‘So maybe you do have a girl up there, eh?’

Rochat spoke very slowly to make sure he didn’t make mistakes.

‘I’m staying in the tower, because there’s been lots of ice and snow. And Monsieur Booty, my cat, is visiting. So I need two
plats du jour
.’

‘Well, for you and your cat, I’ll get the fattest ducks in the canton. Sit and have a Rivella.’

‘I’m in a hurry, monsieur.’

‘Marc, you have to give my cook time to go to the farm, find just the right ducks and bring them to Lausanne. Then we need to wring their necks, pluck their feathers and roast them in the oven.’

Rochat wasn’t sure if it was a joke. He laughed nervously, rocked back and forth on his boot heels. Monsieur Dufaux put his hand on Rochat’s shoulder.

‘You have time for a Rivella, Marc.’

‘I have time for a Rivella.’

Rochat sat at the table by the window. He pulled back the lace curtain and looked up the cobblestones of Escaliers du marché. He could see the belfry through the bare plane trees, and the streaks of thin white clouds sneaking in from the southwest. Monsieur Dufaux came to the table with the drinks and sat.

‘So what’s the weather report for tonight, Marc? More snow coming our way?’

Rochat remembered what the sky looked like from the tower.

‘It’s too warm for more snow today but stingy kind of clouds are coming from the southwest. That means more rain by tomorrow night, then winds will come down from the north and it will turn very cold and icy.’

‘Really?’

Monsieur Dufaux reached for the newspaper and turned to the weather report.

‘Bless me, you’re right. Come to think of it, last week you sat right here and said old man winter was trying to sneak into Lausanne. Next thing, we were buried in snow. Why don’t you pick the lottery numbers for me, Marc? Seventy-six million francs in the pot. I’ll buy the ticket, you pick the numbers, we’ll split the money.’

‘I’m not very good with numbers, monsieur.’

‘Too bad.’ Monsieur Dufaux drank his coffee in one quick gulp. ‘
Bon
, I’ll see about your food.’

He rose from his chair and went to the kitchen. Just now, the café was full of shopkeepers and bankers and people Rochat didn’t know but recognized from the street. Like the two ladies sitting across the café, smoking and talking over coffee. There were big shopping bags at their feet, stuffed with things wrapped in Christmas paper.

‘Goodness, Rochat, you’ve been so busy you forgot it’s nearly Christmas.’